PukeOnABook

Japanese Short Stories. Reformatted for machine Reading 2023. Contents. The Fox by KAFU NAGAI. Flash Storm by TON SATOMI. The Garden by RYUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA. Grass by GISABURO JUICHIYA. Mount Hiei by RIICHI YOKOMITSU. Ivy Gates by KANOKO OKAMOTO. Autumn Wind by GISHU NAKAYAMA. The Titmouse by YASUNARI KAWABATA. One Woman and the War by ANGO SAKAGUCHI. Borneo Diamond by FUMIKO HAYASHI. Along the Mountain Ridge by MORIO KITA. Ugly Demons by YUMIKO KURAHASHI. Bamboo Flowers by TSUTOMU MIZUKAMI. Invitation to Suicide by JUN’ICHI WATANABE. The Fox. KAFU NAGAI. The sound of dry leaves racing through the garden, the sound of wind rattling the paper doors. One afternoon in my winter study, by a dim little window, as if in memory of the autumn-evening field where I’d parted from my lover some years ago, I was leaning lonelily against a brazier and reading a biography of Turgenev. One summer evening, when he was still a child without knowledge of things, Turgenev wandered through his father’s garden, densely overgrown with trees and shrubs. By the weedy edge of an old pond, he came upon the miserable sight of a frog and a snake trying to devour each other. In his innocent, childish heart, Turgenev had immediately doubted the goodness of God. As I read this passage, for some reason I remembered the frightening old garden of my father’s house in Koishikawa, where I was born. In those days, already more than thirty years ago, the canal of the Suido district flowed through fields of spiderwort like a rural stream. At that time the vacant residences of vassals and lower-grade retainers of the old shogunate were coming on the market here and there. Buying up a group of them, my father built a spacious new mansion, while leaving the old groves and gardens intact. By the time I was born, the ornamental alcove posts of the new house had already acquired some of the soft luster of the polishing cloth. On the stones of the garden, which was just as it had always been, the moss grew deeper and deeper, and the shade of the trees and shrubs grew darker and darker. Far back, in the darkest part of those groves, there were two old wells, said to be vestiges of the original households. One of them, during a period of five or six years from before my birth, had been gradually filled in by our gardener, Yasukichi, with all the garden trash, such as dead pine needles, broken-off cryptomeria branches, and fallen cherry leaves. One evening at the beginning of winter, when I had just turned four, I watched Yasu at work. Having finished the job of getting the pines, palms, and bananas ready for the frost, he broke down the sides of the well, which were covered all over with mushrooms dried white like mold. This is one of my many frightening memories of the garden. Ants, millipedes, centipedes, galley worms, earthworms, small snakes, grubs, earwigs, and various other insects that had been asleep in their winter home, crawling out from between the rotten boards in great numbers, began to squirm and writhe slipperily in the cold, wintry gale. Many of them, turning up their dingy white undersides, died on the spot. With a helper whom he’d brought along, Yasu gathered the day’s fallen leaves and dead branches together with the chopped-up boards of the well and set it all on fire. Raking in with a bamboo broom the insects and wriggling snakes that had begun to crawl away, he burned them alive. The fire made sharp, crackling noises. There was no flame, only a damp whitish smoke, which as it climbed through the high tops of the old trees, gave off an indescribably bad smell. The wintry wind, howling desolately in those old treetops, seemed to blow down dark night all through the garden. From the direction of the invisible house, the voice of the wet nurse was calling loudly for me. Abruptly bursting into tears, I was led by the hand by Yasu back to the house. Yasu neatly leveled the ground over the plugged-up old well, but during the spring rains, evening showers, stormy days, and other spells of heavy rain the surface of the ground would subside a foot or two. Afterward the area was roped off and no one allowed to go near it. I remember being told with a special sternness by both my parents to stay away from there. As for the other old well, it indeed is the most terrifying memory I have of that period, which I could not forget even if I tried to. The well seemed to be extraordinarily deep, so that even Yasu did not attempt to fill it up. I don’t know what kind of house now stands on that property, but no doubt the well, with the old tree alongside it, is still there in a corner of the grounds. All around in back of the well, like the precinct of a shrine that’s said to be haunted, a grove of cedars stood in dense, dark quietude both summer and winter. It made that part of the garden all the more frightening. Behind the grove there was a black wooden fence with sharp-pointed stakes atop it. On the other side there was, on one hand, the unfrequented thoroughfare of Kongo Temple at the top of a slope and, on the other, a shantytown that my father had always disliked, saying, “If they would only pull that place down.” My father had bought up what originally had been three small estates. It was all our property now, but the old well was on a patch of wasteland at the base of a cliff that, since it was far down the slope from where the house had been built, was almost forgotten about by the people of the household. My mother often asked my father why he’d bought that useless piece of land. My father’s reply was that if he hadn’t, a slum would have gone up at the foot of the hill. We’d have had to look at dirty tile roofs and laundry drying in the sun. By buying it up and leaving it the same, he kept it nice and quiet down there. Probably for my father, the sinister forms of the old trees that howled in the wind, wept in the rain, and held the night in their arms were not frightening at all. There were even times when my father’s formal, angular face seemed more vaguely alarming than the wen-shaped knot of a pine. One night a thief got into the house and stole a padded silk garment of my mother’s. The next morning our regular fireman, the foreman of the carpenters, and a detective from the police station came by. As they went along examining the footprints by the edge of the veranda outside my father’s sitting room, they found more prints in the trodden and crushed frost that led clear through the midwinter garden. It became evident that the thief had sneaked onto the grounds from the black wooden fence in back of the old well. In front of the well, there was a dirty old towel that he must have dropped in his getaway. Taken by the hand by the chief carpenter, Seigoro, who in feudal days had served the house of Mito, for the first time in my life I walked around this old well off in a corner of the old garden. A solitary willow tree stood by the side of the well. Half-rotten, the trunk had become hollowed and many sad-looking dead branches hung down from it. Struck by an indescribable eeriness, I didn’t so much as think of trying to peer down to the bottom of this well that was too deep to fill up even if one had wanted to. It was not only myself who was afraid. After the robbery, that part of the garden at the base of the cliff and around the old well became a place of dread for everyone in the family except my father. The Satsuma Rebellion had just ended, and the world was full of stories of conspirators, assassins, armed burglars, and bloodthirsty cruelty. Dark, paranoid suspicions hovered everywhere in the air. One could not tell when, under cover of night, lurking under the veranda of the stately gated house of a well-to-do person or of a merchant with a big storehouse, listening for the sleeping breath of the master, a terrorist or assassin would thrust his sword up through the tatami mat. At our house, without the proposal coming from my father or mother, it was decided to have the regular fireman make a watchman’s rounds at night. Night after cold night, as I lay in my wet nurse’s arms, I heard the clacking of his wooden clapper sound out loud and clear all through the sleeping house. There was nothing so unpleasant and frightening as the night. After having a Beniya bean-jam wafer from a shop on Ando Slope as my snack, I would have just started playing house with my mother when the yellow evening sunlight on the translucent paper sliding door would fade away even as I looked. The wind rattled drearily through the bare-branched trees and shrubs. It started getting dark first by the black walls of the ornamental alcove in the parlor. When my mother, saying that she was going to wash her hands, stood up and slid open the door, it was dusky all through the garden to the base of the cliff, where it was completely dark. Of anywhere on the grounds, the place where it became night earliest was at the base of the cliff, where that old well was. But wasn’t it from the bottomless depth of that old well that the night welled up? Such feelings did not leave me until long afterward. Even after I had begun to go to grade school, along with the tale of O-Kiki of the Plate House advertised on the notices for peep shows on temple festival days and the picture book Mysterious Lights on the Sea from which my wet nurse read to me, not merely the old well but the ancient, half-decayed willow tree alongside it took on the force of a natural spell. I could not tell how many times they had frightened me in dreams. I wanted to see the frightening thing itself. But when I timidly asked about it, the wet nurse snipped off the buds of my young awareness with the scissors of superstition. As for my father, when he scolded me for disobedience one of his worst threats was that he would drive me out of the house and tie me up to the willow tree by the well. Ah, what terrible memories of childhood. Even when I was twelve or thirteen, I was afraid to go to the bathroom by myself at night. But I dare say I was not alone in this among the children who grew up in that period. My father was a government official. In those days the cabinet was called the Great Hall of Government, and a minister was addressed as My Lord. At one time my father had been passionately devoted to horsemanship. Four or five years later, when that enthusiasm had died down, he suddenly took up archery. Every morning, before going to the office, he would place a target halfway up the cliff. Standing by the side of the well with his back to the willow tree, he twanged the bowstring in the cool morning breezes of summer. Soon, however, autumn came around. One chilly morning my father, who practiced with one shoulder bare, having excitedly dashed up the cliff path and back down with the bow still in his hand, called out in a loud, hoarse voice, “Tazaki! Tazaki! Come quickly. There’s a fox in the garden.” Tazaki was a youth of sixteen or seventeen who, by virtue of being from my father’s native village, was living at our house as a student-houseboy. Because of an imposing physique and a way of throwing back his shoulders and giving loud harangues larded with many Chinese words, he seemed to me like a pompous adult. “What is the matter, sir?” “Damned nuisance. There’s a fox in this garden. It was startled by the sound of my bow and jumped out of the beargrass at the foot of the cliff. It must have a hole around there.” Together with his rickshaw man, Kisuke, and Tazaki, my father searched the dense growth of low, striped bamboo from around halfway down the cliff. But soon it was time to go to the office. “Tazaki, search this place thoroughly.” “Yes, sir. I will do so.” Tazaki prostrated himself in the entryway as my father’s rickshaw, with a crunching sound over the gravel, went out through the front gate. The minute it was gone, he tucked up his formal divided skirt and with a shoulder pole in one hand stepped out into the garden. When I think of the student-houseboys of those days, it all comes back, the laughable distinctions observed between master and servant, just as in the old feudal days. My mother, who was gentle and kind to everyone, seeing the preparations of Tazaki, said to him, “It’s dangerous. The fox might well bite you, and then what would you do? Please don’t go.” “Madam. Are you suggesting that I’m not a match for a fox? There’s nothing to it. I’ll beat it to death and have it ready to show the master when he gets back.” Squaring his shoulders in that way of his, Tazaki put on a blustering front. Later this man was to become an army officer, and in the Sino-Japanese War achieved a bloody death in the field. Perhaps he felt a natural affinity for slaughter. Our cook, O-Etsu, who was not on good terms with Tazaki and who was a country-bred person full of superstitions, paled and explained to him that it would be bad luck for the house if he killed the fox-god. Tazaki rejected this point-blank, saying it was not for the likes of a rice cook to poke her nose in where the master’s orders were concerned. O-Etsu, puffing out her full red cheeks as she talked, and my wet nurse then told me all about fox possession and fox curses, instances of people being bewitched by foxes and of the miracles of the fox-god, Takezo Inari, whose shrine was in back of Denzu Temple. Although thinking uneasily of such things like the much talked-about method of divination called table-turning, I halfway sided with Tazaki’s bravado and wanted to go with him on his fox conquest. But half of me doubted, wondering if there was anything in the world as strange as this. Tazaki, thrashing about in the beargrass thickets until he was called back for lunch, his shins scratched and bleeding from the raspy-edged bamboo blades and thorns, his face all covered with cobwebs for nothing, came back without having found anything that even looked like a fox hole. In the evening my father returned, followed by an old man called Yodoi. Yodoi, who was my father’s chess and drinking companion almost every night, was a lower-grade civil official who did some money-lending on the side, an underling from my father’s office who made the maids cry because he stayed so long. He drew pictures for me of the horse-drawn trolley cars downtown that were coming into use at that time, and for my mother he had stories of such heroes as Tasuku Hikosaburo and Tanosuke. Accompanied by Yodoi as Tazaki led the way with a paper lantern, my father searched all around the garden twice. In the late evening air, the noise of myriads of insects sounded like falling rain. It was my first discovery of the purity, coldness, and pallor of an autumn night. My mother told a story of having been awakened in the small hours that same night, it was no dream, by an unmistakable wailing sound in the garden. From the next day on the maids would not set foot outside the house after dark no matter what. Our devotedly loyal O-Etsu, believing that bad luck was in store for us, caught a cold from sprinkling well water over herself at daybreak and praying to the god of fire. Hearing about this, Tazaki secretly reported it to my father, and the upshot was that poor O-Etsu was harshly scolded and told that there was a limit even to making a fool of oneself. My wet nurse, after talking it over with my mother, just happened to get a dog from our regular fish dealer, Iroha. In addition, she now and then left out scraps of fried bean curd in the beargrass thickets at the base of the cliff. Early each morning, paying no mind to the chill that deepened day by day, my father went out to the rear of the garden by the old well and practiced his archery. But the fox did not show itself again. Once an emaciated stray dog that had wandered in from somewhere had its ear bitten off by our dog, who set on it savagely as it was eating the fried bean curd. By slow degrees, a mood of relief had spread through the household. Perhaps the fox had escaped to somewhere. Or it hadn’t been a fox at all, but some other stray dog. Already it was winter. “Isn’t there anyone to clean out the brazier in this cold weather? All the servants in this house are blockheads.” One morning, these chiding words of my father’s were heard all through the house. Throughout the house the storm shutters, the paper sliding doors, and the openwork panels over lintels banged and rattled. At the edge of the veranda, like water poured out on the ground, the lonely sound of the wind in the shrubbery was suddenly heard and as suddenly not. When it was time to go to school, my mother, saying that I should wear a scarf, pulled out the drawers of the clothes chest. In the chill, empty air of the big parlor, the smell of camphor seemed to spread through my whole body. But it was still warm in the afternoons. When my mother, the wet nurse, and I went out onto a sunny part of the porch, the appearance of the garden, compared with the time of excitement about the fox, was as changed as if it were another world. I took it strangely to heart. The branches of the plum tree and the blue paulownia were bare and barren. The luxuriant growth of fall plants, such as the rose mallow and the chickenhead clover, had all faded away and died. Unfiltered by the leaves, the brilliant sunlight fell full on the ground. From the filled-in well, where Yasu had burnt alive the small snakes and grubs, to the dark, scary grove of cedars at the base of the cliff, you could see everywhere in the garden through the wintry skeletons of the treetops. As for the maples among the pines on the lower slope of the cliff, their scarlet autumn foliage had turned into dirty old leaves that pell-mell flew and scattered in the wind. In the bonsai landscape tray, set out on a stepping stone at the edge of the veranda, one or two solitary leaves, dyed red as blood, were left on the miniature waxtree. Outside the circular window of my father’s study, the leaves of the yatsude were blacker than any ink, and its jewel-like flowers pallidly glittered. By the water basin, where the fruit of the nandin was still green, the low twittering of the bush warbler was always to be heard. On the roof, under the eaves, about the windows, and everywhere in the garden, the chirruping voice of the sparrow seemed almost noisy. I did not think that the garden in early winter was either lonely or sad. At least I did not feel that it was any more frightening than on a slightly overcast day of autumn. On the contrary, it was a pleasure to tread underfoot the carpet of fallen leaves, to walk about amid its crackling noise. But from the time that Yasukichi, wearing his livery coat dyed with the family crest, came with his helper to make the pines and banana trees ready for winter as he always did, it was not long before the first morning frost did not melt until the afternoon. After that, there was no setting foot in the garden anymore. Before we were aware of it, our house dog had vanished somewhere. Various explanations were given, such as that he had been done in by the dogcatcher or that he was a valuable dog so somebody had stolen him. I begged my father to let us have another dog. But saying that if he did so, other strange dogs would hang around when it was in heat, breaking down the hedges and laying waste to the garden, my father refused to allow another dog in the household. Sometime before this, a small poultry yard had been built by the well outside the kitchen. I used to love to feed the chickens every day when I got back from school. For that reason I didn’t complain very much about not having a dog. It was the happy, peaceful season of midwinter seclusion. As for the mysterious affair of the fox, it faded out of the fancies of the maidservants and the other people of the house. There was no dog now to bark at the footsteps of a person going by late in the night. In the sound of the wind that swayed the tall trees of the garden, there was only the thin, distant peal of the temple bell of Denzuin. Sitting at the warm, sunken hearth with my mother and the wet nurse, I turned and spread out the pages of storybooks and of woodblock color prints under the quiet lamplight. My father, with his subordinate and crony, Yodoi, played go with a crisp, clinking sound of the stones behind the six-leafed screen that had been drawn around them in the inner hall. Sometimes he would clap his hands and shout at the maid for her faulty way of pouring the sakay. My mother, saying that such things could not be left to the servants, would get up and go through the cold dark of the house to the kitchen. In my child’s heart, I almost hated my father for his lack of consideration. It drew near the end of the year. A man who had been a palanquin-bearer in the old days, lately reduced to making frames for paper lanterns at the foot of the hill, hung himself. At the top of Ando Slope, not far from us, a gang of five thieves broke into a pawnshop and killed a sixteen-year-old girl. An arsonist set fire to a secondary temple in the precinct of the Denzuin. A restaurant called the Tatsumiya, which had flourished on Tomi Slope in the days of Lord Mito, went bankrupt. We heard these stories in turn from such people as Kyusai, the family masseur, the fish dealer Kichi, and the fireman Seigoro, who frequented our back door, but they left hardly any impression on me. All I wanted was to attach a humming string to my nine-crested dragon kite with the old man Kansaburo, who was a porter at my father’s office and who came to visit us only on New Year’s Day. I thought only of such things as whether the wind would be blowing that day. At some point or other, however, the family greengrocer, Shunko, and our parlormaid, O-Tama, had become secret lovers. One night, hand in hand and carrying their clothes on their backs, they tried to elope. Tazaki nabbed them as they were going over the wooden fence by the back gate. The ensuing household uproar and the decision to send O-Tama back to her parents’ house in Sumiyoshi, although I did not understand what was happening, seemed terrible to me. The sight of O-Tama’s retreating figure, in tears as she was dragged through the back gate by her white-haired mother, seemed sad even in my eyes. After this, I felt that there was something grim and hateful about Tazaki. My father was well pleased with him, but my mother and the rest of us could not abide him. He was a lowdown person who had done a bad thing. All of New Year’s Day I did nothing but fly my kite. On Sundays, when there was no school, I would get up especially early to play. I begrudged the fact that the winter sun went down so soon. But before long it was February, and then came a Sunday when it was no use getting up early: there was snow. Out by the back door, where my father almost never went, there was the sound of his thick, husky voice. With him was Tazaki, doing most of the talking. There was also the voice of my father’s rickshaw man, Kisuke, who’d come by as he did every morning. Not listening to the wet nurse, who was trying to change my sleeping kimono, I ran toward their voices. When I saw my mother, standing on the threshold with her back to me and her arms folded, a sort of sad happiness filled me. Clinging to her soft sleeve, I wept. “What are you crying about so early in the morning?” My father’s voice was sharp. But my mother, taking out one hand from her bosom, gently stroked my head. “The fox has come back. He’s eaten one of Mune-chan’s favorite chickens. Isn’t that terrible? Be a good boy, now.” The snow was blowing in fitful gusts through the back door into the dirt-floored entryway. Half-melted lumps of snow that had been tracked in under everybody’s high clogs quickly made mud of the floor. The cook, O-Etsu, the new parlormaid, one other maidservant, and my wet nurse, all aflutter over their master’s unexpected appearance at the back door and shivering with cold, sat as if glued to the floorboards of the raised part of the kitchen. My father, putting on the snow clogs that Tazaki set out for him and taking the paper umbrella that Kisuke held over his head, started on a tour of inspection out in back of the house and around the chicken yard by the well. “Mother, I want to go too.” “No, I can’t have you catching cold. Please don’t ask.” Just then the wicket of the back gate was opened and Seigoro, the head fireman, came in, saying, “It’s been quite a heavy snowfall.” Dressed in his firefighting outfit of quilted hood, livery coat, and old-fashioned Japanese gloves, he was making the rounds of the neighborhood on his initial snow inspection. “What’s that? Oh, how terrible. A fox took one of your chickens, you say? Why, it’s the most exciting thing to happen since the Restoration. Just like the samurais, the fox-god was deprived of his stipend. And he couldn’t smell the fried bean curd under all that snow. So he wandered over to your chicken house. It’s no great matter. Your folks will catch him for sure.” Seigoro kindly carried me on his back to the side of the chicken yard. Apparently that morning at daybreak the fox had craftily stolen with rapid strides across the accumulated snowdrifts, dug a hole under the bamboo fence, and crawled through it into the yard. Snow and dirt were scattered all about where he had scratched and scrabbled his way through. Inside the bamboo enclosure, on the snow that had blown into it, not only were chicken feathers mercilessly tossed about but a drop or two of bright red blood was to be seen. “It’ll be no trouble this morning. There are prints all over the snow. ‘If you follow my tracks, you’ll soon find me in the Shinoda woods,’ as the old line goes. Eh, it’s been living in the cliff in your garden since last year?” Just as Seigoro said, a trail of fox prints was found that led from the garden down the cliff and vanished at the base of a pine tree. My father at their head, the band of trackers raised a spontaneous cry of triumph. When Tazaki and the rickshaw man scraped away the snow with a spade and a long-handled hoe, the fox’s lair, that all the last year had been searched for without success, was nakedly exposed in a thicket of beargrass that grew densely even in winter. At length a consultation began on the best method of killing the fox. Kisuke held that if they smoked it out with red pepper, the fox, unable to bear the pungent smoke, would come yelping out of its hole, and they then could dispatch it. Tazaki, saying that it would be a shame if the fox got away, was for setting a snare at the mouth of the hole or, failing that, gunpowder. But then Seigoro, unfolding his arms and tilting his head to one side, broached a difficult matter. “Foxes usually have more than one hole. There’s bound to be an exit somewhere. If we only stop up the entrance, we’ll look like real fools when the fox sneaks out the back door.” This started everybody thinking again. To find the back hole, however, in all this heavy snow, would not just be very difficult but almost impossible. Finally, after another conference that lasted so long that everyone began to shudder with the cold, it was decided that all they could do was to smoke out the hole at this end with sulfur. Tazaki made ready for firing a gun from the house. My father laid an arrow on the string of his great bow. Kisuke with a shoulder pole, Seigoro with a fire axe, and the gardener, Yasu, who just then had come by a trifle belatedly to shovel snow and was pressed into service, also with a shoulder pole, were ready for action. My father returned briefly to the house to change into some old Western clothes. Tazaki went to the apothecary’s in front of Denzuin to buy sulfur and gunpowder. The others noisily whiled away the interval with a two-quart keg of sakay, from which they drank with teacups. What with one delay and another, it was almost noon by the time they finally began smoking out the mouth of the hole. I said I wanted to watch the subjugation of the fox with all the others but I was sternly kept indoors by my mother. With her and the wet nurse, I turned over and spread out as usual the pages of a storybook at the sunken hearth. Unable to stay still, however, I got up and sat down again and again. The only sound of a gun that we heard was the muffled dun of the noonday cannon at Marunouchi. Although so far away, it surprised us on clear days by rattling even the translucent paper sliding doors of our parlor. And yet the sharp report of the gun, shooting the fox dead right at the base of the cliff, would have split both my ears, I thought. The women in the house were as agitated as myself. Wouldn’t somebody get bitten by the fox? Wouldn’t the fox-god come rampaging into the house? Some of the women were even intoning Buddhist prayers and putting on amulets. My mother, however, gave detailed instructions for the sakay treat to be served to all the people of the house. From time to time I went out onto the veranda but not a sound came up from the bottom of the cliff. It was as if nobody was down there. There was no sign of any smoke. There was only the lonely sound of the accumulated snow slipping off from the nearby shrubbery. Although the dark sky hung low over the tops of the groves, which were shrouded by a cloudlike mist, in the snow, scattered about or lying piled in silvery, gleaming drifts, the garden was everywhere a shadowy brightness that was more than mere twilight. After I had lunch with my mother, another short while went by. I was slightly tired of waiting, and also starting to feel a sort of heartweariness. All of a sudden, there was an indescribably piteous shriek, followed by a triumphant shout of many people. Almost kicking down the paper doors, everyone rushed from the house onto the veranda. From what I heard later, the fox, suffocated by the smoking sulfur, had timorously stuck its head out at the mouth of the hole. Seigoro, waiting for it with his axe, had struck the animal a single blow. It was a lucky hit. The blade had split the fox’s head right between the eyes, and the fox had dropped dead on the spot. My portly father in the vanguard, carrying his great bow, then Tazaki and Kisuke between them shouldering the long pole from which the dead fox dangled by its paws, and Seigoro and Yasukichi bringing up the rear, an orderly procession appeared at the top of the cliff. As it tramped through the snowdrifts, I was reminded of the long file of warriors, the Treasury of Loyal Retainers, which I’d seen in my picture book. How manly and heroic they all looked, I thought. Tazaki, the intrepid student-houseboy, advanced toward me and in his usual high-flown, classical manner announced, “Young master. Thus it goes. Heaven’s net is wide and slow, but lets none escape.” With that, he thrust the fox right under our noses. When I saw the axe-cleft skull, the muddy drops of life’s blood that dripped from between the clenched fangs onto the snow, I had to hide my face behind my mother’s soft sleeve. It was decided to hold a great sakay banquet in the house that afternoon. Because the heavy snowfall had prevented the fish dealer from laying in supplies, my father resolved to regale the servants and regular tradespeople with some of our freshly killed chickens. Everyone was in a great good humor. In the little yard where the fox had crept in by stealth, they grabbed two chickens and openly dispatched them. The previous fall, those two black-and-white mottled hens, chicks then, had chirped to me each day as I set out for school and when I got back. Their bodies had been enfolded in fluffy golden wings like cotton puffs. Tossing them feed and giving them small plants to eat, I’d cherished them. By now they had grown into splendidly plump mother birds. Both of them, alas, with the same pathetic squawk, had their necks wrung by the hands of Tazaki. Their feathers were plucked by the hands of Kisuke, their stomachs were cut open and the guts pulled out by the hands of Yasu. The flushed faces of the feasters, who sat up until late at night drinking sakay and licking and smacking their lips, seemed to me like those of the goblins that I’d seen in my picture book. In bed that night, I thought, Why did those people hate the fox so? Saying it was because it had killed the chicken, they had killed the fox and two more chickens besides. From the struggle of the snake and the frog, Turgenev in his child’s heart had doubted the benevolence of God. As soon as I’d begun to read literature, I doubted the meaning of the words “trial” and “punishment,” as they are used in the world. Perhaps it was that killing of the fox in the distant past. Perhaps those memories had, without my knowing it, become the source of my doubt. Flash Storm. TON SATOMI. The light, at about two o’clock in the July afternoon, bore down intensely everywhere on the wide parade grounds. Along the earthen outer wall of a barracks that stood at the western edge of the grounds ran an uneven road. Like the dried up, irregular channels of a stream bed, in several places it had been pounded into two or three ruts by wagon wheels, horses’ hooves, and men’s feet, in other places flowing together into one. If you stood there and looked east, far away in the gently undulant landscape the tops of a dark forest faintly appeared and disappeared. They were like the eastern edge of the enormous grounds. To the north and south also, large groves of tall and short trees stood in lines that, shimmering in the heat, linked up with the forest on the remote eastern side. Within these borders, aside from the summer grasses that, barely surviving the hobnailed boots of soldiers, grew here and there in islands of lifeless green, there were hardly any trees. The blue sky, saturated with the blazing light, trembling with its fever, glared down at the red dirt grounds wherever you looked. They were like two faces, each growing angry at the other’s obduracy, each browbeating the other with swollen, sullen grimaces. There was not a breath of air. Unless something came between them and made peace, there would be war between these two any minute now, no small birds, of course, but not even big birds dared to fly across the sky. Instead the cicadas, an insect kind relying on its numbers, from the deep, leafy shade of the surrounding groves, drew out their long, monotonous song of the hot, stuffy smell of grass, the irritable, heat-mirage ague of summer, a song with a touch of mockery. Even the blue-tail lizard, as if its pride and joy, the tail that gleamed blue and then green, were too much for it, left it limply extended as it stuck its head under the meager shade of the grass, its silvery white belly pulsing as if out of breath. Some very energetic ants, lugging around the body of a dragonfly left half-uneaten by a praying mantis on their black, shiny, little backs, were hard at work even in this heat. As for human beings, there were none to be seen anywhere. But no, there was just one, the arsenal sentry standing guard on the wall of the barracks. Of course, even though he was a man, anything like human mental activity had come to a halt in him. His brain simmering steadily like gray soup, he stood bolt upright. Even if the arson of the sun, like a red-hot iron, had touched off a tremendous explosion in the arsenal, surely he would not have budged an inch. Just then a certain young man, on his way to see a friend who lived on the far side of the parade grounds, took off his hat in the suburban trolley and let the warm wind that fitfully blew in at the window fan and tease his soft crew cut. His business being somewhat urgent, he had braved the blazing heat, but he dreaded the long walk across the parade grounds. Suddenly at the southeast corner of the grounds, a cloud of reddish-brown smoke or dust arose. As he looked, it fanned out and hid all the view behind it. Quickly spreading across the field, it created patterns of light and shadow, spiraled about like a tornado and rushed this way like a tidal wave. In less than a minute it had swept across the parade grounds and invaded the grove on the north side. Hit head on, the trees, waving their heads and soughing in wavelike rhythms, were simultaneously deluged with red dust. At the same instant the attacking dust storm was thrown back by the earth wall on the west side, somersaulting as it danced up into the air. Caught by another blast of wind, it whirled crazily and was hurled against the barracks. Just then the young man, having gotten off the trolley, happened by. Coming up against this wall of dust at the corner where he’d meant to turn onto the grounds, he instantly clamped down his hat and spun right around so that his back faced the wind. His summer kimono and haori over it were plastered to his body so that his rear outline down to the knot of his obi was clearly shown. Any looseness in his clothes was at once blown out streaming and flapping in front of him. His body was bent from the waist in the shape of a bow. But while leaning back into the wind, he was trying hard to straighten up again. (In a print by Hokusai, a man in a strong wind is also bent over like a bow. But that is a pictorial exaggeration.) “Puh. It’s too much.” Just as he thought this, he was blown downwind two or three steps. The next moment, made fun of by the wind he’d been leaning against, he staggered backward. As it reversed itself, the wind flung dust and sand in his face. Self-defensively he’d shut his eyes tight. Even so, “This is awful!” After listening intently to the sound of the wind’s retreat, he slowly turned around and looked out over the parade grounds. Often while crossing this field, he had run into little dust flurries, but never before this kind of hurricane-force gale. He felt a curiosity, as if now he would be able to see something absolutely new to him. Like ripplets that rise in the wake of a surge, small, whispering afterwaves of the wind blew here and there and any which way, swirling up the dust. Then in the distance, a second wall of dust, densely expanding as he looked at it, began heading his way full tilt. Although thinking “I can’t take any more of this,” he gazed at it now, rather with a feeling of awestruck excitement, before he knew it, from the eastern horizon a low, black cloud had closed in on him until it was almost overhead. Up to then he’d thought that the sudden dusk all around him was due simply to the clouds of dust that were blowing across the sun. Astonished by this theatrically abrupt change in the weather, he thought, “Here it comes!” Trying to decide if he should retreat to the trolley stop or make a run for it to his friend’s house, he calculated the distance in both directions and, by the look of the sky, how soon the rain would start coming down. He made up his mind to go forward. Letting the second gale sweep past him, he deftly tucked up the skirt of his kimono in back and, lowering his head, began to charge. In the wind that now came at him from the side, his feet, in white tabi that in a few seconds had been dyed yellowish-brown, raced along alternately beneath his narrowed eyes. By degrees a sad, gloomy darkness completely unlike the calm darkness of night, a mysterious darkness that in old times had made men dread the unusual phenomena of heaven and earth, fell over all. It was like looking through a yellow glass. Everything lost its own colors. With the blurred contours of a volcanic region that has been showered with ashes, the scene turned a sad and dreary hue. Five or six times the wind went by, with an eerie echo that crawled along the ground. Each time the young man struck the same haughty, gallant attitude. For as far as he could see, he was the only man in the field. In the intervals of the wind, from the groves near and far, like the sand and pebbles drawn after a retreating wave, a chafing, uniform sound of a going, a long sighing and soughing, followed from the tops of the trees. During such lulls, piercing the thunderheads that blackly piled up in the east, lavender flashes of lightning sprinted hither and yon. Just as he thought, “Don’t thunder!” a wave of thunder broke with a roar. Ducking despite himself, he felt an unease as if the thunder were reverberating in his gut. Yet he also felt a deep pleasure, somehow as if he had stood up inside himself. (This kind of extraordinary scene is often accompanied by a sublime extravagance that draws men to it.) Anyway, he was already halfway across the parade grounds. That isolated cottage on the far side of the field was his friend’s place. Just when the first drops of rain like glass pellets had begun to pelt against his straw hat, the young man slid open the lattice door of his friend’s house. He was welcomed by his friend’s wife, who said her husband had gone for a swim in the nearby river but would soon be back. The young guest, somehow proud of himself like a boy who has gotten himself all muddy in a war game or nicked himself on his fingertip, showed off his yellowish-brown stained tabi and the traces of rain-streaked dust smeared on his sweaty shins. Almost boastfully he told her about the bursts of thunder and gusts of wind that he’d met with on the way. Drawn into the spirit of the thing, the wife became lively and gay. Busying herself, she drew some water for him in a bucket. By the time the guest, his bare feet not quite wiped dry, stepped up into the house proper and damply padded into the parlor, it had got even darker outside. Only the rain, pallidly gleaming as it came down like a Niagara, seemed to keep it from getting as dark as midnight. The guest and the wife, dumbfounded by this torrential downpour, it really was like a vertically plunging river, stood on the veranda and vaguely stared out at it awhile. As it often is in such storms, the rain did nothing to diminish the force of the wind. On the contrary, it was now blowing harder than ever. The shrubs planted around the outhouse were easily blown almost flat against the ground. No sooner had they lifted up their heads than, swaying and shuddering as if there was no willpower or fight left in them, they were pounded down again. Even the big oaks and cedars that towered up along the east side of the garden attached to this house, even they, which most of the time stood quietly steadfast like old giants whom nothing could move, shaking their great heads in a fine trembling apart of masses of foliage, raised an alarming shriek in the wind and rain. In the trees whose leaves had pale undersides, here and there among the leaf clusters patches of grayish-white flowed together and vanished and flowed together again. As the thick branches that they’d trusted to for safety were terribly shaken, small birds were all but blown out of the trees. In a panic, madly beating their wings, with frantic-sounding chirps that seemed to bode ill, the birds all tried to hide themselves deeper within the foliage. From the lofty treetops that one had to crane one’s neck to look at, leaves and even snapped-off twigs went flying off into the distance like green sparks. The thunder, as if it were beside itself by now, pealed in a continual fury. A lightning bolt zigzagged as if to earth itself right in front of the veranda. Without a second’s letup the rain came down in cataracts. The smooth garden lawn, almost instantly flooded under several inches of water, was like a rice paddy. The rodlike lines of rain, bouncing off its surface with the force of flung pebbles, shattered in spray. Uttering only an amazed “Yaaaa,” the young man looked on spellbound. As with many people who are possessed of a powerful curiosity, he had a nature that derived an obscure thrill from this kind of unusual scene. Once during a summer flood in Tokyo, wading about knee deep in such neighborhoods as Shitaya, Asakusa, and Mukojima, he had stayed away from home for three days. “My, did you ever see such a storm!” These were the wife’s words when she came out on the porch again after having gone to make preparations for tea. The guest had observed for himself that the wind was blowing the spray not only onto the porch but, according to their exposure, into the rooms. The tatami mats were turning a damp yellow. “This won’t do at all.” Having looked all around him, the guest suddenly stood up on his tiptoes. With the wife he went about closing all the rain shutters in the house. Like a trolley car that as it races along the rails sends flying the muddy water that has collected in the grooves, the rain shutters ran swiftly along their slots as they sliced through the accumulated water. The guest, his skirts tucked up, had as much fun as a boy as he slid the doors shut with bangs that echoed throughout the house. He had worked his way around to the kitchen in back. There, at that moment, the wife was trying to shut the water gate. Never in good order, it was stuck fast now. The eaves being shallow on this side of the house that also faced the wind, the big raindrops splashed against the wife’s impatiently frowning face and stylish Western coiffure. She was about to get soaked to the skin. Already the translucent paper of the high-paneled sliding doors was being blown to tatters. “Here, let me try.” Saying this, the guest stepped down into the garden by the wife’s side. But his efforts didn’t go too well either. Constantly bucking himself up with cries of “Yo!” and “Umm!” he put his back into it. Nervously wringing her hands, the wife muttered, “This gate always gets stuck. I can’t do anything with it.” She put out a hand to help. Her cold, wet hand touched the guest’s hand. Standing back, he let her try again. Under his eyes, on the wife’s perspiring nape, the muscles stood out roundly with the force of her effort or relaxed to their former rounded smoothness. From her soaking-wet clothes, from her skin, the scent of a woman was especially strong, at last the gate slid to. Thinking to do so before it got pitch-dark, the guest made his way back through the almost completely shuttered and darkened house to the parlor. Stumbling over the tea things, he’d seated himself tailor-style in what seemed to be the middle of the room when he heard the heavy, thudding beat of his heart. He thought back to that moment when, looking up at the sky over the parade grounds, he’d decided to go on. He now regretted that he hadn’t turned back then and there. And as he did so, he listened hard to the mighty thunderstorm outside. Inside, in the shut-up house, drumming in torrents on the roof, the eaves, and all around, the rain sounded as if it had lost any outlet. It resonated eerily, as if it were falling indoors. The guest, in this isolated house surrounded and cut off by the storm, was very much bothered by his consciousness that he was alone with his friend’s wife. In the darkness there floated up a picture of O-Shichi in the tale by Saikaku, as she lay inside the mosquito net on a night of thunder and rain, murmuring to herself, “Oh dear, the master will scold me for this.” On a pilgrimage she had taken refuge in a wayside shrine. The illustration from an old-fashioned storybook of O-Shichi being grabbed by the hand by the rōnin in his stage wig of a warrior’s shaven head drew itself in the guest’s mind. The round muscles of the wife’s nape worked smoothly in his mind’s eye. “Even though you’re easily swayed by the emotions of a situation, to let yourself act like those characters in old stories who forget themselves because they’re alone with a young woman in a dark house in a thunderstorm, it’s rating yourself too cheap.” The guest tried to upbraid himself. But in the dark a series of sensual apparitions passed before him. As if it was stamped there, he felt the touch of the woman’s cold, wet palm on the back of his right hand. About ten feet away from the main part of the house the twenty-one-year-old houseboy crouched in the servant’s room. Afraid of the thunder, he had blushed scarlet with shame when, at intervals in the storm, he’d heard the rain shutters being slid shut across the way. (In this house it was the custom to employ a young male student rather than a maid.) Starting to his feet, he bounded at two strides into the entryway. “Takebe-san, have you been cowering in your room all this time?’’ In the dark corridor, looking startled and ready to flee, the wife was caught in the pallid light that just reached her from the entryway. Dripping wet, her sleeves were rolled up all the way to her shoulders, like those of the villain Sadakuro in the puppet play The Treasury of Loyal Retainers. Her white, plump arms hung limply at her sides. The inner front skirt of her summer kimono, pulled high up on her thighs and tucked into her half-width obi, revealed a slightly damp-looking white muslin slip and, beneath it, her bare feet to clear above her ankles. The houseboy, who’d literally taken a leap in the dark, stood as if fixed to the spot when he saw the wife before his eyes in a state of undress. The pale face, dimly afloat in the half light, gave a casual laugh and asked again, “You have been, haven’t you?” “pause.” The houseboy’s answer, drowned out by the sound of the rain, did not reach the wife’s ears. But that does not matter much. What’s more interesting is that the houseboy himself had no memory of how he’d replied. He knew that the husband had gone for a swim. But he did not at all know that the guest had dashed into the house just before the downpour began. That was how mesmerized he had been by the thunder. The thought now took hold in him that he was alone with the wife in the darkened house. Until that moment when, working himself up with a desire to do his duty, he had rushed inside the main house, he’d been as good as ignorant of this fact. But now that he stood face to face with his mistress, it flashed through his mind like a lightning bolt. His knowledge of it at once took on a weird clarity that clung around his heart. From here on he would follow a psychological path that was more or less the same as that described for the guest. He too heard the thudding of his heart. He too regretted having come into the house. And in listening hard to the storm outside as he did so, he was also like the guest. That the wife, with a levity unusual for her, had teased him this way went far to stir up a certain thought in him. In the darkness before his eyes, he repeatedly visualized and erased the wife’s face that had just now sunken into them. Thanks to that “certain thought,” this houseboy who was even younger than the guest was finely trembling. There was a tightness in his chest, as if his breath was coming and going only in his mouth. When he heard the wife’s voice from over toward the entryway, the guest, his heart beating harder than ever, stood up to go to that part of the house. He thought he’d heard her say “Kato-san, will you please help me” or words like these. Then he heard a man’s voice, mumbling what sounded like an apology. When only now he realized that it was the houseboy, he tried to feel relieved. But that was not at all what he really felt. At once the sallow face of the houseboy came back to him. Even more than before, it seemed the face of someone who belonged to the lower classes. It irked him extremely that the vulgar houseboy should make his appearance in what up until now had been a splendid pantomime. But when he guessed at the passions that even in the oafish servant must be making his heart pound with exactly the same temptation as his own, he felt an almost unbearable self-contempt. “This hackneyed role is just right for him. It’s quite clear that he’s not the leading man. As for the woman’s part, h’m, I’ll let you have it. Here it is. Eat.” As if tossing a piece of tainted meat to a dog, the guest did his best to hold aloof from the scene. Just then he heard the wife’s footsteps coming his way. The wife was not at all concerned about her husband’s whereabouts. A very good friend of his lived on the bank of the river where he’d gone for a swim. He always invited this man to join him, so it was almost certain that having encountered this sudden storm her easygoing husband was enjoying himself at his friend’s house. He was not one to come home if it meant charging through wind and rain. When, having changed out of her wet kimono, she came into the eight-mat guest room, this fact floated across the wife’s heart with a strange clarity. But unlike the two men (the guest and the houseboy) she did not at all feel bothered and menaced by her awareness of it. Like most women, as she considered a fact that she had placed center stage in her consciousness, if she felt it was an inconvenient fact that might make for trouble in a given situation, she at once and skillfully pushed it back down under the threshold of her thoughts, using sensitivity, guile, timidity, and wisdom to make sure it didn’t raise its head again. This is a characteristic of women that might well be called intelligent foolishness. It gives a lot of men difficulty. “My, my, it’s pitch-dark. Where are you?” “Shall I open one of the shutters a little? It’s too dark.” From the darkness came the guest’s voice, tinged with a faint trembling and heavy, as if he were sighing. “But it’s still teeming.” The wife was the same age of twenty-eight as the guest. But she had always tended to treat this young man, who was much younger than her husband, as if he were a child. In fact, this young bachelor who as the child of a good family had known no hardship, was quite often startled and hurt by her sharp-tongued way with him. The wife, liking to watch the look on the young man’s face at such times and enjoying herself often so, had decided that he was easily manipulated, a man whose strings she could pull as she pleased. However, this belief of hers was mistaken, in that she observed only his momentary expression and not the movements of his heart afterward. It was not that she had the bad nature to flaunt her superiority and torment the young man. On the contrary, at ease in her superiority, she did not grudge him her special loving friendship. Now when the wife heard the young man’s voice, she was immediately able to picture to herself his rigid attitude in the dark. Lured by the usual pleasure of her superiority, an utterly female playfulness reared its head in her. “My word, it was simply awful out there. I was absolutely soaked, oh, and you too, surely? You must have gotten all wet. Why don’t you change? I’ll give you some of my husband’s clothes, if it won’t make you feel odd.” “No, it’s all right. I’m fine this way.” “Really, though, do change. You’ll catch your death of cold. You must have been drenched.” “No, not all that much.” As he said this, the guest patted his clothes here and there. Wouldn’t the wife’s hand, any second now, reach out to feel how wet his clothes were and happen to touch his hand? It was this fear that made him say “No, not all that much” and move his hand around on his clothes. But in the dark where the wife’s voice had come from, there was only silence. He did not know how to interpret it. A fear arose in him that it would be broken by the wife’s all-too-innocent surprise attack. Against the dusky light that leaked through cracks and knotholes in the shutters, opening his eyes wide, the guest studied even the faint tremors of air. Suddenly a flash of lightning shone into the room. As he saw her at that instant, the wife’s figure had a calmness about it that disappointed him. Leaning on her left hand planted on the tatami behind her, her half-opened right hand lightly resting palm upward on her relaxed, slightly sideways lap, she sat at an angle across from him. His fear had been like a sumo wrestler grappling with himself. And yet the space between their knees was much smaller than he’d thought. Pushing himself back a little, he said, “That brightened it up a lot.” No sooner had he spoken than an earsplitting peal of thunder broke with a shattering roar that seemed right outside the room. It rattled the glass panes in the sliding doors. The guest felt as if his blood had leapt all at once into his head. “That was a big one.” He spoke these words to himself to quell his uneasiness. The next moment, however, he already felt somewhat free of his unease. “It really came down that time. And it seemed rather nearby.” Even when he spoke out loud to her, from where the wife sat in darkness there was neither an answer nor the sound of any slight movement of her body. Because of this, how the wife looked and what she was feeling at a moment that had struck fear even into him were completely beyond the guest. Unless the wife didn’t have a nerve in her body for thunderstorms, an intense emotion must have been roiled up in her that was stronger than any fear for her life. Unable to relax, the guest felt a disquiet that would not be dispelled until he’d gotten a word, any word, out of the wife. “The thunder doesn’t bother you?” Even to this, there was no reply. Beginning to feel slightly forlorn, he mumbled as if to himself, “It’s coming down like a waterfall, there’s some more thunder.” “Don’t you like it?” Coming as abruptly as they did, the wife’s words seemed to explode in his ears. “What?” The guest leaned forward despite himself. He deliberately left an interval in which a certain meaning of these words, which could be taken in two ways, might be broached, either by what the wife said or did (if she was going to make an overture). But soon becoming unable to endure that interval, the pressure of its silence, he asked again, “The thunder?” If this conversation had taken place in a bright room, he would not even have had to ask “What?” Now brusquely, he flung out the words that were appropriate to the other meaning (an extremely ordinary one), words that should have been said right away. At the same time, aware of his satisfaction in having warded off a danger and not waiting for what the wife would, of course, reply, he went on, “It’s not that I particularly dislike it. But that last one was a bit too close for comfort. Anyone would have.” Covering his words, the wife said, “I don’t mind it at all myself.” “Not again!” the guest thought. It was getting ridiculous. He felt as if he were being told the same joke many times. The “snake,” as long as one was afraid of it, was like a real snake. But if one deftly parried its lunge, it was nothing but a rotten straw rope that was starting to unravel. Not to have grabbed that rope and tossed it in a ditch was going too easy on the perpetrator of the prank. And for her to twirl the old rope around yet again! “This sort of woman is anathema in Soseki’s stories,” the guest muttered to himself. This time, for his own part, he took up the passive defense of “the silence of darkness.” After a while the wife said, “What a scaredy-cat you are.” But he obstinately held his tongue. The silence went on and on. Meanwhile, the guest sobered up from the delicious sakay of superiority. Had he been wrestling himself again? If the wife’s words had only the ordinary, apparent meaning of the like or dislike of thunder and held no hidden message, had he run on a little too far ahead? Yet mulling over once more their affected simplicity and their context, he did not think he was mistaken. “But if from the start she meant that other thing, and wasn’t talking about the thunder at all, how banal. What does she take me for?” The guest began to grow angry. “It’s all because of this darkness. I wish I could open the rain shutters right now. These silly thoughts would vanish with the dark.” This was suddenly called out by the wife in a loud voice. It startled the guest. Only now he remembered the houseboy. What had the oaf been doing with himself all this while? “Takebe-san.” The wife raised her voice again, louder this time. She had seen some leaks in the ceiling of her husband’s study and had sent the houseboy in with an empty bucket, but now thinking there might be other leaks, she wanted him to look around the rest of the house. She too wondered where he’d been in the interval. Much to her surprise the houseboy answered her from the next room, the morning room. Realizing at once that their conversation had been overheard in its entirety, she and the guest felt some displeasure. But the wife hesitated to show hers openly. Instead, in a pleasant voice, she said, “Are you all right? After that great big thunderbolt? Shall I put up the mosquito netting for you?” From the next room came a laugh that was completely lacking in mirth. “Takebe-san.” This time the guest spoke. “I’m sorry to bother you, but will you bring some matches and a tobacco tray?” “Oh, forgive me. I was so distracted by this uproar that I forgot all about them.” Getting to her feet, the wife went into the breakfast room. “Oh dear. The fire has gone out.” “Do you want me to light it?” “No, it doesn’t matter. Now, where are they? They were around here somewhere. How about the utility charcoal? You don’t know?” “I think it’s in that cupboard.” There was a sound of sticky, padding footsteps as the houseboy went to fetch it. “Ouch!” “Oh, excuse me.” “You hurt me. Where? At the bottom?” “That’s where it was last time.” There was a clattering sound. In the parlor the guest started to get exasperated. “Just matches will be fine. Matches.” “It was here somewhere, isn’t it in this box?” “Yes, that’s right. Probably in there.” “And the matches?” Then a moment later, “What are you doing?” In his gradually heightened state of desire, from this kind of talk the guest could see it all, the small space between the wife’s body and the houseboy’s, their contact, the wife’s damp, fragrant hair, the houseboy’s thudding heart and trembling body, much more vividly than if he were looking at it in a well-lighted room. And he could feel it all, the subtle inner excitement that he could not have perceived with his eyes. Once again a jealousy that was without reason raised its serpent’s head in him. From the morning room there was the sound of a match being struck and a little while afterward the wife’s voice. “Takebe-san. You’re pale.” “It’s nothing. It’s the candle.” “Are you quite sure?” Presently the wife, the tobacco tray in one hand and a candlestick in the other, came back into the room. By then the guest had noticed that the rain had tapered off to a drizzle. “We no longer need a light. Probably we can open the shutters now.” Saying this, he got to his feet and opened two or three himself. The pale, whitish light abruptly shone in. The darkness was gone. The wife of his friend was standing at his side. Wonderingly he looked at her. She was his friend’s wife, and nothing else. “Why are you staring at me so?” “Because somehow it’s as if I’d met you again after a long time.” “Why, you’re right! For a while there I could only hear your voice. I haven’t seen you in a long time.” “Good afternoon. How have you been?” “Fine, thank you. And you?” The storm, as in its onset, was rapid in its ending. Each minute the raindrops were finer and farther apart. The wind died away. The sky kept on getting brighter. After twenty minutes or so the rain had completely stopped. Already patches of blue sky appeared here and there in the upper cloud cover. In the lower sky clouds like white cotton puffs still sailed before the wind at a fairish speed. Heaven and earth, in the explosion of their magnificent quarrel, the electrical enmity that each had harbored against the other until it couldn’t be held back, had bared their hearts to each other. Now both were cool and refreshed, as if they’d revived. The cicadas also, which had been struck dumb by the thunder, took heart again and started up their raucous, sultry cry in chorus. The rooster, which when sky and earth had closed with each other in darkness had flown up in a panic to the perch hung from a rafter in the shed, now came down and, getting its bearings, gave a loud war cry. From far across the rice paddies there was a brave answering cry. The dog, as wet as any drowned rat, its head hanging low, entered the garden shaking off the muddy water in a spray of droplets. When it saw the wife and guest, a fond, friendly look came over its face. Licking its jaws, it propped its chin on the edge of the porch and whined emptily. Chided for that, it gave itself a violent shake that sent the spray flying every which way. Sitting back on its legs, its forepaws exactly side by side, it swiveled its head around and began licking its shoulders. Even those plants and trees that had gotten the worst of the storm, now green and dripping, washed and clean again, respired the faint, fresh sce

Beyond Doubt. Astonishing Stories. April 1941 as "Lyle Monroe and Elma Wentz". Bulletin Board. Delilah and the Space-Rigger. Gentlemen Be Seated. It’s great to be back. Let there be light. Magic Inc. Water is for washing. Reformatted for Machine Text, 2023 PukeOnAPlate. BEYOND DOUBT, By Robert Anson Heinlein, SAVANT SOLVES SECRET OF EASTER ISLAND IMAGES. According to Professor J Howard Erlenmeyer, director of the Archeological Society’s Easter Island Expedition. Professor Erlenmeyer was quoted as saying, “There can no longer be any possible doubt as to the significance of the giant monolithic images which are found in Easter Island. When one considers the primary place held by religious matters in all primitive cultures, and compares the design of these images with artifacts used in the rites of present day Polynesian tribes, the conclusion is inescapable that these images have a deep esoteric religious significance. Beyond doubt, their large size, their grotesque exaggeration of human form, and the seemingly aimless, but actually systematic, distribution gives evidence of the use for which they were carved, to wit; the worship of.” WARM, and incredibly golden, the late afternoon sun flooded the white-and-green city of Nuria, gilding its maze of circular criss-crossed streets. The Towers of the Guardians, rising high above the lushly verdant hills gleamed like translucent ivory. The hum from the domed buildings of the business district was muted while merchants rested in the cool shade of luxuriant, moistly green trees, drank refreshing okrada, and gazed out at the great hook-prowed green-and-crimson ships riding at anchor in the harbor-ships from Hindos, from Cathay, and from the far-flung colonies of Atlantis. In all the broad continent of Mu there was no city more richly beautiful than Muria, capital of the province of Lac. But despite the smiling radiance of sun, and sea, and sky, there was an undercurrent of atmospheric tenseness, as though the air itself were a tight coil about to be sprung, as though a small spark would set off a cosmic explosion. Through the city moved the sibilant whispering of a name-the name was everywhere, uttered in loathing and fear, or in high hope, according to the affiliations of the utterer-but in any mouth the name had the potency of thunder. The name was Talus. Talus, apostle of the common herd; Talus, on whose throbbing words hung the hopes of a million eager citizens; Talus, candidate for governor of the province of Lac. In the heart of the tenement district, near the smelly waterfront, between a narrow side street and a garbage alley was the editorial office of Mu Regenerate, campaign organ of the Talus-for-Governor organization. The office was as quiet as the rest of Nuria, but with the quiet of a spent cyclone. The floor was littered with twisted scraps of parchment, overturned furniture, and empty beer flagons. Three young men were seated about a great, round, battered table in attitudes that spoke their gloom. One of them was staring cynically at an enormous poster which dominated one wall of the room. It was a portrait of a tall, majestic man with a long, curling white beard. He wore a green toga. One hand was raised in a gesture of benediction. Over the poster, under the crimson-and-purple of crossed Murian banners, was the legend: TALUS FOR GOVERNOR! The one who stared at the poster let go an unconscious sigh. One of his companions looked up from scratching at a sheet of parchment with a stubby stylus. “What’s eating on you, Robar?” THE one addressed waved a hand at the wall. “I was just looking at our white hope. Ain’t he beautiful? Tell me, Dolph, how can anyone look so noble, and be so dumb?” “God knows. It beats me.” “That’s not quite fair, fellows,” put in the third, “the old boy ain’t really dumb; he’s just unworldly. You’ve got to admit that the Plan is the most constructive piece of statesmanship this country has seen in a generation.” Robar turned weary eyes on him. “Sure. Sure. And he’d make a good governor, too. I won’t dispute that; if I didn’t think the Plan would work, would I be here, living from hand to mouth and breaking my heart on this bloody campaign? Oh, he’s noble all right. Sometimes he’s so noble it gags me. What I mean is: Did you ever work for a candidate that was so bullheaded stupid about how to get votes and win an election?” “Well, no” “What gets me, Clevum,” Robar went on, “is that he could be elected so easily. He’s got everything; a good sound platform that you can stir people up with, the correct background, a grand way of speaking, and the most beautiful appearance that a candidate ever had. Compared with Old Bat Ears, he’s a natural. It ought to be just one-two-three. But Bat Ears will be re-elected, sure as shootin’.” “I’m afraid you’re right,” mourned Clevum. “We’re going to take such a shellacking as nobody ever saw. I thought for a while that we would make the grade, but now, did you see what the King’s Men said about him this morning?” “That dirty little sheet. What was it?” “Besides some nasty cracks about Atlantis gold, they accused him of planning to destroy the Murian home and defile the sanctity of Murian womanhood. They called upon every red-blooded one hundred per cent Murian to send this subversive monster back where he came from. Oh, it stank! But the yokels were eating it up.” “Sure they do. That’s just what I mean. The governor’s gang slings mud all the time, but if we sling any mud about governor Vortus, Talus throws a fit. His idea of a news story is a nifty little number about comparative statistics of farm taxes in the provinces of Mu. What are you drawing now, Dolph?” “This.” He held up a ghoulish caricature of Governor Vortus himself, with his long face, thin lips, and high brow, atop of which rested the tall crimson governor’s cap. Enormous ears gave this sinister face the appearance of a vulture about to take flight. Beneath the cartoon was the simple caption: BAT EARS FOR GOVERNOR. “There!” exclaimed Robar, “that’s what this campaign needs. Humor! If we could plaster that cartoon on the front page of Mu Regenerate and stick one under the door of every voter in the province, it‘d be a landslide. One look at that mug and they’d laugh themselves sick-and vote for our boy Talus!” HE held the sketch at arm’s length and studied it, frowning: Presently he locked up. “Listen, dopes. Why not do it? Give me one last edition with some guts in it. Are you game?” Clevum looked worried. “Well, I don’t know. What are you going to use for money? Besides, even if Oric would crack loose from the dough, how would we get an edition of that size distributed that well? And even if we did get it done, it might boomerang on us-the opposition would have the time and money to answer it.” Robar looked disgusted. “That’s what a guy gets for having ideas in this campaign-nothing but objections, objections!” “Wait a minute, Robar,” Dolph interposed. “Clevum’s kicks have some sense to them, but maybe you got something. The idea is to make Joe Citizen laugh at Vortus, isn’t it? Well, why not fix up some dodgers of my cartoon and hand ‘em out at the polling places on election day?” Robar drummed on the table as he considered this. “Umm, no, it wouldn’t do. Vortus’ goon squads would beat the hell out of our workers and highjack our literature.” “Well, then how about painting some big banners with old Bat Ears on them? We could stick them up near each polling place where the voters couldn’t fail to see them.” “Same trouble. The goon squads would have them down before the polls open.” “Do you know what, fellows,” put in Clevum, “what we need is something big enough to be seen and too solid for Governor’s plug-uglies to wreck. Big stone statues about two stories high would be about right.” Robar looked more pained than ever. “Clevum, il you can’t be helpful, why not keep quiet? Sure, statues would be fine-if we had forty years and ten million simoleons.” “Just think, Robar.” Dolph jibed, with an irritating smile, “if your mother had entered you for the priesthood, you could integrate all the statues you want-no worry, no trouble, no expense.” “Yeah, wise guy, but in that case I wouldn’t be in politics-Say!” ” ‘S trouble?” “Integration! Suppose we could integrate enough statues of old Picklepuss.“ “How?” “Do you know Kondor?” “The moth-eaten old duck that hangs around the Whirling Whale?” “That’s him. I’ll bet he could do it!” “That old stumblebum? Why, he’s no adept; he’s just a cheap unlicensed sorcerer. Reading palms in saloons and a little jackleg horoscopy is about all he’s good for. He can’t even mix a potent love philter. I know; I’ve tried him.” “Don’t be too damn certain you know all about him. He got all tanked up one night and told me the story of his life. He used to be a priest back in Egypt.” “Then why isn’t he now?” “That’s the point. He didn’t get along with the high priest. One night he got drunk and integrated a statue of the high priest right where it would show up best and too big to be missed-only he stuck the head of the high priest on the body of an animal.” “Whew!” “Naturally when he sobered up the next morning and saw what he had done all he could do was to run for it. He shipped on a freighter in the Red Sea and that’s how come he’s here.” Clevum’s face had been growing longer and longer all during the discussion. He finally managed to get in an objection. “I don’t suppose you two red hots have stopped to think about the penalty for unlawful use of priestly secrets?” “Oh, shut up, Clevum. If we win the election, Talus’ll square it. If we lose the election. Well, if we lose, Mu won’t be big enough to hold us whether we pull this stunt or not.” ORIC was hard to convince. As a politician he was always affable; as campaign manager for Talus, and consequently employer of Robar, Dolph, and Clevum, the boys had sometimes found him elusive, even though chummy. “Ummm, well, I don’t know.” He had said, “I’m afraid Talus wouldn’t like it.” “Would he need to know until it’s all done?” “Now, boys, really, ah, you wouldn’t want me to keep him in ignorance.” “But Oric, you know perfectly well that we are going to lose unless we do something, and do it quick.” “Now, Robar, you are too pessimistic.” Oric’s pop eyes radiated synthetic confidence. “How about that straw poll? We didn’t look so good; we were losing two to one in the back country.” “Well, perhaps you are right, my boy.” Oric laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “But suppose we do lose this election; Mu wasn’t built in a day. And I want you to know that we appreciate the hard, unsparing work that you boys have done, regardless of the outcome. Talus won’t forget it, and neither shall, uh, I, It’s young men like you three who give me confidence in the future of Mu.” “We don’t want appreciation; we want to win this election.” “Oh, to be sure! To be sure! So do we all-none more than myself. Uh-how much did you say this scheme of yours would cost?” “The integration won’t cost much. We can offer Kondor a contingent fee and cut him in on a spot of patronage. Mostly we’ll need to keep him supplied with wine. The big item will be getting the statues to the polling places. We had planned on straight commercial apportation.” “Well, now, that will be expensive.” “Dolph called the temple and got a price.” “Good heavens, you haven’t told the priests what you plan to do?” “No, sir. He just specified tonnage and distances.” “What was the bid?” Robar told him. Oric looked as if his first born were being ravaged by wolves. “Out of the question, out of the question entirely,” he protested. But Robar pressed the matter. “Sure it’s expensive, but it’s not half as expensive as a campaign that is just good enough to lose. Besides-I know the priesthood isn’t supposed to be political, but isn’t it possible with your connections for you to find one who would do it on the side for a smaller price, or even on credit? It’s a safe thing for him; if we go through with this we’ll win-it’s a cinch.” Oric looked really interested for the first time. “You might be right. Mum, yes.” He fitted the tips of his fingers carefully together. “You boys go ahead with this. Get the statues made. Let me worry about the arrangements for apportation.” He started to leave, a preoccupied look on his face. “Just a minute,” Robar called out, “we’ll need some money to oil up old Kondor.” Oric paused. “Oh, yes, yes. How stupid of me.” He pulled out three silver pieces and handed them to Robar. “Cash, and no records, eh?” He winked. “While you’re about it, sir,” added Clevum, “how about my salary? My landlady’s getting awful temperamental.” Oric seemed surprised. “Oh, haven’t I paid you yet?” He fumbled at his robes. “You’ve been very patient; most patriotic. You know how it is-so many details on my mind, and some of our sponsors haven’t been prompt about meeting their pledges.” He handed Clevum one piece of silver. “See me the first of the week, my boy. Don’t let me forget it.” He hurried out. THE three picked their way down the narrow crowded street, teeming with vendors, sailors, children, animals, while expertly dodging refuse of one kind or another, which was unceremoniously tossed from balconies. The Whirling Whale tavern was apparent by its ripe, gamey odor some little distance before one came to it. They found Kondor draped over the bar, trying as usual to cadge a drink from the seafaring patrons. He accepted their invitation to drink with them with alacrity. Robar allowed several measures of beer to mellow the old man before he brought the conversation around to the subject. Kondor drew himself up with drunken dignity in answer to a direct question. “Can I integrate simulacra? My son you are looking at the man who created the Sphinx.” He hiccoughed politely. “But can you still do it, here and now?” Robar pressed him, and added, “For a fee, of course.” Kondor glanced cautiously around. “Careful, my son. Someone might be listening. Do you want original integration, or simply re-integration?” “What’s the difference?” Kondor rolled his eyes up, and inquired of the ceiling, “What do they teach in these modern schools? Full integration requires much power, for one must disturb the very heart of the aether itself; re-integration is simply a re-arrangement of the atoms in a predetermined pattern. If you want stone statues, any waste stone will do.” “Re-integration, I guess. Now here’s the proposition.” “THAT will be enough for the first run. Have the porters desist.” Kondor turned away and buried his nose in a crumbling roll of parchment, his rheumy eyes scanning faded hieroglyphs. They were assembled in an abandoned gravel pit on the rear of a plantation belonging to Dolph’s uncle. They had obtained the use of the pit without argument, for, as Robar had reasonably pointed out, if the old gentleman did not know that his land was being used for illicit purposes, he could not possibly have any objection. Their numbers had been augmented by six red-skinned porters from the Land of the Inca-porters who were not only strong and untiring but possessed the desirable virtue ofspeaking no Murian. The porters had filled the curious ventless hopper with grey gravel and waited impassively for more toil to do. Kondor put the parchment away somewhere in the folds of his disreputable robe, and removed from the same mysterious recesses a tiny instrument of polished silver. “Your pattern, son.” Dolph produced a small waxen image, modeled from his cartoon of Bat Ears. Kondor placed it in front of him, and stared through the silver instrument at it. He was apparently satisfied with what he saw, for he commenced humming to himself in a tuneless monotone, his bald head weaving back and forth in time. Some fifty lengths away, on a stone pedestal, a wraith took shape. First was an image carved of smoke. The smoke solidified, became translucent. It thickened, curdled. Kondor ceased his humming and surveyed his work. Thrice as high as a man stood an image of Bat Ears, good honest stone throughout. “Clevum, my son,” he said, as he examined the statue, “will you be so good as to hand me that jug?” The gravel hopper was empty. ORIC called on them two days before the election. Robar was disconcerted to find that he had brought with him a stranger who was led around through the dozens of rows of giant statues. Robar drew Oric to one side before he left, and asked in a whisper, “Who is this chap?” Oric smiled reassuringly. “Oh, he’s all right. Just one of the boys-a friend of mine.” “But can he be trusted? I don’t remember seeing him around campaign headquarters.” “Oh, sure! By the way, you boys are to be congratulated on the job of work you’ve done here. Well, I must be running on, I’ll drop in on you again.” “Just a minute, Oric. Are you all set on the apportation?” “Oh, yes. Yes indeed. They’ll all be distributed around to the polling places in plenty of time-every statue.” “When are you going to do it?” “Why don’t you let me worry about those details, Robar?” “Well, you are the boss, but I still think I ought to know when to be ready for the apportation.” “Oh, well, if you feel that way, shall we say, ah, midnight before election day?” “That’s fine. We’ll be ready.” ROBAR watched the approach of the midnight before election with a feeling of relief. Kondor’s work was all complete, the ludicrous statues were lined up, row on row, two for every polling place in the province of Lac, and Kondor himself was busy getting reacquainted with the wine jug. He had almost sobered up during the sustained effort of creating the statues. Robar gazed with satisfaction at the images. “I wish I could see the Governor’s face when he first catches sight of one of these babies. Nobody could possibly mistake who they were. Dolph, you’re a genius; I never saw anything sillier looking in my life.” “That’s high praise, pal,” Dolph answered. “Isn’t it about time the priest was getting here? I’ll feel easier when we see our little dollies flying through the air on their way to the polling places.” “Oh, I wouldn’t worry. Oric told me positively that the priest would be here in plenty of time. Besides, apportation is fast. Even the images intended for the back country and the far northern peninsula will get there in a few minutes-once he gets to work.” But as the night wore on it became increasingly evident that something was wrong. Robar returned from his thirteenth trip to the highway with a report of no one in sight on the road from the city. “What’ll we do?” Clevum asked. “I don’t know. Something’s gone wrong; that’s sure.” “Well, we’ve got to do something. Let’s go back to the temple and try to locate him.” “We can’t do that; we don’t know what priest Oric hired. We’ll have to find Oric.” They left Kondor to guard the statues and hurried back into town. They found Oric just leaving campaign headquarters. With him was the visitor he had brought with him two days before. He seemed surprised to see them. “Hello, boys. Finished with the job so soon?” “He never showed up,” Robar panted. “Never showed up? Well, imagine that! Are you sure?” “Of course we’re sure; we were there!” “Look,” put in Dolph, “what is the name of the priest you hired to do this job? We want to go up to the temple and find him.” “His name? Oh, no, don’t do that. You might cause all sorts of complications. I’ll go to the temple myself.” “We’ll go with you.” “That isn’t necessary,” he told them testily. “You go on back to the gravel pit, and be sure everything is ready.” “Good grief, Oric, everything has been ready for hours. Why not take Clevum along with you to show the priest the way?” “I’ll see to that. Now get along with you.” Reluctantly they did as they were ordered. They made the trip back in moody silence. As they approached their destination Clevum spoke up, “You know, fellows.” “Well? Spill it.” “That fellow that was with Oric-wasn’t he the guy he had out here, showing him around?” “Yes; why?” “I’ve been trying to place him. I remember now. I saw him two weeks ago, coming out of Governor Vortus’ campaign office.” AFTER a moment of stunned silence Robar said bitterly, “Sold out. There’s no doubt about it; Oric has sold us out.” “Well, what do we do about it?” “What can we do?” “Blamed if I know.” “Wait a minute, fellows,”’ came Clevum’s pleading voice, “Kondor used to be a priest. Maybe he can do apportation.” “Say! There’s a chance! Let’s get going.” But Kondor was dead to the world. They shook him. They poured water in his face. They walked him up and down. Finally they got him sober enough to answer questions. Robar tackled him. “Listen, pop, this is important; Can you perform apportation?” “Huh? Me? Why, of course. How else did we build the pyramids?” “Never mind the pyramids. Can you move these statues here tonight?” Kondor fixed his interrogator with a bloodshot eye. “My son, the great Arcane laws are the same for all time and space. What was done in Egypt in the Golden Age can be done in Mu tonight.” Dolph put in a word. “Good grief, pop, why didn’t you tell us this before.” The reply was dignified and logical. “No one asked me.” KONDOR set about his task at once, but with such slowness that the boys felt they would scream just to watch him. First, he drew a large circle in the dust. “This is the house of darkness,” he announced solemnly, and added the crescent of Astarte. Then he drew another large circle tangent to the first. “And this is the house of light.” He added the sign of the sun god. When he was done, he walked widdershins about the whole three times the wrong way. His feet nearly betrayed him twice, but he recovered, and continued his progress. At the end of the third lap he hopped to the center of the house of darkness and stood facing the house of light. The first statue on the left in the front row quivered on its base, then rose into the air and shot over the horizon to the east. The three young men burst out with a single cheer, and tears streamed down Robar’s face. Another statue rose up. It was just poised for flight when old Kondor hiccoughed. It fell, a dead weight, back to its base, and broke into two pieces. Kondor turned his head. “I am truly sorry,” he announced; “I shall be more careful with the others.” And try he did-but the liquor was regaining its hold. He wove to and fro on his feet, his aim with the images growing more and more erratic. Stone figures flew in every direction, but none travelled any great distance. One group of six flew off together and landed with a high splash in the harbor. At last, with more than three fourths of the images still untouched he sank gently to his knees, keeled over, and remained motionless. Dolph ran up to him, and shook him. There was no response. He peeled back one of Kondor’s eyelids and examined the pupil. “It’s no good,” he admitted. “He won’t come to for hours.” Robar gazed heartbrokenly at the shambles around him. There they are, he thought, worthless! Nobody will ever see them-just so much left over campaign material, wasted! My biggest idea! Clevum broke the uncomfortable silence. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think what this country needs is a good earthquake.” “The worship of their major deity. Beyond doubt, while errors are sometimes made in archeology, this is one case in which no chance of error exists. The statues are clearly religious in significance. With that sure footing on which to rest the careful scientist may deduce with assurance the purpose of.” THE BULLETIN BOARD. Our campus is not a giant, factory-size job with a particle accelerator and a two-hundred-man football squad, but it's chummy. The chummiest thing about it is the bulletin board in Old Main. You may find a stray glove fastened up with a thumbtack, or you can pick up a baby-sitting job if a married veteran doesn't beat you to it. Or you can buy a car cheap if you tow it from where it gave up. There are items like: "Will the person who removed a windbreaker from the Library please return same and receive a punch in the nose?" But the main interest is the next four sections, "A To-G," "H-To-L," "M-To-T," and "U-to-Z," for they are what we use in place of the U.S. Postal "Service" at enormous saving in postage. Everybody inspects his section before class in the morning. If there's nothing for you, at least you can see who does get mail and sometimes from whom. You'll look again at lunch time and before going home. A person with a busy social life will check the board six or seven times. Mine isn't that busy but I frequently find a note from Cliff. He knows I like to, so he indulges me. It’s fun to get mail on the board. There was a girl I used to run across because we were both in "H-to-L", Gabrielle Lamont. I would say hello and she would say hello and there it stopped. Gabrielle was a sad one, not a total termite, but dampish. Her face had the usual features but she let them live their own lives, not even lipstick. She skinned her hair back and her clothes looked as if they had been bought in France. Not Paris, just France. There's a difference. Which they probably were. Her father is in Modern Languages and he sent her three years to school in France. It did something. I don't think she ever had a date. We both had eight o'clocks and she would check "H-to-L" every morning when I did and then go quietly away. There was never a note for her. Until this one morning. Georgia Lammers, who is purely carnivorous, took a note off the board as Gabrielle came up. I heard this soft little voice say, "Excuse me. That's mine." Georgia said, "Huh? Don't be silly!" Gabrielle looked scared but she put out her hand. "Read the name, please. You've made a mistake." Georgia snatched the note away. She is a junior and wouldn't bother to speak to me if Daddy weren't on the staff, but I'm not afraid of her. "Do it," I insisted. "Let's see the name." Georgia stuck the envelope in my face and snapped, "Read it yourself, snoopy!" "Gabrielle Lamont," I read Out loud. "Hand it over, Georgia." "What?" she yelped, and looked at it. Her cheeks got very red. "Hand it over," I repeated. "Well!" said Georgia. "Anybody can make a mistake!" She flung the note at Gabrielle and flounced off. Gabrielle picked it up. "Thanks," she whispered. "Usual Yellow Cab Service," I said. "A pleasure", which it was. Georgia Lammers is popular in a cheap, plunging-neckline way, but not with me. She acts as if she had invented sex. Gabrielle started getting mail every day some in envelopes, some just with a thumbtack shoved through folds. I wondered who it was; but every time I saw Gabrielle she was alone. I decided it must be someone her father did not like so they had to use notes to arrange secret dates. I told Cliff so, but he said I had an uncontrolled romantic imagination. Gabrielle got eleven notes that week and, I got only four, all from Cliff. I pointed this out and he said I did not appreciate my blessings and he was going to ration me to three a week. Men are exasperating. I came up one morning as Gabriehle was taking down a note; this time Georgia Lammers was there. As Gabrielle left I said sweetly, "Nothing for you, Georgia? Too bad. Or was it Gabrielle's turn to swipe your note?" Georgia sniffed and went into the Registrar's office, where she is a part-time clerk. I thought no more about it until after five, when I was waiting in Old Main for Daddy, intending to ride home with him. There was nothing on "H-To-L" for me, or for Gabrielle, or Georgia. Nobody was around so I sat down on the Senior Bench and rested my feet. I jumped when I heard someone behind me, but it was only Gabrielle. She's a freshman, too, and anyhow she wouldn't tell. But I didn't sit down again, our senior committee thinks up fantastic punishments for ignoring their sacred privileges. A good thing I didn't, Georgia came out Of the office then. But she did not notice me. She went straight to "H-To-L" and unpinned a note. I thought: Maureen, your memory is slipping; there was nothing for her a minute ago. Georgia turned and saw me. She flushed and said, "What are you staring at?" "Sorry," I said. "I didn't think there was a note for you, I just looked at the board." She started to flare up, then she put on a catty smile. "Want to read it?" "Heavens, no!" "Go ahead!" She shoved it at me. "It's very interesting." Puzzled, I took it. It was a blank sheet, nothing but creases and thumb tack holes. "Somebody is playing jokes on you," I said. "Not on me." I turned it over. The address read: "Miss Gabrielle Lamont." It finally soaked in that the address should have been "Georgia Lammers." Or should have been for Georgia to touch it. I said, "This note isn't yours. You have no right to it." "What note?" "This note." "I don't see any note. I see a blank sheet of paper." "But. Look, you thought it was a note to Gabrielle. And you took it down anyway." Her smile got nastier. "No, I knew it wasn't a note. That's the point." "Huh?" She explained and I wanted to scratch her. Poor little Gabrielle had been sending notes to herself, just to get mail when everybody else did, and Georgia had caught on. Both girls had campus jobs which kept them late; Georgia had seen Gabrielle come in late a week earlier, look around, and pin up a note. Being a sneak, she had ducked out to find out to whom Gabrielle was writing, only to find that it was addressed to Gabrielle herself. Poor Gabby! No wonder I had never seen her with anyone. There wasn't anyone. Georgia licked her lips. "Isn't it a scream? That snip trying to make us think she's popular? I should write a real note on this, let her know that her public isn't fooled." "Don't you dare!" "Oh, don't be dull!" She pinned it up, putting the tack back in-the same holes. "I'll let the joke ride until I think of something good." I grabbed her arm, "Don't you touch her notes again or I'll." She shook me off. "You'll what? Tell her that you know her notes are phony? I can just see you!" "I'll tell the Dean, that's what! I'll tell the Dean you've been opening Gabrielle's notes." "Oh, yes? You looked at it, too." "But you handed it to me!" "Did I? My word against yours, sweetie pie." "But." "And if you talk, the whole campus will know about Gabrielle's fake notes. Think it over." She marched off. I was so quiet on the way home that Daddy said, "Smatter, Puddin'? Flunk a quiz?" I assured him that my academic status was satisfactory. "Then why the mourning?" Before Daddy let me register he had warned me that the First Law of the Jungle for a professor's child was not to be a pipeline to the faculty. "But, Daddy, you're a professor." "Student stuff, eh? Better sweat it out alone. Good. Luck." I did not tell Mother either, because with Mother free speech is not just a theory. I did nothing but worry. Poor Gabrielle! She took her "note" down next morning, looking pleased, and I wanted to cry. Then I saw the smirk on Georgia Lammers' face and I felt like murder and mayhem. There was another "note" Friday and I wanted to shout to her not to touch it. I didn't dare. It was like a time bomb, watching Gabrielle's pitiful make believe and knowing that Georgia meant to wreck it as soon as she thought up something nasty enough. I was in the Registrar's office Monday, not to see Georgia, though I couldn't avoid her, but because I am a freshman reporter for the Campus Crier. One of my chores is, getting up the "Happy Birthday" column. I thumbed through the files, noting dates from the coming Friday through the following Thursday. Gabrielle's name turned up for Friday and I decided to send her a birthday card, via the bulletin board, so for once she would have real mail. Next I listed Bun Peterson's name; her birthday was the same as Gabrielle's. Bun is president of the Student Council and head cheerleader and honorary football captain; it seemed a shame she had to have Gabrielle's birthday as well. I decided to get Gabrielle a really nice card, with a hanky. As I finished Georgia picked up my list and said, "Who's getting senile?” I said, "You are," and took it back. She said, "Don't get too big for your beanie, freshman." She went on, "Going to the party for Bun Peterson?" Then added, "Oh, I forgot, it's upper classmen only." I looked her in the eye. "A double choc malt against a used candy bar you aren't either!" She didn't answer and I swaggered out. It was a busy week. Junior sprained his arm, Mother was away two days and I kept house, the cat had to be wormed, and I typed a term paper for Cliff. I didn't think about Gabrielle until late Friday when I stopped by the board on the chance that there might be a note from Cliff. There wasn't, but there was another of Gabnelle's notes, in an envelope with her name typed. I realized with a shock that I had forgotten her birthday card. I was wondering whether to get one and let her find it Monday, when I heard a pisst! It was Georgia Lammers, motioning me to come to the office. Curiosity got me; I went. She pulled me inside; there was no one else in the outer office. "Keep back," she whispered. "If she sees anyone, she may not stop. She's due now, it's after five." I shook her off. "Who?" "Gabrielle, of course. Shut up!" "Huh?" I said. "She's already been there. Her note for Monday is up." "A lot you know! Hush!" She crowded me into the corner, then peeked out. "Quit shoving!" I said and looked out. Gabrielle was pinning something up, her back to us. She saw the envelope with her name, took it down, and hurried away. I turned to Georgia. "If you've monkeyed with one of her notes, I will go to the Dean." "Go ahead, see how far it gets you." "Did you touch that note?" "Sure I did, I wrote it. What's wrong with that?" She had me; anybody can send anyone a note. "Well, what did you say?" "What business is it of yours? Still," she went on, "I'll tell you. It's too good to keep." She dug a paper out of her purse. It was a typewritten rough draft, full of x-outs and inserts; it read: Dear Gabrielle, Today is Bun Peterson's birthday, and we are giving her the finest surprise party this school has ever seen. We would like to invite everybody, but we can't, and you have been picked as one of the girls to represent the freshman class. We are gathering in groups and will descend on her in a body. Your group will meet at seven o'clock in the Snack Shoppe. Put on your best bib and tucker, and don't breathe a word to anyone! The Committee. "It's a shabby trick," I said, "to invite her to another girl's party on her own birthday. You knew it was her birthday." "What of it?" "It's mean, but just like you. How did you get them to invite her? You aren't on the committee, are you?" She stared, then laughed. "She's not invited to anything." "Huh? You mean there's no party? But there is. "Oh, sure, there's a party for Bun Peterson. But that little snip won't be there. That's the joke." It finally sank in. Gabrielle would go to the Snack Shoppe and wait, and wait, and wait, while the party she thought she had been invited to went on without her. "That strikes you as funny?" I said. "That's just the beginning," this Lammers person answered. "About eight-thirty, when she is beginning to wonder 'Wha Hoppen?' a messenger will bring another note. It will be blank paper, just like those she sends to herself, then she'll know." She giggled and wet her lips. "The little fake will have her comeuppance." I started after her and she ducked back of the counter. "You're not allowed back here!" she yelped. I stopped. "You'll have to come out some time. Then we'll find Gabrielle and you will tell her the truth, all of it!" "Tell her yourself!" she snapped. Two boys drifted in and the Registrar came out of the inner office and Georgia became briskly official. I left. Cliff was waiting at "H-To-L"; I was never so glad to see him. "Well," Cliff said a bit later, "phone her. Tell her she's been had and not to go to the Snack Shoppe." "But, Cliff, I can't! That would be almost as cruel as the way Georgia planned it. Look, can't you get somebody to take her to Bun's party?" Cliff wrinkled his forehead. "I don't see how." "Cliff, you've got to!" "Puddin', today is Gabnelte's birthday, too. Right?" "Yes, yes, that's what makes it so mean." "You don't want to send her to Bun's party. What we do is give her a surprise party of her own. Simple." I stared with open-mouthed adoration. "Cliff, you're a genius." "No," he, said modestly, "just highly intelligent and with a heart of gold. Let's get busy, chica." First I phoned Mother. She said, "Tonight, Maureen? I like to entertain your friends but" I cut in with a quick up-to-date. Presently she said, "I'll check the deep freeze. Sommers Market may still be open. How about turkey legs and creamed mushrooms on toast?" "And ice cream," I added. "Birthday parties need ice cream." "But the cake? I'm short on time." "Uh, we'll get the cake." As I hung up Cliff came out of the other booth. "I got the Downbeat Campus Combo," he announced. "Oh, Cliff, an orchestra!" "If you can call those refugees from a juke box that." "But how will we pay for it?" "Don't ask, it was a promotion. They bid on Bun's party and got left, So they listened to reason. But I'm not doing well on guests, baby." "You called your house?" "Yes. A lot of the boys have other plans." "You call again and tell those free loaders that they will never eat another Dagwood in my house if they are not there, on time, and each with a present. No excuses. This is total war." "Aye aye, sir!" We went to Helen Hunt's Tasty Pastry Shoppe. Mr. Helen Hunt was just closing but he let us in. No birthday cake. Not a baker in the place until four the next morning, sorry. I spotted a three-tier wedding cake. "Is that a prop?" "Frankly, that's a disappointment. My wife and I each entered the same order." “You're stuck with it?” "Oh, we may get a wedding cake order unexpectedly." "Eight dollars," I said. He looked at the cake. "Ten dollars", then added, "Cash." I looked at Cliff. He looked at me. I opened my purse and he got out his wallet. We had six fifty-seven. Mr. Helen Hunt stared at the ceiling. Cliff sighed and unpinned his fraternity pin from my blouse, handed it over, and Mr Helen Hunt dropped it into the cash register. He took the little bride-and-groom off the cake, set candles around each tier, then fetched an icing gun. "What name?" "Gabrielle," I replied. "No, make it 'Gabby', G, A, double-B, Y." I called Madame O'Toole from there. Madame bends hair for half the girls on the campus. She lives back of her beauty salon and agreed to be panting and ready at seven-fifteen. Fast driving let Cliff drop me at six-ten. Junior was stringing Christmas tree lights across the front porch and Daddy was moving furniture. Mother was swooshing like a restless tornado, a smudge of dirt on her cheek. I kissed Daddy but Mother wouldn't hold still. I made three calls while the tub was filling, then dunked, put my face on, and inserted myself into my almost-strapless formal. Cliff honked at five minutes to seven; he looked swell in a tuxedo a little too small and the darling had two gardenia corsages, one for me and one for Gabrielle. We roared away toward the Snack Shoppe, hitting on all three. We got there at seven-fifteen. I looked in and saw Gabrielle at a rear table, looking forlorn and nursing a half-empty coke. She was in a long dress which was not too bad but she, had tried to hse makeup and did not know how. Her lipstick was smeared, crooked, and the wrong color, and she had done awful things with rouge and powder. Underneath she was scared green. I walked in. "Hello, Gabby." She tried to smile. "Oh, hello, Maureen." "Ready to go? We're from the committee." "Uh. I don't know. I don't feel well. I'd better go home." "Nonsense! Come on. We'll be late." We got on each side and hustled her out to Cliff's open-air special. "Where is the party?" Gabrielle asked nervously. "Don't be nosy. It's a surprise." Which it was. Cliff pulled up at Madame O'Toole's before she could ask more questions. Gabrielle looked puzzled but her will to resist was gone. Inside I said to Madame O'Toole, "You have seventeen minutes." Madame looked her over like a pile of wet clay. "Two hours is what I need." "Twenty minutes," I conceded. "Can you do it?" Over the phone I had told her that she had to create Cleopatra herself, starting from zip. She pursed her lips and looked the kid over again. "We'll see. Come along, child." Gabrielle looked dazed. "But Maureen." "Hush," I said firmly. "Do exactly what Madame tells you." Madame led her away. While we waited Cliff called the Deke house and the senior dorm and stirred out five more men and two couples. It was thirty minutes before they reappeared, and I nearly fainted. Madame was wasted here. She belonged at the court of Louis Quinze. And so did Gabrielle. At first I thought she was wearing no makeup. Then I, saw that it had been put on so skillfully that you thought it had grown there. Her eyes were eight times as big as they had been and looked like pools of secret sorrow, if you know, a woman who has lived her hair was still brushed straight back but Madame had done it over. What had been a bun was now a chignon, "bun" wasn't the word. Her cheekbones were higher, too. And Madame had done. Something to the dress. It clung more and seemed more low-cut. Riding high on her shoulder was the corsage and her skin blended into the petals. Instead of the beads she had been wearing there was a single strand of pearls, resting where pearls love to rest. They must have been Madame's very own. They looked real. Cliff gasped so I poked him to remind him not to touch. Gabrielle smiled timidly. "Do I look all right?" I said, "Sister, Conover would shoot Powers for your contract. Madame, you're wonderful! Let's go; kids. We're late." You can't talk when Cliff is driving, which was good. We got there at twenty past eight; our block was jammed and our house stood out in colored lights. Junior was on guard; he ducked inside. Cliff took our coats I gave Gabrielle a shove and said, "Go on in." As she appeared in the living room the Downbeat boys bit it and they all sang: "Happy birthday, dear Gabby! "Happy birthday to you!" And then I was almost sorry, for the poor baby covered her face and sobbed. And so did I. Everybody began laughing and talking and shouting and the Downbeat Combo went into dance music, not good but solid, and I knew the party would do. Mother and I smuggled Gabby upstairs and I fixed my face and Mother shook Gabby and told her to stop crying. Gabby stopped and Mother did a perfect job fixing what damage had been done. I didn't know Mother owned mascara but I am always finding Out new things about Mother. So we went back down. Cliff showed up with a strange man and said, "Mademoiselle Lamont, permettez-moi de vous presenter M'sieur Jean Allard," which was more French than I knew he had. Jean Allard was an exchange student that one of the boys had brought along. He was slender and dark and he fastened himself to Gabby, his English was spotty and here was a woman that spoke his language… that and Madame O'Toole's handiwork. Be had competition; most of the stags seemed to want to get close to the new-model Gabby. I sighed with relief and slipped out to the kitchen, being suddenly aware that I had missed dinner, a disaster for one of my metabolism. Daddy was there in an apron; he gave me a turkey leg. I ate that and a few other things that wouldn't fit on the plates. Then I went back and danced with Cliff and some of the stags that had gotten crowded out around Gabby. When the orchestra took ten it turned Out that Johnny Allard could play piano, and he and Gabby sang French songs, the kind that sound naughty, what with the eye-rolling, but probably aren't. Then we all sang Alouette which is more my speed. Gabby was gaining a reputation as a woman of the world. I heard one ex-Boy Scout say, "You've really seen the Folies Bergere?" Gabby looked puzzled and said, "Why not?" He said, "Gee!" while his eyebrows crowded his scalp. Finally we brought out the cake and everybody sang "Happy Birthday" again and Mother had to repair Gabby's face a second time. But by now Gabby could have washed her face and it wouldn't have mattered. Professor Lamont arrived while we were killing the ice cream and cake. Daddy's doing. He and Jean Allard talked French, then I heard Jean ask him, in schoolbook English, for permission to call on his daughter. Doctor Lamont agreed in the same stilted fashion. I blinked. Cliff never asked Daddy; he just started eating at our house, off and on. Around midnight Doctor Lamont took his daughter home, loaded with swag. At the last minute I remembered to run upstairs and wrap up a new pair of nylons that would never fit. Gabby but she could exchange them. So Gabby cried again and clung to me and got incoherent in two languages and I cried some, too. Finally everybody left and Cliff and Daddy and I tidied up the place, sort of. When I hit the bed, I died. Cliff showed up next morning. We gloated over the party, at least I did. Presently he said, "What about Georgia?" I said, "Huh?" He said, "You can't leave it at this. It ought to be poisoned needles, or boiling lava, but the police are narrow-minded." "Any ideas?" He pulled out the bill for the cake. "I'd like to see her pay this." "So would I! But how in the world?" Cliff explained, then we composed the letter together, like this: Dear Georgia, Yesterday was Gabrielle Lamont's birthday, and we gave her the finest party this school has ever seen. Too bad you were hanging around the Snack Shoppe while the fun was going on. But we know you would like to give her a present anyway, you can still pay for the cake. Put on your best bib and tucker and trot around to Helen Hunt's. It was a surprise party, so don't breathe a word to anyone! Nor shall we. The Committee. P S. On second thought it will be-more fun if you don't pay for the cake! It wasn't anonymous; the bill had our names on it and we pinned it to the letter. I bet Cliff two hamburgers that she wouldn't knuckle under. I was wrong. Half an hour after it was delivered Helen Hunt phoned to say that Cliff could have his pin back, the mortgage was lifted. Monday morning I was at the board earlier than either Cliff or Gabby. Gabby's poor little "note" was still pinned up, where she had put it Friday. I wondered what she would do; start pretending all over again? I spotted her coming up the steps, walking alone and lonely, same as always, and again I wondered if it had done any good. Then somebody shouted, "Hey, Gabby! Wait a minute." She stopped and two boys joined her. I watched her and then Cliff growled at my back, "Why the sniffles? Got a cold?" I said, "Oh, Cliffy Give me your hanky and don't ask silly questions." Delilah and the Space-Rigger. Audiobook Dedicated to Ryan Kinel. SURE, WE HAD TROUBLE building Space Station One-but the trouble was people. Not that building a station twenty-two thousand three hundred miles out in space is a breeze. It was an engineering feat bigger than the Panama Canal or the Pyramids-or even the Susquehanna Power Pile. But “Tiny” Larsen built her and a job Tiny tackles gets built. I first saw Tiny playing guard on a semi-pro team, working his way through Oppenheimer Tech. He worked summers for me thereafter till he graduated. He stayed in construction and eventually I went to work for him. Tiny wouldn’t touch a job unless he was satisfied with the engineering. The Station had jobs designed into it that called for six-armed monkeys instead of grown men in space suits. Tiny spotted such boners; not a ton of material went into the sky until the specs and drawings suited him. But it was people that gave us the headaches. We bad a sprinkling of married men, but the rest were wild kids, attracted by high pay and adventure. Some were busted spacemen. Some were specialists, like electricians and instrument men. About half were deep-sea divers, used to working in pressure suits. There were sandhogs and riggers and welders and ship fitters and two circus acrobats. We fired four of them for being drunk on the job; Tiny had to break one stiff’s arm before he would stay fired. What worried us was where did they get it? Turned out a ship fitter had rigged a heatless still, using the vacuum around us. He was making vodka from potatoes swiped from the commissary. I hated to let him go, but he was too smart. Since we were falling free in a 24-hour circular orbit, with everything weightless and floating, you’d think that shooting craps was impossible. But a radioman named Peters figured a dodge to substitute steel dice and a magnetic field. He also eliminated the element of chance, so we fired him. We planned to ship him back in the next supply ship, the R S Half Moon. I was in Tiny’s office when she blasted to match our orbit. Tiny swam to the view port “Send for Peters, Dad,” he said, “and give him the old heave ho. Who’s his relief?” “Party named G Brooks McNye,” I told him. A line came snaking over from the ship. Tiny said, “I don’t believe she’s matched.” He buzzed the radio shack for the ship’s motion relative to the Station. The answer didn’t please him and he told them to call the Half Moon. Tiny waited until the screen showed the rocket ship. C.O. “Good morning, Captain. Why have you placed a line on us?” “For cargo, naturally. Get your hopheads over here. I want to blast off before we enter the shadow.” The Station spent about an hour and a quarter each day passing through Earth’s shadow; we worked two eleven-hour shifts and skipped the dark period, to avoid rigging lights and heating suits. Tiny shook his head. “Not until you’ve matched course and speed with us.” “I am matched!” “Not to specification, by my instruments.” “Have a heart, Tiny! I’m short on maneuvering fuel. If I juggle this entire ship to make a minor correction on a few lousy tons of cargo, I’ll be so late I’ll have to put down on a secondary field. I may even have to make a dead-stick landing.” In those days all ships had landing wings. “Look, Captain,” Tiny said sharply, “the only purpose of your lift was to match orbits for those same few lousy tons. I don’t care if you land in Little America on a pogo stick. The first load here was placed with loving care in the proper orbit, and I’m making every other load match. Get that covered wagon into the groove.” “Very well, Superintendent!” Captain Shields said stiffly. “Don’t be sore, Don,” Tiny said softly. “By the way, you’ve got a passenger for me?” “Oh, yes, so I have!” Shields’ face broke out in a grin. “Well, keep him aboard until we unload. Maybe we can beat the shadow yet.” “Fine, fine! After all, why should I add to your troubles?” The skipper switched off, leaving my boss looking puzzled. We didn’t have time to wonder at his words. Shields whipped his ship around on gyros, blasted a second or two, and put her dead in space with us pronto-and used very little fuel, despite his bellyaching. I grabbed every man we could spare and managed to get the cargo clear before we swung into Earth’s shadow. Weightlessness is an unbelievable advantage in handling freight; we gutted the Half Moon-by hand, mind you-in fifty-four minutes. The stuff was oxygen tanks, loaded, and aluminum mirrors to shield them, panels of outer skin-sandwich stuff of titanium alloy sheet with foamed glass filling-and cases of jato units to spin the living quarters. Once it was all out and snapped to our cargo line I sent the men back by the same line-I won’t let a man work outside without a line no matter how space happy he figures he is. Then I told Shields to send over the passenger and cast off. This little guy came out the ship’s air lock, and hooked on to the ship’s line. Handling himself like he was used to space, he set his feet and dived, straight along the stretched line, his snap hook running free. I hurried back and motioned him to follow me. Tiny, the new man, and I reached the air locks together. Besides the usual cargo lock we had three Kwikloks. A Kwiklok is an Iron Maiden without spikes; it fits a man in a suit, leaving just a few pints of air to scavenge, and cycles automatically. A big time saver in changing shifts. I passed through the middle-sized one; Tiny, of course, used the big one. Without hesitation the new man pulled himself into the small one. We went into Tiny’s office. Tiny strapped down, and pushed his helmet back. “Well, McNye,” he said. “Glad to have you with us.” The new radio tech opened his helmet. I heard a low, pleasant voice answer, “Thank you.” I stared and didn’t say anything. From where I was I could see that the radio tech was wearing a hair ribbon. I thought Tiny would explode. He didn’t need to see the hair ribbon; with the helmet up it was clear that the new “man” was as female as Venus deMilo. Tiny sputtered, then he was unstrapped and diving for the view port. “Dad!” he yelled. “Get the radio shack. Stop that ship!” But the Half Moon was already a ball of fire in the distance. Tiny looked dazed. “Dad,” he said, “who else knows about this?” “Nobody, so far as I know.” He thought a bit. “We’ve got to keep her out of sight. That’s it-we keep her locked up and out of sight until the next ship matches in.” He didn’t look at her. “What in the world are you talking about?” McNye’s voice was higher and no longer pleasant. Tiny glared. “You, that’s what. What are you-a stowaway?’ “Don’t be silly! I’m G B McNye, electronics engineer. Don’t you have my papers?” Tiny turned to me. “Dad, this is your fault. How in Chr, pardon me, Miss. How did you let them send you a woman? Didn’t you even read the advance report on her?” “Me?” I said. “Now see here, you big squarehead! Those forms don’t show sex; the Fair Employment Commission won’t allow it except where it’s pertinent to the job.” “You’re telling me it’s not pertinent to the job here?” “Not by job classification it ain’t. There’s lots of female radio and radar men, back Earthside.” “This isn’t Earthside.” He had something. He was thinking of those two-legged wolves swarming over the job outside. And G B McNye was pretty. Maybe eight months of no women at all affected my judgment, but she would pass. “I’ve even heard of female rocket pilots,” I added, for spite. “I don’t care if you’ve heard of female archangels; I’ll have no women here!” “Just a minute!” If I was riled, she was plain sore. “You’re the construction superintendent, are you not?” “Yes,” Tiny admitted. “Very well, then, how do you know what sex I am?’ “Are you trying to deny that you are a woman?” “Hardly! I’m proud of it. But officially you don’t know what sex G. Brooks McNye is. That’s why I use ‘G’ instead of Gloria. I don’t ask favors.” Tiny grunted. “You won’t get any. I don’t know how you sneaked in, but get this, McNye, or Gloria, or whatever. You’re fired. You go back on the next ship. Meanwhile we’ll try to keep the men from knowing we’ve got a woman aboard.” I could see her count ten. “May I speak,” she said finally, “or does your Captain Bligh act extend to that, too?” “Say your say.” “I didn’t sneak in. I am on the permanent staff of the Station, Chief Communications Engineer. I took this vacancy myself to get to know the equipment while it was being installed. I’ll live here eventually; I see no reason not to start now.” Tiny waved it away. “There’ll be men and women both here someday. Even kids. Right now it’s stag and it’ll stay that way.” “We’ll see. Anyhow, you can’t fire me; radio personnel don’t work for you.” She had a point; communicators and some other specialists were lent to the contractors, Five Companies, Incorporated, by Harriman Enterprises. Tiny snorted. “Maybe I can’t fire you; I can send you home. Requisitioned personnel must be satisfactory to the contractor, meaning me. Paragraph seven, clause M; I wrote that clause myself.” “Then you know that if requisitioned personnel are refused without cause the contractor bears the replacement cost.” “I’ll risk paying your fare home, but I won’t have you here.” “You are most unreasonable!” “Perhaps, but I’ll decide what’s good for the job. I’d rather have a dope peddler than have a woman sniffing around my boys!” She gasped. Tiny knew he had said too much; he added, “Sorry, Miss. But that’s it. You’ll’ stay under cover until I can get rid of you.” Before she could speak I cut in. “Tiny-look behind you!” Staring in the port was one of the riggers, his eyes bugged out. Three or four more floated up and joined him. Then Tiny zoomed up to the port and they scattered like minnows. He scared them almost out of their suits; I thought he was going to shove his fists through the quartz. He came back looking whipped. “Miss,” he said, pointing, “Wait in my room.” When she was gone he added, “Dad, what’ll we do?” I said, “I thought you had made up your mind, Tiny.” “I have,” he answered peevishly. “Ask the Chief Inspector to come in, will you?” That showed how far gone he was. The inspection gang belonged to Harriman Enterprises, not to us, and Tiny rated them mere nuisances. Besides, Tiny was an Oppenheimer graduate; Dalrymple was from M I T. He came in, brash and cheerful. “Good morning, Superintendent. Morning, Mister Witherspoon. What can I do for you?” Glumly, Tiny told the story. Dalrymple looked smug. “She’s right, old man. You can send her back and even specify a male relief. But I can hardly endorse ‘for proper cause’ now, can I?” “Damnation. Dalrymple, we can’t have a woman around here!” “A moot point. Not covered by contract, y’know.” “If your office hadn’t sent us a crooked gambler as her predecessor I wouldn’t be in this am!” “There, there! Remember the old blood pressure. Suppose we leave the endorsement open and arbitrate the cost. That’s fair, eh?” “I suppose so. Thanks.” “Not at all. But consider this: when you rushed Peters off before interviewing the newcomer, you cut yourself down to one operator. Hammond can’t stand watch twenty-four hours a day.” “He can sleep in the shack. The alarm will wake him.” “I can’t accept that. The home office and ships’ frequencies must be guarded at all times. Harriman Enterprises has supplied a qualified operator; I am afraid you must use her for the time being.” Tiny will always cooperate with the inevitable; he said quietly, “Dad, she’ll take first shift. Better put the married men on that shift.” Then he called her in. “Go to the radio shack and start makee-learnee, so that Hammond can go off watch soon. Mind what he tells you. He’s a good man.” “I know,” she said briskly. “I trained him.” Tiny bit his lip. The C.I. said, “The Superintendent doesn’t bother with trivia-I’m Robert Dalrymple, Chief Inspector. He probably didn’t introduce his assistant either, Mister Witherspoon.” “Call me Dad,” I said. She smiled and said, “Howdy, Dad.” I felt warm clear through. She went on to Dalrymple, “Odd that we haven’t met before.” Tiny butted in. “McNye, you’ll sleep in my room-“ She raised her eyebrows; he went on angrily, “Oh, I’ll get my stuff out-at once. And get this: keep the door locked, off shift.’ “You’re darn tootin’ I will!” Tiny blushed. I was too busy to see much of Miss Gloria. There was cargo to stow, the new tanks to install and shield. That left the most worrisome task of all: putting spin on the living quarters. Even the optimists didn’t expect much interplanetary traffic for some years; nevertheless Harriman Enterprises wanted to get some activities moved in and paying rent against their enormous investment. I T and T had leased space for a microwave relay station several million a year from television alone. The Weather Bureau was itching to set up its hemispheric integrating station; Palomar Observatory had a concession (Harriman Enterprises donated that space); the Security Council had, some hush-hush project; Fermi Physical Labs and Kettering Institute each had space-a dozen tenants wanted to move in now, or sooner, even if we never completed accommodations for tourists and travelers. There were time bonuses in it for Five Companies, Incorporated-and their help. So we were in a hurry to get spin on the quarters. People who have never been out have trouble getting through their heads-at least I had-that there is no feeling of weight, no up and down, in a free orbit in space. There’s Earth, round and beautiful, only twenty-odd thousand miles away, close enough to brush your sleeve. You know it’s pulling you towards it. Yet you feel no weight, absolutely none. You float. Floating is fine for some types of work, but when it’s time to eat, or play cards, or bathe, it’s good to feel weight on your feet. Your dinner stays quiet and you feel more natural. You’ve seen pictures of the Station, a huge cylinder, like a bass drum, with ships’ nose pockets dimpling its sides. Imagine a snare drum, spinning around inside the bass drum; that’s the living quarters, with centrifugal force pinch-hitting for gravity. We could have spun the whole Station but you can’t berth a ship against a whirling dervish. So we built a spinning part for creature comfort and an outer, stationary part for docking, tanks, storerooms, and the like. You pass from one to the other at the hub. When Miss Gloria joined us the inner part was closed in and pressurized, but the rest was a skeleton of girders. Mighty pretty though, a great network of shiny struts and ties against black sky and stars-titanium alloy 1403, light, strong, and non-corrodible. Heinlein: https://rumble.com/v406mdz-index-of-robert-heinlein-audiobooks..html

“It’s so clear what’s happening in America. If you can’t see it, you’re either blind or you are part of the problem.” Wayne Allyn Root. Reformatted for Machine Text, 2023. Author’s Note. I dare you. I double dare you. Because of the provocative title, and my high-profile conservative credentials, I’m certain vicious and biased liberal “hit men and women” will try to spin this book as “racist.” It’s not. I dare you to find a racist word in this book. You won’t. This book doesn’t attack any racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual orientation group. What it does is defend a group that is being targeted, attacked, intimidated and persecuted, the great American middle class. I titled itAngry White Malebecause the current American middle class happens to be predominantly white. I am an angry white male defending it. But I’m also defending the millions of middle-class women and religious and ethnic minorities who are also part of America’s middle class. I guess Obama, Hillary, and liberals just consider them expendable, “collateral damage.” This book points out the reverse racism and hypocrisy aimed at America’s middle class. We are under attack. We are marked for extinction.Weare the victims of racism. It’s time to stand up in self-defense. Additional note:Any product or endorsement I make in this book is for companies and products that I use and believe in, the sponsors of my radio show. Foreword by Roger Stone. Wayne Allyn Root has written “The Handbook of the Trump Revolution.” Wayne Allyn Root is an acquired taste. Brash, combative, outspoken, and self-created American businessman, politician, television and radio personality, author, television producer, and political pundit, he is an unabashed advocate for smaller government and American sovereignty. Wayne, who often signs his emails with his initials “WAR,” is probably the most famous celebrity you’ve never heard of (until now). In fact, Wayne has a large body of bestselling books, hit television shows, and reverberating political commentary to his credit. Let’s just say Wayne Allyn Root is a man who understands the odds. Root’s media career began in New York City on WNBC radio (now WFAN) in the early 1980s. He moved onto NBC’sThe Sourceradio network, syndicated around the country in over one hundred markets, as a sports talk host. A free market advocate, Root is a shrewd analyst of market trends, Wall Street, and Vegas gambling odds, a rare combination. This has allowed the optimistic and gregarious conservative to make and lose many fortunes. Wayne is a man who knows how to hustle and knows how to make a buck. That the Obama IRS targeted Wayne for his outspoken opposition to our current president is undeniable. The prolific author and political commentator has undergone vigorous audits and harassments by the Internal Revenue Service yet the stalwart Root has refused to buckle under to the obvious political pressure. Like Donald Trump, Wayne is relentless and unstoppable. Deeply tanned with a wide smile and perfect gleaming white teeth, and always perfectly coiffed, Wayne Allyn Root gives off the air of a Hollywood movie star, or a TV newsman, but he is neither. Dogged in his advocacy for economic growth and opportunity and smaller, less intrusive government, Wayne has gladly taken the slings and arrows of the liberal elite who seek to mock him because they cannot rebut his ideas. There is something about Wayne that is perfectly American. Perhaps it’s his sunny optimism, or his steadfast belief in the bedrock principles of this country. In 2008, disgusted with the free spending and Wall Street bailouts by establishment Republicans, Wayne bolted the party of Lincoln to launch his candidacy for the Libertarian party nomination for president. The ever-ebullient Root would have been a much stronger candidate than former Congressman Barr, Barr posed as a libertarian just long enough to grab that party’s presidential nomination, although he was required to take Root as his vice presidential running mate in order to garner the delegate votes necessary for nomination. The better man was on the lower half of the ticket. Undaunted, Root has continued to pummel Obama over his job-killing economic policies, disastrous foreign policies, and the mountain of debts in borrowing that his administration is bequeathing us. The unflappable Root has now reinvented himself yet again. He was one of the first figures in America to see the potential for the presidential candidacy of Donald J. Trump, and has been a constant presence on cable television and talk radio, defending the New York billionaire and his controversial platform on cutting taxes, regulations, and the size of government; repealing Obamacare; securing the border; reforming trade policies to save the American middle class; and rebuilding America’s military strength. Even worse for the Democrats, Wayne has emerged as one of the most effective critics of Hillary Clinton and her entire record of incompetence, corruption, and lies. Root’s skewering of the former first couple has been relentless and effective. That could be why he has come under constant attack by liberal cable television icons like Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, and Bill Maher. Always controversial and never willing to be quiet in the face of wrong-headed government policies, anything Wayne Allyn Root writes is worth reading. In fact, Wayne has an annoying habit of being ahead of the curve in gauging the public’s disgust with the failed policies of the two-party duopoly and the neo-cons who have driven us to endless wars, while bankrupting the nation. Wayne was among the first to recognize the inherent danger of radical Islam, as well as the unchecked flood of illegal immigrants who are sucking dry the American system, while perpetrating a crime wave against the American people. Wayne calls it as he sees it, unvarnished, blunt, and plainspoken. Another Trump-like attribute. Now inAngry White Male, Root provides a manifesto for Donald Trump’s silent majority, and outlines how immigrants and non-Americans flood here by the millions to sign up for America’s generous taxpayer-financed welfare state. Wayne is the quintessential “Angry White Male.” Roger Stone, New York City, June 2016. Introduction. Bill Maher and the Apology. In the middle of writing this book Bill Maher asked me to be the “sacrificial conservative guest” on his HBO showReal Time with Bill Maher. On the show I was asked about Obama’s visit to Japan. I was asked if Obama should have visited Hiroshima, the site of our nuclear attacks that ended World War II. I was asked, “Was it appropriate for Obama to visit?” This gets to the very core of this book, to the core of why I’m an “Angry White Male.” As I said to host Bill Maher on the show, I’m not a fan of apologies, especially if you’re apologizing for responding to something terrible the other guy did. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. They started the war; we merely ended it. They committed terrible atrocities against our soldiers and American POWs throughout the war. My father, David Root, served in the South Pacific. He fought at Okinawa, the bloodiest battle of World War II. He saw firsthand the atrocities of the Japanese. Our nuclear bombs didn’t just take lives, they saved lives. Ironically, probably more Japanese than American lives. Experts estimated the invasion of Japan would have cost at least one million lives. One of them might have been my father’s. So my answer to Bill Maher was that I’m not a fan of eventhe appearanceof apologizing for those atomic bombs, unless of course Japan’s prime minister is willing to come to Hawaii to apologize to the American victims of Pearl Harbor. I pointed out that that is a negotiation that only a President Donald Trump could win. But I found the response from Bill Maher’s liberal viewers interesting. I received death threats, and people wishing me a “long slow painful death.” Some lectured me on all the apologies we owe to Japanese survivors, American Indians, and, of course, African American slaves. I suddenly realized it’s time for Obama’s victims, middle-class America (which is predominantly white), to speak up. Here is my answer to liberals across the country. You’re 100 percent right, apologies are sometimes necessary. Obama and his socialist cabal should apologize to every middle-class American for the harm they’ve done to the US economy, upward mobility, middle-class jobs, there are none, and the American Dream, it’s dead. They’ve created an unimaginable DISASTER. They’ve destroyed the greatest nation, greatest economy, greatest economic system, capitalism, and greatest middle class in world history. We are living in an Obama Great Depression. Obama should also apologize for adding well over $10 trillion to the national debt (by the time he leaves office), which could lead to a severe debt crisis and the eventual collapse of the US economy, but at a minimum will certainly cripple the quality of life for our children and grandchildren. Obama should also apologize for the lies and fraud of Obamacare. He lied when he said, “If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance.” Really? I lost mine. So did millions of other Americans. We are owed an apology. Obama should also apologize for the disastrous effects of Obamacare, which has doubled and tripled premiums, copays, deductibles, and prescription costs; killed quality high-wage middle-class jobs; and made it almost impossible to start or run a successful small business. But in the case of Obamacare, apologies alone won’t do. The architects of Obamacare are owed a prison sentence for committing the biggest fraud in American history. Obama should apologize for the vicious IRS attacks, trying to persecute people for their political and religious beliefs. Or didn’t you know the IRS was ordered to go after conservative, Tea Party, Christian, and pro-Israel groups? I was one of the victims. Where’s my apology? Obama should apologize for cutting $2.6 billion for veterans, while adding $4.5 billion to the budget for the importing of Syrian migrants into the United States. Every veteran in America is owed an apology. Obama should apologize for demanding in his last budget as president that Congress allocate almost $18,000 for every illegal alien child or teen that enters America. That’s $3,000 more than an American-born senior citizen gets for Social Security, even though they paid into the system. Every American-born senior citizen is owed an apology. Obama should apologize for the disastrous economy he has created with his radical leftist agenda. Obama and his buddies in the Democratic Party should apologize for what they’ve done to Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, and every other urban city run 100 percent by Democrats for the past fifty-plus years that are now all bankrupt, choked by debt, dominated by abandoned homes, shrinking population, streetlights out, violent crime, murder, and hopelessness. They’ve been under 100 percent Democratic rule. What’s the excuse? Obama should apologize for demoralizing every business owner in America by saying, “You didn’t build that.” And Hillary should apologize for saying “Businesses don’t create jobs, government does.” As soon as Obama, Hillary, their socialist cabal, and every guilt-ridden white liberal apologizes for all that. Then and only then should we worry about things done seventy, one hundred, and two hundred years ago. I wasn’t there for any of the things liberals want us to apologize for. Since I bear no responsibility, I don’t see what I have to apologize for. But Obama, Hillary, and their liberal friends should apologize for what they just did to the great American middle class. That group is predominantly white, but there are many millions of other Americans of all races caught up in the attack. I guess they are just considered the victims of unintended consequences. They should also apologize to every small businessman and woman in America. Every business I personally own and every friend I have who owns a small business is in trouble, struggling to overcome the burdens of business under Obama: dramatically increased taxes, regulations, energy costs (because of the fraud of “green energy”), health care costs, legal bills, and IRS attacks. The liberal policies of Obama’s administration have damaged and demoralized every small business owner and job creator in this country. There are twenty-eight million small business owners in America. Over 85 percent happen to be owned by non-Hispanic white Americans, according to CNBC. Hence the reason there are so many angry white males. But that still means millions of small business owners are women, black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American. They have every right to be angry, too. Where is our apology? Obama, Hillary, Bernie, their socialist cabal, and the guilt-ridden white elite liberals ruining this great country called America are not about to apologize. As a matter of fact, they have no intention of resting until America is no longer exceptional, the American Dream is dead, and we, the middle class (but not them), are leading crappy lives of equality (meaning, shared misery). Whywon’tthey apologize? Because this destruction of America is not happening due to ignorance or ineptitude. Instead, it is part of a conscious, coordinated plan to destroy this country. You probably didn’t know that this plan to “bring down America” is actually taught in our ultra-liberal universities. Obama learned it at Columbia. How do I know? I was Obama’s college classmate, I learned the plan as well, and in this book I’ll expose it to all of you. I’m an angry white male. This is my story. Part One. I’m an Angry White Male. One. I Am an S O B. Every author, no matter how fair and impartial he might try to be, comes with his own life experiences and point of view. So before we get into the meat of this book, let me give you a little background on me. I am the perfect Angry White Male because I was born into the perfect, and classic, white middle-class life. I can’t speak to the black experience, or Hispanic experience, or any other kind of experience. Because I was born white. This book is my story and my experience. It isn’t better or inferior to anyone else’s. But it’s mine. I am an S O B, son of a butcher. I’m also a G O B, grandson of a butcher. My father and grandfather were special people. They represented the greatness of America, the salt-of-the-earth drive, ambition, morality, patriotism, work ethic, faith in God, and love of family and country. They both aimed for the American Dream. My grandfather found it. He turned his four-man butcher store into a big success. My father struggled, his two-man butcher store achieved only mediocre success. Yet my dad was happy, loved America, and believed he had achieved his version of the American Dream. Despite never making any serious money, my dad fulfilled the only real dream he had: to be his own boss. The important point here is that they both had a shot, and that’s what makes America great. In America, anyone can become an owner, of their own home, business, life. It may not be pretty. It may not be perfect. But it’s yours. Owning a business, even a small one, is a little piece of heaven. And what has made America great for centuries was that through hard work, ambition, tenacity, and personal responsibility, anyone could build what my father and grandfather did. Sorry Obama, but “we DID build it.” A small businessman in my father’s and grandfather’s day was no Kennedy or Rockefeller or J P Morgan, no mogul, no billionaire. But he or she could move up in class, be their own boss, and stake a claim to a better life and a better future for their kids. My grandparents and parents could pay their bills, buy a new car every four years, go on annual vacations, pay for their children’s college, and live a great middle-class life. You didn’t need to be a millionaire or billionaire to live a great life in the old America. My grandfather and father both did well, to varying degrees. They both died satisfied. They both believed their kids and grandkids would do better than they did. They knew America was exceptional. They knew firsthand the American Dream was real. They knew firsthand the streets were paved with gold. Here’s the crucial question: why would anyone want to purposely aim to “fundamentally change” that? Obama admitted publicly that was his goal. And little by little, that life enjoyed by my father and grandfather is gone. Today, owning a small business is a struggle. Paying the bills is a struggle. Paying thelegalbills is a struggle. Paying the taxes is a struggle. Paying the landlord is a struggle. Filling out the IRS tax returns is a struggle. The cost of regulations makes it almost impossible to start a business or keep a business running. Between high income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, workers’ compensation bills, legal bills, energy bills, skyrocketing health care bills, incorporation fees, minimum wage laws for employees, the threat of lawsuits, IRS audits, government regulations, it never ends, and nowadays it rarely endswell. Later in this book you’ll hear the statistics about the dramatic decline of small business and the death of business start-ups (the lifeblood of middle-class job creation). What I’m talking about isn’t an opinion. What’s happening is a fact. Today, anyone who starts or owns a business is targeted, persecuted, and marked for extinction by both Democrats looking to tax, spend, and redistribute us to death; and Republicans looking to keep us “small” and struggling to give the advantage to their big business donors. We get creamed by both sides and on both ends. The hits just keep on coming! If anyone would know, it’s me. I am a small businessman. Except for an eighteen-month period when I was a national television anchorman, I’ve never worked for anyone in my life. I’ve always been a small business owner, independent contractor, and “One-Man Army.” I’ve never taken a check from the government in my life. I’ve never worked for the government. I’ve never done business with the government. I’ve never had a “safe” weekly paycheck from a big corporation. I’ve never had a pension. No company has paid my health insurance. My income has always been based on performance, meaning, commission. I am the “Last of the Mohicans.” I’m capitalismsquared. I’m the American Dream on steroids. I’m Willie Loman (fromDeath of a Salesman) come to real life and updated for 2016. I don’t depend on anyone but me. I eat what I kill. I’m a real-life Renaissance man. Sadly, there aren’t too many like me left anymore. But that’s not a mistake or coincidence. It’s a purposeful plan. Small businessmen, performance-based and commission-based salesmen, and independent contractors are being systematically driven to extinction. While the GOP is no friend of mine and rarely does anything to help me succeed, the Democrats are my sworn enemy. They are out todestroyme. Could it be a coincidence that everything Obama believes in, everything he’s done, every goal, every policy, is aimed directly at me and Americans just like me? He’s raised my income taxes. He’s raised my payroll taxes. He’s raised my Obamacare taxes. He’s raised my capital gains taxes. He’s dramatically raised taxes on dividends and bank interest. He’s limited my tax deductions. He’s limited my exemptions. He’s phased out my child credits. He’s ruined the quality of my health care and dramatically raised my insurance premiums. He’s added draconian regulations. He’s dramatically raised my legal and accounting bills because of the new complicated taxes and regulations. He’s dramatically raised my energy bills with his climate change and green energy obsession. To educate those who are ignorant or delusional, fossil fuels are dirt cheap. “Alternative energy” is sky high. Pretty simple stuff. He’s tried to hurt the tax advantages of Subchapter S companies. He’s tried to eliminate or drastically restrict the use of independent contractor status (ask Uber). He’s made life almost impossible with rampant use of tax liens by the IRS. Once the IRS places a lien on you or your business, your credit is ruined, all funding from lenders dries up, and you are effectively prevented from earning a living. He’s hit small business with Obamacare rules, overtime rules, and minimum wage raises. He wants to eliminate the cap on FICA (Social Security taxes). I could not survive that one. He wants to eliminate my lifesaving deductions for business expenses, mortgage deduction, and charitable donations. I could not survive that either. He’s passed laws making it almost impossible to choose to leave America and do business or banking overseas. He wants to pass TPP, which would kill middle-class jobs by the millions and place all of us under foreign laws. He’s aimed IRS tax audits at small business. He’s passed new laws allowing the IRS to seize your passport if you owe $50,000 or more, so you are no longer free to leave the country. How scary is that? Any successful small businessman could easily ring up a $50,000 tax bill after only sixty days of being late for payroll taxes. We’re all in grave danger. Think about this: without a passport you can no longer take a business trip overseas. So the IRS has taken away your right to earn a living. He’s passed laws that make it all but impossible for small business owners to set aside money for retirement. He’s handed over the country to lawyers and class action lawsuits. He’s passed Dodd-Frank regulations that make it almost impossible to raise money anymore for a small business. He’s passed draconian banking laws that make it impossible for small business owners like me to ever qualify for a mortgage on an expensive home. So I can never again qualify to own the very home I live in right now. He’s made the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) king and tyrant ruler of America, imposing draconian regulations and fines on small businesses, farmers, ranchers, landowners, and anyone with a puddle on their property. Of course, this same out-of-control EPA has put coal out of business, and with it, hundreds of thousands of high-paying middle-class jobs. He even tried to badly hurt businesses by attempting to ban us from using criminal background checks on potential employees. Can you imagine flying blind when you interview murderers, rapists, and financial scammers for a job? Then if you hire them to interact with your customers and something goes wrong, you get sued.Thatshould be good for your business! And get this one: Obama tried to impose 442 different taxes that were never passed by the Republican Congress, or all of us would already be out of business. What a list. What a madman. How much worse could it get if we had a pure communist tyrant out of the old Soviet Union in charge? It’s like a personal attack directed straight at my life by the Obama administration. And there’s a new attack every day.Literally. Is anything I donotunder attack? There is no point even trying to debate: Obama, Hillary, Bernie, and their socialist cabal clearly want to wipe small business owners, landowners, property owners, farmers, ranchers, any and all salesmen, and independent contractors off the face of the earth. And all of those groups just happen to include about twenty-eight million Americans just like me, predominantly white, small business owners or independent contractors. CNBC estimates this group is 85 percent white. Most of us vote Republican and are supportive of conservative policies, candidates, and causes. Most of us are homeowners. Most of us are high-income earners. Most of us are churchgoers. Most of us are married with children. Every bill, policy, and tax I listed above is aimed to cripple us. So this is clearly no coincidence.It’s crystal clear.Our way of life is under attack. Obama and his socialist cabal hate us for our work ethic, success, and ownership. They want to take it all away, punish us, and redistribute our income and assets. They want us to live in misery. They want us to be serfs: dependent on only big government and big business for our survival. They want us poor, broke, helpless, and hopeless, with nowhere else to turn. So they need to slowly bankrupt us and dry up our money. That is the life Obama, Hillary, Bernie, and their socialist cabal are trying to kill in the name of guilt, equality, fairness, social justice, and, of course, revenge and reparations. But, again, let me stress that the GOP establishment is not much better. They fight for their biggest donors only. The rest of us don’t matter because we have no lobbyists, or DC law firms, or million-dollar checks for the politicians. The middle class made America great, not the other way around. It wasn’t the rich elites, academics, politicians, or bureaucrats. Small business was (and still is) the economic engine of the greatest economy in world history. Capitalism, social mobility, and the economic and individual freedoms guaranteed by the US Constitution have lifted more people out of poverty than all other political systems in world historycombined. They are the very foundation of the American Dream. The middle class is quite simply the class that produces almost everything. Today, the middle class is being targeted, persecuted, and systematically wiped out. I, and millions of others like me, are angry about it. Hence the title of this book,Angry White Male. This group isn’t the super wealthy “1 percent.” But they are the “top 10 percent,” who pay over 70 percent of the taxes in America. And they are the “top 20 percent,” who pay 92.9 percent of the taxes. And they certainly are the “top 40 percent,” who pay 106 percent of the taxes. Yes, the correct figure is 106 percent. Like I said, we pay just about everything (and then some). The middle class and small business owners built America with our blood, sweat, and tears. Our ambition, sacrifice, and courage to risk our own money in pursuit of the American Dream provides virtually all the trillions of dollars in taxes. Without us, the taxes we pay, and the jobs we create, there is no government. We pay for the government agencies, programs, and bureaucrats. We pay for the public works projects, highways, schools, hospitals, and airports. We pay for the welfare state. Yes, Mister Obama,we did build it. Big government politicians like Obama should be praising and celebrating us, not denigrating us. Politicians and government bureaucrats survive and prosper because of us, not the other way around. My vision as a conservative and capitalist has always been to provide opportunity and lift everyone up regardless of race, sex, or social status. My vision of equality is everyone doing well, independent of government. The leftist’s vision of equality is to make everyone equally miserable, poor, hopeless, helpless, and dependent on government. By destroying the middle class, power and control is centralized in the hands of the elite, privileged, political class and the super wealthy who fund them. By the way, this is how most societies have functioned throughout history. Think about the dark days of kings, aristocracy, and serfs. ThinkDownton Abbey. ThinkBraveheart. What’s standing in the way of an elitist, aristocratic, serf society is an independent middle class that doesn’t need or want government’s help. For the progressive elites, that’s a big problem. The middle class gets in the way of big government’s control. That’s why liberals believe the middle class must be eliminated and along with it the capitalist economy that fosters independence, rewards ambition and personal responsibility, and provides upward mobility to achieve the American Dream. So you see, it isn’t about black or white. It’s about a leftist vision of tearing people down, instead of lifting them up. Never forget: the tools being used are social justice, guilt, revenge, reparations, and redistribution, versus empowerment and personal responsibility. And, of course, an open border that allows in millions of foreigners who have no understanding of, or love for, capitalism or economic freedom. They’re interested only in survival. And they demand high taxes on the middle class to pay for their survival. America itself is central to this plan. America is the beacon, the shining light on the hill. America is the proof for millions of “serfs” trapped under the rule of tyrants the world over that freedom exists, that the individual can triumph. America gives hope to the masses that one day they can be free, happy, and wealthy. Therefore, in the eyes of these leftist tyrants, the ideals of America must be stamped out. Ironically, guilty white liberals chose a black American to do the dirty deed. They were smart. They knew that because of guilt and a fear of being called “racist,” white America would allow Obama to do things no white liberal could ever get away with. It’s truly ironic that the man whose slogan was “HOPE” is well on his way to snuffing out the very last hope for mankind. What has been done to the predominantly white middle class in the past eight years is unimaginable and mind-numbing. You need to face the truth before you can act on it. Taking action is the only way to reverse fear and desperation. Complaining doesn’t help. Only taking action will set you free. That action starts with putting a plan in place to protect yourself and save our nation. The great news is this book will present that plan and provide you with options. I hope you’re now starting to understand why I believe we have every right to be Angry White Males. Our livelihoods are being taken away. Our freedom and future as productive members of society hangs in the balance. Two. Angry White Male. The definition of a racist: “Anyone winning an argument with a liberal.” In many ways,Angry White Maleis an autobiography. This book is my story, my testimony to being an angry white male. The things I believe in are under attack: God, country, American exceptionalism, capitalism, Judeo-Christian values, and the great American middle class. As I’ve noted previously, this book is not an indictment of or attack on anyone who is not a white male. This book is simply making the case for self-defense of the great American middle class, which Pew Research has shown to be predominantly white. Pew broke the middle class up into four distinct groups basically representing upper middle class, middle class, working middle class, and the anxious, struggling, trying-to-hang-on class. Pew reports the first group is 79 percent white, the second group is 75 percent white, the third group is 73 percent white, and the fourth group is 56 percent white. My defense of the middle class is not only that of white Americans. It is also the defense of millions of ethnic minorities who have sacrificed and worked hard to achieve the American Dream of being part of the middle class. They are also under attack, and I am defending them, too. This book takes a detailed look at what’s happening to an entire group of good people: law-abiding, tax-paying, hardworking middle-class citizens, most of whom happen to be white. We’re being targeted, intimidated, persecuted, demonized, silenced, financially brutalized, annihilated, literally wiped off the map. Let’s look closer at why the “progressive” political, media, and big business elites have targeted the American middle class for extinction. First, it’s happening to self-medicate wealthy white liberals who feel guilt, embarrassment, and self-hatred about the power, money, and connections they inherited. It’s open season on middle-class white males so these spoiled brat, lucky sperm club, white liberals can feel better about themselves. Second, it’s happening in the name of a mental illness called liberalism, whose adherents believe they are the intellectual elite who know what is best for the masses. And to control the masses they must make them all dependent on government, run by the elite, to survive. As I’ll show throughout the book, in order to achieve that goal, guilty white liberals have to destroy the middle class. They know that can only be done by destroying America’s foundations of God, country, patriotism, capitalism, American exceptionalism, individual responsibility, economic mobility, and the very existence of the American Dream. Third, it’s happening because bankers, Wall Street, and the very wealthy are more comfortable with us as dependent serfs than as potential upwardly mobile middle-class competitors. They don’t care about white or black. They only care about the color green, money. They are greedy. They want the whole ball of wax. They want all the chips on the table. They don’t like true capitalism. They favorcrony capitalism. They want open borders, not because they care about bringing foreigners into America in order to elect Democrats. They just want cheap labor so they can get richer. They want government contracts, government investments, and tons of quantitative easing (QE, Federal Reserve money printing). Because it all goes to them. They also like government regulations and high taxes. Why? Because the more regulations, the better it is for them. They have armies of lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, and compliance officers. They can afford to navigate the thousands of pages of onerous regulations. They don’t care about high taxes. They have tax lawyers and tax shelters. All these rules, regulations, and taxes kill the little guy, the middle class, small business. This kills the competition. These big boys don’t want any of us to be able to compete with them. They want a society that favors giant multinational companies and puts little guys out of business. Look around, it’s happening every day. Small stores struggle to compete with Wal-Mart; small restaurants struggle to compete with national chains; small hardware or food stores struggle to compete with big box stores. And every new government tax or regulation makes the struggle just that much harder and more unfair. Clearly, liberals and big business crony capitalists can never be honest about their goals. If so, we would kick them out of power. Instead, they look us in the eye and lie, saying the actions they are taking to destroy the middle class are only about achieving equality, fairness, and “social justice.” Are you starting to get the picture? We’re screwed. We’re the target. The super wealthy and politically connected elites are against us. They’re all looking out for their own selfish interests. And we, the predominantly white middle class, are not in their best interests. So we’re being targeted. Their laser gun sights are aimed right at us. So you’re damn right I’m angry. And every one of you, regardless of ethnic background, has every right to be angry. This may be my personal angry white male story, but it also belongs to tens of millions of angry middle-class Americans of all ethnic backgrounds. We didn’t attack first; we’re responding in self-defense. Our backs have been put against the wall, and we have no choice but to stand up for ourselves and our children before we are legislated out of existence, penniless, powerless, and, of course, afraid to speak for fear of being shouted down and immediately labeled “racist.” Three. #ObamaWorstPresidentEver The very definition of an angry white male is someone willing to state the truth no matter how politically incorrect. Even more specifically, it is someone willing to state the politically incorrect truth about our nation’s first black president. The truth is, he SUCKS. He’s horrible. He’s terrible. He is the God-awful worst. None of that has anything whatsoever to do with the color of his skin. It has to do with only one thing:facts. Despite eight long years of lies and propaganda from government and the mainstream media, it’s time to call Obama exactly what he is: #OBAMAWORSTPRESIDENTEVER. The problem is that there are two Americas. Obama’s America is filled with poor people, illegal aliens, and people addicted to welfare, food stamps, Obamacare, and hundreds of other government programs. Oh, and let’s not forget all the academicians and people who work for the government. Obama’s voters have no part in the private sector (where all the jobs and tax monies come from). Their lives are tied to government checks and government payrolls. They have their hands perpetually out. Obama’s voters signthe backof checks. Obama’s voters think the economy looks peachy keen. Nothing has changed. As long as their government checks keep on coming, they don’t notice anything wrong with the economy. And why should they? For them, everything is fine. It’s easy to live in denial when you’re living on OPM (other people’s money). But for the rest of America, aka middle-class America and small business owners, it’s a very different story. For Americans who signthe frontof checks and spend their lives paying taxesintothe system, America is a mess, the economy is a disaster, there are no jobs. For that group, the conclusion is pretty simple and straightforward: #OBAMAWORSTPRESIDENTEVER. These two groups come from different worlds. Some might say different planets. You might even say “Republicans are from Mars, and Democrats are from UrANUS.” As if on cue, to prove my point, the latest job report came out while I was writing this book. Under Obama, I’m used to “good jobs reports” that show 200,000 crappy part-time low-wage jobs being created in any given month. Those same “good reports” forget to mention that the 200,000 new crappy part-time jobs are mitigated by 300,000 Americans giving up and dropping out of the workforce that month. The unemployment rate keeps dropping not because Americans are getting jobs but because they have given up looking for work anymore. And the reason we’ve had some “job growth” under Obama is because Obamacare has created a dysfunctional economy where three part-time jobs are needed for a middle-class family to make less than one good job used to pay. So those 200,000 jobs per month being reported are total B.S. Everyone needs three jobs to just live a miserable life. But the jobs report that came out in June 2016 was far worse. It is so bad that the Obama frauds can’t even cover it up with fake stats. Things are so bad, even the cover-up is no longer possible. The jig is up! The results announced in June were pure DISASTER. Experts predicted 160,000 new jobs for May 2016. The actual total: 38,000. The “whisper (best case scenario) number” had been 200,000 new jobs. Instead, the number was far closer to zero than either 160,000 or 200,000. It was the worst jobs number since September 2010. But it was worse than it looked because the Labor Department also revised downward the previous two months’ jobs reports by 59,000 less jobs. Even worse, the number of working-age Americansnotworking went up to a modern record of 94.7 million. Why? Because a mass exodus of 664,000 workers gave up trying to find a job and left the job market in one month (May). Six hundred sixty-four thousand is the population of Washington, DC. The equivalent of the entire population of Washington, DC, just left the US workforce in one month! Instead of working and contributing to the economy by paying taxes, where are these people going? To welfare, food stamps, disability, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and free Obamacare. Most of them will never work again because it just isn’t worth it anymore. A family is better off on welfare, food stamps, housing allowances, and free Obamacare. Don’t forget the free Obama phones. If the same family were working, they might make less money and owe taxes and have to pay for their own health care. It pays better to live off government. And who gets the bill for these millions of Americans who will never work again, forever trapped in poverty and government dependency? The American middle class. We’rescrewed. It’s important to note this is happening at the same time gross domestic product (GDP) is close to zero. Zero economic growth, of course, is why there are zero new jobs. Sounds like an “Obama Great Depression” to me. And if these numbers don’t constitute a Great Depression, I’m afraid to ask, “What does?” Keep in mind that, even with good jobs reports under Obama, it’s been all part-time, low-wage jobs. I call it “the Obama Illegal Immigrant Economy.” The only jobs are mowing lawns, cleaning toilets, or washing dishes. Don’t believe me? Then how do you explain that of the one million net jobs gained by women since 2007, the entire net gain went to “foreigners.” That statistic is provided by Obama’s own Labor Department. Foreigners (people not born in the United States) had theentirenet gain. Among native-born American women there was a net loss of 143,000 jobs during that period. The Obama economy is in free fall. But wait, the news gets worse. Layoffs are up 24 percent in 2016 versus 2015. Rail traffic is down fourteen months in a row. Shipping traffic is down. Retail sales are down. Manufacturing is down. Unsold inventories are piling up. Commercial bankruptcies are soaring. So without further ado, here are the facts of the Obama economy. These facts prove three things beyond a shadow of a doubt: 1. The US economy under Obama is in terrible decline, crisis, and on the verge of collapse. 2. The American middle class, which happens to be predominantly white, has been slaughtered by the liberal policies of Obama. 3. There is no doubt: #OBAMAWORSTPRESIDENT EVER Look at the nine charts onZeroHedge.com, my favorite economic website. Student loan debt, dramatically up. Food stamp use, dramatically up. Federal debt, dramatically up; by the time Obama leaves office, up more than all other presidents in history COMBINED. Federal Reserve money printing, dramatically up, to keep the economy artificially afloat. Health insurance costs, dramatically up (and going much higher). Labor force participation rate, down dramatically. Workers’ share of economy, down dramatically. Median family income, down dramatically. Homeownership, down dramatically. The Obama Economy Is in Free Fall. Here is a powerful list of shocking, damning, specific facts about the Obama economy: Gross domestic product (GDP) is the only real determinant of economic growth. Barack Obama is the only president in the history of America to preside over seven straight years of GDP growth under 3 percent. The year 2016 is off to a pace that virtually guarantees this will be the eighth straight year with GDP under 3 percent. If so, Obama will become the only president in America’s history to never produce a single year of 3 percent or higher GDP. The longest previous streak of under 3 percent GDP in the history of America was four years (1930 to 1933) during the depths of the Great Depression. From 1790 to 2000, America’s economy averaged GDP growth of 3.79 percent. Obama’s eight years are on pace to average GDP of 1.55 percent, substantially less than half of our country’s average economic growth for 210 years. For the first time in American history, more businesses are being destroyed each day than are being created. More Americans now receive entitlements than work full-time. Thirteen of the twenty-three Obamacare State Co-Op Exchanges have failed (gone bust and broke). The remaining ten have losses of over $200 million per year. In this Obama economy, 40 percent of American workers now earn less (adjusted for inflation) than a full-time minimum wage worker in 1968. Twenty percent of US families don’t have a single member who is employed. A record numbers of Americans are not in the workforce (over 94 million). More young Americans now live with their parents than at any time since Great Depression. Forty-three percent of the twenty-two million student loan borrowers aren’t making any loan payments. Two-thirds of Americans don’t have $500 for an emergency bill. Food stamp use under Obama is up by 43 percent. The number of new food stamp recipients under Obama is three times higher than new job recipients (13,298,000 added to food stamp rolls versus 4,276,000 new jobs since January 2009). #OBAMAWORSTPRESIDENTEVER. But here’s thetrulyamazing thing. Hillary Clinton openly brags she is running for Obama’s third term. She wants to extend and expand his presidency. She wants to support andprotecthis legacy. She wants us to vote for more of the same. Amazing. I guess that makes her. #HILLARYWORSTPRESIDENTIALCANDIDATE EVER As I’ve said repeatedly, nothing I’m writing is a condemnation of any racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual orientation group. This book is merely an act of self-defense. There is no question what is happening. There is no question the target is the predominantly white middle class. But the perpetrators aren’t black or minority. As a matter of fact, most of them are guilt-ridden white liberals like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. To succeed in their goal of destroying the middle class and the American Dream they can’t allow the middle class to understand what is really happening to them. They can’t allow the middle class to understand there is an actual plan and they are the target. So this is where the lies, slander, and cover-up begin. Four. Rachel Maddow, Angry White Liberal. Wow, this book just keeps writing itself! I had barely finished writing the Introduction about my Bill Maher experience when out of the blue comes a six-minute diatribe about me from Rachel Maddow to open her MSNBC show. Instantly, I thought, “There’s another chapter.” Ms. Maddow is the polar opposite of me. She is the reason I’m writing this book. She is the classic “Angry White Liberal.” She hates me and people like me with such passion, it’s frightening. How do I know? Just watch her talk about me on her TV show. This was the third time in two years Rachel has led off her show with a diatribe about me. Keep in mind Rachel’s television time is valuable “real estate.” A minute on national TV is valuable like beachfront property. No one wastes five to ten minutes talking about someone or something to start their national TV show unless it’s damn important. I must be damn important to Rachel, or damn effective, or damn annoying, or all of the above. I’ve clearly got the attention of liberal icons like Maddow. What I’m doing and saying is resonating loud and clear, and they are scared stiff. The left has aimed its cannons at me for a reason: what I’m doing and saying is clearlyworking! So effective conservatives like me must be slandered and discredited. This strategy is right out of the playbook of Marxist legend Saul Alinsky. As I’ll detail later, Obama studied Alinsky. So did Hillary. I’m sure Rachel Maddow learned from him, too. When Rachel talks about me, she quivers. She looks like a volcano about to explode. She taps her pen with nervous energy and is clearly obsessed. I take it as a gigantic compliment. Thank you, Rachel. It’s quite an honor when radical liberals like you clearly see me as one of the most hated conservatives in America. It’s an honor to know you obsess about me all the time. It’s an honor to know you get a “shiver running down your leg” when thinking about me. No TV host in the world opens three shows with five- to ten-minute diatribes about Wayne Allyn Root unless I’m a threat to your plan, to your philosophy, to everything you believe in. Liberals must divide and slander to conquer. That’s the Saul Alinsky way. The issue they use to divide and slander is always money. Conservatives, as I pointed out in the last chapter, understand money; they want to earn it and enjoy it. We don’t see money as a sin. We don’t see success as a slur or embarrassment. Liberals have a very different relationship with money. They don’t understand it or how it is made. They think money grows on trees. Or comes from government. They have a distaste for anyone who makes it. That’s why instead of appreciating a successful businessman like me and calling me CEO, or entrepreneur, or small businessman, or author, or international business speaker (which all describe what I do), Maddow called me “a get-rich-quick guy.” This is how angry white liberals see and portray anyone who is successful in business. They sneer at us. They smear us. They denigrate us. They slander us. They look down on us. We are just like money to them:dirty. Many Democrats have no clue the economy is in terrible decline, crisis, and near-collapse. To quote Ronald Reagan, “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant [in this case about money and the economy]. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.” After reading the last chapter, you now understand what Obama’s liberal anti-business policies have done to America, the economy, and the formerly great American middle class. They haven’t lifted anyone out of poverty. Just the opposite, these policies have added three times more Americans to the food stamp rolls than the job rolls. We’ve been decimated, annihilated, targeted for extinction, and it’s working. This is a theme I’ve been harping on for eight long years of the Obama presidency. Every prediction and warning I’ve released has come true. My predictions have been uncannily accurate. Each economic fact makes me look smarter. Liberals like Maddow have no choice; they can’t point to the results so they’re only weapon is to distract the masses from the truth. They’ve got to discredit anyone telling the truth about the economy. They must smear, denigrate, and slander truth tellers like me. As if on cue, the morning after Rachel Maddow’s rant against me, the disastrous job report I reported on in the last chapter came out. It was suddenly clear that the emperor (Obama) had no clothes, and no leg to stand on. The results are right in front of everyone’s eyes: decline, crisis, and economic free fall. That’s why angry liberals like Rachel Maddow need to distract you. I have spent eight long years talking about the economy and middle-class jobs. Ninety-nine percent of my commentaries and 99 percent of my TV and radio appearances are about the economy and how close we are to disaster and collapse because of liberal policies designed topurposelydestroy capitalism and American exceptionalism. Their goal is to destroy America’s middle class and make them dependent on government. And, sadly, I’ve been proven correct for eight long years as the decline deepens and accelerates. Let me state it again. As sorry as I am to say it:I was right. Of course, angry white liberals have to close their eyes to the facts or everything they believe in will be discredited. So Maddow and her liberal cohorts must distract you. Hence, when it comes to me, she ignores the many books and hundreds of editorials I’ve written about the economy and my economic predictions, and instead focuses on one story I wrote about my days at Columbia University with my college classmate, Obama. Then she uses that one story out of hundreds to falsely label me as a “conspiracy theorist.” Interesting phrase. In this case, it’s simply a mean-spirited, distorted way to say that I don’t drink the Obama Kool-Aid. I ask questions, I investigate, I search for the truth. To liberals, anyone who asks questions, seeks truth, or questions motives for what a politician does is a “conspiracy theorist.” Worse, since the president happens to be black, I’m also labeled a “racist.” To compound matters, Maddow even distorted what I said. What is true is that as a Class of ’83 Columbia graduate (the same as Obama) I’ve been asked by the media if I knew Obama at Columbia. I’ve always answered honestly that I didn’t know him, never saw him, never heard of him, never met a single classmate who ever saw him or knew him. I simply told the truth. What I never said, ever, is that he didn’t go there. Never. But she reported on her national TV show that I am a “conspiracy theorist” who says Obama never went to Columbia. What I am is a commonsense citizen and taxpayer asking questions about the most powerful man in the world. Questions the mainstream media, led by guilt-ridden white liberals like Rachel Maddow, have never asked of a black president for fear of being called a “racist.” Unless you’re blind, deaf, or really dumb, it’s clear that Obama’s story at Columbia smells rotten. There’s something wrong with the narrative. The words to describe Obama’s time at Columbia are suspicious, mysterious, strange, weird, and just plain rotten. And to top it off, his college records have been sealed for all eight years of his presidency. So when asked about my classmate, I answered honestly. Then I asked questions anyone with a brain would ask about the man whose finger rests on the nuclear button. Questions like. Why did I never see or hear of Barack Obama at Columbia, even though I knew virtually every other political science major? How come I’ve asked so many of my fellow classmates and none of them admits ever knowing him or even seeing him at Columbia? How come Professor Henry Graff, perhaps the most honored professor in Columbia history, and Columbia’s “Presidential Historian,” says no one named Barack Obama ever took one of his classes? How did Obama get into Columbia with poor grades from a very average college (Occidental)? Students like that are never accepted for transfer into Columbia. Why are his college records sealed? What is he hiding? When I was asked by the media what I thought Obama was hiding, I again answered honestly. I said to the media, “My educated guess is he got into Columbia by committing fraud: by posing as a foreign exchange student from Indonesia (where Obama was raised as a boy). Columbia loves diversity. That lie would have catapulted Obama to the front of the line. Now he’s embarrassed to admit he committed fraud by being an American posing as a foreigner. Just an educated guess. But a damn good one. Even several of my liberal pro-Obama Columbia classmates have told me they suspect I’ve hit the nail on the head. I think asking questions of a president is the duty not only of journalists but of all citizens. That is especially true when the media, filled with biased, corrupted, angry white liberals like Rachel Maddow, have abdicated that duty. Funny how angry white liberals spew hatred, sling names, and ask questions all the time. But no one calls them “conspiracy theorists.” Doesn’t Obama calling conservatives like me racists, hatemongers, radicals, or extremists make him a “conspiracy theorist”? If Hillary blames her never-ending criminal problems on a “vast right wing conspiracy,” doesn’t that make her a “conspiracy theorist”? Even Wikipedia defines the phrase “vast wing conspiracy” as a conspiracy theory created by Hillary Clinton. When Hillary likens Trump to nuclear war, Hitler, and the Holocaust, doesn’t that make her a “conspiracy theorist”? If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he “heard” Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for ten years, he’s not called a “birther” or “taxer” or labeled a “conspiracy theorist.” Even after everything Reid said was proven a lie and headmittedhe made it up just to win the election for Obama, the media never labeled or called him a nasty name. The angry white liberals of the world like Rachel Maddow control the media, so they get to lie, slander, libel, ask questions, and assign the name “conspiracy theorist” without ever being labeled or maligned themselves. They do it to distract the masses from the truth. And that truth is that Obama really is a bad guy who is purposely overwhelming the system and bringing down the economy with the goal of “fundamentally changing America.” Those were his words. Either that or he’s a stupid, clueless, ignorant idiot who is trying to help the economy, but failing every step of the way. I believe he’s a very bright man who knows exactly what he’s doing. I’m no “conspiracy theorist” for asking important questions and pointing out the truth. Or for merely wondering why Obama won’t release his college records. Prove me wrong, Mister Obama. Make me look foolish. Rachel, beg Obama to do it. Tell your hero he can destroy me with one simple step. It’s so easy. I challenge you Mister President:release your college records. But he won’t. Because he can’t. Because the emperor has no clothes. Obama has a deep, dark secret that could destroy his legacy buried in those college records. That’s my guess. No different than Harry Reid’s guess about Mitt Romney’s taxes. The only difference is Romney proved Reid a fool and a liar. Obama has never unsealed his college records. And he never will. But angry white liberals like Rachel will never admit the truth. They want to outlaw the truth. They would ban free speech and free thought if they could. Since they can’t, they slander and libel people like me to destroy their political opposition. And even worse, they do it to distract the American people from the truth, that the disastrous liberal, anti-business policies of Obama, Hillary, and their liberal cronies have destroyed the economy. Angry white males like me want to expose the truth. Angry white liberals like Rachel Maddow are scared to death of the truth. Like Jack Nicholson said in the movieA Few Good Men,“You can’t handle the truth.” Five. The Roots of This Disaster. Obama and I at Columbia. The decline of America, the economy, and the predominantly white middle class under Obama isn’t due to mistake, ignorance, or incompetence at the hands of a “community organizer.” It’s a purposeful, brilliant plan hatched at Columbia University to destroy capitalism, American exceptionalism, Judeo-Christian values, and the American Dream. At its root, this plan is about destroying the predominantly white middle class and small business owners. Because as a great bank robber once said, “That’s where the money is.” I am Obama’s classmate, Class of ’83, Columbia University. Columbia was and is a radical leftist Ivy League college at the corner of Marx Street and Lenin Avenue. The professors taught us many things, some good, many bad. But the worst thing we learned at Columbia was a hatred for America. We were taught to be guilty for “white privilege”, to be guilty for the racism and discrimination of America, to be guilty for poverty caused by white people and our greed, to be guilty for how women, blacks, minorities, and gays were held down in America. It was all “the white man’s fault.” We were also taught a plan to change it all, or as Obama says today, “to fundamentally change America.” The plan was called Cloward-Piven. It was named after a Columbia husband-and-wife professor team. The plan was brilliant in its simplicity. The plan was to “overwhelm the system” so that the US economy would collapse. This was how we could kill capitalism once and for all. Then we could start over. How do you do that? By putting as many Americans as possible “on the dole.” Crush the middle class, make them dependent on government, get everyone you can on welfare and food stamps, and then crush the budget with spending, entitlements, and debt. The country and economy eventually collapse under the weight of everyone getting checks from the government. You’ve “overwhelmed the system.” Now that the economy is dead, and the people are poor and starving and desperate to feed their families, there is complete panic. Now you’ve got them. They’ll buy any promise at this point. They just want hope. They just want to save their children. So now you offer them a new start with socialism (to replace the old capitalist system). Of course, you blame capitalism for all their problems. You’re offering something new and fresh. You’re offering a second chance. You’re offering to pay for everything in return for total government control. “You’ll never have to worry again. We’ll take care of you.” And, of course, you’re also offering lots of “free stuff” to a starving populace. How could they say no? Any of this sound familiar? To one degree or another, this is exactly what’s been happening to America under the last eight years of Obama. Obama is a smart man. He added a couple of new wrinkles. He super-charged the system. How could you overwhelm the system even faster? First, you pass Obamacare. That is the world’s biggest tax increase and redistribution plan. You pile the spending and debt up even faster to overwhelm the system, all under the guise of helping the sick. Brilliant. The second new wrinkle is to purposely leave the border open for eight years. You dismantle any and all border enforcement. You order border agents to “stand down.” You create a twenty-four-hour hotline for illegal aliens to call to complain about poor treatment by border agents. You spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money to provide free lawyers and free legal representation to every illegal child. You shield almost every illegal alien criminal from deportation, and you spend millions of taxpayer dollars to advertise in Mexico that even illegal aliens qualify for food stamps in America, so tell your friends and relatives in America to ask. “Spread the word.” This has all really happened under Obama. It’s hard to even believe. So Obama came up with a more powerful partner to Cloward-Piven. He allowed in millions of foreigners, both legal and illegal, to overwhelm the system much faster. You might say he wanted to “explode the system.” But Columbia University wasn’t unique. This philosophy was taught at many Ivy League and elite universities by radical leftist professors with contempt for America and “those rich white people who control the system.” The brightest students at the elite colleges all learned how to “fundamentally change America.” They learned how to channel Fidel Castro. Remember when Rudy Giuliani said he thought “Obama doesn’t love America,” and it set off a media firestorm? The media literally wanted to tar and feather poor Rudy. But who are these members of the media? I met many of them at Columbia. Many, if not most, of my classmates wound up in the mainstream media. That explains everything. The same biased-leftist media members who ripped Rudy Giuliani to shreds for stating the obvious were the same students thirty years earlier in class at Columbia with me on the day Ronald Reagan was shot. Guess what their reaction was back then? They cheered the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. They clapped, high-fived, and hugged, celebrated like it was New Year’s. Today, when I read about my former classmates in our Columbia college alumni magazine, they are almost all either in the media or lawyers in the Obama administration creating regulations on business. This explains everything. Today, they no doubt support students at California state university system campuses who voted to remove the American flag. Nothing has changed. Once a radical America hater, always a radical America hater. Naturally, that same biased-leftist media (mostly made up of my Columbia classmates and those from other Ivy League schools) decided to play “gotcha” with the 2016 Republican presidential candidates. They asked them, “Do you agree that Obama doesn’t love America?” As usual, GOP candidates panicked and ran away from Giuliani’s statement, which is precisely why Donald Trump became the GOP Presidential nominee. We were waiting for a candidate who would not run for cover when the media attacked, who played on offense, who would hit back, HARD. Trump fit the bill. But the point here is that I know my Columbia classmates like the back of my hand. I understand what makes them tick. Thirty-plus years ago, they were at least honest in their beliefs. They called themselves communists, Marxists, socialists, and even Bolsheviks. They liked being called “radical.” They bragged that they hated America and wanted to bring the system down. And here’s the really

Rahan. Episode Fifty. Those of the high country. On the high cliff, the three hunters observed the strange being. Although he had the appearance of “Those-who-walk-upright”. This being astounded them. It crawled on the grand lake! Text by Roger Lecureux. Drawings by Andre Cheret. In these fierce times, everything that was unusual was a mystery, and all mystery concealed danger. Only demons can float on water! The fish-man brings misfortune!! Ignorant of the worry he inspired, the son of Crao swam towards the rubble from where he could scale the rock wall. Page Two. Nothing forced him to face this obstacle, but his knife had pointed out the cliff to him. And Rahan always obeyed his knife. It was a long and perilous climb throughout which his nerves and muscles were put to the test. He finally reached the crest. Rahan is more exhausted than if he had run all day! And to discover what? Few things! He certainly overlooked a grandiose landscape, but he was used to these visions. And the forest porch was like all the others. You could have sent Rahan to a more welcoming territory! One day he will refuse to obey you! In the cool shade of a large tree, the son of Crao soon fell asleep. Page Three. His sleep was populated by short and inconsequential dreams. The blue mountain decimating his family, while he was still only a child Crao, the dying sage bequeathing to him, the sole survivor of the horde, the necklace with which he would never part again, this necklace, each claw of which symbolized a virtue of "Those-who-walk-upright." Courage, loyalty, goodness. The dreams accelerated, rapid, tumultuous as had been his adventurous destiny. Kill to survive. Survive to extract ithe secrets from nature. The dangers overcome would become entangled. The "Blue-skins", the "Two-tooths", the "long-noses", the "hooked-noses", the "four-handers", the "leather-skins", the "long-manes". Page Four. A fearsome "four-hands" struck him down, crushing his wrists. The cry he uttered tore him from this dream. Argh! And he saw that his wrists were indeed restrained. Not by the hands of the gorilla. But by a strong vine! What?! What?! Three hunters threatened him with their spears! The evil spirit sleeps very heavy! I am not an evil spirit! I am Rahan, the son of Crao! Rahan is a hunter like you! Lies! Hunters don't crawl on water! Since water is your territory, you will return there! And you will never come out again! The son of Crao saw that the long vine which encircled his wrists was tied to a large rock. Page Five. The men suddenly pushed this rock into the void and Rahan was almost thrown to the ground! Ha-ha-ha! You are going to return to your realm, demon! He felt like his muscles were bursting, like his arms were going to be torn off. He braced himself desperately. But the weight of the rock was such that he was gradually dragged towards the void. And the impatient hunters goaded him with their spears! Rahan is lost! The rock will drag him into the depths of the lake! The abyss was only three steps away. Two steps. A step. One last effort, one last press of the lances. And that was the fall! Argh! Page Six. The son of Crao closed his eyes. But as he fell, head forward, his whole body was suddenly turned upside down, torn, bruised. The time has not come for Rahan to join the “Territory of Shadows”! The rock, above him, was stuck on a ledge! But it was only a reprieve. After being dragged by this rock, he in turn risked dragging this one! Was he heavier than the rock? No doubt, because the falling of small stones indicated to him how it slipped on the wall! Trying in vain to "make himself light", he looked under him. He saw the lake which, in an instant, would swallow him up! He also saw the tree. Page Seven. This tree that sprung from a fault as a symbol of life could perhaps save his own. Crao said it at the border of the kingdom of the dead, the hunter must try everything, even the impossible! Pushing his body to sway, Rahan attempted the impossible! Let the rock slip while he was on the wrong trajectory and that would be the end of him! With a violent thrust, he had just propelled himself towards the tree. Ra-ha-ha! He glimpsed everything at once. The green foliage, the brown trunk, the blue eye, the gray cliff. And the rock he dragged! Page Eight. His victorious clamor was strangled. The rock fell upon him like a granite slab! It buzzed above his head, two fingers from his head! It swung away, and returned to the attack, swung away, and came back again. The incredible chase finally ended. The rock swayed an instant at the height of Rahan. And. Slowly rose! Everything could have started again if the son of Crao had not understood the mysterious phenomenon. His legs relaxed. Stay with Rahan! He needs you! A curious balance was then established. Rahan no longer felt his own weight. He could move, draw his knife. Page Nine. The ivory blade attacked the bonds. As soon as they are cut, Rahan and the rock will fall into the lake. Once the vine was cut, there was an instant fall. But this time, the son of Crao was free to move. Ra-ha-ha! Bloom! The rock broke the surface a second after him, brushed him dangerously, and disappeared into the depths. He was saved. Rahan will return to the cliff! He will show the stupid hunters that he is neither a demon nor an evil spirit! The sun was beginning to set when he found himself on the high plateau. The hunters' tracks proved that they had returned to the forest. Page Ten. He followed these tracks until the moment when. Ooh! They will never know that Rahan was not a demon! Three bodies lay in the small clearing, their lacerated torsos and torn limbs leaving no doubt. They were surprised by "long-manes"! The tall, trodden grass and the sharpened points of the spears showed how fierce the confrontation between these men and the wild beasts must have been. Some would have been satisfied to be avenged in this way. But the son of Crao was not of that species. You had stupid beliefs, but you had to be brave! Your people will know how you joined the “Territory of Shadows”. Rahan will bring them your weapons!! Page Eleven. Following the trail of these hunters, Rahan walked for a long time. And the forest in front of him gave way to another cliff. This was low, but steep. He was approaching it when roars rang out. Emerging from the thickets, two lions darted. Rahan does not fear the “Long-manes”! Klonk! Ra-ha-ha! The first lance was thrown with as much force as precision. Barely had it reached its goal when the second struck down the other beast in full leap! Ra-ha-ha! Clamors rose on the cliff, saluting the double, and dazzling feat of the son of Crao. They did not see Rahan crawling on the water. They welcome him like a hunter and not like a demon! Page Twelve. He helped himself to one of the vines hanging from the side of the cliff. Your brothers were killed by "long manes"! Rahan brings you their weapons. The warm clamors suddenly became repulsive. "Fire-hair" has violated the custom which requires that our dead keep their weapons! The sorcerer was the most virulent. “Fire Hair” must be punished immediately! Perhaps he was unaware of our custom, Oaka!? Yes, Rahan did not know it, but he did not know that he made a mistake. And he will return their spears to the three brave men! These words restore calm. Only Oaka-the-sorcerer remained angry. Ouham, the chief, seemed on the contrary to appreciate the courage and loyalty of the son of Crao. He spoke to him at length about his clan. And life on this plateau, which rose like an island, in the heart of the forest. Page Thirteen. You could see that the forest is infested with "Long-manes". The high ground is our only refuge! Alas, no game lives there and we have to go hunting down there. Every day we take great risks to bring back very little meat! We cannot hoist the animals we kill onto the high ground. We cut them up at the foot of the cliff, when the “long-manes” give us time! Sometimes we take several hunters to bring together a section of meat that is barely enough to satisfy the children's hunger. The son of Crao observed the lions he had killed. It was in fact impossible for a hunter on the cliff to hoist the heavy animals. Page Fourteen. But he saw the vines. He saw the trees. He saw the rocks. Rahan knows how to hoist game up to the “Highland” Ouham!! Do not listen to "Fire Hair"! He wants to make you forget his sacrilege! Ouham will listen to him Oaka! The hunter from elsewhere perhaps knows things that we do not know! The son of Crao was already busy choosing the strongest vine, and getting help to push a heavy rock to the edge of the cliff. A little later. Rahan will descend. When he has attached the "Long Mane", you will push the rock into the void. So, once again, Rahan capitalized on his recent adventure. He was going to recreate the strange counterweight phenomenon that he had discovered by chance. Page Fifteen. The lion's paws were firmly bound. Come on, brothers! May the long mane come to you!! Howls of joy drowned out the wary cries of Osaka-the-sorcerer. Counterbalanced by the rock, the heavy corpse of the beast rose towards the high ground! Everyone will have something to eat tonight! Enthusiastic hunters pulled the beast onto the platform. “Fire-hair” is a great wizard! He will not fool the clan for long! Look! The bushes parted in front of other lions. Armed only with his knife, the son of Crao could not face this roaring pack. Page Sixteen. He narrowly escaped the fastest of the beasts. Rahan is wasting too much time tying the "Long-mane"! He must find a quicker way to bring back the game to the hunters! Your idea is wonderful! We will no longer have to skin the game before mounting it. We run less risk! The risks are still too great, Ouham! But Rahan has another idea! The son of Crao went back to work. He built a sort of raft. “Fire-hair” defies nature. The clan has always suffered from hunger. It will always be like this! Do you not think that Rahan especially challenges your authority, Oaka?? All together, the hunters had returned the rock back onto the cliff. And Rahan had finished his strange hoist. This time Rahan will be able to gather the second "Long-mane" without wasting time tying it up! Page Seventeen. Ouham and his people slowly lowered the platform on which the son of Crao was standing. Although the lions had disappeared, their growls proved that they were near. They reappeared at the instant where Rahan was dragging the corpse of the second beast towards the "Raft-hoist." Ha-ha-ha! Rahan will be faster than you "Long-manes"! He will fly away from under your noses!! He rushed towards the platform where his knife was stuck, when. Oh! Furiously braced against a lever, Oaka-the sorcerer pushed the rock into the void. Let the evil spirits over-take you, “Fire-hair”! Page Eighteen. Rahan did not have time to grab onto the platform which rose at breakneck speed! Rahan adored us and you delivered him to the “Long-manes”! You will respond for this gesture in front of the clan, Oaka!! With no other weapon than his bare hands, the son of Crao could not escape the wild beasts that surrounded him! Nothing could save him! Nothing more? But! Faster! Faster! Obeying Ouham's orders, the hunters crowded onto the platform. As soon as their weight exceeded that of the rock, it started to descend. Courage Rahan! The Highland Clan will not abandon you! Page Nineteen. Since Ouham cares so much about “Fire-hair”, let him join the “Territory of Shadows” with him! Oaka was going to cut the vine. But the clan did not give him time to commit this new crime. Chlok! Argh! Rahan saw the sorcerer's body spinning. The hunters who came to his rescue broke the circle of lions. Grab your knife brother! The fierce fight that followed sealed the friendship between Ouham and the son of Crao. Ra-ha-ha! Thank you “Fire-hair”! They will undoubtedly come back. But thanks to the “Thing-that-goes-up-and-goes-down” we will fear them no more! This confrontation, which was talked about for a long time on the high ground, only ceased with the flight of the last wild animals. Page Twenty. A little later. Oaka was a deceiver and a bad sorcerer. Ours are asking you to take his place! Rahan is not a wizard! Rahan is just a hunter. Who lives to learn, to learn, to teach what he knows to his brothers. This is his destiny! The son of Crao left this clan at daybreak. He wielded three spears. Rahan will keep his promise! Crao taught him to respect the customs of "Those-who-walk-upright." The sun was high when he thrust these spears down for those who, through ignorance, had considered him a demon. Then he jumped into the thickets. Roars of the "Long-manes" reached him, but did not worry him. Nothing could stop Rahan when he set out to discover new horizons! Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Why Women Have Sex. Understanding Sexual Motivations, from Adventure to Revenge, and Everything in Between. DOCTOR CINDY MESTON. AND DOCTOR DAVID BUSS. Formatted for Machine speech, 2023 First Edition 2009. "...we identified 237 distinct sexual motivations" Inside the Sexual Mind. Why women have sex is an extraordinarily important but surprisingly little-studied topic. One reason for its neglect is that scientists and everyone else have assumed that the answers are already obvious, to experience pleasure, to express love, or, at the very heart of the biological drive to have sex, to reproduce. So, more than five years ago, we decided to undertake an intensive research project, involving more than three thousand individuals, to uncover the mysteries of women’s sexuality. When our scientific article “Why Humans Have Sex” was published in the August 2007 issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, it generated an avalanche of interest. What that media coverage revealed, however, was just the tip of the iceberg. In that original study, we identified 237 distinct sexual motivations that covered an astonishing variety of psychological nuance. These motives ranged from the mundane, “I was bored”, to the spiritual, “I wanted to get closer to God”, from altruistic, “I wanted my man to feel good about himself”, to vengeful, “I wanted to punish my husband for cheating on me”. Some women have sex to feel powerful, others to debase themselves. Some want to impress their friends. Others want to harm their enemies, “I wanted to break up a rival’s relationship by having sex with her boyfriend”. Some express romantic love, “I wanted to become one with another person”. Others express disturbing hate, “I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease”. But none of these reasons conveyed the “why” that hid behind each motive. Through statistical procedures, we clustered the motivations into natural groupings. We then set out to explore women’s sex lives in richer detail in a new study designed specifically for this book. And we integrated our research with all the latest scientific findings, from our labs and from the labs of other scientists throughout the world, to present what we believe is one of the richest and deepest understandings of women’s sexuality yet achieved. Why Women Have Sex brings these insights to life with detailed descriptions of women’s actual sexual encounters, the motives that impel women to have sex, and the theory behind why each of those motives exists in women’s sexual psychology. Although human sexuality has been the primary focus of our scientific research for many years, this project proved to be more illuminating about women’s sexuality than we ever expected. How did we end up collaborating on this extraordinary project? As it happens, we have offices right next door to each other in the psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin, where we are both professors. Given our shared professional interests, we’ve had many conversations about human sexuality. The topic of conversation turned one day to sexual motivation, and we started discussing a simple question: Why do people have sex? As coauthors, we combine uniquely complementary domains of expertise. One of us, Cindy M Meston, is a clinical psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on the psychophysiology of women’s sexuality. The other, David M Buss, is an evolutionary psychologist and one of the world’s scientific experts on strategies of human mating. Our collaboration allowed us to develop a deeper understanding of women’s sexuality than either of us could have achieved working alone. Viewed from both clinical and evolutionary perspectives, women’s sexuality poses interesting questions. Why do women desire some qualities in a mate, yet are repulsed by others? What tactics do women use to attract their preferred sex partners? Why do some women fuse love and sex psychologically? Why are erotic romance novels so much more appealing to women than to men? Why do some women have sex to keep a mate, whereas other women use sex to get rid of an unwanted mate? The scientific study of sex, or “sexology,” is a multifaceted field spanning the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, and medicine. For the past several decades, sexology has focused on three core issues. Defining and understanding what sexual behaviors, attitudes, and relationships are normal or healthy. Ascertaining how biological factors, life events, and personal preferences or circumstances shape our sexual identities and desires. And discovering how human sexuality affects, and is affected by, social relationships. Clinical psychologists are especially interested in the extent to which a person’s sexual choices and responses can be modified or improved. Evolutionary psychologists study adaptive functions of the components of human sexual psychology, as well as why sexual motivations sometimes malfunction in the modern environment. Since the late nineteenth century, sex researchers have primarily used three scientific methodologies for investigating human sexual behavior: case studies, questionnaires and surveys, and behavioral observation and assessment. The case study method involves careful, in-depth description of individuals with sexual problems or anomalies. For example, early sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840 to 1902) observed a high prevalence of masturbation among his patients, which led him to conclude (erroneously) that masturbation was the source of all sexual variation. Based on case studies, psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) theorized that childhood erotic drives shaped adult sexual behavior. The forerunner of survey research was Havelock Ellis (1859 to 1939), who emphasized the vast individual diversity in sexual behavior, and wrote a memoir detailing his “open marriage” to a self-identified lesbian. In the nineteen forties and fifties, Alfred Kinsey (1894 to 1956) and his collaborators Wardell B. Pomeroy, Paul H Gebhard, and Clyde E Martin redefined the way Americans viewed their sex lives with the publication of two reports describing the sexual activities of men and women. Kinsey and his team fashioned a standardized interview that they used to gather the detailed sex histories of approximately 18,000 men and women across the United States, the largest survey ever of human sexual practices. Kinsey personally recorded 7,985 of the histories. Robert Latou Dickinson (1861 to 1950), a practicing gynecologist in New York, pioneered the laboratory observation of women’s sexuality with his development of a glass observation tube to view and document women’s internal sexual anatomy. Kinsey also used direct observational techniques to study sexual response, but the current era of laboratory sex research began with the work of William H Masters (1915 to 2001) and Virginia E Johnson, who were married from 1971 until 1992. In contrast to the limited observations made by their predecessors, Masters and Johnson recruited nearly seven hundred men and women to participate in studies at their lab, where they documented the physiological changes that occur with sexual arousal and orgasm. They uncovered the role of vaginal lubrication in sexual arousal, the physiology of multiple orgasms, and the similarity between vaginal and clitoral orgasms in women. Since the publication in 1966 of Masters and Johnson’s landmark book The Human Sexual Response, a relatively distinct branch of lab research has emerged: sexual psychophysiology. Studies in sexual psychophysiology investigate the complex interplay between the psychological (feelings, emotions and thought processes) and the physiological (hormones, brain chemicals, genital engorgement, and lubrication) in human sexual behavior. Psychological sexual arousal is typically measured using questionnaires that ask how “turned on” or “turned off” a person feels in a certain context and whether his or her mood is positive, negative, relaxed, or anxious. In the early days of sexual psychophysiology, researchers interested in measuring human physiological arousal with adapted devices used in other species. For instance, penile erection monitors for men can be traced to machines used by horse breeders in the late nineteenth century to prevent masturbation in stud horses! In the early 1970s, two doctors developed a probe that could be used to measure thermal conductance in sheep vaginas. They claimed the device “caused no discomfort for the waking sheep” during the experiments, which lasted up to four hours. Although the device proved too cumbersome and invasive for use in women, its design is not terribly different from modern vaginal probes. Today, researchers measure physiological sexual responses, particularly genital blood flow, using a number of techniques. In women, studies involve vaginal photoplethysmography (a light-sensing device), pulsed wave Doppler ultrasonography,pelvic magnetic resonance imaging, sensors that measure changes in the temperature of the vagina or labia, and thermal imaging of thighs and genitals. In addition, sexual psychophysiologists often record changes in heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, blood pressure, and sweat gland activity. While these nongenital measures can provide information about a person’s physiological state during sexual arousal, they do not specifically indicate sexual response, since emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, and even laughter can also trigger these changes. More recently, researchers have turned to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify the areas of the brain involved in human sexual response and behavior. All of these contemporary techniques allow researchers at the Meston Sexual Psychophysiology Lab and similar labs around the world to study the full spectrum of sexual response. Over the past eleven years, the Meston Lab has investigated questions such as: What is the relation between levels of genital arousal and feeling psychologically aroused? How do early traumatic sexual experiences impact a woman’s ability to become aroused physically and mentally in adulthood? How does a woman’s body image impact her overall sexual function and satisfaction? What is the impact of cigarette smoking and other drugs on men’s and women’s ability to become sexually aroused? How do antidepressants impair women’s ability to become aroused and have an orgasm and how can we overcome these sexual side effects? Does the act of having sexual intercourse alter sex hormones in a way that can impact a woman’s overall sex drive? And why does anxiety sometimes increase and sometimes decrease women’s sexual functioning? Psychological and physiological methods are also used to test evolution-based hypotheses about women’s sexual psychology. To some, it may seem odd to consider these questions through the lens of evolved sexual desires, evolved mate preferences, and an evolved psychology of sexual competition. Indeed, in the field of biology proper, until the Nineteen fifties it was viewed as unrespectable to speak of evolutionary processes having sculpted “behavior” at all, with proper biologists sticking closely to anatomy and physiology. The science of evolutionary biology has changed radically since then. The sexual organs, after all, are designed for sexual behavior! Anatomy, physiology, and psychology cannot be divorced from the behavior they were designed to produce. Many people, when they think about evolution, draw up images such as “nature red in tooth and claw” and “survival of the fittest.” Although competition for survival is certainly part of evolutionary theory, in fact it is not the most important part. Indeed, Darwin himself was deeply troubled by phenomena that could not be explained by this so-called “survival selection.” Marvels such as the brilliant plumage of peacocks, for example, simply defied explanation by survival selection. How could this dazzling plumage possibly have evolved, since it is energetically costly and an open advertisement to predators, qualities clearly detrimental to survival? Darwin wrote in his private correspondence that the sight of a peacock gave him nightmares, since it defied the logic of his theory of natural selection. Darwin’s nightmares subsided when he arrived at a second evolutionary theory that turns out to be central to the understanding of women’s sexual psychology: the theory of sexual selection. Sexual selection deals with the evolution of characteristics not because of the survival advantage they afford organisms, but rather because of mating advantage. Sexual selection operates through two distinct processes, same-sex or intra-sexual competition and preferential mate choice, also called intersexual selection. In intra-sexual competition, members of one sex compete with one another, and the victors gain sexual access to the mates of their choice. Two stags locking horns in combat is the stereotypical image of intra-sexual competition. Although Darwin stressed male-male competition, when it comes to humans, female-female competition is equally intense. Since males of every species differ in qualities such as physical attractiveness, health status, resource acquisition ability, and genetic quality, females who succeed in outcompeting other females for sexual access to males with beneficial qualities have a reproductive advantage over other females. And the evolutionary process is ultimately not about differential survival success, but differential reproductive success. In intra-sexual competition the qualities that lead to access to more desirable mates get passed on in greater numbers because the victors mate more successfully and produce more or higher quality offspring. The characteristics that commonly lead to loss in these competitions bite the evolutionary dust, since they are passed on in fewer offspring. Although this process is sometimes easier to see in males, for whom competition is often ostentatious, the same logic applies to females, for whom competition is generally more subtle. Among humans, for example, social reputation is a key component of same-sex competition. Social reputation is often gained or lost through subtle verbal signals, gossip, alliance formation, and other tactics that sometimes fly under the radar. Evolution, which simply means change over time, occurs as a consequence of same-sex competition because the victors have greater access to desirable sex partners. Preferential mate choice, on the other hand, involves desiring qualities in a mate that ultimately lead to greater reproductive success for the chooser. Women who choose to have sex with healthy men, for example, gain reproductive advantages over women who choose to have sex with disease ridden men. Women remain healthier themselves, since they do not pick up the man’s communicable diseases. Their children remain healthier, since they too avoid picking up the man’s diseases through close contact. And if the qualities linked to health are partly heritable, as we now know they are, then the women’s children will inherit genes for good health. Women’s mating desires and the qualities they find sexually attractive have evolved because they led ancestral mothers to make wise choices, both in sex partners and in long-term mates. Evolved psychological mechanisms go far beyond reproduction to include women’s sexual desires, patterns of sexual attraction, mate preferences, the emergence of the emotion of love, sexual jealousy, and much more. Each major component of women’s sexual psychology solves an adaptive problem, providing a specific benefit to women, or more precisely, provided a benefit to ancestral women that modern women have inherited. So when evolutionary psychologists use phrases such as “evolved psychological mechanisms” or “psychological adaptations,” they do not mean rigid, robotlike instincts expressed in behavior regardless of circumstances. Rather, human psychological adaptations are extremely flexible, highly sensitive to circumstance, and activated only in some social contexts. An evolved emotion such as sexual jealousy, for example, might motivate a woman to have sex with her partner to keep his mind off other women. But a woman usually experiences sexual jealousy only if there is a sexual threat to her relationship. Moreover, a woman might deal with a sexual threat in a multitude of other ways, such as increased vigilance or an increased outpouring of love. Even when women’s sexual adaptations are activated, it does not mean that they must invariably act on them. A woman’s sexual desire, for instance, might be activated by a chance encounter with a tall, dark, and handsome stranger, but she may choose not to act on that evolved desire due to a wish to remain loyal to her regular partner, a concern about damage to her reputation, or moral or religious convictions. Psychological adaptations are not inflexible instincts that ineluctably get expressed in behavior, but rather are flexible mechanisms whose expression is highly contingent on context. Over the past twenty years, the Buss Evolutionary Psychology Lab has used a variety of research methods to explore human sexual psychology. The methods range from observational studies of women’s tactics of sexual attraction in singles bars to physiological recordings to imagining a romantic partner having sexual intercourse with someone else. They include self-reports of sexual mate poaching, experimental studies of women’s sexual attraction to aspects of men’s physique, and hormonal assays of the effects of ovulation on women’s sexual desire. Samples include college undergraduates, dating couples, newlywed couples, older couples, and a culturally diverse sample of more than ten thousand individuals from thirty-three countries worldwide. The Buss Lab has studied the dangerous passion of sexual jealousy, why women have affairs, parental tactics to constrain the sexuality of their daughters, the evolution of love, sexual deception, the effects of ovulation on women’s sexuality, whether men and women can be “just friends,” personality predictors of sexual satisfaction, cues that foretell a partner’s affair, derogation and gossip about sexual competitors, and “sexual intelligence.” The notion that many components of women’s sexual psychology have an evolutionary function does not imply that all features are adaptive, or that every woman’s sexual behavior serves a benefit. Quite the contrary. As we will see throughout this book, some reasons that propel women into sexual encounters are self-destructive and cause personal problems, the loss of self-esteem, and even life tragedies. Some reach clinical proportions and develop into distressing sexual disorders. We cover the entire range of women’s sexual psychology, from the lows of sexual disorders and how they can be treated to the highs of attaining and maintaining a fulfilling sexual life. Our new and never-before-reported study of why women have sex was conducted online between June 2006 and April 2009. Web links and online classified advertisements requested women’s participation in a study designed to understand sexual motivations. The survey itself was hosted by a database using 128-bit encryption technology to protect the information from hackers and to ensure the utmost anonymity to the study’s participants. The women who participated first completed an informed consent during which they received full disclosure of the survey’s subject matter and were assured that they could discontinue the survey at any time. We have shared the women’s exact words, after eliminating any details that might identify them to maintain the confidentiality of their responses. We also let the participants know that if they had any concerns about the study or became distressed after answering the questions or sharing their stories, a clinical psychologist would be available to discuss their concerns with them. The survey began by asking the women if they had ever had sex for one of the 237 reasons we identified in our original study. If a woman’s answer was yes, she would then be prompted to describe a specific experience, if no, she was asked about another reason for having sex. The women’s answers confirmed, enhanced, and enriched the quantitative findings of our initial investigation of why humans have sex. Most important, they gave real women an opportunity to explain in their own words their motivations for having sex, providing a depth of insight into sexual psychology beyond what could be captured from statistical analysis. In the course of the study, 1,006 women from a variety of backgrounds shared their experiences with us. They hailed from forty-six of the fifty states (all except Alaska, Montana, Nebraska, and Delaware), eight of the ten provinces of Canada (all but Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island) and one of the two territories (Northwest Territory), three European countries (Germany, Belgium, and France), and Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and China. The women ranged in age from eighteen (the youngest we accepted into the study) to eighty-six and identified ethnically as American Indian, Asian, black, white (non-Hispanic), and Latino. About 57 percent considered themselves to be part of a specific religious tradition, Christian (Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Mormon, Pentecostal, Protestant, and Seventh Day Adventists), Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Unitarian Universalist, and pagan or Wicca, while 26 percent said they were agnostics and 14 percent said they were atheists. Though the survey was conducted through the Internet, the participants came from diverse socioeconomic situations: 17 percent reported a family income of $25,000 or less a year, 31 percent an income between $25,001 and $50,000, 33 percent an income between $50,001 and $100,000, and 19 percent an income of more than $100,000. Of course, we also asked the women about their relationship status and sexual orientation. Approximately 80 percent reported being in a relationship at the time, whereas 10 percent were currently dating but were not in a long-term relationship. Ninety-three percent of the women said they were predominantly or exclusively heterosexual, with 2 percent identifying as bisexual and 5 percent identifying as predominantly or exclusively homosexual. Eleven percent actually did not choose one of these labels, opting for “other”, including gay, lesbian, asexual, bi-curious, heteroflexible, omnisexual, pansexual, queer, straight-plus, fluid, open, polyamorous, still questioning, and various combinations such as “mostly heterosexual plus a touch of gay.” One of the surprises in our study was that for each reason that impels a woman to have sex, we discovered both successes and failures. Sex was often incredibly pleasurable, giving women a sense of excitement, love, connection, and self-exploration: I have found, two things are important, being able to be really intense sexually with the person, while simultaneously being able to laugh heartily and really enjoy the experience of being with the person in a different way. It’s almost like the laughter and the sex satisfy two basic human urges simultaneously, heterosexual woman, age 42. Women enjoy their sexiness and their sexuality. But goals sought through sex are sometimes not reached. Indeed, sex sometimes leaves women feeling lonely, bitter, and regretful. One woman in our study sought sex in order to relieve her loneliness and feelings of being unattractive, but it didn’t work out that way: I had sex in my last relationship so I would not feel so damned lonely and unlovable. It was a stupid thing because it ended up worsening the feelings for me. I regret it now because we didn’t really know each other very well and were not really sure where we were going. We split up after another month, heterosexual woman, age 39. For every failure, however, we discovered sexual encounters of great success and true poignancy. Here is how one woman described sex as a way of boosting her self confidence: I had sex with a couple of guys because I felt sorry for them. These guys were virgins and I felt bad that they had never had sex before so I had sex with them. I felt like I was doing them a big favor that no one else had ever done. I felt power over them, like they were weaklings under me and I was in control. It boosted my confidence to be the teacher in the situation and made me feel more desirable, heterosexual woman, age 25. Another believed sex was a means of experiencing God: I can’t really describe this experience, but pure joy and connection with another person I feel is becoming closer to the cycles of life and the underlying palpable energy of the world, in essence, God, heterosexual woman, age 21. Through the voices of real women, wide-ranging scientific and clinical findings, and our own original research, women’s sexuality can be seen in all of its textures, whether a sexual encounter leads to pleasure, remorse, emotional connection, or transcendent love. We believe the end result will aid more informed sexual decision making, when, how, and, of course, why to have sex, in a relationship or outside one. Although this is not designed as a “self-help” book, we believe that readers will glean information that they can use in their own lives and share with their sexual partners. We hope that this book provides readers with a new set of lenses for viewing the many nuanced facets of women’s sexual psychology. One. What Turns Women On? Scent, Body, Face, Voice, Movement, Personality, and, Yes, Humor. Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction, Aristotle. Sexual attraction is an elixir of life, from love at first sight to the spark of romance that enlivens a relationship for years. It imbues the great love affairs of literature and film, whether the star-crossed lovers of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or James Cameron’s Titanic or the long-smoldering attraction between Humphrey Bogart’s and Ingrid Bergman’s characters in Casablanca. And despite the reigning conventional wisdom, the basic biochemistry of attraction is the number one reason women give for why they have sex. Despite its relative neglect in the history of psychology, sexual attraction is not simply a topic of titillation. It permeates our conversations, from gossip columns highlighting celebrity fashion missteps to Web sites devoted to ranking who is hot and who is not, advertisers exploit it to sell everything from cars to iPods. Lack of sexual attraction is often a deal breaker in romances, killing possible partnerships before they even get off the ground. And when sexual attraction fades with time, it can propel a partner into the arms of another. For many, sex provides a deep sense of exhilaration that makes them feel alive. We often cannot describe what it is that attracts us to another person. Sometimes we resort to types, latching on to an easily identifiable trait or pointing to a celebrity who has many of the qualities we, and apparently many other people, find most appealing. Many women in our study mentioned a specific physical or personality characteristic that sexually attracted them, yet as many others chose to describe their sexual motivation in the simplest terms: I was attracted to the person. Women also said the person had a beautiful face, the person had a desirable body, the person had beautiful eyes, the person smelled nice, the person’s physical appearance turned me on, the person was a good dancer, or more graphically, the person was too physically attractive for me to resist. This chapter explores what, exactly, women find sexually attractive, and why. Why do musky aromas and resonant voices stir women’s sexual desires? If women really are less sexually stimulated by visual images than men are, why do the faces of, say, Antonio Banderas and George Clooney excite so many women? Is there actually something in the way another person moves that can affect women’s sexual drives? How can a dazzling personality sometimes turn an average Joe into a man who exudes an irresistible animal magnetism? When does physical attraction overpower everything else? Because the spark of attraction often operates beneath our consciousness, some of our answers to these questions come from an evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary psychologists start with the working premise that at least some of the characteristics that women find attractive are not culturally arbitrary. (The same is true of the characteristics that men find attractive.) Could the qualities that define sex appeal unconsciously provide signals of the benefits a woman might get from a potential mate? Biologists distinguish two broad classes of evolutionary benefits. Genetic benefits are the high quality genes that can endow a woman’s children with a better ability to survive and reproduce. Resource benefits, including food, shelter from the hostile forces of nature, and physical protection from aggressive men, help a woman and her children to survive and thrive. As we will see, some of the things that make women want to have sex with men have their roots in humans’ evolutionary past, while others have taken on a life of their own because of how we live, work, dress, and socialize today. Where Attraction Begins. People are constantly coming into contact with one another, we are nestled into adjoining seats in college lecture halls, bump into strangers at coffee shops, move into neighboring houses on suburban cul-de-sacs, or spend long hours in cattycorner cubicles at the office. This proximity is often the first step in becoming attracted to someone. Historically, you can see this in who people choose as their mates. Back in the 1930s, a study examined five thousand marriages performed in a single year, 1931, to determine where the bride and groom lived before their wedding. One third lived within five blocks of each other and more than one half lived within a twenty-block radius. Several studies over the decades have uncovered similar patterns. For example, in classrooms with assigned seating, relationships develop as a function of how far people are seated from each other. Students assigned to a middle seat are more likely to make acquaintances than those who are seated at the end of a row. With alphabetical seating, friendships form between those whose names start with nearby letters. Although being near someone does not guarantee that a sexual spark will be struck, repeated contact, up to a point, with someone increases the odds. One study found that a series of brief, that is, no more than thirty-five-second, face-to-face contacts without even talking to the person increased positive responses. That is, we tend to like the people we see often more than those we see less frequently. In another study, four women research assistants with comparable physical attractiveness attended a college class. One research assistant attended the class fifteen times during the semester, one assistant attended ten times, another five times, and one not at all. None of the women had any verbal contact with the students in the class. At the end of the semester, the students, both men and women, rated how much they liked each of the research assistants. Attraction increased as the number of exposures increased, even though all of the research assistants were fundamentally strangers to the people in the class. As it turns out, some amount of familiarity creates liking whether you’re talking about a person, a drawing, a word in an unknown foreign language, a song, a new product being advertised, a political candidate, or even a nonsense syllable. The more frequent a person’s exposure during the crucial early period of introduction, the more positive the response. Why? We often respond to anyone or anything strange or novel with at least mild discomfort, if not a certain degree of anxiety. With repeated exposure, our feelings of anxiety decrease, the more familiar we are with someone, the better we are able to predict his or her behavior and thus to feel more comfortable around the person. Once people are in close proximity, eye contact becomes important. The effect of mutual eye gaze is especially strong for women and men who are “romantics” by nature, those who believe in love at first sight, love for “the one and only,” and love as the key to relationships. In one study, forty-eight women and men came to a lab and were asked to stare into each other’s eyes while talking. The effect of mutual gaze proved powerful. Many reported that deep eye contact with an opposite-sex stranger created feelings of intense love. As one woman in our study put it: I find it very arousing when someone is mysterious and doesn’t give too much of themselves away upon cursory review. I once had sex with a man because he was looking at me longingly but wouldn’t say much. It was a very passionate experience, heterosexual woman, age 33. Another study had strangers first reveal intimate details of their lives to each other for half an hour, and then asked them to stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes, without breaking eye contact or making any conversation. Participants again reported deep attraction to their study partners. Two of these total strangers even ended up getting married! Too much familiarity, however, can backfire. Traits that are initially deemed positive can become a source of annoyance. Men who were once described as “funny and fun” become “embarrassing in public.” An attractive “spontaneity”, transforms into an unattractive “irresponsibility,” “successful and focused” into “workaholic,” and “strong willed” into “stubborn.” Indeed, a certain amount of “mystery” can be sexually motivating for women, or for men for that matter. Not only can mystery stoke attraction, too much familiarity can quash it. As one woman said in her sexual memoir, “proximity can kill sex faster than fainting.” Just as overexposure can douse the fire of sexual attraction, its opposite, novelty, can stoke its flames. Psychologist Daryl Bem sums it up with the phrase “the exotic becomes erotic.” Indeed, in college classes in which instructors ask women to list the qualities they find sexually attractive, “mysterious” invariably emerges on the list. Humans come blessed with five known senses, sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, and the sensory cues that enter into attraction tend to have greater effect with physical closeness. That’s particularly true when considering one of the strongest ingredients in sex appeal, one long neglected by the scientific community: women’s acute sense of smell. The Scent of Sexiness. Scents are famously known to carry strong psychological associations, think about how a whiff of a loved one’s favored perfume or cologne can bring to mind the person who wore it, along with a cascade of emotions. Partly, this is due to the unusual design of the olfactory nerve, which extends in a network throughout the brain, unlike the nerves carrying information for the other major senses, which are less wide ranging. This architecture helps the brain to tie memories of emotional events with olfactory information. The emotion stirring aspect of smell is important, but smell also turns out to be surprisingly important to women when it comes to basic sexual attraction. Using an instrument called the “Sensory Stimuli and Sexuality Survey,” researchers at Brown University found that women rate how someone smells as the most important of the senses in choosing a lover, edging out sight (a close second), sound, and touch. One woman in our study ranked the attractions of a sexual partner: I was attracted to his smell, his eyes, and his demeanor. Also, his French accent, heterosexual woman, age 23. How a woman smells to a man, in contrast, figures less heavily in his sexual attraction. Perhaps it is because men’s sense of smell is less acute than women’s. Perhaps it is because visual cues loom so much larger in what turns men on. And it’s not just that women think smell matters in whether they are attracted to someone, it’s that women’s sexual arousal is enhanced by good body odors, and killed by bad ones. One reason why body odors play such an important role in women’s sexual attraction has come to scientific light only recently. The first clue came from an unusual discovery: that a woman’s olfactory acuity reaches its peak around the time of her ovulation, the narrow twenty-four-hour window during the monthly menstrual cycle in which she can become pregnant. This led scientists to suspect that women’s sense of smell might play a role in reproduction. It was not until researchers began to explore the body’s defenses against disease, however, that the connection was made. The genes responsible for immune functioning, fighting off disease-causing bacteria and viruses, are located within the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC, found on chromosome 6. Different people have different versions, or alleles, of these MHC genes, in the jargon of geneticists, the MHC genes are “polymorphic.” It turns out that women can benefit in two ways from mating with men who are dissimilar to themselves in MHC genes. First, a mate with dissimilar MHC genes likely has more dissimilar genes in general, and so finding an MHC-dissimilar person attractive might help to prevent inbreeding. Reproducing with close genetic relatives can be disastrous for the resulting children, leading to birth defects, lower intelligence, and other problems. But a second benefit of mating with someone with complementary MHC genes is that any resulting children will have better immune functioning, making them better able to fight off many of the parasites that cause disease. The puzzle is how women could possibly be able to choose mates who have complementary MHC genes in order to give these benefits to their offspring. In a revealing study, Brazilian researchers had twenty-nine men wear patches of cotton on their skin for five days to absorb their sweat, and thus their body odors. A sample of twenty-nine women then smelled each cotton patch and evaluated the odor on a dimension from attractive to unattractive. Scientists identified the specific MHC complex of each man and woman through blood assays. Women found the aromas of men who had an MHC complex complementary to their own smelled the most desirable. The odors of men who had an MHC complex similar to their own made them recoil in disgust. Amazing as it may seem, women can literally smell the scent of a gene complex known to play a key role in immune functioning. This highly developed sense of smell can have a profound effect on women’s sexuality. University of New Mexico evolutionary psychologist Christine Garver-Apgar and her colleagues studied MHC similarity in forty-eight romantically involved couples. They found that as the degree of MHC similarity between each woman and man increased, the woman’s sexual responsiveness to her partner decreased. Women whose partners had similar MHC genes reported wanting to have sex less often with them. They reported less motivation to please their partner sexually compared to the women romantically involved with men with complementary MHC genes. Perhaps even more disturbing to their mates (if they knew), women with MHC-similar partners reported more frequent sexual fantasies about other men, particularly at the most fertile phase of their ovulation cycle. And their sexual fantasies about other men did not just remain in their heads. They found themselves in the arms of other men more often, reporting higher rates of actual sexual infidelity, a 50 percent rate of infidelity among couples who had 50 percent of their MHC alleles in common. So when a woman says that she had sex with a man because he smelled nice, her sexual motivation has hidden roots in an evolutionary adaptation. At an unconscious level, women are drawn to men with whom they are genetically compatible. Another reason why a man’s scent is so important comes from the unusual discovery that body symmetry has sexual allure. Most human bodies are bilaterally symmetrical: The left wrist generally has the same circumference as the right wrist, the left ear is generally as long as the right ear, from the eyes to the toes, the left and right halves of people’s bodies roughly mirror each other. Each individual, however, carries small deviations from perfect symmetry. Two forces can cause faces and bodies to become more asymmetrical. One is genetic, the number of mutations an individual has, which geneticists call mutation load. Although everyone carries some genetic mutations (estimates are that the average person has a few hundred), some people have a higher mutation load than others, and those with more mutations tend to be more asymmetrical. The second force is environmental. During development, some individuals sustain more illnesses, diseases, parasites, and bodily injuries than others, and these environmental insults create asymmetries in the body and face. Symmetry, in short, is a sign of good health, an indication that a person carries a low mutation load and has experienced few environmental injuries, or at least possesses the capacity to sustain environmental injuries without their leaving much of a mark. If body symmetry is attractive because of how we evolved, so is the fact that women are able to detect the scent signature for symmetry, a useful skill when you consider that some asymmetries may not be immediately visible. But could a woman possibly smell body symmetry? In one study, men wore white cotton T-shirts for two nights. The Tshirts were then sealed in plastic bags. In the laboratory, scientists used calipers to measure the various physical components of the men’s bodies, including their wrists, ankles, and earlobes, in order to evaluate their degree of symmetry. Then women smelled each T-shirt and provided a rating of how pleasant or unpleasant it smelled. Women judged the T shirt odors of symmetrical men to be the most attractive and deemed the odors of asymmetrical men to be repulsive. Four independent studies have replicated the finding. Women find the scent of symmetry particularly attractive when they are in the fertile phase of their ovulation cycle, precisely the time in which they are most likely to conceive. This apparently reflects an evolutionary adaptation in women to reproduce with men possessing honest signals of good health, including high-quality genes. When women have extramarital affairs, they tend to choose symmetrical men as partners, yet another indication of the importance of symmetry in sexual attraction. The Power of a Man’s Musk. A person’s scent can influence not only a woman’s mate choice, but also when and how frequently she chooses to have sex and possibly the chance she will become pregnant. Researchers have shown that exposure to male pheromones can increase a woman’s fertility. Pheromones are substances secreted from the glands at the anus, underarms, urinary outlet, breasts, and mouth. In nonhuman mammals, a specialized olfactory structure, the vomeronasal organ, acts as the locus for receiving pheromonal signals, which control most animals’ and insects’ mating rituals. One study found that frequent sexual exposure to men (at least once a week) regularized women’s menstrual cycles, increased fertile basal body temperature, and increased estrogen in the phase of the menstrual cycle following ovulation, called the luteal phase. Another study showed that women who slept with a man two or more times during a forty-day period had a significantly higher incidence of ovulation than those who had slept with a man less often. Once again, sexual attraction plays a role. Doctor Winnifred Cutler, the director of the Athena Institute, found that exposure to male pheromones influences a woman’s sexual attraction to a man. In her study, thirty-eight heterosexual men aged twenty-six to forty-two recorded their baseline levels of sexual behavior and dating experiences for a two-week period. Then for a month they wore either their regular aftershave, or the same aftershave but with an added synthetic version of a pheromone naturally secreted by men. The men did not know which aftershave they were wearing. During the test month, the men continued to record their sexual and dating experiences. The results showed that compared to their baseline levels of sexual activity, the men who wore the “pheromone-charged” aftershave engaged in higher rates of sexual petting and intercourse, had more frequent informal dates, and spent more time sleeping next to a partner. Over the same period, they reported no change in their frequency of masturbation, so the increase in the rest of their sexual activity could not simply have resulted from men having a higher sex drive due to their own exposure to the extra pheromone. Sensitivity to scent does not just provide a means for identifying good hygiene or emotionally resonant perfumes. Scent also gives women cues about a partner’s immune system and body symmetry, and pheromones can unconsciously shape how women become sexually attracted and aroused. Size Matters. We’ve seen how body symmetry, because it indicates good health, is attractive to women. Body symmetry is also linked with men’s muscularity, and studies conducted both in the United States and on the Caribbean island of Dominica have found that symmetrical men have a larger number of sex partners than asymmetrical men. When women identify the specific qualities that attract them to a sexual partner, they frequently mention “the person had a desirable body”, the sixteenth most frequent reason cited for having sex in our original study. But what sorts of bodies do women find sexually desirable? Perhaps the most obvious characteristic is height. Studies consistently find that women consider tall men to be attractive, although only to an extent, taller than average, but not too tall. In analyses of personal ads, 80 percent of women state a desire for a man six feet tall or taller. Men who indicated in their personal ads that they were tall received far more responses from women. Women prefer tall men as marriage partners, and place an even greater emphasis on height in shorter-term sex partners. Women even take height into consideration when selecting sperm donors! A study of British men found that taller than average men have had a greater number of live-in girlfriends than their shorter peers. Two studies found that taller than average men tend to have more children, and hence are more reproductively successful. Women seem to find tall men better candidates for romance and reproduction. Could there be a logic underlying women’s desires for tall men? In traditional cultures, tall men tend to have higher status. “Big men” in hunter-gatherer societies, high-status men who command respect, are literally big men, physically. In Western cultures, tall men tend to have higher socioeconomic status than short men. Another study found that recruiters choose the taller of two applicants for a sales job 72 percent of the time. Each added inch of height adds several thousand dollars to a man’s annual salary. One study estimated that men who are six feet tall earn, on average, $166,000 more across a thirty-year career than men seven inches shorter. Taller policemen are assaulted less often than shorter policemen, indicating that their stature either commands more respect from criminals or causes them to think twice before attacking. Height deters aggression from other men. In the jargon of evolutionary biology, height is an “honest signal” of a man’s ability to protect. Women report simply feeling safer with tall mates. Another answer comes from recently discovered correlates of male height. Tall men, on average, tend to be healthier than short men, although men at the extreme high and low end of the distribution have more health problems. So tall men tend to have better job prospects, to have more economic resources, to enjoy elevated social status, to afford physical protection, and to be healthy, a bounty of adaptive benefits. We will see how sizes in other arenas matter in chapters 2 and 7. Fit for Sex. Height, of course, is not the only aspect of men’s bodies that sexually excites women. Studies of mate preferences reveal that women desire strong, muscular, athletic men for long-term mating as well as for sexual liaisons. Most women show a distinct preference for a particular body morphology, namely, a V-shaped torso that reveals a high shoulder-to-hip ratio (broad shoulders relative to hips). They are attracted to a lean stomach combined with a muscular (but not muscle-bound) upper torso. In fact, both sexes judge men with a high shoulder-to-hip ratio to be more physically and socially dominant, which may give a clue to its appeal, since women generally are not attracted to men who appear as though they could be easily dominated by other men. Men exhibiting a high shoulder-tohip ratio begin having sexual intercourse at an early age, sixteen or younger. They report having more sex partners than their slim-shouldered peers. They have more sexual affairs with outside partners while in a relationship. And they report more instances of being chosen by already-mated women for sexual affairs on the side. Shoulder-to-hip ratio also arouses the green-eyed monster: Potential rivals with a high shoulder-to-hip ratio trigger jealousy in men. Men with strong, athletic, V-shaped bodies tend to succeed in competitions with other men compared to their frailer peers. Across cultures, physical contests such as wrestling, racing, and throwing allow women to gauge men’s physical abilities, including speed, endurance, and strength. Scientific research, though, has discovered that men overestimate the degree of muscularity that women actually find attractive, assuming that they need to pump up more, or puff up more, to be attractive. One study compared the muscularity of men’s bodies in Cosmopolitan (whose readership is 89 percent women) with Men’s Health (whose readership is 85 percent men). Researchers rated the muscularity of men’s bodies depicted in each magazine. The level of muscularity depicted in Cosmopolitan (4.26) was nearly identical to the level of muscularity women rate as ideal in a sexual partner (4.49). Men, in contrast, mistakenly believe that women desire a more muscular sex partner (5.04), which corresponds more closely with the muscularity of men shown in Men’s Health (5.77). Images of muscle-bound men have almost certainly fostered men’s misperception of what women find most sexually attractive, just as photo spreads of impossibly thin women have led women to overestimate the degree of thinness that men find most attractive. After viewing repeated images of V shaped bodies, men become more dissatisfied with their own bodies, just as women become more unhappy with their bodies after seeing images of size zero models. Fully 90 percent of American men report that they want to be more muscular. The figure among the less media-saturated Ghana is 49 percent. Ukrainian men lie in between, with 69 percent reporting a desire to be more muscular. As one researcher summed it up, the average man “feels like Clark Kent but longs to be like Superman.” The Face of Attraction. He could have been a model. When he acted interested in me, I couldn’t believe it. We had sex once. Strangely enough, he kept calling me afterward. I didn’t continue with the relationship for several reasons. One, he was just a pretty face, but I think he was really crazy about me. Two, never date a guy prettier than you are. It’s terrible for your self-esteem and your sanity, heterosexual woman, age 26. Masculine facial features are heavily influenced by the production of testosterone during adolescence, when the bones in the face take their adult form. From an evolutionary perspective, puberty marks the time when men and women enter the arena of mate competition. They begin to allocate time, energy, and effort to the tasks of mate selection and mate attraction. In men, the amount of muscle mass, as we have seen, contributes to success in competition with other men and sexual attractiveness to women. And testosterone turns out to be the magical hormone that promotes men’s muscle mass and masculine facial features. So why don’t all men have masculine faces and ripped bodies? The answer strangely hinges on a negative side effect of testosterone. High testosterone production compromises the body’s immune functioning, leaving men less able to fight off diseases and parasites. Now here is the paradox: Only men who are above average in healthiness during adolescence can “afford” to produce the high levels of testosterone that masculinize the face. Less healthy adolescents cannot afford to compromise their already precarious immune systems, and so produce lower levels of testosterone at precisely the time when facial bones take their adult form. A masculine-looking face signals a man’s health, his ability to succeed in competing with other men, and his ability to protect. And that is the best explanation for why most women find somewhat more masculine faces (but not the most masculine faces) to be the most attractive. But when we consider a woman’s fertility status and whether she is evaluating a man as a casual sex partner or a husband, the dynamics shift. In a series of scientific studies, women were asked to judge the attractiveness of a variety of men’s faces at different points during their ovulation cycle, during the most fertile phase (the five days leading up to ovulation) and during the least fertile, post-ovulation luteal phase. The subjects evaluated the faces for sexiness, their attractiveness as a casual sex partner, and their attractiveness as a long-term mate. Women found above-average masculine faces to be the sexiest and the most attractive for a casual sexual encounter. In contrast, women judged somewhat less masculine faces to be more attractive for a long-term relationship. Women’s sexual desires for testosterone-fueled facial cues of masculinity were especially strong during the fertile window of their cycle. The most plausible interpretation of these results is that women are attracted to men who are likely to be “good dads” when choosing long-term mates, but are attracted to the honest signals of health that masculinity provides when they are most likely to become impregnated. This interpretation, however, raises a puzzle: Why wouldn’t women be attracted to highly masculine males for all mating relationships, from dangerous liaisons through lifelong love? The answer lies in the fact that the more masculine men are less sexually faithful. They are more likely to be the risk taking womanizing “bad boys” among the male population. Consequently, most women face a trade-off: If they choose the less masculine-looking man, they get a better father and a more sexually loyal mate, but they lose out in the currency of genes for good health. If they choose the more masculine man, they can endow their children with good genes for health, but must suffer the costs of a man who channels some of his sexual energy toward other women. So women’s preferences reveal a dual mating strategy, an attempt to get the best of both worlds. They can choose to have a long-term relationship with a slightly less masculine man who will be sexually loyal and invest in her children, while opportunistically having sex with the more masculine men when they are most likely to get pregnant. DNA fingerprinting studies reveal that roughly 12 percent of women get pregnant by men other than their long term mates, suggesting that some, but certainly not all, women pursue this dual mating strategy. Cultures differ, however, in how much women are attracted to facial masculinity. Psychologist Ian Penton-Voak and his colleagues found that Jamaican women found masculine looking men sexier than did British women. They interpret this cultural difference as a product of the higher rates of infectious diseases in Jamaica compared to England. In cultures in which infectious disease is a more pervasive problem, women seem to shift their sexual choices to men who possess honest signals of good health, men whose faces have been shaped by testosterone. Conventionally Handsome. People are drawn to those who are collectively considered attractive, so much so that a number of women in our study reported having sex with attractive people even when they had no desire to pursue a long-term relationship: I became friends with a man who was very handsome, but for whom I felt no desire to pursue a relationship. He asked me to stay the night in his bed, and despite having misgivings. I couldn’t resist. He was conventionally handsome but very edgy and nonconformist and he liked me a lot, predominantly heterosexual woman, age 36. What does it mean for someone to be “conventionally” handsome? Developmental psychologist Judith Langlois studies the meaning of “attractiveness” in human faces by having subjects rate composite faces, made up of sixteen or more images morphed together, against the individual faces used to create the composites. The composite faces were rated more attractive, and, according to Langlois, if “you take a female composite (averaged) face made of thirty-two faces and overlay it on the face of an extremely attractive female model, the two images line up almost perfectly, indicating that the model’s facial configuration is very similar to the composites’ facial configuration.” The same was true of men’s composite faces. Langlois has also found that infants as young as one year old respond to this kind of “averaged” attractiveness in adult faces. Researchers varied their attractiveness levels by putting on attractive and unattractive masks that were carefully and realistically molded to their faces. The men and women then interacted with, and attempted to initiate play with, the one year-olds. They discovered that the infants expressed more positive moods and were more involved in play when they interacted with the researchers who were wearing the attractive masks. Even when the stimulus is a doll, studies show that infants spend more time playing with attractive versus unattractive dolls. There is also a large body of research showing that we are drawn to good-looking people because we make assumptions that they possess a whole host of other desirable traits. They are rated as also being interesting, sociable, independent, dominant, exciting, sexy, well adjusted, socially skilled, and successful. There is some support for these stereotypes. Attractiveness is moderately linked with popularity, good interpersonal skills, and occupational success, and, to some extent, with physical health, mental health, and sexual experience, which may be partly because attractive people are treated more favorably. A Knee-Knocking Voice. Singers such as Elvis Presley in the Nineteen fifties, the Beatles in the Sixties, and Jim Morrison of the Doors in the seventies through contemporary rappers such as Kanye West, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent are, and have always been, famously attractive to women. Part of their sex appeal has undoubtedly been a result of the popularity and social status they command. But there is also a sound of sexiness, something about male voices that gives women a sexual buzz. Voice pitch is the most striking feature of human speech. Before puberty, male and female voices are quite similar. At puberty, remarkable changes occur. Boys experience a dramatic increase in the length of their vocal folds, which become 60 percent longer than those of girls. Longer vocal folds and vocal tracts produce a deeper, more resonant voice pitch. Testosterone triggers the change in boys at puberty, and high levels of testosterone predict deeper voices among adult men. The first scientific evidence of women’s preferences for deeper male voices came from a study in which women rated the deep, resonant voices such as that of Luciano Pavarotti more attractive than the higher-pitched voices such as that of Truman Capote. This may not come as much of a surprise. But three more recent investigations show that mating context is critical in how women choose among men’s voices. Evolutionary anthropologist David Puts obtained voice recordings of thirty men attempting to persuade a woman to go out on a romantic date. Then 142 heterosexual women listened to the recordings and rated each man’s attractiveness in two mating contexts, for a short-term sexual encounter and for a long-term committed relationship. Although women said the deeper voices were more attractive in both mating contexts, they dramatically preferred the deeper voices when considering them as prospects for purely sexual, short-term encounters. Moreover, women in the fertile phase of their ovulation cycle showed the strongest sexual attraction to men with deep voices. One hint as to why is found in studies of female frogs, which gravitate toward deep, resonant croaks of male bullfrogs, a reliable signal, for frogs, of a mate’s size and health. Now, research on people has revealed two similar reasons that help to explain why women find some men’s voices more attractive than others. The first involves bilateral body symmetry, the health-and-good-genes signal that a person can better withstand the stresses of diseases, injuries, and genetic mutations during development. Body symmetry is more likely to produce deep voices. So when a woman finds the resonance of a man’s voice even sexier during her fertile, ovulatory phase, she is attracted to the sound of symmetry for her possible offspring. Attractive-sounding voices also indicate a man’s body morphology. Psychologist Susan Hughes found that men with sexy voices, in contrast to their strident-sounding peers, have a higher shoulder-to-hip ratio, the attractive V-shaped body. Women judge men with lower-pitched voices to be healthier, more masculine, more physically dominant, somewhat older, more socially dominant, and more well-respected by their peers. Do women’s attractions to sexy voices translate into higher sexual success for lower-pitched men? One study found that American men with lower-pitched voices had experienced a larger number of sex partners than men with higher-pitched voices. A second study, of the Hadza, a population of hunter gatherers living in Tanzania, found that men with lower pitched voices had a greater number of children, possibly as a consequence of having greater sexual access to fertile women. So it’s not that carrying a tune makes much difference, a baritone voice like the actor James Earl Jones’s might be mesmerizing because of all it signals about good health, good genes, the capacity to protect, and success in social hierarchies. Many of those sexually alluring musicians had another attractive quality to their credit, a body in motion. Something in the Way He Moves. Physical movement depends on the strength of a person’s bones, muscle tone, and motor control. The ability to move in a coordinated manner, especially through repetitive motions such as walking or dancing, reveals information about a person’s phenotype: It broadcasts information about age, notice the difference between the dancing prowess of younger versus older dancers. It also conveys information about energy level, health, and biomechanical efficiency, whether we know it or not. We found that some women had sex with men simply because they were good dancers: I was told that if a man could dance he could perform in bed. I did not believe this and wanted to see if it was true. I met someone who danced on the same order of a stripper. He danced for me a couple of times. We ended up having sex and yes he was as good in bed as he was on the dance floor. He literally danced while having sex. It was wonderful, heterosexual woman, age 29. He was hot. The fact that he was a good dancer made him that much more appealing. I really enjoy dancing myself, so when I see that a person has rhythm, it turns me on, heterosexual woman, age 26. Research reveals that women find certain body movements to be more attractive than others. One study had women view digitally masked or pixelated images of men dancing. Women were more attracted to men who displayed larger and more sweeping movements. They also rated these men more erotic. Just as men’s faces differ from one another in their de

Rahan, son of the fierce ages. Episode Forty Nine. The Blue shells. Text by Roger Lecureux. Since he knew how to use the wind, the son of Crao no longer hesitated to face the great river. That day he was sailing towards unknown islands, when Rahan does not know these fish! Are they dangerous like the "blue-skins"? The dolphins jumped around the raft, passed under it, and reappeared further away. They want to scare Rahan! But as they did not push the skiff, Crao's son understood that it was a game. He had proof of it a moment later. Page Two. Rahan will find food on the island. He no longer needs these fish. Catch! One after the other he threw his fish. And he laughed at the curious spectacle of dolphins leaping out of the water to catch them in flight! Ha-ha-ha! Higher! Even higher! Ah, why aren't the "Blue-skins" as amusing, as harmless as you! As he had just thrown away the last fish. The great dolphin sprang up very close to the raft, not to menace it, but to beg. He placed his heavy head on the skiff. And the son of Crao, surprised, lost his balance and slipped into the water. Argh! Page Three. Worry once again took hold of him. The dolphins were pushing him with their “noses” They could strike, or bite Rahan. But it looked like they wanted to play with him! He dove and the dolphins followed him. His fears dissipated when he was certain that these strange beasts were indeed playing! Amused, he grabbed one of them and let himself be carried towards the surface. Since you want to play, let's play! The dolphin and his "Rider" sprang out of the water and dove back together! Ra-ha-ha! Page Four. From the shore, astonished men watched this astonishing ride. Twice, three times, ten times, they saw Rahan and the dolphin reappear. It was the son of Crao who was the first to get tired. Thank you “Beast with-no-Name!” But Rahan is not a fish and you tired him! The herd escorted the Raft for a moment longer then disappeared into the depths. Goodbye, “Beasts with-no-Name!” The skiff, shortly after, ran aground on a beach, near a village. Would Rahan have frightened “Those-Who-Walk-Upright”? The village was deserted. The fire that still burned proved that it had just been abandoned. Where are you men of the Shore!? Why are you hiding? Page Five. Rahan is not an enemy!! He swears it on the “mother of mothers”!! In the nearby thickets where they had taken refuge the fishermen hesitated. Their leader was the first to come out. Since you do not belong to Mbong's clan, Tamak believes you! Let us exchange gifts of friendship! Removing his blue shell necklace, Tamak put it around the neck of the son of Crao. Welcome to our island, brother! Rahan thanks you, Tamak. Alas, he has no gift to offer you in exchange. What are you saying?! And this necklace? And this weapon?!! The chief pointed to the ivory knife and the claw necklace. No, Tamak! No. Rahan cannot give you either! Page Six. Rahan would also like to make an offering to Tamak, but he could not give this necklace that his father left to him when he died. And the idea of being dispossessed of the knife which had so often saved his life was unbearable to him! Rahan has nothing to offer you Tamak. Take back your necklace and. No! Custom requires that we exchange presents! Indignant, the chief issued an order. Seize him! Seize him! We will release him when he decides to respect custom!! They could take the collar or the knife! But they want to let Rahan make the offering himself!! Page Seven. A clamor suddenly arose. Boats, coming from a neighboring island, were approaching the shore. Mbong is coming! Mbong is coming! Panic gripped the fishermen who rushed towards the forest. No one thought of the son of Crao. Who saw the arrivals jump onto the beach and rush towards the huts. All brandished sturdy harpoons. Search everywhere! Do not leave any "Gonuk" in these houses! Hum. Tamak harshly enforces the customs of his clan, but Rahan prefers him to Mbong. While his men pillaged the village. Mbong had just caught sight of the son of Crao. Look! Tamak offers us one of his own and a necklace of Gonuks!! Page Eight. The colossus approached with his gaze fixed on the necklace of blue shells. Never has Mbong seen so many Gonuks at once. Tamak gifted Rahan this necklace as a token of friendship. You have no right to take it! Ha-ha-ha! As Mbong stretched out a greedy hand, the captive's legs rose, throwing the colossus to the ground. From a height the fishermen had seen. Rahan gives us a lesson in courage! Even tied up, he dares to resist Mbong! Men rushed in and tied up the ankles of the son of Crao. You will see what it costs to oppose Mbong!! Page Nine. It is with this fat that we attract birds from the sea! A strong smell of decomposed fish welled up when Mbong opened the skin pouch. And smeared the face and torso of the captive with Grease. It would have been too easy to kill you immediately! Mbong and his men moved away. Rahan had been let his ivory knife, but tied up as he was, he could not reach it. Large screaming seagulls were already circling above the beach. One of them dived then another. A moment later their swarm attacked the son of Crao. The beaks struck from all sides. The chest, the neck. The face. Page Ten. Fearful for his eyes, Rahan could only shake his head. And Mbong, over there, laughed, and laughed. However. If Rahan is suffering this torment, it is our fault! We must save him, brothers! We have always been afraid of facing Mbong, but this time, we have to! A moment later Tamack and his Clan emerged from the forest. The panicked seagulls fled towards the sea. And the son of Crao was finally able to open his eyes. He saw the fishermen rushing towards Mbong's men. Tamak has arrived in time! Tamak had to redeem himself! Surprised by the ardor of the fishermen, the plunderers returned to their boats. Do not back down! Fight! Fight!! Page Eleven. Ra-ha-ha! The clamor of Rahan who threw himself into the melee drowned out the exhortations of Mbong. Will you show yourself as “Courageous” as when Rahan was at your mercy!? The harpoon flew towards the son of Crao. Who plunged towards the legs of the colossus, who dodged on dry land, but the water hindered his movements and he was thrown off balance. It was a brief melee and. No more movements, Mbong! Rahan's cutlass is more formidable than the beaks of seagulls! If you don't return to your territory, Mbong will join "The territory of the Shadows"! Already surprised by the fishermen's response, the raiders were dismayed by the defeat of their leader. Page Twelve. A moment later they moved away on the great river, towards the island from which they had come Rahan pushed Mbong towards Tamak. Rahan owed you a present. Here he is Tamak! It is the most beautiful present! For many moons Mbong and his family. Pillaged our village to take over the "Gronuks"! Rahan does not understand very well. So these shells are so precious!? Yes. They are of great value in all these islands. They allow clans to obtain what they want. So this jar is worth two “Gonuks”! Each clan therefore has its reserve of shells. Alas no. The “blue Gonuks”, the most sought after, are only found on our island!! Page Thirteen. The bottom of the moon lagoon is covered in them! And the other clans envy us Why doesn't Tamak share "Gonuks" with them? Tamak would like it! But it is dangerous to fish for the "Gonuks", because the moon lagoon is infested with blue-skins!! Shortly after Tamak, led the son of Crao to the Lagoon. This one evoked a crescent moon. Rahan wants to see. It is dangerous, brother! Rahan dove into the clear water and was immediately amazed. The bottom of the lagoon was indeed lined with blue shells! This is the “treasure” that the clans are fighting over! Oh! Rahan had expected an attack. But he did not expect it to be led by so many sharks! Page Fourteen. If Rahan does not strike first, he is lost! These sharks reminded him of playful dolphins. But, this time, it was no longer a game! The son of Crao knew the ferocity of the "Blue-skins" whom he had often fought. He narrowly avoided one of them. Tamak watched with anxiety the swarming of sharks. His heart sank when reddish scents rose to the surface. But this blood was not Rahan's! It was that of the shark he had just gutted. Fight over his insides, “Blue-skins”! Ra-ha-ha! The victorious cry rolled across the moon lagoon. Tamak was already extending a brotherly hand. Page Fifteen. Does Rahan understand why blue “Gonuks” are so rare! Our fishermen no longer dare to dive into the lagoon! And the rarer the "Gonuks" are, the more value the clans of other islands place on them!! Rahan got it right! The son of Crao was pensive. Today Mbong pillages a village to obtain "Gonuks". Tomorrow, another clan will plunder Mbong's! Why are “Those Who Walk Upright” fighting over common shells! Like “Blue-skins” killing each other! These ideas tormented Rahan all night. The clans do not quarrel over the leaves of these trees because they are innumerable! If we caught as many "Gonuks", happiness would return to the islands! Page Sixteen. Returning to the lagoon, he looked for a long time at the surface which was sometimes crisscrossed by the fin of a shark. There, between the rocky pass, the great river shimmered. And his heart suddenly beat harder. He had found it! He knew how to rid the lagoon of “Blue-skins”! But Rahan will need all the fishermen! Mbong, still bound, saw him running back. If the clan is successful, you will soon have more "Gonuks" than ten seasons of pillaging would bring you! A moment later he son of Crao explained his project to Tamak. If I understand correctly Rahan wants to set a trap in reverse! The chef was skeptical. Do you think the gods will help us? Will the courage and strength of your brothers replace the gods? Trust, Tamak! Page Seventeen. Daybreak found Rahan on the lookout. The breeze brought him a scent and he regretted that it was that of a harmless gazelle. The fate of “Those Who Walk Upright” is well worth the life of a “Two-Horned”!! He would have preferred another prey. But he had no choice. The animal appeared. As the Gazelle passed under the tree, he let himself fall. And the beast had no time to suffer. The ivory cutlass struck only once! Mbong, who had seen the fishermen, their women and children abandon the village, saw him return carrying the “two-horned”. MBong does not understand?! He understood even less when the raft sailed away, carrying the son of Crao and the animal's body! Page Eighteen. Clamors greeted Rahan when the skiff stopped in front of the moon lagoon. All the fishermen were up there, on each side of the gully, as he had asked them to be. You will not have been sacrificed in vain "Two-horned"! He disemboweled the animal and pushed the body into the waves. The reddening waves rolled toward the lagoon. Tamak and his people saw the "Blue-skins" appear from all sides, rushing towards the entrance to the great river. Rahan had to hold on to avoid being thrown into the water by the swirls. Around the Raft the waves were bristling with countless fins. All the sharks in the lagoon wanted to participate in the wild feast!! Page Nineteen. Dull growls rang out. The clan pushed heavy rocks which, as expected caused avalanches! Clamors of joy arose when the crest of the dam broke the surface and the pass was blocked! The lagoon was forever forbidden to the formidable “Blue-skins”! From now on, fishermen could grapple without risk in the inexhaustible carpet of blue shells! A little after. The “Gonuks” will lose this value that they should never have had! The clans will no longer fight to possess them. Rahan had no other desire! Oh yes! Rahan still wants Mbong to be spared! Rahan will punish him in his own way. The captive belongs to you! Page Twenty. The son of Crao left this shore a few days later. May your lust be satisfied Mbong! All these “Gonuks” are yours!! Shortly after, he abandoned Mbong on a desert island. It is a less cruel torture than that of seagulls! You can fish and hunt while you wait for your people to find you! You will understand that “Gonuks” do not bring happiness! Farewell, Mbong! It was a harsh but fair punishment for Mbong-the-greedy. Who would, for a whole season, live as a hermit next to his useless “treasure” of blue shells! But that's another story. As the raft moved away the playful dolphins reappeared. Escorting the skiff. They seemed to invite the son of wild ages to follow them towards the open sea, towards a horizon embroiled in the sun. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Red Planet. Copyright 1949 by Robert Anson Heinlein. For Tish. Reformatted from a scan 2023. Chapter One. Willis. The thin air of Mars was chill but not really cold. It was not yet winter in southern latitudes and the daytime temperature was usually above freezing. The queer creature standing outside the door of a dome shaped building was generally manlike in appearance, but no human being ever had a head like that. A thing like a coxcomb jutted out above the skull, the eye lenses were wide and staring, and the front of the face stuck out in a snout. The unearthly appearance was increased by a pattern of black and yellow tiger stripes covering the entire head. The creature was armed with a pistol-type hand weapon slung at its belt and was carrying, crooked in its right arm, a ball, larger than a basketball, smaller than a medicine ball. It moved the ball to its left arm, opened the outer door of the building and stepped inside. Inside was a very small anteroom and an inner door. As soon as the outer door was closed the air pressure in the anteroom began to rise, accompanied by a soft sighing sound. A loudspeaker over the inner door shouted in a booming bass, “Well? Who is it? Speak up! Speak up!” The visitor placed the ball carefully on the floor, then with both hands grasped its ugly face and pushed and lifted it to the top of its head. Underneath was disclosed the face of an Earth human boy. “It’s Jim Marlowe, Doc,” he answered. “Well, come in. Come in! Don’t stand out there chewing your nails.” “Coming.” When the air pressure in the anteroom had equalized with the pressure in the rest of the house the inner door opened automatically. Jim said, “Come along, Willis,” and went on in. The ball developed three spaced bumps on its lower side and followed after him, in a gait which combined spinning, walking, and rolling. More correctly, it careened, like a barrel being manhandled along a dock. They went down a passage and entered a large room that occupied half the floor space of the circular house plan. Doctor MacRae looked up but did not get up. “Howdy, Jim. Skin yourself. Coffee on the bench. Howdy, Willis,” he added and turned back to his work. He was dressing the hand of a boy about Jim’s age. “Thanks, Doc, oh, hello, Francis. What are you doing here?” “Hi, Jim. I killed a water-seeker, then I cut my thumb on one of its spines.” “Quit squirming!” commanded the doctor. “That stuff stings,” protested Francis. “I meant it to.” “How in the world did you do that?” persisted Jim. “You ought to know better than to touch one of those things. Just burn “Em down and burn “Em up.” He zipped open the front of his outdoor costume, peeled it off his arms and legs and hung it on a rack near the door. The rack held Francis’s suit, the headpiece of which was painted in bright colours like an Indian brave’s war paint, and the doctor’s suit, the mask of which was plain. Jim was now stylishly and appropriately dressed for indoors on Mars, in bright red shorts. “I did burn it,” explained Francis, “But it moved when I touched it. I wanted to get the tail to make a necklace.” “Then you didn’t burn it right. Probably left it full of live eggs. Who’re you making a necklace for?” “None of your business. And I did so burn the egg sac. What do you take me for? A tourist?” “Sometimes I wonder. You know those things don’t die until sundown.” “Don’t talk nonsense, Jim,” the doctor advised. “Now, Frank, I’m going to give you an antitoxin shot. “Twon’t do you any good but it’ll make your mother happy. Long about tomorrow your thumb will swell up like a poisoned pup; bring it back and I’ll lance it.” “Am I going to lose my thumb?” the boy asked. “No, but you’ll do your scratching with your left hand for a few days. Now, Jim, what brings you here? Tummy ache?” “No, Doc, it’s Willis.” “Willis, eh? He looks pert enough to me.” The doctor stared down at the creature. Willis was at his feet, having come up to watch the dressing of Frank’s thumb. To do so he had protruded three eye stalks from the top of his spherical mass. The stalks stuck up like thumbs, in an equal-sided triangle, and from each popped a disturbingly human eye. The little fellow turned around slowly on his tripod of bumps, or pseudopeds, and gave each of his eyes a chance to examine the doctor. “Get me up a cup of Java, Jim,” commanded the doctor, then leaned over and made a cradle of his hands. “Here, Willis, upsidaisy!” Willis gave a little bounce and landed in the doctor’s hands, withdrawing all protuberances as he did so. The doctor lifted him to the examining table; Willis promptly stuck out legs and eyes again. They stared at each other. The doctor saw a ball covered with thick, close-cropped fur, like sheared sheepskin, and featureless at the moment save for supports and eye stalks. The Mars creature saw an elderly male Earthman almost completely covered with wiry grey-and-white hair. The middle portion of this strange, un Martian creature was concealed in snow-white shorts and shirt. Willis enjoyed looking at him. “How do you feel, Willis?” inquired the doctor. “Feel good? Feel bad?” A dimple showed at the very crown of the ball between the stalks, dilated to an opening. “Willis fine!” he said. His voice was remarkably like Jim’s. “Fine, eh?” Without looking around the doctor added, “Jim! Wash those cups again. And this time, sterilize them. Want everybody around here to come down with the pip?” “Okay, Doc,” Jim acknowledged, and added to Francis, “You want some coffee, too?” “Sure. Weak, with plenty of cow.” “Don’t be fussy.” Jim dipped into the laboratory sink and managed to snag another cup. The sink was filled with dirty dishes. Nearby a large flask of coffee simmered over a Bunsen burner. Jim washed three cups carefully, put them through the sterilizer, then filled them. Doctor MacRae accepted a cup and said, “Jim, this citizen says he’s okay. What’s the trouble?” “I know he says he’s all right, Doc, but he’s not. Can’t you examine him and find out?” “Examine him? How, boy? I can’t even take his temperature because I don’t know what his temperature ought to be. I know as much about his body chemistry as a pig knows about patty cake. Want me to cut him open and see what makes him tick?” Willis promptly withdrew all projections and became as featureless as a billiard ball. “Now you’ve scared him,” Jim said accusingly. “Sorry.” The doctor reached out and commenced scratching and tickling the furry ball. “Good Willis, nice Willis. Nobody’s going to hurt Willis. Come on, boy, come out of your hole.” Willis barely dilated the sphincter over his speaking diaphragm. “Not hurt Willis?” he said anxiously in Jim’s voice. “Not hurt Willis. Promise.” “Not cut Willis?” “Not cut Willis. Not a bit.” The eyes poked out slowly. Somehow he managed an expression of watchful caution, though he had nothing resembling a face. “That’s better,” said the doctor. “Let’s get to the point, Jim. What makes you think there’s something wrong with this fellow, when he and I can’t see it?” “Well, Doc, it’s the way he behaves. He’s all right indoors, but outdoors, He used to follow me everywhere, bouncing around the landscape, poking his nose into everything.” “He hasn’t got a nose,” Francis commented. “Go to the head of the class. But now, when I take him out, he just goes into a ball and I can’t get a thing out of him. If he’s not sick, why does he act that way?” “I begin to get a glimmering,” Doctor MacRae answered. “How long have you been teamed up with this balloon?” Jim thought back over the twenty-four months of the Martian year. “Since along toward the end of Zeus, nearly November.” “And now here it is the last of March, almost Ceres, and the summer gone. That suggest anything to your mind?” “Uh, no,” “You expect him to go hopping around through the snow? We migrate when it gets cold; he lives here.” Jim’s mouth dropped open. “You mean he’s trying to hibernate?” “What else? Willis’s ancestors have had a good many millions of years to get used to the seasons around here; you can’t expect him to ignore them.” Jim looked worried. “I had planned to take him with me to Syrtis Minor.” “Syrtis Minor? Oh, yes, you go away to school this year, don’t you? You, too, Frank.” “You bet!” “I can’t get used to the way you kids grow up. I came to Mars so that the years would be twice as long, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference, they spin faster.” ‘Say, Doc, how old are you?” inquired Francis. “Never mind. Which one of you is going to study medicine and come back to help me with my practice?” Neither one answered. “Speak up, speak up!” urged the doctor. “What are you going to study?” Jim said, “Well, I don’t know. I’m interested in areography, but I like biology, too. Maybe I’ll be a planetary economist, like my old man.” “That’s a big subject. Ought to keep you busy a long time. You, Frank?” Francis looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, uh, shucks, I still think I’D like to be a rocket pilot.” “I thought you had outgrown that.” “Why not?” Francis answered. “I might make it.” “On your own head be it. Speaking of such things, you younkers go to school before the colony migrates, don’t you?” Since Earth-humans do not hibernate, it was necessary that the colony migrate twice each Martian year. The southern summer was spent at Charax, only thirty degrees from the southern pole; the colony was now about to move to Copais in Utopia, almost as far to the north, there to remain half a Martian year, or almost a full Earth year. There were year-around establishments near the equator, New Shanghai, Marsport, Syrtis Minor, others, but they were not truly colonies, being manned mainly by employees of the Mars Company. By contract and by charter the Company was required to provide advanced terrestrial education on Mars for colonists; it suited the Company to provide it only at Syrtis Minor. “We go next Wednesday,” said Jim, “On the mail scooter.” “So soon?” “Yes, and that’s what worries me about Willis. What ought I to do, Doc?” Willis heard his name and looked inquiringly at Jim. He repeated, in exact imitation of Jim, “What ought I to do, Doc?” “Shut up, Willis.” “Shut up, Willis.” Willis imitated the doctor just as perfectly. “Probably the kindest thing would be to take him out, find him a hole, and stuff him in it. You can renew your acquaintance when he’s through hibernating.” “But, Doc, that means I’ll lose him! He’ll be out long before I’m home from school. Why, he’ll probably wake up even before the colony comes back.” “Probably.” MacRae thought about it. “It won’t hurt him to be on his own again. It’s not a natural life he leads with you, Jim. He’s an individual, you know; he’s not property.” “Of course he’s not! He’s my friend.” “I can’t see,” put in Francis, “Why Jim sets such store by him. Sure, he talks a lot, but most of it is just parrot stuff. He’s a moron, if you ask me.” “Nobody asked you. Willis is fond of me, aren’t you, Willis? Here, come to papa.” Jim spread his arms; the little Martian creature hopped into them and settled in his lap, a warm, furry mass, faintly pulsating. Jim stroked him. “Why don’t you ask one of the Martians?” suggested MacRae. “I tried to, but I couldn’t find one that was in a mood to pay any attention.” “You mean you weren’t willing to wait long enough. A Martian will notice you if you’re patient. Well, why don’t you ask him? He can speak for himself.” “What should I say?” “I’ll try it. Willis!” Willis turned two eyes on the doctor; MacRae went on, “Want to go outdoors and find a place to sleep?” “Willis not sleepy.” “Get sleepy outdoors. Nice and cold, find hole in ground. Curl up and take good long sleep. How about it?” “No!” The doctor had to look sharply to see that it was not Jim who had answered; when Willis spoke for himself he always used Jim’s voice. Willis’s sound diaphragm had no special quality of its own, any more than has the diaphragm of a radio loudspeaker. It was much like a loudspeaker’s diaphragm, save that it was part of a living animal. “That seems definite, but we’ll try it from another angle. Willis, do you want to stay with Jim?” “Willis stay with Jim.” Willis added meditatively, “Warm!” “There’s the key to your charm, Jim,” the doctor said dryly. “He likes your blood temperature. But ipse dixit, keep him with you. I don’t think it will hurt him. He may live fifty years instead of a hundred, but he’ll have twice as much fun.” “Do they normally live to be a hundred?” asked Jim. “Who knows? We haven’t been around this planet long enough to know such things. Now come on, get out. I’ve got work to do.” The doctor eyed his bed thoughtfully. It had not been made in a week; he decided to let it wait until wash day. “What does ipse dixit mean, Doc?” asked Francis. “It means, He sure said a mouthful.” “Doc,” suggested Jim, “Why don’t you have dinner with us tonight. I’ll call mother. You, too, Frank.” “Not me,” Frank said. “I’D better not. My mother says I eat too many meals with you folks.” “My mother, if she were here, would undoubtedly say the same thing,” admitted the doctor. “Call your mother, Jim.” Jim went to the phone, turned out two colonial housewives gossiping about babies, and finally reached his home on an alternate frequency. When his mother’s face appeared on the screen he explained his wish. “Delighted to have the doctor with us,” she said. “Tell him to hurry along, Jimmy.” “Right away, Mom!” Jim switched off and reached for his outdoor suit. “Don’t put it on,” advised MacRae. “It’s too chilly out. We’ll go through the tunnels.” “It’s twice as far,” objected Jim. “We’ll leave it up to Willis. Willis, how do you vote?” “Warm,” said Willis smugly. Areography: equivalent to “Geography” for Earth. From “Ares,” Greek for Mars. Chapter Two. South Colony, Mars. South colony was arranged like a wheel. The administration building was the hub; tunnels ran out in all directions and buildings were placed over them. A rim tunnel had been started to join the spokes at the edge of the wheel; thus far a forty-five degree arc had been completed. Save for three Moon huts erected when the colony was founded and since abandoned, all the buildings were shaped alike. Each was a hemispherical bubble of silicone plastic, processed from the soil of Mars and blown on the spot. Each was a double bubble, in fact; first one large bubble would be blown, say thirty or forty feet across; when it had hardened, the new building would be entered through the tunnel and an inner bubble, slightly smaller than the first, would be blown. The outer bubble “Polymerized”, that is to say, cured and hardened, under the rays of the sun; a battery of ultra-violet and heat lamps cured the inner. The walls were separated by a foot of dead air space, which provided insulation against the bitter subzero nights of Mars. When a new building had hardened, a door would be cut to the outside and a pressure lock installed; the colonials maintained about two-thirds Earth-normal pressure indoors for comfort and the pressure on Mars is never as much as half of that. A visitor from Earth, not conditioned to the planet, will die without a respirator. Among the colonists only Tibetans and Bolivian Indians will venture outdoors without respirators and even they will wear the snug elastic Mars suits to avoid skin hemorrhages. Buildings had not even view windows, any more than a modern building in New York has. The surrounding desert, while beautiful, is monotonous. South Colony was in an area granted by the Martians, just north of the ancient city of Charax, there is no need to give the Martian name since an Earthman can’t pronounce it, and between the legs of the double canal Strymon. Again we follow colonial custom in using the name assigned by the immortal Doctor Percival Lowell. Francis accompanied Jim and Doctor MacRae as far as the junction of the tunnels under city hall, then turned down his own tunnel. A few minutes later the doctor and Jim, and Willis, ascended into the Marlowe home. Jim’s mother met them; Doctor MacRae bowed. “Madame, I am again imposing on your good nature.” “Fiddlesticks, Doctor. You are always welcome at our table.” “I would that I had the character to wish that you were not so superlative a cook, that you might know the certain truth: it is yourself, my dear, that brings me here.” Jim’s mother blushed. She changed the subject. “Jim, hang up your pistol. Don’t leave it on the sofa where Oliver can get it.” Jim’s baby brother, hearing his name, immediately made a dash for the pistol. Jim and his sister Phyllis both saw this, both yelled, “Ollie!”, and were immediately mimicked by Willis, who performed the difficult trick, possible only to an atonal diaphragm, of duplicating both voices simultaneously. Phyllis was nearer; she grabbed the gun and slapped the child’s hands. Oliver began to cry, reinforced by Willis. “Children!” said Missus Marlowe, just as Mister Marlowe appeared in the door. “What’s all the ruckus?” he inquired mildly. Doctor MacRae picked up Oliver, turned him upside down, and sat him on his shoulders. Oliver forgot that he was crying. Missus Marlowe turned to her husband. “Nothing, darling. I’m glad you’re home. Children, go wash for dinner, all of you.” The second generation trooped out. “What was the trouble?” Mister Marlowe repeated. A few moments later Mister Marlowe joined Jim in his son’s room. “Jim?” “Yes, Dad.” “What’s this about your leaving your gun where the baby could reach it?” Jim flushed. “It wasn’t charged, Dad.” “If all the people who had been killed with unloaded guns were laid end to end it would make quite a line up. You are proud of being a licensed gun wearer, aren’t you?” “Uh, yes, sir.” “And I’m proud to have you be one. It means you are a responsible, trusted adult. But when I sponsored you before the Council and stood up with you when you took your oath, I guaranteed that you would obey the regulations and follow the code, wholeheartedly and all the time, not just most of the time. Understand me?” “Yes, sir. I think I do.” “Good. Let’s go in to dinner.” Doctor MacRae dominated the dinner table talk, as he always did, with a soft rumble of salty comments and outrageous observations. Presently he turned to Mister Marlowe and said, “You said something earlier about another twenty years and we could throw away our respirators; tell me: is there news about the Project?” The colony had dozens of projects, all intended to make Mars more livable for human beings, but the Project always meant the atmosphere, or oxygen, project. The pioneers of the Harvard-Carnegie expedition reported Mars suitable for colonization except for the all-important fact that the air was so thin that a normal man would suffocate. However they reported also that many, many billions of tons of oxygen were locked in the Martian desert sands, the red iron oxides that give Mars its ruddy color. The Project proposed to free this oxygen for humans to breathe. “Didn’t you hear the Deimos newscast this afternoon?” Mister Marlowe answered. “Never listen to newscasts. Saves wear and tear on the nervous system.” “No doubt. But this was good news. The pilot plant in Libya is in operation, successful operation. The first day’s run restored nearly four million tons mass of oxygen to the air, and no breakdowns.” Missus Marlowe looked startled. “Four million tons? That seems a tremendous lot.” Her husband grinned. “Any idea how long it would take that one plant at that rate to do the job, that is, increase the oxygen pressure by five mass-pounds per square inch?” “Of course I haven’t. But not very long I should think.” “Let me see, “His lips moved soundlessly. “Uh, around two hundred thousand years, Mars years, of course.” “James, you’re teasing me!” “No, I’m not. Don’t let big figures frighten you, my dear; of course we won’t depend on one plant; they’ll be scattered every fifty miles or so through the desert, a thousand mega-horsepower each. There’s no limit to the power available, thank goodness; if we don’t clean up the job in our lifetimes, at least the kids will certainly see the end of it.” Missus Marlowe looked dreamy. “That would be nice, to walk outside with your bare face in the breeze. I remember when I was a little girl, we had an orchard with a stream running through it,” She stopped. “Sorry we came to Mars, Jane?” her husband asked softly. “Oh, no! This is my home.” “Good. What are you looking sour about, Doctor?” “Eh? Oh, nothing, nothing! I was just thinking about the end result. Mind you, this is fine work, all of it, hard work, good work, that a man can get his teeth into. But we get it done and what for? So that another two billion, three billion sheep can fiddle around with nonsense, spend their time scratching themselves and baaing. We should have left Mars to the Martians. Tell me, sir, do you know what television was used for when it first came out?” “No, how would I?” “Well, I didn’t see it myself of course, but my father told me about it. It seems. ’ “Your father? How old was he? When was he born?” “My grandfather then. Or it may have been my great grandfather. That’s beside the point. They installed the first television sets in cocktail bars, amusement places, and used them to watch wrestling matches.” “What’s a wrestling match?” demanded Phyllis. “An obsolete form of folk dancing,” explained her father. “Never mind. Granting your point, Doctor, I see no harm.” “What’s folk dancing?” persisted Phyllis. “You tell her, Jane. She’s got me stumped.” Jim looked smug. “It’s when folks dance, silly.” “That’s near enough,” agreed his mother. Doctor MacRae stared. “These kids are missing something. I think I’ll organize a square dancing club. I used to be a pretty good caller, once upon a time.” Phyllis turned to her brother. “Now I suppose you’ll tell me that square dancing is when a square dances.” Mister Marlowe raised his eyebrows. “I think the children have all finished, my dear. Couldn’t they be excused?” “Yes, surely. You may leave, my dears. Say Excuse me, please, Ollie.” The baby repeated it, with Willis in mirror chorus. Jim hastily wiped his mouth, grabbed Willis, and headed for his own room. He liked to hear the doctor talk but he had to admit that the old boy could babble the most fantastic nonsense when other grown-ups were around. Nor did the discussion of the oxygen project interest Jim; he saw nothing strange nor uncomfortable about wearing his mask. He would feel undressed going outdoors without it. From Jim’s point of view Mars was all right the way it was, no need to try to make it more like Earth. Earth was no great shakes anyway. His own personal recollection of Earth was limited to vague memories from early childhood of the emigrants’ conditioning station on the high Bolivian plateau, cold, shortness of breath, and great weariness. His sister trailed after him. He stopped just inside his door and said, “What do you want, shorty?” “Well, Lookie, Jimmy, seeing as I’m going to have to take care of Willis after you’ve gone away to school, maybe it would be a good idea for you to sort of explain it to him, so he would do what I tell him without any trouble.” Jim stared. “Whatever gave you the notion I was going to leave him behind?” She stared back. “But you are! You’ll have to. You can’t take him to school. You ask mother.” “Mother hasn’t anything to do with it. She doesn’t care what I take to school.” “Well, you oughtn’t to take him, even if she doesn’t object. I think you’re mean.” “You always think I’m mean if I don’t cater to your every wish!” “Not to me, to Willis. This is Willis’s home; he’s used to it. He’ll be homesick away at school.” “He’ll have me!” “Not most of the time, he won’t. You’ll be in class. Willis wouldn’t have anything to do but sit and mope. You ought to leave him here with me, with us, where he’d be happy.” Jim straightened himself up. “I’m going to find out about this, right away.” He walked back into the living compartment and waited aggressively to be noticed. Shortly his father turned toward him. “Yes? What is it, Jim? Something eating you?” “Uh, well, look, Dad, is there any doubt about Willis going with me when I go away to school?” His father looked surprised. “It had never occurred to me that you would consider taking him.” “Huh? Why not?” “Well, school is hardly the place for him.” “Why?” “Well, you wouldn’t be able to take care of him properly. You’ll be awfully busy.” “Willis doesn’t take much care. Just feed him every month or so and give him a drink about once a week and he doesn’t ask for anything else. Why can’t I take him, Dad?” Mister Marlowe looked baffled; he turned to his wife. She started in, “Now, Jimmy darling, we don’t want you to.” Jim interrupted, “Mother, every time you want to talk me out of something you start out, Jimmy darling!” Her mouth twitched but she kept from smiling. “Sorry, Jim. Perhaps I do. What I was trying to say was this: we want you to get off to a good start at school. I don’t believe that having Willis on your hands will help any.” Jim was stumped for the moment, but was not ready to give up. “Look, Mother. Look, Dad. You both saw the pamphlet the school sent me, telling me what to do and what to bring and when to show up and so forth. If either one of you can find anything anywhere in those instructions that says I can’t take Willis with me, I’ll shut up like a Martian. Is that fair?” Missus Marlowe looked inquiringly at her husband. He looked back at her with the same appeal for help in his expression. He was acutely aware that Doctor MacRae was watching both of them, not saying a word but wearing an expression of sardonic amusement. Mister Marlowe shrugged. “Take Willis along, Jim. But he’s your problem.” Jim’s face broke out in a grin. “Thanks, Dad!” He left the room quickly in order not to give his parents time to change their minds. Mister Marlowe banged his pipe on an ashtray and glowered at Doctor MacRae. “Well, what are you grinning at, you ancient ape? You think I’m too indulgent, don’t you?” “Oh, no, not at all! I think you did perfectly right.” “You think that pet of Jim’s won’t cause him trouble at school?” “On the contrary. I have some familiarity with Willis’s peculiar social habits.” “Then why do you say I did right?” “Why shouldn’t the boy have trouble? Trouble is the normal condition for the human race. We were raised on it. We thrive on it.” “Sometimes, Doctor, I think that you are, as Jim would put it, crazy as a spin bug.” “Probably. But since I am the only medical man around, I am not likely to be committed for it. Missus Marlowe, could you favor an old man with another cup of your delicious coffee?” “Certainly, Doctor.” She poured for him, then went on. “James, I am not sorry you decided to let Jim take Willis. It will be a relief.” “Why, dear? Jim was correct when he said that the little beggar isn’t much trouble.” “Well, he isn’t really. But, I just wish he weren’t so truthful.” “So? I thought he was the perfect witness in settling the children’s squabbles?” “Oh, he is. He’ll play back anything he hears as accurately as a transcriber. That’s the trouble.” She looked upset, then chuckled. “You know Missus Pottle?” “Of course.” The doctor added, “How can one avoid it? I, unhappy man, am in charge of her nerves.” Missus Marlowe asked, “Is she actually sick, Doctor?” “She eats too much and doesn’t work enough. Further communication is forbidden by professional ethics.” “I didn’t know you had any.” “Young lady, show respect for my white hairs. What about this Pottle female?” “Well, Luba Konski had lunch with me last week and we got to talking about Missus Pottle. Honest, James, I didn’t say much and I did not know that Willis was under the table.” “He was?” Mister Marlowe covered his eyes. “Do go on.” “Well, you both remember that the Konskis housed the Pottles at North Colony until a house was built for them. Sarah Pottle has been Luba’s pet hate ever since, and Tuesday Luba was giving me some juicy details on Sarah’s habits at home. Two days later Sarah Pottle stopped by to give me advice on how to bring up children. Something she said triggered Willis, I knew he was in the room but I didn’t think anything of it, and Willis put on just the wrong record and I couldn’t shut him up. I finally carried him out of the room. Missus Pottle left without saying goodbye and I haven’t heard from her since.” “That’s no loss.” her husband commented. ‘True, but it got Luba in Dutch. No one could miss Luba’s accent and Willis does it better than she does herself. I don’t think Luba minds, though, and you should have heard Willis’s playback of Luba’s description of how Sarah Pottle looks in the morning, and what she does about it.” “You should hear,” answered MacRae, “Missus Pottle’s opinions on the servant problem.” “I have. She thinks it’s a scandal that the Company doesn’t import servants for us.” The doctor nodded. “With collars riveted around their necks.” “That woman! I can’t see why she ever became a colonist.” “Didn’t you know?” her husband said. “They came out here expecting to get rich in a hurry.” “Humph!” Doctor MacRae got a far-away look. “Missus Marlowe, speaking as her physician, it might help me to hear what Willis has to say about Missus Pottle. Do you suppose he would recite for us?” “Doctor, you’re an old fraud, with a taste for gossip.” “Granted. I like also eavesdropping.” “You’re shameless.” “Again granted. My nerves are relaxed. I haven’t felt ashamed in years.” “Willis may just give a thrilling account of the children’s chit-chat for the past two weeks.” “Perhaps if you coaxed him?” Missus Marlowe suddenly dimpled. “It won’t hurt to try.” She left the room to fetch Jim’s globular friend. Chapter Three. Gekko. Wednesday morning dawned clear and cold, as mornings have a habit of doing on Mars. The Suttons and the Marlowes, minus Oliver, were gathered at the Colony’s cargo dock on the west leg of Strymon canal, ready to see the boys off. The temperature was rising and the dawn wind was blowing firmly, but it was still at least thirty below. Strymon canal was a steel-blue, hard sheet of ice and would not melt today in this latitude. Resting on it beside the dock was the mail scooter from Syrtis Minor, its boat body supported by razor-edged runners. The driver was still loading it with cargo dragged from the warehouse on the dock. The tiger stripes on Jim’s mask, the war paint on Frank’s, and a rainbow motif on Phyllis’s made the young people easy to identify. The adults could be told apart only by size, shape, and manner; there were two extras, Doctor MacRae and Father Cleary. The priest was talking in low, earnest tones to Frank. He turned presently and spoke to Jim. “Your own pastor asked me to say good-bye to you, son. Unfortunately the poor man is laid up with a touch of Mars throat. He would have come anyhow had I not hidden his mask.” The Protestant chaplain, as well as the priest, was a bachelor; the two shared a house. “Is he very sick?” asked Jim. “Not that sick. But take his blessing, and mine too.” He offered his hand. Jim dropped his travel bag, shifted his ice skates and Willis over to his left arm and shook hands. There followed an awkward silence. Finally Jim said, “Why don’t you all go inside before you freeze to death?” “Yeah,” agreed Francis. “That’s a good idea.” “I think the driver is about ready now,” Mister Marlowe countered. “Well, son, take care of yourself. We’ll see you at migration.” He shook hands solemnly. “So long, Dad.” Missus Marlowe put her arms around him, pressed her mask against his and said, “Oh, my little boy, you’re too young to go away from home!” “Oh, Mother, please!” But he hugged her. Then Phyllis had to be hugged. The driver called out: “Board!” ”Bye everybody!” Jim turned away, felt his elbow caught. It was the doctor. “Take care of yourself, Jim. And don’t take any gruff off of anybody.” “Thanks, Doc,” Jim turned and presented his school authorization to the driver while the doctor bade Francis good-bye. The driver looked it over. “Both deadheads, eh? Well, seeing as how there aren’t any pay passengers this morning you can ride in the observatory.” He tore off his copy; Jim climbed inside and went up to the prized observation seats behind and above the driver’s compartment. Frank joined him. The craft trembled as the driver jacked the runners loose from the ice, then with a roar from the turbine and a soft, easy surge the car got under way. The banks flowed past them and melted into featureless walls as the speed picked up. The ice was mirror smooth; they soon reached cruising speed of better than two hundred fifty miles per hour. Presently the driver removed his mask; Jim and Frank, seeing him, did likewise. The car was pressurized now by an air ram faced into their own wind of motion; it was much warmer, too, from the air’s compression. “Isn’t this swell?” said Francis. “Yes. Look at Earth.” Their mother planet was riding high above the Sun in the north eastern sky. It blazed green against a deep purple background. Close to it, but easy to separate with the naked eye, was a lesser, pure white star, Luna, Earth’s moon. Due north of them, in the direction they were going, Deimos, Mars’ outer moon, hung no more than twenty degrees above the horizon. Almost lost in the rays of the sun, it was a tiny pale disc, hardly more than a dim star and much outshone by Earth. Phobos, the inner moon, was not in sight. At the latitude of Charax it never rose more than eight degrees or so above the northern horizon and that for an hour or less, twice a day. In the daytime it was lost in the blue of the horizon and no one would be so foolhardy as to watch for it in the bitter night. Jim did not remember ever having seen it except during migration between colonies. Francis looked from Earth to Deimos. “Ask the driver to turn on the radio,” he suggested. “Deimos is up.” “Who cares about the broadcast?” Jim answered. “I want to watch.” The banks were not so high now; from the observation dome he could see over them into the fields beyond. Although it was late in the season the irrigated belt near the canal was still green and getting greener as he watched, as the plants came out of the ground to seek the morning sunlight. He could make out, miles away, an occasional ruddy sand dune of the open desert. He could not see the green belt of the east leg of their canal; it was over the horizon. Without urging, the driver switched on his radio; music filled the car and blotted out the monotonous low roar of the turbo-jet. It was terrestrial music, by Sibelius, a classical composer of another century. Mars colony had not yet found time to develop its own arts and still borrowed its culture. But neither Jim nor Frank knew who the composer was, nor cared. The banks of the canal had closed in again; there was nothing to see but the straight ribbon of ice; they settled back and day-dreamed. Willis stirred for the first time since he had struck the outer cold. He extended his eye stalks, looked inquiringly around, then commenced to beat time with them. Presently the music stopped and a voice said: “This is station D-M-S, the Mars Company, Deimos, circum Mars. We bring you now by relay from Syrtis Minor a program in the public interest. Doctor Graves Armbruster will speak on Ecological Considerations involved in Experimental Artificial Symbiotics as related to.” The driver promptly switched the radio off. “I would like to have heard that,” objected Jim. “It sounded interesting.” “Oh, you’re just showing off,” Frank answered. “You don’t even know what those words mean.” “The dickens I don’t. It means.” “Shut up and take a nap.” Taking his own advice Frank lay back and closed his eyes. However he got no chance to sleep. Willis had apparently been chewing over, in whatever it was he used for a mind, the programme he had just heard. He opened up and started to play it back, woodwinds and all. The driver looked back and up, looked startled. He said something but Willis drowned him out. Willis bulled on through to the end, even to the broken-off announcement. The driver finally made himself heard. “Hey, you guys! What you got up there? A portable recorder?” “No, a bouncer.” “A what?” Jim held Willis up so that the driver could see him. “A bouncer. His name is Willis.” The driver stared. “You mean that thing is a recorder?” “No, he’s a bouncer. As I said, his name is Willis.” ‘This I got to see,” announced the driver. He did something at his control board, then turned around and stuck his head and shoulders up into the observation dome. Frank said, “Hey! You’ll wreck us.” “Relax,” advised the driver. “I put her on echo-automatic. High banks for the next couple o’ hundred miles. Now what is this gismo? When you brought it aboard I thought it was a volley ball.” “No, it’s Willis. Say hello to the man, Willis.” “Hello, man,” Willis answered agreeably. The driver scratched his head. “This beats anything I ever saw in Keokuk. Sort of a parrot, eh?” “He’s a bouncer. He’s got a scientific name, but it just means Martian roundhead. Never seen one before?” “No, you know, bud, this is the screwiest planet in the whole system.” “If you don’t like it here,” asked Jim, “Why don’t you go back where you came from?” “Don’t go popping off, youngster. How much will you take for the gismo? I got an idea I could use him.” “Sell Willis? Are you crazy?” “Sometimes I think so. Oh, well, it was just an idea.” The driver went back to his station, stopping once to look back and stare at Willis. The boys dug sandwiches out of their travel bags and munched them. After that Frank’s notion about a nap seemed a good idea. They slept until wakened by the car slowing down. Jim sat up, blinked and called down, “What’s up?” “Coming into Cynia Station,” the driver answered. “Lay over until sundown.” “Won’t the ice hold?” “Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. The temperature’s up and I’m not going to chance it.” The car slid softly to a stop, then started again and crawled slowly up a low ramp, stopped again. “All out!” the driver called. “Be back by sundown, or get left.” He climbed out; the boys followed. Cynia Station was three miles west of the ancient city of Cynia, where west Strymon joins the canal Oeroe. It was merely a lunchroom, a bunkhouse, and a row of pre-fab warehouses. To the east the feathery towers of Cynia gleamed in the sky, seemed almost to float, too beautifully unreal to be solid. The driver went into the little inn. Jim wanted to walk over and explore the city; Frank favoured stopping in the restaurant first. Frank won out. They went inside and cautiously invested part of their meagre capital in coffee and some indifferent soup. The driver looked up from his dinner presently and said, “Hey, George! Ever see anything like that?” He pointed to Willis. George was the waiter. He was also the cashier, the hotel keeper, the station agent, and the Company representative. He glanced at Willis. “Yep.” “You did, huh? Where? Do you suppose I could find one?” “Doubt it. You see “Em sometimes, hanging around the Martians. Not many of “Em.” He turned back to his reading, a New York Times, more than two years old. The boys finished, paid their bills, and prepared to go outside. The cook-waiter-station-agent said, “Hold on. Where are you kids going?” “Syrtis Minor.” “Not that. Where are you going right now? Why don’t you wait in the dormitory? Take a nap if you like.” “We thought we would kind of explore around outside,” explained Jim. “Okay. But stay away from the city.” “Why?” “Because the Company doesn’t allow it, that’s why. Not without permission. So stay clear of it.” “How do we get permission?” Jim persisted. “You can’t. Cynia hasn’t been opened up to exploitation yet.” He went back to his reading. Jim was about to continue the matter but Frank tugged at his sleeve. They went outside together. Jim said, “I don’t think he has any business telling us we can’t go to Cynia.” “What’s the difference? He thinks he has.” “What’ll we do now?” “Go to Cynia, of course. Only we won’t consult his nibs.” “Suppose he catches us?” “How can he? He won’t stir off that stool he’s warming. Come on.” “Okay.” They set out to the east. The going was not too easy; there was no road of any sort and all the plant growth bordering the canal was spread out to its greatest extent to catch the rays of the midday sun. But Mars’ low gravity makes walking easy work even over rough ground. They came shortly to the bank of Oeroe and followed it to the right, toward the city. The way was easy along the smooth stone of the bank. The air was warm and balmy even though the surface of the canal was still partly frozen. The sun was high; they were the better part of a thousand miles closer to the equator than they had been at daybreak. “Warm,” said Willis. “Willis want down.” “Okay,” Jim agreed, “But don’t fall in.” “Willis not fall in.” Jim put him down and the little creature went skipping and rolling along the bank, with occasional excursions into the thick vegetation, like a puppy exploring a new pasture. They had gone perhaps a mile and the towers of the city were higher in the sky when they encountered a Martian. He was a small specimen of his sort, being not over twelve feet tall. He was standing quite still, all three of his legs down, apparently lost in contemplation of the whichness of what. The eye facing them stared unblinkingly. Jim and Frank were, of course, used to Martians and recognized that this one was busy in his “Other world”; they stopped talking and continued on past him, being careful not to brush against his legs. Not so Willis. He went darting around the Martian’s peds, rubbing against them, then stopped and let out a couple of mournful croaks. The Martian stirred, looked around him, and suddenly bent and scooped Willis up. “Hey!” yelled Jim. “Put him down!” No answer. Jim turned hastily to Frank. “You talk to him, Frank. I’ll never be able to make him understand me. Please!” Of the Martian dominant language Jim understood little and spoke less. Frank was somewhat better, but only by comparison. Those who speak Martian complain that it hurts their throats. “What’ll I say?” “Tell him to put Willis down!” “Relax. Martians never hurt anybody.” “Well, tell him to put Willis down, then.” “I’ll try.” Frank screwed up his mouth and got to work. His accent, bad at best, was made worse by the respirator and by nervousness. Nevertheless he clucked and croaked his way through a phrase that seemed to mean what Jim wanted. Nothing happened. He tried again, using a different idiom; still nothing happened. “It’s no good, Jim,” he admitted. “Either he doesn’t understand me or he doesn’t want to bother to listen.” Jim shouted, “Willis! Hey, Willis! Are you all right?” “Willis fine!” “Jump down! I’ll catch you.” “Willis fine.” The Martian wobbled his head, seemed to locate Jim for the first time. He cradled Willis in one arm; his other two arms came snaking suddenly down and enclosed Jim, one palm flap cradling him where he sat down, the other slapping him across the belly. He felt himself lifted and held and then he was staring into a large liquid Martian eye which stared back at him. The Martian “Man” rocked his head back and forth and let each of his eyes have a good look. It was the closest Jim had ever been to a Martian; he did not care for it. Jim tried to wiggle away, but the fragile appearing Martian was stronger than he was. Suddenly the Martian’s voice boomed out from the top of his head. Jim could not understand what was being said although he spotted the question symbol at the beginning of the phrase. But the Martian’s voice had a strange effect on him. Croaking and uncouth though it was, it was filled with such warmth and sympathy and friendliness that the native no longer frightened him. Instead he seemed like an old and trusted friend. The Martian repeated the question. “What did he say, Frank?” “I didn’t get it. He’s friendly but I can’t understand him.” The Martian spoke again; Frank listened. “He’s inviting you to go with him, I think.” Jim hesitated a split second. “Tell him okay.” “Jim, are you crazy?” “It’s all right. He means well. I’m sure of it.” “Well, all right.” Frank croaked the phrase of assent. The native gathered up one leg and strode rapidly away toward the city. Frank trotted after. He tried his best to keep up, but the pace was too much for him. He paused, gasping, then shouted, “Wait for me,” his voice muffled by his mask. Jim tried to phrase a demand to stop, gave up, then got an inspiration. “Say, Willis, Willis boy. Tell him to wait for Frank.” “Wait for Frank?” Willis said doubtfully. “Yes. Wait for Frank.” “Okay.” Willis hooted at his new friend; the Martian paused and dropped his third leg. Frank came puffing up. The Martian removed one arm from Jim and scooped up Frank with it. “Hey!” Frank protested. “Cut it out.” “Take it easy,” advised Jim. “But I don’t want to be carried.” Frank’s reply was disturbed by the Martian starting up again. Thus burdened, he shifted to a three-legged gait in which at least two legs were always on the ground. It was bumpy but surprisingly fast. “Where do you suppose he is taking us?” asked Jim. “To the city I guess.” Frank added, “We don’t want to miss the scooter.” “We’ve got hours yet. Quit worrying.” The Martian said nothing more but continued slogging toward Cynia. Willis was evidently as happy as a bee in a flower shop. Jim settled down to enjoying the ride. Now that he was being carried with his head a good ten feet above ground his view was much improved; he could see over the tops of the plants growing by the canal and beyond them to the iridescent towers of Cynia. The towers were not like those of Charax; no two Martian cities looked alike. It was as if each were a unique work of art, each expressing the thoughts of a different artist. Jim wondered why the towers had been built, what they were good for, how old they were. The canal crops spread out around them, a dark green sea in which the Martian waded waist deep. The broad leaves were spread flat to the sun’s rays, reaching greedily for life-giving radiant energy. They curled aside as the native’s body brushed them, to spread again as he passed. The towers grew much closer; suddenly the Martian stopped and set the two boys down. He continued to carry Willis. Ahead of them, almost concealed by overhanging greenery, a ramp slanted down into the ground and entered a tunnel arch. Jim looked at it and said, “Frank, what do you think?” “Gee, I don’t know.” The boys had been inside the cities of Charax and Copais, but only in the abandoned parts and at ground level. They were not allowed time to fret over their decision; their guide started down the slope at a good clip. Jim ran after him, shouting, “Hey, Willis!” The Martian stopped and exchanged a couple of remarks with Willis; the bouncer called out, “Jim wait.” ‘Tell him to put you down.” “Willis fine. Jim wait.” The Martian started up again at a pace that Jim could not possibly match. Jim went disconsolately back to the start of the ramp and sat down on the ledge thereof. “What are you going to do?” demanded Frank. “Wait, I suppose. What else can I do? What are you going to do?” “Oh, I’ll stick. But I’m not going to miss the scooter.” “Well, neither am I. We couldn’t stay here after sundown anyhow.” The precipitous drop in temperature at sunset on Mars is almost all the weather there is, but it means death by freezing for an Earth human unless he is specially clothed and continuously exercising. They sat and waited and watched spin bugs skitter past. One stopped by Jim’s knee, a little tripod of a creature, less than an inch high; it appeared to study him. He touched it; it flung out its limbs and whirled away. The boys were not even alert, since a water-seeker will not come close to a Martian settlement; they simply waited. Perhaps a half hour later the Martian, or, at least, a Martian of the same size, came back. He did not have Willis with him. Jim’s face fell. But the Martian said, “Come with me,” in his own tongue, prefacing the remark with the question symbol. “Do we or don’t we?” asked Frank. “We do. Tell him so.” Frank complied. The three started down. The Martian laid a great hand flap on the shoulders of each boy and herded him along. Shortly he stopped and picked them up. This time they made no objection. The tunnel seemed to remain in full daylight even after they had penetrated several hundred yards underground. The light came from everywhere but especially from the ceiling. The tunnel was large by human standards but no more than comfortably roomy for Martians. They passed several other natives; if another was moving their host always boomed a greeting, but if he was frozen in the characteristic trance-like immobility no sound was made. Once their guide stepped over a ball about three feet in diameter. Jim could not make out what it was at first, then he did a double-take and was still more puzzled. He twisted his neck and looked back at it. It couldn’t be, but it was! He was gazing at something few humans ever see, and no human ever wants to see: a Martian folded and rolled into a ball, his hand flaps covering everything but his curved back. Martians, modern, civilized Martians, do not hibernate, but at some time remote eons in the past their ancestors must have done so, for they are still articulated so that they can assume the proper, heat-conserving, moisture-conserving globular shape, if they wish. They hardly ever so wish. For a Martian to roll up is the moral equivalent of an Earthly duel to the death and is resorted to only when that Martian is offended so completely that nothing less will suffice. It means: I cast you out, I leave your world, I deny your existence. The first pioneers on Mars did not understand this, and, through ignorance of Martian values, offended more than once. This delayed human colonization of Mars by many years; it took the most skilled diplomats and semanticians of Earth to repair the unwitting harm. Jim stared unbelievingly at the withdrawn Martian and wondered what could possibly have caused him to do that to an entire city. He remembered a grisly tale told him by Doctor MacRae concerning the second expedition to Mars. “So this dumb fool,” the doctor had said, “A medical lieutenant he was, though I hate to admit it, this idiot grabs hold of the beggar’s flaps and tries to unroll him. Then it happened.” “What happened?” Jim had demanded. “He disappeared.” “The Martian?” “No, the medical officer.” “Huh? How did he disappear?” “Don’t ask me; I didn’t see it. The witnesses, four of “Em, with sworn statements, say there he was and then there he wasn’t. As if he had met a boojum.” “What’s a boojum?” Jim had wanted to know. “You modern kids don’t get any education, do you? The boojum is in a book; I’ll dig up a copy for you.” “But how did he disappear?” “Don’t ask me. Call it mass hypnosis if it makes you feel any better. It makes me feel better, but not much. All I can say is that seven-eighths of an iceberg never shows.” Jim had never seen an iceberg, so the allusion was wasted on him, but he felt decidedly not better when he saw the rolled up Martian. “Did you see that?” demanded Frank. “I wish I hadn’t,” said Jim. “I wonder what happened?” “Maybe he ran for mayor and lost.” “It’s nothing to joke about. Maybe he, Sssh!” Jim broke off. He caught sight of another Martian, immobile, but not rolled up; politeness called for silence. The Martian carrying them made a sudden turn to the left and entered a hall; he put them down. The room was very large to them; to Martians it was probably suitable for a cozy social gathering. There were many of the frames they use as a human uses a chair and these were arranged in a circle. The room itself was circular and domed; it had the appearance of being outdoors for the domed ceiling simulated Martian sky, pale blue at the horizon, increasing to warmer blue, then to purple, and reaching purple-black with stars piercing through at the highest point of the ceiling. A miniature sun, quite convincing, hung west of the meridian. By some trick of perspective the pictured horizons were apparently distant. On the north wall Oeroe seemed to flow past. Frank’s comment was, “Gee whiz!” Jim did not manage that much. Their host had placed them by two resting frames. The boys did not attempt to use them; stepladders would have been more comfortable and convenient. The Martian looked first at them, then at the frames, with great sorrowful eyes. He left the room. He came back very shortly, followed by two others; all three were carrying loads of colourful fabrics. They dumped them down in a pile in the middle of the room. The first Martian picked up Jim and Frank and deposited them gently on the heap. “I think he means, Draw up a chair,” commented Jim. The fabrics were not woven but were a continuous sheet, like cobweb, and almost as soft, though much stronger. They were in all hues of all colours from pastel blue to deep, rich red. The boys sprawled on them and waited. Their host relaxed himself on one of the resting frames; the two others did the same. No one said anything. The two boys were decidedly not tourists; they knew better than to try to hurry a Martian. After a bit Jim got an idea; to test it he cautiously raised his mask. Frank snapped, “Say! What “Cha trying to do? Choke to death?” Jim left his mask up. “It’s all right. The pressure is up.” “It can’t be. We didn’t come through a pressure lock.” “Have it your own way.” Jim left his mask up. Seeing that he did not turn blue, gasp, nor become slack-featured, Frank ventured to try it himself. He found himself able to breathe without trouble. To be sure, the pressure was not as great as he was used to at home and it would have seemed positively stratospheric to an Earthling, but it was enough for a man at rest. Several other Martians drifted in and unhurriedly composed themselves on frames. After a while Frank said, “Do you know what’s going on, Jim?” “Uh, maybe.” “No maybes about it. It’s a growing-together.” “Growing together’ is an imperfect translation of a Martian idiom which names their most usual social event, in bald terms, just sitting around and saying nothing. In similar terms, violin music has been described as dragging a horse’s tail across the dried gut of a cat. “I guess you’re right,” agreed Jim. “We had better button our lips.” “Sure.” For a long time nothing was said. Jim’s thoughts drifted away, to school and what he would do there, to his family, to things in the past. He came back presently to personal self-awareness and realized that he was happier than he had been in a long time, with no particular reason that he could place. It was a quiet happiness; he felt no desire to laugh nor even to smile, but he was perfectly relaxed and content. He was acutely aware of the presence of the Martians, of each individual Martian, and was becoming even more aware of them with each drifting minute. He had never noticed before how beautiful they were. “Ugly as a native’ was a common phrase with the colonials; Jim recalled with surprise that he had even used it himself, and wondered why he ever had done so. He was aware, too, of Frank beside him and thought about how much he liked him. Staunch, that was the word for Frank, a good man to have at your back. He wondered why he had never told Frank that he liked him. Mildly he missed Willis, but he was not worried about him. This sort of a party was not Willis’s dish; Willis liked things noisy, boisterous, and unrefined. Jim put aside the thought of Willis, lay back, and soaked in the joy of living. He noted with delight that the unknown artist who had designed this room had arranged for the miniature sun to move across the ceiling just as the true Sun moved across the sky. He watched it travel to the west and presently begin to drop toward the pictured horizon. There came a gentle booming behind him, he could not catch the words, and another Martian answered. One of them unfolded himself from his resting stand and ambled out of the room. Frank sat up and said, “I must have been dreaming.” “Did you go to sleep?” asked Jim. “I didn’t.” “The heck you didn’t. You snored like Doc MacRae.” “Why, I wasn’t even asleep.” “Says you!” The Martian who had left the room returned. Jim was sure it was the same one; they no longer looked alike to him. He was carrying a drinking vase. Frank’s eyes bulged out. “Do you suppose they are going to serve us water?” “Looks like,” Jim answered in an awed voice. Frank shook his head. “We might as well keep this to ourselves; nobody’ll ever believe us.” “You’re right.” The ceremony began. The Martian with the vase announced his own name, barely touched the stem of the vase and passed it on. The next Martian gave his name and also simulated drinking. Around the circle it came. The Martian who had brought them in, Jim learned, was named “Gekko”; it seemed a pretty name to Jim and fitting. At last the vase came around to Jim; a Martian handed it to him with the wish, “May you never suffer thirst.” The words were quite clear to him. There was an answering chorus around him: “May you drink deep whenever you wish!” Jim took the vase and reflected that Doc said that the Martians didn’t have anything that was catching for humans. “Jim Marlowe!” he announced, placed the stem in his mouth and took a sip. As he handed it back he dug into his imperfect knowledge of the dominant language, concentrated on his accent and managed to say, “May water ever be pure and plentiful for you.” There was an approving murmur that warmed him. The Martian handed the vase to Frank. With the ceremony over the party broke up in noisy, almost human chatter. Jim was trying vainly to follow what was being said to him by a Martian nearly three times his height when Frank said, “Jim! You see that sun? We’re going to miss the scooter!” “Huh? That’s not the real Sun; that’s a toy.” “No, but it matches the real Sun. My watch says the same thing.” “Oh, for Pete’s sake! Where’s Willis? Gekko, where’s Gekko?” Gekko, on hearing his name, came over; he clucked inquiringly at Jim. Jim tried very hard to explain their trouble, tripped over syntax, used the wrong directive symbols, lost his accent entirely. Frank shoved him aside and took over. Presently Frank said, “They’ll get us there before sunset, but Willis stays here.” “Huh? They can’t do that!” “That’s what the man says.” Jim thought. “Tell them to bring Willis here and ask him.” Gekko was willing to do that. Willis was carried in, placed upon the floor. He waddled up to Jim and said, “Hi, Jim boy! Hi, Frank boy!” “Willis,” said Jim earnestly, “Jim is going away. Willis come with Jim?” Willis seemed puzzled. “Stay here. Jim stay here. Willis stay here. Good.” “Willis,” Jim said frantically, “Jim has got to go away. Willis come with Jim?” “Jim go?” “Jim go.” Willis almost seemed to shrug. “Willis go with Jim,” he said sadly. ‘Tell Gekko.” Willis did so. The Martian seemed surprised, but there was no further argument. He gathered up both boys and the bouncer and started for the door. Another larger Martian , tagged “G’Kuro’ Jim recalled, relieved Gekko of Frank and tailed along behind. As they climbed the tunnel Jim found suddenly that he needed his mask; Frank put his on, too. The withdrawn Martian was still cluttering the passageway; both their porters stepped over him without comment. The sun was very low when they got to the surface. Although a Martian cannot be hastened, his normal pace makes very good time; the long-legged pair made nothing of the three miles back to Cynia Station. The sun had just reached the horizon and the air was already bitter when the boys and Willis were dumped on the dock. The two Martians left at once, hurrying back to the warmth of their city. “Good-bye, Gekko!” Jim shouted. “Good-bye, G’Kuro!” The driver and the station master were standing on the dock; it was evident that the driver was ready to start and had been missing his passengers. “What in the world?” said the station master. “We’re ready to go,” said Jim. “So I see,” said the driver. He stared at the retreating figures. He blinked and turned to the agent. “We should have left that stuff alone, George. I’m seeing things.” He added to the boys, “Well, get aboard.” They did so and climbed up to the dome. The car clumped down off the ramp to the surface of the ice, turned left onto Oeroe canal and picked up speed. The Sun dropped behind the horizon; the landscape was briefly illuminated by the short Martian sunset. On each bank the boys could see the plants withdrawing for the night. In a few minutes the ground, so lush with vegetation a half hour before, was bare as the true desert. The stars were out, sharp and dazzling. Soft curtains of aurora hung over the skyline. In the west a tiny steady light rose and fought its way upwards against the motion of the stars. “There’s Phobos,” said Frank. “Look!” “I see it,” Jim answered. “It’s cold. Let’s turn in.” “Okay. I’m hungry.” “I’ve got some sandwiches left.” They munched one each, then went down into the lower compartment and crawled into bunks. In time the car passed the city Hesperidum and turned west-northwest onto the canal Erymanthus, but Jim was unaware of it; Jim was dreaming that Willis and he were singing a duet for the benefit of amazed Martians. “All out! End of the line!” The driver was prodding them. “Huh?” “Up you come, shipmate. This is it, Syrtis Minor.” Chapter Four. Lowell Academy. Dear Mother and Dad, The reason I didn’t phone you when we got in Wednesday night was that we didn’t get in until Thursday morning. When I tried to phone on Thursday the operator told me that Deimos had set for South Colony and then I knew it would be about three days until I could relay a call through Deimos and a letter would get there sooner and save you four and a half credits on a collect phone call. Heinlein Index: https://rumble.com/v406mdz-index-of-robert-heinlein-audiobooks..html

Rocket Ship Galileo. Robert Anson Heinlein. Reformatted from a scan, 2023. Contents Chapter 1, “LET THE ROCKET ROAR” Chapter 2, A MAN-SIZED CHALLENGE Chapter 3, CUT -RATE COLUMBUS Chapter 4, THE BLOOD OF PIONEERS Chapter 5, GROWING PAINS Chapter 6, DANGER IN THE DESERT Chapter 7, “WE’LL GO IF WE HAVE TO WALK” Chapter 8, SKYWARD! Chapter 9, INTO THE LONE LYDEPTHS Chapter 10, THE METHOD OF SCIENCE Chapter 11, ONE ATOM WAR TOO MANY? Chapter 12, THE BARE BONE S Chapter 13, SOME BODY IS NUTS! Chapter 14, NO CHANCE A TALL! Chapter 15, WHAT POSSIBLE REAS ON? Chapter 16, THE SECRET BEHIND THE MOON Chapter 17, UNTIL WE ROT Chapter 18, TOO LITTLE TIME Chapter 19, SQUEEZE PLAY Chapter One. LET THE ROCKET ROAR. “Everybody all set?” Young Ross Jenkins glanced nervously at his two chums. “How about your camera, Art? You sure you got the lens cover off this time?” The three boys were huddled against a thick concrete wall, higher than their heads and about ten feet long. It separated them from a steel stand, anchored to the ground, to which was bolted a black metal shape, a pointed projectile, venomous in appearance and an ugly rocket. There were fittings on each side to which stub wings might be attached, but the fittings were empty; the creature was chained down for scientific examination. “How about it, Art?” Ross repeated. The boy addressed straightened up to his full five feet three and faced him. “Look,” Art Mueller answered, “of course I took the cover off, it’s on my check-off list. You worry about your rocket, last time it didn’t fire at all and I wasted twenty feet of film.” “But you forgot it once, okay, how about your lights?” For answer Art switched on his spot lights; the beams shot straight up, bounced against highly polished stainless-steel mirrors and brilliantly illuminated the model rocket and the framework which would keep it from taking off during the test. A third boy, Maurice Abrams, peered at the scene through a periscope which allowed them to look over the reinforced concrete wall which shielded them from the rocket test stand. “Pretty as a picture,” he announced, excitement in his voice. “Ross, do you really think this fuel mix is what we’re looking for?” Ross shrugged, “I don’t know. The lab tests looked good, we’ll soon know. All right, places everybody! Check-off lists, Art?” “Complete.” “Morrie?” “Complete.” “And mine’s complete. Stand by! I’m going to start the clock. Here goes!” He started checking off the seconds until the rocket was fired. “Minus ten, minus nine, minus eight, minus seven, minus six, minus five, minus four.” Art wet his lips and started his camera. “Minus three! Minus two! Minus one! Contact!” “Let it roar!” Morrie yelled, his voice already drowned by the ear-splitting noise of the escaping rocket gas. A great plume of black smoke surged out the orifice of the thundering rocket when it was first fired, billowed against an earth ramp set twenty feet behind the rocket test stand and filled the little clearing with choking fumes. Ross shook his head in dissatisfaction at this and made an adjustment in the controls under his hand. The smoke cleared away; through the periscope in front of him he could see the rocket exhaust on the other side of the concrete barricade. The flame had cleared of the wasteful smoke and was almost transparent, save for occasional sparks. He could actually see trees and ground through the jet of flame. The images shimmered and shook but the exhaust gases were smoke-free. “What does the dynamometer read?” he shouted to Morrie without taking his eyes away from the periscope. Morrie studied the instrument, rigged to the test stand itself, by means of a pair of opera glasses and his own periscope. “I can’t read it!” he shouted. “Yes, I can, wait a minute. Fifty-two, no, make it a hundred and fifty-two; it’s second time around. Hunder’ fiftytwo, fif-three, four. Ross, you’ve done it! You’ve done it! That’s more than twice as much thrust as the best we’ve ever had.” Art looked up from where he was nursing his motion-picture camera. It was a commercial 8-millimeter job, modified by him to permit the use of more film so that every second of a test could be recorded. The modification worked, but was cantankerous and had to be nursed along. “How much more time?,” he demanded. “Seventeen seconds,” Ross yelled at him. “Stand by, I’m going to give her the works.” He twisted his throttle-monitor valve to the right, wide open. The rocket responded by raising its voice from a deep-throated roar to a higher pitch with an angry overtone almost out of the audible range. It spoke with snarling menace. Ross looked up to see Morrie back away from his periscope and climb on a box, opera glasses in hand. “Morrie-get your head down!” The boy did not hear him against the scream of the jet, intent as he was on getting a better view of the rocket. Ross jumped away from the controls and dived at him, tackling him around the waist and dragging him down behind the safety of the barricade. They hit the ground together rather heavily and struggled there. It was not a real fight; Ross was angry, though not fighting mad, while Morrie was merely surprised. “What’s the idea?,” he protested, when he caught his breath. “You crazy idiot!” Ross grunted in his ear. “What were you trying to do? Get your head blown off?” “But I wasn’t.” But Ross was already clambering to his feet and returning to his place at the controls; Morrie’s explanation, if any, was lost in the roar of the rocket. “What goes on?” Art yelled. He had not left his place by his beloved camera, not only from a sense of duty but at least partly from indecision as to which side of the battle he should join. Ross heard his shout and turned to speak. “This goon,” he yelled bitterly, jerking a thumb at Morrie, “tried to.” Ross’s version of the incident was lost; the snarling voice of the rocket suddenly changed pitch, then lost itself in a boneshaking explosion. At the same time there was a dazzling flash which would have blinded the boys had they not been protected by the barricade, but which nevertheless picked out every detail of the clearing in the trees with brilliance that numbed the eyes. They were still blinking at the memory of the ghastly light when billowing clouds of smoke welled up from beyond the barricade, surrounded them, and made them cough. “Well,” Ross said bitterly and looked directly at Morrie, “that’s the last of the Starstruck Five.” “Look, Ross,” Morrie protested, his voice sounding shrill in the strange new stillness, “I didn’t do it. I was only trying to.” “I didn’t say you did,” Ross cut him short. “I know you didn’t do it. I had already made my last adjustment. She was on her own and she couldn’t take it. Forget it. But keep your head down after this-you darn near lost it. That’s what the barricade is for.” “But I wasn’t going to stick my head up. I was just going to try.” “Both of you forget it,” Art butted in. “So we blew up another one. So what? We’ll build another one. Whatever happened, I got it right here in the can.” He patted his camera. “Let’s take a look at the wreck.” He started to head around the end of the barricade. “Wait a minute,” Ross commanded. He took a careful look through his periscope, then announced: “Seems okay. Both fuel chambers are split. There can’t be any real danger now. Don’t burn yourselves. Come on.” They followed him around to the test stand. The rocket itself was a complete wreck but the test stand was undamaged; it was built to take such punishment. Art turned his attention to the dynamometer which measured the thrust generated by the rocket. “I’ll have to recalibrate this,” he announced. “The loop isn’t hurt, but the dial and the rack-and-pinion are shot.” The other two boys did not answer him; they were busy with the rocket itself. The combustion chamber was split wide open and it was evident that pieces were missing. “How about it, Ross?” Morrie inquired. “Do you figure it was the metering pump going haywire, or was the soup just too hot for it?” “Hard to tell,” Ross mused absently. “I don’t think it was the pump. The pump might jam and refuse to deliver fuel at all, but I don’t see how it could deliver too much fuel unless it reared back and passed a miracle.” “Then it must have been the combustion chamber. The throat is all right. It isn’t even pitted much,” he added as he peered at it in the gathering twilight. “Maybe. Well, let’s throw a tarp over it and look it over tomorrow morning. Can’t see anything now. Come on, Art.” “Okay. Just a sec while I get my camera.” He detached his camera from its bracket and placed it in its carrying case, then helped the other two drag canvas tarpaulins over all the test gear-one for the test stand, one for the barricade with its controls, instruments, and periscopes. Then the three turned away and headed out of the clearing. The clearing was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, placed there at the insistence of Ross’s parents, to whom the land belonged, in order to keep creatures, both four-legged and two legged, from wandering into the line of fire while the boys were experimenting. The gate in this fence was directly behind the barricade and about fifty feet from it. They had had no occasion to glance in the direction of the gate since the beginning of the test run-indeed, their attentions had been so heavily on the rocket that anything less than an earthquake would hardly have disturbed them. Ross and Morrie were a little in front with Art close at their heels, so close that, when they stopped suddenly, he stumbled over them and almost dropped his camera. “Hey, watch where you’re going, can’t you?” he protested. “Pick up your big feet!” They did not answer but stood still, staring ahead and at the ground. “What gives?” he went on. “Why the trance? Why do-oh!” He had seen it too. “It” was the body of a large man, crumpled on the ground, half in and half out the gate. There was a bloody wound on his head and blood on the ground. They all rushed forward together, but it was Morrie who shoved them back and kept them from touching the prone figure. “Take it easy!” he ordered. “Don’t touch him. Remember your first aid. That’s a head wound. If you touch him, you may kill him.” “But we’ve got to find out if he’s alive,” Ross objected. “I’ll find out. Here-give me those.” He reached out and appropriated the data sheets of the rocket test run from where they stuck out of Ross’s pocket. These he rolled into a tube about an inch in diameter, then cautiously placed it against the back of the still figure, on the left side over the heart. Placing his ear to the other end of the improvised stethoscope he listened. Ross and Art waited breathlessly. Presently his tense face relaxed into a grin. “His motor is turning over,” he announced. “Good and strong. At least we didn’t kill him.” “We?” “Who do you think? How do you think he got this way? Take a look around and you’ll probably find the piece of the rocket that konked him.” He straightened up. “But never mind that now. Ross, you shag up to your house and call an ambulance. Make it fast! Art and I will wait here with, with, uh, him. He may come to and we’ll have to keep him quiet.” “Okay.” Ross was gone as he spoke. Art was staring at the unconscious man. Morrie touched him on the arm. “Sit down, kid. No use getting in a sweat. We’ll have trouble enough later. Even if this guy isn’t hurt much I suppose you realize this about winds up the activities the Galileo Marching-and-Chowder Society, at least the rocketry-and-loud-noises branch of it.” Art looked unhappy. “I suppose so.” “Suppose nothing. It’s certain. Ross’s father took a very dim view of the matter the time we blew all the windows out of his basement, not that I blame him. Now we hand him this. Loss of the use of the land is the least we can expect. We’ll be lucky not to have handed him a suit for damages too. Art agreed miserably. “I guess it’s back to stamp collecting for us,” he assented, but his mind was elsewhere. Law suit. The use of the land did not matter. To be sure the use of the Old Ross Place on the edge of town had been swell for all three of them, what with him and his mother living in back of the store, and Morrie’s folks living in a flat, but-law suit! Maybe Ross’s parents could afford it; but the little store just about kept Art and his mother going, even with the afterschool jobs he had had ever since junior high, a law suit would take the store away from them. His first feeling of frightened sympathy for the wounded man was beginning to be replaced by a feeling of injustice done him. What was the guy doing there anyhow? It wasn’t just. “Let me have a look at this guy,” he said. “Don’t touch him,” Morrie warned. “I won’t. Got your pocket flash?” It was becoming quite dark in the clearing. “Sure. Here, catch.” Art took the little flashlight and tried to examine the face of their victim-hard to do, as he was almost face down and the side of his face that was visible was smeared with blood. Presently Art said in an odd tone of voice, “Morrie-would it hurt anything to wipe some of this blood away?” “You’re dern tootin’ it would! You let him be till the doctor comes.” “All right, all right. Anyhow I don’t need to, I’m sure anyhow. Morrie, I know who he is.” “You do? Who?” “He’s my uncle.” “Your uncle!” “Yes, my uncle. You know-the one I’ve told you about. He’s my Uncle Don. Doctor Donald Cargraves, my Atomic Bomb uncle.” Chapter Two. A MAN-SIZED CHALLENGE. “At least I’m pretty sure it’s my uncle,” Art went on. “I could tell for certain if I could see his whole face.” “Don’t you know whether or not he’s your uncle? After all, a member of your own family.” “Nope. I haven’t seen him since he came through here to see Mother, just after the war. That’s been a long time. I was just a kid then. But it looks like him.” “But he doesn’t look old enough,” Morrie said judiciously. “I should think, Here comes the ambulance!” It was indeed, with Ross riding with the driver to show him the road and the driver cussing the fact that the road existed mostly in Ross’s imagination. They were all too busy for a few minutes, worrying over the stranger as a patient, to be much concerned with his identity as an individual. “Doesn’t look too bad,” the interne who rode with the ambulance announced. “Nasty scalp wound. Maybe concussion, maybe not. Now over with him, easy! While I hold his head.” When turned face up and lifted into the stretcher, the patient’s eyes flickered; he moaned and seemed to try to say something. The doctor leaned over him. Art caught Morrie’s eye and pressed a thumb and forefinger together. There was no longer any doubt as to the man’s identity, now that Art had seen his face. Ross started to climb back in the ambulance but the interne waved him away. “But all of you boys show up at the hospital. We’ll have to make out an accident report on this.” As soon as the ambulance lumbered away Art told Ross about his discovery. Ross looked startled. “Your uncle, eh? Your own uncle. What was he doing here?” “I don’t know. I didn’t know he was in town.” “Say, look, I hope he’s not hurt bad, especially seeing as how he’s your uncle, but is this the uncle, the one you were telling us about who has been mentioned for the Nobel Prize?” “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. He’s my Uncle Donald Cargraves.” “Doctor Donald Cargraves!” Ross whistled. “Jeepers! When we start slugging people we certainly go after big game, don’t we?” “It’s no laughing matter. Suppose he dies? What’ll I tell my mother?” “I wasn’t laughing. Let’s get over to the hospital and find out how bad he’s hurt before you tell her anything. No use in worrying her unnecessarily.” Ross sighed, “I guess we might as well break the news to my folks. Then I’ll drive us over to the hospital.” “Didn’t you tell them when you telephoned?,” Morrie asked. “No. They were out in the garden, so I just phoned and then leaned out to the curb to wait for the ambulance. They may have seen it come in the drive but I didn’t wait to find out.” “I’ll bet you didn’t.” Ross’s father was waiting for them at the house. He answered their greetings, then said, “Ross.” “Yes, sir?” “I heard an explosion down toward your private stamping ground. Then I saw an ambulance drive in and drive away. What happened?” “Well, Dad, it was like this: We were making a full-power captive run on the new rocket and.” He sketched out the events. Mister Jenkins nodded and said, “I see. Come along, boys.” He started toward the converted stable which housed the family car. “Ross, run tell your mother where we are going. Tell her I said not to worry.” He went on, leaning on his cane a bit as he walked. Mister Jenkins was a retired electrical engineer, even-tempered and taciturn. Art could not remember his own father; Morrie’s father was still living but a very different personality. Mister Abrams ruled a large and noisy, children-cluttered household by combining a loud voice with lavish affection. When Ross returned, puffing, his father waved away his offer to drive. “No, thank you. I want us to get there.” The trip was made in silence. Mister Jenkins left them in the foyer of the hospital with an injunction to wait. “What do you think he will do?” Morrie asked nervously. “I don’t know. Dad’ll be fair about it.” “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Morrie admitted. “Right now I don’t want justice; I want charity.” “I hope Uncle Don is all right,” Art put in. “Huh? Oh, yes, indeed! Sorry, Art, I’m afraid we’ve kind of forgotten your feelings. The principal thing is for him to get well, of course.” “To tell the truth, before I knew it was Uncle Don, I was more worried over the chance that I might have gotten Mother into a law suit than I was over what we might have done to a stranger.” “Forget it,” Ross advised. “A person can’t help worrying over his own troubles. Dad says the test is in what you do, not in what you think. We all did what we could for him.” “Which was mostly not to touch him before the doctor came,” Morrie pointed out. “Which was what he needed.” “Yes,” agreed Art, “but I don’t check you, Ross, on it not mattering what you think as long as you act all right. It seems to me that wrong ideas can be just as bad as wrong ways to do things.” “Easy, now. If a guy does something brave when he’s scared to death is he braver than the guy who does the same thing but isn’t scared?” “He’s less, no, he’s more. You’ve got me all mixed up. It’s not the same thing.” “Not quite, maybe. Skip it.” They sat in silence for a long time. Then Morrie said, “Anyhow, I hope he’s all right.” Mister Jenkins came out with news. “Well, boys, this is your lucky day. Skull uninjured according to the X-ray. The patient woke when they sewed up his scalp. I talked with him and he has decided not to scalp any of you in return.” He smiled. “May I see him?” asked Art. “Not tonight. They’ve given him a hypo and he is asleep. I telephoned your mother, Art.” “You did? Thank you, sir.” “She’s expecting you. I’ll drop you by.” Art’s interview with his mother was not too difficult; Mister Jenkins had laid a good foundation. In fact, Missus Mueller was incapable of believing that Art could be “bad.” But she did worry about him and Mister Jenkins had soothed her, not only about Art but also as to the welfare of her brother. Morrie had still less trouble with Mister Abrams. After being assured that the innocent bystander was not badly hurt, he had shrugged. “So what? So we have lawyers in the family for such things. At fifty cents a week it’ll take you about five hundred years to pay it off. Go to bed.” “Yes, Poppa.” The boys gathered at the rocket testing grounds the next morning, after being assured by a telephone call to the hospital that Doctor Cargraves had spent a good night. They planned to call on him that afternoon; at the moment they wanted to hold a post-mortem on the ill-starred Starstruck Five. The first job was to gather up the pieces, try to reassemble them, and then try to figure out what had happened. Art’s film of the event would be necessary to complete the story, but it was not yet ready. They were well along with the reassembling when they heard a whistle and a shout from the direction of the gate. “Hello there! Anybody home?” “Coming!” Ross answered. They skirted the barricade to where they could see the gate. A tall, husky figure waited there, a man so young, strong, and dynamic in appearance that the bandage around his head seemed out of place, and still more so in contrast with his friendly grin. “Uncle Don!” Art yelled as he ran up to meet him. “Hi,” said the newcomer. “You’re Art. Well, you’ve grown a lot but you haven’t changed much.” He shook hands. “What are you doing out of bed? You’re sick.” “Not me,” his uncle asserted. “I’ve got a release from the hospital to prove it. But introduce me, are these the rest of the assassins?” “Oh-excuse me. Uncle Don, this is Maurice Abrams and this is Ross Jenkins. Doctor Cargraves.” “How do you do, sir?” “Glad to know you, Doctor.” “Glad to know you, too.” Cargraves started through the gate, then hesitated. “Sure this place isn’t booby-trapped?” Ross looked worried. “Say, Doctor-we’re all sorry as can be. I still can’t see how it happened. This gate is covered by the barricade.” “Ricochet shot probably. Forget it. I’m not hurt. A little skin and a little blood-that’s all. If I had turned back at your first warning sign, it wouldn’t have happened.” “How did you happen to be coming here?” “A fair question. I hadn’t been invited, had I?” “Oh, I didn’t mean that.” “But I owe you an explanation. When I breezed into town yesterday, I already knew of the Galileo Club; Art’s mother had mentioned it in letters. When my sister told me where Art was and what he was up to, I decided to slide over in hope of getting here in time to watch your test run. Your hired girl told me how to find my way out here.” “You mean you hurried out here just to see this stuff we play around with?” “Sure. Why not? I’m interested in rockets.” “Yes, but-we really haven’t got anything to show you. These are just little models.” “A new model,” Doctor Cargraves answered seriously, “of anything can be important, no matter who makes it nor how small it is. I wanted to see how you work. May I?” “Oh, certainly, sir-we’d be honored.” Ross showed their guest around, with Morrie helping out and Art chipping in. Art was pink-faced and happy, this was his uncle, one of the world’s great, a pioneer of the Atomic Age. They inspected the test stand and the control panel. Cargraves looked properly impressed and tut-tutted over the loss of Starstruck Five. As a matter of fact he was impressed. It is common enough in the United States for boys to build and take apart almost anything mechanical, from alarm clocks to hiked-up jaloppies. It is not so common for them to understand the sort of controlled and recorded experimentation on which science is based. Their equipment was crude and their facilities limited, but the approach was correct and the scientist recognized it. The stainless steel mirrors used to bounce the spotlight beams over the barricade puzzled Doctor Cargraves. “Why take so much trouble to protect light bulbs?” he asked. “Bulbs are cheaper than stainless steel.” “We were able to get the mirror steel free,” Ross explained. “The spotlight bulbs take cash money.” The scientist chuckled. “That reason appeals to me. Well, you fellows have certainly thrown together quite a set-up. I wish I had seen your rocket before it blew up.” “Of course the stuff we build,” Ross said diffidently, “can’t compare with a commercial unmanned rocket, say like a mailcarrier. But we would like to dope out something good enough to go after the junior prizes.” “Ever competed?” “Not yet. Our physics class in high school entered one last year in the novice classification. It wasn’t much, just a powder job, but that’s what got us started, though we’ve all been crazy about rockets ever since I can remember.” “You’ve got some fancy control equipment. Where do you do your machine-shop work? Or do you have it done?” “Oh, no. We do it in the high-school shop. If the shop instructor okays you, you can work after school on your own.” “It must be quite a high school,” the physicist commented. “The one I went to didn’t have a machine shop.” “I guess it is a pretty progressive school,” Ross agreed. “It’s a mechanical-arts-and-science high school and it has more courses in math and science and shop work than most. It’s nice to be able to use the shops. That’s where we built our telescope.” “Astronomers too, eh?” “Well-Morrie is the astronomer of the three of us.” “Is that so?” Cargraves inquired, turning to Morrie. Morrie shrugged. “Oh, not exactly. We all have our hobbies. Ross goes in for chemistry and rocket fuels. Art is a radio ham and a camera nut. You can study astronomy sitting down.” “I see,” the physicist replied gravely. “A matter of efficient self-protection. I knew about Art’s hobbies. By the way, Art, I owe you an apology; yesterday afternoon I took a look in your basement. But don’t worry-I didn’t touch anything.” “Oh, I’m not worried about your touching stuff, Uncle Don,” Art protested, turning pinker, “but the place must have looked a mess.” “It didn’t look like a drawing room but it did look like a working laboratory. I see you keep notebooks, no, I didn’t touch them, either!” “We all keep notebooks,” Morrie volunteered. “That’s the influence of Ross’s old man.” “Dad told me he did not care,” Ross explained, “how much I messed around as long as I kept it above the tinker-toy level. He used to make me submit notes to him on everything I tried and he would grade them on clearness and completeness. After a while I got the idea and he quit.” “Does he help you with your projects?” “Not a bit. He says they’re our babies and we’ll have to nurse them.” They prepared to adjourn to their clubhouse, an out-building left over from the days when the Old Ross Place was worked as a farm. They gathered up the forlorn pieces of Starstruck Five, while Ross checked each item. “I guess that’s all,” he announced and started to pick up the remains. “Wait a minute,” Morrie suggested. “We never did search for the piece that clipped Doctor Cargraves.” “That’s right,” the scientist agreed. “I have a personal interest in that item, blunt instrument, missile, shrapnel, or whatever. I want to know how close I came to playing a harp.” Ross looked puzzled. “Come here, Art,” he said in a low voice. “I am here. What do you want?” “Tell me what piece is still missing.” “What difference does it make?” But he bent over the box containing the broken rocket and checked the items. Presently he too looked puzzled. “Ross.” “Yeah?” “There isn’t anything missing.” “That’s what I thought. But there has to be.” “Wouldn’t it be more to the point,” suggested Cargraves, “to look around near where I was hit?” “I suppose so.” They all searched, they found nothing. Presently they organized a system which covered the ground with such thoroughness that anything larger than a medium-small ant should have come to light. They found a penny and a broken Indian arrowhead, but nothing resembling a piece of the exploded rocket. “This is getting us nowhere,” the doctor admitted. “Just where was I when you found me?” “Right in the gateway,” Morrie told him. “You were collapsed on your face and.” “Just a minute. On my face?” “Yes. You were.” “But how did I get knocked on my face? I was facing toward your testing ground when the lights went out. I’m sure of that. I should have fallen backwards.” “Well, I’m sure you didn’t, sir. Maybe it was a ricochet, as you said.” “Hum, maybe.” The doctor looked around. There was nothing near the gate which would make a ricochet probable. He looked at the spot where he had lain and spoke to himself. “What did you say, doctor?” “Uh? Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Forget it. It was just a silly idea I had. It couldn’t be.” He straightened up as if dismissing the whole thing. “Let’s not waste any more time on my vanishing blunt instrument. It was just curiosity. Let’s get on back.” The clubhouse was a one-story frame building about twenty feet square. One wall was filled with Ross’s chemistry workbench with the usual clutter of test-tube racks, bunsen burners, awkward-looking, pretzel-like arrangements of glass tubing, and a double sink which looked as if it had been salvaged from a junk dealer. A home-made hood with a hinged glass front occupied one end of the bench. Parallel to the adjacent wall, in a little glass case, a precision balance’ of a good make but of very early vintage stood mounted on its own concrete pillar. “We ought to have air-conditioning,” Ross told the doctor, “to do really good work.” “You haven’t done so badly,” Cargraves commented. The boys had covered the rough walls with ply board; the cracks had been filled and the interior painted with washable enamel. The floor they had covered with linoleum, salvaged like the sink, but serviceable. The windows and door were tight. The place was clean. “Humidity changes could play hob with some of your experiments, however,” he went on. “Do you plan to put in air-conditioning sometime?” “I doubt it. I guess the Galileo Club is about to fold up.” “What? Oh, that seems a shame.” “It is and it isn’t. This fall we all expect to go away to Tech.” “I see. But aren’t there any other members?” “There used to be, but they’ve moved, gone away to school, gone in the army. I suppose we could have gotten new members but we didn’t try. Well, we work together well and, you know how it is.” Cargraves nodded. He felt that he knew more explicitly than did the boy. These three were doing serious work; most of their schoolmates, even though mechanically minded, would be more interested in needling a stripped-down car up to a hundred miles an hour than in keeping careful notes. “Well, you are certainly comfortable here. It’s a shame you can’t take it with you.” A low, wide, padded seat stretched from wall to wall opposite the chemistry layout. The other two boys were sprawled on it, listening. Behind them, bookshelves had been built into the wall. Jules Verne crowded against Mark’s Handbook of Mechanical Engineering. Cargraves noted other old friends: H G Wells’ Seven Famous Novels, The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and Smyth’s Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Jammed in with them, side by side with Ley’s Rockets and Eddington’s Nature of the Physical World, were dozens of pulp magazines of the sort with robot men or space ships on their covers. He pulled down a dog-eared copy of Haggard’s When the Earth Trembled and settled his long body between the boys. He was beginning to feel at home. These boys he knew; he had only to gaze back through the corridors of his mind to recognize himself. Ross said, “If you’ll excuse me, I want to run up to the house.” Cargraves grunted, “Sure thing,” with his nose still in the book. Ross came back to announce, “My mother would like all of you to stay for lunch.” Morrie grinned, Art looked troubled. “My mother thinks I eat too many meals over here as it is,” he protested feebly, his eyes on his uncle. Cargraves took him by the arm. “I’ll go your bail on this one, Art,” he assured him; then to Ross, “Please tell your mother that we are very happy to accept.” At lunch the adults talked, the boys listened. The scientist, his turban bandage looking stranger than ever, hit it off well with his elders. Anyone would hit it off well with Missus Jenkins, who could have been friendly and gracious at a cannibal feast, but the boys were not used to seeing Mister Jenkins in a chatty mood. The boys were surprised to find out how much Mister Jenkins knew about atomics. They had the usual low opinion of the mental processes of adults; Mister Jenkins they respected but had subconsciously considered him the anachronism which most of his generation in fact was, a generation as a whole incapable of realizing that the world had changed completely a few years before, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Yet Mister Jenkins seemed to know who Doctor Cargraves was and seemed to know that he had been retained until recently by North American Atomics. The boys listened carefully to find out what Doctor Cargraves planned to do next, but Mister Jenkins did not ask and Cargraves did not volunteer the information. After lunch the three and their guest went back to the clubhouse. Cargraves spent most of the afternoon spread over the bunk, telling stories of the early days at Oak Ridge when the prospect of drowning in the inescapable, adhesive mud was more dismaying than the ever-present danger of radioactive poisoning, and the story, old but ever new and eternally exciting, of the black, rainy morning in the New Mexico desert when a great purple-and-golden mushroom had climbed to the stratosphere, proclaiming that man had at last unloosed the power of the suns. Then he shut up, claiming that he wanted to re-read the old H Rider Haggard novel he had found. Ross and Morrie got busy at the bench; Art took a magazine. His eyes kept returning to his fabulous uncle. He noticed that the man did not seem to be turning the pages very often. Quite a while later Doctor Cargraves put down his book. “What do you fellows know about atomics?” The boys exchanged glances before Morrie ventured to answer. “Not much I guess. High-school physics can’t touch it, really, and you can’t mess with it in a home laboratory.” “That’s right. But you are interested?” “Oh, my, yes! We’ve read what we could, Pollard and Davidson, and Gamov’s new book. But we don’t have the math for atomics.” “How much math do you have?” “Through differential equations.” “Huh?” Cargraves looked amazed. “Wait a minute. You guys are still in high school?” “Just graduated.” “What kind of high school teaches differential equations? Or am I an old fuddy-duddy?” Morrie seemed almost defensive in his explanation. “It’s a new approach. You have to pass a test, then they give you algebra through quadratics, plane and spherical trigonometry, plane and solid geometry, and plane and solid analytical geometry all in one course, stirred in together. When you finish that course, and you take it as slow or as fast as you like, you go on.” Cargraves shook his head. “There’ve been some changes made while I was busy with the neutrons. Okay, Quiz Kids, at that rate you’ll be ready for quantum theory and wave mechanics before long. But I wonder how they go about cramming you this way? Do you savvy the postulational notion in math?” “Why, I think so.” “Tell me.” Morrie took a deep breath. “No mathematics has any reality of its own, not even common arithmetic. All mathematics is purely an invention of the mind, with no connection with the world around us, except that we find some mathematics convenient in describing things.” “Go on. You’re doing fine!” “Even then it isn’t real, or isn’t true, the way the ancients thought of it. Any system of mathematics is derived from purely arbitrary assumptions, called postulates, the sort of thing the ancients called axioms.” “Your jets are driving, kid! How about the operational notion in scientific theory? No, Art-you tell me.” Art looked embarrassed; Morrie looked pleased but relieved. “Well, uh, the operational idea is, uh, it’s building up your theory in terms of the operations you perform, like measuring, or timing, so that you don’t go reading into the experiments things that aren’t there.” Cargraves nodded. “That’s good enough, it shows you know what you’re talking about.” He kept quiet for a long time, then he added, “You fellows really interested in rockets?” Ross answered this time, “Why, er, yes, we are. Rockets among other things. We would certainly like to have a go at those junior prizes.” “That’s all?” “Well, no, not exactly. I guess we all think, well, maybe some day.” His voice trailed off. “I think I see.” Cargraves sat up. “But why bother with the competition? After all, as you pointed out, model rockets can’t touch the full-sized commercial jobs. The prizes are offered just to keep up interest in rocketry, it’s like the model airplane meets they used to have when I was a kid. But you guys can do better than that, why don’t you go in for the senior prizes?” Three sets of eyes were fixed on him. “What do you mean?” Cargraves shrugged. “Why don’t you go to the moon with me?” Chapter Three. CUT-RATE COLUMBUS. The silence that filled the clubhouse had a solid quality, as if one could slice it and make sandwiches. Ross recovered his voice first. “You don’t mean it,” he said in a hushed tone. “But I do,” Doctor Cargraves answered evenly. “I mean it quite seriously. I propose to try to make a trip to the moon. I’d like to have you fellows with me. Art,” he added, “close your mouth. You’ll make a draft.” Art gulped, did as he was told, then promptly opened it again. “But look,” he said, his words racing, “Uncle Don, if you take us, I mean, how could we-or if we did, what would we use for, how do you propose.” “Easy, easy!” Cargraves protested. “All of you keep quiet and I’ll tell you what I have in mind. Then you can think it over and tell me whether or not you want to go for it.” Morrie slapped the bench beside him. “I don’t care,” he said, “I don’t care if you’re going to try to fly there on your own broom, I’m in. I’m going along.” “So am I,” Ross added quickly, moistening his lips. Art looked wildly at the other two. “But I didn’t mean that I wasn’t, I was just asking, Oh, shucks! Me, too! You know that.” The young scientist gave the impression of bowing without getting up. “Gentlemen, I appreciate the confidence you place in me. But you are not committed to anything just yet.” “But.” “So kindly pipe down,” he went on, “and I’ll lay out my cards, face up. Then we’ll talk. Have you guys ever taken an oath?” “Oh, sure, Scout Oath, anyhow.” “I was a witness in court once.” “Fine. I want you all to promise, on your honor, not to spill anything I tell you without my specific permission, whether we do business or not. It is understood that you are not bound thereby to remain silent if you are morally obligated to speak up, you are free to tell on me if there are moral or legal reasons why you should. Otherwise, you keep mum, on your honor. How about it?” “Yes, sir!” “Right!” “Check.” “Okay,” agreed Cargraves, settling back on his spine. “That was mostly a matter of form, to impress you with the necessity of keeping your lips buttoned. You’ll understand why, later. Now here is the idea: All my life I’ve wanted to see the day when men would conquer space and explore the planets, and I wanted to take part in it. I don’t have to tell you how that feels.” He waved a hand at the book shelves. “Those books show me you understand it; you’ve got the madness yourselves. Besides that, what I saw out on your rocket grounds, what I see here, what I saw yesterday when I sneaked a look in Art’s lab, shows me that you aren’t satisfied just to dream about it and read about it, you want to do something. Right?” “Right!” It was a chorus. Cargraves nodded. “I felt the same way. I took my first degree in mechanical engineering with the notion that rockets were mechanical engineering and that I would need the training. I worked as an engineer after graduation until I had saved up enough to go back to school. I took my doctor’s degree in atomic physics, because I had a hunch, oh, I wasn’t the only one! I had a hunch that atomic power was needed for practical space ships. Then came the war and the Manhattan Project. When the Atomic Age opened up a lot of people predicted that space flight was just around the corner. But it didn’t work out that way-nobody knew how to harness the atom to a rocket. Do you know why?” Somewhat hesitantly Ross spoke up. “Yes, I think I do.” “Go ahead.” “Well, for a rocket you need mass times velocity, quite a bit of mass in what the jet throws out and plenty of velocity. But in an atomic reaction there isn’t very much mass and the energy comes out in radiations in all directions instead of a nice, lined-up jet. Just the same.” “Just the same what?” “Well, there ought to be a way to harness all that power. Darn it, with so much power from so little weight, there ought to be some way.” “Just what I’ve always thought,” Cargraves said with a grin. “We’ve built atomic plants that turn out more power than Boulder Dam. We’ve made atomic bombs that make the two used in the war seem like firecrackers. Power to burn, power to throw away. Yet we haven’t been able to hook it to a rocket. Of course there are other problems. An atomic power plant takes a lot of shielding to protect the operators, you know that. And that means weight. Weight is everything in a rocket. If you add another hundred pounds in dead load, you have to pay for it in fuel. Suppose your shield weighed only a ton, how much fuel would that cost you, Ross?” Ross scratched his head. “I don’t know what kind of fuel you mean nor what kind of a rocket you are talking about, what you want it to do.” “Fair enough,” the scientist admitted. “I asked you an impossible question. Suppose we make it a chemical fuel and a moon rocket and assume a mass-ratio of twenty to one. Then for a shield weighing a ton we have to carry twenty tons of fuel.” Art sat up suddenly. “Wait a minute, Uncle Don.” “Yes?” “If you use a chemical fuel, like alcohol and liquid oxygen say, then you won’t need a radiation shield.” “You got me, kid. But that was just for illustration. If you had a decent way to use atomic power, you might be able to hold your mass-ratio down to, let’s say, one-to-one. Then a one-ton shield would only require one ton of fuel to carry it. That suit you better?” Art wriggled in excitement. “I’ll say it does. That means a real space ship. We could go anywhere in it!” “But we’re still on earth,” his uncle pointed out dryly. “I said if. Don’t burn out your jets before you take off. And there is still a third hurdle: atomic power plants are fussy to control, hard to turn on, hard to turn off. But we can let that one alone till we come to it. I still think we’ll get to the moon.” He paused. They waited expectantly. “I think I’ve got a way to apply atomic power to rockets.” Nobody stood up. Nobody cheered. No one made a speech starting, “On this historic occasion.” Instead they held their breaths, waiting for him to go on. “Oh, I’m not going into details now. You’ll find out all about it, if we work together.” “We will!” “Sure thing!” “I hope so. I tried to interest the company I was with in the scheme, but they wouldn’t hold still.” “Gee whillickers! Why not?” “Corporations are in business to make money; they owe that to their stockholders. Do you see any obvious way to make money out of a flight to the moon?” “Shucks.” Art tossed it off. “They ought to be willing to risk going broke to back a thing like this.” “Nope. You’re off the beam, kid. Remember they are handling other people’s money. Have you any idea how much it would cost to do the research and engineering development, using the ordinary commercial methods, for anything as big as a trip to the moon?” “No,” Art admitted. “A good many thousands, I suppose.” Morrie spoke up. “More like a hundred thousand.” “That’s closer. The technical director of our company made up a tentative budget of a million and a quarter.” “Whew!” “Oh, he was just showing that it was not commercially practical. He wanted to adapt my idea to power plants for ships and trains. So I handed in my resignation.” “Good for you!” Morrie looked thoughtful. “I guess I see,” he said slowly, “why you swore us to secrecy. They own your idea.” Cargraves shook his head emphatically, “No, not at all. You certainly would be entitled to squawk if I tried to get you into a scheme to jump somebody else’s patent rights, even if they held them by a yellow-dog, brain-picking contract.” Cargraves spoke with vehemence. “My contract wasn’t that sort. The company owns the idea for the purposes for which the research was carried out, power. And I own anything else I see in it. We parted on good terms. I don’t blame them. When the Queen staked Columbus, nobody dreamed that he would come back with the Empire State Building in his pocket.” “Hey,” said Ross, “these senior prizes, they aren’t big enough. That’s why nobody has made a real bid for the top ones. The prize wouldn’t pay the expenses, not for the kind of budget you mentioned. It’s a sort of a swindle, isn’t it?” “Not a swindle, but that’s about the size of it,” Cargraves conceded. “With the top prize only $250,000 it won’t tempt General Electric, or du Pont, or North American Atomic, or any other big research corporation. They can’t afford it, unless some other profit can be seen. As a matter of fact, a lot of the prize money comes from those corporations.” He sat up again. “But we can compete for it!” “How?” “I don’t give a darn about the prize money. I just want to go!” “Me too!” Ross made the statement; Art chimed in. “My sentiments exactly. As to how, that’s where you come in. I can’t spend a million dollars, but I think there is a way to tackle this on a shoestring. We need a ship. We need the fuel. We need a lot of engineering and mechanical work. We need overhead expenses and supplies for the trip. I’ve got a ship.” “You have? Now? A space ship?” Art was wide-eyed. “I’ve got an option to buy an Atlantic freighter-rocket at scrap prices. I can swing that. It’s a good rocket, but they are replacing the manned freighters with the more economical robot controlled jobs. It’s a V-17 and it isn’t fit to convert to passenger service, so we get it as scrap. But if I buy it, it leaves me almost broke. Under the UN trusteeship for atomics, a senior member of the Global Association of Atomic Scientists, that’s me!” he stuck in, grinning, “can get fissionable material for experimental purposes, if the directors of the Association approve. I can swing that. I’ve picked thorium, rather than uranium-235, or plutonium-never mind why. But the project itself had me stumped, just too expensive. I was about ready to try to promote it by endorsements and lecture contracts and all the other clap, trap it sometimes takes to put over scientific work, when I met you fellows.” He got up and faced them. “I don’t need much to convert that old V-17 into a space ship. But I do need skilled hands and brains and the imagination to know what is needed and why. You’d be my mechanics and junior engineers and machine-shop workers and instrument men and presently my crew. You’ll do hard, dirty work for long hours and cook your own meals in the bargain. You’ll get nothing but coffee-and-cakes and a chance to break your necks. The ship may never leave the ground. If it does, chances are you’ll never live to tell about it. It won’t be one big adventure. I’ll work you till you’re sick of me and probably nothing will come of it. But that’s the proposition. Think it over and let me know.” There was the nerve-tingling pause which precedes an earthquake. Then the boys were on their feet, shouting all at once. It was difficult to make out words, but the motion had been passed by acclamation; the Galileo Club intended to go to the moon. When the buzzing had died down, Cargraves noticed that Ross’s face was suddenly grave. “What’s the matter, Ross? Cold feet already?” “No,” Ross shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s too good to be true.” “Could be, could be. I think I know what’s worrying you. Your parents?” “Uh, huh. I doubt if our folks will ever let us do it.” Chapter Four. THE BLOOD OF PIONEERS. Cargraves looked at their woebegone faces. He knew what they were faced with; a boy can’t just step up to his father and say, “By the way, old man, count me out on those plans we made for me to go to college. I’ve got a date to meet Santa Claus at the North Pole.” It was the real reason he had hesitated before speaking of his plans. Finally he said, “I’m afraid it’s up to each of you. Your promise to me does not apply to your parents, but ask them to respect your confidence. I don’t want our plans to get into the news.” “But look, Doctor Cargraves,” Morrie put in, “why be so secret about it? It might make our folks feel that it was just a wild-eyed kid’s dream. Why can’t you just go to them and explain where we would fit into it?” “No,” Cargraves answered, “they are your parents. When and if they want to see me, I’ll go to them and try to give satisfactory answers. But you will have to convince them that you mean business. As to secrecy, the reasons are these: there is only one aspect of my idea that can be patented and, under the rules of the UN Atomics Convention, it can be licensed by anyone who wants to use it. The company is obtaining the patent, but not as a rocket device. The idea that I can apply it to a cheap, shoestring venture into space travel is mine and I don’t want anyone else to beat me to it with more money and stronger backing. Just before we are ready to leave we will call in the reporters, probably to run a story about how we busted our necks on the take-off.” “But I see your point,” he went on. “We don’t want this to look like a mad-scientist-and-secret-laboratory set-up. Well, I’ll try to convince them.” Doctor Cargraves made an exception in the case of Art’s mother, because she was his own sister. He cautioned Art to retire to his basement laboratory as soon as dinner was over and then, after helping with the dishes, spoke to her. She listened quietly while he explained. “Well, what do you think of it? She sat very still, her eyes everywhere but on his face, her hands busy twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. “Don, you can’t do this to me.” He waited for her to go on. “I can’t let him go, Don. He’s all I’ve got. With Hans gone.” “I know that,” the doctor answered gently. “But Hans has been gone since Art was a baby. You can’t limit the boy on that account.” “Do you think that makes it any easier?” She was close to tears. “No, I don’t. But it is on Hans’ account that you must not keep his son in cotton batting. Hans had courage to burn. If he had been willing to knuckle under to the Nazis he would have stayed at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. But Hans was a scientist. He wouldn’t trim his notion of truth to fit political gangsters. He.” “And it killed him!” “I know, I know. But remember, Grace, it was only the fact that you were an American girl that enabled you to pull enough strings to get him out of the concentration camp.” “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it. Oh, you should have seen him when they let him out!” She was crying now. “I did see him when you brought him to this country,” he said gently, “and that was bad enough. But the fact that you are American has a lot to do with it. We have a tradition of freedom, personal freedom, scientific freedom. That freedom isn’t kept alive by caution and unwillingness to take risks. If Hans were alive he would be going with me, you know that, Sis. You owe it to his son not to keep him caged. You can’t keep him tied to your apron strings forever, anyhow. A few more years and you will have to let him follow his own bent.” Her head was bowed. She did not answer. He patted her shoulder. “You think it over, Sis. I’ll try to bring him back in one piece.” When Art came upstairs, much later, his mother was still sitting, waiting for him. “Arthur?” “Yes, Mother.” “You want to go to the moon?” “Yes, Mother.” She took a deep breath, then replied steadily. “You be a good boy on the moon, Arthur. You do what your uncle tells you to.” “I will, Mother.” Morrie managed to separate his father from the rest of the swarming brood shortly after dinner. “Poppa, I want to talk to you man to man.” “And how else?” “Well, this is different. I know you wanted me to come into the business, but you agreed to help me go to Tech.” His father nodded. “The business will get along. Scientists we are proud to have in the family. Your Uncle Bernard is a fine surgeon. Do we ask him to help with the business?” “Yes, Poppa, but that’s just it-I don’t want to go to Tech.” “So? Another school?” “No, I don’t want to go to school.” He explained Doctor Cargraves’ scheme, blurting it out as fast as possible in an attempt to give his father the whole picture before he set his mind. Finished, he waited. His father rocked back and forth. “So it’s the moon now, is it? And maybe next week the sun. A man should settle down if he expects to accomplish anything, Maurice.” “But, Poppa, this is what I want to accomplish!” “When do you expect to start?” “You mean you’ll let me? I can?” “Not so fast, Maurice. I did not say yes; I did not say no. It has been quite a while since you stood up before the congregation and made your speech, ‘Today I am a man-‘ That meant you were a man, Maurice, right that moment. It’s not for me to let you; it’s for me to advise you. I advise you not to. I think it’s foolishness.” Morrie stood silent, stubborn but respectful. “Wait a week, then come back and tell me what you are going to do. There’s a pretty good chance that you will break your neck on this scheme, isn’t there?” “Well, yes, I suppose so.” “A week isn’t too long to make up your mind to kill yourself. In the meantime, don’t talk to Momma about this.” “Oh, I won’t!” “If you decide to go ahead anyway, I’ll break the news to her. Momma isn’t going to like this, Maurice.” Doctor Donald Cargraves received a telephone call the next morning which requested him, if convenient, to come to the Jenkins’ home. He did so, feeling, unreasonably he thought, as if he were being called in on the carpet. He found Mister and Missus Jenkins in the drawing room; Ross was not in sight. Mister Jenkins shook hands with him and offered him a chair. “Cigarette, Doctor? Cigar?” “Neither, thank you.” “If you smoke a pipe,” Missus Jenkins added, “please do so.” Cargraves thanked her and gratefully stoked up his old stinker. “Ross tells me a strange story,” Mister Jenkins started in. “If he were not pretty reliable I’d think his imagination was working overtime. Perhaps you can explain it.” “I’ll try, sir.” “Thanks. Is it true, Doctor, that you intend to try to make a trip to the moon.” “Quite true.” “Well! Is it also true that you have invited Ross and his chums to go with you in this fantastic adventure?” “Yes, it is.” Doctor Cargraves found that he was biting hard on the stem of his pipe. Mister Jenkins stared at him. “I’m amazed. Even if it were something safe and sane, your choice of boys as partners strikes me as outlandish.” Cargraves explained why he believed the boys could be competent junior partners in the enterprise. “In any case,” he concluded, “being young is not necessarily a handicap. The great majority of the scientists in the Manhattan Project were very young men.” “But not boys, Doctor.” “Perhaps not. Still, Sir Isaac Newton was a boy when he invented the calculus. Professor Einstein himself was only twenty-six when he published his first paper on relativity, and the work had been done when he was still younger. In mechanics and in the physical sciences, calendar age has nothing to do with the case; it’s solely a matter of training and ability.” “Even if what you say is true, Doctor, training takes time and these boys have not had time for the training you need for such a job. It takes years to make an engineer, still more years to make a toolmaker or an instrument man. Tarnation, I’m an engineer myself. I know what I’m talking about.” “Ordinarily I would agree with you. But these boys have what I need. Have you looked at their work?” “Some of it.” “How good is it?” “It’s good work, within the limits of what they know.” “But what they know is just what I need for this job. They are rocket fans now. They’ve learned in their hobbies the specialties I need.” Mister Jenkins considered this, then shook his head. “I suppose there is something in what you say. But the scheme is fantastic. I don’t say that space flight is fantastic; I expect that the engineering problems involved will some day be solved. But space flight is not a back-yard enterprise. When it comes it will be done by the air forces, or as a project of one of the big corporations, not by half-grown boys.” Cargraves shook his head. “The government won’t do it. It would be laughed off the floor of Congress. As for corporations, I have reason to be almost certain they won’t do it, either.” Mister Jenkins looked at him quizzically. “Then it seems to me that we’re not likely to see space flight in our lifetimes.” “I wouldn’t say so,” the scientist countered. “The United States isn’t the only country on the globe. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear some morning that the Russians had done it. They’ve got the technical ability and they seem to be willing to spend money on science. They might do it.” “Well, what if they do?” Cargraves took a deep breath. “I have nothing against the Russians; if they beat me to the moon, I’ll take off my hat to them. But I prefer our system to theirs; it would be a sour day for us if it turned out that they could do something as big and as wonderful as this when we weren’t even prepared to tackle it, under our set-up. Anyhow,” he continued, “I have enough pride in my own land to want it to be us, rather than some other country.” Mister Jenkins nodded and changed his tack. “Even if these three boys have the special skills you need, I still don’t see why you picked boys. Frankly, that’s why the scheme looks rattlebrained to me. You should have experienced engineers and mechanics and your crew should be qualified rocket pilots.” Doctor Cargraves laid the whole thing before them, and explained how he hoped to carry out his plans on a slim budget. When he had finished Mister Jenkins said, “Then as a matter of fact you braced these three boys because you were hard up for cash?” “If you care to put it that way.” “I didn’t put it that way; you did. Candidly, I don’t altogether approve of your actions. I don’t think you meant any harm, but you didn’t stop to think. I don’t thank you for getting Ross and his friends stirred up over a matter unsuited to their ages without consulting their parents first.” Donald Cargraves felt his mouth grow tense but said nothing; he felt that he could not explain that he had lain awake much of the night over misgivings of just that sort. “However,” Mister Jenkins went on, “I understand your disappointment and sympathize with your enthusiasm.” He smiled briefly. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll hire three mechanics, you pick them, and one junior engineer or physicist, to help you in converting your ship. When the time comes, I’ll arrange for a crew. Hiring will not be needed there, in my opinion, we will be able to pick from a long list of volunteers. Wait a minute,” he said, as Cargraves started to speak, “you’ll be under no obligation to me. We will make it a business proposition of a speculative sort. We’ll draw up a contract under which, if you make it, you assign to me a proper percentage of the prize money and of the profits from exclusive news stories, books, lectures, and so forth. Does that look like a way out?” Cargraves took a deep breath. “Mister Jenkins,” he said slowly, “if I had had that proposition last week, I would have jumped at it. But I can’t take it.” “Why not?” “I can’t let the boys down. I’m already committed.” “Would it make a difference if I told you there was absolutely no chance of Ross being allowed to go?” “No. I will have to go looking for just such a backer as yourself, but it can’t be you. It would smack too much of allowing myself to be bought off, No offense intended, Mister Jenkins! To welch on the proposition I made Ross.” Mister Jenkins nodded. “I was afraid you would feel that way. I respect your attitude, Doctor. Let me call Ross in and tell him the outcome.” He started for the door. “Just a moment, Mister Jenkins.” “Yes?” “I want to tell you that I respect your attitude, too. As I told you, the project is dangerous, quite dangerous. I think it is a proper danger but I don’t deny your right to forbid your son to risk his neck with me.” “I am afraid you don’t understand me, Doctor Cargraves. It’s dangerous, certainly, and naturally that worries me and Missus Jenkins, but that is not my objection. I would not try to keep Ross out of danger. I let him take flying lessons; I even had something to do with getting two surplus army trainers for the high school. I haven’t tried to keep him from playing around with explosives. That’s not the reason.” “May I asked what it is?” “Of course. Ross is scheduled to start in at the Technical Institute this fall. I think it’s more important for him to get a sound basic education than for him to be first man on the moon.” He turned away again. “Wait a minute! If it’s his education you are worried about, would you consider me a competent teacher?” “Eh? Well, yes.” “I will undertake to tutor the boys in technical and engineering subjects. I will see to it that they do not fall behind.” Mister Jenkins hesitated momentarily. “No, Doctor, the matter is settled. An engineer without a degree has two strikes against him to start with. Ross is going to get his degree.” He stepped quickly to the door and called out, “Ross!” “Coming, Dad.” The center of the argument ran downstairs and into the room. He looked around, first at Cargraves, then anxiously at his father, and finally at his mother, who looked up from her knitting and smiled at him but did not speak. “What’s the verdict?” he inquired. His father put it bluntly. “Ross, you start in school in the fall. I cannot okay this scheme.” Ross’s jaw muscles twitched but he did not answer directly. Instead he said to Cargraves, “How about Art and Morrie?” “Art’s going. Morrie phoned me and said his father didn’t think much of it but would not forbid it.” “Does that make any difference, Dad?” “I’m afraid not. I don’t like to oppose you, son, but when it comes right down to cases, I am responsible for you until you are twenty-one. You’ve got to get your degree.” “But, but, look, Dad. A degree isn’t everything. Heinlein Index: https://rumble.com/v406mdz-index-of-robert-heinlein-audiobooks..html

Rahan. Episode Forty Eight. The Weapons that fly. Story by Roger Lecruex. Art by Andre Cheret. It was scorching hot and the son of Crao stretched out happily in the shade of a large tree. It was then that he heard a slight rustle in the foliage and caught a glimpse of the man with the blowgun. He threw himself aside, barely avoiding the short dart that was intended for him! Pook! The man was already extracting another arrow from his curious bamboo quiver. If you want Rahan dead, come down and face him! Page Two. But before he slipped it into his blowgun, Rahan had thought of a use for the long vines. Since you will not come down, Rahan will make you come to him! He violently shook the vines, which the man imprudently held. Ra-ha-ha Argh! And he, surprised by the suddenness of the response, lost his balance. When he regained his senses, the son of Crao had grabbed the blowgun. Since Tara did not manage to kill you, you can kill him! It is the law of the hunt! Rahan does not take the life of "Those-who-walk-upright". Why did you want to steal his?! Page Three. All those who do not belong to the Gaa clan are enemies! Rahan has heard such stupidity too often! Go away! Go, Tara! Go back to your people! Rahan will continue on his way! You will not get far! You should never have ventured into our territory! After the hunter had disappeared into the thicket, the son of Crao sighed. Would he therefore come up against hostility from his fellow men everywhere and always? The blowgun was not an unknown weapon to him. The short arrows, he knew, were poisoned. Rahan will have to be wary of Gaa's hunters, he thought to himself. He plunged into the forest with all his senses alert, fearing at every step that a dart would spring from the thickets. Page Four. He finally arrived and almost shouted with joy. All around was a large lake, which was simmering under the sun. Rahan escaped the hunters! And there is the possibility of refreshing himself! When he rushed between the soapwort bushes, he felt like he was treading on warm ashes. Yes, it is like those ashes left by the fires of Rahan! The thick layer of gray dust proves that the sun, season after season, set these bushes on fire. The son of Crao continued his course on this ground softer than the moss of the undergrowth when. Baghae! Suddenly emerging from behind a large charred stump, a black panther pounced on him! Page Five. The shock was such that the knife he had just drawn escaped him. Argh! A cloud of ashes rose when he collapsed under the beast. You surprised Rahan, Baghae, but you have not taken his life yet! The son of Crao and the feline rolled into the hollow of a dune. The arrows!! The arrows which had just scattered on the ground made the outcome of the melee even more uncertain. Each of these poisonous darts was more formidable than the panther's slaps. This thought increased Rahan's energy tenfold. Ra-ha-ha! Page Six. The beast, thrown back, growled furiously and gathered itself up for a new attack. Attack Baghae! And pay attention! The son of Crao had grabbed two darts. The one he threw barely stuck in the black chest. But he did not have to use the second. The panther, as if struck by lightning, collapsed on the ashes. Ra-ha-ha! A moment later, he had found his knife and the blowgun and was carefully collecting the fine arrows. Rahan has never needed to bathe so much! From head to toe, the son of Crao was, in fact, covered in gray dust. He rushed towards the lake. Page Seven. The water was cool and felt good on his aching muscles. He was happily rubbing his arms and chest when. Ooh! A whitish foam bubbled between his fingers. He waved his hands to get rid of the foam and his astonishment grew even greater. Countless little bubbles fluttered around him, bright and light. Rahan has discovered a magic powder! The bubbles disappeared, and. The hunters of Gaa have, found the traces of Rahan! These tracks, on the ashes, were easy to follow. Behind the rushes, Crao's son saw the men heading towards the lake. Page Eight. He had used this trick many times. He grabbed the blowgun and let himself slide under the water. He no longer heard or saw the hunters. But he guessed that they were observing the surface of the lake. He was wrong! The men, whose tracks had led to the edge of the lake, were scrutinizing the Sky! His trail ends there and he did not turn back, because he took flight like a bird! Like many clans, in these fierce times, this one knew nothing about swimming! That the fugitive had dared to face the water of the lake was unthinkable to them! When the son of Crao stood up cautiously, Gaa and his hunters in the distance were about to disappear into the forest. This old trick has succeeded, once again. Page Nine. Never had his body, cleansed of the mysterious dust, been so clean. Delighted, He joyfully whipped the foam that floated around him. Even Crao the wise man, who knew so many things did not know of powder-that cleans! The foam clumped together at the end of the blowgun. Like a bright cluster of tiny tears. Fly away, little tears, fly away! The shaking was not enough, Rahan instinctively brought the blowgun to his mouth, and blew. And it was a new miracle! A bubble grew and grew, and grew. It sparkled with marvelous colors Is Rahan dreaming?! Page Ten. Transparent and light, the bubble suddenly detached itself, moving slowly in front of the stunned son of Crao. Are you good or are you a malevolent thing? Rahan was more intrigued than worried. But as this "Thing" got closer he nevertheless held out his knife. Back!! Pop! Ohh! You are not very dangerous! The bubble, touching the ivory blade, had vanished. “Tears-that-fly” are born from magic powder. But they die as soon as we touch them!! Rahan enjoyed making bubbles for a long time, laughing when they burst at the slightest touch, spraying him with fine droplets. Ha-ha-ha! Rahan will take magic powder with him! Page Eleven. Shortly after, in fact, he filled a bamboo quiver with ashes. A wad of grass would clog this container. He was returning to the forest when, along the dune where he had confronted "Baghae" The Baghae had disappeared! The hunters of Gaa found the Baghae's body and brought it back to the village! No! Rahan is mistaken! The son of Crao could not discover other traces in the ashes. Only his own and those of the panther!! “Baghae” disappeared like “Tears that fly”. Ctot! Argh!! Too late he noticed the noise behind the stump. The dart stuck in his shoulder and he collapsed without even seeing the hunters! Page Twelve. He did not come to himself until much later. The Hunters. The weapons. The "Territory of Shadows" is made like this. You are not in the “Territory of Shadows”. You are prisoner of Gaa. We have arrows that strike the enemy, others that plunge them into the “Long Sleep”! Rahan now realized that he was attached to the wall of a hut. Do you hear Gaa? Do you understand him? Yes, the son of Crao understood why he was still alive, why the panther had disappeared. When the "Baghae" came out of the long sleep, she took refuge in the forest. But Rahan cannot escape! Gaa could have killed Rahan. Why didn't he do it? Because you spared Tara. And also because Gaa wants to prove his skill to his brothers! Page thirteen. If these arrows hit you, you will die! And that will mean that Gaa is no longer worthy of being leader! The arrows that Gaa brandished had a reddish tip. The hunters were kept aside. Thirty steps from Rahan, Gaa raised his blowgun. Gaa hopes he will not hit you, Rahan! Rahan was confused. Puff! The son of Crao had never experienced such a moment of anguish. Gaa wanted to spare him, but how far would his pride push him? The first dart whistled. And came to care a stop near his face. The second stuck a hand's width away. Gaa is capable! But Rahan can do better than him! Free him and give him back his knife! Let Gaa take his place!! The approvals that were made proved that this challenge enchanted the hunters! Page Fourteen. A moment later, Rahan was freed and Gaa, through pride or unconsciousness, calmly leaned against the hut. Gaa is ready! Rahan must do better than Gaa, but without touching him! If Gaa dies, Rahan will be killed by the hunters! The son of Crao managed to control his emotion. Silence fell as he brandished the ivory knife. Make Rahan aim true, Crao! The cutlass flew, whirled, plunged towards the clan leader, and. The clamors it drew saluted the feat! The blade stuck a finger away from Gaa's throat, but the latter did not flinch. Only “Magic Powder” can give you your skill! Page Fifteen. Gaa brandished the quiver filled with ashes. Since you are a sorcerer, tell us the secret of this powder, Otherwise you will die! Rahan disliked to play the sorcerer. But he no longer had a choice. This powder does not give throwing skill, but it makes "tears-that-fly!" Ha-ha-ha! Tears that fly! Ha-ha-ha! Gaa and his brothers would like to see! They will see. They saw Rahan pour the ashes into a bowl full of water. Barely had he whipped the water with his knife when a thick foam rose. Give Rahan a blowgun! A moment later, stupor froze the clan. They looked without understanding at the marvelous bubbles that rose in the sky. Page Sixteen. Eh!? Gaa suddenly saw one of them, curiously deformed. He wanted to grab it but! Gaa wants a “Flying Tear”!! Ooh! Why did Rahan make the “Tear” disappear?? Gaa wants a tear that doesn't disappear! The hunters, for their part, tried in vain to catch the bubbles. The son of Crao was incapable of performing such a miracle! But Gaa insisted, and became threatening. If you do not obey, you will die! He was going to slip a red-tipped dart into his blowgun. Rahan does not have the power to prolong the life of the "Tears-that-Fly". But Gaa and his people perhaps do? Page Seventeen. Whoever gets the biggest “Tear” might be able to preserve it! There was a moment of hesitation, and what Rahan hoped for happened. Jostling around the bowl the hunters plunged their blowguns into the soapy mass. It's time to flee! The men were too busy to pay attention to their captive. He rushed towards the nearby forest. Ah! Nevertheless this “Tear” was big! You lied to us, Rahan! But, but! Gaa was the first to notice the disappearance of the son of Crao. They quickly found the traces of the fugitive and the hunt began again. The big lake will stop him! Without the magic powder, he won't be able to fly away! Page Eighteen. Rahan, who was actually running towards the lake, had very little lead over his pursuers. They do not know how to "Crawl on water". Rahan will escape from them! The hunters screamed in amazement when he dove. Such audacity was beyond their comprehension! The son of Crao swam underwater, moving away from the shore. He only returned to the surface when he felt he was out of range of the poisoned darts. Click! Plock! Plock! Some fell behind him and. Stop! Stop! A hunter who can glide on water deserves to live!! But if water supports Rahan, it will support Gaa! Gaa will Bring Rahan Back Alive! And he will become our brother! Page Nineteen. With the courage and recklessness that were his own, Gaa threw himself into the water! And the clan, amazed, saw what they had never seen. One of their own was floating on the lake, moving forward on the lake! Gesticulating as best he could, Gaa remained on the surface. Rahan, amused, heard his cries of joy. Gloo. Gaa Crawls on the water! Gaa Crawls on the water! Gaa thanks Rahan. To have proven that to him. It was possible! Rahan has nothing left. To fear from the Clan! He will be our brother. For a moment, Gaa almost sank, but Rahan was already coming to the rescue. Don't gesticulate so much, Gaa! You have to stay calm to properly “Crawl on water”! Page Twenty. Rahan does not know how to make "Tears" that last. But he knows many things that he can teach yours! Yes, yes, But you have already taught us the most beautiful things. We will no longer fear the great lake! Imitating Rahan, Gaa swam almost decently. As they came towards the shore, the son of Crao willingly allowed himself to be left behind. Very good Gaa! Very Good! The hunters, hostile a moment earlier, now cheered Rahan. Although brutal, this turnaround. Was not as unexpected as it seemed. It often took so little in those fierce times for contempt to give way to respect, for friendship to drive out hatred! “Those-who-walk-upright”, men, had so much to learn from each other. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

The B-58 Hustler, A Short History

Rahan. Episode Forty Seven. The Men without hair. Text by Roger Lecureux. Drawing by Andre Cheret. Bang! The spear that stuck behind him told the son of Crao that the pack that had been chasing him since nightfall had not lost his track! He picked up his pace and climbed nimbly over a large tree felled by lightning and. Argh! The ground opened beneath him. Thin branches and leaves that had concealed the trap. Page Two. Accompanied him in his fall. He heard the clamors of his pursuers and instinctively protected his head. What? What? A coarse net of lines, stretched across the pit, had spared him from hitting the bottom! Rahan understands. This trap is designed to capture game alive! The net bumped and jolted as it was slowly raised. During his flight, the son of Crao had only glimpsed his pursuers. He only now noticed that none of them had hair. We wanted to slaughter you! But since the spirits led you into this trap, it is because they want Araya to decide your fate! Do not resist! Page Three. How could Rahan, entangled in the meshes and threatened by twenty spears, have resisted? Rahan is the friend of all "Those-who-walk-upright", men-without-hair! You lie! It was the evil spirit that sent you to our territory! Advance! Advance! The moon was still shining when the hunters and their captive came within sight of a cave. Araya knew you would bring back Long Hair! The setting clouds told him so! The son of Crao guessed the man was a sorcerer from his heavy collars, and from his words. Since dawn, one of us has been observing you. When they told Araya how you had escaped the "Long-nose", Araya set his brothers on your trail! Because only an evil spirit can avoid the anger of the “Long-nose”! Page Four. Just before sunset, in fact, Rahan had been charged several times by a rhinoceros. It was only due to his composure and his flexibility that he tired the pachyderm. Ra-ha-ha! Evil spirits do not exist! Any agile hunter can tire out a "Longnose"! Obviously, it would be difficult for Araya! Rahan, mockingly, pointed to the sorcerer's belly. But undoubtedly Araya prefers to eat the game that others catch! Ten spears were going to strike the son of Crao when. Stop!! You would not kill a defenseless hunter in the time of granook! Have my brothers forgotten it? The young girl who emerged from the cave looked at her companions with contempt. Page Five. If Araya wants to take "Long-Hair’s” life, let him take it himself! But give long-haired his weapon back! Lonoo was very little when she last saw Araya hunting. But Araya will undoubtedly accept a fight with long hair! The spears were lowered. Lonoo snatched the ivory knife from a hunter. Take! If you faced a "Long-nose", you will not fear a “big belly"! The worried sorcerer suddenly became accusatory. The clouds said that Araya must never hold a weapon again, or his power would be taken away! But since Lonoo wants a fight, she will have it. At sunrise, "Long hair" will face Taurk, who has been reincarnated as Araya-the-hidden! Page Six. As cries of approval arose, the sorcerer smiled perfidiously. But Longo herself will have to ensure that the evil spirit does not escape the clan. She answers for it with her life!! The hunters without hair, and Araya disappeared into the cave. Rahan thanks you, Lonoo. But who are you? Why does the clan obey you? The clan still respects me a little because I am the daughter of granook-the-chief. But mine obey Araya in everything! You do not seem to have much respect for your wizard! I hate him! I have hated him ever since. When Grannok-the-chief and a few brave people joined the "Territory of Shadows". Crushed by buffaloes while they were hunting for the clan! Page Seven. That day Araya refused to accompany my father, claiming that the spirits were unfavorable to hunting. I know this “Prediction” excused his fear and his laziness! But my people believed that Araya knew the language of clouds! They made him the clan wizard! This happened many moons ago. Since then, Araya has never hunted again, never risked his life again. He spends his time sleeping and eating! Or, he plays with this monster who only obeys him! A monster? What monster? Taurk! A buffalo that he managed to train, and which, he says, is the reincarnation of the hunter he was before becoming a sorcerer. Do not smile "Long-haired"! It is this fury that you will have to face at daybreak! Loone had an expression of fear. Page Eight. The son of Crao contemplated the sky that would soon brighten with the light of dawn. Rahan could run away. Yes, he could run away. But he knows that Arraya is just waiting for this to accuse Lonoo of having helped the Evil Spirit! This is why Rahan would stay! He will fight Taurk! Lurking in the darkness, the sorcerer was spying on them. They must both die, otherwise Araya will lose the trust of the clan! Rahan and Lonoo were returning to the cave. Why do yours not have hair? They shave their heads. Ever since Araya claimed to have seen in the clouds that death was leading the hunters towards the “Territory of Shadows” by pulling them by their hair!! Page Nine. Why does he make up such lies? This sloth must play his role as a wizard! And chance came to his aid! What do you mean? Since the men cut their hair, the clan has not lost a single hunter. It is just luck, but. My brothers attribute these Miracles to the one-who-sees-into-the-skies. This is why they obey him! This is why you will be disemboweled by Taurk! The horizon was turning pink. You still have time to escape "Long Hair"! No! Rahan will not sacrifice your life for his!! At the sorcerer's call, the hunters burst out of the cave. The Clouds of the East promise us the death of the evil spirit! Let him be delivered to Taurk! Page Ten. The son of Crao allowed himself to be dragged away without resistance. Rahan had faced buffaloes before. He had always triumphed! A moment later, he was pushed into a shallow but very large pit. You see the sun rise for the last time! The hunters and their companions gathered at the edge of this natural arena. Among them, Rahan caught a glimpse of Lonoo, who addressed him with a sad greeting. Free Taurk! Men opened a heavy trapdoor. There was a moment of silence and suddenly Taurk appeared. Rahan had never seen a buffalo so powerful, with such fearsome horns! Page Eleven. Kill the evil spirit, Taurk!! Kill him! The hoof of the great buffalo scratched the ground. He had just seen the son of Crao. If Rahan kills Taurk, the hunters will believe he killed the sorcerer's reincarnation! They will be merciless! An insane idea occurred to Rahan. Defeat without killing this monster that charged him. He sheathed his knife and waited for the shock! Ra-ha-ha! An admiring clamor arose which was redoubled when, dragged through the dust, the son of Crao grabbed the other horn. Ah! Rahan may make you touch the ground! Just a moment! A simple instant! Page Twelve. Rahan attempted an impossible feat. The big buffalo, shaking his head in disgust, shrugged him off! Ha-ha-ha! What vanity it is to hope to defeat Araya the hunter! Long hair goes. Screams drowned out the sorcerer's voice. Taruk, continuing his course, charged a hunter who had just slipped into the pit! No Taurk! No! No!! The irritated buffalo no longer listened to Araya. The son of Crao heard the howl of the disemboweled man. Araya is lying to you, “Men-without-Hair”!! If he had been reincarnated in a buffalo, he would not have killed one of your people!! And you see that it is not enough to cut your hair to escape death! Over there, Taurk savagely trampled his victim. Page thirteen. The sight and smell of blood increased the fury of the buffalo which charged the son of Crao once again. Rahan wanted to spare you but it is not possible! If one of us has to join the "Territory of Shadows", it will be you. The ivory knife shone under the sun. At the moment when Taurk came towards him with his head down. Ra-ha-ha! Rahan had dived between the great horns. Using these, he managed to turn around on the neck of the buffalo which was kicking furiously. The “Hairless Men” acclaimed his audacity. "Long-Haired" does not seem to fear reincarnations, does he, Araya? Page Fourteen. Taurk now charged straight ahead and the son of Crao struck, searching for the spot he knew was vital. And the ivory blade suddenly cut the jugular. The large buffalo suddenly collapsed on its front legs, throwing Rahan to the ground. Its rear legs bent in turn and it rolled onto its side. Ra-ha-ha! If long hair triumphed over Taurk, it is because he is an evil spirit! No!! We all saw him take on Tarak! He fought as a courageous hunter! The clan must give him back his freedom. Araya felt doubt creeping into his people. Once again cunning, he became conciliatory. Araya may have misunderstood the clouds' signs! Page Fifteen. Yes Araya had misunderstood! The clouds say that "Long-haired" can live. If he leaves our territory immediately!! The sorcerer solemnly consulted the sky. You triumph again are yours! The clouds do not speak to those who walk upright! They say whether the coming day will be beautiful or not, and that is all! After the death of Granook-the-chief, you live by lies, Araya. If Taurk was your reincarnation as a hunter, he would not have killed one of you! And if you could have predicted things you would have known that Rahan would kill the buffalo! The sorcerer hid his rage poorly. It was the presence of the Evil Spirit that caused Araya to lose his power. When "Longhair" is gone, Araya will regain his power! Good and evil spirits do not exist! Rahan hopes men without hair will understand this one day! The hunters, confused, watched the son of Crao rush towards the forest. Page Sixteen. Lonoo saw him disappear into the thickets. If Lonoo does not guide "Long Hair", he will encounter the "Great Ravine" and will have to turn back. The hunters will think that he is coming back to challenge them and will have no pity for him. While her people returned to the cave, she slipped away. Hold! Hold! Lonoo perhaps hopes to bring back "Long-haired". As long as this girl lives, Araya's authority will not be complete! Rahan will not go back! The son of Crao, however, was already far away. He would have gone even further if a precipice had not stopped his course. He could have walked along this wide and deep ravine, but he liked to overcome these obstacles that nature presented to him. A moment later, from his knife and a bamboo, he had made a solid javelin. He tied a long vine there. Page Seventeen. If his knife is helpful to Rahan, he will find a fork! The javelin flew towards the trees that stood on the other side of the ravine Once again, Rahan drew a lesson from a recent misadventure. Like the arrow that skewered the squirrel, the javelin disappeared in the foliage, getting stuck in the branches as soon as he pulled the line. He tied it to a trunk when clamors reached him. Could Araya have convinced the hairless men that Rahan is an evil spirit? The hunters, intrigued by the disappearance of their wizard, were looking for him. And they had just discovered. The corpse of Lonoo!! Page Eighteen. The son of Crao was above the void when Araya emerged from the thickets brandishing a heavy pebble. Long Hair will die! Long hair killed Lonoo!! He must die!! While the witch angrily hammered on the line, the hunters appeared in turn. Rahan was not yet in the middle of the precipice when the vine gave way. Argh! Klack. He was violently thrown against the steep wall of the ravine, but despite the shock he did not let go. Araya is lying to you again!! Rahan didn't kill Lonoo!! Page Nineteen. Klack! Bang! Bang! Rahan will not make it up there without being hit! Rahan did not kill Lonoo!! The spears ricocheted dangerously around Rahan. When Lonoo, wavering, appeared behind the hunters. Longhair tells the Truth! It was Araya who wanted to kill Lonoo! He caught up with Lonoo in the forest and hit her with a stone! Argh! You will never oppose Araya Lonoo again! She lies! She lies to save "Longhair"! Here is proof that we do not lie, brothers! While struggling, she snatched her necklace from Araya! Rahan had taken advantage of this respite to climb out of the ravine. What he heard filled his heart with joy. Page Twenty. “Long-hair” was right! Araya has always deceived us! But by striking Lonoo, he is condemned to join the "Territory of Shadows"!! No! No! The sorcerer screamed in fear but the hunters, unyielding, pushed him towards the “Grand Ravine.” It was so deep that the body spinning in the void disappeared from Rahan's eyes. Come back, brother, you no longer have any reason to run away from us! It was true. Nothing forced the son of Crao to leave this territory anymore. This was why, shortly after. How long did he stay among this clan? No one can say it. Still, when he said goodbye to Lonoo one fine morning, all the hunters had regained their abundant hair of yesteryear. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

He lives badly who does not know how to die well. ON SERENITY OF MIND11.4. One. PREPARE YOURSELF. Seneca’s greatest prose work, theMoral Epistles,is a collection of letters addressed to a close friend, Lucilius, who like Seneca was in his 60s at the time theEpistleswere composed, AD 63 to 65. Death and dying are a prominent theme in these letters and several deal almost entirely with that theme, including letters 30, 70, 77, 93, and 101, all represented in this volumeeither in whole, as signaled by the inclusion of their salutations and sign-offs, or in large part. The letters usually take as their point of departure an event in Seneca’s daily life, such as a visit to an ill friend, or, as in the case of the excerpt below, an idea Senecahad encountered in his reading. Though they take the form of an intimate correspondence, theEpistleswere primarily writtenfor publication, and the “you” addressed in them is sometimes Lucilius but at other times the Roman public, or even humanity generally. Epicurus says, “Rehearse for death,”or, if this conveys the meaning better to us, “it’s a great thing to learn how to die.” Perhaps you think it useless to learn something that must only be used once; but this is the very reason why we ought to rehearse. Wemust study always the thing we cannot tell from experience whether we know. “Rehearse for death”; the man who tells us this bids us rehearse for freedom. Those who have learned how to die have unlearned how to be slaves. It is a power above, and beyond,all other powers. What matter to them the prison-house, the guards, the locks? They have a doorway of freedom. There’s only one chain that holdsus in bondage, the love of life. If it can’t be cast off, let it be thus diminished that, if at some point circumstance demands it, nothing will stop or deter us from making ourselves ready to do at once what needs to be done. Epistle26.8 to 10. In the letter excerpted below, Seneca coaches Lucilius as to how he should advise an unnamed friend who has withdrawn from public life into quieter pursuits. If [your friend] had been born in Parthia, he would be holding a bow in his hands right from infancy; if in Germany, he would brandish a spear as soon as he reached boyhood;if he had lived in the time of our ancestors, he would have learned to ride in the cavalry and to strike down his foe in hand-to-hand combat. Each nation has its own training to coax and command its members. Which one, then,must your friend practice? The one that has good effect against all weapons and against every kind of enemy: contempt of death. No one doubts that death has something terrible about it, such that our minds, which Nature endowed with a love of itself, are disturbed by it. Otherwise there would be no need to make ourselves ready and hone ourselves for that which we might enter by a certain voluntaryimpulse, just as we all are motivated by self-preservation. No onelearnsto lie down contentedly in a bed of roses, if the need arises, but rather we steel ourselves for this: to not betray a confidenceunder torture, or to stand on guard, though wounded, through the night, if the need arises, without even leaning on an upright spear, since sleep has a way of sneaking up on those who lean againstsome support. But what if a great yearning for longer life holds you in its grip? You must believe that none of the things that depart from your sight, and that are subsumed into the universe from which they sprang (and will soon spring again), is used up; these things pause, but do not die, just as death, which we fear and shun, interrupts but does not strip away our life. The day will comeagain which will return us into the light. Many would reject that day, were it not that it returns us without our memories. But I will instruct you carefully in the way that all things that seem to die are infact only transformed; thus the one who will return to the world should leave it with equanimity. Just look at how the circuit of the universe returns upon itself. You will see that nothingin this cosmos is extinguished, but everything falls and rises by turns. The summer departs, but the year will bring another; winter falls away, but its own months will restore it. Night blocks the sun, but in an instant daylight will drive that night away. Whatever movement of the constellations has passed, repeats; one part of the sky is always rising, another part sinking below the horizon. Let me at last come to an end, but I will add this one thought: neither infants, nor children, nor those whose minds are afflicted, are afraid of death; it would be repellent, if our reason did not offer us thesame contentment to which they are led by their folly. Farewell. (Epistle36.7 to 12) Seneca suffered his whole life from respiratory illness, probably including tuberculosis, and from asthma.His discomfort was such that, in young adulthood, he contemplated suicide, according to his own report. He must have experienced attacks like the one described below throughout his life, but they took on added significance as he grew older, especially given that the name doctors gave to them (according to Seneca) wasmeditatio mortis,“rehearsal for death.” Dear Lucilius, Ill health had grantedme a long reprieve; then it came on me suddenly. “What sort of illness?” you ask. It’s an apt question, since there’s nonethat I haven’t experienced. But one alone is, you might say, my allotment. I don’t know what its Greek name is, but it could be fittingly calledsuspirium.It comes on with sudden and brief force, like a tornado; it’s nearly over within an hour, for who could die for a longtime? Every physical discomfort and danger passes through me; there’s nothing I find more aggravating. And how could I not? This is not illness, that’s something else entirely, but loss of life and soul. Therefore the doctors call it “rehearsal for death,” and sometimes the spirit accomplishes what it often has attempted. Do you suppose I’m cheerful as I write these things, because I’ve escaped?I think it would be ridiculous to delight in this outcome as though it were a form of good health, just as ridiculous as to proclaim victory when one’s court case has been postponed. Yet, even in the midst of suffocation, I did not cease taking comfort frombrave and happy thoughts. “What’s this?” I say to myself. “Does death make trial of me so frequently? Let it: I’ve done likewise to death,for a long time.” When was that, you ask? Before I was born: for death is nonexistence. I know what that’s like. It will be the same after me as it was before me. If death holds any torment, then that torment must also have existed before we came forth into the light, but, back then, we felt nothing troubling. I ask you, wouldn’t you call it a very foolish thing if someone judges that a lamp is worseoff after it’s snuffed out than before it has been lighted? We too are snuffed out and lighted. In the time in between, we have sense and experience; before and after is true peace. We go wrong in this, Lucilius, if I’m not mistaken: we think that death comes after, whereas in fact it comes both before and after. Whatever existed before us was death. What does it matter whether you cease to be,or neverbegin? The outcome of either is just this, that you don’t exist. I kept telling myself these encouragements, and others of the same kind, silently, for there wasn’t space for words. Then little by little thesuspirium, which had already turned into a kind of panting, gave me longer respites and slowed down. But it hung on, and even though it has ceased, I do not yet have natural, easybreathing; I feel a certain break in its rhythm, a delay between breaths. Take this on faith from me: I won’t tremble, at the last moments; I’m prepared. I don’t think at all about the entire day ahead.Praise and emulate that man who does not disdain to die, though it’s pleasant to live; what virtue is there in leaving by being thrown out? Yet here too is a virtue: I’m being thrown out, butlet me take my leave nonetheless. The wise man is never thrown out, for to be thrown out is to be expelledfrom a place that you leave unwillingly; the wise man does nothing unwillingly; he flees from necessity, since he desires that which it will force upon him. Farewell. Epistle54. Nothing can be of such great benefit to you, in your quest for moderation in all things, than to frequentlycontemplate the brevity of one’s life span, and its uncertainty. Whatever you undertake, cast your eyes on death. Epistle114.27. Two. HAVE NO FEAR. By the time Seneca began his magnum opus, theMoral Epistles,in AD 63, he had been writing ethical treatises for more than a quarter of a century. His earliest surviving works, from the early 40s AD, are consolations, designed to offer comfort to friends or relations (including his own mother) who were mourning the death or absence of a loved one. In theConsolation to Marciafrom which the passage below and several others in this volume are taken, Seneca addresses a mother grieving for the loss of a teenaged son. Consider that the dead are afflicted by no ills, and that those things that render the underworld a source of terror are mere fables. No shadows loom over the dead, nor prisons, nor rivers blazing with fire, nor the waters of oblivion; there are no trials,no defendants, no tyrants reigning a second time in that place of unchained freedom. The poets have devised these things for sport, and have troubled our minds with empty terrors. Death is the undoing of all our sorrows, an end beyond which our ills cannot go; it returns us to that peace in which we reposed before we were born. If someone pities the dead, let him also pity those not yet born. To Marcia19.4. In his essayOn Serenity of Mind,Seneca makes the case that fear of death not only makes dying more difficult but diminishesthe nobility and moral integrity of all of life. In the second passage below he uses Julius Canus, a man otherwise barely known to us, to illustrate the “greatness of mind” found in those unafraid of death. What’s to be feared in returning to where youcame from? He lives badly who does not know how to die well. Thus we must, first and foremost, reduce the price we set on life, and count our breath among the things we think cheap. As Cicero says, gladiators who seek by every means to preserve their life, we detest, but we favor those who wear their disregard of it like a badge. Know that the same outcome awaits us all, but dying fearfully, often,is itself a cause of death. Dame Fortune, who makes us her sport, says: “Why should I keep you alive, you lowly, cowering creature? You’llbe more wounded and slashed if you don’t learn how to offer your throat willingly. But you’ll live longer, and die more easily, if you accept the sword-stroke bravely, without pulling back your neck or holding up your hands.” He who fears death will never doanything to help the living. But he who knows that this was decreed the moment he was conceived will live by principle and at the same time will ensure, using the same power of mind, that nothing of what happens to him comes as a surprise. On Serenity of Mind11.4. Julius Canus,an exceptionally great man got into a long dispute with Caligula. As he was leaving the room, Caligula, that secondPhalaris, said: “Just so you don’t take comfort from an absurd hope, I’ve ordered you to be led away for execution.” “Thankyou, best of rulers,” Canus replied. I’m not sure what he was feeling; I can imagine several possibilities. Did he want to give insult by showing how great was the emperor’s cruelty, that it made death seem a boon? Or was he reproaching the man’s habitual insanity (for thosewhose children had been executed, or whose property had been taken away, used to give thanks in this way)? Or was he embracing the sentence joyfully, like a grant of freedom? Whatever the reason, his reply showed a greatness of mind. He was playing a board game when the centurion in charge of leading off the throngs of the condemned told him it was time to move. Hearing the call, Canus countedup the pieces and said to his partner: “See that you don’t cheat and say you won, after my death.” Then he turned to the centurion andsaid, “You’re my witness; I was ahead by one.” On Serenity of Mind14.4. In later life, to judge by theMoral Epistles,Seneca witnessed the illnesses and deaths of many close contemporaries, and made careful note of how each man faced his final challenge. Hethen held up these examplars for the edification of his friend Lucilius and, through the publication of theLetters,the entire Roman world. Dear Lucilius, I went to see Aufidius Bassus, a very noble fellow, stricken and struggling with his advancing years. But already there is more to weigh him down than lift him up, for old age is leaning upon him with its huge weight, everywhere. The man’sbody, as you know, was ever weak anddessicated; he held or even patched it together, as I might more accurately say, for a long time, but suddenly it gave out. Just as, when a ship has got water in the hold, one crack or another can be stopped up, but once it has begun to come apart in many spots and to go under, there’s no more help for the splitting vessel, just so, in an old man’s body, weaknesscan be supported and propped up for a time. But when, just as in a rotting house, every join is coming apart, and a new crack opens up while you’re patching the old, then it’s time to look around for a way to leave. But our friend Bassus stays sharp minded. Philosophy furnishes him with this: to be cheerful when death comes in view, to stay strong and happy no matter what one’s bodily condition,and not to let go even when one is let go of. A great ship’s captain continues the voyage even with a torn sail, and if he has to jettisoncargo, he still keeps the remainder of the ship on course. This is what our friend Bassus does. He looks on his own end with the kind of attitude and expression that would seem too detached even if he were looking on someone else’s. It’s a great thing, Lucilius,and always to be studied: when that inescapable hour arrives, go out with a calm mind. Other kinds of death are intermingled with hope. Illness lets up, fires are put out, ruin bypasses those whom it seemed about to sink; the sea spits out, safe and well, those whom it had just as violently swallowed down; the soldier retracts his sword from the very neck of the doomed man. But he whom old ageleads toward death has nothing to hope for; for him alone, no reprieve is possible. No other way of dying is so gradual and so long lasting. Our Bassus seemed to me to be laying out his own body for burial, and accompanying itto the grave; he lives like one surviving himself, and bears the grief over himself as a wise man should. For he talks freely about death and bears it so calmly that weare led to think that, if there’s anything troubling or fearsome in this business, it’s the fault of the dying man, not of death. There’s nothing more worrisome in the act of dying than there is after death; it’s just as insane to fear what you’re not going to feel as to fear what you’re not even going to experience. Or could anyone think that itwillbe felt, the very thing that will cause nothingat all to be felt? “Therefore,” Bassus declares, “death is as far beyond all other evils as it is beyond the fear of evils.” I know such things are often said and often must be said, but they have never done me so much good, either when reading them or hearing people say that we must not fear things that don’t hold any terrors. It’s the man who speaks from death’s own neighborhood that hasthemost authority in my eyes. I’ll say plainly what I believe: I think that the man in the midst of death is braver than the one who skirts its edges. The approach of death lends even to the ignorant the resolve to face inevitabilities, like a gladiator who, though very skittish throughout his combat, offers his neck to his enemy and guides the sword toward himself if it strays off-target. But thedeath that is only nearby (though sure to arrive) does not grant that steady firmness of resolve, a rarer thing that can only be exhibited by a sage. I would gladly listen therefore to one who can, as it were, report on death, giving his opinion about it and showing what it’s like as though having seen it close up. You would, I suppose, put more trust and give more weight to someone who had come backto life and told you, based on experience, that death holds no evils; but those who have stood in front of death, who have seen it coming andembraced it, can best tell you what sort of upset its approach brings with it. You can count Bassus among these, a man who doesn’t want us to be deceived. Bassus says that it’s as silly to fear death as to fear old age, for just as age follows youth, sodeath follows age. Whoever doesn’t want to die, doesn’t want to live. Life is granted with death as its limitation; it’s the universal endpoint. To fear it is madness, since fear is for things we’re unsure of; certainties are merely awaited. Death’s compulsion is both fair and unopposed, and who can complain of sharing a condition that no one does not share? The first step toward fairness is evenhandedness.But there’s no need now to plead the case of Nature; she wants our law to be the same as hers. Whatever Nature puts together, she undoes, and what she undoes, she puts together again. Truly, if it happens that old age dispatches someone gently, not suddenlytearing him away from life but little by little releasing him, that person ought to thank the gods for bringing him, after he’s had his fillof life, to a rest that is needed by all and welcomed by the weary. You see people who long for death, more so indeed than life is usually sought. I don’t know which imparts to us a greater resolve: those who beg for death or those who await it calmly and cheerfully. The former happens occasionally, owing to madness or some sudden outrage, while the latter is a kind of serenity born of steadyjudgment. Some arrive at death in a rage, but no one greets death’s arrival cheerfully except those who have long prepared themselves for it. I confess that I had gone to see Bassus, a dear friend, rather often, for multiple reasons; in part, to learn whether I would find him the same on every occasion, or wouldn’t the power of hiswill diminish along with the strength of his body? In fact itonly increased in him, just as the joy of chariot drivers is often seen more clearly as they approach the seventh and last lap of victory. He would say, in accord with the teachings of Epicurus, that he hoped, first of all, there would be no pain in his final breath; but if there was, he had a certain comfort in its very brevity, for no pain is long lasting if it is great. Moreover there would berelief for him in this thought, even if his soul was torturously torn from his body: that after this pain, he could no longer feel pain. But he had no doubt that his elderly soul was already on the edge of his lips, and no great force would be needed to pull it away. A fire that has gotten control of ready tinder must be put out with water, or sometimes by tearing down buildings, he said; but thefire that lacks fuel dies down by itself. I listen to these words gladly, Lucilius, not becauseI’m hearing something new, but because I’m being drawn toward what is, as it were, right before my eyes. What then? Have I not seen many others cutting their lives short? Indeed I have, but those who come to death with no hatred of life, who receive death rather than drawing it toward them, make adeeper impression on me. Bassus used to say that the torment we feel is of our own making; we tremble when we believe death is near. But whom is itnotnear, when it’s ready and waiting at every moment, in every place? “Let’s consider,” he says, “at the point when something seems to draw near that might cause our death, how many other causes there are, even close at hand, which we don’t fear.”An enemy threatens someone with death, but an upset stomach beats him to it. If we want to separate into categories the reasons for our fear, we will find some that exist, others that merelyseem to. We don’t fear death but the contemplation of death. Death itself is always the same distance away; if it is to be feared, then it should be feared always. What time is there that’s exempt from death? But I ought to be afraid that you’ll hate this lengthy letter even more than death! So I’ll come to an end. As for you: study death always, so that you’ll fear it never. Farewell. Epistle30. It’s not death that’s glorious, but dying courageously. No one praises death; rather, we praise the person whose soul death stripped away before causing it any turmoil. The death that was glorious inCato’s case was base and worthy of shame in Decimus’s.This is Decimus: the man who, while seeking postponements of death, though destined to die, drew apart in order to empty his bowels, and, when summoned to his death and ordered to bare hisneck, said “I’ll bare it if I can live.” What madness, to take flight when there’s no going backward! “I’ll bare it if I can live.” He almost added “even under Antony.” That’s a man worthy to be allowed to live, alright! But, as I was discussing earlier, you see that death, in itself, is neither good nor bad; Cato made the most honorable use of it, Decimus the most shameful. Anything that has no glory of its own takes on glory when virtue is added to it. Metal is neither cold nor hot in itself; it grows hot when stuck in a furnace, and coolsoff again when plunged into water. Death is honorable by way of what’s honorable, namely virtue and a mind that disdains outward appearances. But, Lucilius, even among the things we call “intermediate” between good and bad, there are distinctions to be made. Death is not “indifferent” in the same way as whether you have an odd or even number of hairs on your head.Death is among those thingsthat are not bad but, nevertheless, have an outward appearance of badness. For the love of one’s own self, and the desire to maintain and preserve oneself, are deeply rooted, along with an aversion to annihilation, which seems to strip away many good things from us and take us away from that abundance of things to which we are accustomed. And this too estranges us from death: that we know what ishere before us, but don’t know what the things are like that we will cross over into, and we dread the unknown. Then too our fear of darkness is a natural fear, and death is thought to be leading us into darkness. So, even if death is an “indifferent,” it’s not the kind of thing that can be easily ignored. The mind must be hardened by a great training program to endure to look on it and see it approach. Death ought to be scorned more than it customarily is. We take many things about it onfaith, and the talents of many strive to increase its ill reputation. There are descriptions of a subterranean prison-house, and a realm shrouded in eternal night, in which: the huge door-guard of Orcus, stretched out over half-eaten bones in a gore-spattered cave, barks forever to frighten the bloodless shades of the dead. And even if you believe that these are fables, and that nothing remains in the afterlife to frighten the dead, a different terror creeps in: people are just as afraid of being in the underworld as of not being anywhere. With these things working against us, poured into our ears over long stretches of time, why would it not be glorious to die courageously, one of the greatestachievements of the humanmind? The mind will never strive for virtue if it thinks death is an evil thing; it will, though, if it considers death an indifferent. Epistle82.10 to 17. It’s fitting for you to experience pain, and thirst, and hunger, and old age, if, that is, a long delay in the human world befalls you, and illness, and loss, and death. But there’s no reason to trust those who makea great din all around you: nothing of these things is bad, nothing is unbearable or harsh. Fear attaches to them only by consensus. You fear death, but your fear is only of a rumor, and what could be more foolish than a man who’s afraid of words? Our friend Demetriusoften says that the words of the ignorant issue from the same place as the rumblings of their guts. “What matter to me,” he says,“whether they sound off from up top or from down below?” It’s altogether mad to fear being disgraced by the disgraceful. And likewise, just as you have no cause to fear evil rumors, so you have none to fear the things you would not fear unless rumor had commanded it. No good man would take harm from getting spattered by nasty rumors, right? Death too has a bad reputation; but let’s not allowthat to harm it in our eyes. None of those who bring charges against it have ever tried it, and it’s impudent to condemn what you know nothing of. But youdoknow, at least, how many have found death helpful; how many it has released from tortures, poverty, lamentation, punishments, fatigue. We are in no one’s power, if death is inourpower. Epistle91.18 to 21. The passage below is preceded bya description of the celestial plane of serene contemplation to which the philosopher’s mind canrise. In its final sentence, Seneca demonstrates one of his greatest rhetorical talents, a sharp eye for trenchant, pointed analogies. When the mind raises itself to this sublime level, it becomes a manager, not a lover, of the body, as though this were its necessary burden; it does not become subjectto what it was put in charge of. No free man is slave to the body. No need to mention the other masters that emerge from an excessive concern over it; the body’s own dominion is gloomy and demanding. The man of temperate mind leaves his body, the great-minded man7leaps out of it; no one asks what its end will be, after it’s been left behind, but just as we ignore the clippings from our beardsand hair, just so, that divine sort of mind, as it prepares to leave itshuman form, judges that the destination of its container, whether fire burns it, or earth covers it, or wild beasts tear it apart, matters as little to it as the afterbirth does to an infant. Epistle92.33 to 34. Three. HAVE NO REGRETS. In his earliest surviving work, theConsolation to Marcia,Seneca took on the stern challenge of convincing a mother not to be grieved by the loss of a son. In this and other works, Seneca insists, using various arguments, that the value we place on length of life, and our sense that something has been lost when life is cut short, are fundamentally mistaken. “He died toosoon, still a youth.” Suppose he had still had ahead of him, well, reckon up the longest that’s allowed to a human being to keep going. How long is it? We are born into the briefest space of time,soon to make way for the next arrivals. Am I speaking only of our life spans, which, we know,roll on with incredible speed? Consider the ages of cities: you’ll see how even the ones that take pridein their antiquity have stood only a short time. All human affairs are short, transitory, bounded in a negligible space of endless time. We consider this earth, with its cities, peoples, and rivers, enclosed by a circle of sea, as a tiny dot, if it’s compared with all of time, time, that stretches out longer than the world, especially since the world’s age is redoubled so many times within its span. What difference does it make to extend something, if the amount of added time is little more than nothing? There’s only one way we can say that the life we live is long: if it’s enough. You can name for me vigorous men, men whose oldage has become legendary; you can count off their sets of a hundred and ten years; when you let your mind roam across all of time, there’s no difference between thelongest and the shortest life, if you survey how long a person lived and compare it with how long hedidn’tlive. To Marcia21.1 to 3. In the fourEpistlesbelow, each presented mostly or wholly complete, Seneca strives to convince his readers that life should be measured by quality, not quantity, and that prolongation of life is not desirable in and of itself. This point, so clear cut yet so difficultto embrace, is fundamental to his philosophy. Other kinds of enjoyment, or physical experience, have a natural terminus, a point at which we are content to have them cease.We should strive to reach a similar satiety of living, as Seneca claims that he himself has done. Dear Lucilius, Let’s cease to want what we wanted. For my part, I arrange things such that, being an old man, I don’t wantthe same things I did as a child. My days have this one goal, as do my nights; this is my task and my study, to put an end to old evils. I make it so that my day is a small version of my whole life. I don’t, by Hercules, grab at it as though it were my last one, but I look upon it as though itcouldbe my last. Indeed I’m writing this letter now as though death were coming to call for me in thevery midst of writing it; I’m ready to depart. I enjoy my life thus far because I don’t spend too much time measuring how long all this will remain. Before I became old, I took care to live well; in old age I take care to die well. And dying well means dying willingly. Let’s compose our minds such that we want whatever the situation demands, and in particular that we contemplate our end withoutsadness. We must prepare for death before life. Our life is well furnished, yet we’re greedy for its furnishings; something always seems to be lacking, and always will. It’s not years nor days, but the mind, that determines that we’ve lived enough. I, my dearest Lucilius, have lived as much as is enough. Full, I await my death. Farewell. Epistle61. Tullius Marcellinus, whom you knew very well,a quiet young man who soon became an old man, was taken ill with a disease that, though not without remedy, was long lasting and discomfiting and made many demands on him; so he began to weigh the possibility of death. Hegathered together a large group of friends. Each of them, out of timidity, either urged on him the same thing he would have urged on himself, or else played the flatterer andyes-man, and gave the advice he guessed would be more pleasing to the one weighing his options. But our Stoic friend, an outstanding fellow, and a brave and vigorous man, to praise him in the words with which he deserves to be praised, advised him the best, as it seems to me. He began as follows: “Marcellinus, don’t torment yourself as though you were pondering a great matter. Living is not a greatmatter; all your slaves do it, and all the animals. To die honorably, prudently, bravely, nowthatis great. Consider how long it is now that you’ve been doing the same things; food, sleep, the act of love, this is the cycle we move through. So it’s not just a prudent or brave or wretched man, but even one who’s merely fussy, who might want to die.” The man no longer needed a spokesman, but rather,an assistant; the slaves refused to obey.So he began by taking away their fear; he pointed out that the household staff only got into trouble when it was unclear whether the master’s death was his own choice. Otherwise, he said, it would have set just as bad an example to kill a master as to prevent him. Then he turned to Marcellinus himself, advising him that it would be not inhumane, justas at the conclusion of a dinner party the leftovers are divided among the attendants, so now, at the conclusion of life, to offer something to those who had been his assistants throughout life. Marcellinus was a man of easygoing mind, and generous even when his own estate was at stake, so he parceled out little amounts to his weeping slaves, and freely offered comfort to them. He didn’t needa sword, or the spilling of blood. He fasted for three days, and then ordereda tent to be set up in his bedroom. A bath was then brought in; he lay in it a long time, and as hot water was added, he slipped away, little by little, not without a certain pleasure (as he said), the pleasure that a gentle loss of consciousness, not unknown to us (whose mind has sometimes slipped away),can bring. I’ve digressed, but the story is one you will find not unpleasing, for you will learn that the death of a man who was your friend was neither difficult nor painful. Although he made a conscious decision to die, he nonetheless left the world in the gentlest way, and merely slipped out of life. But the story will not be without its applications, for necessity often drives such instances. Often we oughtto die but don’t wish to, or are dying but don’t wish to. No one is so naïve as not to recognize that he must die at some point, yet when he approaches that point he turns back, trembles, pleads. But wouldn’t aman seem to you the greatest of all fools, if he wept because for a thousand years previously, he had not been alive? He’s just as great a fool if he weeps because he won’t live for a thousandyears to come. It’s just the same: you won’t exist, just as you didn’t exist; neither past nor future is yours. You were thrust into this brief moment; how long will you prolong it? Why weep? What are you looking for? Your efforts are wasted. Stop hoping to bend the fates of the gods by prayer. Those fates are determined and fixed, guided by a great and eternal necessity. You’ll go to the sameplace that all go. What’s so strange about that? You were born under this law; it happened to your father, your mother, your ancestors, everyone before you, everyone after you. Anunbreakable sequence, which no effort can alter, binds and tows all things. How great a throng of those yet to die will follow your footsteps! How great a crowd will accompany you! You would bear up more bravely, I imagine,if many thousands of things were dying along with you. In fact, many thousands, both men and animals, are giving up the ghost in all kinds of ways, at the very moment when you are hesitating to die. Don’t you think you are going to arrive someday where you were always headed? No journey is without an endpoint. Do you suppose I’m now going to recount the examples of great men? I’ll tell you of youthsinstead. There’s that Spartan whom legend tells of, still a boy, who, when captured by enemies, shouted, in his native Doric dialect, “I won’t be a slave!” and then made good on his words: the first time he was ordered to perform a slavish and demeaning task, he was told to bring thechamberpot, he broke his skull by dashing it against a wall. That’s how near at hand freedom is, so should anyonebe a slave? Wouldn’t you rather your son die like that, than live to old age through inaction? Why then are you troubled, when dying bravely is a task even for boys? Let’s say you refuse to follow; you’ll be led against your will. So make your own the rules that belong to another power. You won’t take up the boy’s attitude and say, “I am no slave”? You poor man, you’re a slave to people, to things,to life, for a life lived without the courage to die is slavery. What do you have to look forward to? You’ve exhausted those pleasures that delay and detain you in life.There’s nothing you would find new, nothing with which you’re not sated to the point of disgust. You know the taste of wine and of mead. It doesn’t matter whether a hundred amphoras’ worthpasses through your bladder, or a thousand;you’re just a wineskin. You know very well the taste of the oyster and the mullet; your self-indulgence has set nothing aside, untried, for coming years. Yettheseare the things you are torn away from only against your will. What else is there that you might be pained to see torn away from you? Your friends? But do you know how to be a friend? Your country? Do you value that highly enough topostpone your dinner for? The sunlight? You’d snuff that out if you could; for what have you ever done that’s worthy of light? Admit it: it’s not the yearning for the senate house, or for the forum, or even for the natural world that makes you reluctant to die; it’s the grocery market you leave behind unwillingly, a place from which you’ve left nothing behind. You fear death; but look how you scornit, amid your banquet ofmushrooms! You want to live, but do you know how? You’re afraid to die: why is that? Isn’t this life of yours a death? Julius Caesar, when going along the Via Latina, was met by one from a file of guarded prisoners, a man whose beard trailed down to his chest, who asked him for death. “So you’re living now?” Caesar said. That’s how we must respond to those whom deathis coming to aid. “You’re afraid to die, but are you living now?” “But I want to live,” the man says; “I’m doing honorable things. I don’t want to leave behind the duties of life, which I’m carrying out faithfully and diligently.” What, do you not realize that dying, too, is one of those duties of life? You’re not abandoning any duty. There’s no set number of these, no limit you have to reach. There’s no life that’s not short. If you examine the nature of things, even the life of Nestor is short, or that of Sattia, who ordered inscribedon her tombstone that she had lived ninety-nine years. You see in her someone glorying in a long old age. But who could have endured her, if she had filled out a full century? Just as with storytelling, so with life: it’s important how well it is done,not how long. It doesn’t matter at what point you call a halt. Stop wherever you like; only put a good closer on it.Farewell. Epistle77.5 to 20. Dear Lucilius, In the letter you wrote complaining about the death of the philosopher Metronax, saying that he could have and should have lived longer, I missed the even disposition you have in abundance in every matter, and toward every person, butlack in this one matter, just as everyone lacks it. I’ve seen many who kept a calm mind when facing human beings, but none who did so facing gods. Instead, we berate Fate everyday: “Why was that man taken off in the middle of his journey? Why is that othernottaken off? Why does he prolong his old age, making it troublesome to himself and others?” Which do you think more fair, I ask you: thatyou obey Nature, or that Nature obey you? What difference does it make how fast you depart a place that must, without doubt, be departed? We ought to take care that we live not a long time, but enough; for we need Fate to help us live long, but our own minds, to live enough. Life is long if it is full, and it gets filled when the mind returns its own good to itself and passes over into controlof itself. In what way were eighty years, passed in sloth, a benefit to someone? He didn’t live but only lingered in life; he didn’t die late, but died for a long time. “He lived eighty years.” Yes, but it matters up to what point of death you are counting. “He diedin his prime.” Yes, but he had carried out the duties of a good citizen, a good friend, and a good son; he lacked nothing in anyof these paths. His lifetime was cut short, but his life was completed. “He lived for eighty years.” No, he merelywasfor eighty years, unless you say “he lived” in the same way we say that trees live. As for myself, I wouldn’t refuse the addition of more years. But if my span of life is cut short, I will say that I lacked nothing that would render that life happy. I did not prepare for thatfar-off day that my greedy hopes had promised would be my last, but rather I regarded every day as though itweremy last. Just as a man of smaller stature can be complete, so a life can be complete in a smaller stretch of time. Life span stands outside our control. It’s not in my power how long I willexist, but rather how long I willtrulyexist. Demand this of me: that I not pass througha base life span as though passing through shadows, but that I live my life, not skip past it. What’s the most complete span of a life, you ask? To live until attaining wisdom. Whoever reaches that goal ends at a point not furthest, but greatest. Let that man rejoice boldly in the truth, and give thanks to the gods, and to himself among these; let him credit the cosmos for his creation, and deservedlyso, for he returns to the cosmos a better life than the one he got. He has set the template of the good man, and revealed its measure and its quality. If he had added anything to it, the addition would have been similar to what came before. How long is our life?We have enjoyed an understanding of all things; we know from what origins Nature brings itself forth, how it ordersthe world, throughwhat changes it recalls the seasons, how it contains everything that will ever come to be and makes itself its own endpoint; we know that the stars move by their own force, that nothing is stationary except the earth, and that everything else races along at constant speed; we know how the moon outruns the sun and why, though slower, it leaves the faster object behind; we know how it takes onor loses its light, what cause brings on night and what restores the day. A journey awaits,to where you can see these things more closely. The wise man says, “It’s not for this that I depart with greater courage, that I think I have a clear path toward my gods. I deserve to be admitted to their company, and I have already been among them; I have sent my mind there, and they have sent theirsto me. But supposing I am destroyed and that nothing of my humannature remains after death: I possess a great mind nonetheless, even if it’s not going anywhere when I depart.” Surely you don’t think the man happier who died on the last day of the games, than he who died in the middle? By no less an interval thanthatdoes each of us precede the next to die. Death makes its way through all;the killer follows on the heels of his victim. We get most anxious over the thing that is least important. What does it matter how long you dodge the thing you cannot escape? Farewell. Epistle93. Dear Lucilius, Every day, every hour reveals how we are nothing, and brings new arguments to convince those who have forgotten their fragility; it compels those who have contemplated eternal thingsto look toward death. What is this prelude driving at, you ask? You once knew Cornelius Senecio,an illustrious and dutiful Roman knight. He advanced himself from slender origins, and was coasting downhill toward better things, for stature increases more easily than it gets started. Wealth, also, tends to linger a long time in poverty’s realm, and hangs on there even while it is struggling out;but Senecio was on the point of gaining riches, led there by two very effective things, expertise in getting wealth and in managing it; either one might have made him rich. This man of highest thriftiness, who cared for his physical health no less than for his estate, after coming to see me in the morning (as was his habit),and then sitting by the side of a suffering, terminally ill friendall day and (with greater dejection) into the night, and then taking a cheerful meal, was seized by a sudden attack of ill health, angina, and barely kept breathing, through choked airways, until the dawn. Thus only a few short hours after he hadcarried out the duties of a sound and healthy man, he was dead. He was taken off, a man who was managing business on both land and sea, who had made astart in civic affairs and left no source of revenue untapped, at the consummate moment of good fortune, at the flood tide of incoming wealth. Sow your pear trees, Meliboeus, and set your vines in a row. How foolish to set things in order, when we’re not lords of tomorrow! What madness is the far-reaching hope of those who begin things! “I’ll buy things, build things, lend and collect, accruehonors, and finally I’ll spend my worn-out, filled-up old age in idle leisure.” Listen to me: everything is doubtful, even for the fortunate; no one should promise himself anythingregarding the future; the thing held in the hands slips away, and chance cuts short the very hour we hold before us. Time proceeds by a settled law, but it moves through darkness. What does it matter to me that somethingis clear to Nature, if it’s opaque to me? We plan long sea voyages and late returns to our native land after traversing foreign shores; military campaigns and the slow payoff of building fortifications; governorships and attainment of one office after another, meanwhile death stands by our side; and since death is never contemplated except as another’s fate, instances of mortality pile up beforeus but don’t abide any longer than our astonishment at them. But what could be more foolish than to marvel that something will happen on a certain day, when it could happen onanyday? Our end-point is fixed where the inescapable necessity of the fates has planted it, but none of us knowshow far off from that endpoint our course lies. Therefore let’s shape our minds as though we’d arrived atthe last lap. Make haste to live, Lucilius, and think each of your days to be an individual life. The man who accustoms himself to this way of thought, for whom life is complete each day, is free of worry; but to those who live for hope, each moment, as it draws near, slips away, and in steals greediness and, the thing most wretched and cause of all most wretched things, the fear of death. Thencecomes that most debased prayer of Maecenas, in which he accepts weakness and disfigurement and the freshly sharpened stakes of the cross, so long as, among these evils, he is spared the breath of life: Make my hand feeble, make my foot feeble; give me a swelling hunchback, knock out my loosening teeth; as long as life remains, it’s fine. Just preserve my life, even if I sit on a sharpenedstake. Here, he desires the thing that would bring the most wretchedness, had it happened, and seeks a postponement of torment as though it were life itself. Imagine that Vergil had once recited to him this line: Is it so very wretched a thing, this dying? He desires that the worst of evils, things that are the hardest to endure, be continued and prolonged, and for what reward? A longerlife, as it seems. But what is living, if it’s only a lengthy dying? Is there anyone who would want to be mutilated by tortures, to perish limb by limb, and to give up the ghost many times on the rackrather than simply breathe it out a single time? Is there anyone who would prefer, when driven forward to that grim piece of wood, already bent, enfeebled, and puffed out into vile swellings of hischest and shoulders, having amassed many causes of death even apart from the cross, to drag out a life that will feel so many torments? Go ahead, then, deny that it’s a great gift of Nature that we must die. But many are ready to swap worse things for it: to betray a friend in order to live longer, or to hand over their children, with their own hands, for lechery, just to see the next dawn, a dawnthat’s privy to their many sins. This desire for life must be knocked out of us. We must learn that it makes no difference when you undergo the thing that must be undergone some time or other; that it matters how well you live, not how long. And often the “well” lies in not living long.Farewell. Epistle101. FOUR. SET YOURSELF FREE. In the passage below, Seneca again consoles Marcia on the death of her teenaged son. At one point he also refers to Marcia’s father, who some years earlier had starved himself to death to escape persecution by the emperor Tiberius; his suicide was completed just as his senate colleagues, obeying the will of the emperor, were voting to have him executed. That sort of death,freely chosen rather than imposed by a greater power, had particular resonance for Seneca in the era of Caligula, during which theConsolation to Marciawas likely written, and again in the second half of Nero’s reign, during which he wrote theEpistles.Both emperorswere prone to paranoia and forced many citizens they suspected of disloyalty, including ultimately Seneca himself, to take theirown lives or else face both execution and confiscation of property. That recurring pattern helped define suicide as a path to self-liberation, in Seneca’s mind. Oh, how ignorant they are of their troubles, those who do not praise and await death as the finest device of Nature! Whether it closes off happiness or drives away disaster; whether it ends the satiety and torpor of the old, or reducesthe bloom of youth when better things are looked for, or calls back adolescence before it embarks on harsher paths, it is an end for all and a remedy for many, and for some the answer to a prayer, better deserved by no one more than those to whom it comes before it is summoned.Death releases those enslaved to a hated master; it lightens the chains of prisoners; it frees from prison those whoman unopposable authority had forbidden to leave; it demonstrates, to exiles who bend their eyes and thoughts always to their homeland, that there’s no difference in what nation one makes one’s home; it evens everything out, when Fortune has made a bad division of shared property and given one man to another, though both were born with equal rights;it’s the point past which no one ever againdoes another’s bidding, the state in which no one is aware of his lowliness, the path which is closed to no one, the end your father, Marcia, eagerly desired; it’s death, I declare, that makes being born something other than a torment, that allows me not to collapse in the face of menacing events, that lets me keep my mind intact and in controlof itself; I have a court of appeal. Lo, over here,I see crosses of torture, and not all of one kind, but different ones from different makers. For some men hang others upside down, head facing the earth; others drive a stake through the genitalia; still others stretch the arms on the crossbeam.I see the “lyres,”I see beatings, and instruments devised for every different limb and joint;but I see death as well. Over there, there are bloodthirstyenemies and imperious fellow citizens; but I see death is there also. Slavery is no burden, provided that, if your master disgusts you, you can cross over into freedom with a single step. I hold you dear, life, by virtue of the boon of death. To Marcia20.1. The passage below, from Seneca’s early workDe Ira(“On Anger”), represents his moststriking equation of suicide and personal freedom.It comes directly after Seneca’s discussion of two Near Eastern tyrants, Cambyses and Astyages, who had committed outrages on their chief ministers: Cambyses had killed the son of Prexaspes by using him as an archery target, while Astyages had fed to Harpagus a stew of his own butchered children. These stories, and Seneca’s response to them here, take on special point given that Seneca would later, perhaps soon after this passage was composed, become a chief minister himself, at the court of the young Nero. We will not urge our readers to follow the commands of torturers; we will show instead that, in every kind of enslavement, the road to freedom lies open. If one’s mind is ill and wretched from its own failings, it canmake an end of its own sufferings. I will say to one who has fallenin with a king who fires arrows into the chests of his friends, or to another whose master gluts fathers on the guts of their children, “What do you groan for, senseless man? What hope do you have that some foe will liberate you, by destroying your whole family, or some king will wing his way to you, extending his power from afar? Anywhere you cast your glance, the end of your troubles can be found.You see that high, steep place? From there comes the descent to freedom. You see that sea, that river, that well? Freedom lies there, at its bottom. You see that short, gnarled, unhappy tree? Freedom hangs from it. Look to your own neck, your windpipe, your heart; these are the paths out of slavery. Are these exits I show you too laborious, demanding of resolve andstrength? Then, if you ask whatis the path to freedom, I say: any vein in your body.” On Anger3.15.3. Seneca often pointed to the death of Marcus Porcius Cato, an event that took place a century before his own time, as a model of self-liberation by suicide. Cato, a devoted Stoic, had opposed Julius Caesar both in the senate and on the battlefield, in hopes of preventing Rome from becoming an autocracy. After he lost a crucialbattle in North Africa, near Utica, Cato withdrew to a private room and disemboweled himself with a sword. His friends found him still alive and had a doctor sew up his wound, but Cato resolutely pulled out the stitches and finished himself off. Seneca found this death exemplary because of its political motivation, its philosophic inspiration (Cato hadbeen reading Plato’sPhaedo,a dialogue thatdiscusses the immortality of the soul, just before undertaking his deed), and above all because of the resolve required to bring it to completion. I tell you, I can’t see anything Jupiter would consider more lovely anywhere on earth, if he should turn his attention here, than the sight of Cato, standing upright amid public disasters even though his faction had been wrecked more than once. “Leteverything submit to the control of one man,” he said, “let the lands be guarded by troops and the seas by fleets, let Caesar’s soldiers blockade the ports, yet Cato has a means of escape: he’ll forge a broad path to freedom with a single hand. This sword here, thus far harmless and free from the taint of civil war, will finally accomplish brave and noble deeds; itwill give to Cato the freedomit could not give to his homeland. Go forth, my soul, toward the deed you have long contemplated; tear yourself away from human affairs. Petreius and Juba have met in combat, and lie dead, each killed by the other’s hand;that’s a bold and illustrious pact of death, but not the kind that suitsourgreatness. It’s just as base for Cato to seek death at another’s hands as it is to seek life.” It’sclear to me that the gods looked on with great joy while that man, his own harshest avenger, took thought for others’ safety and helped those who left him prepare their escape; while he pored over his studies in his final night; while he stuck his sword into his holy breast; while he scattered his own organs and drew out with his hand that beatified soul, a thing too good to be tainted by a metalblade. For this reason, I couldbelieve, his wound was not sure or effective enough: to watch Cato once was not enough for the immortal gods; his virtue was held back and recalled,so that it might reveal itself in a more difficult role. To seek death a second time takes a greater mind than to enter it once. Why else would the gods not have looked on with approval as the one they nurtured gotaway by means of a brilliant and memorable escape? Death sanctifies those whose exit wins praise even from those in whom it inspires fear. On Providence2.9. Having explored Cato’s demise in the opening section ofOn Providence,above, Seneca returns to the idea of suicide as self-liberation in the closing section of the work, where an unnamed god is speaking to humankind. “Above all, I tookcare that no one would detain you against your will; the exit stands open. If you don’t want to fight, you’re allowed to flee. Thus out of all the things I wanted you to go through by necessity, I made dying the easiest. I put your soul on a downhill slope. If it’s a drawn-out death,just wait a bit, and you’ll see how short and easy is the path to freedom. I put much shorter delays in yourway as you leave the world than as you enter. Otherwise Fortune would have held great power over you, if the human race took as long dying as being born. Let every time and every place instruct you on how easy it is to renounce Nature and to press back on it its gift. Among the very altars and the solemn rites of those making sacrifice, there where life is prayed for, study death. See how the sleekbodies of bulls are felled by a smallwound, and the blow of a human hand dispatches animals of great strength. The ligaments of the neck are severed by a small blade, and when that joint that connects the head and neck is cut, the creature’s bulk, however huge, collapses. The breath of life does not lurk in some deep place; it does not need to be dug out with tools. Your organs don’t need tobe searched out by a stab wound deep within. Death is as near as can be. I set no fixed spot for these killing blows; wherever you want to strike, the way lies open. That thing we call dying, the moment when the soul leaves the body, is too quick for the speed of its exit to be felt. If the noose breaks the neck, or if water blocks your breathing, or if the hard ground beneath you breaks your headas you fall, or if a draught of flame cuts off the course of your returning breath, whatever formdeath takes, it comes quickly. So aren’t you ashamed? You fear for so long that which takes only a short time!” On Providence6.7. As Seneca aged and his physical condition deteriorated, he increasingly confronted the question of self-euthanasia. His feelings on the subject were conflicted, andnot always consistent. Whereas inEpistle 77part three, Seneca seemed to approve of the suicide of Tullius Marcellinus, who had been plagued by a painful but temporary illness, he says inEpistle 58below that only in the case of an incurable condition would suicide be justified. Then in the letter that follows, Epistle 70,presented here in its entirety, Seneca explores both sides of the problemof self-euthasia and decides that the choice is contingent on circumstances. On this question, whether one ought to disdain the exigencies of old age and not wait for their end but make an end with one’s hand, I’ll tell you what I think. The man who lingers and awaits his fate is near to being a coward, just as the drinker who drains an entire amphora, and even sucks down the dregs, is toomuch devoted to wine. But that raises the question whether the end of life is the dregs or something very clear and fluid, if, that is, the mind stays free of damage, the senses stay intact and give delight to the spirit, and the body is not worn out or dead before its time; it makes a great difference whether what one prolongs is life or death. But if one’s body becomes useless for performingits functions, is it not fitting to draw the struggling mind out of it? And, perhaps, the deed must be done a littlebefore it ought, lest, when it ought to be done, you’re no longer able to do it. And when the danger of living badly is greater than that of dying soon, only a fool would not buy his way out of a great risk at the price of a small moment of time. A very long old age has broughtfew men to death’s threshold without debilities, whereas for many, life lies there motionless, unable to make use of what makes it life. Do you think there is anything crueler to lose from life than the right to end it? Don’t begrudge me a hearing, as though my opinion were meant for your own case; take the full measure of my words. I won’t depart from old age as long as it leaves me intact,or at least whole in that better portion of myself. But if it begins to destroy my mind and to tear away parts of it, if what is left to me is not life but mere breath, I’lljump out of the rotten and collapsing building. I won’t use death to escape illness, so long as the illness is curable and does not occlude my mind. I won’t use my hand against myself merely on account of pain; to die forthat reason is to admit defeat. But if I know that my condition must be endured forevermore, I’ll leave, not because of the pain itself, but because it will cut me off from everything that gives one a reason to live. It’s a weak and idle man who dies on account of pain, but it’s a fool who lives for pain’s sake. Epistle58.32 to 36. Dear Lucilius, After a long time away, I have visited Pompeii,your hometown. I was brought back within view of my young adulthood; whatever I had done as a youth, it seemed I was able to do again or had just recently done. We have sailed on pastin the voyage of life, Lucilius; just as, when one is at sea (as Vergil says), the lands and the towns fall away, so have we watched drop from sight, as time sails hurriedly on, first our boyhood, then our adolescence,then whatever lies between youth and mid-life, spanning the gap between them, then the best years of old age, until at last the common end of all humankind hoves in view. We are deluded to think this a perilous reef. It’s a harbor, sometimes to be sought, never to be shunned; someone who drifted there, in the first years of life, has no more cause to complain than one who sailed there atspeed. For as you know, lazy breezes sport with some men, holding back their progress and tiring them with the boredom of a gentle calm, while an unceasing gale sweeps other men along most swiftly.Consider that the same thing happens to us: life brings some very quickly to where even those who tarry must eventually go; others it first tenderizes and ripens. Life, as you know, is not a thing thatshould be held onto forever. Merely to live is not in itself good, but rather, to livewell. Thus the sage will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can. He’ll examine where he will live, with whom, and how, and what he will do. He’ll think about what kind of life is his, not what length. If a host of troubles arise and roil his serenity, he’ll set himself free; and he won’t do this onlyin the final exigency; rather, when his fortune first begins to seem suspect to him, he’ll look around to see whether he’s at a good stopping point. He judges that it makes no difference whether he fashions his end or receives it, whether it happens later or sooner. He does not fear it as he would a great setback,for no one can lose much out of a tiny dribble. It’s of no matter whether one diessooner, or later; dying well or badly is what matters. And to die well is to escape the danger of living badly. Thus I think that that man of Rhodes spoke a most unmanly word; when he had been thrown into a hole by the tyrant, and was being kept alive like some animal, he said, to someone who urged him to stop eating, “So long as one lives, one must hold onto every hope.” Though there’s truth tothat, life should not be bought at any price. It’s folly to die from the fear of death. Your executioner is coming; wait for him. Why get a head start? Why take on the task of inflicting cruelty that belongs to another? Are you jealous of your butcher, or do you seek to spare him his efforts? Socrates could have ended his life by fasting and abstinence, rather than dying by poison; yet he spentthirty days in prisonawaiting death, not in the belief that anything was possible, as though such a long stretch of time might give room for hopes of all kinds, but so that he might submit to the laws, and allow his friends to take joy in the last days of Socrates. Nothing could have been sillier than to have contempt for death but also to fear poison! Scribonia, a solid, serious woman, was thepaternal aunt of Drusus Libo, a youth high in rank but low in intelligence, who had greater hopes for himself than anyone of that time had reason to entertain, greater indeed than he himself had reason to hold atanytime. When Drusus was carried out of the senate, ailing, lying on a litter, with only a few to attend him (for his inner circle had wickedly deserted a man who was no longer a defendantbut a terminal case), he began to consider whether to take his own life or wait for death to arrive.Scribonia said tohim, “What joy is there for you in taking care of someone else’s job?” But she failed to sway him; he did away with himself with his own hands. And he had reason: if he had lived another three or four days, doomed to die by the sentence his enemy had passed, he would indeedhave taken care of someone else’s job. One can’t generalize and say that, in a situation where

This e-text scanned, OCR'd and once overed by Gorgon776 on 16 May 2001. It needs some more correction. If you correct this text, update the version number by .1 and add your name here. PukeOnaPlate 2023 Version plus point one. Formatted for text to speech. Hyphens, brackets and ellipses replaced with commas. Mister and Doctor spelled out explicitly. A TENDERFOOT IN SPACE. When this book was in process, Doctor Kondo asked me whether there were any stories of Robert's which had not been reprinted. On looking over the list of stories, I found that "A Tenderfoot in Space" had never been printed in anything except when it originally appeared in Boys' Life. All copies in our possession had been sent to the UCSC Archives, so I asked them to Xerox those and send them to me. And found this introduction by Robert, which he had added to the carbon in the library before he sent it down there. I was completely surprised, and asked Doctor Kondo whether he would like to use it? Here it is. Virginia Heinlein. This was written a year before Sputnik and is laid on the Venus earthbound astronomers inferred before space probes. Two hours of rewriting, a word here, a word there, could change it to a planet around some other star. But to what purpose? Would The Tempest be improved if Bohemia had a sea coast? If I ever publish that collection of Boy Scout stories, this story will appear unchanged. Nixie is, of course, my own dog. But in 1919, when I was 12 and a Scout, he had to leave me, a streetcar hit him. If this universe has any reasonable teleology whatever, a point on which I am unsure, then there is some provision for the Nixies in it. Part One. "Heel, Nixie," the boy said softly, "and keep quiet." The little mongrel took position left and rear of his boy, waited. He could feel that Charlie was upset and he wanted to know why, but an order from Charlie could not be questioned. The boy tried to see whether or not the policeman was noticing them. He felt light-headed, neither he nor his dog had eaten that day. They had stopped in front of this supermarket, not to buy for the boy had no money left, but because of a "BOY WANTED" sign in the window. It was then that he had noticed the reflection of the policeman in the glass. The boy hesitated, trying to collect his cloudy thoughts. Should he go inside and ask for the job? Or should he saunter past the policeman? Pretend to be just out for a walk? The boy decided to go on, get out of sight. He signaled the dog to stay close and turned away from the window. Nixie came along, tail high. He did not care where they went as long as he was with Charlie. Charlie had belonged to him as far back as he could remember; he could imagine no other condition. In fact Nixie would not have lived past his tenth day had not Charlie fallen in love with him; Nixie had been the least attractive of an unfortunate litter; his mother was Champion Lady Diana of Ojai, his father was unknown. But Nixie was not aware that a neighbor boy had begged his life from his first owners. His philosophy was simple: enough to eat, enough sleep, and the rest of his time spent playing with Charlie. This present outing had been Charlie's idea, but any outing was welcome. The shortage of food was a nuisance but Nixie automatically forgave Charlie such errors, after all, boys will be boys and a wise dog accepted the fact. The only thing that troubled him was that Charlie did not have the happy heart which was a proper part of all hikes. As they moved past the man in the blue uniform, Nixie felt the man's interest in them, sniffed his odor, but could find no real unfriendliness in it. But Charlie was nervous, alert, so Nixie kept his own attention high. The man in uniform said, "Just a moment, son." Charlie stopped, Nixie stopped. "You speaking to me, officer?" "Yes. What's your dog's name?" Nixie felt Charlie's sudden terror, got ready to attack. He had never yet had to bite anyone for his boy, but he was instantly ready. The hair between his shoulder blades stood up. Charlie answered, "Uh, his name is “Spot.” "So?" The stranger said sharply, "Nixie!" Nixie had been keeping his eyes elsewhere, in order not to distract his ears, his nose, and the inner sense with which he touched people's feelings. But he was so startled at hearing this stranger call him by name that he turned his head and looked at him. "His name is 'Spot,' is it?" the policeman said quietly. "And mine is Santa Claus. But you're Charlie Vaughn and you're going home." He spoke into his helmet phone: "Nelson, reporting a pickup on that Vaughn missing-persons flier. Send a car. I'm in front of the new supermarket." Nixie had trouble sorting out Charlie's feelings; they were both sad and glad. The stranger's feelings were slightly happy but mostly nothing; Nixie decided to wait and see. He enjoyed the ride in the police car, as he always enjoyed rides, but Charlie did not, which spoiled it a little. They were taken to the local Justice of the Peace. "You're Charles Vaughn?" Nixie's boy felt unhappy and said nothing. "Speak up, son," insisted the old man. "If you aren't, then you must have stolen that dog." He read from a paper "accompanied by a small brown mongrel, male, well trained, responds to the name 'Nixie.' Well?" Nixie's boy answered faintly, "I'm Charlie Vaughn." "That's better. You'll stay here until your parents pick you up." The judge frowned. "I can't understand your running away. Your folks are emigrating to Venus, aren't they?" "Yes, sir." "You're the first boy I ever met who didn't want to make the Big Jump." He pointed to a pin on the boy's lapel. "And I thought Scouts were trustworthy. Not to mention obedient. What got into you, son? Are you scared of the Big Jump? 'A Scout is Brave.' That doesn't mean you don't have to be scared, everybody is at times. 'Brave' simply means you don't run even if you are scared." "I'm not scared," Charlie said stubbornly. "I want to go to Venus." "Then why run away when your family is about to leave?" Nixie felt such a burst of warm happy-sadness from Charlie that he licked his hand. "Because Nixie can't go!" "Oh." The judge looked at boy and dog. "I'm sorry, son. That problem is beyond my jurisdiction." He drummed his desk top. "Charlie, will you promise, Scout's honor, not to run away again until your parents show up?" "Uh, yes, sir." "Okay. Joe, take them to my place. Tell my wife she had better see how recently they've had anything to eat." The trip home was long. Nixie enjoyed it, even though Charlie's father was happy-angry and his mother was happy-sad and Charlie himself was happy-sad-worried. When Nixie was home he checked quickly through each room, making sure that all was in order and that there were no new smells. Then he returned to Charlie. The feelings had changed. Mister Vaughn was angry, Missus Vaughn was sad, Charlie himself gave out such bitter stubbornness that Nixie went to him, jumped onto his lap, and tried to lick his face. Charlie settled Nixie beside him, started digging fingers into the loose skin back of Nixie's neck. Nixie quieted at once, satisfied that he and his boy could face together whatever it was, but it distressed him that the other two were not happy. Charlie belonged to him; they belonged to Charlie; things were better when they were happy, too. Mister Vaughn said, "Go to bed, young man, and sleep on it. I'll speak with you again tomorrow." "Yes, sir. Good night, sir." "Kiss your mother goodnight. One thing more, Do I need to lock doors to be sure you will be here in the morning?" "No, sir." Nixie got on the foot of the bed as usual, tromped out a space, laid his tail over his nose, and started to go to sleep. But his boy was not sleeping; his sadness was taking the distressing form of heaves and sobs. So Nixie got up, went to the other end of the bed and licked away tears, then let himself be pulled into Charlie's arms and tears applied directly to his neck. It was not comfortable and too hot, besides being taboo. But it was worth enduring as Charlie started to quiet down, presently went to sleep. Nixie waited, gave him a lick on the face to check his sleeping, then moved to his end of the bed. Missus Vaughn said to Mister Vaughn, "Charles, isn't there anything we can do for the boy?" "Confound it, Nora. We're getting to Venus with too little money as it is. If anything goes wrong, we'll be dependent on charity." "But we do have a little spare cash." "Too little. Do you think I haven't considered it? Why, the fare for that worthless dog would be almost as much as it is for Charlie himself! Out of the question! So why nag me? Do you think I enjoy this decision?" "No, dear." Missus Vaughn pondered. "How much does Nixie weigh? I, well, I think I could reduce ten more pounds if I really tried." "What? Do you want to arrive on Venus a living skeleton? You've reduced all the doctor advises, and so have I." "Well, I thought that if somehow, among us, we could squeeze out Nixie's weight, it's not as if he were a Saint Bernard! We could swap it against what we weighed for our tickets." Mister Vaughn shook his head unhappily. "They don't do it that way." "You told me yourself that weight was everything. You even got rid of your chess set." "We could afford thirty pounds of chess sets, or china, or cheese, where we can't afford thirty pounds of dog." "I don't see why not." "Let me explain. Surely, it's weight; it's always weight in a space ship. But it isn't just my hundred and sixty pounds, or your hundred and twenty, not Charlie's hundred and ten. We're not dead weight; we have to eat and drink and breathe air and have room to move, that last takes more weight because it takes more ship weight to hold a live person than it does for an equal weight in the cargo hold. For a human being there is a complicated formula, hull weight equal to twice the passenger's weight, plus the number of days in space times four pounds. It takes a hundred and forty-six days to get to Venus, so it means that the calculated weight for each of us amounts to six hundred and sixteen pounds before they even figure in our actual weights. But for a dog the rate is even higher, five pounds per day instead of four." "That seems unfair. Surely a little dog can't eat as much as a man? Why, Nixie's food costs hardly anything." Her husband snorted. "Nixie eats his own rations and half of what goes on Charlie's plate. However, it's not only the fact that a dog does eat more for his weight, but also they don't reprocess waste with a dog, not even for hydroponics." "Why not? Oh, I know what you mean. But it seems silly." "The passengers wouldn't like it. Never mind; the rule is: five pounds per day for dogs. Do you know what that makes Nixie's fare? Over three thousand dollars!" "My goodness!" "My ticket comes to thirty-eight hundred dollars and some, you get by for thirty-four hundred, and Charlie's fare is thirty-three hundred, yet that confounded mongrel dog, which we couldn't sell for his veterinary bills, would cost three thousand dollars. If we had that to spare, which we haven't, the humane thing would be to adopt some orphan, spend the money on him, and thereby give him a chance on an uncrowded planet, not waste it on a dog. Confound it! A year from now Charlie will have forgotten this dog." "I wonder." "He will. When I was a kid, I had to give up dogs, more than once they died, or something. I got over it. Charlie has to make up his mind whether to give Nixie away, or have him put to sleep." He chewed his lip. "We'll get him a pup on Venus." "It won't be Nixie." "He can name it Nixie. He'll love it as much." "But, Charles, how is it there are dogs on Venus if it's so dreadfully expensive to get them there?" "Eh? I think the first exploring parties used them to scout. In any case they're always shipping animals to Venus; our own ship is taking a load of milch cows." "That must be terribly expensive." "Yes and no, they ship them in sleep-freeze of course, and a lot of them never revive. But they cut their losses by butchering the dead ones and selling the meat at fancy prices to the colonists. Then the ones that live have calves and eventually it pays off." He stood up. "Nora, let's go to bed. It's sad, but our boy is going to have to make a man's decision. Give the mutt away, or have him put to sleep." "Yes, dear." She sighed. "I'm coming." Nixie was in his usual place at breakfast, lying beside Charlie's chair, accepting tidbits without calling attention to himself. He had learned long ago the rules of the dining room: no barking, no whining, no begging for food, no paws on laps, else the pets of his pet would make difficulties. Nixie was satisfied. He had learned as a puppy to take the world as it was, cheerful over its good points, patient with its minor shortcomings. Shoes were not to be chewed, people were not to be jumped on, most strangers must be allowed to approach the house, subject, of course, to strict scrutiny and constant alertness, a few simple rules and everyone was happy. Live and let live. He was aware that his boy was not happy even this beautiful morning. But he had explored this feeling carefully, touching his boy's mind with gentle care by means of his canine sense for feelings, and had decided, from his superior maturity, that the mood would wear off. Boys were sometimes sad and a wise dog was resigned to it. Mister Vaughn finished his coffee, put his napkin aside. "Well, young man?" Charlie did not answer. Nixie felt the sadness in Charlie change suddenly to a feeling more aggressive and much stronger but no better. He pricked up his ears and waited. "Chuck," his father said, "last night I gave you a choice. Have you made up your mind?" "Yes, Dad." Charlie's voice was very low. "Eh? Then tell me." Charlie looked at the tablecloth. "You and Mother go to Venus. Nixie and I are staying here." Nixie could feel anger welling up in the man, felt him control it. "You're figuring on running away again?" "No, sir," Charlie answered stubbornly. "You can sign me over to the state school." "Charlie!" It was Charlie's mother who spoke. Nixie tried to sort out the rush of emotions impinging on him. "Yes," his father said at last, "I could use your passage money to pay the state for your first three years or so, and agree to pay your support until you are eighteen. But I shan’t." "Huh? Why not, Dad?" "Because, old-fashioned as it sounds, I am head of this family. I am responsible for it, and not just food, shelter, and clothing, but its total welfare. Until you are old enough to take care of yourself I mean to keep an eye on you. One of the prerogatives which go with my responsibility is deciding where the family shall live. I have a better job offered me on Venus than I could ever hope for here, so I'm going to Venus, and my family goes with me." He drummed on the table, hesitated. "I think your chances are better on a pioneer planet, too, but, when you are of age, if you think otherwise, I'll pay your fare back to Earth. But you go with us. Understand?" Charlie nodded, his face glum. "Very well. I'm amazed that you apparently care more for that dog than you do for your mother, and myself. But." "It isn't that, Dad. Nixie needs." "Quiet. I don't suppose you realize it, but I tried to figure this out, I'm not taking your dog away from you out of meanness. If I could afford it, I'd buy the hound a ticket. But something your mother said last night brought up a third possibility." Charlie looked up suddenly, and so did Nixie; wondering why the surge of hope in his boy. "I can't buy Nixie a ticket, but it's possible to ship him as freight." "Huh? Why, sure, Dad! Oh, I know he'd have to be caged up, but I'd go down and feed him every day and pet him and tell him it was all right and." "Slow down! I don't mean that. All I can afford is to have him shipped the way animals are always shipped in space ships, in sleep-freeze." Charlie's mouth hung open. He managed to say, "But that's." "That's dangerous. As near as I remember, it's about fifty-fifty whether he wakes up at the other end. But if you want to risk it, well, perhaps it's better than giving him away to strangers, and I'm sure you would prefer it to taking him down to the vet's and having him put to sleep." Charlie did not answer. Nixie felt such a storm of conflicting emotions in Charlie that the dog violated dining room rules; he raised up and licked the boy's hand. Charlie grabbed the dog's ear. "All right, Dad," he said gruffly. "We'll risk it, if that's the only way Nixie and I can still be partners." Nixie did not enjoy the last few days before leaving; they held too many changes. Any proper dog likes excitement, but home is for peace and quiet. Things should be orderly there, food and water always in the same place, newspapers to fetch at certain hours, milkmen to supervise at regular times, furniture all in its proper place. But during that week all was change, nothing on time, nothing in order. Strange men came into the house (always a matter for suspicion), and he, Nixie, was not even allowed to protest, much less give them the what-for they had coming. He was assured by Charlie and Missus Vaughn that it was "all right" and he had to accept it, even though it obviously was not all right. His knowledge of English was accurate for a few dozen words but there was no way to explain to him that almost everything owned by the Vaughn family was being sold, or thrown away, nor would it have reassured him. Some things in life were permanent; he had never doubted that the Vaughn home was first among these certainties. By the night before they left, the rooms were bare except for beds. Nixie trotted around the house, sniffing places where familiar objects had been, asking his nose to tell him that his eyes deceived him, whining at the results. Even more upsetting than physical change was emotional change, a heady and not entirely happy excitement which he could feel in all three of his people. There was a better time that evening, as Nixie was allowed to go to Scout meeting. Nixie always went on hikes and had formerly attended all meetings. But he now attended only outdoor meetings since an incident the previous winter, Nixie felt that too much fuss had been made about it, just some spilled cocoa and a few broken cups and anyhow it had been that cat's fault. But this meeting he was allowed to attend because it was Charlie's last Scout meeting on Earth. Nixie was not aware of that but he greatly enjoyed the privilege, especially as the meeting was followed by a party at which Nixie became comfortably stuffed with hot dogs and pop. Scoutmaster McIntosh presented Charlie with a letter of withdrawal, certifying his status and merit badges and asking his admission into any troop on Venus. Nixie joined happily in the applause, trying to out bark the clapping. Then the Scoutmaster said, “Okay, Rip." Rip was senior patrol leader. He got up and said, "Quiet, fellows. Hold it, you crazy savages! Charlie, I don't have to tell you that we're all sorry to see you go, but we hope you have a swell time on Venus and now and then send a postcard to Troop Twenty-Eight and tell us about it, we'll post 'em on the bulletin board. Anyhow, we wanted to get you a going-away present. But Mister McIntosh pointed out that you were on a very strict weight allowance and practically anything would either cost you more to take with you than we had paid for it, or maybe you couldn't take it at all, which wouldn't be much of a present. "But it finally occurred to us that we could do one thing. Nixie." Nixie's ears pricked. Charlie said softly, "Steady, boy." "Nixie has been with us almost as long as you have. He's been around, poking his cold nose into things, longer than any of the tenderfeet, and longer even than some of the second class. So we decided he ought to have his own letter of withdrawal, so that the troop you join on Venus will know that Nixie is a Scout in good standing. Give it to him, Kenny." The scribe passed over the letter. It was phrased like Charlie's letter, save that it named "Nixie Vaughn, Tenderfoot Scout" and diplomatically omitted the subject of merit badges. It was signed by the scribe, the scoutmaster, and the patrol leaders and countersigned by every member of the troop. Charlie showed it to Nixie, who sniffed it. Everybody applauded, so Nixie joined happily in applauding himself. "One more thing," added Rip. "Now that Nixie is officially a Scout, he has to have his badge. So send him front and center." Charlie did so. They had worked their way through the Dog Care merit badge together while Nixie was a pup, all feet and floppy ears; it had made Nixie a much more acceptable member of the Vaughn family. But the rudimentary dog training required for the merit badge had stirred Charlie's interest; they had gone on to Dog Obedience School together and Nixie had progressed from easy spoken commands to more difficult silent hand signals. Charlie used them now. At his signal Nixie trotted forward, sat stiffly at attention, front paws neatly drooped in front of his chest, while Rip fastened the tenderfoot badge to his collar, then Nixie raised his right paw in salute and gave one short bark, all to hand signals. The applause was loud and Nixie trembled with eagerness to join it. But Charlie signaled "hold and quiet," so Nixie remained silently poised in salute until the clapping died away. He returned to heel just as silently, though quivering with excitement. The purpose of the ceremony may not have been clear to him, if so, he was not the first tenderfoot Scout to be a little confused. But it was perfectly clear that he was the center of attention and was being approved of by his friends; it was a high point in his life. But all in all there had been too much excitement for a dog in one week; the trip to White Sands, shut up in a travel case and away from Charlie, was the last straw. When Charlie came to claim him at the baggage room of White Sands Airport, his relief was so great that he had a puppyish accident, and was bitterly ashamed. He quieted down on the drive from airport to spaceport, then was disquieted again when he was taken into a room which reminded him of his unpleasant trips to the veterinary, the smells, the white-coated figure, the bare table where a dog had to hold still and be hurt. He stopped dead. "Come, Nixie!" Charlie said firmly. "None of that, boy. Up!" Nixie gave a little sigh, advanced and jumped onto the examination table, stood docile but trembling. "Have him lie down," the man in the white smock said. "I've got to get the needle into the large vein in his foreleg." Nixie did so on Charlie's command, then lay tremblingly quiet while his left foreleg was shaved in a patch and sterilized. Charlie put a hand on Nixie's shoulder blades and soothed him while the veterinary surgeon probed for the vein. Nixie bared his teeth once but did not growl, even though the fear in the boy's mind was beating on him, making him just as afraid. Suddenly the drug reached his brain and he slumped limp. Charlie's fear surged to a peak but Nixie did not feel it. Nixie's tough little spirit had gone somewhere else, out of touch with his friend, out of space and time, wherever it is that the "I" within a man or a dog goes when the body wrapping it is unconscious. Charlie said shrilly, "Is he all right?" "Eh? Of course." "Uh, I thought he had died." "Want to listen to his heart beat?" "Uh, no, if you say he's all right. Then he's going to be okay? He'll live through it?" The doctor glanced at Charlie's father, back at the boy, let his eyes rest on Charlie's lapel. "Star Scout, eh?" "Uh, yes, sir." "Going on to Eagle?" "Well, I'm going to try, sir." "Good. Look, son. If I put your dog over on that shelf, in a couple of hours he'll be sleeping normally and by tomorrow he won't even know he was out. But if I take him back to the chill room and start him on the cycle, "He shrugged. "Well, I've put eighty head of cattle under today. If forty percent are revived, it's a good shipment. I do my best." Charlie looked grey. The surgeon looked at Mister Vaughn, back at the boy. "Son, I know a man who's looking for a dog for his kids. Say the word and you won't have to worry about whether this pooch's system will recover from a shock it was never intended to take." Mister Vaughn said, "Well, son?" Charlie stood mute, in an agony of indecision. At last Mister Vaughn said-sharply, "Chuck, we've got just twenty minutes before we must check in with Emigration. Well? What's your answer?" Charlie did not seem to hear. Timidly. He put out one hand, barely touched the still form with the staring, unseeing eyes. Then he snatched his hand back and squeaked, "No! We're going to Venus, both of us!", turned and ran out of the room. The veterinary spread his hands helplessly. "I tried." "I know you, did, Doctor," Mister Vaughn answered gravely. "Thank you." The Vaughn’s took the usual emigrant routing: winged shuttle rocket to the inner satellite station, ugly wingless ferry rocket to the outer station, transshipment there to the great globular cargo liner Hesperus. The jumps and changes took two days; they stayed in the deep space ship for twenty-one tedious weeks, falling in half-elliptical orbit from Earth down to Venus. The time was fixed, an inescapable consequence of the law of gravity and the sizes and shapes of the two planetary orbits. At first Charlie was terribly excited. The terrific high gravity boost to break away from Earth's mighty grasp was as much of a shocker as he had hoped; six gravities is shocking, even to those used to it. When the shuttle rocket went into free fall a few minutes later, utter weightlessness was as distressing, confusing, and exciting, as he had hoped. It was so upsetting that he would have lost his lunch had he not been injected with anti-nausea drug. Earth, seen from space, looked as it had looked in color-stereo pictures, but he found that the real thing is as vastly more satisfying as a hamburger is better than a picture of one. In the outer satellite station, someone pointed out to him the famous Captain Nordhoff, just back from Pluto. Charlie recognized those stern, lined features, familiar from TV and news pictures, and realized with odd surprise that the hero was a man, like everyone else. He decided to be a spaceman and famous explorer himself. S. S. Hesperus was a disappointment. It "blasted" away from the outer station with a gentle shove, one tenth gravity, instead of the soul-satisfying, bone grinding, ear-shattering blast with which the shuttle had left Earth. Also, despite its enormous size, it was terribly crowded. After the Captain had his ship in orbit to intercept Venus five months later, he placed spin on his ship to give his passengers artificial weight, which took from Charlie the pleasant new feeling of weightlessness which he had come to enjoy. He was bored silly in five days, and there were five months of it ahead. He shared a cramped room with his father and mother and slept in a hammock swung "nightly", the ship used Greenwich time, between their bunks. Hammock in place, there was no room in the cubicle; even with it stowed, only one person could dress at a time. The only recreation space was the mess rooms and they were always crowded. There was one view port in his part of the ship. At first it was popular, but after a few days even the kids didn't bother, for the view was always the same: stars, and more stars. By order of the Captain, passengers could sign up Tor a "sightseeing tour." Charlie's chance came when they were two weeks out, a climb through accessible parts of the ship, a quick look into the power room, a longer look at the hydroponics gardens which provided fresh air and part of their food, and a ten-second glimpse through the door of the Holy of Holies, the control room, all accompanied by a lecture from a bored junior officer. It was over in two hours and Charlie was again limited to his own, very crowded part of the ship. Up forward there were privileged passengers, who had staterooms as roomy as those of the officers and who enjoyed the luxury of the officers' lounge. Charlie did not find out that they were aboard for almost a month, but when he did, he was righteously indignant. His father set him straight. "They paid for it." "Huh? But we paid, too. Why should they get." "They paid for luxury. Those first-class passengers each paid~ about three times what your ticket cost, or mine. We got the emigrant rate, transportation and food and a place to sleep.” "I don't think it's fair." Mister Vaughn shrugged. "Why should we have something we haven't paid for." "Uh, well, Dad, why should they be able to pay for luxuries we can't afford?" "A good question. Philosophers ever since Aristotle have struggled with that one. Maybe you'll tell me, someday." "Huh? What do you mean, Dad?" "Don't say 'Huh.' Chuck, I'm taking you to a brand new planet. If you try, you can probably get rich. Then maybe you can tell me why a man with money can command luxuries that poor people can't." "But we aren't poor!" "No, we are not. But we aren't rich either. Maybe you've got the drive to get rich. One thing is sure: on Venus the opportunities are all around you. Never mind, how about a game before dinner?" Charlie still resented being shut out of the nicest parts of the ship, he had never felt like a second-class anything, citizen, or passenger, before in his life; the feeling was not pleasant. He decided to get rich on Venus. He would make the biggest uranium strike in history; then he would ride first class between Venus and Earth whenever he felt like it, that would teach those stuck-up snobs! He then remembered he had already decided to be a famous spaceman. Well, he would do both. Someday he would own a space line, and one of the ships would be his private yacht. But by the time the Hesperus reached the halfway point he no longer thought about it. The emigrants saw little of the ship's crew, but Charlie got acquainted with Slim, the emigrants' cook. Slim was called so for the reason that cooks usually are; he sampled his own wares all day long and was pear shaped. Like all space ships, the Hesperus was undermanned except for astrogators and engineers, why hire a cook's helper when the space can be sold to a passenger? It was cheaper to pay high wages to a cook who could perform production-line miracles without a helper. And Slim could. But he could use a helper. Charlie's merit badge in cooking plus a willingness to do as he was told made him Slim's favorite volunteer assistant. Charlie got from it something to do with his time, sandwiches and snacks whenever he wanted them, and lots of knowledgeable conversation. Slim had not been to college but his curiosity had never dried up; he had read everything worth reading in several ship's libraries and had kept his eyes open dirtside on every inhabited planet in the Solar System. "Slim, what's it like on Venus?" "Mum, pretty much like the books say. Rainy. Hot. Not too bad at Borealis, where you'll land." "Yes, but what's it like?" "Why not wait and see? Give that stew a stir, and switch on the short-waver. Did you know that they used to figure that Venus couldn't be lived on?" "Huh? No, I didn't." "Struth. Back in the days when we didn't have space flight, scientists were certain that Venus didn't have either oxygen nor water. They figured it was a desert, with sand storms and no air you could breathe. Proved it, all by scientific logic." "But how could they make such a mistake? I mean, obviously, with clouds all over it and." "The clouds didn't show water vapor, not through a spectroscope they didn't. Showed lots of carbon dioxide, though, and by the science of the last century they figured they had proved that Venus couldn't support life." "Funny sort of science! I guess they were pretty ignorant in those days." "Don't go running down our grandfathers. If it weren't for them, you and I would be squatting in a cave, scratching fleas. No, Bub, they were pretty sharp; they just didn't have all the facts. We've got more facts, but that doesn't make us smarter. Put them biscuits over here. The way I see it, it just goes to show that the only way to tell what's in a stew is to eat it, and even then you aren't always sure. Venus turned out to be a very nice place. For ducks. If there were any ducks there. Which there ain't." "Do you like Venus?" "I like any place I don't have to stay in too long. Okay, let's feed the hungry mob." The food in the Hesperus was as good as the living accommodations were bad. This was partly Slim's genius, but was also the fact that food in a space ship costs by its weight; what it had cost Earthside matters little compared with the expense of lifting it off Earth. The choicest steaks cost the spaceline owners little more than the same weight of rice, and any steaks left over could be sold at high prices to colonist’s weary for a taste of Earth food. So the emigrants ate as well as the first class passengers, even though not with fine service and fancy surroundings. When Slim was ready he opened a shutter in the galley partition and Charlie dealt out the wonderful viands like chow in a Scout camp to passengers queued up with plates. Charlie enjoyed this chore. It made him feel like a member of the crew, a spaceman himself. Charlie almost managed not to worry about Nixie, having told himself that there was nothing to worry about. They were a month past midpoint, with Venus only six weeks away before he discussed it with Slim. "Look, Slim, you know a lot about such things. Nixie'll make it all right, won't he?" "Hand me that paddle; Mum, don't know as I ever ran across a dog in space before. Cats now, cats belong in space. They're clean and neat and help to keep down mice and rats." "I don't like cats." "Ever lived with a cat? No, I see you haven't. How can you have the gall not to like something you don't know anything about? Wait till you've lived with a cat, then tell me what you think. Until then, well, who told you were entitled to an opinion?" "Huh? Why, everybody is entitled to his own opinion!" "Nonsense, Bub. Nobody is entitled to an opinion about something he is ignorant of. If the Captain told me how to bake a cake, I would politely suggest that he not stick his nose into my trade, contrariwise, I never tell him how to plot an orbit to Mars." "Slim, you're changing the subject. How about Nixie? He's going to be all right, isn't he?" "As I was saying, I don't have opinions about things I don't know. Happens I don't know dogs. Never had one as a kid; I was raised in a big city. Since then I've been in space. No dogs." "Darn it, Slim!, you're being evasive: You know about sleep-freeze. I know you do." Slim sighed. "Kid, you're going to die someday and so am I. And so is your pup. It's the one thing we can't avoid. Why, the ship's reactor could blow up and none of us would know what hit us till they started fitting us with haloes. So why fret about whether your dog comes out of sleep-freeze? Either he does and you've worried unnecessarily, or he doesn't and there's nothing you can do about it." "So you don't think he will?" "I didn't say that. I said it was foolish to worry." But Charlie did worry; the talk with Slim brought it to the top of his mind, worried him more and more as the day got closer. The last month seemed longer to him than the four dreary months that had preceded it. As for Nixie, time meant nothing to him. Suspended between life and death, he was not truly in the Hesperus at all; but somewhere else, outside of time. It was merely his shaggy little carcass that lay, stored like a ham, in the frozen hold of the ship. Eventually the Captain slowed his ship, matched her with Venus and set her in a, parking orbit alongside Venus's single satellite station. After transshipment and maddening delay the Vaughns were taken down in the winged shuttle Cupid into the clouds of Venus and landed at the north pole colony, Borealis. For Charlie there was a still more maddening delay: cargo, which included Nixie, was unloaded after passengers and took many days because the mighty Hesperus held so much more than the little Cupid. He could not even go over to the freight sheds to inquire about Nixie as immigrants were held at the reception center for quarantine. Each one had received many shots during the five-month trip to inoculate them against the hazards of Venus; now they found that they must wait not only on most careful physical examination and observation to make sure that they were not bringing Earth diseases in with them but also to receive more shots not available aboard ship. Charlie spent the days with sore arms and gnawing anxiety. So far he had had one glimpse outdoors, a permanently cloudy sky which never got dark and was never very bright. Borealis is at Venus's north pole and the axis of the planet is nearly erect; the unseen Sun circled the horizon, never rising nor setting by more than a few degrees. The colony lived in eternal twilight. The lessened gravity, nine-tenths that of Earth, Charlie did not notice even though he knew he should. It had been five months since he had felt Earth gravity and the Hesperus had maintained only one-third gravity in that outer part, where spin was most felt. Consequently Charlie felt heavier than seemed right, rather than lighter, his feet had forgotten full weight. Nor did he notice the heavy concentration, about 2 percent, of carbon dioxide in the air, on which Venus's mighty jungles depended. It had once been believed that so much carbon dioxide, breathed regularly, would kill a man, but long before space flight, around 1950, experiments had shown that even a higher concentration had no bad effects. Charlie simply didn't notice it. All in all, he might have been waiting in a dreary, barracks-like building in some tropical port on Earth. He did not see much of his father, who was busy by telephone and by germproof conference cage, conferring with his new employers and arranging for quarters, nor did he see much of his mother; Missus Vaughn had found the long trip difficult and was spending most of her time lying down. Nine days after their arrival Charlie was sitting in the recreation room of the reception center, disconsolately reading a book he had already read on Earth. His father came in. "Come along." "Huh? What's up?" "They're going to try to revive your dog. You want to be there, don't you? Or maybe you'd rather not? I can go, and come back and tell you what happened." Charlie gulped. "I want to be there. Let's go." The room was like the one back at White Sands where Nixie had been put to sleep, except that in place of the table there was a cage-like contraption with glass sides. A man was making adjustments on a complex apparatus which stood next to the glass box and was connected to it. He looked up. "Yes? We're busy." "My name is Vaughn and this is my son Charlie. He's the owner of the dog." The man frowned. "Didn't you get my message? I'm Doctor Zecker, by the way. You're too soon; we're just bringing the dog up to temperature." Mister Vaughn said, "Wait here, Charlie," crossed the room and spoke in a low voice to Zecker. Zecker shook his head. "Better wait outside." Mister Vaughn again spoke quietly; Doctor Zecker answered, "You don't understand. I don't even have proper equipment, I've had to adapt the force breather we use for hospital monkeys. It was never meant for a dog." They argued in whispers for a few moments. They were interrupted by an amplified voice from outside the room "Ready with ninety-seven-X, Doctor, that's the dog." Zecker called back, "Bring it in!", then went on to Mister Vaughn, "All right, keep him out of the way. Though I still say he would be better off outside." He turned, paid them no further attention. Two men, came in, carrying a large tray. Something quiet and not very large was heaped on it, covered by dull blue cloth. Charlie whispered, "Is that Nixie?" "I think so," his father-answered in a low voice. "Keep quiet and watch." "Can't I see him?" "Stay where you are and don't say a word, else the doctor will make you leave." Once inside, the team moved quickly and without speaking, as if this were something rehearsed again and again, something that must be done with great speed and perfect precision. One of them opened the glass box; the other placed the tray inside, uncovered its burden. It was Nixie, limp and apparently dead. Charlie caught his breath. One assistant moved the little body forward, fitted a collar around its neck, closed down a partition like a guillotine, jerked his hands out of the way as the other assistant slammed the glass door through which they had put the dog in, quickly sealed it. Now Nixie was shut tight in a glass coffin, his head lying outside the end partition, his body inside. "Cycle!" Even as he said it, the first assistant slapped a switch and fixed his eyes on the instrument board and Doctor Zecker thrust both arms into long rubber gloves passing through the glass, which allowed his hands to be inside with Nixie's body. With rapid, sure motions he picked up a hypodermic needle, already waiting inside, shoved it deep into the dog's side. "Force breathing established."' "No heart action, Doctor!" The reports came one on top of the other, Zecker looked up at the dials, looked back at the dog and cursed. He grabbed another needle. This one he entered gently, depressed the plunger most carefully, with his eyes on the dials. "Fibrillation." "I can see!" he answered snappishly, put down the hypo and began to massage the dog in time with the ebb and surge of the "iron lung." And Nixie lifted his head and cried. It was more than an hour before Doctor Zecker let Charlie take the dog away. During most of this time the cage was open and Nixie was breathing on his own, but with the apparatus still in place, ready to start again if his heart or lungs should falter in their newly relearned trick of keeping him alive. But during this waiting time Charlie was allowed to stand beside him, touch him, sooth and pet him to keep him quiet. At last the doctor picked up Nixie and put him in Charlie's arms. "Okay, take him. But keep him quiet; I don't want him running around for the next ten hours. But not too quiet, don't let him sleep." "Why not, Doctor?" asked Mister Vaughn. "Because sometimes, when you think they've made it, they just lie down and quit, as if they had had a taste of death and found they liked it. This pooch has had a' near squeak, we have only seven minutes to restore blood supply to the brain. Any longer than that, well, the brain is permanently damaged and you might as well put it out of its misery." "You think you made it in time?" "Do you think," Zecker answered angrily, "that I would let you take the dog if I hadn't?" "Sorry." "Just keep him quiet, but not too quiet. Keep him awake." Charlie answered solemnly, "I will, Doctor Nixie's going to be all right, I know he is." Charlie stayed awake all night long, talking to Nixie, petting him, keeping him quiet but not asleep. Neither one of his parents tried to get him to go to bed. Part Two. Nixie liked Venus. It was filled with a thousand new smells, all worth investigating, countless new sounds, each of which had to be catalogued. As official guardian of the Vaughn family and of Charlie in particular, it was his duty and pleasure to examine each new phenomenon, decide whether or not it was safe for his people; he set about it happily. It is doubtful that he realized that he had traveled other than that first lap in the traveling case to White Sands. He took up his new routine without noticing the five months clipped out of his life; he took charge of the apartment assigned to the Vaughn family, inspected it thoroughly, then nightly checked it to be sure that all was in order and safe before he tromped out his place on the foot of Charlie's bed and tucked his tail over his nose. He was aware that this was a new place, but he was not homesick. The other home had been satisfactory and he had never dreamed of leaving it, but this new home was still better. Not only did it have Charlie, without whom no place could be home, not only did it have wonderful odors, but also he found the people more agreeable. In the past, many humans had been quite stuffy about flower beds and such trivia, but here he was almost never scolded or chased away; on the contrary people were anxious to speak to him, pet him, feed him. His popularity was based on arithmetic: Borealis had fifty-five thousand people but only eleven dogs; many colonists were homesick for man's traditional best friend. Nixie did not know this, but he had great capacity for enjoying the good things in life without worrying about why. Mister Vaughn found Venus satisfactory. His work for Synthetics of Venus, Limited, was the sort of work he had done on Earth, save that he was now paid more and given more responsibility. The living quarters provided by the company were as comfortable as the house he had left back on Earth and he was unworried about the future of his family for the first time in years. Missus Vaughn found Venus bearable but she was homesick much of the time. Charlie, once he was over first the worry and then the delight of waking Nixie, found Venus interesting, less strange than he had expected, and from time to time he was homesick. But before long he was no longer homesick; Venus was home. He knew now what he wanted to be: a pioneer. When he was grown he would head south, deep into the unmapped jungle, carve out a plantation. The jungle was the greatest single fact about Venus. The colony lived on the bountiful produce of the jungle. The land on which Borealis sat, buildings and spaceport, had been torn away from the hungry jungle only by flaming it dead, stabilizing the muck with gel-forming chemicals, and poisoning the land thus claimed, then flaming, cutting, or poisoning any hardy survivor that pushed its green nose up through the captured soil. The Vaughn family lived in a large apartment building which sat on land newly captured. Facing their front door, a mere hundred feet away across scorched and poisoned soil, a great shaggy dark-green wall loomed higher than the buffer space between. But the mindless jungle never gave up. The vines, attracted by light, their lives were spent competing for light energy, felt their way into the open space, tried to fill it. They grew with incredible speed. One day after breakfast Mister Vaughn tried to go out his own front door, found his way hampered. While they had slept a vine had grown across the hundred-foot belt, supporting itself by tendrils against the dead soil, and had started up the front of the building. The police patrol of the city were armed with flame guns and spent most of their time cutting back such hardy intruders. While they had power to enforce the law, they rarely made an arrest. Borealis was a city almost free of crime; the humans were too busy fighting nature in the raw to require much attention from policemen. But the jungle was friend as well as enemy. Its lusty life offered food for millions and billions of humans in place of the few thousands already on Venus. Under the jungle lay beds of peat, still farther down were thick coal seams representing millions of years of lush jungle growth, and pools of oil waiting to be tapped. Aerial survey by jet-copter in the volcanic regions promised uranium and thorium when man could cut his way through and get at it. The planet offered unlimited wealth. But it did not offer it to sissies. Charlie quickly bumped his nose into one respect in which Venus was not for sissies. His father placed him in school, he was assigned to a grade taught by Mister deSoto. The school room was not attractive, "grim" was the word Charlie used, but he was not surprised, as most buildings in Borealis were unattractive, being constructed either of spongy logs or of lignin panels made from jungle growth. But the school itself was "grim." Charlie had been humiliated by being placed one grade lower than he had expected; now he found that the lessons were stiff and that Mister deSoto did not have the talent, or perhaps the wish to make them fun. Resentfully, Charlie loafed. After three weeks Mister deSoto kept him in after school. "Charlie, what's wrong?" "Huh? I mean, 'Sir?" "You know what I mean. You've been in my class nearly a month. You haven't learned anything. Don't you want to?" "What? Why, sure I do." "Surely' in that usage, not 'sure.' Very well, so you want to learn; why haven't you?" Charlie stood silent. He wanted to tell Mister deSoto what a swell place Horace Mann Junior High School had been, with its teams and its band and its student plays and its student council, this crazy school didn't even have a student council! And its study projects picked by the kids themselves, and the Spring Outburst and Sneak Day, and, oh, shucks! But Mister deSoto was speaking. "Where did you last go to school, Charlie?" Charlie stared. Didn't the teacher even bother to read his transcript? But he told him and added, "I was a year farther along there. I guess I'm bored, having to repeat." "I think you are, too, but I don't agree that you are repeating. They had an eighteen-year Jaw there, didn't they?" "Sir?" "You were required to attend school until you were eighteen Earth-years old?" "Oh, that! Sure. I mean 'surely.' Everybody goes to school until he's eighteen. That's to 'discourage juvenile delinquency," he quoted. "I wonder. Nobody ever flunked, I suppose." "Sir?" "Failed. Nobody ever got tossed out of school or left back for failing his studies?" "Of course not, Mister deSoto. You have to keep age groups together, or they don't develop socially as they should." "Who told you that?" "Why, everybody knows that. I've been hearing that ever since I was in kindergarten. That's what education is for, social development." Mister deSoto leaned back, rubbed his nose. Presently he said slowly; "Charlie, this isn't that kind of a school at all." Charlie waited. He was annoyed at not being invited to sit down and was wondering what would happen if he sat down anyway. "In the first place we don't have the eighteen-year rule. You can quit school today. You know how to read. Your handwriting is sloppy but it will do. You are quick in arithmetic. You can't spell worth a hoot, but that's your misfortune; the city fathers don't care whether you learn to spell or not. You've got all the education the City of Borealis feels obliged to give you. If you want to take a flame gun and start carving out your chunk of the jungle, nobody is standing in your way. I can write a note to the Board of Education, telling them that Charles Vaughn, Junior has gone as far as he ever will. You needn't come back tomorrow." Charlie gulped. He had never heard of anyone being dropped from school for anything less than a knife fight. It was unthinkable, what would his folks say? "On the other hand," Mister deSoto went on, "Venus needs educated citizens. We'll keep anybody as long as they keep learning. The city will even send you back to Earth for advanced training if you are worth it, because we need scientists and engineers, and more teachers. But this is a struggling new community and it doesn't have a penny to waste on kids who won't study. We do flunk them in this school. If you don't study, we'll lop you off so fast you'll think you've been trimmed with a flame gun. We're not running the sort of overgrown kindergarten you were in. It's up to you. Buckle down and learn, or get out. So go home and talk it over with your folks." Charlie was stunned. "Uh, Mister deSoto? Are you going to talk to my father?" "What? Heavens, no! You are their responsibility, not mine. I don't care what you do. That's all. Go home." Charlie went home, slowly. He did not talk it over with his parents. Instead he went back to school and studied. In a few weeks he discovered that even algebra could be interesting, and that old Frozen Face was an interesting teacher when Charlie had studied hard enough to know what the man was talking about. Mister deSoto never mentioned the matter again. Getting back in the Scouts was more fun but even Scouting held surprises. Mister Qu'an, Scoutmaster of Troop Four, welcomed him heartily. "Glad to have-you, Chuck. It makes me feel good when a Scout among the new citizens comes forward and says he wants to pick up the Scouting trail again." He looked over the letter Charlie had brought with him. "A good record, Star Scout at your age. Keep at it and you'll be a Double Star, both Earth and Venus." "You mean," Charlie said slowly, "that I'm not a Star Scout here?" "Eh? Not at all." Mister Qu'an touched the badge on Charlie's jacket. "You won that fairly and a Court of Honor has certified you. You'll always be a Star Scout, just as a pilot is entitled to wear his comet after he's too old to herd a space ship. But let's be practical. Ever been out in the jungle?" "Not yet, sir. But I always was good at woodcraft." "Hum, ever camped in the Florida Everglades?" "Well, no sir." "No matter. I simply wanted to point out that while the Everglades are jungle, they are an open desert compared with the jungle here. And the coral snakes and water moccasins in the Everglades are harmless little pets alongside some of the things here. Have you seen our dragonflies yet?" "Well, a dead one, at school." "That's the best way to see them. When you see a live one, better see it first, if it's a female and ready to lay eggs." "Uh, I know about them. If you fight them off, they won't sting." "Which is why you had better see them first." "Mister Qu'an? Are they really that big?" "I've seen thirty-six-inch wing spreads. What I'm trying to say, Chuck, is that a lot of men have died learning the tricks of this jungle. If you are as smart as a Star Scout is supposed to be, you won't assume that you know what these poor fellows didn't. You'll wear that badge, but you'll class yourself in your mind as a tenderfoot, all over again, and you won't be in a hurry about promoting yourself." Charlie swallowed it. "Yes, sir. I'll try." "Good. We use the buddy system, you take care of your buddy and he takes care of you. I'll team you with Hans Kuppenheimer. Hans is only a Second Class Scout, but don't let that fool you. He was born here and he lives in the bush, on his father's plantation. He's the best jungle rat in the troop." Charlie said nothing, but resolved to become a real jungle rat himself, fast. Being under the wing of a Scout who was merely second class did not appeal to him. But Hans turned out to be easy to get along with. He was quiet, shorter but stockier than Charlie, neither unfriendly nor chummy; he simply accepted the assignment to look after Charlie. But he startled Charlie by answering, when asked, that he was twenty-three years old. It left Charlie speechless long enough for him to realize that Hans, born here, meant Venus years, each only two hundred twenty-five Earth days. Charlie decided that Hans was about his own age, which seemed reasonable. Time had been a subject which had confused Charlie ever since his arrival. The Venus day was only seven minutes different from that of Earth, he had merely had to have his wristwatch adjusted. But the day itself had not meant what it used to mean, because day and night at the north pole of Venus looked alike, a soft twilight. There were only eight months in the year, exactly four weeks in each month, and an occasional odd “Year Day" to even things off. Worse still, the time of year didn't mean anything; there were no seasons, just one endless hot, damp summer. It was always the same time of-day, always the same time of year; only clock and calendar kept it from being the land that time forgot. Charlie never quite got used to it. If Nixie found the timelessness of Venus strange he never mentioned it. On Earth he had slept at night simply because Charlie did so, and, as for seasons, he had never cared much for winter anyhow. He enjoyed getting back into the Scouts even more than Charlie had, because he was welcome at every meeting. Some of the Scouts born on Earth had once had dogs; now none of them had, and Nixie was at once mascot of the troop. He was petted almost to exhaustion the first time Charlie brought him to a meeting, until Mister Qu'an pointed out that the dog had to have some peace, then squatted down and petted Nixie himself. "Nixie," he said musingly, "a nixie is a water sprite, isn't it?" "Uh, I believe it does mean that," Charlie admitted, "but that isn't how he got his name." "So?" "Well, I was going to name him 'Champ,' but when he was a puppy I had to say 'Nix' to so many things he did that he got to thinking it was his name, and then it was." "Mum, more logical than most names. And even the classical meaning is appropriate in a wet place like this. What's this on his collar? I see, you've decorated him with your old tenderfoot badge." "No, sir," Charlie corrected. "That's his badge." "Eh?" "Nixie is a Scout, too. The fellows in my troop back Earthside voted him into the troop. They gave him that. So Nixie is a Scout." Mister Qu'an raised his eyebrows and smiled. One of the boys said, "That's about the craziest yet. A dog can't be a Scout." Charlie had doubts himself; nevertheless he was about to answer indignantly when the Scoutmaster cut smoothly in front of him. "What leads you to say that, Al!?" "Huh? Well, gosh! It's not according to Scout regulations." "It isn’t? I admit it is a new idea, but I can't recall what rule it breaks. Who brought a Handbook tonight?" The Scribe supplied one; Mister Qu'an passed it over to Alf Rheinhardt. "Dig in, AIf. Find the rule." Charlie diffidently produced Nixie's letter of transfer. He had brought it, but had not given it to the Scribe. Mister Qu'an read it, nodded and said, "Looks okay." He passed the letter along to others and said, "Well, Alf?" "In the first place, it says here that you have to be twelve years old to join, Earth years, that is, 'cause that's where the Handbook was printed. Is that dog that old? I doubt it." Mister Qu'an shook his head. "If I were sitting on a Court of Honor, I'd rule that the regulation did not apply. A dog grows up faster than a boy." "Well, if you insist on joking, and Scouting is no joke to me, that's the point: a dog can't be a Scout, because he's a dog." "Scouting is no joke to me either, Alf, though I don't see any reason not to have fun as we go. But I wasn't joking. A candidate comes along with a letter of transfer, all regular and proper. Seems to me you should go mighty slow before you refuse to respect an official act of another troop. All you've said is that Nixie is a dog. Well, didn't I see somewhere, last month's Boys' Life I think, that the Boy Scouts of Mars had asked one of the Martian chiefs to serve on their planetary Grand Council?" "But that's not the same thing!" "Nothing ever is. But if a Martian, who is certainly not a human being, can hold the highest office in Scouting, I can't see how Nixie is disqualified simply because he's a dog. Seems to me you'll have to show that he can't or won't do the things that a Tenderfoot Scout should do." "Uh," Alf grinned knowingly. "Let's hear him explain the Scout Oath." Mister Qu'an turned to Charlie. "Can Nixie speak English?" "What? Why, no, sir, but he understands it pretty well." The Scoutmaster turned back to Alf. "Then the 'handicapped' rule applies, Alf, we never insist that a Scout do something he can't do. If you were crippled or blind, we would change the rules to fit you. Nixie can't talk words, so if you want to quiz him about the Scout Oath, you'll have to bark. That's fair, isn't it, boys?" The shouts of approval didn't sit well with Alf. He answered sullenly, "Well, at least he has to follow the Scout Law, every Scout has to do that." "Yes," agreed the Scoutmaster soberly. "The Scout Law is the essence of Scouting. If you don't obey it, you aren't a Scout, no matter how many merit badges you wear. Well, Charlie? Shall we examine Nixie in Scout Law?" Charlie bit his lip. He was sorry that he hadn't taken that badge off Nixie's collar. It was mighty nice that the fellows back home had voted Nixie into the troop, but with this smart Aleck trying to make something of it, Why did there always have to be one in every troop who tried to take the fun Out of life? He answered reluctantly, "All right." "Gi

INTRODUCTION. Forty-five BC was a bad year for Marcus Tullius Cicero. The famous Roman orator and statesman was in his early sixties and alone. He had divorced his wife of thirty years not long before and married a younger woman, only to divorce her almost immediately. His beloved daughter Tullia had died at the beginning of the year, plunging Cicero into despair. And his place at the forefront of Roman politics had been lost just four years earlier when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River and forced the Roman Republic into civil war. Cicero could not support Caesar and so, after initially standing against the new dictator and subsequently receiving a humiliating pardon, he had retired to his country estate. There he remained, far from Rome, an old man in his own mind useless to the world. But rather than sinking into his wine cups or committing suicide as his friend the younger Cato had done, Cicero turned to writing. He had been an avid student of Greek philosophy in his youth and longed to make his mark in the literary world by explaining to his Roman countrymen the ideas he had discovered in Plato, Aristotle, and other great thinkers. He was naturally inclined to the Stoic doctrines of virtue, order, and divine providence, as opposed to what he saw as the limited and self-indulgent views of the Epicureans. And so he began to write. In an astonishingly short period of time, working from early morning until late into the night, he produced numerous treatises on government, ethics, education, religion, friendship, and moral duty. Just before Caesar’s murder on the Ides of March in forty four BC, Cicero turned to the subject of old age in a short treatise titled De Senectute. In the ancient world as in the modern, human life could be short, but we err when we suppose that the lifespan in Greece and Rome was necessarily brief. Although longevity in antiquity is notoriously difficult to measure, and infant and childhood mortality was certainly high, if men and women reached adulthood, they stood a decent chance of living into their sixties, seventies, or beyond. Greek authors before Cicero had written about the last phase of life in different ways. Some idealized the elderly as enlightened bearers of wisdom, such as Homer’s King Nestor, while others caricatured them as tiresome and constant complainers. The poet Sappho from the sixth century BC is perhaps the most striking of all ancient writers on the subject as she mourns the loss of her own youth in a recently discovered fragmentary poem: My skin once soft is wrinkled now, My hair once black has turned to white. My heart has become heavy, my knees, That once danced nimbly like fawns cannot carry me. How often I lament these things, but what can be done? No one who is human can escape old age. Cicero, however, wanted to move beyond mere resignation to offer a broader picture of old age. While acknowledging its limitations, he sought to demonstrate that the later years could be embraced as an opportunity for growth and completeness at the end of a life well lived. He chose as spokesman in his fictional dialogue the elder Cato, a Roman leader from the previous century whom he greatly admired. In his brief conversation with two younger friends, Cato shows how old age can be the best phase of life for those who apply themselves to living wisely. He refutes the objections of many critics that old age need be a wretched time of inactivity, illness, loss of sensual pleasure, and paralyzing fear about the closeness of death. Though Cicero pokes fun at seniors such as himself by having Cato digress into rambling asides (such as his extended discourse on farming), he nevertheless affirms old age as a time of life not to be dreaded but to be enjoyed to the fullest. There are many valuable lessons to be learned from Cicero’s little book on aging. Some of the most important are: A good old age begins in youth. Cicero says the qualities that make the later years of our lives productive and happy should be cultivated from the beginning. Moderation, wisdom, clear thinking, enjoying all that life has to offer, these are habits we should learn while we are young since they will sustain us as we grow older. Miserable young people do not become happier as they grow older. Old age can be a wonderful part of life. The senior years can be very enjoyable if we have developed the proper internal resources. Yes, there are plenty of unhappy old people, but they shouldn’t blame age for their problems. Their faults, Cicero says, are the result of poor character, not the number of years they have lived. There are proper seasons to life. Nature has fashioned human life so that we enjoy certain things when we are young and others when we are older. Attempting to cling to youth after the appropriate time is useless. If you fight nature, you will lose. Older people have much to teach the young. There is genuine wisdom in life that can be gained only by experience. It is our pleasure and duty as we grow older to pass this on to those younger than us who are willing to listen. But young people also can offer much to their elders, including the pleasure of their lively company. Old age need not deny us an active life, but we need to accept limitations. No eighty-year-old is going to win a foot race against healthy young people in their twenties, but we can still be physically active within the modest constraints imposed on us by our bodies. And there is so much older people can do that doesn’t require great physical strength, from studying and writing to offering wisdom and experience to our communities. The mind is a muscle that must be exercised. Cicero has the main character of his book learn Greek literature in his later years and carefully recall the events of the day before going to sleep each night. Whatever technique works, it is vital to use our minds as much as possible as we grow older. Older people must stand up for themselves. Or as Cicero says, “Old age is respected only if it defends itself, maintains its rights, submits to no one, and rules over its domain until its last breath.” The later years of life are no time for passivity. Sex is highly overrated. Not that older people can’t enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, but the relentless sexual passions of youth fade as we grow older, and thank goodness they do, according to Cicero. The reduction of sensual appetites gives us room to enjoy other aspects of life that are much more satisfying and lasting. Cultivate your own garden. Cicero presents this idea in his chapter praising the delights of farming, but there is an important lesson here. Finding a worthwhile activity in our later years that gives us true enjoyment is essential for happiness. Spreading manure or pruning grapevines may not be your passion, but whatever yours is, pursue it with joy. Death is not to be feared. Cicero says that death marks either the end of human consciousness or the beginning of eternal bliss. Whether or not this is true, it certainly holds, as Cicero says, that life is like a play. A good actor knows when to leave the stage. To cling desperately to one’s life when it has been lived well and is drawing to a close is both futile and foolish. Readers from the Middle Ages to modern times have been delighted and inspired by Cicero’s little book on aging. The French essayist Montaigne declared that it gave him an appetite for growing older, while the American Founding Father John Adams took pleasure in re-reading the dialogue many times in his later years. Benjamin Franklin was so impressed by the book that he printed a translation of it in Philadelphia, making it one of the earliest classical works published in America. Today’s world, obsessed with the pursuit of youth, needs Cicero’s wisdom more than ever. HOW TO GROW OLD. Dedication to my friend Atticus. Oh Titus, if I can give you any help, if I can lighten the cares fixed in your breast, that now roast you and turn you on a spit, what will be my reward? And so, Atticus, may I address you in the same lines which, that man of little wealth but rich in loyalty, speaks to Flamininus, although I’m sure that you’re not like Flamininus. who is tossed about by worry, Titus, day and night. I know that you are a man of moderation and even temper, who brought home from Athens more than just a name! You brought back a cultured and prudent mind as well. Yet I suspect that you are troubled by the same political events of our day that are causing me such anxiety. But looking for comfort from such things is too difficult to do now and is a topic we’ll have to put off until another time. Instead, I would like to write something for you now about the subject of growing old. This burden is common to both of us, or at least it’s quickly and unavoidably approaching, and I want to lighten the burden for you and me alike. I know that you of course are facing the prospect of aging calmly and wisely, and that you will continue to do so in the future, just as you approach everything in life. But still, when I was thinking about writing on the subject, you kept coming to mind. I would like this little book to be a worthy gift that we can enjoy together. In fact, I’ve so much enjoyed composing this work that writing it has wiped away all thoughts of the disadvantages of growing older and made it instead seem a pleasant and enjoyable prospect. We truly can’t praise the love and pursuit of wisdom enough, since it allows a person to enjoy every stage of life free from worry. I’ve written a great deal on other matters and will again in the future, but, as I said, this book that I’m sending you now is about growing old. When Aristo of Ceos wrote about the subject, he made Tithonus his spokesman, but I think it’s wrong to give a mythological character such authority. Instead, I have put my words into the mouth of the aged Marcus Cato so that they might be taken more seriously. I imagine Laelius and Scipio with him at his house, admiring how he is handling his age so well. If he seems to reply in a way that is more learned than he appears in his own writings, attribute it to the Greek literature he studied carefully in his later years. But why should I say more? From here on, the words of Cato himself will unfold to you my thoughts on growing older. THE CONVERSATION WITH CATO. Scipio: When Gaius Laelius and I are talking, Marcus Cato, we often admire your outstanding and perfect wisdom in general, but more particularly that growing old never seems to be a burden to you. This is quite different from the complaints of most older men, who claim that aging is a heavier load to bear than Mount Etna. Cato: I think, my young friends, that you are admiring me for something that isn’t so difficult. Those who lack within themselves the means for living a blessed and happy life will find any age painful. But for those who seek good things within themselves, nothing imposed on them by nature will seem troublesome. Growing older is a prime example of this. Everyone hopes to reach old age, but when it comes, most of us complain about it. People can be so foolish and inconsistent. They say that old age crept up on them much faster than they expected. But, first of all, who is to blame for such poor judgment? Does old age steal upon youth any faster than youth does on childhood? Would growing old really be less of a burden to them if they were approaching eight hundred rather than eighty? If old people are foolish, nothing can console them for time slipping away, no matter how long they live. So if you compliment me on being wise, and I wish I were worthy of that estimate and my name, in this way alone do I deserve it: I follow nature as the best guide and obey her like a god. Since she has carefully planned the other parts of the drama of life, it’s unlikely that she would be a bad playwright and neglect the final act. And this last act must take place, as surely as the fruits of trees and the earth must someday wither and fall. But a wise person knows this and accepts it with grace. Fighting against nature is as pointless as the battles of the giants against the gods. Laelius: True, Cato, but we have a special request to make of you, and I think I speak for Scipio as well. We both hope to live long enough to become old someday, so we would be very grateful if you could teach us even now how we can most reasonably bear the weight of the approaching years. Cato: It would be my pleasure, Laelius, if you would really like me to. Laelius: We would indeed, if it’s not too much trouble. You’ve already traveled far on the road we will follow, so we would like to learn about the journey from you. Cato: I’ll do my best. I have often heard the complaints of people my age, “like gathers with like,” says the old proverb, especially Gaius Salinator and Spurius Albinus, my near-contemporaries and former consuls, who were constantly moaning about how age had snatched away the sensual pleasures of life, pleasures without which, at least to them, life was not worth living. Then they complained that they were being neglected by those who had once paid them attention. But in my view, their blame was misplaced. If aging were the real problem, then the same ills would have befallen me and every other old person. But I have known many people who have grown old without complaint, who don’t miss the binding chains of sensual passion, and who aren’t neglected by their friends. Again, the blame for all these sorts of complaints is a matter of character, not of age. Older people who are reasonable, good-tempered, and gracious will bear aging well. Those who are mean-spirited and irritable will be unhappy at every period of their lives. Laelius: That is undoubtedly true, Cato. But what if someone were to say that your wealth, property, and social standing, advantages in life that few people possess, are what have made growing older so pleasant for you? Cato: There is some truth in that, Laelius, but it isn’t the whole story. Remember the tale of Themistocles and the man from Seriphos. The two were having an argument one day during which the Seriphian said that Themistocles was famous only because of the glory of his city, not his own achievements. “By Hercules, that’s true,” said Themistocles. “I would never have been famous if I was from Seriphos, nor you if you were from Athens.” The same can be said of old age. It isn’t a light burden if a person, even a wise man, is poor. But if someone is a fool, all the money in the world won’t make aging easier. My dear Scipio and Laelius, old age has its own appropriate defenses, namely, the study and practice of wise and decent living. If you cultivate these in every period of your life, then when you grow old they will yield a rich harvest. Not only will they produce wondrous fruit even at the very end of life, a key point in our discussion, but you will be satisfied to know that you have lived your life well and have many happy memories of these good deeds. When I was young, I was fond of Quintus Maximus, who recaptured Tarentum, as if we were the same age, although he was an old man and I just a lad. He was a man of dignity seasoned with friendliness, and age had not changed him. When I first began to get to know him, he was not yet of great old age but certainly growing advanced in years. He had first become a consul the year after I was born. In his fourth term as consul, I was a young soldier marching with him to Capua, then five years later to Tarentum. Four years after that, when Tuditanus and Cethegus were consuls, I became a quaestor. At that same time Quintus Maximus was giving speeches in favor of the Cincian Law on gifts and rewards, though he was quite elderly by then. Even though he was old, he waged war like a young man, and wore down Hannibal’s youthful exuberance by his persistence. My friend Ennius spoke splendidly about him: One man, by delaying, saved our country. He refused to put his reputation above the safety of Rome, so that now his glory grows ever brighter. Such vigilance and skill he displayed in recapturing Tarentum! I myself heard Salinator, the Roman commander who had lost the town and fled to the citadel, boast to him, “Quintus Fabius, you owe the retaking of Tarentum to me.” The general laughed and said in reply, “That’s certainly true, since I wouldn’t have had to recapture it if you hadn’t lost it in the first place.” Nor was Fabius more distinguished as a soldier than as a statesman. When he was consul the second time, the tribune Gaius Flaminius was trying to parcel out Picene and Gallic land against the express will of the Senate. Even though his colleague Spurius Carvilius kept silent, Fabius made every effort to oppose Flaminius. And when he was an augur, he dared to say that the auspices favored whatever was for the good of the state and that what was bad for the state was against the auspices. I can assure you from personal observation that there were many admirable qualities in that man, but nothing was more striking than how he bore the death of his son, a distinguished former consul. His funeral oration is available for us to read, and when we do, what philosopher is not put to shame? But Fabius wasn’t just commendable in public while under the gaze of his fellow citizens. He was even more admirable in the privacy of his own home. His conversation, his moral advice, his knowledge of history, his expertise in the laws of augury, all were astonishing! He was very well read for a Roman, and knew everything not only about our own wars but also about foreign conflicts. I was eager to listen to him at the time, as if I foresaw, as indeed happened, that when he was gone I would have no one else to learn from. Why have I said so much about Fabius Maximus? So that you might see how wrong it would be to describe an old age like his as unhappy. Of course, not everyone is able to be a Scipio or a Fabius and talk about the cities they have conquered, the battles they have fought on land or sea, the wars they have waged, and the triumphs they have won. But there is another kind of old age, the peaceful and serene end of a life spent quietly, blamelessly, and with grace. Plato lived this way in his last years, still writing when he died at eighty-one. Isocrates is another example, who tells us himself he was ninety-four when he composed his Panathenaicus, and he lived another five years after that! His teacher Gorgias of Leontini reached his one hundred and seventh birthday, never resting from his studies and work. When someone asked him why he wished to live so long, he replied, “I have no reason to complain about old age.” A noble answer, worthy of a scholar. Foolish people blame old age for their own faults and shortcomings. Ennius, whom I mentioned just a little while ago, certainly didn’t do this, for he compares himself as an old man to a gallant and victorious racehorse: Like a courageous steed that has often won Olympic races in the last lap, now weakened by age he takes his rest. You probably remember Ennius quite clearly, for he died only nineteen years before the election of our present consuls, Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius, back when Caepio and Philippus were consuls (the latter for the second time). I was sixty-five when he died and I made a speech in favor of the Voconian Law with a loud voice and mighty lungs. Ennius was seventy at the time and suffered what men suppose are the two greatest burdens of life, poverty and old age. But he bore them so well you might think he enjoyed them. When I think about old age, I can find four reasons why people consider it so miserable: First, because it takes us away from an active life. Second, because it weakens the body. Third, because it deprives us of almost all sensual pleasures. Fourth, because it is not far from death. If you don’t mind, let’s look at each of these reasons one by one to see if they are true. The Active Life. Let’s consider first the claim that old age denies us an active life. What kind of activities are we talking about? Don’t we mean the sort we engage in when young and strong? But surely there are activities suitable for older minds even when the body is weakened. Wasn’t there important work for Quintus Maximus, whom I mentioned earlier, and for Lucius Paullus, your own father, Scipio, and also the father-in-law of that best of men, my son? And what about other old men, such as Fabricius, Curius, and Coruncanius? Were they doing nothing when they were using their wisdom and influence to protect their country? Appius Claudius was not only old but also blind when he spoke before the Senate, which was favoring a peace treaty with King Pyrrhus. Yet he did not hesitate to utter the words Ennius later put into verse: What madness has turned your minds, once firm and strong, from their course? And so on, in the most impressive style. But you know the poem, and indeed the actual speech of Appius survives. He delivered it seventeen years after his second consulship, though there were ten years between his consulships and he had been censor before first being consul, so you can see that he was a very old man by the time of the war with Pyrrhus. Yet this is the story recorded by our ancestors. People who say there are no useful activities for old age don’t know what they’re talking about. They are like those who say a pilot does nothing useful for sailing a ship because others climb the masts, run along the gangways, and work the pumps while he sits quietly in the stern holding the rudder. He may not be doing what the younger crewmen are doing, but what he does is much more important and valuable. It’s not by strength or speed or swiftness of body that great deeds are done, but by wisdom, character, and sober judgment. These qualities are not lacking in old age but in fact grow richer as time passes. In my life I have served as a soldier in the ranks, then a junior officer, then a general, and finally, when consul, as a commander-in-chief. Since I am no longer fighting in wars, perhaps you think I am doing nothing. But the Senate listens to me when I speak about which wars to fight and how to fight them. Even now, I am looking into the future and planning war on Carthage. I will never stop fearing that city until I know it has been totally destroyed. And I pray that the immortal gods will reserve for you, Scipio, the honor of completing the work your grandfather left unfinished. It has been thirty-three years since that greatest of men died, but each passing year will increase the memory of his fame. He died the year before I became censor, nine years after my consulship, during which time he himself was elected consul a second time. If your grandfather had lived to be a hundred, would he have regretted his old age? Certainly not. He wouldn’t have spent such time running or jumping or throwing his spear or practicing with his sword, but instead he would have used his wisdom, reason, and judgment. If old men didn’t possess these qualities, our ancestors never would have given the name “Senate” to our highest council. Among the Spartans as well, those who hold the most important offices are called “elders,” which is exactly what they are. If you read or listen to the histories of foreign lands, you will learn that the greatest states were overturned by the young but saved and restored by the old. As Naevius says in his play The Game: Tell me, how did you lose your great nation so quickly? And the most significant answer the characters give is this: Because new speakers came forth, foolish young men. Rashness is truly the fruit of youth, but wisdom of old age. Some people will say that memory fades away as the years pass. Of course it does if you don’t exercise it or aren’t very bright to begin with. Themistocles learned by heart the names of all the citizens of Athens. So when he grew old, do you think he confused Aristides with Lysimachus when he greeted them? I myself remember not only those who are living now but their fathers and grandfathers too. As I read their epitaphs, I am not afraid of losing my memory, as the superstition says, but rather find my recollections of the dead refreshed. And I have certainly never heard of an old man who forgot where he hid his money! Old people remember what interests them, whether it be the dates to appear in court, who owes them money, or to whom they owe money. And what about elderly lawyers, priests, augurs, and philosophers? What a multitude of things they remember! Old people maintain a sound mind as long as they remain eager to learn and apply themselves. This is true not only of public figures but of those leading quiet, private lives. Sophocles composed tragedies long into his old age. When he seemed to be neglecting his family’s finances because of his passion for writing, his sons took him to court so that the jurymen could remove him from authority on account of his weakness of mind (like us, they had laws empowering such actions when the head of the family was mismanaging business affairs). They say that the old man then read to the court his Oedipus at Colonus, which he had just written and was even then revising, asking when he finished if it sounded like the work of a weak-minded person. After his recitation, the jury acquitted him. Clearly Sophocles was not deterred in his calling by old age, nor were Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, or Stesichorus, nor the two men I mentioned earlier, Isocrates and Gorgias, not to mention outstanding philosophers such as Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Xenocrates, or their successors Zeno, Cleanthes, or Diogenes the Stoic, whom you have both seen at Rome. Didn’t they all actively pursue their work as long as they lived? But setting aside these extraordinary men and their work, I can name for you elderly Roman farmers from the Sabine countryside, my own neighbors and friends, who are almost never out of their fields during major farming operations such as sowing, reaping, and storing crops. Although their work is less notable than some other types of labor, for truly no one is so old that he doesn’t think he’ll live another year, these men know they are working at tasks they will not live to see finished. As Caecilius Statius says in his Young Comrades: He plants trees for the use of another age. If you ask a farmer, however old he might be, whom he is planting for, he will always reply: “For the immortal gods, who have not only handed down to me these things from my ancestors but also determined that I should pass them on to my descendants.” When he wrote about that old man making provisions for future generations, Caecilius said something even more striking: Indeed, Old Age, if you brought no evil, but this alone, it would be enough, that a person, by living long sees many things he does not wish to see. But perhaps the same old man sees much he likes! In any case, even young people see much in life they wish they hadn’t. Another sentiment expressed by Caecilius is even worse: I think the most unhappy thing about old age is feeling that you are wearisome to the young. Not at all, I say! The old can be a pleasure rather than a burden. Just as wise old men enjoy the company of young men of good character and find their old age made lighter by honor and affection received from the young, so young men rejoice in the instruction given by old men, by which they are led to virtue. My young friends, I like to think you enjoy my company as much as I do yours. So you see how old age, far from being feeble and sluggish, can be very active, always doing and engaged in something, as it follows the pursuits of earlier years. And you should never stop learning, just as Solon in his poetry boasts that while growing old he learned something new every day. I’ve done the same, teaching myself Greek as an old man. I have seized on this study like someone trying to satisfy a long thirst. (And this, by the way, is how I’ve been able to use all the examples I’ve brought into this discussion.) I have heard that Socrates learned as an old man to play the lyre, that favorite instrument of the ancients. I wish I could do that as well, but at least I’ve applied myself diligently to literature. The Body and the Mind. I no longer wish for the strength of youth, that was the second objection to growing older we listed, any more than when I was a young man I desired the strength of a bull or an elephant. People should use the strength they have appropriately whatever their age. What story could be more pitiful than that of Milo of Croton? One day when as an old man he was watching the young athletes training on the racecourse, he reportedly looked down at his own muscles and wept, saying: “And these now are dead.” But not as dead as you, foolish man! For your fame never came from yourself, only from the strength of your sides and arms. Sextus Aelius, Tiberius Coruncanius of earlier times, and, more recently, Publius Crassus were very different from this. These men instructed their fellow citizens in the law and remained expert jurists until their last breath. I do fear that a public speaker loses some of his effectiveness as he grows older, since his skill depends not only on his intellect but also on his lungs and strength. But advancing years do have a way of making the voice brighter, more melodious. I haven’t yet lost this quality and you can see how old I am. The appropriate speaking style of later years is peaceful and restrained, and often the calm and elegant voice of an older person lends itself to being more readily heard. And even if someone is no longer able to speak well, he can still instruct a Scipio or a Laelius! What indeed could be more pleasant than an old age surrounded by the enthusiasm of youth? For surely we must agree that old people at least have the strength to teach the young and prepare them for the many duties of life. What responsibility could be more honorable than this? Truly, it seemed to me, Scipio, that Gnaeus and Publius Scipio, as well as your two grandfathers, Lucius Aemilius and Publius Africanus, were most fortunate to be accompanied always by crowds of noble young people. And no one who provides a liberal education to others can be considered unhappy even if his body is failing with age. The excesses of youth are more often to blame for the loss of bodily strength than old age. A wanton and wasteful youth yields to old age a worn-out body. The elderly Cyrus, according to Xenophon, declared as an old man on his deathbed that he had never felt less vigorous in his later years than as a young man. And also I remember as a boy seeing Lucius Metellus, who, four years after his second consulship, became chief priest and held that post for twenty-two years. To the end of his days he was so vigorous that in spite of extreme old age he never felt the loss of youth. I don’t need to mention myself in this respect, though old men like me are allowed to indulge themselves. Don’t you see in Homer how often Nestor declares his own admirable qualities? He had seen three generations of men at that point in his life, but he didn’t fear seeming overly talkative or conceited when he spoke the truth about himself. For as Homer says: “Speech sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue.” Now this sweetness in no way depended on his physical strength, and yet the Greek leader Agamemnon never prays for ten men like Ajax, but for ten like Nestor. He doesn’t doubt that if he had them, Troy would quickly fall. But to return to myself. I am eighty-four years old now, and I wish I could make the same boast as Cyrus. But this much I can say: I no longer have the energy I did when I served as a young soldier in the Punic War, or as quaestor in the same war, or as a consul and general in Spain, or four years later, serving as a military tribune in the campaign at Thermopylae under the consul Manius Glabrio. But nonetheless, as you can plainly see, old age has not unnerved or shattered me. Neither the Senate nor the popular assembly nor my friends nor my followers nor my guests find my strength lacking. I give no credit to that ancient and much-praised proverb that advises us to become old early if we want to be old long. Personally, I would rather be old for a shorter time than to be old too soon. Therefore, I have never refused an appointment with anyone who wanted to meet with me. It’s true that I don’t have the strength of either of you, but then again neither of you has the strength of the centurion Titus Pontius. Does that mean that he is a better person than you? Let each use properly whatever strengths he has and strive to use them well. If he does this, he will never find himself lacking. They say that Milo walked the length of the Olympic stadium carrying an ox on his shoulders. But what would you prefer to be given, the physical strength of Milo or the mental power of Pythagoras? In short, enjoy the blessing of bodily strength while you have it, but don’t mourn when it passes away, any more than a young man should lament the end of boyhood or a mature man the passing of youth. The course of life cannot change. Nature has but a single path and you travel it only once. Each stage of life has its own appropriate qualities, weakness in childhood, boldness in youth, seriousness in middle age, and maturity in old age. These are fruits that must be harvested in due season. I expect, Scipio, that you sometimes hear news about your grandfather’s friend and host Masinissa, who is now ninety years old. Once he begins a journey by foot, he never mounts a horse. Likewise, when he sets out on horseback he never dismounts. He goes bareheaded even in the rain and cold. He is in such good condition that he still carries out all his royal duties and functions in person. This shows how a man who practices exercise and self-control can preserve some of his original vigor even when he grows old. But let us assume that old age makes us feeble, what does it matter? No one expects older people to be physically strong in any case. That is why both law and custom exempt men my age from public duties requiring bodily strength. We aren’t expected to perform tasks we cannot do nor even those things we can do. Of course, many older people truly are in poor health, so that they are unable to carry out normal duties or indeed any tasks that life demands. However, this inability is not a factor of old age but a characteristic of poor health in general. Remember, Scipio, the weakness of your adoptive father, the son of Publius Africanus. He had poor health, or rather no health at all. Had it not been so, he would have been the second glory of our country, for in addition to his father’s courage he possessed more abundant learning. Therefore, since even the young cannot escape infirmity, why should we marvel that old people sometimes lack physical strength? We must fight, my dear Laelius and Scipio, against old age. We must compensate for its drawbacks by constant care and attend to its defects as if it were a disease. We can do this by following a plan of healthy living, exercising in moderation, and eating and drinking just enough to restore our bodies without overburdening them. And as much as we should care for our bodies, we should pay even more attention to our minds and spirits. For they, like lamps of oil, will grow dim with time if not replenished. And even though physical exercise may tire the body, mental activity makes the mind sharper. When the playwright Caecilius speaks of “old fools of the comic stage,” he means men who are gullible, forgetful, and lazy, qualities that belong not to old age in general but only to those who have allowed themselves to become drowsy, sluggish, and inert. Wantonness and lust are more common in the young than in the old, yet they are not found in all youth, just those of poor character. So too the senile silliness we call “dotage” is characteristic not of all old people but only those who are weak in spirit and will. Appius Claudius was old and blind, yet he led a household of four vigorous sons, five daughters, numerous servants, and many dependents. He did not lazily succumb to old age but kept his mind taut as a bow. He didn’t direct his household as much as he ruled over it. His slaves feared him, his children venerated him, and all held him dear. The traditions and discipline of his forefathers flourished in his home. For old age is respected only if it defends itself, maintains its rights, submits to no one, and rules over its domain until its last breath. Just as I approve of a young man with a touch of age about him, I applaud an old man who maintains some flavor of his youth. Such a person may grow old in body but never in spirit. I am now working on the seventh book of my Origins and collecting all the records of our earliest history, as well as editing the speeches I delivered in famous cases. I am investigating augural, priestly, and civil law. I also devote much of my time to the study of Greek literature. And to exercise my memory, I follow the practice of the Pythagoreans and each evening go over everything I have said, heard, or done during the day. These are my mental gymnastics, the racecourses of my mind. And although I sweat and toil with them, I don’t greatly miss my former bodily strength. I also provide legal advice to my friends and frequently attend meetings of the Senate, where I propose topics for discussion and argue my opinion after pondering the issues long and hard. All this I do not with the strength of my body but with the force of my mind. Even if the effort of doing these things were more than I could manage, I could still lie on my reading couch and think about the activities that were now beyond me. But the fact that I can do them I owe to my vigorous life. For a man who has been engaged in studies and activities his whole life does not notice old age creeping up on him. Instead, he gradually and effortlessly slips into his final years, not overcome suddenly but extinguished over a long period. The Pleasures of Age. We come now to the third objection to growing older, that the pleasures of the flesh fade away. But if this is true, I say it is indeed a glorious gift that age frees us from youth’s most destructive failing. Now listen, my most noble young friends, to the ancient words of that excellent and most distinguished man, Archytas of Tarentum, repeated to me when I was serving as a young soldier in that very city with Quintus Maximus: He said the most fatal curse given to men by nature is sexual desire. From it spring passions of uncontrollable and reckless lust seeking gratification. From it come secret plotting with enemies, betrayals of one’s country, and the overthrow of governments. Indeed, there is no evil act, no unscrupulous deed that a man driven by lust will not perform. Uncontrolled sensuality will drive men to rape, adultery, and every other sexual outrage. And since nature, or perhaps some god, has given men no finer gift than human intelligence, this divine endowment has no greater foe than naked sensuality. Where lust rules, there is no place for self-control. And in the kingdom of self-indulgence, there is no room for decent behavior. “Imagine,” Archytas continued, to make his meaning clearer, “a person enjoying the most exquisite sensual pleasure possible. No one would doubt that a man in that state is incapable of using his mind in any rational or reasonable way. Therefore, nothing is more detestable or pernicious than sensual pleasure. If a person indulges in it too much and too long, it plunges the soul into utter darkness.” Nearchus, a steadfast friend of Rome who was my host at Tarentum, told me that according to tradition Archytas spoke these words to Gaius Pontius the Samnite, father of the man who defeated the consuls Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius at the Caudine Forks. Nearchus added that Plato the Athenian was present and heard him utter these words. And indeed I have investigated this and found that Plato did come to Tarentum when Lucius Camillus and Appius Claudius were consuls. So why have I quoted Archytas? To make you see that if reason and wisdom aren’t enough to make us reject lustful desires, then we should be grateful that old age takes away the craving to do what is wrong. For such feelings cloud our judgment, are at war with reason, and, if I may say so, blind the eyes of the mind and allow no room for living a good life. It was an unpleasant duty I performed when I had to eject from the Senate a man who had been consul seven years earlier, Lucius Flamininus, the brother of that most worthy Titus Flamininus. But I believed his shameful lust had demanded this action. For when he was a consul in Gaul, he executed, at the request of a prostitute during a banquet, some man imprisoned for a capital offense. During the time when his brother, my immediate predecessor, had been censor, Lucius had escaped punishment. But Flaccus and I could not permit such flagrant and indecent passion to go unanswered, especially since his scandalous crime against a private individual had dishonored Rome. I often heard from elders, who said they heard it from old men when they were boys, that Gaius Fabricius used to marvel at a story told to him (while he was on a mission to King Pyrrhus) by Cineas of Thessaly. Cineas said that there was an Athenian professing to be wise who claimed that everything we do should be judged by how much pleasure it gives us. Now, when Manius Curius and Tiberius Coruncanius heard this from Fabricius, they said they hoped that the Samnites and Pyrrhus himself would adopt his teaching, since it’s easier to conquer people who surrender to pleasure. Manius Curius had been a good friend of Publius Decius, who, while consul for the fourth time (and five years before Curius himself was consul), had sacrificed his life for his country. Fabricius and Coruncanius knew him as well. They were firmly convinced, as shown by the lives they led and especially by Decius’s final act, that certain goals in life are naturally fine and noble and should be sought for their own sake. They believed that every decent person should pursue these goals and reject self-indulgence as contemptible. Why am I talking so much about pleasure? Because the fact that old age feels little desire for sensual delights is not only no cause for reproach but indeed a reason to praise it highly. Old age has no extravagant banquets, no tables piled high, no wine cups filled again and again, but it also has no drunkenness, no indigestion, and no sleepless nights! However, if we must make some concession to pleasure, since its allurement is hard to resist, “the bait of evil” Plato brilliantly calls it, men caught in its net like fish, then I admit we should allow old age, though it lacks excessive feasts, the delights of more moderate dinners. When I was a child I often saw old Gaius Duilius, son of Marcus, who first defeated the Carthaginians in a naval battle, walking home from dinner parties. He always loved being escorted on these little journeys by torchbearers and a flute player. No private citizen had behaved in such a way previously, but his glorious reputation gave him license. But why do I speak of others? Let me return now to myself. To begin with, I have always had my club companions. It was during my quaestorship that clubs in honor of the Great Mother and her Idaean worship were introduced at Rome. I used to regularly dine with these companions in a modest fashion, yet with a certain fervor of youth most appropriate then, though it diminishes as time goes by. But it wasn’t the gastronomic delights that appealed to me even then as much as the pleasure of meeting and conversing with my friends. The word our ancestors used for a meal with friends was convivium, a “living together”, because it describes the essence of a social gathering. It’s a much richer description of the experience than the Greek terms “drinking together” or “eating together,” which emphasize what is least important in these gatherings rather than what is most valuable. Personally, because I love conversation, I even enjoy dinner parties that start early in the day. At these gatherings, I talk not only with my contemporaries, very few of whom remain, but also with you and your young friends. I am so grateful to old age for increasing my delight in conversation while lessening my desire for food and drink. But if any of my older friends enjoy these things, and let no one think that I have declared war on pleasure since a certain amount of it has perhaps been justified by nature, then let me say that I know no reason old age should be lacking in such gratification. I very much appreciate our ancestral custom of appointing a banquet leader for social gatherings and starting the conversation at the head of the table when the wine comes in. I also like cups as described in Xenophon’s Symposium, small and filled as if with dew, cool in the summer and warmed in winter by sunshine or fire. Even when I’m among the rustic Sabines I frequent such gatherings. And when at home with my neighbors, I join them every day for a meal where we talk as long into the night as we can about all sorts of things. But of course some people will point out that the old aren’t as able as the young to have their senses tickled. That’s true, but they don’t yearn for it either, and nothing troubles you if you don’t desire it. Sophocles, when he was already an old man, gave a great answer to someone who asked if he still enjoyed sex. “Good gods, no!” he said. “I have gladly escaped that cruel and savage master.” For those who yearn for such things, not to have them is perhaps troublesome and annoying. But if you’ve had your fill of sex and have satisfied all such desires, then to lack them is better than to possess them. If you don’t long for something, you don’t miss it. That’s why I say the absence of desire is quite pleasant. But granting that young people enjoy the pleasures of the flesh more than the old, I need to make two points. First, as I’ve said, these kinds of pleasures matter little. Second, even though old age doesn’t provide these delights in abundance, it doesn’t lack them completely. Just as Ambivius Turpio entertained the audience at the front of the theater more than those in the rear seats, still he gave those in back a good show as well. In the same way, young people may enjoy sex more than the old, but the elderly still can appreciate it sufficiently by looking on such pleasures from a distance. How wonderful it is for the soul when, after so many struggles with lust, ambition, strife, quarreling, and other passions, these battles are at last ended and it can return, as they say, to live within itself. There is no greater satisfaction to be had in life than a leisurely old age devoted to knowledge and learning. I used to see, Scipio, your father’s friend Gaius Gallus measuring, you might say, the whole of the heavens and the earth. How often the morning sun surprised him as he worked on some chart he had begun the previous night. And how often night overtook him at a task he had begun at dawn. How he delighted in telling us about eclipses of the sun and moon before they happened! And let’s not forget others who engaged in easier but no less demanding work. How Naevius delighted in his Punic War, as did Plautus in The Savage and The Cheat. I myself saw Livius Andronicus when he was an old man. He brought out a play six years before I was born, when Cento and Tuditanus were consuls, yet he continued to live until I was a young man. I don’t need to mention again the example of Publius Licinius Crassus, who was active in religious and civic law, or bring up Publius Scipio, who was elected chief priest just a few days ago. Yet I have seen all these men still enthusiastic in their callings after they grew old. There was also Marcus Cethegus, whom Ennius rightly described as “the marrow of persuasion.” I myself saw him speak with exuberance even though he was an old man. How can anyone compare the pleasures of banquets or games or brothels to what these men enjoyed? They had a passion for learning, a passion that in sensible and educated people advances as the years go by. So there is truth in Solon’s verse I quoted in which he said that as he grew older he learned more and more every day. Surely there can be no greater pleasure than the pleasure of the mind. The Joys of Farming. Now, speaking of pleasures, let me tell you about farming, which brings me a great deal of personal joy. The pleasures of growing things are not at all diminished by age and they seem to me most suitable for the life of a wise person. The joys of farming are like a bank account with the earth itself, which never refuses to honor a withdrawal and always returns the principal with interest, though sometimes only a little yet at other times a great deal. What delights me are not only the fruits of the land but the power and nature of the earth itself. It receives the scattered seed in its softened and ready womb, and for a time the seed remains hidden, occaecatum in Latin, hence our word occatio. Then warmed by the moist heat of its embrace, the seed expands and brings forth a green and flourishing blade. With the support of its fibrous roots, it grows and matures until at last it stands erect on its jointed stalk. Now within its sheath it has reached its adolescent stage so that finally it bursts forth and an ear of grain comes into the light with ordered rows and a palisade of spikes as protection against nibbling by small birds. I really shouldn’t mention the vine, its beginnings, cultivation, and growth. But I must tell you that tending vines is the rejuvenation and delight of my old age. I simply can’t get enough of it. I won’t dwell here on the inherent force of all things that are generated from the earth, how from a tiny fig seed or grape stone or from the smallest seeds of any fruit or plant mighty trunks and branches grow. Just consider the planting of shoots, the twigs, the cuttings, the sprouts, isn’t it enough to fill anyone with admiration? Vines naturally want to droop on the earth, but prop them up and they will raise their tendrils like hands to the sky. They twist and turn in every course until the farmer’s pruning knife checks them lest they turn to wood and spread too abundantly. With the coming of spring, the branches left on a vine at every joint put forth a bud, which in turn become swelling grapes. These are bitter at first, but soon the moisture of the earth and heat of the sun turn them sweet as they ripen, wrapped by leaves to provide moderate warmth and keep away the burning rays of the sun. What indeed could be more alluring to the taste or pleasing to the eye? Now, it isn’t simply the usefulness of the vine that delights me, as I said before, but its cultivation and very nature. Just consider the rows of stakes, the vine tops joined to trellises, the tying up of the branches, the extending of the vines, and the pruning of some branches, as I said, while others are left to grow freely. Why should I now mention irrigation, ditching, and the hoeing of the ground that makes the land more productive? Why should I discuss here the usefulness of manure? You can read all about this in my book on agriculture. Even the learned Hesiod says nothing of this matter, although he wrote on agriculture. But Homer, who I believe lived many generations earlier, does mention Odysseus’s father Laertes soothed his sorrow over his absent son by tilling his land and manuring it too. The farmer also enjoys his fields, meadows, vineyards, and woodlands, his gardens and orchards, cattle pastures, swarming bees, and all manner of flowers. Planting too is a delight, and grafting as well, a most ingenious operation of agriculture. I could go on and on about the charms of farming, though I have said too much already. But do forgive me if I continue, for my enthusiasm for the rustic life carries me away. And besides, old age is naturally talkative, I don’t want to excuse it of all its faults. They say that Manius Curius spent the remainder of his life in farming after he had triumphed over the Samnites, Sabines, and Pyrrhus. And as I gaze at his country house, not far from my own, I cannot admire enough the frugality of the man or the disciplined spirit of his times. Once, while he was sitting by his fireside, some Samnites brought him a large gift of gold. But he rejected this, saying that it seemed to him less glorious to possess gold than to rule over those who have it. A man with such a great soul must have found much happiness in old age. But lest I wander away from my subject, let me return to farmers. In former days, senators (that is, senes, “elders”) were farmers, if indeed the story is true that Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was at his plough when they called him to be dictator. By the order of Cincinnatus, Gaius Servilius Ahala, his master of the horse, seized Spurius Maelius and put him to death for attempting to make himself king. It was from their distant farmhouses that Curius and other elders were summoned to the Senate. That is why the messengers sent to bring them were called viatores, “travelers.” Surely men like these who delighted in working the land could not have been unhappy when they grew old? I personally believe that no life can be happier than that of a farmer, not only because of the service provided that benefits the entire human race, but because of the pleasures I mentioned earlier and the abundance of all things needed for worship of the gods and the sustenance of humanity. Seeing that some people are very concerned with material goods, I hope this talk of abundance will return me to their good graces. For the farmer who looks ahead and works hard always has his storage rooms and cellars full of wine, oil, and provisions. His whole farm is filled with an air of plenty with rooms of abundant pork, goat meat, lamb, poultry, milk, cheese, and honey. Then there is the farmer’s own garden, which he calls his “second leg of pork.” What spare time he has is sweetened with activities such as bird-catching and hunting. Why should I speak at length about the greenness of meadows, the ordered rows of trees, the glory of vineyards and olive groves? Instead, I will be brief. Nothing can be more abundantly useful or beautiful than a well-kept farm. Not only does old age not impede the enjoyment of such a farm, but it actually invites and increases its enjoyment. For where else in the world can an old man better find warmth from the sunshine or the hearth? Or where else in the summertime can he more healthfully cool himself with shade or running water? Let others have their weapons, their horses, their spears and fencing foils, their balls, their swimming contests and foot races. Just leave old men like me our dice and knucklebones. Or take away those too if you want. Old age can be happy without them. The writings of Xenophon are very informative on many subjects and I recommend you read them carefully, as I know you already do. How greatly he praises agriculture in his book on estate management. To show you that Xenophon regarded agriculture as the most regal of pursuits, let me tell you a story from his book which he has Socrates relate in a conversation with Critobolus. Cyrus the Younger, a Persian prince known for his outstanding intelligence and the glory of his rule, was visited at Sardis by Lysander of Sparta, a man of the greatest virtue. He had come to Sardis with gifts from their allies. Among the courtesies Cyrus extended to his guest was a tour of a carefully planted park. Lysander complimented the prince on the stately trees growing in patterns of five, the clean and well-tilled soil, and the sweet fragrance of the flowers. The Spartan then added that what impressed him was not only all the hard work that had gone into the park but the ingenuity with which everything had been arranged. “It was I who planned it all,” said Cyrus. “The rows are mine, the arrangement is mine, and I planted many of the trees with my own hands.” After gazing at Cyrus’s purple robes, the shining beauty of his body, and his Persian clothes decorated with gold and many precious stones, Lysander declared: “People are right to call you happy, Cyrus. Not only are you fortunate, but you are a virtuous man as well.” The good fortune of growing things is something every old person can enjoy. The cultivation of the soil is something we can pursue even to the end of our days. For example, we hear the story that Valerius Corvinus continued to work on his farm at an advanced age and so lived until he was a hundred years old. His first and sixth consulships were forty-six years apart, in other words, the length of time our ancestors considered to be the span of a man’s adult life until the start of old age. And the final part of his life was happier than what had come before since his influence was greater and he had fewer responsibilities. The Honors of Old Age. The crowning glory of old age is respect. Great respect was given to Lucius Caecilius Metellus, as well as Aulus Atilius Caiatinus. His epitaph reads: All the nations say this man was the noblest of his country. But you know the whole epitaph since it is inscribed on his tomb. The universal acknowledgment of his fine qualities is testimony to his influence. We have seen in recent times the chief priest Publius Crassus and his successor Marcus Lepidus. What men they were! And what should I say of Paullus and Africanus and Maximus, of whom I spoke earlier? These men exuded authority not only in their speech but in the mere nod of their head. Surely the respect given to old age crowned with public honors is more satisfying than all the sensual pleasures of youth. But please bear in mind that throughout this whole discussion I am praising an old age that has its foundation well laid in youth. Thus it follows, as I once said with the approval of all who heard me, that an old age which must defend itself with words alone is unenviable. Wrinkles and gray hair cannot suddenly demand respect. Only when the earlier years of life have been well spent does old age at last gather the fruits of admiration. When that has finally happened, the signs of respect may at first seem unimportant or even trivial, morning visits, requests for meetings, people making way for you and rising when you approach, being escorted to and from the Forum, being asked for advice. We Romans scrupulously practice these civilities, as do all other decent nations. It is reported that Lysander of Sparta, of whom I was just speaking, used to say that his city was the best place for the elderly, since his hometown treated old people with greater respect and deference than anywhere else. A story goes that once in Athens an old man went to a crowded theater to see a play, but not one of his countrymen offered him a seat. However, when he came to the section reserved for visiting Spartan delegates, each of them rose and invited him to sit down. This action was heartily applauded by the whole crowd, which prompted one of the Spartans to say: “These Athenians know what good behavior is, but they don’t practice it.” There are many admirable customs among our own board of augurs, but one particularly relevant to our discussion is the tradition that gives the members precedence in speaking according to age. This takes priority above official rank and even above those who are serving as the highest magistrates. What sensual pleasures could be compared to the rewards such influence bestows? It seems to me that those who make good use of such rewards are like actors who have played well to the end their role in the drama of life, and not like incompetent players who fall apart in the last act. But some will say old people are morose, anxious, ill-tempered, and hard to please. And when we look closely, some of them are miserly as well. But these are faults of character, not of age. Besides, moroseness and the other faults I have mentioned have an arguable excuse in the aged, though perhaps not a very good one. After all, old people imagine themselves ignored, despised, and mocked. And granted, a fragile body is easily hurt. But all these troubles of age can be eased by a decent and enlightened character. We can see this in real life as well as on stage in Terence’s Adelphi brothers. One of them is most disagreeable while the other is quite pleasant. The truth is that a person’s character, like wine, does not necessarily grow sour with age. Austerity in old age is proper enough, but like everything else it should be in moderation. Sourness of disposition is never a virtue. As for miserliness in the old, what purpose it could serve I don’t understand. What could be more ridiculous than for a traveler to add to his baggage at the end of a journey? Death Is Not to Be Feared. We must finally consider the fourth objection to growing old, an objection that seems especially calculated to cause worry and distress to a man of my years. I speak of the nearness of death. When a person is old, there is certainly no doubt that death cannot be far away. Wretched indeed is the man who in the course of a long life has not learned that death is nothing to be feared. For death either completely destroys the human soul, in which case it is negligible, or takes the soul to a place where it can live forever, which makes it desirable. There is no third possibility. Why should I be afraid then, since after death I will be either not unhappy or happy? Besides, who even among the young would be foolish enough to believe with absolute confidence that he will be alive when evening comes? Young people are much more likely than the old to suffer death by accident. They also fall sick more easily, suffer more intently, and are harder to cure. That is why so few young people arrive at old age. If so many didn’t die young, we would have a wiser and more prudent population. For reason and good judgment are found in the old. If there had never been any old people, states would never have existed. But I return now to the closeness of death. Why do you say it is a reproach to old age when you see it is also common among the young? I have felt this keenly myself with the loss of my dear son, as have you, Scipio, with the death of your two brothers, young men destined for greatness. But you may argue that young people can hope to live a long time, whereas old people cannot. Such hope is not wise, for what is more foolish than to mistake something certain for what is uncertain, or something false for what is true? You might also say that an old man has nothing at all to hope for. But he in fact possesses something better than a young person. For what youth longs for, old age has attained. A young person hopes to have a long life, but an old man has already had one. But, good gods, what in our human world ever lasts a long time? Let us assume the longest life possible, so that we may hope to reach the age of that king of Tartessus I have read about, a certain Arganthonius of Gades who reigned for eighty years and lived to the age of one hundred and twenty. But to me nothing that has an end seems long. For when that end comes, all that came before is gone. All that remains then are the good and worthy deeds you have done in your life. Hours and days, months and years flow by, but the past returns no more and the future we cannot know. We should be content with whatever time we are given to live. An actor does not need to remain on stage throughout a play. It is enough that he appears in the appropriate acts. Likewise, a wise man need not stay on the stage of this world until the audience applauds at the end. The time allotted to our lives may be short, but it is long enough to live honestly and decently. If by chance we enjoy a longer life, we have no reason to be more sorrowful than a farmer when a pleasant springtime turns to summer and autumn. Spring is like youth with the promise of fruits to come. Our later years are the seasons of harvesting and storing away. The particular fruit of old age, as I have said, is the memory of the abundant blessings of what has come before. Everything that is in accord with nature should be considered good. And what could be more proper in the natural course of life than for the old to die? When young people die, nature rebels and fights against this fate. A young person dying reminds me of a fire extinguished by a deluge. But when an old person dies, it is like a flame that diminishes gradually and flickers away of its own accord with no force applied after its fuel has been used up. In the same way, green apples are hard to pick from a tree, but when ripe and ready they fall

Robert A. Heinlein. Between Planets. ACE BOOKS. A Division of Charter Communications Inc. 1120 Avenue of the Americas. New York, N. Y. 10036. BETWEEN PLANETS. Copyright, 1951, by McCall Corporation and Robert A. Heinlein Scanned by BAX. Proofed by FRENCHIE. For Scott and KENT. A condensed version under the title Planets in Combat appeared in three parts in Blue Book Magazine. Printed in U.S.A. Robert “A.” Heinlein. Between Planets. One. New Mexico. “EASY, boy, easy.” Don Harvey reined in the fat little cow pony. Ordinarily Lazy lived up to his name; today he seemed to want to go places. Don hardly blamed him. It was such a day as comes only to New Mexico, with sky scrubbed clean by a passing shower, the ground already dry but with a piece of rainbow still hanging in the distance. The sky was too blue, the buttes too rosy, and the far reaches too sharp to be quite convincing. Incredible peace hung over the land and with it a breathless expectancy of something wonderful about to happen. “We’ve got all day,” he cautioned Lazy, “so don’t get yourself in a lather. That’s a stiff climb ahead.” Don was riding alone because he had decked out Lazy in a magnificent Mexican saddle his parents had ordered sent to him for his birthday. It was a beautiful thing, as gaudy with silver as an Indian buck, but it was as out of place at the ranch school he attended as formal clothes at a branding, a point which his parents had not realized. Don was proud of it, but the other boys rode plain stock saddles; they kidded him unmercifully and had turned “Donald James Harvey” into “Don Jaime” when he first appeared with it. Lazy suddenly shied. Don glanced around, spotted the cause, whipped out his gun, and fired. He then dismounted, throwing the reins forward so that Lazy would stand, and examined his work. In the shadow of a rock a fair-sized snake, seven rattles on its tail, was still twitching. Its head lay by it, burned off. Don decided not to save the rattles; had he pinpointed the head he would have taken it in to show his marksmanship. As it was, he had been forced, to slice sidewise with the beam before he got it. If he brought in a snake killed in such a clumsy fashion someone would be sure to ask him why he hadn’t used a garden hose. He let it lie and remounted while talking to Lazy. “Just a no-good old sidewinder,” he said reassuringly. “More scared of you than you were of it.” He clucked and they started off. A few hundred yards further on Lazy shied again, not from a snake this time but from an unexpected noise. Don pulled him in and spoke severely. “You bird-brained butterball! When are you going to learn not to jump when the telephone rings?” Lazy twitched his shoulder muscles and snorted. Don reached for the pommel, removed the phone, and answered. “Mobile 6-J-233309, Don Harvey speaking.” “Mister Reeves, Don,” came back the voice of the headmaster of Ranchito Alegre. “Where are you?” “Headed up Peddler’s Grave Mesa, sir.” “Get home as quickly as you can.” “Uh, what’s up, sir?” “Radiogram from your parents. I’ll send the copter out for you if the cook is back-with someone to bring your horse in.” Don hesitated. He didn’t want just anybody to ride Lazy, like as not getting him overheated and failing to cool him off. On the other hand a radio from his folks could not help but be important. His parents were on Mars and his mother wrote regularly, every ship-but radiograms, other than Christmas and birthday greetings, were almost unheard of. “I’ll hurry, sir.” “Right!” Mister Reeves switched off. Don turned Lazy and headed back down the trail. Lazy seemed disappointed and looked back accusingly. As it turned out, they were only a half-mile from the school when the ranch copter spotted them. Don waved it off and took Lazy on in himself. Despite his curiosity he delayed to wipe down the pony and water it before he went in. Mister Reeves was waiting in his office and motioned for him to come in. He handed Don the message. It read: DEAR SON, PASSAGE RESERVED FOR YOU VALKYRIE CIRCUM-TERRA TWELVE APRIL LOVE MOTHER AND DAD. Don blinked at it, having trouble taking in the simple facts. “But that’s right away” “Yes. You weren’t expecting it?” Don thought it over. He had halfway expected to go home-if one could call it going home when he had never set foot on Mars-at the end of the school year. If they had arranged his passage for the Vanderdecken three months from now. “Uh, not exactly. I can’t figure out why they would send for me before the end of the term.” Mister Reeves fitted his fingertips carefully together. “I’d say that it was obvious.” Don looked startled. “You mean? Mister Reeves, you don’t really think there is going to be trouble, do you?” The headmaster answered gravely, “Don, I’m not a prophet. But it is my guess that your parents are sufficiently worried that they want you out of a potential war zone as quickly as possible.” He was still having trouble readjusting. Wars were something you studied, not something that actually happened. Of course his class in contemporary history had kept track of the current crisis in colonial affairs, but, even so, it had seemed something far away, even for one as widely traveled as himself-a matter for diplomats and politicians, not something real. “Look, Mister Reeves, they may be jumpy but I’m not. I’d like to send a radio telling them that I’ll be along on the next ship, as soon as school is out.” Mister Reeves shook his head. “No, I can’t let you go against your parents’ explicit instructions. In the second place, ah.” The headmaster seemed to have difficulty in choosing his words. “That is to say, Donald, in the event of war, you might find your position here, shall we call it, uncomfortable?” A bleak wind seemed to have found its way into the office. Don felt lonely and older than he should feel. “Why?” he asked gruffly. Mister Reeves studied his fingernails. “Are you quite sure where your loyalties lie?” he said slowly. Don forced himself to think about it. His father had been born on Earth; his mother was a second-generation Venus colonial. But neither planet was truly their home; they had met and married on Luna and had pursued their researches in planetology in many sectors of the solar system. Don himself had been born out in space and his birth certificate, issued by the Federation, had left the question of his nationality open. He could claim dual citizenship by parental derivation. He did not think of himself as a Venus colonial; it had been so long since his family had last visited Venus that the place had grown unreal in his mind. On the other hand he had been eleven years old before he had ever rested his eyes on the lovely hills of Earth. “I’m a citizen of the System,” he said harshly. “Hum said the headmaster. “That’s a fine phrase and perhaps someday it will mean something. In the meantime, speaking as a friend, I agree with your parents. Mars is likely to be neutral territory; you’ll be safe there. Again, speaking as your friend-things may get a little rough here for anyone whose loyalty is not perfectly clear.” “Nobody has any business questioning my loyalty under the law, I count as native born!” The man did not answer. Don burst out, “The whole thing is silly! If the Federation wasn’t trying to bleed Venus white there wouldn’t be any war talk.” Reeves stood up. “That will be all, Don. I’m not going to argue politics with you.” “It’s true! Read Chamberlain’s Theory of Colonial Expansion!” Reeves seemed startled. “Where did you lay hands on that book? Not in the school library.” Don did not answer. His father had sent it to him but had cautioned him not to let it be seen; it was one of the suppressed books-on Earth, at least. Reeves went on, “Don, have you been dealing with a book legger?” Don remained silent. “Answer me!” Presently Reeves took a deep breath and said, “Never mind. Go up to your room and pack. The copter will take you to Albuquerque at one o’clock.” “Yes, sir.” He had started to leave when the headmaster called him back. “Just a moment. In the heat of our, uh, discussion I almost forgot that there was a second message for you.” “Oh?” Don accepted the slip; it said: DEAR SON, BE SURE TO SAY GOODBYE TO UNCLE DUDLEY BEFORE YOU LEAVE. MOTHER. This second message surprised him in some ways even more than the first; he had trouble realizing that his mother must mean Doctor Dudley Jefferson-a friend of his parents but no relation, and a person of no importance in his own life. But Reeves seemed not to see anything odd in the message, so he stuck it in his Levis and left the room. Long as he had been earthbound he approached packing with a true spaceman’s spirit. He knew that his passage would entitle him to only fifty pounds of free lift; he started discarding right and left. Shortly he had two piles, a very small one on his own bed-indispensable clothing, a few capsules of microfilm, his slide rule, a stylus, and a vreetha, a flutelike Martian instrument which he had not played in a long time as his schoolmates had objected. On his roommate’s bed was a much larger pile of discards. He picked up the vreetha, tried a couple of runs, and put it on the larger pile. Taking a Martian product to Mars was coal to Newcastle. His roommate, Jack Moreau, came in as he did so. “What in time goes on? House cleaning?” “Leaving.” Jack dug a finger into his ear. “I must be getting deaf. I could have sworn you said you were leaving.” “I am.” Don stopped and explained, showing Jack the message from his parents. Jack looked distressed. “I don’t like this. Of course I knew this was our last year, but I didn’t figure on you jumping the gun. I probably won’t sleep without your snores to soothe me. What’s the rush?” “I don’t know. I really don’t. The Head says that my folks have war jitters and want to drag their little darling to safety. But that’s silly, don’t you think? I mean, people are too civilized to go to war today.” Jack did not answer. Don waited, then said sharply, “You agree, don’t you? There won’t be any war.” Jack answered slowly, “Could be. Or maybe not.” “Oh, come off it!” His roommate answered, “Want me to help you pack?” “There isn’t anything to pack.” “How about all that stuff?” “That’s yours, if you want it. Pick it over, then call in the others and let them take what they like.” “Huh? Gee, Don, I don’t want your stuff. I’ll pack it and ship it after you.” “Ever ship anything ‘tween planets? It’s not worth it.” “Then sell it. Tell you what, we’ll hold an auction right after supper.” Don shook his head. “No time. I’m leaving at one o’clock.” “What? You’re really blitzing me, kid. I don’t like this.” “Can’t be helped.” He turned back to his sorting. Several of his friends drifted in to say goodbye. Don himself had not spread the news and he did not suppose that the headmaster would have talked, yet somehow the grapevine had spread the word. He invited them to help themselves to the plunder, subject to Jack’s prior claim. Presently he noticed that none of them asked why he was leaving. It bothered him more than if they had talked about it. He wanted to tell someone, anyone, that it was ridiculous to doubt his loyalty-and anyhow there wasn’t going to be a war. Rupe Salter, a boy from another wing, stuck his head in, looked over the preparations. “Running out, eh? I heard you were and thought I’d checkup.” “I’m leaving, if that’s what you mean.” “That’s what I said. See here, `Don Jaime,’ how about that circus saddle of yours? I’ll take it off your hands if the price is right.” “It’s not for sale.” “Huh? No horses where you’re going. Make me a price.” “It belongs to Jack here.” “And it’s still not for sale,” Moreau answered promptly. “Like that, eh? Suit yourself.” Salter went on blandly, “Another thing you willed that nag of yours yet?” The boys’ mounts, with few exceptions, were owned by the school, but it was a cherished and long-standing privilege of a boy graduating to “will” his temporary ownership to a boy of hischoice. Don looked up sharply; until that moment he had not thought about Lazy. He realized with sudden grief that he could not take the little fat clown with him-nor had he made any arrangements for his welfare. “The matter is settled,” he answered, added to himself: as far as you are concerned. “Who gets him? I could make it worth your while. He’s not much of a horse, but I want to get rid of the goat I’ve had to put up with.” “It’s settled.” “Be sensible. I can see the Head and get him anyhow. Willing a horse is a graduating privilege and you’re ducking out ahead of time.” “Get out.” Salter grinned. “Touchy, aren’t you? Just like all fogeaters, too touchy to know what’s good for you. Well, you’re going to be taught a lesson someday soon.” Don, already on edge, was too angry to trust himself to speak. “Fogeater,” used to describe a man from cloud wrapped Venus, was merely ragging, no worse than “Limey” or “Yank”, unless the tone of voice and context made it, as now, a deliberate insult. The others looked at him, half expecting action. Jack got up hastily from the bed and went toward Salter. “Get going, Salty. We’re too busy to monkey around with you.” Salter looked at Don, then back at Jack, shrugged and said, “I’m too busy to hang around here. But not too busy, if you have anything in mind.” The noon bell pealed from the mess hall; it broke the tension. Several boys started for the door; Salter moved out with them. Don hung back. Jack said, “Come on-beans!” “Jack?” “Yeah?” “How about you taking over Lazy?” “Gee, Don? I’d like to accommodate you-but what would I do with Lady Maude?” “Uh, I guess so. What’ll I do?” “Let me see.” Jack’s face brightened. “You know that kid Squinty Morris? The new kid from Manitoba? He hasn’t got a permanent yet; he’s been taking his rotation with the goats. He’d treat Lazy right; I know, I let him try Maudie once. He’s got gentle hands.” Don looked relieved. “Will you fix it for me? And see Mister Reeves?” “Huh? You can see him at lunch; come on.” “I’m not going to lunch. I’m not hungry. And I don’t much want to talk to the Head about it.” “Why not?” “Well, I don’t know. When he called me in this morning he didn’t seem exactly, friendly.” “What did he say?” “It wasn’t his words; it was his manner. Maybe I am touchy-but I sort of thought he was glad to see me go.” Don expected Jack to object, convince him that he was wrong. Instead he was silent for a moment, then said quietly, ‘Don’t take it too hard, Don. The Head is probably edgy too. You know he’s got his orders?” “Huh? What orders?” “You knew he was a reserve officer, didn’t you? He put in for orders and got ‘em, effective at end of term. Missus. Reeves is taking over the school for the duration.” Don, already overstrained, felt his head whirling. For the duration? How could anyone say that when there wasn’t any such thing? “‘Sfact,” Jack went on. “I got it straight from cookie.” He paused, then went on, “See here, old son-we’re pals, aren’t we?” “Huh? Sure, sure!” “Then give it to me straight: are you actually going to Mars? Or are you heading for Venus to sign up?” “Whatever gave you that notion?” “Skip it, then. Believe me; it wouldn’t make any difference between us. My old man says that when it’s time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.” He looked at Don’s face, then went on, “What you do about it is up to you. You know I’ve got a birthday coming up next month?” “Huh? Yes, so you have.” “Come then, I’m going to sign up for pilot training. That’s why I wanted to know what you planned to do.” “Oh.” “But it doesn’t make any difference-not between us. Anyhow, you’re going to Mars.” “Yes. Yes, that’s right.” “Good!” Jack glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to run-or they’ll throw my chow to the pigs. Sure you’re not coming?” “Sure.” “See you.” He dashed out. Don stood for a moment, rearranging his ideas. Old Jack must be taking this seriously-giving up Yale for pilot training. But he was wrong-he had to be wrong. Presently he went out to the corral. Lazy answered his call, then started searching his pockets for sugar. “Sorry, old fellow,” he said sadly, “not even a carrot. I forgot.” He stood with his face to the horse’s cheek and scratched the beast’s ears. He talked to it in low tones, explaining as carefully as if Lazy could understand all the difficult words. “So that’s how it is,” he concluded. “I’ve got to go away and they won’t let me take you with me.” He thought back to the day their association had begun. Lazy had been hardly more than a colt, but Don had been frightened of him. He seemed huge, dangerous, and probably carnivorous. He had never seen a horse before coming to Earth; Lazy was the first he had ever seen close up. Suddenly he choked, could talk no further. He flung his arms around the horse’s neck and leaked tears. Lazy nickered softly, knowing that something was wrong, and tried to nuzzle him. Don raised his head. “Goodbye, boy. Take care of yourself.” He turned abruptly and ran toward the dormitories. Two. “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin”. THE SCHOOL copter dumped him down at the Albuquerque field. He had to hurry to catch his rocket, as traffic control had required them to swing wide around Sandia Weapons Center. When he weighed in he ran into another new security wrinkle. “Got a camera in that stuff, son?” the weighmaster had inquired as he passed over his bags. “No, why?” “Because we’ll fog your film when we fluoroscope, that’s why.” Apparently X-ray failed to show any bombs hidden in his underwear; his bags were handed back and he went aboard-the winged-rocket Santa Fe Trail, shuttling between the Southwest and New Chicago. Inside, he fastened his safety belts, snuggled down into the cushions, and waited. At first the noise of the blast-off bothered him more than the pressure. But the noise dopplered away as they passed the speed of sound while the acceleration grew worse; he blacked out. He came to as the ship went into free flight, arching in a high parabola over the plains. At once he felt great relief no longer to have unbearable weight racking his rib cage, straining his heart, turning his muscles to water-but, before he could enjoy the blessed relief, he was aware of a new sensation; his stomach was trying to crawl up his gullet. At first he was alarmed, being unable to account for the unexpected and unbearably unpleasant sensation. Then he had a sudden wild suspicion could it? Oh, no! It couldn’t be, not space sickness, not to him. Why, he had been born in free fall; space nausea was for Earth crawlers, groundhogs! But the suspicion grew to certainty; years of easy living on a planet had worn out his immunity. With secret embarrassment he conceded that he certainly was acting like a groundhog. It had not occurred to him to ask for an anti-nausea shot before blast-off, though he had walked past the counter plainly marked with a red cross. Shortly his secret embarrassment became public; he had barely time to get at the plastic container provided for the purpose. Thereafter he felt better, although weak, and listened halfheartedly to the canned description coming out of the loudspeaker of the country over which they were falling. Presently, near Kansas City, the sky turned from black back to purple again, the air foils took hold, and the passengers again felt weight as the rocket continued glider fashion on a long, screaming approach to New Chicago. Don folded his couch into a chair and sat up. Twenty minutes later, as the field came up to meet them, rocket units in the nose were triggered by radar and the Santa Fe Trail braked to a landing. The entire trip had taken less time than the copter jaunt from the school to Alburquerque, something less than an hour for the same route eastward that the covered wagons had made westward in eighty days, with luck. The local rocket landed on a field just outside the city, next door to the enormous field, still slightly radioactive, which was both the main spaceport of the planet and the former site of Old Chicago. Don hung back and let a Navajo family disembark ahead of him, then followed the squaw out. A movable slideway had crawled out to the ship; he stepped on it and let it carry him into the station. Once inside he was confused by the bustling size of the place, level after level, above and below ground. Gary Station served not merely the Santa Fe Trail, the Route 66, and other local rockets shuttling to the Southwest; it served a dozen other local lines, as well as ocean hoppers, freight tubes, and space ships operating between Earth and Circum-Terra Station-and thence to Luna, Venus, Mars, and the Jovian moons; it was the spinal cord of a more-than-world-wide empire. Tuned as he was to the wide and empty New Mexico desert and, before that, to the wider wastes of space, Don felt oppressed and irritated by the noisy swarming mass. He felt the lossof dignity that comes from men behaving like ants, even though his feeling was not thought out in words. Still, it had to be faced-he spotted the triple globes of Interplanet Lines and followed glowing arrows to its reservation office. An uninterested clerk assured him that the office had no record of his reservation in the Valkyrie. Patiently Don explained that the reservation had been made from Mars and displayed the radiogram from his parents. Annoyed into activity the clerk finally consented to phone Circum-Terra; the satellite station confirmed the reservation. The clerk signed off and turned back to Don. “Okay, you can pay for it here.” Don had a sinking feeling. “I thought it was already paid for?” He had on him his father’s letter-of-credit but it was not enough to cover passage to Mars. “Huh? They didn’t say anything about it being prepaid.” At Don’s insistence the clerk again phoned the space station. Yes, the passage was prepaid since it had been placed from the other end; didn’t the clerk know his tariff book? Thwarted on all sides, the clerk grudgingly issued Don a ticket to couch 64, Rocket Ship Glory Road, lifting from Earth for Circum-Terra at nine oh three fifty seven the following morning. “Got your security clearance?” “Huh? What’s that?” The clerk appeared to gloat at what was a legitimate opportunity to decline to do business after all. He withdrew the ticket. “Don’t you bother to follow the news? Give me your ID.” Reluctantly Don passed over his identity card; the clerk stuck it in a stat machine and handed it back. “Now your thumb prints.” Don impressed them and said, “Is that all? Can I have my ticket?” “Is that all? He says Be here about an hour early tomorrow morning. You can pick up your ticket then-provided the I.B.I. says you can.” The clerk turned away. Don, feeling forlorn, did likewise. He did not know quite what to do next. He had told Headmaster Reeves that he would stay overnight at the Hilton Caravansary, that being the hotel his family had stopped at 18 years earlier and the only one he knew by name. On the other hand he had to attempt to locate Doctor Jefferson “Uncle Dudley”, since his mother had made such a point of it. It was still early afternoon; he decided to check his bags and start looking. Bags disposed of, he found an empty communication booth and looked up the doctor’s code, punched it into the machine. The doctor’s phone regretted politely that Doctor Jefferson was not at home and requested him to leave a message. He was dictating it when a warm voice interrupted: “I’m at home to you, Donald. Where are you, lad?” The view screen cut in and he found himself looking at the somewhat familiar features of Doctor Dudley Jefferson. “Oh I’m at the station, Doctor-Gary Station. I just got in.” “Then grab a cab and come here at once.” “Uh, I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Doctor. I called because mother said to say goodbye to you.” Privately he had hoped that Doctor Jefferson would be too busy to waste time on him. Much as he disapproved of cities he did not want to spend his last night on Earth exchanging politeness with a family friend; he wanted to stir around and find out just what the modern Babylon did have to offer in the way of diversion. His letter-of-credit was burning a hole in his pocket; he wanted to bleed it a bit. “No trouble. See you in a few minutes. Meanwhile I’ll pick out a fatted calf and butcher it. By the way, did you receive a package from me?” The doctor looked suddenly intent. “A package? No” Doctor Jefferson muttered something about the mail service. Don said, “Maybe it will catch up with me. Was it important?” “Uh, never mind; we’ll speak of it later. You left a forwarding address?” “Yes, sir-the Caravansary.” “Well-whip up the horses and see how quickly you can get here. Open sky” “And safe grounding, sir.” They both switched off. Don left the booth and looked around for a cab stand. The station seemed more jammed than ever, with uniforms much in evidence, not only those of pilots and other ship personnel but military uniforms of many corps-and always the ubiquitous security police. Don fought his way through the crowd, down a ramp, along a slidewalk tunnel, and finally found what he wanted. There was a queue waiting for cabs; he joined it. Beside the queue was sprawled the big, ungainly saurian form of a Venerian “dragon.” When Don progressed in line until he was beside it, he politely whistled a greeting. The dragon swiveled one fluttering eyestalk in his direction. Strapped to the “chest” of the creature, between its forelegs and immediately below and in reach of its handling tendrils, wasa small box, a voder. The tendrils writhed over the keys and the Venerian answered him, via mechanical voder speech, rather than by whistling in his own language. “Greetings to you also, young sir. It is pleasant indeed, among strangers, to hear the sounds one heard in the egg.” Don noted with delight that the outlander had a distinctly Cockney accent in the use of his machine. He whistled his thanks and a hope that the dragon might die pleasantly. The Venerian thanked him, again with the voder, and added, “Charming as is your accent, will you do me the favor of using your own speech that I may practice it?” Don suspected that his modulation was so atrocious that the Venerian could hardly understand it; he lapsed at once into human words. “My name is Don Harvey,” he replied and whistled once more-but just to give his own Venerian name, “Mist on the Waters”; it had been selected by his mother and he saw nothing funny about it. Nor did the dragon. He whistled for the first time, naming himself, and added via voder, “I am called `Sir Isaac Newton.’ ” Don understood that the Venerian, in so tagging himself, was following the common dragon custom of borrowing as a name of convenience the name of some earth human admired by the borrower. Don wanted to ask “Sir Isaac Newton” if by chance he knew Don’s mother’s family, but the queue was moving up and the dragon was lying still; he was forced to move along to keep from losing his place in line. The Venerian followed him with one oscillating eye and whistled that he hoped that Don, too, might die pleasantly. There was an interruption in the flow of autocabs to the stand; a man operated flatbed truck drew up and let down a ramp. The dragon reared up on six sturdy legs and climbed aboard. Don whistled a farewell-and became suddenly and unpleasantly aware that a security policeman was giving him undivided attention. He was glad to crawl into his autocab and close the cover. He dialed the address and settled back. The little car lurched forward, climbed a ramp, threaded through a freight tunnel, and mounted an elevator. At first Don tried to keep track of where it was taking him but the tortured convolutions of the ant hill called “New Chicago” would have made a topologist dyspeptic; he gave up. The robot cab seemed to know where it was going and, no doubt, the master machine from which it received its signals knew. Don spent the rest of the trip fretting over the fact that his ticket had not yet been turned over to him, over the unwelcome attention of the security policeman, and, finally, about the package from Doctor Jefferson. The last did not worry him; it simply annoyed him to have mail go astray. He hoped that Mister Reeves would realize that any mail not forwarded by this afternoon would have to follow him all the way to Mars. Then he thought about “Sir Isaac.” It was nice to run across somebody from home. Doctor Jefferson’s apartment turned out to be far underground in an expensive quarter of the city. Don almost failed to arrive; the cab had paused at the apartment door but when he tried to get out the door would not open. This reminded him that he must first pay the fare shown in the meter-only to discover that he had pulled the bumpkin trick of engaging a robot vehicle without having coins on him to feed the meter. He was sure that the little car, clever as it was, would not even deign to sniff at his letter-of-credit. He was expecting disconsolately to be carted by the machine off to the nearest police station when he was rescued by the appearance of Doctor Jefferson. The doctor gave him coins to pay the shot and ushered him in. “Think nothing of it, my boy; it happens to me about once a week. The local desk sergeant keeps a drawer full of hard money just to buy me out of hock from our mechanical masters. I pay him off once a quarter, cumshaw additional. Sit down. Sherry?” “Er, no, thank you, sir.” “Coffee, then. Cream and sugar at your elbow. What do you hear from your parents?” “Why, the usual things. Both well and working hard and all that.” Don looked around him as he spoke. The room was large, comfortable, even luxurious, although books spilling lavishly and untidily over shelves and tables and even chairs masked its true richness. What appeared to be a real fire burned in one corner. Through an open door he could see several more rooms. He made a high, and grossly inadequate, mental estimate of the cost of such an establishment in New Chicago. Facing them was a view window which should have looked into the bowels of the city; instead it reflected a mountain stream and fir trees. A trout broke water as he watched. “I’m sure they are working hard,” his host answered. “They always do. Your father is attempting to seek out, in one short lifetime, secrets that have been piling up for millions of years. Impossible-but he makes a good stab at it. Son, do you realize that when your father started his career we hadn’t even dreamed that the first system empire ever existed?” He added thoughtfully, “If it was the first.” He went on, “Now we have felt out the ruins on the floor of two oceans-and tied them in with records from four other planets. Of course your father didn’t do it all, or even most of it-but his work has been indispensable. Your father is a great man, Donald, and so is your mother. When I speak of either one I really mean the team. Help yourself to sandwiches.” Don said, “Thank you,” and did so, thereby avoiding a direct answer. He was warmly pleased to hear his parents praised but it did not seem to be quite the thing to agree heartily. But the doctor was capable of carrying on the conversation unassisted. “Of course we may never know all the answers. How was the noblest planet of them all, the home of empire, broken and dispersed into space junk? Your father spent four years in the Asteroid Belt-you were along, weren’t you? And never found a firm answer to that. Was it a paired planet, like Earth-Luna, and broken up by tidal strains? Or was it blown up?” “Blown up?” Don protested. “But that’s theoretically impossible, isn’t it?” Doctor Jefferson brushed it aside. “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it’s done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen. Studied any mathematical philosophy, Don? Familiar with infinite universe sheafs and open-ended postulate systems?” “Uh, I’m afraid not, sir.” “Simple idea and very tempting. The notion that everything is possible and I mean everything-and everything has happened. Everything. One universe in which you accepted that wine and got drunk as a skunk. Another in which the fifth planet never broke up. Another in which atomic power and nuclear weapons are as impossible as our ancestors thought they were. That last one might have its points, for sissies at least. Like me.” He stood up. “Don’t eat too many sandwiches. I’m going to take you out to a restaurant where there will be food, among other things, and such food as Zeus promised the gods-and failed to deliver.” “I don’t want to take up too much of your time, sir.” Don was still hoping to get out on the town by himself. He had a dismaying vision of dinner in some stuffy rich man’s club, followed by an evening of highfalutin talk. And it was his last night on Earth. “Time? What is time? Each hour ahead is as fresh as was the one we just used. You registered at the Caravansary?” “No, sir, I just checked my bags at the station.” “Good. You’ll stay here tonight; we’ll send for your luggage later.” Doctor Jefferson’s manner changed slightly. “But your mail was to be sent to the hotel?” “That’s right.” Don was surprised to see that Doctor Jefferson looked distinctly worried. “Well, we’ll check into that later. That package I sent to you-would it be forwarded promptly?” “I really don’t know, sir. Ordinarily the mail comes in twice a day. If it came in after I left, it would ordinarily wait over until morning. But if the headmaster thought about it, he might have it sent into town special so that I would get it before up-ship tomorrow morning.” “Mean to say there isn’t a tube into the school?” “No, sir, the cook brings in the morning mail when he shops and the afternoon mail is chuted in by the Roswell copter bus.” “A desert island! Well, we’ll check around midnight. If it hasn’t arrived then-never mind.” Nevertheless he seemed perturbed and hardly spoke during their ride to dinner. The restaurant was misnamed The Back Room and there was no sign out to indicate its location; it was simply one of many doors in a side tunnel. Nevertheless many people seemed to know where it was and to be anxious to get in, only to be thwarted by a stern-faced dignitary guarding a velvet rope. This ambassador recognized Doctor Jefferson and sent for the maitre d’hotel. The doctor made a gesture understood by headwaiters throughout history, the rope was dropped, and they were conducted in royal progress to a ringside table. Don was bug eyed at the size of the bribe. Thus he was ready with the proper facial expression when he caught sight of their waitress. His reaction to her was simple; she was, it seemed to him, the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, both in person and in costume. Doctor Jefferson caught his expression and chuckled. “Don’t use up your enthusiasm, son. The ones we have paid to see will be out there.” He waved at the floor. “Cocktail first?” Don said that he didn’t believe so, thank you. “Suit yourself. You are man high and a single taste of the flesh-pots wouldn’t do you any permanent harm. But suppose you let me order dinner for us?” Don agreed. While Doctor Jefferson was consulting with the captive princess over the menu, Don looked around. The room simulated outdoors in the late evening; stars were just appearing overhead. A high brick wall ran around the room, hiding the non-existent middle distance and patching in the floor to the false sky. Apple trees hung over the wall and stirred in the breeze. An old-fashioned well with a well sweep stood beyond the tables on the far side of the room; Don saw another “captive princess” go to it, operate the sweep, and remove a silver pail containing a wrapped bottle. At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels. Don had never seen one but he recognized its function; it was a Martian’s “perambulator,” a portable air-conditioning unit to provide the rare, cold air necessary to a Martian aborigine. The occupant could be seen dimly, his frail body supported by a metal articulated servo framework to assist him in coping with the robust gravity of the third planet. His pseudo wings drooped sadly and he did not move. Don felt sorry for him. As a youngster he had met Martians on Luna, but Luna’s feeble field was less than that of Mars; it did not turn them into cripples, paralyzed by a gravity field too painful for their evolutionary pattern. It was both difficult and dangerous for a Martian to risk coming to Earth; Don wondered what had induced this one. A diplomatic mission, perhaps? Doctor Jefferson dismissed the waitress, looked up and noticed him staring at the Martian. Don said, “I was just wondering why he would come here. Not to eat, surely.” “Probably wants to watch the animals feeding. That’s part of my own reason, Don. Take a good look around you; you’ll never see the like again.” “No, I guess not-not on Mars.” “That’s not what I mean. Sodom and Gomorrah, lad, rotten at the core and skidding toward the pit. These our actors, as I foretold you, are melted into air and so forth. Perhaps even `the great globe itself.’ I tally too much. Enjoy it; it won’t last long.” Don looked puzzled. “Doctor Jefferson, do you like living here?” “Me? I’m as decadent as the city I infest; it’s my natural element. But that doesn’t keep me from telling a hawk from a handsaw.” The orchestra, which had been playing softly from nowhere in particular, stopped suddenly and the sound system announced “News flash!” At the same time the darkening sky overhead turned black and lighted letters started marching across it. The voice over the sound system read aloud the words streaming across the ceiling: BERMUDA: OFFICIAL: THE DEPARTMENT OF COLONIAL AFFAIRS HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE VENUS COLONIES HAS REJECTED OUR NOTE. A SOURCE CLOSE TO THE FEDERATION CHAIRMAN SAYS THAT THIS IS AN EXPECTED DEVELOPMENT AND NO CAUSE FOR ALARM. The lights went up and the music resumed. Doctor Jefferson’s lips were stretched back in a mirthless grip. “How appropriate!” he commented. “How timely! The handwriting on the wall.” Don started to blurt out a comment, but was distracted by the start of the show. The stage floor by them had sunk out of sight, unnoticed, during the news flash. Now from the pit thus created came a drifting, floating cloud lighted from within with purple and flame and rose. The cloud melted away and Don could see that the stage was back in place and peopled with dancers. There was a mountain in the stage background. Doctor Jefferson had been right; the ones worth staring at were on the stage, not serving the tables. Don’s attention was so taken that he did not notice that food had been placed in front of him. His host touched his elbow. “Eat something, before you faint.” “Huh? Oh, yes, sir!” He did so, busily and with good appetite but with his eyes on the entertainers. There was one man in the cast, portraying Tannhauser, but Don did not know and did not care whom he represented; he noticed him only when he got in the way. Similarly, he had finished two thirds of what was placed before him without noticing what he was eating. Doctor Jefferson said, “Like it?” Don did a double take and realized that the doctor was speaking of food, not of the dancers. “Oh, yes! It’s awfully good.” He examined his plate. “But what is it?” “Don’t you recognize it? Baked baby gregarian.” It took a couple of seconds for Don to place in his mind just what a gregarian was. As a small child he had seen hundreds of the little satyr-like bipeds-faunas gregariaus veneris Smythii-but he did not at first associate the common commercial name with the friendly, silly creatures he and his playmates, along with all other Venus colonials, had always called “move-overs” because of their chronic habit of crowding up against one, shouldering, nuzzling, sitting on one’s feet, and in other ways displaying their insatiable appetite for physical affection. Eat a baby, move-over? He felt like a cannibal and for the second time in one day started to behave like a groundhog in space. He gulped and controlled himself but could not touch another bite. He looked back at the stage. Venusberg disappeared, giving way to a tired-eyed man who kept up a rapid fire of jokes while juggling flaming torches. Don was not amused; he let his gaze wander around the room. Three tables away a man met his eyes, then looked casually away. Don thought about it, then looked the man over carefully and decided that he recognized him. “Doctor Jefferson?” “Yes, Don?” “Do you happen to know a Venus dragon who calls himself `Sir Isaac Newton’?” Don added the whistled version of the Venerian’s true name. “Don’t!” the older man said sharply. “Don’t what?” “Don’t advertise your background unnecessarily, not at this time. Why do you ask about this, uh, `Sir Isaac Newton’?” He kept his voice low with his lips barely moving. Donald told him about the casual meeting at Gary Station. “When I got through I was dead sure that a security cop was watching me. And now that same man is sitting over there, only now he’s not in uniform.” “Are you sure?” “I think I’m sure.” “Hum, you might be mistaken. Or he might simply be here in his off hours-though a security policeman should not be, not on his pay. See here, pay no further attention to him and don’t speak of him again. And don’t speak of that dragon, nor of anything else Venetian. Just appear to be having a good time. But pay careful attention to anything I say.” Don tried to carry out the instructions, but it was hard to keep his mind on gaiety. Even when the dancers reappeared he felt himself wanting to turn and stare at the man who had dampened the party. The plate of baked gregarian was removed and Doctor Jefferson ordered something for him called a “Mount Etna.” It was actually shaped like a volcano and a plume of steam came out of the tip. He dipped a spoon into it, found that it was fire and ice, assaulting his palate with conflicting sensations. He wondered how anyone could eat it. Out of politeness he cautiously tried another bite. Presently he found that he had eaten all of it and was sorry there was not more. At the break in the stage acts Don tried to ask Doctor Jefferson what he really thought about the war scare. The; doctor firmly turned the talk around to his parents’ work and branched out to the past and future of the System. “Don’t fret yourself about the present, son. Troubles, merely troubles-necessary preliminaries to the consolidation of the System. In five hundred years the historians will hardly notice it. There will be the Second Empire-six planets by then.” “Six? You don’t honestly think well ever be able to do anything with Jupiter and Saturn? Oh-you mean the Jovian moons.” “No, I mean six primary planets. We’ll move Pluto and Neptune in close by the fire and we’ll drag Mercury back and let it cool off.” The idea of moving planets startled Don. It sounded wildly impossible, but he let it rest, since his host was a man who maintained that everything and anything was possible. “The race needs a lot of room,” Doctor Jefferson went on. “After all, Mars and Venus have their own intelligent races; we can’t crowd them much more without genocide-and it’s not dead certain which way the genocide would work, even with the Martians. But the reconstruction of this system is just engineering, nothing to what else we’ll do. Half a millennium from now there will be more Earth-humans outside this system than in it; we’ll be swarming around every G-type star in this neighborhood. Do you know what I would do if I were your age, Don? I’d get me a berth in the Pathfinder.” Don nodded. “I’d like that.” The Pathfinder, star ship intended for a one-way trip, had been building on, and near, Luna since before he was born. Soon she would go. All or nearly all of Don’s generation had at least dreamed about leaving with her. “Of course,” added his host, “you would have to have a bride.” He pointed to the stage which was again filling. “Take that blonde down there. She’s a likely looking lassie-healthy at least.” Don smiled and felt worldly. “She might not hanker after pioneering. She looks happy as she is.” “Can’t tell till you ask her. Here.” Doctor Jefferson summoned the maitre d’hotel; money changed hands. Presently the blonde came to their table but did not sit down. She was a tom-tom singer and she proceeded to boom into Don’s ears, with the help of the orchestra, sentiments that would have embarrassed him even if expressed privately. He ceased to feel worldly, felt quite warm in the face instead and confirmed his resolution not to take this female to the stars. Nevertheless he enjoyed it. The stage was just clearing when the lights blinked once and the sound system again brayed forth: “Space raid warning! Space raid warning!” All lights went out. Three. Hunted. For an infinitely long moment there was utter blackness and silence without even the muted whir of the blowers. Then a tiny light appeared in the middle of the stage, illuminating the features of the starring comic. He drawled in an intentionally ridiculous nasal voice, “The next sound you hear will be. The Tromp of Doom!” He giggled and went on briskly, “Just sit quiet, folks, and hang on to your money-some of the help are relatives of the management. This is just a drill. Anyhow, we have a hundred feet of concrete overhead-and a darn sight thicker mortgage. Now, to get you into the mood for the next act which is mine, the next round of drinks is on the house.” He leaned forward and called out, “Gertie! Drag up that stuff we couldn’t unload New Year’s Eve.” Don felt the tension ease around the room and he himself relaxed. He was doubly startled when a hand closed around his wrist. “Quiet!” whispered Doctor Jefferson into his ear. Don let himself be led away in the darkness. The doctor apparently knew, or remembered, the layout; they got out of the room without bumping into tables and with only one unimportant brush with someone in the dark. They seemed to be going down a long hall, black as the inside of coal, then turned a corner and stopped. “But you can’t go out sir,” Don heard a voice say. Doctor Jefferson spoke quietly, his words too low to catch. Something rustled; they moved forward again, through a doorway, and turned left. They proceeded along this tunnel-Don felt sure that it was the public tunnel just outside the restaurant though it seemed to have turned ninety degrees in the dark. Doctor Jefferson still dragged him along by the wrist without speaking. They turned again and went down steps. There were other people about, though not many. Once someone grabbed Don in the dark; he struck out wildly, smashed his fist into something flabby and heard a muffled grunt. The doctor merely pulled him along the faster. The doctor stopped at last, seemed to be feeling around in the dark. There came a feminine squeal out of the blackness. The doctor drew back hastily and moved on a few feet, stopped again. “Here,” he said at last. “Climb in.” He pulled Don forward and placed his hand on something; Don felt around and decided that it was a parked autocab, its top open. He climbed in and Doctor Jefferson got in behind, closing the top after him. “Now we can talk,” he said calmly. “Someone beat us to that first one. But we can’t go anywhere until the power comes on again.” Don was suddenly aware that he was shaking with excitement. When he could trust himself to speak he said, “Doctor-is this actually an attack?” “I doubt it mightily,” the man answered. “It’s almost certainly a drill-I hope. But it gave us just the opportunity that I had been looking for to get away quietly.” Don chewed this over. Jefferson went on, “What are you fretting about? The check? I have an account there.” It had not occurred to Don that they were walking out on the check. He said so and added, “You mean that security policeman I thought I recognized?” “Unfortunately.” “But, I think I must have made a mistake. Oh, it looked like the same man, all right, but I don’t see how it would have been humanly possible for him to have followed me even if he popped into the next cab. I distinctly remember that at least once my cab was the only cab on an elevator. That tears it. If it was the same cop, it was an accident; he wasn’t looking for me.” “Perhaps he was looking for me.” “Huh?” “Never mind. As to following you-Don, do you know how these autocabs work?” “Well-in general.” “If that security cop wanted to tail you, he would not get into the next cab. He would call in and report the number of your cab. That number would be monitored in the control-net board at once. Unless you reached your destination before the monitoring started, they would read the code of your destination right out of the machine. Where upon another security officer would be watching for your arrival. It carries on from there. When I rang for an auto cab my circuit would already be monitored, and the cab that answered the ring likewise. Consequently the first cop was already seated at a table in The Back Room before we arrived. That was their one slip, using a man you had seen but we can forgive that as they are overworked at present. “But why would they want me? Even if they think I’m uh, disloyal, I’m not that important.” Doctor Jefferson hesitated, then said, “Don, I don’t know how long we will be able to talk. We can talk freely for the moment because they are just as limited by the power shutdown as we are. But once the power comes on we can no larger talk and I have a good deal to say. We can’t talk, even here, after the power comes on.” “Why not?” “The public isn’t supposed to know, but each of these cabs has a microphone in it. The control frequency for the cab itself can carry speech modulation without interfering with the operation of the vehicle. So we are not safe once power is restored. Yes, I know; it’s a shameful set up. I didn’t dare talk in the restaurant, even with the orchestra playing. They could have had a shotgun mike trained on us. “Now, listen carefully. We must locate that package I mailed to you, we must. I want you to deliver it to your father, or rather, what’s in it. Point number two: you must catch that shuttle rocket tomorrow morning, even if the heavens fall. Point number three: you won’t stay with me tonight, after all. I’m sorry but I think it is best so. Number four: when the power comes on, we will ride around for a while, talking of nothing in particular and never mentioning names. Presently I will see to it that we end up near a public common booth and you will call the Caravansary. If the package is there, you will leave me, go back to the Station, get your bags, then go to the hotel, register and pick up your mail. Tomorrow morning you will get your ship and leave. Don’t call me. Do you understand all that?” ‘Uh, I think so, sir.” Don waited, then blurted out, “But why? Maybe I’m talking out of turn, but it seems to me I ought to know why we are doing this.” “What do you want to know?” “Well, what’s in the package?” “You will see. You can open it, examine it, and decide for yourself. If you decide not to deliver it, that’s your privilege. As for the rest-what are your political convictions, Don?” “Why, that’s rather hard to say, sir.” “Hum, mine weren’t too clear at your age either. Let’s put it this way: would you be willing to string along with your parents for the time being? Until you form your own?” “Why, of course!” “Did it seem a bit odd to you that your mother insisted that you look me up? Don’t be shy-I know that a young fellow arriving in the big town doesn’t look up semi-strangers through choice. Now-she must have considered it important for you to see me. Eh?” “I guess she must have.” “Will you let it stand at that? What you don’t know, you can’t tell-and can’t get you into trouble.” Don thought it over. The doctor’s words seemed to make sense, yet it went mightily against the grain to be asked to do something mysterious without knowing all the whys and wherefore. On the other hand, had he simply received the package, he undoubtedly would have delivered it to his father without thinking much about it. He was about to ask further questions when the lights came on and the little car started to purr. Doctor Jefferson said, “Here we go!” leaned over the board and quickly dialed a destination. The autocab moved forward. Don started to speak but the doctor shook his head. The car threaded its way through several tunnels, down a ramp and stopped in a large underground square. Doctor Jefferson paid it off and led Don through the square and to a passenger elevator. The square was jammed and one could sense the crowd’s frenetic mood resulting from the space raid alarm. They had to shove their way through a mass of people gathered around a public telescreen in the center of the square. Don was glad to get on the elevator, even though it too was packed. Doctor Jefferson’s immediate destination was another cab stand in a square several levels higher. They got into a cab and moved away; this one they rode for several minutes, then changed cabs again. Don was completely confused and could not have told whether they were north, south, high, low, east, or west. The doctor glanced at his watch as they left the last autocab and said, “We’ve killed enough time. Here.” He indicated a communication booth near them. Don went in and phoned the Carvansary. Was there any mail being held for him? No, there was not. He explained that he was not registered at the hotel; the clerk looked again. No, sorry sir. Don came out and told Doctor Jefferson. The doctor chewed his lip. “Son, I’ve made a bad error in judgment.” He glanced around; there was no one near them. “And I’ve wasted time.” “Can I help, sir?” “Eh? Yes, I think you can-I’m sure you can.” He paused to think. “We’ll go back to my apartment. We must. But we won’t stay there. We’ll find some other hotel-not the Caravansary-and I’m afraid we must work all night. Are you up to it?” “Oh, certainly!” “I’ve some `borrowed-time’ pills; they’ll help. See here Don, whatever happens, you are to catch that ship tomorrow. Understand?” Don agreed. He intended to catch the ship in any case and could not conceive of a reason for missing it. Privately he was beginning to wonder if Doctor Jefferson were quite right in his head. “Good. We’ll walk; it’s not far.” A half-mile of tunnels and a descent by elevator got them there. As they turned into the tunnel in which the doctor’s apartment was located, he glanced up and down it; it was empty. They crossed rapidly and the doctor let them in. Two strange men were seated in the living room. Doctor Jefferson glanced at them, said, “Good evening, gentlemen,” and turned back to his guest. “Good night, Don. It’s been very pleasant seeing you and be sure to remember me to your parents.” He grasped Don’s hand and firmly urged him out the door. The two men stood up. One of them said, “It took you a long time to get home, Doctor.” “I’d forgotten the appointment, gentlemen. Now, goodbye, Don-I don’t want you to be late.” The last remark was accompanied by increased pressure on Don’s hand. He answered, “Uh-good night, Doctor. And thanks.” He turned to leave, but the man who had spoken moved quickly between him and the door. “Just a moment, please.” Doctor Jefferson answered, “Really, gentlemen, there is no reason to delay this boy. Let him go along so that we may get down to our business.” The man did not answer directly but called out, “Elkins! King!” Two more men appeared from a back room of the apartment. The man who seemed to be in charge said to them, “Take the youngster back to the bedroom. Close the door.” “Come along, buddy.” Don, who had been keeping his mouth shut and trying to sort out the confusing new developments, got angry. He had more than a suspicion that these men were security police even though they were not in uniform, but he had been brought up to believe that honest citizens had nothing to fear. “Wait a minute!” he protested. “I’m not going any place. What’s the idea?” The man who had told him to come along moved closer and took his arm. Don shook it off. The leader stopped any further action by his men with a very slight gesture. “Don Harvey.“ “Huh? Yes?” “I could give you a number of answers to that. One of them is this.” He displayed a badge in the palm of his hand. “But that might be faked. Or, if I cared to take time, I could satisfy you with stamped pieces of paper, all proper and legalistic and signed with important names.” Don noticed that his voice was gentle and cultured. “But it happens that I am tired and in a hurry and don’t want to be bothered playing word games with young punks. So let it stand that there are four of us all armed. So-will you go quietly, or would you rather be slapped around a bit and dragged?” Don was about to answer with school-game bravado; Doctor Jefferson cut in. “Do as they ask you, Donald!” He closed his mouth and followed the subordinate on back. The man led him into the bedroom and closed the door. “Sit down,” he said pleasantly. Don did not move. His guard came up, placed a palm against his chest and pushed. Don sat down. The man touched a button at the bed’s control panel, causing it to lift to the reading position, then lay down. He appeared to go to sleep, but every time Don looked at him the man’s eyesmet his. Don strained his ears, trying to hear what was going on in the front room, but he need not have bothered; the room, being a sleeping room, was fully soundproof. So he sat there and fidgeted, trying to make sense out of preposterous things that had happened to him. He recalled almost with unbelief that it had been only this morning that Lazy and he had started out to climb Peddler’s Grave. He wondered what Lazy was doing now and whether the greedy little rascal missed him. Probably not, he admitted mournfully. He slid a glance at the guard, while wondering whether or not, if he gathered himself together, drawing his feet as far under him as he could. The guard shook his head. “Don’t do it,” he advised. “Don’t to what?” “Don’t try to jump me. You might hurry me and then you might get hurt bad.” The man appeared to go back to sleep. Don slumped into apathy. Even if he did manage to jump this one, slug him maybe, there were three more out front. And suppose he got away from them? A strange city, where they had everything organized, everything under control, where would he run to? Once he had come across the stable cat playing with a mouse. He had watched for a moment, fascinated even though his sympathies were with the mouse, before he had stepped forward and put the poor beastie out of its misery. The cat had never once let the mouse scamper further than pounce range. Now he was the mouse. “Up you come!” Don jumped to his feet, startled and having trouble placing himself. “I wish I had your easy conscience,” the guard said admiringly. “It’s a real gift to be able to catch forty winks any time. Come on; the boss wants you.” Don preceded him back into the living room; there was no one there but the mate of the man who had guarded him. Don turned and said, “Where is Doctor Jefferson?” “Never mind,” his guard replied. “The lieutenant hates to be kept waiting.” He started on out the door. Don hung back. The second guard casually took him by the arm; he felt a stabbing pain clear to his shoulder and went along. Outside they had a manually-operated car larger than the robot cabs. The second guard slipped into the driver’s seat; the other urged Don into the passenger compartment. There he sat down and started to turn-and found that he could not. He was unable even to raise his hands. Any attempt to move, to do anything other than sit and breathe, felt like struggling against the weight of too many blankets. “Take it easy,” the guard advised. “You can pull a ligament fighting that field. And it does not do any good.” Don had to prove to himself that the man was right. Whatever the invisible bonds were, the harder he strained against them the tighter they bound him. On the other hand when he relaxed and rested he could not even feel them. “Where are you taking me?” he demanded. “Don’t you know? The city I.B.I. office, of course.” “What for? I haven’t done anything!” “In that case, you won’t have to stay long.” The car pulled up inside a large garaging room; the three got out and waited in front of a door; Don had a feeling that they were being looked over. Shortly the door opened; they went inside. The place had the odor of bureaucracy. They went down a long corridor past endless offices filled with clerks, desks, transtypers, filing machines, whirring card sorters. A lift bounced them to another level; they went on through more corridors and stopped at an office door. “Inside,” said the first guard. Don went in; the door slid shut behind him with the guards outside. “Sit down, Don.” It was the leader of the group of four, now in the uniform of security officer and seated at a horseshoe desk. Don said, “Where is Doctor Jefferson? What did you do with him?” “Sit down, I said.” Don did not move; the lieutenant went on, “Why make it hard for yourself? You know where you are; you know that I could have you restrained in any way that suited me some of them quite unpleasant. Will you sit down, please, and save us both trouble?” Don sat down and immediately said, “I want to see a lawyer.” The lieutenant shook his head slowly, looking like a tired and gentle school teacher. “Young fellow, you’ve been reading too many romantic novels. Now if you had studied the dynamics of history instead, you would realize that the logic of legalism alternates with the logic of force in a pattern dependent on the characteristics of the culture. Each culture evokes its own basic logic. You follow me?” Don hesitated; the other went on, “No matter. The point is, your request for a lawyer comes about two hundred years too late to be meaningful. The verbalisms lag behind the facts. Nevertheless, you shall have a lawyer or a lollipop, whichever you prefer, after I am through questioning you. If I were you, I’d take the lollipop. More nourishing. “I won’t talk without a lawyer,” Don answered firmly. “No? I’m sorry. Don, in setting up your interview I budgeted eleven minutes for nonsense. You have used up four already, no, five. When the eleven minutes are gone and you find yourself spitting out teeth, remember that I bore you no malice. Now about this matter of whether or not you will talk; there are several ways of making a man talk and each method has its fans who swear by it. Drugs, for example, nitrous oxide, scopolamine, sodium pentothal, not to mention some of the new, more subtle, and relatively non-toxic developments. Even alcohols have been used with great success by intelligence operatives. I don’t like drugs; they affect the intellect and clutter up an interview with data of no use to me. You’d be amazed at the amount of rubbish that can collect in the human brain, Don, if you had had to listen to it-as I have. “And there is

Rahan. Episode Forty six. The return of the "Goraks". When he saw the squirrel on a high branch, the son of Crao congratulated himself on having made a bow the day before. It was hard for him to kill the little red creature. But he was so hungry! Rahan was gifted with astonishing skill. The thin arrow passed right through the animal. Ra-ha-ha! The cry of victory ended with a groan of spite. The body of the struck squirrel was stuck high up in the branches. Page Two. Rahan will not abandon his game to the “hook-bills”! An instant later, he climbed up onto the great tree. He was about to reach the squirrel when the growl of a wild beast reached him. That of the saber-toothed tiger. A “Gorak”! Rahan would not have killed the red beast if he had known that a Gorak was lurking nearby. The son of Crao hated this beast whose ferocity he knew, this monster who killed for the pleasure of killing. This is why he placed an arrow on his bow. His heart beat faster when the thickets parted. It was not a "Gorak" who was advancing into the clearing. But three! Page Three. How many hunters have you slaughtered? How many human offspring have you devoured? Hit in the heart, one of the three beasts reared up, releasing a terrible roar. His last roar. The other two had suddenly collected themselves. They scanned the woods, doubtless believing that the danger was coming there. But Rahan knew that their scent, in a moment, would alert them to his presence in the tree. He drew his bow once again. Crack! And the unexpected happened. His foot slipped on the bark, and he lost his balance and fell into the void. He hit a dead branch. Page Four. This branch perhaps saved him from a fatal fall. But it broke, and fell with him, and fell on him! The two beasts, surprised by this noise, had fled to the other end of the clearing. But it was only a brief respite. For the son of Crao, who quickly recovered his spirits. He felt as if his legs were broken, the enormous branch weighed so heavily on his thighs. From the depths of the clearing, one of the tigers launched himself with a great bound. If Rahan must join the "Land of Shadows", you will accompany me, Gorak! If Rahan no longer had time to free himself, he had time to draw his knife. Ra-ha-ha! Page Five. The ivory blade plunged into the monster's chest but the shock was such that the weapon was torn from him. As the monster collapsed a distance away from him, the last "Gorak" growled furiously. Rahan is not lost yet. He still has his bow! Yes, the bow was there. But it was impossible to free it from this branch! You are a prisoner, too! But you can still help Rahan! As the beast approached, the son of Crao managed to place an arrow on the bow. And to stretch it. Approach, Gorak, Approach! Overcoming his pain, Rahan twisted himself to adjust to the saber-toothed tiger. He suddenly released the arrow. Page Six. Klong! Which disappeared almost entirely into the beast's flank. Rahan did not have the strength to shout his victory cry. A fog fell between him and the falling Gorak. And he himself fell backwards, overcome by the pain and the efforts he had just made. In his semi-unconsciousness, and probably because of the burden weighing on him, he dreamed that goraks were devouring his legs. Then these monsters disappeared and he felt light, light. He opened his eyelids and saw men around him. Carry the fire-haired hunter to the village! No need, brothers! Rahan believes he will be able to walk! Page Seven. The son of Crao was indeed able to get up. His legs were certainly painful, but they were not broken. When the day dawns, Rahan will leap as well as a Gorak! Trank wishes it to you, Rahan! All hunters will need their legs before long! What do you mean, Trank? These beasts that you killed are a bad omen for us! They announce the return of the Goraks! A long season of misfortunes will begin for our clan! As they walked towards the village, Trank recounted how during certain seasons, this territory was invaded by a multitude of tigers. The clan will then lead a terrible life! “Goraks” are roaming everywhere! Only this ravine protects us! The village appeared, on a rocky platform that stood curiously in the middle of a deep gorge. Page Eight. For moons and moons the forest is forbidden to us! We can no longer hunt or bring back water from springs. Hunger and thirst kill the weakest among us! So the clan cannot predict the return of the "Goraks"? No. Several seasons can go by without them coming! Then, one day, we see one or two. It's the bad sign that alerts us. Because we know that others are coming from all sides. A terrible roar suddenly interrupted Trank. A great Gorak! At the village! Quickly! Quickly! Rahan believed Trank and his men to be courageous. Why are they running away from just one Gorak? The panicked hunters rushed towards the gorge. Limping, the son of Crao was out-distanced and found himself alone, while other roars arose. Page Nine. Huddled in a thicket Rahan suddenly felt his blood run cold. What he saw was too horrible. A giant gorak! Rahan understands better the flight of the hunters! He did not sense Rahan! The monster that passed in front of him was three times bigger than any of those he had faced before. A moment later, the giant feline growled at the edge of the gorge. He does not dare to jump! The hunters are safe. But Rahan is not! Page Ten. However. "Firehair" couldn't follow us. But perhaps he escaped the Gorak? Leave the bridges in place! The son of Crao would have liked to join Trank, to jump towards the bridge thrown above the ravine. But the "Sabre-toothed Tiger" came and went in front of this one. Trank's men were ready to pull back the trunks in case the feline ran onto them. But the beast, smelling this danger, had moved away. If Rahan does not take advantage of this opportunity, he will remain at the mercy of the "Goraks" who will invade the forest! Suddenly emerging from the forest, the son of Crao ran towards the gorge. But his aching legs abandoned him a few steps from a "Bridge". Page Eleven. He was dragging himself towards it when the "Gorak" saw him and launched himself, growling. Rahan will not have time! Rah-ha-ha! But the desire to live redoubled Rahan's strength tenfold, and he stood up and dove towards the bridge. Gripping the trunks, he felt as if they gave way to his weight. But they did not. While a monstrous paw tried to grab him, he realized that the hunters were retracting the bridge back. The beast roared more furiously as it saw his prey escape from him. You would have thought he was going to jump, but the fear of heights stopped him. A moment later. Rahan will not forget that his brothers just saved his life! You are not saved yet! Page Twelve. You might die of hunger and thirst like many of us! Our fate now depends on Goraks! For how many moons will they besiege us? Nobody knows! They will eventually leave this territory! Yes, Rahan. They will disappear one day, as they came! But when will that day arrive? When? The sun plunged behind the mountains. The giant tiger had disappeared into the forest from which roars arise, sometimes distant, sometimes very near. Trank listened warily. There are two "Great Goraks" among them as usual! Our hunters are brave and courageous and they would not fear to face ordinary goraks. But their bravery can do nothing against these giants. Page thirteen. Our arrows barely penetrate the skin of these monsters! And even the fire of our torches does not frighten him! They are invulnerable! If Rahan understands correctly, it would be enough to kill this pair of large Goraks so that the clan can go hunting again! It would still be dangerous but we would do it. Our tribe’s life would almost return to normal! So, Trank, we must kill these great Goraks! A ray from the moon highlighted the resolute expression of the son of Crao. Rahan is Crazy! We tried everything. Fire. Arrows. Traps! I tell you again that these monsters are invulnerable! Page Fourteen. No, Trank! There is always a way to defeat the enemy! We will find it! I would like to believe “Fire-hair”! Although a soft litter had been prepared for him, the son of Crao did not sleep that night. Yes, there must be a way! The bridges had been brought back and the village of huts seemed to sail in the gorge between the hills whose echo drowned out the disturbing growls of the saber-toothed tigers. Rahan is too presumptuous! He thought he would find a way to kill the "Great Goraks", but he cannot! And you are no more useful to Rahan than arrows are to hunters! Irritated, he threw his knife towards a bamboo which supported the skin roof. Page Fifteen. The weapon did not stick in the too soft target which rebounded it back towards him! Ooh! The thing itself was banal. But it reminded the son of Crao how he had already used the flexibility of bamboo. Rahan has found it! To kill giant goraks, you need a giant bow! Giant arrows! Rahan had exclaimed so loudly that Trank came running. Has “Fire Hair” had a bad dream? No, Trank! On the contrary! A little later. This bamboo will be the wood of the largest bow that "Those-who-walk-upright" have ever seen! The most powerful too! But no hunter will be able to draw this bow! Page Sixteen. The son of Crao smiled. He remembered himself stuck under the branch the day before. He relived the curious way in which he had shot his arrow. Let Trank ask his men to help Rahan, and Trank will understand! There was no point in calling the hunters. They were already coming out of the huts. Rahan demonstrated, at the end of the night, an extraordinary imagination. Here is the “Hand” that will hold our bow! The large bamboo was firmly fixed between the wooden “fingers” plugged into the bridge. At daybreak, the giant bow was in place and the son of Crao was making arrows to his size. Your idea is wonderful “Fire Hair”! But how can we target the "Goraks"? Page Seventeen. We won't have to aim! Rahan will lure them in front of the arrow! Rahan will serve as bait! Terrifying roars greeted the rising sun. Felines appeared on the other side of the chasm, who seemed to be escorting a large gorak. The time has come, brothers! Stretch the bow, push the bridge! Ra-ha-ha! Trank and his men faithfully carried out the orders of Rahan who, standing at the edge of the trunks, above the void, challenged the wild animals. The giant Gorak which was extending its clawed paw suddenly found itself in front of the bridge. Push a little more, brothers! A little more! Pull!! Page Eighteen. Ten hands free the vine at the same time. The strength of the arc was such. That Rahan barely saw the enormous arrow slip between his legs. When he looked up, it had gone right through the monster's neck. The saber-toothed tiger rolled onto its side, stood up with a terrible start, and fell into the abyss. Ra-ha-ha! The cry of victory of the son of Crao rose to the crests of the hills. And was taken back by the hunters who brought back the crossbow bridge. “Firehair” delivered us from the nightmare! The clan will no longer fear the return of Goraks! You are the most cunning, the most intelligent of the hunters, “Fire Hair”! Rahan only has the merit of observing and reflecting! Page Nineteen. If his bow had not gotten tangled in that branch yesterday, he probably would never have had the idea of the giant bow! But enough about Rahan! Now we must kill the other big Gorak! The second monster did not venture near the gorge until three days later. It was killed in the same conditions as the first. Except for one detail. Trank this time had claimed the honor of serving as "Bait"! The forest is open to us, brothers! We don't fear the little Goraks! But the clan did not have to face other felines. The death of the "Giants", curiously, had caused the multitude of “Little” ones to flee. Page Twenty. Do the "Goraks" have "Leaders"? Rahan is ignorant of that. Rahan is ignorant of a great many things. But Rahan knows that the "Goraks" are the enemies of these who-walk-upright. And it is fortunate that Trank now knows how to protect his own. The son of Crao could, certainly, have lived among these loyal and brave hunters. But his adventurous destiny could not stop there. That is why one morning. Goodbye “Fire-Hair”! We will never forget you. Goodbye Brothers! Delighted that his knife had pointed out the rising sun, Rahan set off towards this new horizon. He too would not forget this clan where he had met neither mischievous hunters, nor proud chiefs, nor stupid sorcerers. Which, in those fierce times, was very rare among “Those-who-walk-upright”! Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Formatted for machine text from a scanned document, 2023. The general rules are that words are spelled out explicitly in most cases “Dr.” becomes “Doctor”, “Mr.” becomes “Mister”. Trailing punctuation is also removed. “F. D. R.” becomes “F D R” and “- “or “…” becomes “, “ Robert Anson Heinlein. Take Back Your Government! INTRODUCTION. Jerry Pournelle. This is a book for every American who wants to reclaim the political process. Are you mad as Hell and not going to take it anymore? Have you tried to participate in the traditional political process only to discover that the traditional political parties have no place for you, won't listen, and don't much matter anyway? Have you turned to the Perot movement as a remedy? Do you want to see a fundamental change in the American political system? If so, you need this book. If you have never thought about politics, and hate the whole idea, you really need this book. As Pericles of Athens was fond of observing, because you take no interest in politics is no guarantee that politics will not take an interest in you. If you look to H Ross Perot to lead the nation to salvation, you particularly need this book. I say this in full knowledge that much of the book, indeed its very heart, seems to be badly out of date. Ironically, being "out of date" is one of the book's major values. This book was written in a very different era of American politics; in a time when ordinary people could and did participate effectively in the political scene. This was a manual to show them how to do that there were many such manuals. This one was unique in that Robert Heinlein both had practical experience in politics and was one of the dearest, and most entertaining) writers of the era. Reading this book will be good for you, but the good news is that it's fun. Heinlein offers a number of timeless insights, but many of his details are seriously out of date. That, however, is not a defect but a feature: because in describing how to operate in a political world that vanished during the "reforms" of the sixties and seventies, Heinlein describes a working democracy: not as a dead world of the past, but as the dynamic living world he knew and lived in and loved. It is a world we could reclaim. A world we must reclaim. The United States went a long way down the wrong road during the Cold War. It is time we return to more familiar territory. This book can be vital to that return. Democracy, Robert Heinlein says, "is not an automatic condition resulting from laws and constitutions. It is a living, dynamic process which must be worked at by you yourself, or it ceases to be a democracy, even if the shell and form remain." That was written in 1946, at the close of World War Two, before the Cold War; before the federalization of much of American life. When we look around at the disaster area that American politics has become, it is all too clear that Robert was correct. The shell and form of American democracy remain, but much of what Robert understood about American democracy has vanished. When Heinlein wrote, the typical professional politician was what was then known as a political boss. Most local, district, and county party leaders were unpaid volunteers. Professional political managers were distrusted. While some state legislators and congressmen were returned to office year after year, most were not, and those who were, though powerful through the seniority system, were often the butts of political jokes, and were quite aware that they could easily be turned out of office, either in a primary or a general election. It was a government by amateurs in a true sense, in that everyone had to live under the laws they passed. They worked hard, too. Heinlein could (and does) complain that members of Congress, and of the State Legislature, were underpaid and had too few perks of office; and offer the opinion that the main reason people went to their city council, or state capital, or Washington, and endured the hardships of public office, was patriotism. It was all true in those days. Some politicians might have been motivated by greed, or a lust for power, but most thought of themselves as, and were seen by their constituents to be, public servants, sacrificing some of their productive years to the political process. Today things are different. However the professional politicians see themselves, poll after poll shows that the American people think they are a self-perpetuating elite motivated mostly by the desire to retain power. Since Heinlein wrote this book, most states have changed from a part-time amateur legislature of citizens who approved laws they would have to live with and make a living under, to full-time paid professionals who spend most of their time in the state capital rather than in their home districts, exempt themselves from the laws and regulations they impose on others, and who, far from making a living under the laws they make, are paid by the state and sometimes prevented by conflict-of-interest laws from outside work. A noted exception is, of course, lawyers, who have been allowed to retain their partnerships in law firms even if the firm does business with the government. They did that in Heinlein's day too. Their idea of making a living is not yours. It's doubly true of the Congress of the United States, which has multiplied its perks while invariably exempting itself from such laws as the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Wage/Hours Act, most of the reporting laws, and nearly all federal regulations. Far from a largely citizen body, the Congress has become a governing elite with high job security. Since this book was written, Congress went from an assembly of the people to an institution with 98 percent incumbency-a lower turnover than Britain's hereditary House of Lords. While private industry loses jobs, Congress multiplies its staff: there are over 30,000 "Hill Rats," as congressional staff are called in Washington. They serve 535 senators and representatives. Do you have nearly 50 people to mind details and run errands for you? Each of your legislators in Washington does, all paid with your taxes. Think about that before you contemplate running for office. Each congressman commands a political patronage machine that the old ward bosses would have envied. Other things have changed. The budget has grown enormously. Government (federal, state, and local) now spends nearly half the money generated in this country. The national debt went from an irritation to an impending disaster. The civil service at all levels has grown well beyond anyone's ability to predict in 1946. Government, in a word, has become very big business indeed, while what we used to fear as "the big business interest" has faded into the background. I could multiply examples endlessly, but surely the point is made. Somewhere between 1946 and the present the American democracy as Heinlein knew it disappeared, to be replaced with our present system in which our local affairs are governed by Washington, a city that can't govern itself, but has no qualms about telling the rest of us how we should live. The Opportunity We have a new situation in this year of grace 1992 and of the independence of these United States the 216th. To say that the American people have come to distrust their government is a silly understatement. The polls show that they hate our present political system. They're mad as Hell and they aren't going to take it anymore. There is a movement to take back control, and it may work. For the first time in our lifetimes there is an alternative. Millions of Americans, disgusted with politics as usual, have turned to a man who, as I write this, is still legally only an "undeclared candidate for President", but who, as I write this, is the likely winner of the Presidency. In the state of New Jersey both houses of the legislature went from a majority by one party to a veto-proof majority of the other. As I write this we can predict that there will be at least 100 new faces among the 435 members of the House of Representatives; and it is entirely possible that there will be many more, perhaps even a majority of new faces. There will be equally profound changes at the state and local level. Everywhere there is an opportunity to, in the words of the old political rallying cry, Turn the Rascals Out. We can change the system. We very likely will. With what, then, shall we replace the system of professional politicians? It's no good "reforming" the system only to abandon it to a new crew of professional politicians. That cure could easily be worse than the disease. We must Turn the Rascals Out, but we must rebuild our system of citizen controlled government. That, I submit, is the great value of this book. It's all in here. In this book, Robert Heinlein describes, lovingly and in great detail, the system of government which worked for this republic for nearly two hundred years. This isn't a blueprint, and it's not a treatise on political science. We will need those and they will come; but this is a love story. Jerry Pournelle Hollywood, California July 1992. Robert Anson Heinlein. Preface, In which the defendant pleads guilty to the charge of being a politician but offers a statement in his defense. This is intended to be a practical manual of instruction for the American layman who has taken no regular part in politics, has no personal political ambitions, and no desire to make money out of politics, but who, nevertheless, would like to do something to make his chosen form of government work better. If you have a gnawing, uneasy feeling that you should be doing something to preserve our freedoms and to protect and improve our way of life but have been held back by lack of time, lack of money, or the helpless feeling that you individually could not do enough to make the effort worthwhile, then this book was written for you. The individual, unpaid and inexperienced volunteer citizen in politics, who is short on both time and money, can take this country away from the machine politicians and run it to suit himself, if he knows how to go about it. This book is a discussion of how to go about it, with no reference to particular political issues. I have my own set of political opinions and some of them are almost bitter in their intensity, but, still more strongly, I have an abiding faith in the good sense and decency of the American people. Many are urging you daily as to what you should do politically; I hope only to show some of the details of how you can do it-the mechanics of the art There are thousands of books for the citizen interested in public affairs, books on city planning, economics, political history, civics, Washington gossip, foreign affairs, sociology, political science, and the like. There are many books by or about major figures in public life, such as James A Parley's instructive and interesting autobiography, or that inspiring life of Mister Justice Holmes, the Yankee from Olympus. I have even seen a clever, sardonic book about machine politicians called How to Take a Bribe. But I have never seen a book intended to show a private citizen, with limited time and money, how he can be a major force in politics. This book is the result of my own mistakes and sad experiences and is written in the hope that you may thereby be saved some of them. If it accomplishes that purpose, I hope that you will be tolerant of its shortcomings. A decent respect for your opinions requires that I show my credentials for writing this book. A plumber has his license; a doctor hangs up his diploma; a politician can only cite his record, I have done the things I discuss. I have been a precinct worker, punching doorbells for my ticket. I have organized political clubs, managed campaigns, run for office, been a county committee man, a state committeeman, attended conventions including national conventions, been a county organizer, published political newspapers, made speeches, posted signs, raised campaign funds, licked stamps, dispensed patronage, run headquarters, cluttered up "smoke-filled rooms," and have had my telephone tapped. I suppose that makes me a politician. I do know that it has proved to me that a single citizen, possessed of the right to speak and the right to vote, can make himself felt whenever he takes the trouble to exercise those twin rights. Robert Anson Heinlein April, 1946. Chapter one. Why Touch the Dirty Business? "He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled there with." Ecclesiastes Thirteen verse one. And the Pharisees asked Jesus: "Why do you eat and drink with the publicans and sinners'?" Luke Five, Verse thirty. This book is on the mechanics and techniques of practical politics, and is based on the idea that democracy is worth the trouble and can be made to work by ordinary people. If you can go along with me on that I don't care what party you belong to. I am registered in one of the two major parties, so chances are at least fifty-fifty that you can guess my affiliation, but any party bias I let creep into this book will be an oversight. The techniques of politicking are not the property of any party. From politics I have come to believe the following: (1) Most people are basically honest, kind, and decent. (2) The American people are wise enough to run their own affairs. They do not need Fuehrers, Strong Men, Technocrats, Commissars, Silver Shirts, Theocrats, or any other sort of dictator. (3) Americans have a compatible community of ambitions. Most of them don't want to be rich but do want enough economic security to permit them to raise families in decent comfort without fear of the future. They want the least government necessary to this purpose and don't greatly mind what the other fellow does as long as it does not interfere with them living their own lives. As a people we are neither money mad nor prying; we are easy-going and anarchistic. We may want to keep up with the Joneses, but not with the Vanderbilts. We don't like cops. (4) Democracy is not an automatic condition resulting from laws and constitutions. It is a living, dynamic process which must be worked at by you yourself, or it ceases to be democracy, even if the shell and form remain. (5) One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way, prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs. Hitler's government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise. (6) Democracy is the most efficient form of government ever invented by the human race. On the record, it has worked better in peace and in war than fascism, communism, or any other form of dictatorship. As for the mythical yardstick of "benevolent" monarchy or dictatorship, there ain't no such animal! (7) A single citizen, with no political connections and no money, can be extremely effective in politics. I left the most important proposition to the last, on purpose. It is contrary to the beliefs of many but it happens to be true. You yourself can be a strong political force at less cost per evening spent in politics than spending that same evening at the movies and at less effort than it takes to be a scoutmaster, a good bridge player, or a radio hobbyist, about the effort it takes to be a Sunday School teacher, an active ETA member, or stamp collector. You may possibly think me unrealistic in some of the opinions expressed above. I may be self-deluded but I got those opinions from active politics through many campaigns. If your own experience in politics is really extensive you are certainly entitled to contradict me, but I don't think you will! If active politics is fairly new to you, if, let us say, you have taken part in no more than one or two campaigns and have been left disheartened thereby, I ask that you suspend judgment for the time being. I am puzzled by persons who take exception to the first proposition and seem to believe that crookedness is commoner than honesty. I can see how a citizen too long exposed to a corrupt machine might come to think the whole world is dishonest, but I am afraid that when I hear a man complain that everybody is crooked it makes me suspect that he himself is dishonest, especially if he complains that an honest man can't make a living in his line of business. I have met crooks, of course, but for every dishonest man I have met dozens, scores, of men so honest it hurt, both in and out of politics. Any banker can confirm this. Ask your banker how many good checks come into the bank for every bad check. The figures will give you a warm glow of pleasure. However, the occasional crook will band together with his kind and take your government away from you if you let him. It is very soothing to the conscience to tell yourself that, after all, you can't do anything to change the sorry state of things. It is much easier to sit in your living room, skim the headlines, and then make bitter remarks about those no-good crooks in the city hall, or the state capital, or Washington, and to complain about how they pay no attention to the welfare of the ordinary citizen (meaning yourself) than it is to put on your hat, go out in your neighborhood, and round up a few votes. What do you expect for free? Chimes? If you wanted to round up a big order of yard goods, you wouldn't expect to accomplish it with your feet on your desk. This is just as important. Or have you forgotten that income tax form you made out? And your nephew who the die at Okinawa because you let some senile congressman stay in office rather than bother with politics? Why should the average citizen bother with politics? Why touch the dirty business? Isn't politics loaded up with crooks you wouldn't want to eat with and crackpots you wouldn't want to have in your house? "Loaded" is hardly the word, but you will find plenty of each and they will almost drive you nuts. Besides that, and worse, your respectable friends, people who wouldn't be caught dead in a political club, will assume that you are in it for what you can get out of it they will be very sure of it, for that is the only reason their peanut heads can imagine! Then why bother? Why expose yourself to bad companions and snide remarks simply to make a single-handed attempt to clean the Augean stables, to bail the ocean, to clear the forest? Because you are needed. Because the task is not hopeless. Democracy is normally in perpetual crisis. It requires the same constant, alert attention to keep it from going to pot that an automobile does when driven through downtown traffic. If you do not yourself pay attention to the driving, year in and year out, the crooks, or scoundrels, or nincompoops will take over the wheel and drive it in a direction you don't fancy, or wreck it completely. When you pick yourself up out of the wreckage, you and your wife and your kids, don't talk about what "They" did to you. You did it, compatriot, because you preferred to sit in the back seat and snooze. Because you thought your taxes bought you a bus ticket and a guaranteed safe arrival, when all your taxes bought you was a part ownership in a joint enterprise, on a share the cost and share-the-driving plan. But the crisis is more than usually acute this year, the traffic is thicker, the curves more blind, the traffic signals less reliable, and there are a lot of places where the pavement is out which have not been marked on any map. More than ever your own welfare demands that you be alert and responsible. Do you favor peacetime conscriptions? How did your congressman vote on it? Have you got any sons under twenty-one? Should the budget be balanced on a pay-as-you-go plan? If so, are you willing to vote to raise your own taxes? Or would you rather cut the budget for the army, the navy, and for veterans' benefits? Is there some other way to do it? Should coal miners be forbidden to strike? Can you mine coal with bayonets? What would your rent be in a free market? Or are you still sleeping on a borrowed couch? When will a home be built for you and your kids? Can you afford it when it is built, if ever? Does your town have a building code which prevents the use of new materials and new construction methods? How do you feel about a loan to Great Britain? To France? To Russia? Are you willing to go on rationing to keep Germans from starving? How long should the occupation of Japan continue? Why? How did your congressman vote on FEPC? Do you know what FEPC is? How does it affect you? The Filipinos become independent this year, should we let Philippine sugar in duty free? Do you live in the Colorado sugar beet country? Is a Senate filibuster a legitimate defense of states' rights, or a piece of tyranny? Should an oil man be in charge of military and naval oil reserves? Was Secretary Fall an oil operator? Does it make any difference? Should we insist that Russia give us free access and uncensored news reports so that we will know what she is up to? Is it worth fighting about? How about the Big Five Veto power? Does it make for peace or war? Should Russia get out of Iran? Should Britain get out of Egypt? Should we get out of Korea? Are the three cases parallel? Or very different? Is a Manchurian communist the same thing as a Brooklyn communist? Why? Why not? Should a sharecropper be a Republican or a Democrat? Should a stockholder be a Democrat or a Republican? What is the American Way of Life? Does it mean the same thing on the Main Line as it does on Skid Row? Are you sure about that last answer? Aren't we all in the same boat? Will an atomic bomb discriminate between bank account, or party labels? Now we are getting down to cases. All the other problems were of the simple, easy sort that we have blundered our way through, not too badly, for the past hundred and seventy years. We have a double-edged crisis this year, more acute on both its edges than any we have ever faced before, more acute, even, than Pearl Harbor, or the terrible War between the States. The first crisis is political and economic. Our way of life is being challenged by a revolutionary upsurge in all corners of the globe. We can meet it with hysteria, persecution, and a new isolationism, or we can define our way of life in action and defend it by practical accomplishment. An American who is well housed, well fed, and holding a good job is poor pickings for an agitator. But let him miss seven meals, The second crisis is amorphous but of even more deadly danger. We have entered the Atomic Era, but we are not yet used to the idea. Have you read the Smyth Report? Do you know what the Smyth Report is? It is the War Department's report on the atom bomb and is titled Atomic Energy for Military Purposes by H D Smyth. It is available in any bookstore and most newsstands at a buck twenty five. It is dull reading but quite understandable and is easily the most important document to the human race since the Sermon on the Mount. I won't try to tell you what it should mean to you. That's up to you. You are a free American citizen, for a while yet, at least. With good luck you should live another five or ten years. Whether or not you and your kids live longer than that depends on how you interpret the Smyth Report. But you must interpret it for yourself, no guardian angel will help you. Get it and read it. Then get a copy of your own precinct list and start investigating this year's crop of candidates. If your interpretation of the Smyth Report and the world events behind it is correct, there is still a chance that the Star-Spangled Banner will continue to wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. Just a chance, that's all. But get busy, neighbor. There's work to be done. CHAPTER TWO. How to Start. "Put down your bucket where you are!" The late Booker T Washington, in his life-long attempts to advise his people on how to help themselves, had a favorite anecdote about a sailing ship, becalmed and out of fresh water off the coast of South America. After many days they sighted another ship, a steam ship, and signaled, "Bring us water. We are dying of thirst." The other ship sent back this message, "Put down your bucket where you are!" They were in the broad mouth of the Amazon, afloat in millions of gallons of fresh water, and did not know it! Here is how to start in politics: Get your telephone book. Look up the party of your registration, or, if you are not registered in a party, the party which most nearly fits your views. I don't care what party it is, but let us suppose for illustration that it is the Republican Party. You will find a listing something like Republican County Committee, Associated Republican Clubs, Republican Assembly, or perhaps several such. Telephone one of them. Say, "My name is Joseph Q, or Josephine W, Ivory tower. I am a registered voter at 903 Farflung Avenue. Can you put me in touch with my local club?" The voice at the other end will say, “Just a minute. Do you know what ward you are in?" You say no, it’s at least even money that you don't know, if you are a normal American! The voice mutters, "Fairview, Farwest, Farflung," The owner of the voice is checking a file or a map. Then you hear, in an aside, "Say, Marjorie, gimme the folder on the 13th ward." "What do you want to know?" says Marjorie. She knows them by heart; she typed them. She is a political secretary and belongs to one of two extreme classes. Either she is a patriot and absolutely incorruptible, or she can be bought and sold like cattle. Either way she knows who the field worker in the 13th ward is. After a couple of minutes of this backing and filling you are supplied with a name, an address, and a telephone number of a local politician who is probably the secretary of the local club. You may also be supplied with the address and times and dates of meetings of the local club, if it is strong enough to have permanent headquarters. The local club may vary anywhere from a club in permanent possession of a store frontage on a busy street, with a full time secretary on the premises and a complete ward, precinct, and block organization, to a club which exists largely in the imagination of the secretary and which meets only during campaigns in the homes of the members. Your next job is to telephone the secretary. This is probably not necessary. If the local organization is any good at all, the secretary of the local club will callow, probably the same day. Marjorie will have called him and said, "Get a pencil and paper, Jim. I've got a new sucker for you." Or, if she is not cynical, she may call you a new prospect. She will have added you to a card file and set the wheels in motion to have your registration checked and to have you placed on several mailing lists. Presently you will start receiving one or more political newspapers, free, despite the subscription price posted on the masthead, and, in due course, you will receive campaign literature from candidates who have the proper connections at headquarters. Your political education will have begun, even if you never bother to become active. Note that it has not cost you anything so far. The costs need never exceed nickels, dimes, and quarters, even if you become very active. The costs can run as high as you wish, of course. The citizen who is willing to reach for his checkbook to back up his beliefs is always welcome in politics. But such action is not necessary and is not as rare as the citizen who is willing to punch doorbells and lick stamps. Some of the most valuable and respected politicians I have ever known had to be provided with lunch money to permit them to do a full day's volunteer work in any area more than a few blocks from their respective homes. I know of one case, a retired minister with a microscopic pension just sufficient to buy groceries for himself and his bedridden wife, who became county chairman and leader-in-fact of the party in power in a metropolitan area of more than three million people. He was so poor that he could not afford to attend political breakfasts or dinner. He could never afford to contribute to party funds, nor, on the other hand, was he ever on the party payroll, he never made a thin dime out of politics. What he did have to contribute was honesty, patriotism, and a willingness to strive for what he thought was right It made him boss of a key county in a key state, when he was past seventy and broke. I digress. This book will have many digressions; politics is like that, as informal as an old shoe, and the digressions may be the most important part. It is sometimes hard to tell what is important in the practical art of politics. Charles Evans Hughes failed to become president because his manager was on bad terms with a state leader and thereby failed to see to it that the candidate met the local leader on one particular occasion in one California city. The local campaign lost its steam because the local leader's nose was out of joint over the matter. Mister Hughes lost the state of California; with its electoral vote he would have become president. A switch of less than nineteen hundred votes in the city in which the unfortunate incident occurred would have made Mister Hughes the war-time president during World War one. The effect on world history is incalculable and enormous. It is entirely possible that we would have been in a League of Nations (not the League, that was Woodrow Wilson's League); it is possible that Hitler would never have come to power; it is possible that World War Two would never have occurred and that your nephew who fell at Okinawa would be alive today. We cannot calculate the consequences. But we do know that world history was enormously affected by a mere handful of votes, less than one percent of one percent, less than one ten-thousandth of the total vote cast. An active political club can expect to deliver to the polls on election day, through unpaid volunteers driving their own cars, as many votes as the number that swung the 1916 presidential election. It could be your club and an organization you helped to build. Which is why you must now telephone the local club secretary. It may be your chance to prevent, by your own direct and individual action, World War Three! The club secretary, Jim Ballot box, will not give you the brush off. Even if it is a tight machine organization, founded on graft and special privilege, an honest-to-goodness volunteer who is willing to work is more to be desired than fine gold, yeah, verily! If it is that sort of a club, presently you will be offered cash for your efforts, anywhere from five dollars per precinct per campaign on the west coast, through five dollars per day during the campaign in the Middle West, to a sound and secure living month in and month out on the east coast. These figures do not refer to the Republican Party, as such, nor to the Democratic Party. They refer to the Machine, no matter what its label. Don't take the money. Remain a volunteer. You will be treated with startled response. Every time you turn down money you will automatically be boosted one rung in the party councils. And the progress is very fast. But, no matter which sort of club it is, you will be welcomed with open arms. You have already caused a minor flurry at the downtown headquarters by volunteering during "peace time", other than immediately before a campaign. It shocked them but they rose to the occasion and put you in touch with your local leader. They are used to volunteers during campaigns, and are aware that most of them are phonies who expect at least a postmaster's job in return for a promise to work one precinct plus a little handshaking at a few political meetings. If it should happen that you call up during a campaign, you will be treated a little more warily until you have established that you are in fact a volunteer and not a hopeful patronage hound, but you will be received pleasantly and given a chance to work. This applies to any political club anywhere at any time. If Jim Ballot box happens to be secretary of the other sort of club, the sort unconnected with a powerful, well-financed machine, he will be even happier to see you, although he may not be as schooled in the arts of graciousness as his full-time professional opposite number. His club will be in a chronic state of crisis financially, or even moribund; an enthusiastic new member is manna to him. He will have plenty for you to do. You can be chairman next term if you want to be and share with him the worries about hall rent, postage, secretarial work, and how to get people out to meetings. At the very least he will place you in charge of one or more precincts, which will make you nervous as a bridegroom; it's too much responsibility too suddenly, and he will unburden his heart to you. You will learn. There remain two other possibilities which may result from your telephone call to the downtown headquarters. The first is that there may be no club in your district, in which case you will make your start directly at the downtown headquarters and will meet there the other active party members from your own area. You will join with them in organizing a local club before the next election. It is not hard to do; the process will be discussed in a later chapter. The last remaining possibility is that your telephone book contains no listings for your political party. This will happen only in small towns or in the country. If you live in a small town or in the country, you already know at least one party leader in your own party, probably Judge Dewlap, who served one term in the state senate and has been throwing his weight around ever since. Call him up. Tell him you want to work for the party. Perhaps you don't like the old windbag. No matter, he likes you. He likes all voters, especially ones who want to work for the party! He may suggest that you have lunch with him at the Elks' Club and talk over civic conditions. Or he may simply invite you to drop into his real estate office for a chat. But he won't brush you off. From now on you're his boy! Until he finds out he can't dictate to you. But by that time you are a politician in your own right and there is nothing he can do about it. That knife in your back has Judge Dewlap's finger prints on it. We have covered all the possibilities; you are now in politics. As a result of one telephone call you have started. Stay with the club or local organization for several months at least. Attend all the meetings. Help out with the routine work. Don't be afraid to lick stamps, serve on committees, check precinct lists, or distribute political literature. Count on devoting a couple of evenings a month to it for six months or a year. Your expenses during this training period need not exceed a dollar a month. At the end of that time you are a politician. I mean it. You will have become acquainted with your local officeholders and political leaders, you will have discovered where several of the bodies are buried, you will have taken part in one local or national campaign and received your first blooding in meeting the public. You will find that you are now reading the newspapers with insight as to the true story behind the published story. You will have grown up about ten years in your knowledge of what makes the world go 'round. You will either have experienced the warm glow of solid accomplishment that comes from realizing that you performed a necessary part in a successful campaign for a man or an issue, or you will have taken part in the private post-mortem in which you and your colleagues analyze why you lost and what to do about it next time. The answer is usually to start your precinct organization earlier, with special reference to getting your sure votes registered and to make sure they are dragged to the polls. You will feel that you can win next time and probably you will. Politics for the volunteer fireman is not one long succession of lost causes-far from it! But the point at which you will realize that you are in fact a politician with a definite effect on public life is the time when your friends and neighbors start asking your advice about how to mark their ballots. And they will. Perhaps not about presidential nor gubernatorial candidates, but they will ask and take your advice about lesser candidates and about the propositions on the ballot you may discover in the course of the first few months that you are in the wrong club, or even in the wrong party. This does not matter in the least insofar as your political education is concerned. In fact it is somewhat of an advantage to make a mistake in your first affiliation; you will learn things thereby which you could never possibly learn so well or so rapidly if you had found your own true lodge brothers on your first attempt. It does not matter by what door you enter politics. If you have belonged to the party wrong/or you, by habit or tradition, a few months of active politics will disclose the fact to you. You can then reregister and cross over, bringing with you experience and solid conviction you could hardly have acquired any other way. If the trouble lies in your having fallen first into the hands of a gang of unprincipled machine politicians, the mistake is still a valuable one, for you will discover presently that there is a reform element in your party, unaffiliated with the Machine. You can join them, taking with you a knowledge of the practical art of vote-getting which reformers frequently never acquire. You will be invaluable to your new associates. Most of the techniques of vote-getting are neither dishonest nor honest in themselves, but the machines normally know vastly more about such techniques than do the reform organizations. The honest organizations can afford to copy at least 90 Percent of the machine techniques. It is curiously and wonderfully true that a volunteer, reform organization can use the machine techniques much more effectively than the Machine does, with fewer workers and less money. It is like the difference between the ardor of unselfish love and the simulated passion of prostitution; the unorganized voting public can feel the difference. Recapitulation-How to start: Take a telephone book. Look up your political party. Telephone, locate your local club. Join it, attend all the meetings, and do volunteer work for several months. At the end of drat time, let your conscience be your guide. You will know enough to know where you belong and what you should do. I might as well admit right now that the above paragraph is really all this book can tell you. The matter discussed in the later chapters are things which you will learn for yourself in any case, provided you do everything called f or in the paragraph above. If you have skimmed through this book to this point without, as yet, laying the purchase price on the counter, you can save the price of the book without loss to yourself simply by remembering that one paragraph, and doing it! On the other hand you might buy the book anyhow and lend it to your loud-mouthed brother-in-law. Aren't you pretty sick of the way he is forever flapping his jaw about the way the country is run? But when has he ever done anything about it except to go down and kill your vote on election day by voting the wrong way? Give him this book, then tell him to put up or shut up! You can point out to him that he owes it to his three kids to take a responsible part in politics, instead of just beating his gums. If he won't get off his fat backside and get busy in politics but still refuses to stop being a Big Wind, you are then justified in indulging in the pleasure of being rude to him. After all, you have wanted to be for years, haven't you? This is your opportunity; you've got nothing to lose politically since he votes wrong anyhow, when he remembers to vote, and it will come as a relief to be rude for once, now that you are a politician and usually polite to all comers. Tell him that he is so damned ignorant that he doesn't have any real opinions about politics and so lax in his civic duties that he wouldn't be entitled to opinions if he had any. Tell him to shut up and to quit holding up the bridge game. The faint sound of cheering you will hear from the distance will be me. I don't like the jerk either, nor any of his tribe. You may not believe that getting into politics is actually as simple as I have described it. Here is my own case: I returned to my own state after an extended absence. My profession had kept me travelling and it happened to be the first time I had ever been at home during a campaign. I walked into the local street headquarters of my party and said to a woman at a desk, "I have a telephone, an automobile, and a typewriter. What can I do?" I was referred to another headquarters a couple of miles away, I was so ignorant that I did not know the district boundaries and had gotten into the wrong headquarters. That very same day, to my utter amazement and confusion, I found myself in charge of seven precincts. Six weeks later I was a director of the local club. Six months later I was publishing, in my spare time, a political newspaper of two million circulation. During the next campaign I was a county committeeman, a state committeeman, and a district chairman. Shortly after that campaign I was appointed county organizer for my party. And so on. It does not end. The scope and importance of the political work assigned to a volunteer fireman is limited only by his strength and his willingness to accept responsibility. Nor is the work futile. The volunteer organization with which I presently became affiliated recalled a mayor, kicked out a district attorney, replaced the governor with one of our own choice, and completely changed the political complexion of one of the largest states, all within four years. I did not do it alone-naturally not, nothing is ever done alone in politics-but it was done by a comparatively small group of unpaid volunteers almost all of whom were as ignorant of politics at the start as I was. Or let me tell you about Susie. Susie is a wonderful girl. She and her husband volunteered about the same time I did. Susie had a small baby; she packed him into a market basket, stuck him into the back of the family car and went out and did field work. In the following four years Susie replaced a national committeeman with a candidate of her own choice, elected a congressman, and managed the major portion of the campaign which gave us a new governor. She topped her career finally by being the indispensable key person in nominating a presidential candidate of one of the two major parties. I'll tell more about that later; it's quite a story. All this time Susie was having babies about every third year. She never accepted a cent for herself, but it became customary, after the house filled up, for the party to see to it that Susie had a maid during a campaign. The rest of the time she kept house, did the cooking, and reared her kids unassisted. During the war she added riveting on bombers during the night shift to her other activities. We can't all be Susies. But remember this, all that Susie had to offer was honesty, willingness, and an abiding faith in democracy. She had no money and has none now, and she had no political connections nor experience when she started. I could fill a whole book with case histories of people like Susie. Most of them are people of very limited income who are quite busy all day earning that income. One of the commonest excuses from the person who knows that he should take part in civic business is: "I would like to but I am just so tarnation busy making a living for my wife and kids that I can't spare the time, the money, nor the energy." The middle class in Germany felt the same way; it brought them Hitler, the liquidation of their class, and the destruction of their country. The next time you feel like emulating them, remember Susie and her four kids. Or Gus. Gus drove a truck from four a.m. to noon each day; he had a wife and two kids. By sleeping in the afternoons and catching a nap after midnight he managed to devote many of his evenings to politics. In less than three years he was state chairman of the young people's club of his party and one of the top policy makers in the state organization. What did he get out of it? Nothing, but the satisfaction of knowing that he had made his state a better place for his kids to live. The Guses and the Susies in this country are the people who have preserved and are preserving our democracy, not the big city bosses, not the Washington officeholders, and most emphatically not your loud-mouthed and lazy brother-in-law. I have said that the rest of the book will tell only things that you will learn anyhow, through experience. They will be recounted in hopes of saving you much time, much bitter experience, and in the expectation that my own experiences may make you more effective more quickly than you otherwise might be. I also hope to brace you against the disappointment and sometimes disheartening disillusionments that are bound to come to anyone participating in this deadly serious game. One warning I want to include right now, since you may not finish reading this book. You are entering politics with the definite intention of treating it as a patriotic public service. You intend to pay your own way; you seek neither patronage nor cash. Almost at once you will be offered pay. You will turn it down. Again and again it will be offered and patronage as well. There will come a day when you are offered pay to campaign for an issue or a man in whom you already believe and most heartily and to whom you are already committed. The offer will come from a man who is sincerely your friend and whom you know to be honest and patriotic. He will argue that the organization expects to pay for the work you are already doing and that you might as well be paid. He honestly prefers for you to be on the payroll; it makes the whole affair more orderly. Everything he says is perfectly true; it is honest pay, from a clean source, for honest work in which you believe. It happens that just that moment a little extra money would come in mighty handy. What should you do? Don't take it! If you take it, it is almost certain to mark the end of your climb toward the top in the policy-making councils of your party. You are likely to remain a two-bit, or at best a four-bit, ward heeler the rest of your life. A volunteer fireman need not have money to be influential in public affairs, but he must not accept money, even when it is clean money, honestly earned. If you take it you are a hired man and hired men carry very little weight anywhere. There is a corny old story about a sugar daddy and a stylish and beautiful young society matron. The s.d. offered her five thousand dollars to spend a week at Atlantic City with him. After due consideration she accepted. He then offered her fifty dollars instead. In great indignation she said, "Sir, what kind of a woman do you think I am?" "We settled that," he told her. "Now we're haggling over the price." Don't make the mistake she did. There is however some sense in haggling over the conditions. If you reach the point where your party wants you to accept a state or national party post, for full-time work in a position of authority, or your government asks the same thing of you, under circumstances where it is evident that you must surrender your usual means of livelihood, go ahead and take it, if you honestly believe that your services are needed and that you can do the best job that could be done by any of the available candidates. It is well understood in political circles that public office or major party office is almost always badly underpaid for the talent and experience the jobs need. The salaries, therefore, are regarded simply as retainers to permit the holder to eat while serving the public. But don't be a paid ward heeler! On the other hand, it is not wise to hold the petty hired man in the party in contempt. You will have to work with many of them no matter what party you are in. The biggest reform movements in this country include areas where the Machine is dominant; the most perfectly oiled political machines include areas where all the work is volunteer and unpaid. You will find the paid precinct or headquarters worker as honest and as conscientious as employees usually are; almost invariably he or she will be sincerely loyal to the party employing him. They usually do more work than their wages justify. Remember this, and be careful what you say to them or about them. Most of them are as honest as you are and just as anxious for your man to win. But don't become one of them if you expect to have any major effect on the future of this country. Well, then, if you are never to accept pay, except under remote circumstances in which the job even with pay is likely to be a financial sacrifice, what can you expect to get out of it? The rewards are intangible but very pleasing to an adult mind. The drawbacks are easier to see. You must expect to be regarded with amusement and even suspicion by some of your acquaintances. Most of the station-wagon crowd you used to run around with will be certain that you are in it for what you can get out of it, for that is the only reason their un-matured minds can imagine. They are the free riders in the body politic; despite the fact they do nothing to make our form of government work, they serenely believe that the wheels go around by their gracious consent and think that gives them the privilege of caustic and ignorant criticism of the laborers in the vineyard. Moreover, you won't be seeing so much of them from now on. You will find that you are beginning to select your social contacts, your dinner guests and your golf partners from among your political acquaintances. You will do this because you find more intelligence, more brilliant conversation, and more worthwhile solid human values among your political acquaintances than you found among the free riders. You won't plan it that way, but it will work itself out. You will play less bridge. Bridge is a good game, but it is dull and tasteless when compared with politics. Your brother-in-law will shun your company. That's clear gain! There will come to you the warm satisfaction of being in on the know every time you pick up your newspaper. News stories that once were dull will be filled with zest for you, because you will know what they mean. From the stand point of sheer recreation you will have discovered the greatest sport in the world. Horse racing, gambling, football, the fights, all of these things are childish and trite compared with this greatest sport! Politics is a game where you always play for keeps, where the game is continuous, always fresh and full of surprises. It will take all of your intelligence and wit and all that you have ever learned or can learn to play it well. The stakes are the highest conceivable, the lives and the futures of every living creature on this planet. How well you play it can make the difference between freedom or a firing squad, civilization or atomic conflagration. For this is the day of decision, the hour of the knife, and none but yourself can choose for you the correct path in the maze. Over and above the joy of playing for high stakes is the greatest and most adult joy of all, the continuous and sustaining knowledge that you have broken with childish ways and come at last into your full heritage as a free citizen, integrated into the life of the land of your birth or your choice, and carrying your share of adult responsibility for the future thereof! CHAPTER THREE. "It Ain't Necessarily So!" This chapter will be devoted to smearing a few cherished illusions. I do not suppose that you are suffering from all of the misapprehensions listed herein; however, if you are typically American and have not had extensive political experience, it is likely that you are subject to one or more of them. Before we go ahead with detailed discussion of the practical art of politics it is well to correct the record with respect to many items in the Great American Credo, items which happen to be wrong and which have to do with politics. It will save your time and mine in later discussion. With the possible exceptions of love and religion probably more guff is talked and believed about politics than about any other subject. I am going to discuss some of that guff and try to puncture it. Most of the items I have chosen because I myself have had to change my opinions through bitter experience in politics. My present opinions are subject to human error. However, they are based on the scientific method of observation of facts; they are not armchair speculation. If you don't believe me, go take a look, several looks! For yourself. But I suggest that you will save yourself a lot of the mistakes I made if you assume that what I say is true until through your own experience you reach a different opinion. Warning! Every generalization I make about groups of people is subject to exceptions. You must meet each citizen with an open mind. For example, there is no natural law which prevents club women from being intelligent and quite a few of them are. Now let's let our hair down and speak plainly. We are going to discuss a lot of sacred cows and then kick them in the slats. We are going to mention a lot of unmentionable subjects, using everything but Anglo-Saxon monosyllables. We are going to discuss Catholics and Communists and Jews and Negroes, women in politics, reformers, school teachers, the nobility of the Irish, civil service vs. patronage, and whether Father was right. I will try to tell the truth as I have seen it. I hope I won't splash any mud in your direction but I may. "One should never consider a man's religion in connection with politics." This is a fine credo, based on the American ideal of freedom of religion. It happens to be cockeyed and results from mushy thinking. One should always consider a candidate's religious beliefs; it is one of the most important things about him. Whether a man is a Catholic, a Protestant, a Communist, a Mormon, or a Jew has a very strong bearing on how he will perform his duties in certain jobs. Communism is, of course, classed with the religions more about that later. The important thing to remember is to consider a man's religion objectively, in relation to what you expect of him, and not in an attitude of blind prejudice. There is nothing discriminatory nor un-American in scrutinizing a man's religious beliefs in connection with politics. A man's religion is a matter of free choice, even though most people remain in the faiths to which they were born. A Catholic can become a Jew; a Communist can become a Quaker. A man's religious beliefs offer a strong clue to his attitudes, values, and prejudices and you are entitled to consider them when he is in public life. For example, let us suppose that you live in a mythical community where the school board can, at its discretion, assign public funds to the support of private schools which are open to the public, parochial schools, of course. Let us suppose that you believe that public funds should be used only for state-controlled schools. Two tickets of candidates are before you, one Catholic, one non-Catholic, all equally well qualified, good men and true. Should you vote for the ticket which will support your own opinion, or should you ignore what you know about the candidates and vote for the one with the pretty blue eyes? Or let us suppose, same election; same town, that you are a non-Catholic who believes that tax money should support popular education but that the government should not be allowed to determine the nature of that education, except, perhaps, for the three R's. It is your belief that the individual parents should control the training received by their children; you fear state domination. Whom should you vote for? Or suppose you are a Catholic but believe that public funds for support of Catholic schools would be the first step toward state control of those schools. Which way do you vote? The problem can become still more complicated. Congress is considering subsidizing scientific research; many of the best colleges and universities in this country are controlled or dominated by members of a particular faith. Would you refuse a research subsidy to Notre Dame but allow it to some state-owned college in Tennessee, the state where biology is subject to the vote of the state legislature? Or how about the great University of Southern California? It was a Methodist college once; there has been a divorce of sorts but the influence is still there. Can USC be trusted with a subsidy in mechanical engineering, or does nothing less than outright atheism meet your standards for freedom of thought? In passing it might be added that private schools with church leanings were an indispensable factor in the scientific research that won World War Two. What bearing does all this have on the problem of tax funds for parochial schools? It obviously has some bearing and you yourself will have to consider the factors when you decide whether to campaign for the ticket made up of Catholics or the one made up of non-Catholics. In my home state recently there were introduced in the legislature a group of bills concerning birth control and a group of bills concerning liquor licensing, local option, and prohibition. The governor received hundreds of letters about these two groups. Analysis showed that practically all of the letters about the birth control measures came from Catholic groups, whereas the letters about liquor measures came almost exclusively from Protestant church groups. Is it not obvious, then, that you have a legitimate interest in the religious persuasion of your state legislator, your state senator, and your state governor? Suppose you are a Christian Scientist; how do you feel about socialized medicine? Suppose instead that you are strong for socialized medicine; is it of interest to you that a candidate for the legislature is a Christian Scientist? Or should you ignore it? Is a Jewish congressman more likely or less likely to vote to open the United States to any and all displaced persons in Europe? Who is the more likely to put a rider concerning Palestine on a bill to end money to Britain, a non-Zionist Jew or an Irish Catholic from Boston? The ramifications of the political effect of a man's religious beliefs are endless. I do not intend to suggest answers to any of these questions; I simply mean to make it clear that to shut your eyes to this factor is to handicap yourself grossly in the analysis of men and issues. To vote always for a person of your own religious persuasion, or, at the other extreme, always to ignore a candidate's religious beliefs, is equally stupid and unrealistic. The first attitude is narrow and un-American; the second is custard-headed. Call 'em as you see 'em! Now let us discuss church groups. (Before shouts of dirty red, fascist, papist, Jew, atheist, or whatever, start coming in, let me put this on record: Like all my great grandparents, I am native born, an American mixture, principally Irish, with a dash of English and French and a pinch of German. My name is Bavarian Catholic in origin; I was brought up in the Methodist faith. I believe in democracy, personal liberty, and religious freedom.) American church groups as a whole are frequent sources of corruption and confusion in politics. This is a regrettable but observable fact which runs counter to the strong credo that if only the church people would get together and assert their strength we could run all those dirty crooks out of town. In fact, the church members of any community, voting as a bloc, could swing any election, institute any reforms they wished, and make them stick. It does not work out that way. I do not question that we are more moral, more charitable and more civilized as a result of church instruction and the labors of priests, ministers, rabbis, and countless devout laymen. Nor do I question the political good intent of church groups. The evil consequences result from good intentions applied in too limited a field. Only rarely do churches become interested in the way in which paving contracts are awarded, how the oral examinations for civil service are conducted, or the fashion in which real estate values are assessed for tax purposes. Towing fees for stolen cars, the allocation of gasoline tax monies between city, county, and state, or the awarding of public utility franchises are likely to be too "political" for discussion from the pulpit. Instead church groups are likely to demand laws which prohibit practices contrary to various religious codes of morals. A crooked political machine is happy to oblige each church as such laws do not hamper the machine; they help it-first, by providing new fields of graft and corruption, second, by insuring the votes of the madams, bookies, etc., engaged in these fields, and third, by obtaining support from the very church groups which demanded the legislation. If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well. If your conscience requires that you support legislation of the type referred to above, then you must realize that your overall problem of keeping honest officials in office to enforce the laws is made much more difficult and that you must work several times as hard and be much more alert if you are to have an honest government. As an amateur, unpaid, volunteer politician interested in certain reforms, don't expect any real help from the churches even in accomplishing the moral objectives of the churches, or you will be due for a terrible disappointment. Women in Politics We were told, when Votes-for-Women was new, that women would bring higher moral standards and would eliminate the graft and corruption which the nasty old men had tolerated. Women have had an effect, they caused the installation of a powder room in the Senate's sacred halls; they changed the atmosphere of conventions from that of a prize fight to something more like a college reunion, and they broadened the refreshments at political doings from a simple the t of beer and pigs knuckles to a point where the menu now includes ice cream and cake, little fancy sandwiches, coffee, and wine cooler. The change in refreshments is a distinct improvement; I don't like pigs knuckles. They have also brought political corruption to a new low. Whoops! Easy, girls, please! Quiet down. There are exceptions to all rules-you may be the exception to this one. That is for you to determine. Judge yourself. A great many women are willing to go to hell in a wheel barrow. Their husbands may be politically just as dishonest but the gentle sex are usually willing to sell out at a lower price. They go in for cut-rate corruption. If you file for office, or become the manager of a candidate, you will quickly be besieged by telephone calls from women who want to help in your campaign. They sound like enthusiastic volunteers; you will find very quickly that they are political streetwalkers who will support any candidate and any issue, without compunction, for a very low price. Brush them off, but politely, a practical politician should never go out of his way to make anyone sore; your purpose is to win elections, not arguments. Let the opposition hire them. They are hardly worth the low price they charge, even to him. Later on in the campaign you will find that he hi

PLANET OF THE APES. By Pierre Boulle. Translated by Xan Fielding. A SIGNET BOOK. SIGNET, SIGNET CLASSICS, MENTOR, PLUME AND MERIDIAN BOOKS FIRST PRINTING, NOVEMBER, 1964 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. PLANET OF THE APES. Part one. CHAPTER ONE. Jinn and Phyllis were spending a wonderful holiday, in space, as far away as possible from the inhabited stars. In those days interplanetary voyages were an everyday occurrence, and interstellar travel not uncommon. Rockets took tourists to the wondrous sites of Sirius, or financiers to the famous stock exchanges of Arcturus and Aldebaran. But Jinn and Phyllis, a wealthy leisured couple, were distinguished in their cosmos for their originality and a few grains of poetry. They wandered over the universe for their pleasure, by sail. Their ship was a sort of sphere with an envelope, the sail, which was miraculously fine and light and moved through space propelled by the pressure of light-radiation. Such a machine, left to its own devices in the vicinity of a star, though far enough away for the field of gravity not to be too powerful, will always move in a straight line in the opposite direction to the star; but since Jinn and Phyllis' stellar system contained three suns that were relatively close to one another, their vessel received rays of light along three different axes. Jinn had therefore conceived an extremely ingenious method of steering. His sail was lined inside with a series of black blinds that he could roll up or unroll at will, thus changing the effect of the light-pressure by modifying the reflecting power of certain sections. Furthermore, this elastic envelope could be stretched or contracted as the navigator pleased. Thus, when Jinn wanted to increase his speed, he gave it the biggest diameter possible. It would then take the blasts of radiation on an enormous surface and the vessel would hurtle through space at a furious velocity, which made his mate Phyllis quite dizzy. He would also be overcome by vertigo, and they would then cling passionately to each other, their gaze fixed on the mysterious and distant depths to which their flight propelled them. When, on the other hand, they wanted to slow down, Jinn pressed a button. The sail would shrink until it became a sphere just big enough to contain them both, packed tightly together. The effect of the light became negligible, and this minute bubble, reduced to nothing more than its own inertia, seemed motionless, as though suspended in the void by an invisible thread. The young couple would spend rapturous idle hours in this reduced universe, erected on their own scale and for them alone, which Jinn compared to a becalmed sailing ship and Phyllis to the air bubble of the sea spider. Jinn knew a number of other tricks, considered as the height of art by sailing cosmonauts: for example, making use of the shadows of the planets and certain satellites in order to change course. He imparted this skill to Phyllis, who was now almost as accomplished as he himself and often more daring. When she held the tiller, she would sometimes fire a broadside that swept them right to the borders of the stellar system, heedless of the resulting magnetic storm, which would start to upset the light-rays and to shake their skiff like a cockleshell. On two or three occasions, waked up with a start by the tempest, Jinn had had quite a struggle snatching the tiller from her and, in order to run for shelter as quickly as possible, starting the auxiliary rocket, which they made it a point of honor never to use except in case of danger. One day Jinn and Phyllis were lying side by side in the middle of their spacecraft without a care in the world, making the most of their holiday by exposing themselves to the rays of their three suns. Eyes closed, Jinn was thinking only of his love for Phyllis. Phyllis lay stretched out on her side, gazing at the immensity of the universe and letting herself be hypnotized, as she often did, by the cosmic sensation of the void. All of a sudden she came out of her trance, wrinkled her brow, and sat up. An unusual flash of light had streaked across this void. She waited a few seconds and saw a second flash, like a ray being reflected off a shiny object. The cosmic sense she had acquired in the course of these cruises could not deceive her. Moreover, Jinn, when it was pointed out to him, agreed with her, and it was inconceivable that he should make a mistake in this matter: a body sparkling in the light was floating through space, at a distance they could not yet assess. Jinn picked up a pair of binoculars and focused them on the mysterious object, while Phyllis leaned on his shoulder. "It's not a very big object," he said. "It seems to be made of glass, No, let me look. It's drawing closer. It's going faster than we are. It looks like." A puzzled expression came into his eyes. He lowered the binoculars, which she at once snatched up. "It's a bottle, darling." "A bottle!" She looked at it, in turn. "Yes, it's a bottle. I can see it quite clearly. It's made of light-colored glass. It's corked; I can see the seal. There's something white inside that looks like paper", a message, obviously. Jinn, we've got to get hold of it!" Jinn was of the same opinion and had already embarked on some skillful maneuvers to place the sphere on the trajectory of the unusual body. He soon succeeded and then reduced his own speed to enable it to catch up with him. Meanwhile Phyllis donned her diving suit and made her way out of the sail by the double trapdoor. There, holding onto a rope with one hand and brandishing a long-handled scoop in the other, she stood in readiness to retrieve the bottle. It was not the first time they" had come across strange bodies, and the scoop had already been in use. Sailing at low speed, sometimes completely motionless, they had enjoyed surprises and made discoveries that were precluded to travelers by rocket. In her net Phyllis had already gathered up remnants of pulverized planets, fragments of meteorites that had come from the depths of the universe, and pieces of satellites launched at the outset of the conquest of space. She was very proud of her collection; but this was the first time they had come across a bottle, and a bottle containing a message , of that she was certain. She trembled from head to foot with impatience, gesticulating like a spider on the end of its thread as-she shouted down the telephone to her companion: "Slower, Jinn. No, a bit faster than that, it's going to pass us. Starboard. Now hard to port. Hold it. I've got it!" She gave a triumphant cry and came back inside with her trophy. It was a largish bottle and its neck had been carefully sealed. A roll of paper could be seen inside. "Jinn, break it open, hurry up!" Phyllis begged, stamping her foot. Less impatient, Jinn methodically chipped off the sealing wax. But when the bottle was thus opened, he saw that the paper was stuck fast and could not be shaken out. He therefore yielded to his mate's entreaties and smashed the glass with a hammer. The paper unrolled of its own accord. It consisted of a large number of very thin sheets, covered with tiny handwriting. The message was written in the language of the Earth, which Jinn knew perfectly, having been partly educated on that planet. An uncomfortable feeling, however, restrained him from starting to read a document that had fallen into their bands in such an incongruous manner; but Phyllis' state of excitement decided him. She was not so well acquainted with the language of the Earth and needed his help. "Jinn, please!" He reduced the volume of the sphere so that it floated idly in space, made sure that there was no obstacle in front of them, then lay down beside his companion and began to read the manuscript. CHAPTER TWO. I am confiding this manuscript to space, not with the intention of saving myself, but to help, perhaps, to avert the appalling scourge that is menacing the human race. Lord have pity onus! "The human race?" Phyllis exclaimed, stressing the second word in her astonishment. "That's what it says here," Jinn assured her. "Don't start off by interrupting me." And he went on with his reading. As for me, Ulysse Merou, I have set off again with my family in the spaceship. We can keep going for several years. We grow vegetables and fruit on board and have a poultry run. We lack nothing. One day perhaps we shall come across a friendly planet. This is a hope I hardly dare express. But here, faithfully reported, is the account of my adventure. It was in the year twenty five hundred that I embarked with two companions in the cosmic ship, with the intention of reaching the region of space where the super gigantic star Betelgeuse reigns supreme. It was an ambitious project, the most ambitious that had ever been conceived on Earth. Betelgeuse, or Alpha Orionis, as our astronomers called it, is about three hundred light-years distant from our planet. It is remarkable for a number of things. First, its size: its diameter is three or four hundred times greater than that of our sun; in other words, if its center were placed where the sun's center lies, this monster would extend to within the orbit of Mars. Second, its brilliance: it is a star of first magnitude, the brightest in the constellation of Orion, visible on Earth to the naked eye in spite of its distance. Third, the nature of its rays: it emits red and orange lights, creating a most magnificent effect. Finally, it is a heavenly body with a variable glow: its luminosity varies with the seasons, this being caused by the alterations in its diameter. Betelgeuse is a palpitating star. Why, after the exploration of the solar system, all the planets of which are inhabited, why was such a distant star chosen as the target for the first interstellar flight? It was the learned Professor Antelle who made this decision. The principal organizer of the enterprise, to which he devoted the whole of his enormous fortune, the leader of our expedition, he himself had conceived the spaceship and directed its construction. He told me the reason for his choice during the voyage. "My dear Ulysse," he said, "it is not much harder, and it would scarcely take any longer, for us to reach Betelgeuse than a much closer star: Proxima Centauris, for example." At this I saw fit to protest and draw his attention to some recently ascertained astronomical data: "Scarcely take any longer! But Proxima Centauris is only four light-years away, whereas Betelgeuse." "Is three hundred, I'm well aware of that. But we shall take scarcely more than two years to reach it, while we should have needed almost as much time to arrive in the region of Proxima Centauris. You don't believe it because you are accustomed to mere flea hops on our planets, for which a powerful acceleration is permissible at the start because it lasts no more than a few minutes, the cruising speed to be reached being ridiculously low and not to be compared with ours. It is time I gave you a few details as to how our ship works. "Thanks to its perfected rockets, which I had the honor of designing, this craft can move at the highest speed imaginable in the universe for a material body, that is to say, the speed of light minus epsilon." "Minus epsilon?" "I mean it can approach it to within an infinitesimal degree: to within a thousand-millionth, if you care to put it that way." "Good," I said. "I can understand that." "What you must also realize is that while we are moving at this speed, our time diverges perceptibly from time on Earth, the divergence being greater the faster we move. At this very moment, since we started this conversation, we have lived several minutes, which correspond to a passage of several months on our planet. At top speed, time will almost stand still for us, but of course we shall not be aware of this. A few seconds for you and me, a few heartbeats, will coincide with a passage of several years on Earth." "I can understand that, too. In fact, that is the reason why we can hope to reach our destination before dying. But in that case, why a voyage of two years? Why not only a few days or a few hours?" "I was just coming to that. Quite simply because, to reach the speed at which time almost stands still, with an acceleration acceptable to our organisms, we need about a year. A further year will be necessary to reduce our speed. Now do you understand our flight plan? Twelve months of acceleration; twelve months of reducing speed; between the two, only a few hours, during which we shall cover the main part of the journey. And at the same time you will understand why it scarcely takes any longer to travel to Betelgeuse than to Proxima Centauri. In the latter case we should have to go through the same indispensable year of acceleration, the same year of deceleration, and perhaps a few minutes instead of a few hours between the two. The overall difference is insignificant. As I'm getting on in years and will probably never be able to make another crossing, I preferred to aim at a distant point straight away, in the hope of finding a world very different from our own." This sort of conversation occupied our leisure hours on board and at the same time made me appreciate Professor Antelle's prodigious skill all the more. There was no field he had not explored, and I was pleased to have a leader like him on such a hazardous enterprise. As he had foreseen, the voyage lasted about two years of our time, during which three and a half centuries must have elapsed on Earth. That was the only snag about aiming so far into the distance: if we came back one day we should find our planet older by seven or eight hundred years. But we did not care. I even felt that the prospect of escaping from his contemporaries was an added attraction to the professor. He often admitted he was tired of his fellow men. "Men!" Phyllis again exclaimed. "Yes, men," Jinn asserted. "That’s what it says." There was no serious incident on the flight. We had started from the Moon. Earth and its planets quickly disappeared. We had seen the sun shrink till it was nothing but an orange in the sky, then a plum, and finally a point of light without dimensions, a simple star that only the professor's skill could distinguish from the millions of other stars in the galaxy. We thus lived without sun, but were none the worse for this, the craft being equipped with equivalent sources of light. Nor were we bored. The professor's conversation was fascinating; I learned more during those two years than I had learned in all my previous existence. I also learned all that one needed to know in order to guide the spacecraft. It was fairly easy: one merely gave instructions to some electronic devices, which made all the calculations and directly initiated the maneuvers. Our garden provided an agreeable distraction. It occupied an important place on board. Professor Antelle, who was interested, among other subjects, in botany and agriculture, had planned to take advantage of the voyage to check certain of his theories on the growth of plants in space. A cubic compartment with sides about thirty feet long served as a plot. Thanks to some trays, the whole of its volume was put to use. The earth was regenerated by means of chemical fertilizers and, scarcely more than two months after our departure, we had the pleasure of seeing it produce all sorts of vegetables, which provided us with an abundance of healthy food. Food for the eye, too, had not been forgotten: one section was reserved for flowers, which the professor tended lovingly. This eccentric had also brought some birds, butterflies, and even a monkey, a little chimpanzee whom we had christened Hector and who amused us with his tricks. It is certain that the learned Antelle, without being a misanthrope, was not interested at all in human beings. He would often declare that he did not expect much from them anymore, and this probably explains. "Misanthrope?" Phyllis again broke in, dumfounded. "Human beings?" "If you keep interrupting me every other second," said Jinn, "we shall never get to the end. Do as I do: try to understand." Phylus promised to keep quiet till the end of the reading, and she kept her promise. This probably explains why he had collected in the craft, which was big enough to accommodate several families countless vegetable species and some animals, while limiting the number of the passengers to three: himself; his disciple Arthur Levain, a young physician with a great future; and myself, Ulysse Merou, a little-known journalist who had met the professor as a result of an interview. He had suggested taking me with him after learning that I had no family and played chess reasonably well. This was an outstanding opportunity for a young journalist. Even if my story was not to be published for eight hundred years, perhaps for that very reason it would have unusual value. I had accepted with enthusiasm. The voyage thus occurred without a setback. The only physical inconvenience was a sensation of heaviness during the year of acceleration and the one of reducing speed. We had to get used to feeling our bodies weigh one and a half times their weight on Earth, a somewhat tiring phenomenon to begin with, but to which we soon paid no attention. Between those two periods there was a complete absence of gravity, with all the oddities accruing from this phenomenon; but that lasted only a few hours and we were none the worse for it. And one day, after this long crossing, we had the dazzling experience of seeing the star Betelgeuse appear in the sky in a new guise. CHAPTER THREE. The feeling of awe produced by such a sight cannot be described: a star, which only yesterday was a brilliant speck among the multitude of anonymous specks in the firmament, showed up more and more clearly against the black background, assumed a dimension in space, appearing first of all as a sparkling nut, then swelled in size, at the same time becoming more definite in color, so that it resembled an orange, and finally fell into place in the cosmos with the same apparent diameter as our own familiar daytime star. A new sun was born for us, a reddish sun, like ours when it sets, the attraction and warmth of which we could already feel. Our speed was then very much reduced. We drew still closer to Betelgeuse, until its apparent diameter far exceeded that of all the heavenly bodies hitherto seen, which made a tremendous impression on us. Antelle gave some instructions to the robots and we started gravitating around the super-giant. Then the scientist took out his astronomical instruments and began his observations. It was not long before he discovered the existence of four planets whose dimensions he rapidly determined, together with their distances from the central star. One of these, two away from Betelgeuse, was moving on a trajectory parallel to ours. It was about the same size as Earth; it possessed an atmosphere containing oxygen and nitrogen; it revolved around Betelgeuse at a distance equivalent to thirty times the space between the Sun and Earth, receiving a radiation comparable to that received by our planet, thanks to the size of the super-giant combined with its relatively low temperature. We decided to make it our first objective. After fresh instructions were given to the robots, our craft was quickly put into orbit around it. Then, with engines switched off, we observed this new world at our leisure. The telescope revealed its oceans and continents. The craft was not equipped for a landing, but this eventuality had been provided for. We had at our disposal three much smaller rocket machines, which we called launches. It was in one of these that we embarked, taking with us some measuring instruments and Hector, the chimpanzee, who was equipped as we were with a diving suit and had been trained in its use. As for our ship, we simply let it revolve around the planet. It was safer there than a liner lying at anchor in a harbor, and we knew it would not drift an inch from its orbit. Landing on a planet of this kind was an easy operation with our launch. As soon as we had penetrated the thick layers of the atmosphere, Professor Antelle took some samples of the outside air and analyzed them. He found they had the same composition as the air on Earth at a similar altitude. I hardly had time to ponder on this miraculous coincidence, for the ground was approaching rapidly; we were no more than fifty miles or so above it. Since the robots carried out every maneuver, I had nothing to do but press my face to the porthole and watch this unknown world rising toward me, my brain reeling with the excitement of discovery. The planet bore a strange resemblance to Earth. This impression became clearer every second. I could now discern the outline of the continents with my naked eye. The atmosphere was bright, slightly tinged with a pale green color verging from time to time on yellow, rather like our sky in Provence at sunset. The ocean was light blue, also with green tinges. The form of the coastline was very different from anything I had seen at home, though my feverish eye, conditioned by so many analogies, insisted wildly on discerning similarities even there. But there the resemblance ended. Nothing in the planet's topography recalled either our Old or New Worlds. Nothing? Come now! On the contrary, the essential factor! The planet was inhabited. We flew over a town: a fairly big town, from which roads radiated, bordered with trees and with vehicles moving along them. I had time to make out the general architecture: broad streets and white houses with long straight lines. But we were to land a long way farther off. Our flight swept us first over cultivated fields, then over a thick russet-colored forest that called to mind our equatorial jungle. We were now at a very low altitude. We caught sight of a fairly large clearing occupying the top of a plateau, the ground all around it being rather broken. Our leader decided to attempt a landing there and gave his last orders to the robots. A system of retrorockets came into action. We hovered motionless for a moment or two above the clearing, like a gull spotting a fish. Then, two years after leaving our Earth, we came down gently and landed without a jolt in the middle of the plateau, on green grass reminiscent of our meadows in Normandy. CHAPTER FOUR. We were silent and motionless for quite a time after making contact with the ground. Perhaps this behavior will seem surprising, but we felt the need to recover our wits and concentrate our energy. We were launched on an adventure a thousand times more extraordinary than that of the first terrestrial navigators and were preparing ourselves to confront the wonders of interstellar travel that have fired the imaginations of several generations of poets. For the moment, talking of wonders, we had landed without a hitch on the grass of a planet that contained, as ours did, oceans, mountains, forests, cultivated fields, towns, and certainly inhabitants. Yet we must have been fairly far from the civilized regions, considering the stretch of jungle over which we had flown before touching down. We eventually came out of our daydream. Having donned our diving suits, we carefully opened one porthole of the launch. There was no hiss of air. The pressures inside and outside were the same. The forest surrounded the clearing like the walls of a fortress. Not a sound, not a movement disturbed it. The temperature was high but bearable: about seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit. We climbed out of the launch, accompanied by Hector. Professor Antelle insisted first of all on analyzing the atmosphere by a more precise method. The result was encouraging: the air had the same composition as the Earth's, in spite of some differences in the proportion of the rare gases. It was undoubtedly breathable. Yet, to make doubly sure, we tried it out first on our chimpanzee. Rid of his suit, the monkey appeared perfectly happy and in no way inconvenienced. He seemed overjoyed to find himself free and on land. After a few skips and jumps, he scampered off to the forest, sprang into a tree, and continued his capering in the branches. He drew farther away and finally disappeared, ignoring our gestures and shouts. Then, shedding our own space suits, we were able to talk easily. We were startled by the sound of our voices, and ventured only timidly to take a step or two without moving too far from our launch. There was no doubt that we were on a twin planet of our Earth. Life existed. The vegetable realm was, in fact, particularly lush: some of these trees must have been over a hundred and fifty feet tall. The animal kingdom soon appeared in the form of some big black birds, hovering in the sky like vultures, and other smaller ones, rather like parakeets, that chased one another chirping shrilly. From what we had seen before landing, we knew that a civilization existed, too. Rational beings, we dared not call them men yet, had molded the face of the planet. Yet the forest all around us appeared to be uninhabited. This was scarcely surprising; landing at random in some corner of the Asiatic jungle, we should have had the same impression of solitude. Before taking a further step, we felt it was urgent to give the planet a name. We christened it Soror, because of its resemblance to our Earth. Deciding to make an initial reconnaissance without delay, we entered the forest, following a sort of natural path. Arthur Levain and I were armed with carbines. As for the professor, he scorned material weapons. We felt light-footed and walked briskly: not that our weight was less than on Earth, there again the similarity was complete, but the contrast with the ship's force of gravity prompted us to scamper along like young goats. We were marching in single file, calling out every now and then to Hector, but with no success, when young Levain, who was leading, stopped and motioned us to listen. A murmur, like running water, could be heard in the distance. We made our way in that direction and the sound became clearer. It was a waterfall. On coming to it, all three of us were moved by the beauty of the site. A stream of water, clear as our mountain torrents, twisted above our heads, spread out into a sheet on a ledge of level ground, and fell at our feet from a height of several yards into a sort of lake, a natural swimming pool fringed with rocks mingled with sand, the surface of which reflected the light of Betelgeuse, which was then at its zenith. The sight of this water was so tempting that the same urge seized both Levain and me. The heat was now intense. We took off our clothes and got ready to dive into the lake. But Professor Antelle cautioned us to behave with a little more prudence when coming up against the system of Betelgeuse for the first time. Perhaps this liquid was not water at all and might be extremely dangerous. He went up to the edge of it, bent down, examined it, then cautiously touched it with his finger. Finally he scooped a little up in the palm of his hand, smelled it, and wetted the end of his tongue with it. "It can't be anything but water," he muttered. He bent down again to plunge his hand into the lake, when we saw him suddenly stiffen. He gave an exclamation of surprise and pointed toward something he had just discerned in the sand. I experienced, I believe, the most violent emotion of my life. There, beneath the scorching rays of Betelgeuse that filled the sky above our heads like an enormous red balloon, visible to all of us and admirably outlined on a little patch of damp sand, was the print of a human foot. CHAPTER FIVE. "It's a woman's foot," Arthur Levain declared. This peremptory remark, made in a strangled voice, did not surprise me at all. It confirmed my own opinion. The slimness, the elegance, the singular beauty of the footprint had disturbed me profoundly. There could be no doubt as to the humanness of the foot. Perhaps it belonged to an adolescent or to a small man, but with much more likelihood, and this I hoped with all my heart, to a woman. "So Soror is inhabited by humans," Professor Antelle murmured. There was a hint of disappointment in his voice, which made me at that moment less well disposed toward him. He shrugged his shoulders with a gesture that was habitual with him and joined us in inspecting the sand around the lake. We discovered other footprints, obviously left by the same creature. Levain, who had moved away from the water's edge, drew our attention to one on the dry sand. The print itself was still damp. "She was here less than five minutes ago," the young man exclaimed, "She was swimming, heard us coming, and fled." It had become an implicit fact for us that the subject under discussion was a woman. We fell silent, scanning the forest, but without hearing so much as the noise of a branch breaking. "We've got all the time in the world," said the professor, shrugging his shoulders again. "But if a human being swam here, we could no doubt do the same without any danger." Without further ado the learned scientist shed his clothes and plunged his skinny body into the pool. After our long voyage the pleasure of this swim in cool, delicious water made us almost forget our recent discovery. Levain alone seemed harassed and lost in thought. I was about to make a taunting remark about his melancholy expression when I saw the woman just above us, perched on the rocky ledge from which the cascade fell. I shall never forget the impression her appearance made on me. I held my breath at the marvelous beauty of this creature from Soror, who revealed herself to us dripping with spray, illuminated by the blood-red beams of Betelgeuse. It was a woman, a young girl, rather, unless it was a goddess. She boldly asserted her femininity in the light of this monstrous sun, completely naked and without any ornament other than her hair, which hung down to her shoulders. True, we had been deprived of any point of comparison for over two years, but none of us was inclined to fall a victim to mirages. It was plain to see that the woman, who stood motionless on the ledge like a statue on a pedestal, possessed the most perfect body that could be conceived on Earth. Levain and I were breathless, lost in admiration, and I think even Professor Antelle was moved. Standing upright, leaning forward, her breasts thrust out toward us, her arms raised slightly backward in the attitude of a diver taking off, she was watching us, and her surprise clearly equaled our own. After gazing at her for a long time, I was so dazzled that I could not discern any particular feature: her body as a whole hypnotized me. It was only after several minutes that I saw she belonged to the white race, that her skin was golden rather than bronzed, that she was tall, but not excessively so, and slender. Then I noticed, as though in a dream, a face of singular purity. Finally I looked at her eyes. Then I became more alert, my attention sharpened, and I stiffened, for in her expression there was an element that was new to me. In it I discerned the outlandish, mysterious quality all of us had been expecting in a world so distant from our own. But I was unable to analyze or even define the nature of this oddity. I only sensed an essential difference from individuals of our own species. It did not come from the color of her eyes: these were of a grayish hue not often found among us, but nevertheless not unknown. The anomaly lay in their emanation, a sort of void, an absence of expression, reminding me of a wretched mad girl I had once known. But no! It was not that, it could not be madness. When she saw that she herself was an object of curiosity, or, to be more accurate, when my eyes met hers, she seemed to receive a shock and abruptly looked away with an automatic gesture as swift as that of a frightened animal. It was not out of shame at being this scrutinized. I had a feeling that it would have been an exaggeration to suppose her capable of such an emotion. It was simply that her gaze would not, or could not, withstand mine. With her head turned to one side, she now watched us stealthily, out of the corner of her eye. "As I told you, it's a woman," young Levain muttered. He had spoken in a voice stifled with emotion, almost a whisper: but the young girl heard him and the sound of his voice produced a strange effect on her. She recoiled, but so swiftly that once again I compared her movement to the reflex of a frightened animal pausing before taking flight. She stopped, however, after taking two steps backward, the rocks then concealing most of her body. I could discern no more than the top of her head and an eye that was still trained on us. We dared not move a muscle, tortured by the fear of seeing her rush away. Our attitude reassured her. After a moment she stepped out again onto the ledge. But young Levain was decidedly too excited to! Be able to hold his tongue. "Never in my life." He began. He stopped, realizing his imprudence. She had recoiled in the same manner as before, as though the human voice terrified her. Professor Antelle motioned us to keep quiet and started splashing about in the water without appearing to pay the slightest attention to her. We adopted the same tactics, which met with complete success. Not only did she step forward once more, but she soon showed a visible interest in our movements, an interest that was manifested in a rather unusual manner, rousing our curiosity even more. Have you ever watched a timid puppy on the beach while his master is swimming? He longs to join him in the water, but dares not. He takes three steps in one direction, three in another, draws away, scampers back, shakes his head, paws the ground. Such, exactly, was the behavior of this girl. And all of a sudden we heard her: but the sounds she uttered only added to the impression of animality created by her attitude. She was then standing on the very edge of her perch, as though about to fling herself into the lake. She had broken off her sort of dance for a moment. She opened her mouth. I was standing a little to one side and was able to study her without being noticed. I thought she was going to speak, to give a shout. I was expecting a cry. I was prepared for the most barbarous language, but not for the strange sounds that came out of her throat; specifically out of her throat, for neither mouth nor tongue played any part in this sort of shrill mewing or whining, which seemed yet again to express the joyful frenzy of an animal. In our zoos, sometimes, young chimpanzees play and wrestle together giving just such little cries. Since, despite our astonishment, we forced ourselves to go on swimming without paying attention to her, she appeared to come to a decision. She lowered herself onto the rock, took a grip on it with her hands, and started climbing down toward us. Her agility was extraordinary. Her golden body, appearing to us through a cloud of spray and light, like a fairy-tale vision, moved quickly down the rock face along the thin transparent blade of the waterfall. In a few moments, clinging to some imperceptible projections, she was down at the level of the lake, kneeling on a flat stone. She watched us a few seconds longer, then took to the water and swam toward us. We realized she wanted to play and therefore continued with our frolics, which had given her such confidence, modifying our movements whenever she looked startled. Soon we were all involved in a game in which she had unconsciously laid down the rules: a strange game indeed, with a certain resemblance to the movements of seals in a pool, which consisted of alternately fleeing from us and approaching us, suddenly veering away when we were almost within reach, then drawing so close as to graze us but without ever actually coming into contact. It was childish; but what would we not have done in order to tame the beautiful stranger! I noticed that Professor Antelle took part in this play with unconcealed pleasure. This had been going on for some time, and we were getting out of breath, when I was struck by the paradoxical nature of the girl's expression: her solemnity. There she was, taking evident pleasure in the games she was inspiring, yet not a smile had appeared on her face. For some time this had given me a vague feeling of uneasiness, without my knowing exactly why. I was now relieved to discover the reason: she neither laughed nor smiled; from time to time she only uttered one of those little throaty cries that evidently expressed her satisfaction. I decided to make an experiment. As she approached me, cleaving the water with a peculiar swimming action resembling a dog's and with her hair streaming out behind her like the tail of a comet, I looked her straight in the eye and, before she could turn her head aside, gave her a smile filled with all the friendliness and affection I could muster. The result was surprising. She stopped swimming, stood up in the water, which reached to her waist, and raised her hands in front of her in a gesture of defense. Then she quickly turned her back on me and raced for the shore. Out of the water, she paused and half turned around, looking at me askance, as she had on the ledge, with the startled air of an animal that has just seen something alarming. Perhaps she might have regained her confidence, for the smile had frozen on my lips and I had started swimming again in an innocent manner, but a fresh incident renewed her emotion. We heard a noise in the forest and, tumbling from branch to branch, our friend Hector came into view, landed on his feet, and scampered over toward us, overjoyed at finding us again. I was amazed to see the bestial expression, compounded of fright and menace that came over the young girl's face when she caught sight of the monkey. She drew back, hugging the rocks so closely as to melt into them, every muscle tensed, her back arched, her hands contracted like claws. All this because of a nice little chimpanzee who was about to greet us! As he passed close by, without noticing her, she sprang out. Her body twanged like a bow. She seized him by the throat and closed her hands around his neck, holding the poor creature firmly between her thighs. Her attack was so swift that we did not even have time to intervene. The monkey hardly struggled. He stiffened after a few seconds and fell dead when she let go of him. This gorgeous creature in a romantic flight of fancy I had christened her "Nova," able to compare her appearance only to that of a brilliant star, Nova had strangled a harmless pet animal with her own hands. When, having recovered from our shock, we rushed toward her, it was far too late to save Hector. She turned to face us as though to defend herself, her arms again raised in front of her, her lips curled back, in a menacing attitude that brought us to a standstill. Then she uttered a last shrill cry, which could be interpreted as a shout of triumph or a bellow of rage, and fled into the forest. In a few seconds she had disappeared into the undergrowth that closed back around her golden body, leaving us standing aghast in the middle of the jungle, now completely silent once again. CHAPTER SIX. "A female savage," I said, "belonging to some backward race like those found in New Guinea or in our African forests?" I had spoken without the slightest conviction. Arthur Levain asked me, almost violently, if I had ever noted such grace and fineness of feature among primitive tribes. He was a hundred times right and I could think of nothing else to say. Professor Antelle, who appeared to be lost in thought, had nevertheless listened to our conversation. "The most primitive people on our planet have a language," he finally said. "This girl cannot talk." We searched for the stranger around the region of the stream, but unable to find the slightest trace of her, made our way back to our launch in the clearing. The professor thought of taking off again to attempt a landing at some more civilized spot, but Levain suggested stopping where we were for at least twenty-four hours to try to establish another contact with this jungle's inhabitants. I supported him in this suggestion, which eventually prevailed. We dared not admit to one another that the hope of seeing the girl again held us to the area. The afternoon went by without incident; but toward evening, after admiring the fantastic setting of Betelgeuse, which flooded the horizon beyond all human imagination, we had the impression of some change in our surroundings. The jungle gradually became alive with furtive rustlings and snappings, and we felt that invisible eyes were spying on us through the foliage. We spent an uneventful night, however, barricaded in our launch, keeping watch in turns. At dawn we experienced the same sensation, and I fancied I heard some shrill little cries like those Nova had uttered the day before. But none of the creatures with which our feverish imagination peopled the forest revealed itself. So we decided to return to the waterfall. The entire way, we were obsessed by the unnerving impression of being followed and watched by creatures that dared not show themselves. Yet Nova, the day before, had been willing to approach us. "Perhaps it's our clothes that frighten them," Arthur Levain said suddenly. This seemed a most likely explanation. I distinctly remembered that when Nova had fled after strangling our monkey, she had found herself in front of our pile of clothes. She had then sprung aside quickly to avoid them, like a shy horse. "We'll soon see." And, diving into the lake after undressing, we started playing again as on the day before, ostensibly oblivious of all that surrounded us. The same trick worked again. After a few minutes we noticed the girl on the rocky ledge, without having heard her approach. She was not alone. There was a man standing beside her, a man built like us, resembling men on Earth, a middle-aged man also completely naked, whose features were so similar to those of our goddess that I assumed he was her father. He was watching us, as she was, in an attitude of bewilderment and concern. And there were many others. We noticed them little by little, while we forced ourselves to maintain our feigned indifference. They crept furtively out of the forest and gradually formed an unbroken circle around the lake. They were all sturdy, handsome specimens of humanity, men and women with golden skin, now looking restless, evidently prey to a great excitement and uttering an occasional sharp cry. We were hemmed in and felt somewhat anxious, remembering the incident with the chimpanzee. But their attitude was not menacing; they simply appeared to be interested in our actions. That was it. Presently Nova, Nova whom I already regarded as an old acquaintance, slipped into the water and the others followed one by one with varying degrees of hesitation. They all drew closer and we began to chase one another in the manner of seals as we had done the previous day; only now we were surrounded by a score or more of these strange creatures, splashing about and playing, all with solemn expressions contrasting oddly with these childish frolics. After a quarter of an hour of this I was beginning to feel tired. Was it just to behave like school children that we had come all the way to the universe of Betelgeuse? I felt almost ashamed of myself and was vexed to see that the learned Antelle appeared to be taking great pleasure in this game. But what else could we do? It is hard to imagine the difficulty of establishing contact with creatures who are ignorant of the spoken word or of laughter. Yet I did my best. I went through a few motions that I hoped might convey some meaning. I clasped my hands in as friendly a manner as possible, bowing at the same time, rather like the Chinese. I waved kisses at them. None of these gestures evoked the least response. Not a glimmer of comprehension appeared in their eyes. Whenever we had discussed, during the voyage, our eventual encounter with living beings, we saw in our mind's eye monstrous, misshapen creatures of a physical aspect very different from ours, but we always implicitly imagined the presence in them of a mind. On the planet Soror reality appeared to be quite the reverse: we had to do with inhabitants resembling us in every way from the physical point of view but who appeared to be completely devoid of the power of reason. This indeed was the meaning of the expression I had found so disturbing in Nova and that I now saw in all the others: a lack of conscious thought; the absence of intelligence. They were interested only in playing. And even then the game had to be pretty simple! With the idea of introducing into it a semblance of coherence that they could grasp, the three of us linked hands and, with the water up to our waists, shuffled around in a circle, raising and lowering our arms together as small children might have done. This seemed not to move them in the slightest. Most of them drew away from us; others gazed as us with such an obvious absence of comprehension that we were ourselves dumfounded. It was the intensity of our dismay that gave rise to the tragedy. We were so amazed to find ourselves, three grown men, one of whom was a world celebrity, holding hands while executing a childish dance under the mocking eye of Betelgeuse, that we were unable to keep straight faces. We had undergone such restraint for the last quarter of an hour that we needed some relief. We were overcome by bursts of wild and uncontrollable laughter. This explosion of hilarity at last awakened a response in the onlookers, but certainly not the one we had been hoping for. A sort of tempest ruffled the lake. They started rushing off in all directions in a state of fright that in other circumstances would have struck us as laughable. After a few moments we found ourselves alone in the water. They ended up by collecting together on the bank at the edge of the pool, in a trembling mob, uttering their furious little cries and stretching their arms out toward us in rage. Their gestures were so menacing that we took fright. Levain and I made for our weapons, but the wise Antelle whispered to us not to use them and even' not to brandish them so long as they did not approach us. We hastily dressed without taking our eyes off them. But scarcely had we put on our trousers and shirts than their agitation grew into a frenzy. It appeared that the sight of men wearing clothes was unbearable to them. Some of them took to their heels; others advanced toward us, their arms outstretched, their hands clawing the air. I picked up my carbine. Paradoxically for such obtuse people, they seemed to grasp the meaning of this gesture, turned tail, and disappeared into the trees. We made haste to regain the launch. On our way back I had the impression that they were still there, albeit invisible, and were following our withdrawal in silence. CHAPTER SEVEN. The attack was launched as we came within sight of the clearing, with an abruptness that precluded all defense. Leaping out of the thickets like stags, the men of Soror were upon us before we could lift our weapons to our shoulders. The curious thing about this aggression was that it was not exactly directed against our persons. I sensed this at once, and my intuition was soon confirmed. At no moment did I feel myself in danger of death, as Hector had been. They were not after our lives, but after our clothes and all the accessories we were carrying. In a moment we were overwhelmed. A mass of probing hands stripped us of our weapons and ammunition pouches and threw these aside, while others struggled to peel off our clothes and tear them to shreds. Once I had understood what had provoked their fury, I passively gave in, and though I received a few scratches I was not seriously injured. Antelle and Levain did the same, and presently we found ourselves stark naked in the midst of a group of men and women who, visibly reassured to see us in this state, started dancing around us, encircling us too tightly for us to be able to escape. There were now at least a hundred of them on the edge of the clearing. Those who were farther away then fell upon our launch with a fury comparable to that which had induced them to pull our clothes to pieces. In spite of the despair I felt at seeing them pillage our precious vehicle, I pondered on their behavior and fancied I could discern an essential principle in it: these beings were roused to fury by objects. Things that were manufactured provoked their anger as well as their fear. When they seized an instrument, they held it in their hands only long enough to break it, tear it apart, or twist it. Then they promptly hurled it as far away as possible, as though it were a live coal, only to pick it up again and complete its destruction. They made me think of a cat fighting with a big rat that was half dead but still dangerous, or of a mongoose that had caught a snake. I had already noted the curious fact that they had attacked us without a single weapon, without even using sticks. Powerless, we witnessed the sacking of our launch. The door had soon yielded to their blows. They rushed inside and destroyed everything that could be destroyed, in particular the precious navigating instruments, and scattered the bits and pieces. This pillage lasted quite a time. Then, since the metal envelope alone remained intact, they came back to our group. We were jostled, pulled this way and that, and finally dragged off into the depths of the jungle. Our situation was becoming more and more alarming. Disarmed, stripped, obliged to march barefoot at too fast a pace, we could neither exchange our impressions nor even complain. The slightest attempt at conversation provoked such menacing reactions that we had to resign ourselves to painful silence. And yet these creatures were men like us. Clad and shod, they would scarcely have drawn attention in our world. Their women were all beautiful, though none could rival Nova's splendor. The latter followed close behind us. On several occasions, when I was jostled by my guards, I turned around toward her, imploring a sign of compassion, which I fancied I discerned once on her face. But this, I think, was only wishful thinking. As soon as my gaze met hers, she tried to avoid it, without her eyes expressing any sentiment other than bewilderment. This calvary lasted several hours. I was overwhelmed with fatigue, my feet bleeding, my body covered with scratches caused by the reeds through which these men of Soror made their way with impunity, like snakes. My companions were in no better shape than I was, and Antelle was stumbling at every step by the time we finally reached what appeared to be the end of the march. The forest was less thick at this spot and the undergrowth had given place to short grass. Here our guards released us and, without bothering about us, started playing once more, chasing one another through the trees, which seemed to be their main occupation. We sank to the ground, numb with fatigue, taking advantage of this respite to hold a consultation. It needed all the philosophy of our leader to prevent us from being engulfed in dark despair. Night was falling. We could no doubt attempt an escape by taking advantage of the general inattention; but then what? Even if we managed to retrace our steps, there was no chance of our being able to use the launch. It seemed wiser to remain where we were and to try to win over these disconcerting beings. Moreover, we were famished. We rose to our feet and took a few timid steps. They went on with their senseless games without paying any attention. Nova alone seemed not to have forgotten us. She started following us at a distance, always turning her head away when we looked at her. After wandering at random, we discovered we were in a sort of encampment where the shelters were not even huts, but nest like constructions like those built by the big apes in our African forests: a few interwoven branches, without any binding, placed on the ground or wedged into the forks of low trees. Some of these nests were occupied. Men and women, I cannot see how else I can describe them, lay stretched out inside them, often in couples, fast asleep and snuggling up together as dogs do in the cold. Other, larger shelters served entire families, and we noticed several children who looked extremely handsome and healthy. This provided no solution to our feeding problem. At last we saw at the foot of a tree a family getting ready to eat, but their meal was hardly designed to tempt us. They were puffing to pieces, without the aid of any utensil, a fairly large animal resembling a deer. With their nails and their teeth they tore off bits of the raw meat, which they devoured after merely removing a few shreds of skin. There was no sign of a fireplace in the neighborhood. This feast turned our stomachs, and in any case, after drawing a little closer, we realized we were by no means welcome to share it. Quite the contrary! Angry growls made us draw back quickly. It was Nova who came to our rescue. Did she do so because she had finally understood that we were hungry? Could she really understand anything? Or was it because she was famished herself? In any case, she went up to a big tree, encircled the trunk with her thighs, climbed up into the branches, and disappeared in the foliage. A few moments later we saw a shower of fruit resembling bananas fall to the ground. Then she climbed down again, picked up one or two of these and began eating them without taking her eyes off us. After a moment's hesitation we grew bold enough to imitate her. The fruit was quite good and we were able to eat our fill while she watched us without protesting. After drinking some water from a stream, we decided to spend the night there. Each of us chose a corner in the grass in which, to build a nest similar to the others in the colony. Nova showed some interest in our work, even to the point of approaching me and helping me to break a recalcitrant branch. I was moved by this gesture; young Levain found it so vexing that he lay down at once, buried himself in the grass, and turned his back on us. As for Professor Antelle, he had already fallen asleep, dead tired. I took some time to finish my bed, still closely watched by Nova, who had drawn some distance, away. When I lay down, she stood motionless for a moment or two, as though unable to make up her mind; then she took a few hesitant steps toward me. I did not move a muscle for fear of frightening her away. She lay down beside me. I still did not move. She eventually snuggled up against me, and there was nothing to distinguish us from the other couples occupying the nests of this strange tribe. But although this giri was marvelously beautiful, I still did not regard her as a woman. Her manner was that of a pet animal seeking the warmth of its master. I appreciated the warmth of her body, without its ever crossing my mind to desire her. I ended up by falling asleep in this outlandish position, half dead from fatigue, pressed against this strangely beautiful and unbelievably mindless creature, after bestowing no more than a glance on the satellite of Soror, which, smaller than our Moon, cast a yellowish light over the jungle. CHAPTER EIGHT. The sky was turning pale through the trees when I awoke. Nova was still asleep. I watched her in silence and sighed as I remembered her cruelty to our poor monkey. She had probably also been the cause of our misadventure by pointing us out to her companions. But how could one hold this against her when faced with the perfection of her body? Suddenly she stirred and raised her head. A gleam of fear came into her eyes and I felt her muscles contract. Since I did not move, however, her face gradually relaxed. She remembered; she managed for the first time to withstand my gaze for a moment. I regarded this as a personal victory and went so far as to smile at her again, forgetting her previous reaction to this earthly manifestation. This time it was less intense. She shivered, stiffened again as though about to take flight, but stayed where she was. Encouraged, I smiled more broadly. She trembled again but eventually calmed down, her face soon expressing nothing but profound astonishment. Had I succeeded in taming her? I became bold enough to put my hand on her shoulder. A shiver ran down her spine, but she still did not move. I was intoxicated by this success, and was even more so when I thought she was trying to imitate met. It was true. She was trying to smile. I could sense her painful efforts to contract the muscles of her delicate face. She made several attempts, managing only to produce a sort of painful grimace. There was something tremendously moving about this excessive labor on the part of a human being to achieve an everyday expression, and with such a pitiful result. I suddenly felt extremely touched, filled with compassion as though for a crippled child. I increased the pressure of my hand on her shoulder. I brought my face closer to hers. She replied to this gesture by rubbing her nose against mine, then by passing her tongue over my cheek. I was bewildered and hesitant. To be on the safe side, I imitated her in my clumsy fashion. After all, I was a foreign visitor and it was up to me to adopt the customs of the great Betelgeuse system. She appeared satisfied. We had gone thus far in our attempts at communication, myself none too sure how to continue, frightened of committing some blunder with my Earthly manners, when a terrifying hullabaloo made us start up in alarm. I found myself with my two companions, whom I had selfishly forgotten, standing bolt upright in the gathering dawn. Nova had sprung to her feet even more quickly and showed signs of the deepest terror. I understood immediately that this din was a nasty surprise not only for us but for all the inhabitants of the forest, for all of them, abandoning their lairs, had started running hither and thither in panic. This was not a game, as on the previous day; their cries expressed sheer terror. This din, suddenly breaking the silence of the forest, was enough to make one's blood run cold, but I felt besides that the men of the jungle knew what was in the offing and that their fear was caused by the approach of a specific danger. It was a strange cacophony, a mixture of rattling sounds like a roll of drums, other more discordant noises resembling a clashing of pots and pans, and also shouts. It was the shouts that made the most impression on us, for although they were in no language familiar to us, they were incontestably human. The early morning light revealed a strange scene in the forest: men, women, and children running in all directions, passing and bumping into one another, some of them even climbing into the trees as though to seek refuge there. Soon, however, some of the older ones stopped to prick up their ears and listen. The noise was approaching rather slowly. It came from the region where the forest was thickest and seemed to emanate from a fairly long unbroken line. I compared it to the noise made by beaters in one of our big shoots. The elders of the tribe appeared to make a decision. They uttered a series of yelps, which were no doubt signals or orders, then rushed off in the opposite direction from the noise. The rest of them followed, and we saw them galloping all around us like a driven herd of deer. Nova, too, was about to take to her heels, but she paused suddenly and turned around toward us, above all toward me, I felt. She uttered a plaintive whimper, which I assumed to be an invitation to follow her, then took one leap and disappeared. The din grew louder and I fancied I heard the undergrowth snapping as though beneath some heavy footsteps. I admit that I lost my composure. Caution prompted me, however, to stay where I was and to face the newcomers who, it became clearer every second, were uttering these human cries. But after my ordeal of the day before, this horrible racket unnerved me. I was infected by the terror of Nova and the others. I did not pause to think; I did not even want to consult my companions; I plunged into the undergrowth and took to my heels in the young girl's footsteps. I ran as fast as I could for several hundred yards without being able to catch up with her, and then noticed that Levain alone had followed me, Professor Antelle's age precluding such rapid flight. Levain was panting beside me. We looked at each other, ashamed of our behavior, and I was about to suggest going back or at least waiting for our leader, when some other noises made us jump in alarm. As to these, I could not be mistaken. They were gunshots echoing through the jungle: one, two, three, then several more, at irregular intervals, sometimes one at a time, at other times two consecutive shots, strangely reminiscent of a double-barreled gun. They were firing in front of us, on the path taken by the fugitives. While we paused, the line from which the first din had come, the line of beaters, drew closer, very close to us, sowing panic in us once again. I do not know why the shooting seemed to me less frightening, more familiar than this hellish din. Instinctively I resumed my headlong flight, taking care nevertheless to keep under cover of the undergrowth and to make as little noise as possible. My companion followed after me. We thus reached the region in which the shots had been heard. I slowed down and crept forward, almost on all fours. Still followed by Levain, I clambered up a sort of hillock and came to a halt on the summit, panting for breath. There was nothing in front of me but a few trees and a curtain of scrub. I advanced cautiously, my head on a level with the ground. There I lay for a moment or two as though floored by a blow, overpowered by a spectacle completely beyond my poor human comprehension. CHAPTER NINE. There were several incongruous features in the scene that unfolded before my eyes, some of them horrifying, but my attention was at first drawn exclusively to a figure standing motionless thirty paces away and peering in my direction. I almost shouted aloud in amazement. Yes, in spite of my terror, in spite of the tragedy of my own position, I was caught between the beaters and the guns, stupefaction overrode all other emotion when I saw this creature on the lookout, lying in wait for the game. For it was an ape, a large-sized gorilla. It was in vain that I told myself I was losing my reason: I could entertain not the slightest doubt as to his species. But an encounter with a gorillaon the planet Soror was not the essential outlandishness of the situation. This for me lay in the fact that the ape was correctly dressed, like a man of our world, and above all that he wore his clothes in such an easy manner. This natural aspect was what struck me first of all. No sooner had I seen the animal than I realized that he was not in any way disguised. The state in which I saw him was normal, as normal to him as nakedness was to Nova and her companions. He was dressed as you and I are, I mean as you and I would be if we were taking part in one of those drives organized for ambassadors or other distinguished persons at official shooting parties. His dark-brown jacket seemed to be made by the best Paris tailor and revealed underneath a checked shirt of the kind our sportsmen wear. His breeches, flaring out slightly above his calves, terminated in a pair of leggings. There the resemblance ended: instead of boots he wore big black gloves. It was a gorilla, I tell you! From his shirt collar emerged a hideous head, its top shaped like a sugar loaf and covered with black hair, with a flattened nose and jutting jaws. There he stood, leaning slightly forward, in the posture of a hunter on the lookout, grasping a rifle in his long hands. He was facing me, on the other side of a large gap cut out of the jungle at right angles to the direction of the drive. All of a sudden he stiffened. He had noticed, as I had, a faint sound in the bushes a little to my right. He turned around and at the same time raised his weapon, ready to •put it to his shoulder. From my position I could see the furrow left in the undergrowth by one of the fugitives who was running blindly straight ahead. I almost shouted out to warn him, so obvious was the ape's intention. But I had neither the time nor the strength; the man

Rahan. Episode Forty Five. The hunters of the lightning. The volcano thundered once again and the glowing lava flowed slowly down its sides.. This is how the blue mountain vomited its entrails of fire a long time ago! Rahan had never forgotten that horrible day in his childhood when the torrents of fire had decimated his entire horde and. Made him, the son of Crao-the-wise, of Crao-the-brave, the only clan survivor of Blue Mountain. Rahan curses the hollow mountains and their anger! Page Two. He was about to abandon his refuge when cries arose not far from him. The cries of joy. He glimpsed men rushing towards the volcano All brandished branches and shields as well. The gods have heard Trao! They bring us fire!! Using the path of the "People of the Trees", Rahan, very intrigued, followed these strange hunters. Slipping between the rocks, the men climb towards the incandescent rivulets. Was Rahan having a bad nightmare? Or had the hunters of this clan lost their minds. Page Three. What followed was fantastic. The men went towards the flow of lava and, protecting themselves from the intense heat, plunged their branches into it. As soon as they ignited, they screamed with joy and fled the torrent of fire. The clan will be able to chase away the darkness this night! Why sacrifice yourself like this, when it is easy to make fire spring from the “Stones-that-throw-stars”! A man had just fallen. The thick and incandescent wave overwhelmed him. Another hunter stumbled. His head hit a rock and he remained unconscious without the clan caring about him. Rahan won't let the fire devour him. Page Four. The son of Crao rushed towards the man who was groaning under the flat stone which was crushing his legs. The incandescent wave was approaching closer. Rahan will save you! As the stone was heavy, he used a branch to lift it enough to free the hunter. Stand up! Run away! Run away! The unfortunate man had a broken leg, and Rahan had to carry him to flee towards the forest. The lava wave flowed only slowly. It seeped between the rocks in thin rivulets, which will soon die out. A little latter. Why did you risk your life to save Ganouk's? Rahan does not like to see "Those-Who-Walk-Upright" die stupidly! Page Five. Ganouk will never walk upright again! Ha! Rahan has already healed wounded hunters like Ganouk! The son of Crao firmly ligated his tibia. Moons and moons will pass, but Ganouk will be able to stand up again! But Ganouk will no longer be able to hunt! Trao will force him to constantly monitor the sacred fire of the clan! Who is Trao? Your wizard? Your Chief? Trao is a chief and a wizard! Only he knows how to understand the signs of the clouds! Only he knows when fire from heaven will fall! Ganouk spoke of his clan. He spoke of Trao who knew how to command the clouds and trigger thunder. The gods send us their gifts! Let my brothers run to chase the fireballs! Page Six. It was common in these fierce times that men who did not know how to make fire had to steal it from lightning trees. And Trao made his people “Lightning Hunters”! And he does not hesitate to let them face the fire of the thundering mountains. When Ganouk can walk, he will lead Rahan to his clan. Rahan will teach him how to make a fire without risking entering the territory of shadows! Several days passed. The son of Crao hunted for himself and his companion. And Ganouk, amazed, witnessed the miracle of fire emerging from colliding flint. Trao will never believe Ganouk! He will accuse Rahan of being an evil demon! Page Seven. It was while returning from hunting one morning that Rahan saw the tracks of the saber-toothed tiger. The “Gorak” will devour Ganouk!! If Rahan does not arrive in time, Ganouk is lost! The tracks were heading in fact towards the clearing where his companion was still paralyzed. Rahan launched himself into the vines. The "Four-Hands", amazed, saw him flying from branch to branch almost as agilely as they. A moment later, surprise froze him. Surprise made of joy and worry. Courage Ganouk, courage! Joy, because his companion, in the face of danger, had found the strength to stand up! Worry because Ganouk, disarmed, was at the mercy of the big beast. Ra-ha-ha! Page Eight. Never had a fight been so short! Letting himself fall on the monster's spine, Rahan struck, and struck again! And the tiger collapsed, its long teeth curiously stuck in the ground. Rahan had Triumphed! His victory is less than that of Ganouk! Who conquered his wounds. Ganouk knew how to win! Ganouk is standing again! Tomorrow he will find his clan! At sunrise, the two men set off. They walked for a long time because Rahan had to support his still limping companion. Some caves finally appeared. A large fire illuminated one of them. It is in this cave that the clan preserves the sacred fire. Only Trao and mutilated hunters are allowed to go there. Page Nine. If Ganouk does not regain his former agility, this is where he will end his days! Rahan will oppose him! “Fire Hair” saved Ganouk on the “Thunder Mountain.” Then he healed his broken leg! Then he snatched him from the clutches of a “Gorak”! But Rahan also knows a wonderful secret! He knows how to create fire with these stones for which so many of our hunters left for the “Territory of Shadows.” The chief of the clan, emerging from the cave, looked angrily at the son of Crao. Ganouk uses the words of evil spirits! Trao alone, your leader, knows how to guide you or make fall the sky fire! Page Ten. Rahan knew how to stay calm. I am Rahan, the son of Crao! If your name resembles that of my father, you have none of his wisdom! Crao also knew how to see the approach of thunder in the clouds. He too could have sent his brothers to capture the “balls of fire” falling from the sky. But Crao preferred to create the fire without risking the lives of his people! The anger of the leader of the lightning hunters became rage. Let this demon be silent! May he perish in the cave of evil spirits! The circle of hunters immediately closed in on Rahan. Who was overcome by the most powerful and vigorous of them. Ha-ha-ha! You will die like all those who dared to challenge the authority of Trao! Page Eleven. Stunned, Rahan was thrown into one of the three caves. Ten hunters then blocked the entrance with a huge rock. Ganouk was pushed into the one where mutilated men tirelessly fueled a large fire. The son of Crao regained his senses. The gaps that let the light through were far too narrow to allow him to escape. And it would take ten men stronger than Rahan to push back this accursed rock! The Cave was vast. The ground was littered with stones, tree trunks and a few skeletons. They died of cold or starvation! And Trao reserves the same fate for Rahan! Page Twelve. But Rahan will not go to the “Territory of Shadows”! He, Oh! A swarm of bats burst from the depths of the cavern. Ra-ha-ha! Arming himself with a long branch, the son of Crao repelled their attack. The birds of darkness fear the light. Since Rahan cannot let daylight in, he will make a fire! The bats, in fact, took refuge in their dark lair as soon as the flames rose from the crackling branches. Clamors arose when the lightning hunters caught a glimpse, through the gaps, of the glow of this fire. Ganouk did not lie! The demon man knows how to make fire! Page Thirteen. The sky suddenly darkened and torrential rain fell. And for a moment, countless streams. Converged towards the cave where the sacred fire was kept. Schiff! The sheet of water spread there and, despite the efforts of its guardians, extinguished the flames. Trao shouted and raged, and pointed to the sky that crackled with lightning. It was the arrival of the demon-man that provoked the anger of the clouds! Lightning struck beyond the great river, setting fire to a clump of trees. Let my brothers go hunting! Let them bring back here the fire falling from the sky! The son of Crao saw all the able-bodied men rushing towards the river. This is a good time to escape from the clan! But how could Rahan push this rock? Page Fourteen. Rahan felt the prongs of his collar. That of “Tenacity”. The one of "Trust". And suddenly. Rahan was able to lift the stone that was crushing Ganouk with a branch! Why can he not push aside this rock with a stronger branch? Did the son of Crao invent, in these fierce times, the effective lever system? The fact is, that a moment later, he placed under the rock a long and solid trunk. Ten times, twenty times, with all his weight, he shook this trunk. And the enormous rock moved, and then moved again. Ra-ha-ha! Slowly pushed back, it finally left a passage through which Rahan could escape. Page Fifteen. When he slipped out of the cave, the rain had stopped falling. The plateau was deserted and no one could have prevented his escape. But he did not think for a moment about himself. Rahan will not leave the territory without having convinced Trao, even if he has to use force. In the nearby cave where the water had smothered the fire, the sorcerer threatened his men. For letting the fire die, you will be banished! As for you who brought back the demon man, you will die immediately! Trao, ranting at Ganouk, brandished his long spear. But he did not have. Time to project it. The son of Crao grasped him. If Trao does not drop his weapon, he will be the one to go into shadow territory! Page Sixteen. Dumbfounded, Trao obeyed. How had the captive escaped? How had he pushed back a rock that only ten vigorous hunters could move? Rahan will not steal your life! But he will make you suffer the fate you reserved for him! Rahan led the leader towards the cave of bats. Help Rahan move this rock! Ganouk and his companions saw him push Trao into it. We will liberate Trao when he admits that he abused you! A moment later, everyone heaved, once again blocking the entrance to the cave. How many men in your clan have died while hunting lightning? How many will return from this hunt where Trao sent them? Page Seventeen. Rahan is right! Ganouk has lived with him for days and he knows that fire can be born from “Stones-that-throw-stars”! When Trao admits this, our people will no longer have to defy death! The clan will live happily! As clamors rose from the side of the river, the son of Crao abandoned the mutilated men. Your brothers are coming back. Maybe they need Rahan! Leaping through the thickets, he arrived very quickly on the bank. Brandishing flaming branches the “Lightning Hunters” were passing back across the river. But they had to resist the impetuous current. And Rahan, helpless, saw the flood swallow up several of them. This is what it costs to go looking far away for fire falling from the sky! Page Eighteen. These men had led such a race, made such efforts. That the son of the Crao had to help them climb onto the bank. Exhausted, and panting, they did not even react when the large crocodile sprung from the reeds. Back, wood-skin! Seizing the flaming branch of a hunter, Rahan plunged it into the gaping maw of the saurian. Ra-ha-ha! The monster immediately disappeared into the tall tufts of rushes. Why are you here? Has Trao granted you his pardon? No! Rahan freed himself! And he locked Trao in the cave! Fearing the reaction of these men, Rahan clutched at his ivory knife. Page Nineteen. But he did not have to draw it. Three hunters died on the “Mountain-that-thunders”. As many were swallowed up by the river! We should have believed Ganouk who swore that you could make fire come from stones! Trao deceived us and we will kill him! The men, angry, threw their torches into the river. You will not kill Trao, because he did not know the secret of fire! “Those-who-walk-upright” have no right to kill those who do not know certain things! They have to convince them! The “Lightning Hunters” did not have to convince their leader. Freed by Ganouk and his companions, Trao brandished two flints. A fire lit up the cave. Trao wanted to know! As Ganouk and Rahan said, he struck these stones. Page Twenty. And the stones we throw the stars which set the branches on fire! Trao was crazy to send his brothers to look for fire beyond the hills! Trao is no longer worthy of remaining your leader! For what? If Rahan revealed to us the secret of fire, he also said. That ignorance is not a crime! Since your eyes have been opened to the truth, you will remain the leader! The clan demands it! If the son of Crao stayed away it was because he never intervened when "Those Who Walk Upright" decide their destiny. But he was happy to see Trao come to him, arms fraternally outstretched. He waited for the hug, while the clamors of those who would no longer die chasing the fire drowned out the thunder of a distant volcano. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Rahan. Episode Forty Four. The Miracle Herb. Rahan does not want to die! He does not want to join the territory of shadows! The son of Crao reproached himself once again for having ventured into this desert without end. He had not eaten anything in days and he was exhausted. Text by Roger Lecureux. Drawing by Andre Cheret. He crawled, rather found himself, on the burning sand towards the Oasis which trembled behind the heat mist. Crao the wise often said. There is water where trees and grass grow! And certain herbs can calm the hunter's hunger! Page Two. Great vultures circled in the sky as if to watch for the end of the man. You are hungry too “Crooked Beak”! But you will not fight over Rahan's flesh! He was getting closer to the oasis, whose patch of greenery was becoming more precise. Exhausted, he stopped for a moment. It was then that a vulture, believing him to be dead, swooped down on him. No Crooked Beak! Rahan is not yet prey for you! The son of Crao only had time to draw his knife. The ivory blade struck the great raptor, and. Ouch! His weapon slipped from his fingers! Page Three. Mortally wounded, the vulture flew away with the cutlass. He fluttered for a moment before falling like a stone on the oasis. Satisfy your hunger. Quench your thirst. Finally find refreshment. Recovering his knife. These thoughts gave energy back to Rahan. He finally reached the shade of the tall palm trees and saw the huts around the watering hole. Rahan hopes that “Those Who Walk Upright” will not be hostile to him! He also saw strange beasts, beasts like he had never seen before. If these "hollow backs" are fierce Rahan is lost! But although the camels remained peacefully grouped together, men rushed towards him. Who are you "Fire-hair"? Where do you come from? Page Four. I am Rahan, the son of Crao. Rahan has strayed into your territory. He is hungry and he is thirsty. Cries of joy suddenly arose from a man who was dragging the vulture. Look Traor! Look at what the good spirit sends us! The bird of prey was respectfully placed at the feet of Traor. Who appeared to be the leader of this clan. Traor will divide it between his brothers! The son of Crao tore his knife from the body of the bird. It was Rahan who killed “Crooked Beak”! He is entitled to his share! Rahan noticed that these men were not carrying any weapons. What is this magic item? If it kills the “Hooked Beaks”, Traor wants it! Page Five. The sun dipped behind the horizon. Rahan cannot give his cutlass to Traor. But he will teach the clan to make weapons for hunting. And suddenly the men, worried, rushed towards the palm trees which they climbed with agility. They fear the wild animals who will come to drink thought Rahan to himself. Shortly after, in fact, a few cheetahs appeared, heading towards the watering hole. One of them leapt at the throat of a camel. From their refuges the men witnessed what was for them a miracle. Rahan won't let you slit the throat of this harmless "Hollow-back"! Ra-ha-ha! The formidable ivory blade, with a single blow, had just opened the cheetah's flank! Page Six. Another feline was already rushing towards Crao's son. A vulgar "Spotted Skin" will not scare away Rahan. The man and the beast rolled to the ground, one striking with his cutlass, the other clawing. Ra-ha-ha! Rahan stood up once again victorious! But the arm with which he had protected his face was streaked with deep gashes. If “Fire-hair” does not die, the men of the clan will want him as leader! But. What? What is he doing? Avoiding the attack of another feline, the son of Crao dove into the waterhole. Page Seven. It was shallow but he knew that the wild animals, hating water, would not risk it! He remained there until the beasts had watered and abandoned the oasis to disperse in the desert. The amazed men descended from the palm trees. Rahan killed two monsters! Rahan is a god! No, brothers. Rahan is just a simple hunter! The proof: A god would not have been hurt like Rahan was! Gaano-the-Sorcerer knows the “Eat-and-heal” herbs. Follow me “Fire Hair”! Page Eight. Gaano led Rahan into a clearing lined with damp moss. Here and there grew tall tufts of grass. This herb is miraculous. It is not only the main food of our clan, but. It heals almost everyone's skin. I collected many seeds which I sowed in this humid clearing. After applying herbs to Rahan's wounds, Gaano made a bandage from a palm leaf. But these precious herbs will end up missing from the clan! Think again! The ones I just cut will have grown back in a few days. Thanks to these herbs, mine do not know hunger. The courage of the son of Crao had earned him the respect of the clan. Every evening when the monsters come prowling we take refuge in the trees. But you proved to us that we could fight them. Alas, we don't have what you call a knife. Rahan will teach you how to make weapons. Page Nine. Until daybreak, Rahan recounted his adventures. Traor alone showed bitterness. He feared that his authority would be called into question. "Firehair" cannot remain among us if he has not undergone the "Great Ordeal"! Custom demands it! The big Test? What is this custom? You will know immediately! Traor gave a little smirk. You will have to throw yourself from the top of this branch with a vine tied to your ankles. If the vine breaks, you plunge straight into the “Territory of Shadows”! If the vine resists and if your knees or your hips are dislocated, you will be unworthy to live among us! But you can refuse the test! Crao's son could have refused this terrible ordeal and left the oasis. But he had so much to teach this clan! Rahan accepts! Page Ten. A moment later, he climbed towards the high branch. Long vines hung from the branch, almost to the ground. Rahan gathered back to him the strongest of these. And tied it tightly around his ankles. His life depended in part on the strength of this knot. The silence became even heavier when he stood on the branch ready to dive into the void. Maybe Rahan will join you, Crao!! Traor was serious. Perhaps he regreted having imposed this formidable ordeal. But it was too late. Rahan had just let himself fall. Page Eleven. If the vine gave way, its skull would break open on the ground, which was approaching at breakneck speed. The vine resisted! But although he had flexed all his muscles, he had the sensation that they were tearing, that his legs were being torn off. But it was just a sensation. Kloch! He hovered above the ground for a moment. Ten fingers from the ground! The members of the clan rushed forward cheering this novel exploit. Page Twelve. Stunned by the terrible shock, Rahan saw a world turned upside down. The trees, the men. Traor-the leader. He still had the strength to recover and to cut the vine and free his ankles. The cries that rose up proved to him that he had definitely won the trust of the desert clan. A little later. “Fire-hair” can stay with us. He can replace Traor and command the clan! What are you doing? The son of Crao brandished his ivory knife. Do not move, Traor! Do not move! Page Thirteen. The knife whistled in the chief's ears, went to rest, a step behind him. Argh! Blok! Why did you want to kill Traor? Rahan did not want to kill Traor! But he killed the beast that would have sent him to the kingdom of shadows! Look there! The knife, aimed with remarkable skill, had cut the great black scorpion in two. “Fire-hair” saved Traor! Why did he do that? He could have become the leader of the clan! Rahan never thought of replacing Traor! He will leave as soon as he is healed. You are already healed, brother. The magic herb has triumphed over the malady! Page Fourteen. Gaano-the-sorcerer untied the bandage. Rahan's wounds were nothing more than fine cuts, already healed. The son of Crao had made a promise to the men of the clan. He held it in the days that followed. He taught them to make powerful bows. With these arrows your people will no longer have to fear the wild beasts, Traor. He also taught them how to cut flint to make strong spears. And he initiated them into the handling of these weapons. When wild animals threaten you, you will no longer have to take refuge in the trees. But never use these spears and arrows against "Those-who-walk-upright." Page Fifteen. A few days later, the sorcerer brought Rahan back to the clearing. The tufts of grass had already grown back. You have taught our clan a lot of things. How can we thank you? Rahan would be happy to introduce the miracle herb to other clans! Gaano will give you seeds! Lots of Seeds! Traor also wanted to make a present to the one he had been so suspicious of. He offered him his own camel. Goodbye brother! Our clan will not forget you! This time, the son of Crao did not have to turn his knife to know which horizon to head towards. He confided his destiny to the "Hollow-back" who trotted towards the rising sun. With each stride, the necklace of claws jumped on his neck. And the bag swollen with seeds bounced. These seeds from which the miracle herb was born. These seeds he would make known to “those who walk upright”, his brothers. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

A NATIONAL SURVEY. He gradually built up a picture of a people being systematically and thoroughly enslaved, a picture of a nation as helpless as a man completely paralyzed, its defenses destroyed, its communications entirely in the hands of the invaders. Everywhere he found boiling resentment, a fierce willingness to fight against the tyranny, but it was undirected, uncoordinated, and, in any modern sense, unarmed. Sporadic rebellion was as futile as the scurrying of ants whose hill has been violated. Pan-Asians could be killed, yes, and there were men willing to shoot on sight, even in the face of the certainty of their own deaths. But their hands were bound by the greater certainty of brutal multiple retaliation against their own kind. As with the Jews in Germany before the final blackout in Europe, bravery was not enough, for one act of violence against the tyrants would be paid for by other men, women, and children at unspeakable compound interest. SIXTH COLUMN. This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. Copyright (c) 1949 by Robert A. Heinlein. Reprinted from Astounding Science Fiction, (c) 1941 by Street and Smith Publications Inc. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. A Baen Book Baen Publishing Enterprises PO. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 ISBN: 0-671-72026-0 Cover art by John Melo First Baen printing, January 1988 Fourth Baen printing, July 1995 Distributed by SIMON & SCHUSTER 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Printed in the United States of America For John S. Arvvine CHAPTER ONE. "What the hell goes on here?" Whitey Ardmore demanded. They ignored his remark as they had ignored his arrival. The man at the television receiver said, "Shut up. We're listening," and turned up the volume. The announcer's voice blared out: “Washington destroyed completely before the government could escape. With Manhattan in ruins, that leaves no,” there was a click as the receiver was turned off. "That's that," said the man near it. "The United States is washed up." Then he added, "Anybody got a cigarette?" Getting no answer, he pushed his way out of the small circle gathered around the receiver and felt through the pockets of a dozen figures collapsed by a table. It was not too easy, as rigor mortis had set in, but he finally located a half-empty pack, from which he removed a cigarette and lighted it. "Somebody answer me!" commanded Ardmore. "What's happened here?" The man with the cigarette looked him over for the first time. "Who are you?" "Ardmore, major, intelligence. Who are you?" "Calhoun, colonel in research." "Very well, Colonel-I have an urgent message for your commanding officer. Will you please have someone tell him that I am here and see to it that I am taken to him?" He spoke with poorly controlled exasperation. Calhoun shook his head. "Can't do it. He's dead." He seemed to derive some sort of twisted pleasure from the announcement. "Huh?" "That's right-dead. They're all dead, all the rest. You see before you, my dear Major, all that are left of the personnel of the Citadel-perhaps I should say of the emergency research laboratory, department of defense, this being in the nature of an official report." He smiled with half his face, while his eye took in the handful of living men in the room. Ardmore took a moment to comprehend the statement, then inquired, "The Pan-Asians?" "No, No, not the Pan-Asians. So far as I know, the enemy does not suspect the existence of the Citadel. No, we did it ourselves-an experiment that worked too well. Doctor Ledbetter was engaged in research in an attempt to discover a means of.” "Never mind that, Colonel. Whom does command revert to? I've got to carry out my orders. " "Command? Military command? Good Lord, man, we haven't had time to think about that yet. Wait a moment." His eye roved around the room, counting noses. "Hum, I'm senior to everyone here-and they are all here. I suppose that makes me commanding officer." "No line officers present?" "No, all special commissions. That leaves me it. Go ahead with your report." Ardmore looked about at the faces of the half a dozen men in the room. They were following the conversation with apathetic interest. Ardmore worried to himself before replying over how to phrase the message. The situation had changed; perhaps he should not deliver it at all. "I was ordered," he said, picking his words, "to inform your general that he was released from superior command. He was to operate independently and prosecute the war against the invader according to his own judgment. You see," he went on, "when I left Washington twelve hours ago we knew they had us. This concentration of brain power in the Citadel was about the only remaining possible military asset." Calhoun nodded. "I see. A defunct government sends orders to a defunct laboratory. Zero plus zero equals zero. It's all very funny if one only knew when to laugh." "Colonel!" "Yes?" "They are your orders now. What do you propose to do with them?" "Do with them? What the hell is there to do? Six men against four hundred million. I suppose," he added "to make everything nice and tidy for the military mind I should write out a discharge from the United States army for everybody left and kiss 'em good-by. I don't know where that leaves meharakiri, perhaps. Maybe you don't get it. This is all the United States there is left. And it's left because the Pan-Asians haven't found it." Ardmore wet his lips. "Apparently I did not clearly convey the order. The order was to take charge, and prosecute the war!" "With what?" He measured Calhoun before answering. "It is not actually your responsibility. Under the changed situation, in accordance with the articles of war, as senior line officer present I am assuming command of this detachment of the United States army!" It hung in the balance for twenty heartbeats. At last Calhoun stood up and attempted to square his stooped shoulders. "You are perfectly correct, sir. What are your orders?" "What are your orders?" he asked himself. Think fast, Ardmore, you big Junk, you've shot off your face-now where are you? Calhoun was right when he asked "With what?” yet he could not stand still and see the remnant of military organization fall to pieces. You've got to tell 'em something, and it's got to be good; at least good enough to hold 'em until you think of something better. Stall, brother, stall! "I think we had best examine the new situation here, first. Colonel, will you oblige me by having the remaining personnel gather around-say around that big table? That will be convenient." "Certainly, sir." The others, having heard the order, moved toward the table. "Graham! And you, what's your name? Thomas, isn't it? You two remove Captain MacAllister's body to some other place. Put him in the corridor for now." The commotion of getting one of the ubiquitous corpses out of the way and getting the living settled around a table broke the air of unreality and brought things into focus. Ardmore felt more self-confidence when he turned again to Calhoun. "You had better introduce me to those here present. I want to know what they do and something about them, as well as their names." It was a corporal's guard, a forlorn remnant. He had expected to find, hidden here safely and secretly away under an unmarked spot in the Rocky Mountains, the most magnificent aggregation of research brains ever gathered together for one purpose. Even in the face of complete military disaster to the regular forces of the United States, there remained a reasonable outside chance that two hundred-odd keen scientific brains, secreted in a hide-away whose very existence was unsuspected by the enemy and equipped with every modern facility for research, might conceivably perfect and operate some weapon that would eventually drive out the Pan-Asians. For that purpose he had been sent to tell the commanding general that he was on his own, no longer responsible to higher authority. But what could half a dozen men do in any case? For it was a scant half a dozen. There was Doctor Lowell Calhoun, mathematician, jerked out of university life by the exigencies of war and called a colonel. There was Doctor Randall Brooks, biologist and bio-chemist, with a special commission of major. Ardmore liked his looks; he was quiet and mild, but gave the impression of an untroubled strength of character superior to that of a more extroverted man-he would do, and his advice would be useful. Ardmore mentally dubbed Robert Wilkie a "punk kid." He was young and looked younger, having an overgrown collie-dog clumsiness, and hair that would not stay in place. His field, it developed, was radiation, and the attendant branches of physics too esoteric for a layman to understand. Ardmore had not the slightest way of judging whether or not he was any good in his specialty. He might be a genius, but his appearance did not encourage the idea. No other scientist remained. There were three enlisted men: Herman Scheer, technical sergeant. He had been a mechanic, a die maker, a tool maker. When the army picked him up he had been making precision instruments for the laboratories of the Edison Trust. His brown, square hands and lean fingers backed up his account of himself. His lined, set face and heavy jaw muscles made Ardmore judge him to be a good man to have at his back in a tight place. He would do. There remained Edward Graham, private first-class, specialist rating officers' cook. Total war had turned him from his profession as an artist and interior decorator to his one other talent, cooking. Ardmore was unable to see how he could fit into the job, except, of course, that somebody had to cook. The last man was Graham's helper, Jeff Thomas, private-background: none. "He wandered in here one day," explained Calhoun. "We had to enlist him and keep him here to protect the secret of the place." Acquainting Ardmore with the individuals of his "command" had used up several minutes during which he had thought furiously with half his mind about what he should say next. He knew what he had to accomplish, some sort of a shot in the arm that would restore the morale of this badly demoralized group, some of the old hokum that men live by. He believed in hokum, being a publicity man by trade and an army man only by necessity. That brought to mind another worry-should he let them know that he was no more a professional than they, even though he happened to hold a line commission? No, that would not be very bright; they needed just now to regard him with the faith that the layman usually holds for the professional. Thomas was the end of the list: Calhoun had stopped talking. Here's your chance, son, better not muff it! Then he had it fortunately it would take only a short build-up. "It will be necessary for us to continue our task assignment independently for an indefinite period. I want to remind you that we derive our obligations not from our superior officers who were killed in Washington, but from the people of the United States, through their Constitution. That Constitution is neither captured nor destroyed-it cannot, for it is not a piece of paper, but the joint contract of the American people. Only the American people can release us from it." Was he right? He was no lawyer, and he didn't know-but he did know that they needed to believe it. He turned to Calhoun. "Colonel Calhoun, will you now swear me in as commanding officer of this detachment of the United States army?" Then he added, as an apparent afterthought, "I think it would be well for us all to renew our oaths at the same time." It was a chanted chorus that echoed through the nearly empty room." I do solemnly swear-to carry out the duties of my office-and to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States-against all of its enemies, domestic and foreign!' "So help me God." "’So help me God!"' Ardmore was surprised to discover that the show he had staged brought tears to his own cheeks. Then he noticed them in Calhoun's eyes. Maybe there was more to it than he had thought. "Colonel Calhoun, you, of course, become director of research. You are second in command, but I will carry out the duties of executive officer myself in order to leave you free to pursue your scientific inquiries. Major Brooks and Captain Wilkie are assigned to you. Scheer!" "Yes, sir!" "You work for Colonel Calhoun. If he does not need all of your service, I will assign additional duties later. Graham!" "Yes, sir." "You will continue your present duties. You are also mess sergeant, mess officer, supply officer-in fact, you are the whole commissary department. Bring me a report later today estimating the number of rations available and the condition of perishables. Thomas works for you, but is subject to call by any member of the scientific staff any time they want him. That may delay meals, but it can't be helped." "Yes, sir." "You and I and Thomas will perform all duties among us that do not directly apply to research, and will assist the scientists in any way and at any time that they need us. That specifically includes myself, Colonel," he emphasized, turning to Calhoun, "if another pair of untrained hands is useful at any point, you are directed to call on me." "Very well, Major." "Graham, you and Thomas will have to clear out the bodies around the place before they get too high-say by tomorrow night. Put them in an unused room and hermetically seal it. Scheer will show you how." He glanced at his wrist. "Two o'clock. When did you have lunch?" "There, uh, was none today." "Very well. Graham, serve coffee and sandwiches here in twenty minutes." "Very good, sir. Come along, Jeff." "Coming." As they left, Ardmore turned back to Calhoun. "In the meantime, Colonel, let's go to the laboratory where the catastrophe originated. I still want to find out what happened here!" The other two scientists and Scheer hesitated; he picked them up with a nod, and the little party filed out. "You say nothing in particular happened, no explosion, no gas-yet they died?" They were standing around Doctor Ledbetter's last set-up. The martyred scientist's body still lay where it had fallen, a helpless, disorganized heap. Ardmore took his eyes from it and tried to make out the meaning of the setup apparatus. It looked simple, but called no familiar picture to mind. "No, nothing but a little blue flame that persisted momentarily. Ledbetter had just closed this switch." Calhoun pointed to it without touching it. It was open now, a self-opening, spring-loaded type. "I felt suddenly dizzy. When my head cleared, I saw that Ledbetter had fallen and went to him, but there was nothing that I could do for him. He was dead-without a mark on him." "It knocked me out," offered Wilkie. "I might not have made it if Scheer hadn't given me artificial respiration." "You were here?" Ardmore asked. "No, I was in the radiation laboratory over at the other end of the plant. It killed my chief." Ardmore frowned and pulled a chair out from the wall. As he started to sit down there was a scurrying sound, a small gray shape flashed across the floor and out the open door. A rat, he thought, and dismissed the matter. But Doctor Brooks stared at it in amazement, and ran out the door himself, calling out behind him: "Wait a minute-right back!" "I wonder what's gotten into him?" Ardmore inquired of no one in particular. The thought flashed through his mind that the strain of events had finally been too much for the mild little biologist. They had less than a minute to wait in order to find out. Brooks returned as precipitately as he had left. The exertion caused him to pant and interfered with articulation. "Major Ardmore! Doctor Calhoun! Gentlemen!" He paused and caught his breath. "My white mice are alive!" "Huh? What of it?" "Don't you see? It's an important datum, perhaps a crucially important datum. None of the animals in the biological laboratory was hurt! Don't you see?" "Yes, but, Oh! Perhaps I do-the rat was alive and your mice weren't killed, yet men were killed all around them." "Of course! Of course!" Brooks beamed at Ardmore. "Hum. An action that kills a couple of hundred men through rock walls and metal, with no fuss and no excitement, yet passes by mice and the like. I've never before heard of anything that would kill a man but not a mouse." He nodded toward the apparatus. "It looks as if we had big medicine in that little gadget, Calhoun." "So it does," Calhoun agreed, "if we can learn to control it." "Any doubt in your mind?" "Well-we don't know why it killed, and we don't know why it spared six of us, and we don't know why it doesn't harm animals." "So. Well, that seems to be the problem." He stared again at the simple appearing enigma. "Doctor, I don't like to interfere with your work right from scratch, but I would rather you did not close that switch without notifying me in advance." His gaze dropped to Ledbetter's still figure and hurriedly shifted. Over the coffee and sandwiches he pried further into the situation. "Then no one really knows what Ledbetter was up to?" "You could put it that way," agreed Calhoun. "I helped him with the mathematical considerations, but he was a genius and somewhat impatient with lesser minds. If Einstein were alive, they might have talked as equals, but with the rest of us he discussed only the portions he wanted assistance on, or details he wished to turn over to assistants." "Then you don't know what he was getting at?" "Well, yes and no, are you familiar with general field theory?" "Criminy, no!" "Weld-that makes it rather hard to talk, Major Ardmore. Doctor Ledbetter was investigating the theoretically possible additional spectra.” "Additional spectra?" "Yes. You see, most of the progress in physics in the last century and a half has been in dealing with the electromagnetic spectrum, light, radio, X-ray.” "Yes, yes, I know that, but how about these additional spectra?" "That's what I am trying to tell you," answered Calhoun with a slight note of annoyance. "General field theory predicts the possibility of at least three more entire spectra. You see, there are three types of energy fields known to exist in space: electric, magnetic, and gravitic or gravitational. Light, X-rays, all such radiations, are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Theory indicates the possibility of analogous spectra between magnetic and gravitic, between electric and gravitic, and finally, a three-phase type between electric-magnetio-gravitic fields. Each type would constitute a complete new spectrum, a total of three new fields of learning. "If there are such, they would presumably have properties quite as remarkable as the electromagnetic spectrum and quite different. But we have no instruments with which to detect such spectra, nor do we even know that such spectra exist." "You know," commented Ardmore, frowning a little, "I'm just a layman in these matters and don't wish to set my opinion up against yours, but this seems like a search for the little man who wasn't there. I had supposed that this laboratory was engaged in the single purpose of finding a military weapon to combat the vortex beams and A-bomb rockets of the Pan-Asians. I am a bit surprised to find the man whom you seem to regard as having been your ace researcher engaged in an attempt to discover things that he was not sure existed and whose properties were totally unknown. It doesn't seem reasonable. " Calhoun did not answer; he simply looked supercilious and smiled irritatingly. Ardmore felt put in the wrong and was conscious of a warm flush spreading up toward his face. "Yes, yes," he said hastily, "I know I'm wrong-whatever it was that Ledbetter found, it killed a couple of hundred men. Therefore it is a potential military weapon-but wasn't he just mugging around in the dark?" "Not entirely," Calhoun replied, with a words-of-one-syllable air. "The very theoretical considerations that predict additional spectra allow of some reasonable probability as to the general nature of their properties. I know that Ledbetter had originally been engaged in a search for a means of setting up tractor and pressor beams-that would be in the magneto-gravitic spectrum-but the last couple of weeks he appeared to be in a condition of intense excitement and radically changed the direction of his experimentation. He was close-mouthed; I got no more than a few hints from the transformations and developments which he had me perform for him. However,” Calhoun drew a bulky loose-leaf notebook from an inner pocket, “he kept complete notes of his experiments. We should be able to follow his work and perhaps infer his hypotheses.” Young Wilkie, who was seated beside Calhoun, bent toward him. "Where did you find these, doctor?" he asked excitedly. "On a bench in his laboratory. If you had looked you would have seen them." Wilkie ignored the thrust; he was already eating up the symbols set down in the opened book. "But that is a radiation formula.” "Of course it is-d'you think I'm a fool?" "But it's all wrong!" "It may be from your standpoint; you may be sure that it was not to Doctor Ledbetter." They branched off into argument that was totally meaningless to Ardmore; after some minutes he took advantage of a pause to say, "Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Just a moment. I can see that I am simply keeping you from your work; I've learned all that I can just now. As I understand it, your immediate task is to catch up with Doctor Ledbetter and to discover what it is that his apparatus does-without killing yourselves in the process. Is that right?" "I would say that is a fair statement," Calhoun agreed cautiously. "Very well, then-carry on, and keep me advised at your convenience." He got up; the others followed his example. "Oh just one more thing." "Yes?" "I happened to think of something else. I don't know whether it is important or not, but it came to mind because of the importance that Doctor Brooks attached to the matter of the rats and mice." He ticked points off on his fingers. "Many men were killed; Doctor Wilkie was knocked out and very nearly died; Doctor Calhoun experienced only a momentary discomfort; the rest of those who lived apparently didn't suffer any effects of any sort weren't aware that anything had happened except that their companions mysteriously died. Now, isn't that data of some sort?" He awaited a reply anxiously, being subconsciously afraid that the scientists would consider his remarks silly, or obvious. Calhoun started to reply, but Doctor Brooks cut in ahead of him. "Of course, it is! Now why didn't I think of that? Dear me, I must be confused today. That establishes a gradient, an ordered relationship in the effect of the unknown action." He stopped and thought, then went on almost at once. "I really must have your permission, Major, to examine the cadavers of our late colleagues, then by examining for differences between them and those alive, especially those hard hit by the unknown action.” He broke off short and eyed Wilkie speculatively. "No, you don't!" protested Wilkie. "You won't make a guinea pig out of me. Not while I know it!" Ardmore was unable to tell whether the man's apprehension was real or facetious. He cut it short. "The details will have to be up to you gentlemen. But remember-no chances to your lives without notifying me." "You hear that, Brooksie?" Wilkie persisted. Ardmore went to bed that night from sheer sense of duty, not because he felt ready to sleep. His immediate job was accomplished; he had picked up the pieces of the organization known as the Citadel and had thrown it together into some sort of a going concern-whether or not it was going any place he was too tired to judge, but at least it was going. He had given them a pattern to live by, and, by assuming leadership and responsibility, had enabled them to unload their basic worries on him and thereby acquire some measure of emotional security. That should keep them from going crazy in a world which had gone crazy. What would it be like, this crazy new world-a world in which the superiority of western culture was not a casually accepted Of course,' a world in which the Stars and Stripes did not fly, along with the pigeons, over every public building? Which brought to mind a new worry: if he was to maintain any pretense of military purpose, he would have to have some sort of a service of information. He had been too busy in getting them all back to work to think about it, but he would have to think about it tomorrow, he told himself, then continued to worry about it. An intelligence service was as important as a new secret weapon-more important; no matter how fantastic and powerful a weapon might be developed from Doctor Ledbetter's researches, it would be no help until they knew just where and how to use it against the enemy's weak points. A ridiculously inadequate military intelligence had been the prime characteristic of the United States as a power all through its history. The most powerful nation the globe had ever seen, but it had stumbled into wars like a blind giant. Take this present mess: the atom bombs of Pan-Asia weren't any more powerful than our own but we had been caught flat-footed and had never gotten to use a one. We had had how many stock-piled? A thousand, he had heard. Ardmore didn't know, but certainly the Pan-Asians had known, just how many, just where they were. Military intelligence had won the war for them, not secret weapons. Not that the secret weapons of the Pan-Asians were anything to sneer at particularly when it was all too evident that they really were "secret." Our own so-called intelligence services had fallen down on the job. O K, Whitey Ardmore, it's all yours now! You can build any sort of an intelligence service your heart desires-using three near-sighted laboratory scientists, an elderly master sergeant, two kitchen privates, and the bright boy in person. So you are good at criticizing. ”If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" He got up, wished passionately for just one dose of barbiturate to give him a night's sleep, drank a glass of hot water instead, and went back to bed. Suppose they did dig up a really powerful and new weapon? That gadget of Ledbetter's certainly looked good, if they could learn to handle it but what then? One man couldn't run a battle cruiser-he couldn't even get it off the ground-and six men couldn't whip an empire, not even with seven league boots and a death ray. What was that old crack of Archimedes? "If I had a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to rest it, I could move the Earth." How about the fulcrum? No weapon was a weapon without an army to use it. He dropped into a light sleep and dreamed that he was flopping around on the end of the longest lever conceivable, a useless lever, for it rested on nothing. Part of the time he was Archimedes, and part of the time Archimedes stood beside him, jeering and leering at him with a strongly Asiatic countenance. CHAPTER TWO. Ardmore was too busy for the next couple of weeks to worry much about anything but the job at hand. The underlying postulate of their existence pattern-that they were, in fact, a military organization which must someday render an accounting to civil authority-required that he should comply with, or closely simulate compliance with, the regulations concerning paperwork, reports, records, pay accounts, inventories, and the like. In his heart he felt it to be waste motion, senseless, yet as a publicity man, he was enough of a jackleg psychologist to realize intuitively that man is a creature that lives by symbols. At the moment these symbols of government were all important. So he dug into the regulation manual of the deceased paymaster and carefully closed out the accounts of the dead, noting in each case the amounts due each man's dependents "in lawful money of the United States," even while wondering despondently if that neat phrase would ever mean anything again. But he did it, and he assigned minor administrative jobs to each of the others in order that they might realize indirectly that the customs were being maintained. It was too much clerical work for one man to keep up. He discovered that Jeff Thomas, the cook's helper, could use a typewriter with facility and had a fair head for figures. He impressed him into the job. It threw more work on Graham, who complained, but that was good for him, he thought-a dog needs fleas. He wanted every member of his command to go to bed tired every night. Thomas served another purpose. Ardmore's high strung disposition required someone to talk to. Thomas turned out to be intelligent and passively sympathetic, and he found himself speaking with more and more freedom to the man. It was not in character for the commanding officer to confide in a private, but he felt instinctively that Thomas would not abuse his trust-and he needed nervous release. Calhoun brought up the matter which forced Ardmore to drop his preoccupation with routine and turn his attention to more difficult matters. Calhoun had called to ask permission to activate Ledbetter's apparatus, as modified to suit their current hypotheses, but he added another and embarrassing question. "Major Ardmore, can you give me some idea as to how you intend to make use of the Ledbetter effect?" Ardmore did not know; he answered with another question. "Are you near enough to results to make that question urgent? If so, can you give me some idea of what you have discovered so far?" "That will be difficult," Calhoun replied in an academic and faintly patronizing manner, "since I am constrained not to speak in the mathematical language which, of necessity, is the only way of expressing such things.” "Now, Colonel, please," Ardmore broke in, irritated more than he would admit to himself and inhibited by the presence of Private Thomas, "you can kill a man with it or you can't and you can control whom you kill or you can't." "That's an oversimplification," Calhoun argued. "However, we think that the new set-up will be directional in its effect. Doctor Brook's investigations caused him to hypothecate an asymmetrical relationship between the action and organic life it is applied to, such that an inherent characteristic of the life form determines the effect of the action as well as the inherent characteristics of the action itself. That is to say, the effect is a function of the total factors of the process, including the life form involved, as well as the original action.” "Easy, easy, Colonel. What does that mean as a weapon?" "It means that you could turn it on two men and decide which one it is to kill-with proper controls," Calhoun answered testily. "At least, we think so. Wilkie has volunteered to act as a control on it, with mice as the object." Ardmore granted permission for the experiment to take place, subject to precautions and restrictions. When Calhoun had gone, his mind returned at once to the problem of what he was going to do with the weapon-if any. And that required data that he did not have. Damn it!-he had to have a service of information; he had to know what was going on outside. The scientists were out, of course. And Scheer, for the scientific staff needed his skill. Graham? No, Graham was a good cook, but nervous and irritable, emotionally not stable, the very last man to pick for a piece of dangerous espionage. It left only himself. He was trained for such things; he would have to go. "But you can't do that, sir," Thomas reminded him. "Huh? What's that?" He had been unconsciously expressing his thoughts aloud, a habit he had gotten into when he was alone, or with Thomas only. The man's manner encouraged using him for a sounding board. "You can't leave your command, sir. Not only is it against regulations, but, if you will let me express an opinion, everything you have done so far will fall to pieces." "Why should it? I'll be back in a few days." "Well, sir, maybe it would hold together for a few days-though I'm not sure of that. Who would be in charge in your absence?" "Colonel Calhoun-of course." "Of course." Thomas expressed by raised eyebrows and ready agreement an opinion which military courtesy did not permit him to say aloud. Ardmore knew that Thomas was right. Outside of his specialty, Calhoun was a bad-tempered, supercilious, conceited old fool, in Ardmore's opinion. Ardmore had had to intercede already to patch up trouble which Calhoun's arrogance had caused. Scheer worked for Calhoun only because Ardmore had talked with him, calmed him down, and worked on his strong sense of duty. The situation reminded him of the time when he had worked as press agent for a famous and successful female evangelist. He had signed on as director of public relations, but he had spent two-thirds of his time straightening out the messes caused by the vicious temper of the holy harridan. "But you have no way of being sure that you will be back in a few days," Thomas persisted. "This is a very dangerous assignment; if you get killed on it, there is no one here who can take over your job." "Oh, now, that's not true, Thomas. No man is irreplaceable." "This is no time for false modesty, sir. That may be true in general, but you know that it is not true in this case. There is a strictly limited number to draw from, and you are the only one from whom all of us will take direction. In particular, you are the only one from whom Doctor Calhoun will take direction. That is because you know how to handle him. None of the others would be able to, nor would he be able to handle them." "That's a pretty strong statement, Thomas." Thomas said nothing. At length Ardmore went on. "All right, all right suppose you are right. I've got to have military information. How am I going to get it if I don't go myself?" Thomas was a little slow in replying. Finally, he said quietly, "I could try it." "You?" Ardmore looked him over and wondered why he had not considered Thomas. Perhaps because there was nothing about the man to suggest his potential ability to handle such a job-that, combined with the fact that he was a private, and one did not assign privates to jobs requiring dangerous independent action. Yet perhaps "Have you ever done any work of that sort?" "No, but my experience may be specially adapted in a way to such work." "Oh, yes! Scheer told me something about you. You were a tramp, weren't you, before the army caught up with you?" "Not a tramp," Thomas corrected gently, "a hobo." "Sorry-what's the distinction?" "A tramp is a bum, a parasite, a man that won't work. A hobo is an itinerant laborer who prefers casual freedom to security. He works for his living, but he won't be tied down to one environment." "Oh, I see. Hum, yes, and I begin to see why you might be especially well adapted to an intelligence job. I suppose it must require a good deal of adaptability and resourcefulness to stay alive as a hobo. But wait a minute, Thomas-I guess I've more or less taken you for granted; I need to know a great deal more about you, if you are to be entrusted with this job. You know, you don't act like a hobo." "How does a hobo act?" "Eh? Oh, well, skip it. But tell me something about your background. How did you happen to take up hoboing?" Ardmore realized that he had, for the first time, pierced the man's natural reticence. Thomas fumbled for an answer, finally replying, "I suppose it was that I did not like being a lawyer." "What?" "Yes. You see, it was like this: I went from the law into social administration. In the course of my work I got an idea that I wanted to write a thesis on migratory labor and decided that in order to understand the subject I would have to experience the conditions under which such people lived." "I see. And it was while you were doing your laboratory work, as it were, that the army snagged you. " "Oh, no," Thomas corrected him. "I've been on the road more than ten years. I never went back. You see, I found I liked being a hobo." The details were rapidly arranged. Thomas wanted nothing in the way of equipment but the clothes he had been wearing when he had stumbled into the Citadel. Ardmore had suggested a bedding roll, but Thomas would have none of it. "It would not be in character," he explained. "I was never a bindlestiff. Bindlestiffs are dirty, and a self-respecting hobo doesn't associate with them. All I want is a good meal in my belly and a small amount of money on my person." Ardmore's instructions to him were very general. "Almost anything you hear or see will be data for me," he told him. "Cover as much territory as you can, and try to be back here within a week. If you are gone much longer than that, I will assume that you are dead or imprisoned, and will have to try some other plan. "Keep your eyes open for some means by which we can establish a permanent service of information. I can't suggest what it is you are to look for in that connection, but keep it in mind. Now as to details: anything and everything about the Pan-Asians, how they are armed, how they police occupied territory, where they have set up headquarters, particularly their continental headquarters, and, if you can make any sort of estimate, how many of them there are and how they're distributed. That would keep you busy for a year, at least; just the same, be back in a week. " Ardmore showed Thomas how to operate one of the outer doors of the Citadel; two bars of "Yankee Doodle," breaking off short, and a door appeared in what seemed to be a wall of country rock-simple, and yet foreign to the Asiatic mind. Then he shook hands with him and wished him good luck. Ardmore found that Thomas had still one mare surprise for him; when he shook hands, he did so with the grip of the Dekes, Ardmore's own fraternity! Ardmore stood staring at the closed portal, busy arranging his preconceptions. When he turned around, Calhoun was behind him. He felt somewhat as if he had been caught stealing jam. "Oh, hello, Doctor," he said quickly. "How do you do, Major," Calhoun replied with deliberation. "May I inquire as to what is going on?" "Certainly. I've sent Lieutenant Thomas out to reconnoiter. " "Lieutenant?" "Brevet lieutenant. I was forced to use him for work fax beyond his rank; I found it expedient to assign him the rank and pay of his new duties." Calhoun pursued that point no further, but answered with another, in the same faintly critical tone of voice. "I suppose you realize that it jeopardizes all of us to send anyone outside? I am a little surprised that you should act in such a matter without consulting with others." "I am sorry you feel that way about it, Colonel," Ardmore replied, in a conscious attempt to conciliate the older man, "but I am required to make the final decision in any case, and it is of prime importance to our task that nothing be permitted to distract your attention from your all-important job of research. Have you completed your experiment?" he went on quickly. "Yes." "Well?" "The results were positive. The mice died." "How about Wilkie?" "Oh, Wilkie was unhurt, naturally. That is in accordance with my predictions." Jefferson Thomas. Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude, University of California, Bachelor of Law, Harvard Law School, professional hobo, private and cook's helper, and now a brevet lieutenant, intelligence, United States army, spent his first night outside shivering on pine needles where dark had overtaken him. Early the next morning he located a ranch house. They fed him, but they were anxious for him to move along. "You never can tell when one of those heathens is going to come snooping around," apologized his host, "and I can't afford to be arrested for harboring refugees. I got the wife and kids to think about." But he followed Thomas out to the road, still talking, his natural garrulity prevailing over his caution. He seemed to take a grim pleasure in bewailing the catastrophe. "God knows what I'm raising those kids up to. Some nights it seems like the only reasonable thing to do is to put them all out of their sorrow. But Jessie-that's my wife-says it's a scandal and a sin to talk that way, that the Lord will take care of things all in His own good time. Maybe so-but I know it's no favor to a child to raise it up to be bossed around and lorded over by those monkeys." He spat. "It's not American." "What's this about penalties for harboring refugees?" The rancher stared at him. "Where've you been, friend?" "Up in the hills. I haven't laid eyes on one of the so-and-so's yet." "You will. But then you haven't got a number, have you? You'd better get one. No, that won't do you any good; you'd just land in a labor camp if you tried to get one." "Number? "Registration number. Like this." He pulled a glassine-covered card out of his pocket and displayed it. It had axed to it a poor but recognizable picture of the rancher, his fingerprints, and pertinent data as to his occupation, marital status, address, et-cetera. There was a long, hyphenated number running across the top. The rancher indicated it with a work-stained finger. "That first part is my number. It means I have permission from the emperor to stay alive and enjoy the air and sunshine," he added bitterly. "The second part is my serial classification. It tells where I live and what I do. If I want to cross the county line, I have to have that changed. If I want to go to any other town than the one I'm assigned to do my marketing in, I've got to get a day's special permit. Now I ask you-is that any way for a man to live?" "Not for me," agreed Thomas. "Well, I guess I had better be on my way before I get you in trouble. Thanks for the breakfast." "Don't mention it. It's a pleasure to do a favor for a fellow American these days." He started off down the road at once, not wishing the kindly rancher to see how thoroughly he had been moved by the picture of his degradation. The implications of that registration card had shaken his free soul in a fashion that the simple, intellectual knowledge of the defeat of the United States had been unable to do. He moved slowly for the first two or three days, avoiding the towns until he had gathered sufficient knowledge of the enforced new customs to be able to conduct himself without arousing suspicion. It was urgently desirable that he be able to enter at least one big city in order to snoop around, read the bulletin boards, and find a chance to talk with persons whose occupations permitted them to travel. From a standpoint of personal safety he was quite willing to chance it without an identification card but he remembered clearly a repeated injunction of Ardmore's "Your paramount duty is to returns Don't go making a hero of yourself. Don't take any chance you can avoid and come back!" Cities would have to wait. Thomas skirted around towns at night, avoiding patrols as he used to avoid railroad cops. The second night out he found the first of his objectives, a hobos' jungle. It was just where he had expected to find it, from his recollection of previous trips through the territory. Nevertheless, he almost missed it, for the inevitable fire was concealed by a jury-rigged oil-can stove, and shielded from chance observation. He slipped into the circle and sat down without comment, as custom required, and waited for them to look him over. Presently a voice said plaintively: "It's Gentleman Jeff. Cripes, Jeff, you gave me a turn. I thought you was a flat face. Whatcha been doin' with yourself, Jeff?" "Oh, one thing and another. On the dodge." "Who isn't these days?" the voice returned. "Everywhere you try, those slant-eyes.” He broke into a string of attributions concerning the progenitors and personal habits of the Pan-Asians about which he could not possibly have had positive knowledge. "Stow it, Moe," another voice commanded. "Tell us the news, Jeff." "Sorry," Thomas refused affably, "but I've been up in the hills, kinda keeping out of the army and doing a little fishing." "You should have stayed there. Things are bad everywhere. Nobody dares give an unregistered man a day's work and it takes everything you've got just to keep out of the labor camps. It makes the big Red hunt look like a picnic." "Tell me about the labor camps," Thomas suggested. "I might get hungry enough, to try one for a while." "You don't know. Nobody could get that hungry." The voice paused, as if the owner were turning the unpleasant subject over in his mind. "Did you know the Seattle Kid?" "Seem to recall. Little squint-eyed guy, handy with his hands?" "That's him. Well, he was in one, maybe a week, and got out. Couldn't tell us how; his mind was gone. I saw him the night he died. His body was a mass of sores, blood poisoning, I guess." He paused then added reflectively: "The smell was pretty bad." Thomas wanted to drop the subject but he needed to know more. "Who gets sent to these camps?" "Any man that isn't already working at an approved job. Boys from fourteen on up. All that was left alive of the army after we folded up. Anybody that's caught without a registration card." "That ain't the half of it," added Moe. "You should see what they do with unassigned women. Why, a woman was telling me just the other day-a nice old gel; gimme a handout. She was telling me about her niece used to be a schoolteacher, and the flat faces don't want any American schools or teachers. When they registered her they.” "Shut up, Moe. You talk too much." It was disconnected, fragmentary, the more so as he was rarely able to ask direct questions concerning the things he really wanted to know. Nevertheless he gradually built up a picture of a people being systematically and thoroughly enslaved, a picture of a nation as helpless as a man completely paralyzed, its defenses destroyed, its communications entirely in the hands of the invaders. Everywhere he found boiling resentment, a fierce willingness to fight against the tyranny, but it was undirected, uncoordinated, and, in any modern sense, unarmed. Sporadic rebellion was as futile as the scurrying of ants whose hill has been violated. Pan-Asians could be killed, yes, and there were men willing to shoot on sight, even in the face of the certainty of their own deaths. But their hands were bound by the greater certainty of brutal multiple retaliation against their own kind. As with the Jews in Germany before the final blackout in Europe, bravery was not enough, for one act of violence against the tyrants would be paid for by other men, women, and children at unspeakable compound interest. Even more distressing than the miseries he saw and heard about were the reports of the planned elimination of the American culture as such. The schools were closed. No word might be printed in English. There was a suggestion of a time, one generation away, when English would be an illiterate language, used orally alone by helpless peons who would never be able to revolt for sheer lack of a means of communication on any wide scale. It was impossible to form any rational estimate of the numbers of Asiatics now in the United States. Transports, it was rumored, arrived daily on the West coast, bringing thousands of administrative civil servants, most of whom were veterans of the amalgamation of India. Whether or not they could be considered as augmenting the armed forces who had conquered and now policed the country it was difficult to say, but it was evident that they would replace the white minor officials who now assisted in civil administration at pistol point. When those white officials were "eliminated" it would be still more difficult to organize resistance. Thomas found the means to enter the cities in one of the hobo jungles. Finny-surname unknown-was not, properly speaking, a knight of the road, but one who had sought shelter among them and who paid his way by practicing his talent. He was an old anarchist comrade who had served his concept of freedom by engraving really quite excellent Federal Reserve notes without complying with the formality of obtaining permission from the treasury department. Some said that his name had been Phineas; others connected his moniker with his preference for manufacturing five-dollar bills, "big enough to be useful; not big enough to arouse suspicion." He made a registration card for Thomas at the request of one of the 'bos. He talked while Thomas watched him work. "It's only the registration number that we really have to worry about, son. Practically none of the Asiatics you will run into can read English, so it really doesn't matter a lot we say about you. Mary had a little lamb, would probably do. Same for the photograph. To them, all white men look alike." He picked up a handful of assorted photographs from his kit and peered at them nearsightedly through thick spectacles. "Here, pick out one of these that looks not unlike you and we will use it. Now for the number.” The old man's hands were shaky, almost palsied, yet they steadied down to a deft sureness as he transferred India ink to cardboard in amazing simulation of machine printing. And this he did without proper equipment, without precision tools, under primitive conditions. Thomas understood why the old artist's masterpieces caused headaches for bank clerks. "There!" he announced. "I've given you a serial number which states that you were registered shortly after the change, and a classification number which permits you to travel. It also says that you are physically unfit for manual labor, and are permitted to peddle or beg. It's the same thing to their minds." "Thanks, awfully," said Thomas. "Now, uh, what do I owe you for this?" Finny's reaction made him feel as if he had uttered some indecency. "Don't mention payment, my son! Money is wrong-it's the means whereby man enslaves his brother." "I beg your pardon, sir," Thomas apologized sincerely. "Nevertheless, I wish there were some way for me to do something for you." "That is another matter. Help your brother when you can, and help will come to you when you need it. " Thomas found the old anarchist's philosophy confused, confusing, and impractical, but he spent considerable time drawing him out, as he seemed to know more about the Pan-Asians than anyone else he had met. Finny seemed unafraid of them and completely confident of his own ability to cope with them when necessary. Of all the persons Thomas had met since the change, Finny seemed the least disturbed by it in fact, disturbed not at all, and completely lacking in any emotion of hate or bitterness. This was hard for him to understand at first in a person as obviously warmhearted as Finny, but he came to realize that, since, the anarchist believed that all government was wrong and that all men were to him in fact brothers, the difference to him was one of degree only. Looking at the Pan-Asians through Finny's eyes there was nothing to hate; they were simply more misguided souls whose excesses were deplorable. Thomas did not see it from such Olympian detachment. The Pan-Asians were murdering and oppressing a once-free people. A good Pan-Asian was a dead Pan-Asian, he told himself, until the last one was driven back across the Pacific. If Asia was overpopulated, let them limit their birth rate. Nevertheless, Finny's detachment and freedom from animus enabled Thomas more nearly to appreciate the nature of the problem. "Don't make the mistake of thinking of the Pan-Asians as bad, they're not, but they are different. Behind their arrogance is a racial inferiority complex, a mass paranoia, that makes it necessary for them to prove to themselves by proving to us that a yellow man is just as good as a white man, and a damned sight better. Remember that, son, they want the outward signs of respect more than they want anything else in the world." "But why should they have an inferiority complex about us? We've been completely out of touch with them for more than two generations-ever since the Nonintercourse Act." "Do you think racial memory is that short-lived? The seeds of this are way back in the nineteenth century. Do you recall that two high Japanese officials had to commit honorable suicide to wipe out a slight that was done Commodore Perry when he opened up Japan? Now those two deaths are being paid for by the deaths of thousands of American officials." "But the Pan-Asians aren't Japanese." "No, and they are not Chinese. They are a mixed race, strong, proud, and prolific. From the American standpoint they have the vices of both and the virtues of neither. But from my standpoint they are simply human beings, who have been duped into the old fallacy of the State as a super-entity. Ich habe einen Kameraden. Once you understand the nature of.” He went off into a long dissertation, a mixture of Rousseau, Rocker, Thoreau, and others. Thomas found it inspirational, but unconvincing. But the discussion with Finny was of real use to Thomas in comprehending what they were up against. The Nonintercourse Act had kept the American people from knowing anything important about their enemy. Thomas wrinkled his brow, trying to recall what he knew about the history of it. At the time it had been passed, the Act had been no more than a de jure recognition of a de facto condition. The sovietizing of Asia had excluded westerners, particularly Americans, from Asia more effectively than could any Act of Congress. The obscure reasons that had led the Congress of that period to think that the United States gained in dignity by passing a law confirming what the commissars had already done to us baled Thomas; it smacked of Sergeant Dogberry's policy toward thieves. He supposed that it had simply seemed cheaper to wish Red Asia out of existence than to fight a war. The policy behind the Act had certainly seemed to justify itself for better than half a century; there had been no war. The proponents of the measure had maintained that China was a big bite even for Soviet Russia to digest and that the United States need fear no war while the digesting was taking place. They had been correct as far as they went but as a result of the Nonintercourse Act we had our backs turned when China digested Russia. Leaving America to face a system even stranger to western ways of thinking than had been the Soviet system it displaced. On the strength of the forged registration card and Finny's coaching as to the etiquette of being a serf, Thomas ventured into a medium-sized city. The cleverness of Finny's work was put to test almost immediately. He had stopped at a street corner to read a posted notice. It was a general order to all Americans to be present at a television receiver at eight each evening in order to note any instructions that their rulers might have for them. It was not news; the order had been in effect for some days and he had heard of it. He was about to turn away when he felt a sharp, stinging blow across his shoulder blades. He whirled around and found himself facing a Pan-Asian wearing the green uniform of a civil administrator and carrying a swagger cane. "Keep out of the way, boy!" He spoke in English, but in a light, singing tone which lacked the customary American accentuation. Thomas jumped into the gutter. ”They like to look down, not up,” and clasped his hands together in the form required. He ducked his head and replied, "The master speaks; the servant obeys." "That's better," acknowledged the Asiatic, apparently somewhat mollified. "Your ticket." The man's accent was not bad, but Thomas did not comprehend immediately, possibly because the emotional impact of his experience in the role of slave was all out of proportion to what he had expected. To say that he raged inwardly is meaninglessly inadequate. The swagger cane cut across his face. "Your ticket!" Thomas produced his registration card. The time the Oriental spent in examining it gave Thomas an opportunity to pull himself together to some extent. At the moment he did not care greatly whether the card passed muster or not; if it came to trouble, he would take this one apart with his bare hands. But it passed. The Asiatic grudgingly handed it back and strutted away, unaware that death had brushed his elbow. It turned out that there was little to be picked up in town that he had not already acquired secondhand in the hobo jungles. He had a chance to estimate for himself the proportion of rulers to ruled, and saw for himself that the schools were closed and the newspapers had vanished. He noted with interest that church services were still held, although any other gathering together of white men in assembly was strictly forbidden. But it was the dead, wooden faces of the people, the quiet children, that got under his skin and made him decide to sleep in the jungles rather than in town. Thomas ran across an old friend at one of the hobo hideouts. Frank Roosevelt Mitsui was as American as Will Rogers, and much more American than that English aristocrat, George Washington. His grandfather had brought his grandmother, half Chinese and half wahini, from Honolulu to Los Angeles, where he opened a nursery and raised flowers, plants, and little yellow children, children that knew neither Chinese nor Japanese, nor cared. Frank's father met his mother, Thelma Wang, part Chinese but mostly Caucasian, at the International Club at the University of Southern California. He took her to the Imperial Valley and installed her on a nice ranch with a nice mortgage. By the time Frank was raised, so was the mortgage. Jet Thomas had cropped lettuce and honeydew melon for Frank Mitsui three seasons and knew him as a good boss. He had become almost intimate with his employer because of his liking for the swarm of brown kids that were Frank's most important crop. But the sight of a flat, yellow face in a hobo jungle made Thomas' hackles rise and almost interfered with his recognizing his old acquaintance. It was an awkward meeting. Well as he knew Frank, Thomas was in no mood to trust an Oriental. It was Frank's eyes that convinced him; they held a tortured look that was even more intense than that found in the eyes of white men, a look that did not lessen even while he smiled and shook hands. "Well, Frank," Jeff improvised inanely, "who'd expect to find you here? I should think you'd find it easy to get along with the new regime." Frank Mitsui looked still more unhappy and seemed to be fumbling for words. One of the other hobos cut in. "Don't be a fool, Jeff. Don't you know what they've done to people like Frank?" "No, I don't." "Well, you're on the dodge. If they catch you, it's the labor camp. So is Frank. But if they catch him, it's curtains-right now. They'll shoot him on sight." "So? What did you do, Frank?" Mitsui shook his head miserably. "He didn't do anything," the other continued. "The empire has no use for American Asiatics. They're liquidating them." It was quite simple. The Pacific coast Japanese, Chinese, and the like did not fit into the pattern of serfs and overlords-particularly the half-breeds. They were a danger to the stability of the pattern. With cold logic they were being hunted down and killed. Thomas listened to Frank's story. "When I got home they were dead-all of them. My little Shirley, Junior, Jimmy, the baby-and Alice." He put his face in his hands and wept. Alice was his wife. Thomas remembered her as a brown, stocky woman in overalls and straw hat, who talked very little but smiled a lot. "At first I thought I would kill myself," Mitsui went on when he had sufficient control of himself, "then I knew better. I hid in an irrigation ditch for two days, and then I got away over the mountains. Then some whites almost killed me before I could convince them I was on their side." Thomas could understand how that would happen, and could think of nothing to say. Frank was damned two ways; there was no hope for him. "What do you intend to do now, Frank?" He saw a sudden return of the will to live in the man's face. "That is why I will not let myself die! Ten for each one,” he counted them off on his brown fingers, “ten of those devils for each one of my babies-and twenty for Alice. Then maybe ten more for myself, and I can die." "Hum. Any luck?" "Thirteen, so far. It is slow, for I have to be very sure, so that they won't kill me before I finish." Thomas pondered it in his mind, trying to fit this new knowledge into his own purpose. Such fixed determination should be useful, if directed. But it was some hours later before he approached Mitsui again. "How would you," he asked gently, "like to raise your quota from ten to a thousand each-two thousand for Alice?" CHAPTER THREE. The exterior alarms brought Ardmore to the portal long before Thomas whistled the tune that activated the door. Ardmore watched the door by televisor from the guard room, his thumb resting on a control, ready to burn out of existence any unexpected visitor. When he saw Thomas enter his thumb relaxed, but at the sight of his companion it tightened again. A Pan-Asian! He almost blasted them in sheer reflex before he checked himself. It was possible, barely possible, that Thomas had brought a prisoner to question. "Major! Major Ard

FOR DOROTHY AND CLARE. Formatted from a scan. TOMORROW, THE STARS A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc. Printing History Doubleday edition published 1952 Berkley edition / June 1967 Sixteenth printing / September 1981 All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1952 by Doubleday and Company, Inc. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 245 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10017. ISBN: 0-425-05357-1 A BERKLEY BOOK TM 757,375 Berkley Books are published by Berkley Publishing Corporation, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016. Printed in the United States of America Contents: I'M SCARED. By Jack Finney. THE SILLY SEASON. By C. M. KORNBLUTH. THE REPORT ON THE BARNHOUSE EFFECT. By KURT VONNEGUT, JUNIOR. THE TOURIST TRADE. By Bob TUCKER. RAINMAKER. By JOHN REESE. ABSALOM. BY HENRY KUTTNER. THE MONSTER. By LESTER DEL REY. JAY SCORE. By Eric Frank Russell. BETELGEUSE BRIDGE. By William TENN. SURVIVAL SHIP. By Judith Merril. KEYHOLE. By Murray Leinster. MISBEGOTTEN MISSIONARY. By Isaac Asimov. THE SACK. By William Morrison. POOR SUPERMAN. By Fritz Leiber. PREFACE. The first science-fiction anthology merited a reader's examination as something new; the nineteenth (or fiftieth; the number changes rapidly) cannot plead that justification and needs a reason for being other than the well-known hunger of writers, editors, and publishers. The purpose of this book is to give you pleasure. The stories have been selected to entertain, and within the very broad category of "speculative fiction," no other criterion has been used. Our intention has been to bring together good stories, ones which give pleasure on rereading and which have not previously been available in book form. These stories may possibly instruct, mystify, elevate, or inspire; if so, consider such to be bonuses not covered by the purchase price; our single motive is to entertain you. Science fiction has only recently become popular and is not yet fully respectable. Until the end of World War Two it was, in the opinion of most critics, by definition "trash" and so convicted without a hearing. The scientific marvels of World War Two, radar, atom bombs, giant rockets, and the rather spectacular success of science-fiction writers in predicting these things combined to cause a widespread postwar interest in speculative fiction, stories about the future, which in time forced the professional critics to notice this stepchild of literature. And yet one may pause to wonder why the stepchild was so completely ignored before the war. Quite aside from the pulp specialty magazines, many worthwhile, deeply thoughtful novels of this genre were available to the critics before World War Two, for example, S. Fowler Wright's monumental The World Below, or Olaf Stapledon's philosophical novels of the future of our race. And many of the standard literary lions had ventured at least one science fiction novel. Why should so much of J. B. Priestley's reputation rest on Angel Pavement while The Doomsday Men is almost unheard of? Why was there a rage for The Green Hat while Michael Arlen's Man's Mortality made hardly a ripple? The four authors cited cannot possibly be accused of being semiliterate hacks suited only to publication on pulpwood paper and catering to that portion of the public which moves its lips while reading. Why were their serious works in speculative fiction ignored? I'll chance a guess. The story about the future never has fitted comfortably into the implicitly defined limits of serious literature. In the prose field, literature, in the stuffy and respectable sense usually meant either the historical novel or certain rather pedestrian types of the contemporary novel. One gathers the impression that it helps for the author to be dead or to have had the good judgment to write his story first in a language less well known than English, but these are not indispensable requirements. Rather ponderous length seems to be part of the unspoken definition, extensive research should be either self-evident or claimed, and dialogue is usually sparse and not too sprightly. A clearly stated regional scene is a help too, especially if it is back country. Such a novel the literary critic can take in his stride, read in one evening, and compose his review while shaving. It either does or does not come up to his standards and he knows why. Either way, it is an accepted type and a serious piece of work. Science fiction does not fit into this frame; it's a much more exotic art. The critic may find himself shying away from this literary freak. He can judge quickly whether or not it is grammatical and readable, but what about the content? A man who has applied himself seriously to the field of English literature may not have had time to be well-read in geology, nuclear physics, rocket engineering, astrophysics, genetics, cosmogony, cybernetics, chemistry, biophysics, and electronics. Can he afford to recommend this item as a serious and worthwhile work? Does the author know what he is talking about, or is the rude fellow pulling one's leg? Perhaps his "science" is of the Sunday-supplement variety, in which case one would not wish to recommend it. But how is one to know? The dilemma is quite real, for there are many stories around which bear the same close superficial resemblance to honest science fiction that a lead quarter does to a product of the Denver mint. The critic is hardly to be blamed if he chooses to pass up extravagant stories of the future in favor of the tried and true. Science fiction is even less prepared to compete for attention in the most modern of the ultra-literary school. Science-fiction heroes are almost always likable, rarely psychotic, the mad scientist has had his day, and they almost never fall in love with their sisters or their fathers' wives or mistresses. The writers of science fiction without exception favor clear, lucid, grammatical sentences; I do not guarantee against an occasional split infinitive, but they never write in a Joycean or neo-Freudian mishmash. As you can see, the fiction of the future is much too old-fashioned to win even a passing nod from the avant-garde school critics. Perhaps it is just as well. Let me add that the skilled practitioners, no other sort are represented in this volume, have learned not to lard their stories with obscure and polysyllabic technical terms and have learned how to define in context such few special terms as may be indispensable to following the story. They have even given up the long-cherished practice of assigning to natives of other planets names consisting mainly of throat-rasping gutturals. I must admit that sparsely dressed and exceedingly nubile young ladies still appear on the covers of some of the specialist magazines, but they are rarely to be found now in the stories inside those same magazines; their persistence on the covers is simply a part of the same phenomenon to be found in cigarette, automobile, and deodorant ads. Literature or not, science fiction is here to stay; it will not be crowded out even by the new Plunging-Neckline school of the historical novel, nor by the four-letter-word school of the contemporary novel. Youths who build hot-rods are not dismayed by spaceships; in their adult years they will build such ships. In the meantime they will read stories of interplanetary travel, and they are being joined by their entire families. The future rushes at us apace, faster than sound, approaching the speed of light; the healthy-minded are aware of our headlong plunge into a strange and different, possibly terrifying, future and see nothing improper in speculating about the shape of tomorrow. Science fiction is sometimes miscalled "escape literature," a mistake arising from a profound misconception of its nature and caused by identifying it with fantasy. Science fiction and fantasy are as different as Karl Marx and Groucho Marx. Fantasy is constructed either by denying the real world in toto or at least by making a prime basis of the story one or more admittedly false premise, fairies, talking mules, trips through a looking glass, vampires, seacoast Bohemia, Mickey Mouse. But science fiction, no matter how fantastic its content may seem, always accepts all of the real world and the entire body of human knowledge about the real world as the framework for the fictional speculation. Since the field of human knowledge concerning the real world, its natural laws, events, and phenomena, is much too large for any one brain, every science-fiction author is bound to make some slips, but here it is the intention that counts: the author's purpose is not to escape from reality but to explore seriously the complex and amazing manifold of possibilities which lie unrevealed in the future of our race, to explore them in the light of what we do know now. If such is escape literature, then so is an insurance policy. There is only one story here. “I'm Scared," by Jack Finney, which could possibly be called "escape literature", but it provides no escape for the reader. Better skip it. All of the stories herein are honest science fiction, but there is another type of story masquerading as science fiction which circulates like the lead quarters mentioned earlier. Call it "pseudo-scientific fantasy." The writers thereof are either too ignorant or too careless to do the painstaking work required to produce honest speculation. Much of it gets printed, unfortunately, since all editors cannot be expected to be erudite in all fields of knowledge. Nor do you find it only in the pulp magazines with the pretty bare-skinned ladies and the bugeyed monsters on the covers; it is as likely to pop up in the most respected slick-paper magazines or between the boards of dignified tradebook houses. Such stories may be rife with spaceships, ray guns, and mutant monsters, but they are marked by a crude disregard for established fact. However, knowledge of the world about us and of the scientific facts which describe its functioning is rather widespread these days; the effect of such barbarisms on the reader who does happen to know that the facts are being manhandled is much like that which would arise from the reading of a "historical" novel which asserted that Henry the eighth was the son of Queen Elizabeth, or a war story in which the writer was under the impression that corporals were senior to master sergeants. It is to be hoped that, as the public increases in sophistication in these matters, such writers will find it necessary to go back to working for a living. In the meantime, such slips as you may find in this book are the honest mistakes of honest workmen; I think I can vouch that such errors as exist do not invalidate the stories in which they appear. Science fiction is not fantasy, but it can certainly be fantastic, and be assured that the more fantastic it is, the more wild, the more extravagant it sounds, it is that much more likely to be a reasonably correct extrapolation of what our real future will be. Regard the difference between the 1900 horse-and-buggy and the 1950 faster-than-sound plane. Our fictional prophecies almost certainly err on the side of conservatism. In this book you will find stories of space travel (of course!), a gambol in the fourth dimension, telekinesis, robots, intelligent plants, strange nonhuman creatures from the other side of the galaxy, and invasions from Mars. The Wonderful Land of Oz has not more to offer, and none of it is fantasy. Did I hear someone describe robots as fantasy? I myself find humanoid robots hard to believe in, but who am I to set my prejudices against the facts? I put it to you that a B-36 in flight is a fair example of a robot activated by a controlling human brain. I submit further that it is a longer step from the covered wagon to the B36 than it is from present cybernetic machines to Doctor Asimov's "positronic robots." But can a machine have consciousness, life, volition? We don't know, because we do not as yet know what any of those things are. Meanwhile, robotics is a legitimate field for speculation. Time travel? We don't understand the nature of time; it is much too early to say that time travel is impossible. Telekinesis? Refer to the abstruse reports pouring out of Duke University and elsewhere, then resolve never again to bet on dice. The control of mass by the human mind is as factually established as yesterday's sunrise. Tomorrow's sunrise is, of course, only a high probability. For the impact that telekinesis may have on your grandchildren, or on you, see "The Barnhouse Effect" herewith. Space travel? Go down to White Sands, watch them throw one of the big ones away, and be convinced. Space travel is about to move from speculative fiction to contemporary fiction and news story, and some of us are a wee bit wistful about it. How can we dream up wonderful new Martians when the National Geographic starts running photographs of real ones? One story is included here almost as a period piece. “Rainmaker." When first published shortly after World War Two this piece was science fiction; now the commercial trade of rainmaking has reached the point where lawsuits dealing with it clutter the courts. Technology has overtaken prophecy. But a good story is not ruined thereby; "Rainmaker" is still fun to read. Besides, it is clinching demonstration of the vast difference between pseudo-scientific fantasy and the real article. But it is the fact that "Rainmaker" was and remains a pleasure to read that controlled its inclusion here; we the editors are strongly convinced that science-fiction pieces should be stories, warm and human, not thinly disguised engineering reports. On that note this essay will close in order that you may get on with the real purpose of this book, the reading of stories about people who might be your grandchildren, facing new problems in this wildly fantastic universe. Each story has been read and reread by each of five editors, and enjoyed each time; we expect that you will enjoy them too. My thanks to the other four, Truman Talley, Judith Merril, Fred Pohl, and Walter Bradbury. ROBERT “A.” HEINLEIN. Colorado Springs. I'M SCARED. By Jack Finney. I'm very badly scared, not so much for myself, I'm a gray-haired man of sixty-six, after all, but for you and everyone else who has not yet lived out his life. For I believe that certain dangerous things have recently begun to happen in the world. They are noticed here and there, idly discussed, then dismissed and forgotten. Yet I am convinced that unless these occurrences are recognized for what they are, the world will be plunged into a nightmare. Judge for yourself. One evening last winter I came home from a chess club to which I belong. I'm a widower; I live alone in a small but comfortable three-room apartment overlooking Fifth Avenue. It was still fairly early, and I switched on a lamp beside my leather easy chair, picked up a murder mystery I'd been reading, and turned on the radio; I did not, I'm sorry to say, notice which station it was tuned to. The tubes warmed, and the music of an accordion, faint at first, then louder, came from the loud-speaker. Since it was good music for reading, I adjusted the volume control and began to read. Now I want to be absolutely factual and accurate about this, and I do not claim that I paid close attention to the radio. But I do know that presently the music stopped and an audience applauded. Then a man's voice, chuckling and pleased with the applause, said. ”All right, all right," but the applause continued for several more seconds. During that time the voice once more chuckled appreciatively, then firmly repeated. ”All right," and the applause died down. "That was Alec Somebody-or-other," the radio voice said, and I went back to my book. But I soon became aware of this middle-aged voice again; perhaps a change of tone as he turned to a new subject caught my attention. "And now, Miss Ruth Greeley," he was saying. ”of Trenton, New Jersey. Miss Greeley is a pianist; that right?" A girl's voice, timid and barely audible, said. ”That's right, Major Bowes." The man's voice, and now I recognized his familiar singsong delivery, said. ”And what are you going to play?" The girl replied. “La Paloma.” The man repeated it after her, as an announcement: "'La Paloma.'" There was a pause, then an introductory chord sounded from a piano, and I resumed my reading. As the girl played, I was half aware that her style was mechanical, her rhythm defective; perhaps she was nervous. Then my attention was fully aroused once more by a gong which sounded suddenly. For a few notes more the girl continued to play falteringly, not sure what to do. The gong sounded jarringly again, the playing abruptly stopped and there was a restless murmur from the audience. "All right, all right," said the familiar voice, and I realized I'd been expecting this, knowing it would say just that. The audience quieted, and the voice began. ”Now.” The radio went dead. For the smallest fraction of a second no sound issued from it but its own mechanical hum. Then a completely different program came from the loudspeaker; the recorded voices of Bing Crosby and his son were singing the concluding bars of "Sam's Song," a favorite of mine. So I returned once more to my reading, wondering vaguely what had happened to the other program, but not actually thinking about it until I finished my book and began to get ready for bed. Then, undressing in my bedroom, I remembered that Major Bowes was dead. Years had passed, half a decade, since that dry chuckle and familiar. ”All right, all right," had been heard in the nation's living rooms. Well, what does one do when the apparently impossible occurs? It simply made a good story to tell friends, and more than once I was asked if I'd recently heard Moran and Mack, a pair of radio comedians popular some twenty-five years ago, or Floyd Gibbons, an old-time news broadcaster. And there were other joking references to my crystal radio set. But one man, this was at a lodge meeting the following Thursday, listened to my story with utter seriousness, and when I had finished he told me a queer little story of his own. He is a thoughtful, intelligent man, and as I listened I was not frightened, but puzzled at what seemed to be a connecting link, a common denominator, between this story and the odd behavior of my radio. Since I am retired and have plenty of time, I took the trouble, the following day, of making a two-hour train trip to Connecticut in order to verify the story firsthand. I took detailed notes, and the story appears in my files now as follows: Case 2. Louis Trachnor, coal and wood dealer, R F D 1, Danbury, Connecticut, aged fifty-four. On July 20, 1950, Mister Trachnor told me, he walked out on the front porch of his house about six o'clock in the morning. Running from the eaves of his house to the floor of the porch was a streak of gray paint, still damp. "It was about the width of an eight-inch brush," Mister Trachnor told me, ”and it looked like hell, because the house was white. I figured some kids did it in the night for a joke, but if they did, they had to get a ladder up to the eaves and you wouldn't figure they'd go to that much trouble. It wasn't smeared, either; it was a careful job, a nice even stripe straight down the front of the house." Mister Trachnor got a ladder and cleaned off the gray paint with turpentine. In October of that same year Mister Trachnor painted his house. "The white hadn't held up so good, so I painted it gray. I got to the front last and finished about five one Saturday afternoon. Next morning when I came out I saw a streak of white right down the front of the house. I figured it was the damn kids again, because it was the same place as before. But when I looked close, I saw it wasn't new paint; it was the old white I'd painted over. Somebody had done a nice careful job of cleaning off the new paint in a long stripe about eight inches wide right down from the eaves! Now who the hell would go to that trouble? I just can't figure it out." Do you see the link between this story and mine? Suppose for a moment that something had happened, on each occasion, to disturb briefly the orderly progress of time. That seemed to have happened in my case; for a matter of some seconds I apparently heard a radio broadcast that had been made years before. Suppose, then, that no one had touched Mister Trachnor's house but himself; that he had painted his house in October, but that through some fantastic mix-up in time, a portion of that paint appeared on his house the previous summer. Since he had cleaned the paint off at that time, a broad strip of new gray paint was missing after he painted his house in the fall. I would be lying, however, if I said I really believed this. It was merely an intriguing speculation, and I told both these little stories to friends, simply as curious anecdotes. I am a sociable person, see a good many people, and occasionally I heard other odd stories in response to mine. Someone would nod and say,” Reminds me of something I heard recently.” and I would have one more to add to my collection. A man on Long Island received a telephone call from his sister in New York one Friday evening. She insists that she did not make this call until the following Monday, three days later. At the Forty-fifth Street branch of the Chase National Bank, I was shown a check deposited the day before it was written. A letter was delivered on East Sixty-eighth Street in New York City, just seventeen minutes after it was dropped into a mailbox on the main street of Green River, Wyoming. And so on, and so on; my stories were now in demand at parties, and I told myself that collecting and verifying them was a hobby. But the day I heard Julia Eisenberg's story, I knew it was no longer that. Case 17. Julia Eisenberg, office worker, New York City, aged thirty-one. Miss Eisenberg lives in a small walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village. I talked to her there after a chess-club friend who lives in her neighborhood had repeated to me a somewhat garbled version of her story, which was told to him by the doorman of the building he lives in. In October 1947, about eleven at night, Miss Eisenberg left her apartment to walk to the drugstore for toothpaste. On her way back, not far from her apartment, a large black-and-white dog ran up to her and put his front paws on her chest. "I made the mistake of petting him," Miss Eisenberg told me,” and from then on he simply wouldn't leave. When I went into the lobby of my building, I actually had to push him away to get the door closed. I felt sorry for him, poor hound, and a little guilty, because he was still sitting at the door an hour later when I looked out my front window." This dog remained in the neighborhood for three days, discovering and greeting Miss Eisenberg with wild affection each time she appeared on the street. "When I'd get on the bus in the morning to go to work, he'd sit on the curb looking after me in the most mournful way, poor thing. I wanted to take him in, but I knew he'd never go home then, and I was afraid whoever owned him would be sorry to lose him. No one in the neighborhood knew whom he belonged to, and finally he disappeared." Two years later a friend gave Miss Eisenberg a three-week-old puppy. "My apartment is really too small for a dog, but he was such a darling I couldn't resist. Well, he grew up into a nice big dog who ate more than I did." Since the neighborhood was quiet, and the dog well behaved, Miss Eisenberg usually unleashed him when she walked him at night, for he never strayed far. "One night, I'd last seen him sniffing around in the dark a few doors down, I called to him and he didn't come back. And he never did; I never saw him again. "Now our street is a solid wall of brownstone buildings on both sides, with locked doors and no areaways. He couldn't have disappeared like that, he just couldn't. But he did." Miss Eisenberg hunted for her dog for many days afterward, inquired of neighbors, put ads in the papers, but she never found him. "Then one night I was getting ready for bed; I happened to glance out the front window down at the street, and suddenly I remembered something I'd forgotten all about. I remembered the dog I'd chased away over two years before." Miss Eisenberg looked at me for a moment, then she said flatly. “It was the same dog. If you own a dog you know him, you can't be mistaken, and I tell you it was the same dog. Whether it makes sense or not, my dog was lost, I chased him away, two years before he was born." She began to cry silently, the tears running down her face. "Maybe you think I'm crazy, or a little lonely and overly sentimental about a dog. But you're wrong." She brushed at her tears with a handkerchief. "I'm a well-balanced person, as much as anyone is these days, at least, and I tell you I know what happened." It was at that moment, sitting in Miss Eisenberg's neat, shabby living room, that I realized fully that the consequences of these odd little incidents could be something more than merely intriguing; that they might, quite possibly, be tragic. It was in that moment that I began to be afraid. I have spent the last eleven months discovering and tracking down these strange occurrences, and I am astonished and frightened at how many there are. I am astonished and frightened at how much more frequently they are happening now, and, I hardly know how to express this, at their increasing power to tear human lives tragically apart. This is an example, selected almost at random, of the increasing strength of, whatever it is that is happening in the world. Case 34. Paul V. Kerch, accountant, the Bronx, aged thirty-one. On a bright clear Sunday afternoon, I met an unsmiling family of three at their Bronx apartment: Mister Kerch, a chunky, darkly good-looking young man; his wife, a pleasant-faced dark haired woman in her late twenties, whose attractiveness was marred by circles under her eyes; and their son, a nice-looking boy of six or seven. After introductions, the boy was sent to his room at the back of the house to play. "All right," Mister Kerch said wearily then, and walked toward a bookcase.” let's get at it. You said on the phone that you know the story in general." It was half a question, half a statement. "Yes," I said. He took a book from the top shelf and removed some photographs from it. "There are the pictures." He sat down on the davenport beside me, with the photographs in his hand. "I own a pretty good camera. I'm a fair amateur photographer, and I have a darkroom setup in the kitchen; do my own developing. Two weeks ago we went down to Central Park." His voice was a tired monotone, as though this was a story he'd repeated many times, aloud and in his own mind. "It was nice, like today, and the, kid's grandmothers have been pestering us for pictures, so I took a whole roll of film, pictures of all of us. My camera can be set up and focused and it will snap the picture automatically a few seconds later, giving me time to get around in front of it and get in the picture myself." There was a tired, hopeless look in his eyes as he handed me all but one of the photographs. "These are the first ones I took," he said. The photographs were all fairly large, perhaps seven by three and a half inches, and I examined them closely. They were ordinary enough, very sharp and detailed, and each showed the family of three in various smiling poses. Mister Kerch wore a light business suit, his wife had on a dark dress and a cloth coat, and the boy wore a dark suit with knee-length pants. In the background stood a tree with bare branches. I glanced up at Mister Kerch, signifying that I had finished my study of the photographs. "The last picture," he said, holding it in his hand ready to give to me.” I took exactly like the others. We agreed on the pose, I set the camera, walked around in front, and joined my family. Monday night I developed the whole roll. This is what came out on the last negative." He handed me the photograph. For an instant it seemed to me like merely one more photograph in the group; then I saw the difference. Mister Kerch looked much the same, bareheaded and grinning broadly, but he wore an entirely different suit. The boy, standing beside him, wore long pants, and a good three inches taller, obviously older, but equally obviously the same boy. The woman was an entirely different person. Dressed smartly, her light hair catching the sun, she was very pretty and attractive. She was smiling into the camera and holding Mister Kerch's hand. I looked up at him. "Who is this?" Wearily, Mister Kerch shook his head. "I don't know," he said suddenly, then exploded: "I don't know! I've never seen her in my life!" He turned to look at his wife, but she would not return his glance, and he turned back to me, shrugging. "Well, there you have it," he said. "The whole story." And he stood up, thrusting both hands into his trouser pockets, and began to pace about the room, glancing often at his wife, talking to her actually, though he addressed his words to me. "So who is she? How could the camera have snapped that picture? I've never seen that woman in my life!" I glanced at the photograph again, then bent closer. "The trees here are in full bloom," I said. Behind the solemn-faced boy, the grinning man and smiling woman, the trees of Central Park were in full summer leaf. Mister Kerch nodded. "I know," he said bitterly. "And you know what she says?" he burst out, glaring at his wife. "She says that is my wife in the photograph, my new wife a couple of years from now! God!" He snapped both hands down on his head. "The ideas a woman can get!" "What do you mean?" I glanced at Missus. Kerch, but she ignored me, remaining silent, her lips tight. Kerch shrugged hopelessly. "She says that photograph shows how things will be a couple of years from now. She'll be dead or", he hesitated, then said the word bitterly.” divorced, and I'll have our son and be married to the woman in the picture." We both looked at Missus. Kerch, waiting until she was obliged to speak. "Well, if it isn't so," she said, shrugging a shoulder.” then tell me what that picture does mean." Neither of us could answer that, and a few minutes later I left. There was nothing much I could say to the Kerches; certainly I couldn't mention my conviction that, whatever the explanation of the last photograph, their married life was over. Case 72. Lieutenant Alfred Eichler, New York Police Department, aged thirty-three. In the late evening of January 9, 1951, two policemen found a revolver lying just off a gravel path near an East Side entrance to Central Park. The gun was examined for fingerprints at the police laboratory and several were found. One bullet had been fired from the revolver and the police fired another which was studied and classified by a ballistics expert. The fingerprints were checked and found in police files; they were those of a minor hoodlum with a record of assault. A routine order to pick him up was sent out. A detective called at the rooming house where he was known to live, but he was out, and since no unsolved shootings had occurred recently, no intensive search for him was made that night. The following evening a man was shot and killed in Central Park with the same gun. This was proved ballistically past all question of error. It was soon learned that the murdered man had been quarreling with a friend in a nearby tavern. The two men, both drunk, had left the tavern together. And the second man was the hoodlum whose gun had been found the previous night, and which was still locked in a police safe. As Lieutenant Eichler said to me. “It's impossible that the dead man was killed with that same gun, but he was. Don't ask me how, though, and if anybody thinks we'd go into court with a case like that, they're crazy.” Case 111. Captain Hubert V Rihm, New York Police Department, retired, aged sixty-six. I met Captain Rihm by appointment one morning in Stuyvesant Park, a patch of greenery, wood benches, and asphalt surrounded by the city, on lower Second Avenue. "You want to hear about the Fentz case, do you?" he said, after we had introduced ourselves and found an empty bench. "All right, I'll tell you. I don't like to talk about it, it bothers me, but I'd like to see what you think." He was a big, rather heavy man, with a red, tough face, and he wore an old police jacket and uniform cap with the insignia removed. "I was up at City Mortuary," he began as I took out my notebook and pencil,” at Bellevue, about twelve one night, drinking coffee with one of the interns. This was in June of 1950, just before I retired, and I was in Missing Persons. They brought this guy in and he was a funny-looking character. Had a beard. A young guy, maybe thirty, but he wore regular mutton chop whiskers, and his clothes were funny-looking. Now I was thirty years on the force and I've seen a lot of queer guys killed on the streets. We found an Arab once, in full regalia, and it took us a week to find out who he was. So it wasn't just the way the guy looked that bothered me; it was the stuff we found in his pockets." Captain Rihm turned on the bench to see if he'd caught my interest, then continued. "There was about a dollar in change in the dead guy's pocket, and one of the boys picked up a nickel and showed it to me. Now you've seen plenty of nickels, the new ones with Jefferson's picture, the buffalo nickels they made before that, and once in a while you still even see the old Liberty-head nickels; they quit making them before the first world war. But this one was even older than that. It had a shield on the front, a United States shield, and a big five on the back; I used to see that kind when I was a boy. And the funny thing was, that old nickel looked new; what coin dealers call 'mint condition,' like it was made the day before yesterday. The date on that nickel was 1876, and there wasn't a coin in his pocket dated any later." Captain Rihm looked at me questioningly. "Well," I said glancing up from my notebook,” that could happen." "Sure it could," he answered in a satisfied tone,” but all the pennies he had were Indian-head pennies. Now when did you see one of them last? There was even a silver three-cent piece; looked like an old-style dime, only smaller. And the bills in his wallet, every one of them, were old-time bills, the big kind." Captain Rihm leaned forward and spat on the patch, a needle jet of tobacco juice and an expression of a policeman's annoyed contempt for anything deviating from an orderly norm. "Over seventy bucks in cash, and not a federal reserve note in the lot. There were two yellow-back tens. Remember them? They were payable in gold. The rest were old national-banknotes; you remember them too. Issued direct by local banks, personally signed by the bank president; that kind used to be counterfeited a lot. "Well," Captain Rihm continued, leaning back on the bench and crossing his knees.”there was a bill in his pocket from a livery stable on Lexington Avenue; three dollars for feeding and stabling his horse and washing a carriage. There was a brass slug in his pocket good for a five-cent beer at some saloon. There was a letter postmarked Philadelphia, June 1876, with an old-style two-cent stamp, and a bunch of cards in his wallet. The cards had his name and address on them, and so did the letter." "Oh," I said, a little surprised,” you identified him right away, then?" "Sure. Rudolph Fentz, some address on Fifth Avenue, I forget the exact number, in New York City. No problem at all." Captain Rihm leaned forward and spat again. "Only that address wasn't a residence. It's a store, and it has been for years, and nobody there ever heard of any Rudolph Fentz, and there's no such name in the phone book either. Nobody ever called or made any inquiries about the guy, and Washington didn't have his prints. There was a tailor's name in his coat, a lower Broadway address, but nobody there ever heard of this tailor." "What was so strange about his clothes?" The captain said,” Well, did you ever know anyone who wore a pair of pants with big black-and-white checks, cut very narrow, no cuffs, and pressed without a crease?" I had to think for a moment. "Yes," I said then,” my father, when he was a very young man, before he was married; I've seen old photographs." "Sure," said Captain Rihm,”and he probably wore a short sort of cutaway coat with two cloth-covered buttons at the back, a vest with lapels, a tall silk hat, a big, black oversize bow tie on a turned-up stiff collar, and button shoes." "That's how this man was dressed?" "Like seventy-five years ago! And him no more than thirty years old. There was a label in his hat, a Twenty-third Street hat store that went out of business around the turn of the century. Now what do you make out of a thing like that?" "Well," I said carefully,” there's nothing much you can make of it. Apparently someone went to a lot of trouble to dress up in an antique style, the coins and bills I assume he could buy at a coin dealer's, and then he got himself killed in a traffic accident." "Got himself killed is right. Eleven-fifteen at night in Times Square, the theaters letting out, busiest time and place in the world, and this guy shows up in the middle of the street, gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he'd never seen them before. The cop on duty noticed him, so you can see how he must have been acting. The lights change, the traffic starts up, with him in the middle of the street, and instead of waiting, the damn fool, he turns and tries to make it back to the sidewalk. A cab got him and he was dead when he hit." For a moment Captain Rihm sat chewing his tobacco and staring angrily at a young woman pushing a baby carriage, though I'm sure he didn't see her. The young mother looked at him in surprise as she passed, and the captain continued: "Nothing you can make out of a thing like that. We found out nothing. I started checking through our file of old phone books, just as routine, but without much hope, because they only go back so far. But in the 1939 summer edition I found a Rudolph Fentz, Junioir, somewhere on East Fifty-second Street. He'd moved away in forty two, though, the building super told me, and was a man in his sixties besides, retired from business; used to work in a bank a few blocks away, the super thought. I found the bank where he'd worked, and they told me he'd retired in forty, and had been dead for five years; his widow was living in Florida with a sister. "I wrote to the widow, but there was only one thing she could tell us, and that was no good. I never even reported it, not officially, anyway. Her husband's father had disappeared when her husband was a boy maybe two years old. He went out for a walk around ten one night, his wife thought cigar smoke smelled up the curtains, so he used to take a little stroll before he went to bed, and smoke a cigar, and he didn't come back, and was never seen or heard of again. The family spent a good deal of money trying to locate him, but they never did. This was in the middle 1870s some time; the old lady wasn't sure of the exact date. Her husband hadn't ever said too much about it. "And that's all," said Captain Rihm. "Once I put in one of my afternoons off hunting through a bunch of old police records. And I finally found the Missing Persons file for 1876, and Rudolph Fentz was listed, all right. There wasn't much of a description, and no fingerprints, of course. I'd give a year of my life, even now, and maybe sleep better nights, if they'd had his fingerprints. He was listed as twenty-nine years old, wearing full muttonchop whiskers, a tall silk hat, dark coat and checked pants. That's about all it said. Didn't say what kind of tie or vest or if his shoes were the button kind. His name was Rudolph Fentz and he lived at this address on Fifth Avenue; it must have been a residence then. Final disposition of case: not located. "Now, I hate that case," Captain Rihm said quietly. "I hate it and I wish I'd never heard of it. What do you think?" he demanded suddenly, angrily. "You think this guy walked off into thin air in 1876, and showed up again in 1950?" I shrugged noncommittally, and the captain took it to mean no "No, of course not," he said. "Of course not, but give me some other explanation." I could go on. I could give you several hundred such cases. A sixteen-year-old girl walked out of her bedroom one morning, carrying her clothes in her hand because they were too big for her and she was quite obviously eleven years old again. And there are other occurrences too horrible for print. All of them have happened in the New York City area alone, all within the last few years; and I suspect thousands more have occurred, and are occurring, all over the world. I could go on, but the point is this: What is happening, and why? I believe that I know. Haven't you noticed, too, on the part of nearly everyone you know, a growing rebellion against the present? And an increasing longing for the past? I have. Never before in all my long life have I heard so many people wish that they lived "at the turn of the century," or "when life was simpler," or "worth living," or "when you could bring children into the world and count on the future," or simply "in the good old days." People didn't talk that way when I was young! The present was a glorious time! But they talk that way now. For the first time in man's history, man is desperate to escape the present. Our newsstands are jammed with escape literature, the very name of which is significant. Entire magazines are devoted to fantastic stories of escape, to other times, past and future, to other worlds and planets, escape to anywhere but here and now. Even our larger magazines, book publishers, and Hollywood are beginning to meet the rising demand for this kind of escape. Yes, there is a craving in the world like a thirst, a terrible mass pressure that you can almost feel, of millions of minds struggling against the barriers of time. I am utterly convinced that this terrible mass pressure of millions of minds is already, slightly but definitely, affecting time itself. In the moments when this happens, when the almost universal longing to escape is greatest, my incidents occur. Man is disturbing the clock of time, and I am afraid it will break. When it does, I leave to your imagination the last few hours of madness that will be left to us; all the countless moments that now make up our lives suddenly ripped apart and chaotically tangled in time. Well, I have lived most of my life; I can be robbed of only a few more years. But it seems too bad, this universal craving to escape what could be a rich, productive, happy world. We live on a planet well able to provide a decent life for every soul on it, which is all ninety-nine of a hundred human beings ask. Why in the world can't we have it? THE SILLY SEASON. By C. M. KORNBLUTH. It was a hot summer afternoon in the Omaha bureau of the World Wireless Press Service, and the control bureau in New York kept nagging me for copy. But since it was a hot summer afternoon, there was no copy. A wrapup of local baseball had cleared about an hour ago, and that was that. Nothing but baseball happens in the summer. During the dog days, politicians are in the Maine woods fishing and boozing, burglars are too tired to burgle, and wives think it over and decide not to decapitate their husbands. I pawed through some press releases. One sloppy stencil-duplicated sheet began: "Did you know that the lemonade way to summer comfort and health has been endorsed by leading physiotherapists from Maine to California? The Federated Lemon-Growers Association revealed today that a survey of 2,500 physiotherapists in 57 cities of more than 25,000 population disclosed that 87 percent of them drink lemonade at least once a day between June and September, and that another 72 percent not only drink the cooling and healthful beverage but actually prescribe it.” Another note tapped out on the news circuit printer from New York: "960M-HW kicker? ND SNST-NY." That was New York saying they needed a bright and sparkling little news item immediately,” soonest." I went to the eastbound printer and punched out: "96NY-UPCMNG FU MINS-OM." The lemonade handout was hopeless; I dug into the stack again. The State University summer course was inviting the governor to attend its summer conference on aims and approaches his adult secondary education. The Agricultural College wanted me to warn farmers that white-skinned hogs should be kept from the direct rays of the summer sun. The manager of a fifth-rate local pug sent a write up of his boy and a couple of working press passes to his next bout in the Omaha Arena. The Schwartz and White Bandage Company contributed a glossy eight-by-ten of a blonde in a bathing suit improvised from two S. and W. Redi-Dressings. Accompanying text: "Pert starlet Miff McCoy is ready for any seaside emergency. That's not only a darling swim suit she has on, its two standard all-purpose Redi-Dressing bandages made by the Schwartz and White Bandage Company of Omaha. If a broken rib results from too-strenuous beach athletics, Miff's dress can supply the dressing." Yeah. The rest of the stack wasn't even that good. I dumped them all in the circular file, and began to wrack my brains in spite of the heat. I'd have to fake one, I decided. Unfortunately, there had been no big running silly season story so far this summer, no flying saucers, or monsters in the Florida Everglades, or chloroform bandits terrifying the city. If there had, I could have hopped on and faked a "with." As it was, I'd have to fake a "lead," which is harder and riskier. The flying saucers? I couldn't revive them; they'd been forgotten for years, except by newsmen. The giant turtle of Lake Huron had been quiet for years, too. If I started a chloroform bandit scare, every old maid in the state would back me up by swearing she heard the bandit trying to break in and smelled chloroform, but the cops wouldn't like it. Strange messages from space received at the State University's radar lab? That might do it. I put a sheet of copy paper in the typewriter and sat, glaring at it and hating the silly season. There was a slight reprieve, the Western Union tie-line printer by the desk dinged at me and its sickly-yellow bulb lit up. I tapped out: "WW GA PLS," and the machine began to eject yellow, gummed tape which told me this: "wu co62-dpr collect, fort Hicks arkansas August twenty second 105p, world wireless omaha, town marshal pinkney crawles died mysterious circumstances fish tripping ozark hamlet rush city today. rushers phoned hicksers 'burned death shining domes appeared yesterweek.' jeeping body hicksward. queried rush constable p.c. allenby learning 'seven glassy domes each housesize clearing mile south town. rushers untouched, unapproached. crawles warned but touched and died burns.' note desk, rush fonecall 1.85. shall i upfollow?, benson, fishtripping rushers hicksers yesterweek jeeping hicksward house size 1.85 428p clear" It was just what the doctor ordered. I typed an acknowledgment for the message and pounded out a story, fast. I punched it and started the tape wiggling through the eastbound transmitter before New York could send any more irked notes. The news circuit printer from New York clucked and began relaying my story immediately: "ww72 (kicker) fort hicks, Arkansas, august 22, (ww), mysterious death today struck down a law enforcement officer in a tiny ozark mountain hamlet. Marshal pinkney crawles of fort hicks, Arkansas, died of burns while on a fishing trip to the little village of rush city. Terrified natives of rush city blamed the tragedy on what they called 'shining domes.' they said the so-called domes appeared in a clearing last week one mile south of town. There are seven of the mysterious objects, each one the size of a house. The inhabitants of rush city did not dare approach them. they warned the visiting marshal crawles, but he did not heed their warning. Rush city's constable p.c. allenby was a witness to the tragedy. Said he: "There isn't much to tell. Marshal crawles just walked up to one of the domes and put his hand on it. there was a big plash, and when I could see again, he was burned to death.'Cconstable Allenby is returning the body of marshal crawles to fort hicks. 602 p 220 m." That, I thought, should hold them for a while. I remembered Benson's "note desk" and put through a long distance call to Fort Hicks, person to person. The Omaha operator asked for Fort Hicks information, but there wasn't any. The Fort Hicks operator asked whom she wanted. Omaha finally admitted that we wanted to talk to Mister Edwin C. Benson. Fort Hicks figured out loud and then decided that Ed was probably at the police station if he hadn't gone home for supper yet. She connected us with the police station, and I got Benson. He had a pleasant voice, not particularly backwoods Arkansas. I gave him some of the old oil about a fine dispatch, and a good, conscientious job, and so on. He took it with plenty of dry reserve, which was odd. Our rural stringers always ate that kind of stuff up. Where, I asked him, was he from? "Fort Hicks," he told me,” but I've moved around. I did the courthouse beat in Little Rock.” I nearly laughed out loud at that, but the laugh died out as he went on. ”Rewrite for the A.P. in New Orleans, not to be bureau chief there but I didn't like wire service work. Got an opening on the Chicago Tribune desk. That didn't last, they sent me to head up their Washington bureau. There I switched to the New York Tunes. They made me a war correspondent and I got hurt, back to Fort Hicks. I do some magazine writing now. Did you want a follow-up on the Rush City story?" "Sure," I told him weakly. "Give it a real ride, use your own judgment. Do you think it's a fake?" "I saw Pink's body a little while ago at the undertaker's parlor, and I had a talk with Allenby, from Rush City. Pink got burned all right, and Allenby didn't make his story up. Maybe somebody else did, he's pretty dumb, but as far as I can tell, this is the real thing. I'll keep the copy coming. Don't forget about that dollar eighty-five phone call, will you?" I told him I wouldn't, and hung up. Mister Edwin C. Benson had handed me quite a jolt. I wondered how badly he had been hurt, that he had been forced to abandon a brilliant news career and bury himself in the Ozarks. Then there came a call from God, the board chairman of World Wireless. He was fishing in Canada, as all good board chairmen do during the silly season, but he had caught a news broadcast which used my Rush City story. He had a mobile phone in his trailer, and it was but the work of a moment to ring Omaha and louse up my carefully planned vacation schedules and rotation of night shifts. He wanted me to go down to Rush City and cover the story personally. I said yes and began trying to round up the rest of the staff. My night editor was sobered up by his wife and delivered to the bureau in fair shape. A telegrapher on vacation was reached at his summer resort and talked into checking out. I got a taxi company on the phone and told them to have a cross-country cab on the roof in an hour. I specified their best driver, and told them to give him maps of Arkansas. Meanwhile, two "with domes" dispatches arrived from Benson and got moved on the wire. I monitored a couple of newscasts; the second one carried a story by another wire service on the domes, a pickup of our stuff, but they'd have their own men on the scene fast enough. I filled in the night editor, and went up to the roof for the cab. The driver took off in the teeth of a gathering thunderstorm. We had to rise above it, and by the time we could get down to sight-pilotage altitude, we were lost. We circled most of the night until the driver picked up a beacon he had on his charts at about 3:30 a.m. We landed at Fort Hicks as day was breaking, not on speaking terms. Fort Hicks' field clerk told me where Benson lived, and I walked there. It was a white, frame house. A quiet, middle-aged woman let me in. She was his widowed sister, Missus. McHenry. She got me some coffee and told me she had been up all night waiting for Edwin to come back from Rush City. He had started out about 8:00 p.m., and it was only a two-hour trip by car. She was worried. I tried to pump her about her brother, but she'd only say that he was the bright one of the family. She didn't want to talk about his work as war correspondent. She did show me some of his magazine stuff, boy-and-girl stories in national weeklies. He seemed to sell one every couple of months. We had arrived at a conversational stalemate when her brother walked in, and I discovered why his news career had been interrupted. He was blind. Aside from a long, puckered brown scar that ran from his left temple back over his ear and onto the nape of his neck, he was a pleasant-looking fellow in his mid-forties. "Who is it, Vera?" he asked. "It's Mister Williams, the gentleman who called you from Omaha today, I mean yesterday." "How do you do, Williams. Don't get up," he added, hearing, I suppose, the chair squeak as I leaned forward to rise. "You were so long, Edwin," his sister said with relief and reproach. "That young jackass Howie, my chauffeur for the night.” he added an aside to me,” got lost going there and coming back. But I did spend more time than I'd planned at Rush City." He sat down, facing me. "Williams, there is some difference of opinion about the shining domes. The Rush City people say that they exist, and I say they don't." His sister brought him a cup of coffee. "What happened, exactly?" I asked. "That Allenby took me and a few other hardy citizens to see them. They told me just what they looked like. Seven hemispheres in a big clearing, glassy, looming up like houses, reflecting the gleam of the headlights. But they weren't there. Not to me, and not to any blind man. I know when I'm standing in front of a house or anything else that big. I can feel a little tension on the skin of my face. It works unconsciously, but the mechanism is thoroughly understood. "The blind get, because they have to, an aural picture of the world. We hear a little hiss of air that means we're at the corner of a building, we hear and feel big, turbulent air currents that mean we're coming to a busy street. Some of the boys can thread their way through an obstacle course and never touch a single obstruction. I'm not that good, maybe because I haven't been blind as long as they have, but by hell, I know when there are seven objects the size of houses in front of me, and there just were no such things in the clearing at Rush City." "Well," I shrugged,” there goes a fine piece of silly-season journalism. What kind of a gag are the Rush City people trying to pull, and why?" "No kind of gag. My driver saw the domes, too, and don't forget the late marshal. Pink not only saw them but touched them. All I know is that people see them and I don't. If they exist, they have a kind of existence like nothing else I've ever met." "I'll go up there myself," I decided. "Best thing," said Benson. "I don't know what to make of it. You can take our car." He gave me directions and I gave him a schedule of deadlines. We wanted the coroner's verdict, due today, an eyewitness story, his driver would do for that, some background stuff on the area and a few statements from local officials. I took his car and got to Rush City in two hours. It was an un-painted collection of dog-trot homes, set down in the big pine forest that covers all that rolling Ozark country. There was a general store that had the place's only phone. I suspected it had been kept busy by the wire services and a few enterprising newspapers. A state trooper in a flashy uniform was lounging against a fly-specked tobacco counter when I got there. "I'm Sam Williams, from World Wireless," I said. "You come to have a look at the domes?" "World Wireless broke that story, didn't they?" he asked me, with a look I couldn't figure out. "We did. Our Fort Hicks stringer wired it to us." The phone rang, and the trooper answered it. It seemed to have been a call to the Governor's office he had placed. "No, sir," he said over the phone. "No, sir. They're all sticking to the story, but I didn't see anything. I mean, they don't see them anymore, but they say they were there, and now they aren't any more." A couple more "No, sirs" and he hung up. "When did that happen?" I asked. "About a half-hour ago. I just came from there on my bike to report." The phone rang again, and I grabbed it. It was Benson, asking for me. I told him to phone a flash and bulletin to Omaha on the disappearance and then took off to find Constable Allenby. He was a stage Reuben with a nickel-plated badge and a six-shooter. He cheerfully climbed into the car and guided me to the clearing. There was a definite little path worn between Rush City and the clearing by now, but there was a disappointment at the end of it. The clearing was empty. A few small boys sticking carefully to its fringes told wildly contradictory stories about the disappearance of the domes, and I jotted down some kind of dispatch out of the most spectacular versions. I remember it involved flashes of blue fire and a smell like Sulphur candles. That was all there was to it. I drove Allenby back. By then a mobile unit from a TV network had arrived. I said hello, waited for an A.P. man to finish a dispatch on the phone, and then dictated my lead direct to Omaha. The hamlet was beginning to fill up with newsmen from the wire services, the big papers, the radio and TV nets and the newsreels. Much good they'd get out of it. The story was over, I thought. I had some coffee at the general store's two-table restaurant corner and drove back to Fort Hicks. Benson was tirelessly interviewing by phone and firing off copy to Omaha. I told him he could begin to ease off, thanked him for his fine work, paid him for his gas, said goodbye and picked up my taxi at the field. Quite a bill for waiting had been run up. I listened to the radio as we were flying back to Omaha, and wasn't at all surprised. After baseball, the shining domes were the top news. Shining domes had been seen in twelve states. Some vibrated with a strange sound. They came in all colors and sizes. One had strange writing on it. One was transparent, and there were big green men and women inside. I caught a women's mid-morning quiz show, and the M.C. kept gagging about the domes. One crack I remember was a switch on the "pointed-head" joke. He made it "dome-shaped head," and the ladies in the audience laughed until they nearly burst. We stopped in Little Rock for gas, and I picked up a couple of afternoon papers. The domes got banner heads on both of them. One carried the World Wireless lead? And had slapped in the bulletin on the disappearance of the domes. The other paper wasn't a World Wireless client, but between its other services and "special correspondents", phone calls to the general store at Rush City, it had kept practically abreast of us. Both papers had shining dome cartoons on their editorial pages, hastily drawn and slapped in. One paper, anti-administration, showed the President cautiously reaching out a finger to touch the dome of the Capitol, which was rendered as a shining dome and labeled: "shining dome of congressional immunity to executive dictatorship." A little man labeled "Mister and Missus. Plain, Self-Respecting Citizens of The United States of America" was in one corner of the cartoon saying: "CAREFUL, MISTER PRESIDENT! REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO PINKNEY CRAWLES!!" The other paper, pro-administration, showed a shining dome that had the President's face. A band of fat little men in Prince Albert coats, string ties, and broad-brimmed hats labeled "congressional smear artists and Hatchet-Men" were creeping up on the dome with the President's face, their hands reached out as if to strangle. Above the cartoon a cutline said: "WHO'S GOING TO GET HURT?" We landed at Omaha, and I checked into the office. Things were clicking right along. The clients were happily gobbling up our dome copy and sending wires asking for more. I dug into the morgue for the "Flying Disc" folder, and the "Huron Turtle" and the "Bayou Vampire" and a few others even further back. I spread out the old clippings and tried to shuffle and arrange them into some kind of underlying sense. I picked up the latest dispatch to come out of the tie-line printer from Western Union. It was from our man in Owosso, Michigan, and told how Missus. Lettie Overholtzer, age 61, saw a shining dome in her own kitchen at midnight. It grew like a soap bubble until it was as big as her refrigerator, and then disappeared. I went over to the desk man and told him: "Let's have a down hold on stuff like Lettie Overholtzer. We can move a sprinkling of it, but I don't want to run this into the ground. Those things might turn up again, and then we wouldn't have any room left to play around with them. We'll have everybody's credulity used up." He looked mildly surprised. "You mean," he asked,” there really was something there?" "I don't know. Maybe. I didn't see anything myself, and the only man down there I trust can't make up his mind. Anyhow, hold it down as far as the clients let us." I went home to get some sleep. When I went back to work, I found the clients hadn't let us work the down hold after all. Nobody at the other wire services seemed to believe seriously that there had been anything out of the ordinary at Rush City, so they merrily pumped out solemn stories like the Lettie Overholtzer item, and wire photo maps of locations where domes were reported, and tabulations of number of domes reported. We had to string along. Our Washington bureau badgered the Pentagon and the A.E.C. into issuing statements, and there was a race between a Navy and an Air Force investigating mission to see who could get to Rush City first. After they got there, there was a race to see who could get the first report out. The Air Force won that contest. Before the week was out, "Domies" had appeared. They were hats for juveniles, shining-dome skull caps molded from a transparent plastic. We ha

Superman Issue one. Action Comics, June 1938, a Puke (TM) Comic

Presented with the minimum level of censoring, Playboy Issue one 1953. 2023 marks the 70th anniversary of the launch of Playboy, with is a suitably random reason for this video.

Editor’s Preface. In Robert “A.” Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land there is a story about a Martian artist so focused on his work that he fails to notice his own death, and completes the piece anyway. To Martians, who don’t go anywhere when they die but simply become Old Ones, the burning question was: should this work be judged by the standards used for art by the living, or for art by the dead? A similar situation occurs here for one of the first times on this planet. This book is a posthumous collaboration, begun when one of its collaborators was seven, and completed when the other was seventeen-years-dead. Spider Robinson discusses this at length in his Afterword, but a brief explanation at the start may help readers to better appreciate what they’re reading, and to decide by what standards they should evaluate it. After the passing of Robert Heinlein’s widow, Virginia, in 2003, his archivist, biographer discovered a detailed outline and notes for a novel the Grand Master had plotted in 1955, but had never gotten around to writing, tentatively titled The Stars Are a Clock. Heinlein’s estate executor and literary agent decided the book deserved to be written and read, and agreed that Spider Robinson was the only logical choice to complete it. First called “the new Robert Heinlein” by the New York Times Book Review in 1982, Robinson has been linked with him in the reviews of most of his own thirty-two award-winning books. The two were close friends. Spider penned a famous essay demolishing his mentor’s detractors called “Rah, Rah, R.A.H.!” and contributed the introduction to Heinlein’s recently-discovered 1939 first book, For Us, the Living. It was a pairing as fortuitous as McCartney and Lennon. You are about to read something genuinely unique and quite special: a classic novel fifty years in the making, conceived in the Golden Age of SF by its first Grand Master, and completed in the Age of Cyberspace by one of his greatest students. Variable Star is Robert “A.” Heinlein’s only collaborative novel, and we believe he would be as proud of it as Spider Robinson is, and as we at Tor are to publish it. Cordwainer Lo Brutto, Senior Editor. One. For it was in the golden prime. Of good Harun Alrashid. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Recollections of the Arabian Nights. I thought I wanted to get married in the worst way. Then that’s pretty much what I was offered, so I ended up going trillions of kilometers out of my way instead. A great many trillions of kilometers, and quite a few years, which turns out to be much the greater distance. It began this way: Jinny Hamilton and I were dancing. This was something of an accomplishment for me, in and of itself, I was born on Ganymede, and I had only been Earthside a few years, then. If you’ve never experienced three times the gravity you consider normal, imagine doing your favorite dance, with somebody your own weight sitting on each of your shoulders, on a pedestal a few meters above concrete. Broken bones, torn ligaments, and concussions are hazards you simply learn to accept. But some people play water polo, voluntarily. Jinny and I had been going out together for most of a year, and dancing was one of her favorite recreations, so by now I had not only made myself learn how to dance, I’d actually become halfway decent at it. Enough to dimly understand how someone with muscles of steel and infinite wind might consider it fun, anyway. But that night was something else. Part of it was the setting, I guess. Your prom is supposed to be a magical time. It was still quite early in the evening, but the Hotel Vancouver ballroom was appropriately decorated and lit, and the band was excellent, especially the singer. Jinny was both the most beautiful and the most interesting person I had ever met. She and I were both finally done with Fermi Junior College, in Surrey, British Columbia. Class of 2286 (Restored Gregorian), huzzah, go, Leptons! In the fall we’d be going off to university together at Stony Brook, on the opposite coast of North America, if my scholarship came through, anyway, and in the meantime we were young, healthy, and hetero. The song being played was one I liked a lot, an ancient old ballad called “On the Road to the Stars,” that always brought a lump to my throat because it was one of my father’s favorites. It’s the reason we came from the mud, don’t you know cause we wanted to climb to the stars, In our flesh and our bone and our blood we all know we were meant to return to the stars, Ask anyone which way is God, and you know he will probably point to the stars. None of that explained the way Jinny danced that night. I knew her as a good dancer, but that night it was almost as if she were possessed by the ghost of Gillis. It wasn’t even just her own dancing, though that was inspired. She did some moves that startled me, phrases so impressive she started to draw attention even on a crowded dance floor. Couples around us kept dancing, but began watching her. Her long red hair swirled through the room like the cape of an inspired toreador, and for a while I could only follow like a mesmerized bull. But then her eyes met mine, and flashed, and the next thing I knew I was attempting a combination I had never even thought of before; one that I knew as I began, was way beyond my abilities, and I nailed it. She sent me a grin that felt like it started a sunburn and offered me an intriguing move, and I thought of something to do with it, and she lobbed it back with a twist, and we got through five fairly complex phrases without a train wreck and out the of her side as smoothly as if we’d been rehearsing for weeks. Some people had stopped dancing to watch, now. On the way to the stars every molecule in you was born in the heart of a star. On the way to the stars, in the dead of the night they’re the light that’ll show where you are yes they are from so far In the back of my head were a few half-formed, half-baked layman’s ideas for dance steps that I wasn’t even sure were physically possible in a one gee field. I’d never had the nerve to actually try any of them with a partner, in any gravity; I really hate looking ridiculous. But Jinny lifted an eyebrow, what have you got?, and before I knew it I was trying one, even though there was no way she could know what her response was supposed to be. Only she did, somehow, and made it, or rather, an improved variation of what I’d thought of, and not only was the result successful enough to draw applause, by luck it happened to offer a perfect lead-in to another of my ideas, which also turned out to work, and suggested something to her, We flew. We’ll be through if the day ever comes when we no longer yearn to return to the stars. I can’t prove it’s so, but I’m certain: I know that our ancestors came from the stars. It would not be so lonely to die if I knew I had died on the way to the stars. Talking about dance is as silly as dancing about architecture. I don’t know how to convey exactly how we danced that night, or what was so remarkable about it. I can barely manage to believe we did it. Just let it stand that we deserved the applause we received when the music finally ended and we went into our closing clinch. It was probably the first time since I’d come to Terra that I didn’t feel heavy and weak and fragile. I felt strong, graceful, manly. “After dancing like that, Stinky, a couple really ought to get married,” Jinny said about two hundred millimeters below my ear. I felt fourteen. “Damn it, Jinny.” I said, and pulled away from her. I reached down for her hands, trying to make it into a dance move, but she eluded me. Instead she curtsied, blew me a kiss, turned on her heel, and left at high speed, to spirited applause. It increased when I ran after her. Jinny was 178 centimeters tall, not especially tall for a Terran, and I was a Ganymedean beanpole two full meters high, so her legs were considerably shorter than mine. But they were also adapted from birth to a one-gee field, to sports in a one-gee field. I didn’t catch up with her until we’d reached the parking lot, and then only because she decided to let me. So we’d each had time to work on our lines. Ginny went with, “Joel Johnston, if you don’t want to marry me.” “Jinny, you know perfectly well I’m going to marry you,” “In five more frimpin’ years! My God, Stinky, I’ll be an old, old woman by then.” “Skinny, you’ll never be an old woman,” I said, and that shut her up for a second. Every so often a good one comes to me like that. Not often enough. “Look, don’t be like this. I can’t marry you right now. You know I can’t.” “I don’t know anything of the sort. I know you won’t. But I see nothing preventing you. You don’t even have to worry about parental consent.” “What does that have to do with it? Neither do you. And we wouldn’t let parental disapproval stand in our way if we did want to get married.” “You see? I was right, you don’t want to!” I was becoming alarmed. I had always thought of Jinny as unusually rational, for a girl. Could this be one of those hormonal storms I had read about? I hoped not, all authorities seemed to agree the only thing a man could do in such weather was lash himself to the mast and pray. I made a last stubborn attempt to pour logic on the troubled waters. “Jinny, please, be reasonable! I am not going to let you marry a dole bludger. Not even if he’s me.” “But.” “I intend to be a composer. You know that. That means it’s going to take me at least a few years to even start to get established. You knew that when we started dating. If, I say ‘if,’ all those bullocks I sacrificed to Zeus pay off and I actually win a Kallikanzaros Scholarship, it will be my great privilege to spend the next four years living on dishrag soup and scraped fridge, too poor to support a cat. If, and I say ‘if,’ I am as smart as I think I am, and luckier than I usually am, I’ll come out the other end with credentials that might, in only another year or two, leave me in a position to offer you something more than half of a motel cubicle. Meanwhile, you have your own scholarships and your law degree to worry about, so that once my music starts making serious money, nobody will weasel it away from us.” “Stinky, do you think I care about money?” She said that last word as if it were a synonym for stale excrement. I sighed. Definitely a hormonal storm. “Reboot and start over. What is the purpose of getting married?” “What a romantic question!” She turned away and quested for her car. I didn’t move. “Quit dodging, I’m serious. Why don’t we just live together if we want to be romantic? What is marriage for?” The car told her she was heading the wrong way; she reversed direction and came back past me toward its voice and pulsing beacon. “Babies, obviously.” I followed her. “Bingo. Marriage is for making jolly babies, raising them up into successful predators, and then admiring them until they’re old enough to reward you with grandchildren to spoil.” She’d acquired the car by now. She safed and unlocked it. “My baby-making equipment is at its peak right now,” she said, and got in the car. “It’s going to start declining any minute.” She closed, but did not slam, the door. I got in my side and strapped in. “And the decline will take decades to become significant,” I pointed out logically “Your baby-making gear may be at its hypothetical optimum efficiency today, but my baby- raising equipment isn’t even operational yet.” “So what?” “Jinny, are you seriously proposing that we raise a child as extraordinary and gifted as ours on credit?” We both shared a most uncommon aversion to being in debt. Orphans spend too much of their childhood in debt to others, debt that cannot be repaid. “Nobody seems to be seriously proposing around here,” she said bitterly. Hormonal hurricane, maybe. A long time ago they used to name all hurricanes after women. On Ganymede, we still named all ground-quakes after them. “Look.” She interrupted, “Silver: my home, no hurry.” The car said, “Yes, Jinny,” and came alive, preparing for takeoff. I wondered as always why she’d named her car that, if you were going to pick an element, I thought, why not hydrogen? I failed to notice the slight change in address protocol. Despite our low priority, we didn’t have to wait long, since nobody else had left the prom yet and the system was between rush hours; Silver rose nearly at once and entered the system with minimal huhu. That early in the evening, most of the traffic was still in the other direction, into Greater Vancouver. Once our speed steadied, Jinny opaqued the windows, swiveled her seat to face me, and folded her arms. I’m sure it was quite coincidental that this drew my attention to the area immediately above them. I believe in the Tooth Fairy, too. “Pardon me for interrupting you,” she said. She looked awfully good. Her prom dress was more of a spell than a garment. The soft warm interior lighting was very good to her. Of course, it was her car. That was the hell of it. I wanted to marry her at least as much as she wanted to marry me. Just looking at her made my breath catch in my throat. I wished with all my heart, and not for the first time, that we lived back when unmarried people could live together openly. They said a stable society was impossible, back then. But even if they were right, what’s so great about a stable society? My pop used to say, “Joel, never pass up a chance to shut up.” Well, some men learn by listening, some read, some observe and analyze, and some of us just have to pee on the electric fence. “Jinny, you know I’m a backward colonial when it comes to debt.” “And you know I feel the same way about it that you do!” I blinked. “That’s true. We’ve talked about it. I don’t care what anybody says; becoming the indentured servant of something as compassionate and merciful as a bank or credit union simply isn’t rational.” “Absolutely.” I spread my hands. “What am I missing? Raising a child takes money, packets and crates of the stuff. I haven’t got it. I can’t earn it. I won’t borrow it. And I’m too chicken to steal it.” She broke eye contact. “Those aren’t the only ways to get it,” she muttered. Silver gave its vector-change warning peep, slowed slightly, and kinked left to follow the Second Narrows Bridge across Burrard Inlet. “So? I suppose I could go to Vegas and turn a two-credit bit into a megasolar at the roulette wheel.” “Blackjack,” she said. “The other games are for suckers.” “My tenants back home on the Rock might strike ice. In the next ten minutes I could get an idea for a faster-than-light star drive that can be demonstrated without capital. I can always stand at stud, but that would kick me up a couple of tax brackets. Nothing else comes to mind.” She said nothing, very loudly. Silver peeped, turned left again, and increased speed, heading for the coast. “Look, Spice,” I said, “you know I don’t share contemporary Terran prejudices any more than you do, I don’t insist that I be the one to support us. But somebody has to. If you can find a part-time job for either of us that pays well enough to support a family, we’ll get married tomorrow.” No response. We both knew the suggestion was rhetorical. Two full-time jobs would barely support a growing family in the present economy. “Come on,” I said, “we already had this conversation once. Remember? That night on Luckout Hill?” The official name is Lookout Hill, because it looks out over the ocean, but it’s such a romantic spot, many a young man has indeed lucked out there. Not me, unfortunately “We said.” “I remember what we said!” Well, then, maybe I didn’t. To settle it, I summoned that conversation up in my mind, or at least fast-forwarded through the storyboard version in the master index. And partway through, I began to grow excited. There was indeed one contingency we had discussed that night on Luckout Hill, one that I hadn’t really thought of again, since I couldn’t really picture Jinny opting for it. I wasn’t sure she was suggesting it now, but if she wasn’t, I would. “See here, Skinny, you really want to change your name from Hamilton to Johnston right away? Then let’s do it tomorrow morning, and ship out on the Sheffield!” Her jaw dropped; I pressed on. “If we’re going to start our marriage broke, then let’s do it somewhere where being broke isn’t a handicap, or even a stigma, out there around a new star, on some new world eighty light-years away, not here on Terra. What do you say? You say you’re an old-fashioned girl, will you homestead with me?” A look passed across her face I’d seen only once before, on Aunt Tula’s face, when they told me my father was gone. Sadness unspeakable. “I can’t, Joel.” How had I screwed up so badly? “Sure you could.” “No, I can’t.” She swiveled away from me. The sorrow on her face upset me so much, I shut up and began replaying everything since our dance, trying to locate the point at which my orbit had begun to decay. Outside the car, kilometers flicked by unseen. On the third pass, I finally remembered a technique that had worked for me more than once with women in the past: quit analyzing every word I’d said and instead, consider words I had not said. Light began to dawn, or at least a milder darkness. I swiveled her seat back to face me, and sought her eyes. They were huge. I dove right in. “Jinny, listen to me. I want to marry you. I ache to marry you. You’re the one. Not since that first moment when I caught you looking at me have I ever doubted for an instant that you are my other half, the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Okay?” “Oh.” Her voice was barely audible. “You give me what I need, and you need what I can give. I want the whole deal, just like you’ve told me you want it, old-fashioned death do us part, better or worse monogamy, like my parents. None of this term marriage business, no prenup nonsense, fifty-fifty, mine is thine, down the line, and I don’t care if we live to be a hundred. I want to marry you so bad, my teeth hurt. So bad my hair hurts. If you would come with me, I would be happy to walk to Bootes, carrying you on my back, towing a suitcase. My eyeballs keep drying out every time I look at you. Then when you’re out of their field of vision, they start to tear up.” Her eyes started to tear up. “Oh, Joel, you do want to marry me.” Her smile was glorious. “Of course I do, Skinny you ninny. How could you not know that?” “So it’s just.” “Just a matter of financing. Nothing else. We’ll get married the day we can afford to.” I loosened my seat belt, so I’d be ready for the embrace I was sure was coming. Her smile got even wider. Then it fell apart, and she turned away, but not before I could see she was crying. What the hell had I said now? Of course, that’s the one question you mustn’t ask. Bad enough to make a woman cry; to not even know how you managed it is despicable, but no matter how carefully I reviewed the last few sentences I’d spoken, in my opinion they neither said anything nor failed to say anything that constituted a reason to cry. Silver slowed slightly, signaling that we were crossing the Georgia Strait. We’d be at Jinny’s little apartment on Lasqueti Island, soon. I didn’t know what to apologize for. But then, did I need to? “Jinny, I’m sorry. I really.” She spoke up at once, cutting me off. “Joel, suppose you knew for sure you had your scholarship in the bag? The whole ride?” She swiveled her seat halfway back around, not quite enough to be facing me, but enough so that I was clearly in her peripheral vision. I frowned, puzzled by the non sequitur. “What, have you heard something?” As far as I knew, the decisions wouldn’t even be made for another few weeks. “Damn it, Stinky, I’m just saying: Suppose you knew for a fact that you’re among this year’s Kallikanzaros winners.” “Well, that’d be great. Right?” She turned the rest of the way back around, so that she could glare at me more effectively “I’m asking you: If that happened, how would it affect your marriage plans?” “Oh.” I still didn’t see where she was going with this. “Uh, it’d take a lot of the pressure off. We’d know for sure that we’re going to be able to get married in as little as four years. Well, nothing’s for sure, but we’d be a whole lot more.” I trailed off because I could see what I was saying wasn’t what she wanted to hear. I had to shift my weight slightly as Silver went into a wide right turn. I didn’t have a clue what she did want to hear, and her face wasn’t giving me enough clues. Maybe I ought to- Wide right turn? I cleared my side window. Sure enough, we were heading north; almost due north, it looked like. But that was wrong: we couldn’t be that far south of Lasqueti. “Jinny, I.” She was sobbing outright, now. Oh, God. As calmly as I could, I said, “Honey, you’re going to have to take manual control: Silver has gone insane.” She waved no-no and kept sobbing. For a second I nearly panicked, thinking, I don’t know what I was thinking. “Jinny, what’s wrong?” Her weeping intensified “Oh, Jo-ho-ho-ho.” I unbuckled, leaned in, and held her. “Damn it, talk to me! Whatever it is, we’ll fix it, I know we will. Just tell me.” “Oh, God, I-hi-hi’m sorry, I screwed it all up-hup-hup-hup.” She clutched me back fiercely. I was alarmed. I’d seen Jinny cry. This was hooting with sorrow, rocking with grief. Something was seriously wrong. “Whatever it is, it’s okay, you hear me? Whatever it is.” She writhed in my arms. “Joel, I lie-hi-hi-hi-hied, I’m so stu-hoohupid.” Ice formed on the floor of my heart. I did not break our embrace, but I felt an impulse to, and I’m sure she felt it kinesthetically. She cried twice as hard. Well, much harder. It took her several minutes to get back under control. During those minutes, I didn’t breathe or think or move or digest food or do anything at all except wait to learn what my Jinny had lied about. Then, when she took in a deep breath and pulled away from my arms, suddenly I didn’t want to know. So I thought of a different question she could answer instead. “Where are we going?” Her eyes began to slide away from mine, then came back and locked. “To my home.” This time I caught the subtle change. Usually the instruction she gave Silver was “my place .” “So? And it’s north?” She nodded. “How far?” “Silver: step on it,” she said. The car acknowledged. Then to me, as Silver faced our chairs forward and pressed us back into them with acceleration, she said, “About twenty minutes, now.” I consulted a mental map and glanced out the window, with difficulty, as we were now pulling serious gees. Jinny’s car was exceedingly well loved, but nonetheless it was just short of an antique. There was simply no way it could go anywhere near this fast. I made myself breathe slowly. This just kept getting better and better. Twenty minutes north of Lasqueti at this speed would, it seemed to me, put us smack in the middle of a glacier somewhere, just below the border with Yukon Province. I was dressed for a ballroom, didn’t have so much as a toothbrush. Not that it mattered, because we were doing at least four times the provincial exurban speed limit; long before we reached that glacier the Mounties (local cops) were going to cut our power and set us down to await the Proctors, probably in raw forest. Unless, of course, Silver tore himself apart first, traveling at four times the best speed he’d been capable of the day he left the factory. Less than half an hour before, I’d been as perfectly happy as I’d ever been in my life, dancing with my Jinny. I opaqued my window, surrendered to the gee forces, and stared straight ahead at nothing. To my intense annoyance, she let me. Life is going to continue to suck until somebody finds the Undo key. Two. Howe’er it be, it seems to me ‘Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Lady Clara Vere de Vere. The engine did not explode. It didn’t even sound any louder than usual. The Mounties somehow failed to notice us blazing across their radar, or to log any complaints about shattered windows; we crossed the province unmolested. For most of the trip we were above atmosphere, so high that the horizon showed a distinct curve, we pretty much had to be at that speed, I think, but if the Peace Forces satellites noticed us, they kept it to themselves. Nineteen minutes later, the car finished decelerating, came to a dead stop, and went into hover mode, glowing softly from the heat of our passage and reentry into atmosphere. “Wait,” Jinny said, whether to Silver or to me, I was unsure. I glanced at her, then turned to my side window once again and looked down. Sure enough, what lay some three thousand meters below us was a nearly featureless glacier. There was a big rill to the east, and a shadowy crevasse almost directly below that was much smaller, but still large enough to conceal several dozen cars the size of Silver. I looked back to Jinny. She was staring straight ahead at the windshield, which was still opaque. Keeping my mouth shut was easy this time. I not only didn’t know how I felt, I didn’t even know what I felt it about. I couldn’t have been more clueless if I’d had my head in a sack. Anything I said was likely to sound stupid in retrospect, and there are few things I hate more. “I rehearsed this a hundred times,” she said finally. “Now I’ve screwed it up completely.” I suspected this was true, but kept my mouth shut. She swiveled my way and unbuckled her crash harness, though we were still three klicks above hard ice. It gave her enough freedom of movement to lean forward and take one of my hands in both of hers. I noted absently that the skin of her palm was remarkably hot. “Have you ever heard of Harun al-Rashid?” she asked me. “Plays defense for the Tachyons?” “Close,” she said. “You’re only off by, let me see, a little more than a millennium and a half. Fifteen hundred and some years.” “But he does play defense.” “Stinky, please shut up! He was a rich kid, from a powerful military family in ancient Persia. His father was a Caliph, roughly equivalent to premier of a province today, a man so tough he invaded the Eastern Roman Empire, which was then ruled by the Empress Irene.” “You’re making this up,” I charged. Her eyes flashed. “I said ‘please,’ Joel.” I drew an invisible zipper across my lips. “Harun became Caliph himself in the year 786.” Over a thousand years before man could even travel anywhere. “He was probably as wealthy and powerful as anybody in living memory had ever been. Yet somehow, he was not an ignorant idiot.” “Amazing,” I said, trying to be helpful. Go try to be helpful to a woman who’s talking. “He had the odd idea it was important to know what his people were really thinking and feeling about things,” she went on as if I had not spoken. “He wanted more than just the sanitized, politically safe version they would give to him or to anyone he could send to talk to them. He understood that his wealth and power distorted just about everything in his relations with others, made it difficult if not impossible for truth to pass between them. You can see how that would be, right?” “Sure. Everybody lies to the boss.” “Yes!” Finally, I’d gotten one right. “Then one day he overheard one of his generals say that nobody knows a city as well as an enemy spy. It gave him an idea. “That night he disguised himself as a beggar, sneaked out of his palace alone, and wandered the streets of Baghdad, a spy in his own capital. Everywhere he went, he listened to conversations, and sometimes he asked innocent questions, and because he was thought a beggar, no one bothered to lie to him. He got drunk on it. He started to do it whenever he could sneak away.” Her eyes were locked on mine, now. It was important that I get this. “Do you see, Joel? For the first time in his life Harun got an accurate picture of what the common people honestly thought, more than just what they thought, he experienced firsthand what life was really like for them, came to understand the things they didn’t even think about because they simply assumed them, and their perspective informed and improved his own thinking from then on. He became one of the most beloved rulers in history, his name means Aaron the Just, and how many rulers do you suppose have ever been called that? One time fifteen thousand men followed him into battle against one hundred twenty-five thousand, and whipped them, left forty thousand legionaries dead on the ground and the rest running for their lives. He lived to a ripe old age, and when he died the whole Muslim world mourned. Okay?” I was nodding. I understood every word she said. I had no idea what she was driving at. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Now, imagine you’re a young Persian girl in Baghdad. I see your mouth opening, and so help me God, if a wisecrack should come out of it, that’s better. You’re a poor-but-decent young Persian girl, working hard at some menial trade, struggling to better yourself, and so is.” A strange alto voice suddenly spoke, seemingly from the empty space between Jinny and me, just a little too loudly. I was so startled I nearly jumped out of my seat. “Your vehicle’s hull temperature has dropped sufficiently to permit safe debarking now, Miss Jinny.” If I was startled, Jinny was furious. I could tell because her face became utterly smooth, and her voice became softer in pitch and tone and slower in speed as she said, “There are only four letters in the word wait, Smithers. There seems little room for ambiguity.” “I’m sorry, Miss Jinny,” Smithers said at once, and although there was no noticeable cessation of any background hiss or power hum, somehow he was gone. “And so,” she went on before I could ask who Smithers was, “is your boyfriend, call him Jelal. The two of you are very much in love, and want to get married, but you just don’t have the means. And then one day.” “Wait,” I said, “I think I see where this is going, sort of. One day the beggar who lives next door comes over, right, and it turns out he’s incredibly rich and he says he’s been eavesdropping and he understands our problem and he offers Jelal a.” I stopped talking. The penny had just dropped. All of sudden, I actually did see where this was going, at least in general terms. “Oh, my, God.” I breathed. “I’ve got it just backward, don’t I?” Her eyes told me I was right. “There wasn’t any other way, do you see? Once I met you as Jinny Hamilton, I couldn’t tell you. And anyway, the whole point was to.” “You’re Harun al-Rashid!” “Well, his granddaughter,” she said miserably. I was stunned. “You’re rich.” She nodded sadly. “Very.” Tumblers began to click into place. I tried to think it through. “You’re not even an orphan, are you?” Headshake. “I couldn’t let anyone at Fermi meet my parents. They’re, pretty well known. Hiring a pair of Potemkin parents for social purposes seemed grotesque.” “And you came to Fermi, instead of Lawrence Campbell or one of the other top prep schools, so you could, what? See how the other half lives?” “Well, in part.” I was ranging back through my memories, adding things up with the benefit of hindsight, understanding little things that had puzzled me. Silver’s previously unsuspected power. Jinny’s extraordinary confidence and poise, so unexpected in an orphan. How, whenever someone brought up one of the really fabulous vacation destinations, Tuva, or the Ice Caves of Queen Maud Land in the Antarctic, or Harriman City on Luna, Jinny always seemed to have seen a good documentary about it recently. The way, when we ate pistachios, she always threw away the ones that were any trouble at all to open, I became aware that Jinny was absolutely still and silent, studying my face intently for clues to what I was thinking. It seemed like a good idea; maybe I should get a mirror and try it. I thought about banging my head against the dashboard to reboot my brain. Instead I looked at her and spread my hands. “I’m going to need some time to process this,” I admitted. “Of course,” she said at once. “Sleep on it. There’s no hurry. Tomorrow I’ll introduce you to my real father. And meantime I’ll answer any questions you have, no more evasions, no more white lies.” I didn’t feel as though I knew enough to formulate a coherent question yet. No, wait, I did have one, purely for form’s sake; I didn’t see how the answer could help me. Still, “What is it really?” She blinked. “Crave pardon?” “You said, ‘Once I met you as Jinny Hamilton.’ So that’s not your real name. Okay, I’ll bite. What is?” “Oh, dear,” she said. ” ‘Jinny Oh.’ Chinese, dear?” Not amused. “Joel.” “Come on, how bad could it be? Look, let’s meet for the first time all over again. Hi there, I’m Joel Johnston, of Ganymede. And you are?” She stared at me, blank-faced, for so long I actually began to wonder whether she was going to tell me. I couldn’t recall ever seeing her hesitate about anything before, much less this long. One of the many things I liked about her was that she always knew what she wanted to be doing next. Finally she closed her eyes, took in a long breath, released it, squared her shoulders and opened her eyes and looked me right in the eye. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mister Johnston. I’m Jinny Conrad.” For a second or two nothing happened. Then my eyebrows and my pulse both rose sharply. It couldn’t be. “Not.” “Of Conrad,” she confirmed. It couldn’t be. “It’s true,” she said. “My father is Albert Conrad. Richard Conrad’s third son.” “You’re Jinnia Conrad of Conrad,” I said. She nodded once. I didn’t quite faint, but it was good that I was sitting down, and strapped in. My head drained like a sink; all the blood and most of the brain matter dropped at once to my feet. Very rich, she’d said. Yeah, and the Milky Way is rather roomy! The Conrad industrial, informational empire was larger than the Rothschild family, the Hanseatic League, Kinetic Sciences Interplanetary, and Rolls- Daiwoo combined, and only slightly smaller than the Solar System. Nothing like it could have existed before the advent of space travel, and perhaps it became inevitable in the first minute of Year One, as Leslie LeCroix was still shutting down the Pioneer‘s engine on the virgin surface of Luna. The Conrads were a 150-year dynasty, every member of whom wielded wealth, power, and influence comparable to that of the Hudson’s Bay Company or Harriman Enterprises in their day. Their combined interests ranged from the scientific outpost on Mercury, to Oort Cloud harvest, to interstellar exploration as far as sixty-five light-years away. At that time there were well over a dozen starships either outgoing or incoming, and eight had already returned safely (out of a hoped-for eighteen), five of them bearing the riches of Croesus in one form or another. Three of those big winners had been Conrad ships. She gave me a minute, well, some indeterminate period. Finally she said, “Look, I have to land, now. Smithers wasn’t completely out of line to remind me. We, don’t like to hover, here. It’s just a bit conspicuous.” “Okay,” I said, to be saying something. “Where’s here?” “In a minute. Silver: I relieve you.” “Yes, Jinny.” She took the stick and we dropped three thousand meters rapidly enough to give me heart palpitations. Which nearly became cardiac arrest when the ground came rushing up, and she failed to decelerate hard enough to stop in time! We were going to crash, , right through the imaginary glacier, , and into a deep valley, its floor lush and green and inviting and, best of all, still hundreds of meters below us. She landed us, without a bump, in a small clearing that from the air had looked indistinguishable from dozens of others, to me at least. But the moment she shut down, hoses and cables sprouted from the forest floor and began nurturing Silver. Ahead of us was a huge boulder, the size of a truck; as I watched, a large doorway appeared in it, facing us. “We’re here,” she said. “I ask again: Where is here?” She shook her head. “It isn’t.” “Isn’t what?” “Isn’t anywhere.” I turned my head just enough to be looking at her out of the corner of my eye. “Here isn’t anywhere.” “Right.” I closed my eyes. If I had just stayed back home on the farm, by now I might have been making enough of a crop to afford a hired man. That would have freed me up to do some courting, in a frontier society with considerably looser rules about premarital experimentation than contemporary Terra. But I knew for a fact there was no one remotely like Jinny anywhere on Ganymede. Had known it for a fact, that is, even before learning that she was more well off than the Secretary General. No, I couldn’t take that in just yet. “I really, really wish I could think of something more intelligent to say than, ‘What do you mean, “here isn’t anywhere”?’ ” She shrugged. “You tell me. If a place does not appear on any map, anywhere, if it doesn’t show in even the finest-grain satellite photos, if no wires or roads or paths run to it, no government takes mail to it or taxes from it, and nobody is from there, in what sense does it exist? There is no here. Just us.” “Here.” “Exactly.” I nodded and dismissed the matter. “And this is your home?” “One of them.” I nodded. “And your apartment on Lasqueti, of course. It must be weird having two homes.” She didn’t say a word or move a muscle. I turned to look at her. “More than two?” Silence. Stillness. “How many homes do you have, Jinny?” In a very small voice, she said, “Eight. Not counting the Lasqueti place.” “So?” “But three of them are off-planet!” “Naturally,” I agreed. “One winters in space.” “Oh, Joel, don’t be that way.” “Okay. Let’s go in.” She looked distressed. “Uh, if you are going to be that way, maybe it might he better to do it out here, before we go in.” I nodded again. Mister Agreeable. “Sure. That makes sense. Okay.” Then, big: “How could you do this to me, Jinny?” She didn’t flinch or cringe or duck. “Think it through, Joel. Sleep on it. Tomorrow morning, you tell me: How could I have not done it?” I began an angry retort, and swallowed it. I had to admit I had not begun to think this thing through yet, and Dad always drilled into me that the time to open your mouth came after that. Besides, I already had a glimmering of what she meant. I filled my lungs, emptied them slowly and fully, and said, “You’re right. Okay I’m prepared to be polite, now. Let’s go inside.” “You won’t have to be,” she said. “I promise you won’t see any family at all until tomorrow morning. I made them guarantee that. This is our Prom Night.” I frowned. “I wish I had an overnight bag. Change of socks, fresh shirt, my razor.” “Don’t worry about it,” she said, and unlocked the doors. I let it go. Probably the contents of the slop chest here were finer than anything I owned. “All right. Invite me up to your place.” “Down, actually.” We opened our doors and got out. The roof of imaginary glacier did not exist from its underside; the moon and stars shone unimpeded overhead, a neat trick. But this was definitely not a natural ecology. The air was skin temperature, with an occasional breeze just slightly warmer. It smelled of dirt and green growing things, with just a little ozone tingle as if it had rained recently, though it had not. The loamy earth beneath my feet was rich, almost quivering with life; any farmer I knew back on Ganymede would have desperately envied it. Acres of it, at least a meter deep: wild, uncultivated, supporting nothing but trees, scrub, and inedible berries. Just lying there. Conspicuous non consumption. Start getting used to it, old son. I thought of saying something, but I knew Jinny would never understand. It’s funny: the very word “Terra” means “dirt”, and not one hungry terrestrial in a thousand has a clue how important, how precious it is. I shook my head. The door in that huge rock ahead of the car was indeed an elevator. Back when I was four I’d been in an elevator that nice. In Stockholm, when Dad came Earthside to pick up the Nobel. Like that one, this elevator had a live human operator, of advanced age and singular ugliness, who made it a point of pride to remain unaware of our existence: he happened to be leaving as we stepped in, and took us down a good fifty meters with him. The car descended with unhurried elegance. It gave me time to think about the kind of people who would live deep underground, in a place that did not exist, and still feel the need to pull the sky over them like a blanket. “Paranoid” didn’t seem to cover it. By happy chance the operator decided to pause and check the operation of the doors just as he was passing the floor we wanted; so intent was his inspection, we were able to escape unnoticed. This left us in a kind of reception room, so lavish as to remind me of the lobby of that hotel back in Stockholm. The carpet was grass. But I didn’t get time to study the room; nearly at once I felt a tugging and turned to see a man older and uglier than the elevator operator trying to take my cloak. With some misgivings I let him have it, and that seemed to have been a mistake, for he simply handed it off to a small boy who suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision, and then literally threw himself at my feet and began loosening my shoes. I, reacted. If we’d been under normal gravity, on Ganymede or Mars, I think I’d have kicked his teeth in; as it was he went sprawling. But he took a shoe with him as he went, a trick I admired as much as I resented it. Jinny giggled. I recovered, removed the other shoe myself with as much dignity as I could muster, and handed it to him as he approached again. He reunited it with its twin, bowed deeply, and backed away. I turned to Jinny and forgot whatever I’d been about to say. Her own cloak and shoes had been magicked away by tall elves, and she looked, how do girls do that, anyway? One minute just be there, and the next, be there. They can do it without moving a muscle, somehow. “Good evening, Miss Jinny,” said a baritone voice from across the room. “Welcome home.” Standing just inside a door I had failed to notice was a man nearly as tall as me with a shaved head, wearing a suit that cost more than my tuition at Fermi Junior. Like us, and the various elves I’d seen, he wore no shoes. Presumably they would cobble us all new ones in the night. “Thank you, Smithers. This is, damn. Excuse me.” She lifted her phone-finger to her ear, listened for a few moments, frowned, said “Yes,” and broke the connection. “I’ve got to go, for just a few minutes. Get Joel situated, would you please, Smithers? I’m sorry, Joel, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” “Okay.” She was gone. Somehow he was at my side, without having covered the intervening distance. “Good evening, Mister Johnston. I’m Alex Rennick, master of the house at present. Welcome to the North Keep. Let me show you to your room, first, and then perhaps I can give you the ten-credit tour.” His eyes were gray, almost mauve. His head wasn’t shaved, it was depilated. Despite his height, a dozen subconscious cues told me he was earthborn. He was fit, and had an air of great competence and great confidence. I’m pretty good at guessing ages, given that everybody looks alike now, and I couldn’t pin him down any closer than the thirty-to-sixty zone. I found it interesting that he knew my last name without having been given it. “Thank you, Mister Rennick. You are most kind. Please call me Joel.” “And I am Alex. Will you come this way, Joel?” I thought of an ancient joke, put it out of my mind, and followed him from the room. As I did I promised myself, solemnly, that no matter what wonders I was shown here, I would not boggle. No matter how staggeringly opulent the place proved to be, I would not let it make me feel inferior. My father had been a Nobel laureate, and my mother a great composer, how many of these people could say as much? “Do you have any questions to start?” he asked as we went. “Yes, Alex,” I said, memorizing the route we were taking. “Why does Jinny call you Smithers?” “I have no idea.” His tone was absolutely neutral, but somehow I knew I’d touched a sore spot. Either it bothered him not to know, or the answer was humiliating. “Ah,” I said, lowering my pitch. “To drive you crazy, then.” I was curious to see how he’d respond to an invitation to a jocular, between-us-men discussion of his mistress, whom I personally knew to be a handful and a half. He sidestepped effortlessly. “That would be redundant, I’m afraid.” “Have you worked here long?” “Yes.” I see. “How many people live here in, the North Keep, you said?” “The number varies.” His stinginess with information was beginning to mildly irritate me. “No doubt. But surely as master of the house you know its current value.” I halfway expected him to say “Yes, I do,” and clam up. But he wasn’t that kind of childish. Instead he used jujitsu. “There are eighty-four persons resident in the North Keep at the moment. By midnight the number will be ninety-two, and shortly before breakfast time tomorrow it is expected to drop back to eighty-nine.” “Ah.” I hesitated in phrasing my next question. “And how many of those are employees?” “All but four. Five tomorrow.” Yipes! Yes, Conrads lived here, all right. “Here we are.” He stopped before a door that looked no different from any of several dozen we’d passed along the way, and tapped the button which on Terra is for some reason always called a knob. The door dilated to reveal a room full of thick pink smoke. At least it looked like smoke, and behaved like it, roiling and billowing, with the single exception that it declined to spill out of the open door into the corridor. I reminded myself I’d promised myself not to boggle, and with only what I hoped was an imperceptible hesitation, I walked right into the pink smoke, came out the other side, and boggled. Worse; I actually yelped. I was on Ganymede. Look, I admit I’m a hick. But I had experienced Sim walls by that point in my life, even if I couldn’t afford them yet. Even good ones didn’t really fool you; you could tell they were not real, just rectangular windows into worlds that you never really forgot were virtual. I’d even experienced six-wall Sim, 360-degree surround, and even then you had to voluntarily cooperate with the illusion for it to work: it never quite got the rounding correction perfect at the corners. But it was pretty good. This was real. I was back home on Ganymede, so convincingly that for just a startled moment, two-thirds of my weight seemed to leave me. I realized with astonishment that the air even smelled like Ganymede air, tasted like it, different from terrestrial air in ways subtle but unmistakable. I was standing in the middle of a newly made field, the soil only just coming to life. Beneath my feet, earthworms were shaking off the grogginess of cold sleep and beginning to realize they weren’t on Terra anymore. On the edge of the field, fifteen or twenty meters away, was a new-built farmhouse, smoke spiraling from its chimney. Try and build a fire anywhere else on Terra and they’d fine you the equivalent of two months’ tuition, for a first offense. Until today, I hadn’t seen a square meter of naked soil since I’d landed on its namesake. I felt my eyes begin to sting and water, and with no further warning a tidal wave of homesickness broke over me. I spun around in time to see Rennick come through the doorway. From this side too it looked like it was full of pink smoke. But it was no longer a door in anything: it just stood by itself in the middle of the field, a rectangle of pink smoke without any wall to be a hole in. I turned my back on hole and house master alike. “Miss Jinny thought you’d find this congenial,” he said from just behind me. I nodded. “Follow me please.” That didn’t require an answer either. We walked to the farmhouse and went inside. “The ‘fresher and entertainment center are in the obvious places. You’ll find clothing in that closet, Unlimited Access at that desk. If you want anything, anything whatsoever, state your wishes to the house server. His name is Leo.” I had the homesickness under control now, enough that I trusted myself to speak at least. “Leo is listening at all times?” “Leo listens at all times,” he agreed. “But he cannot hear anything unless he is addressed. Your privacy and security as a guest are unconditionally guaranteed.” “Of course,” I said as if I believed him. I idly opened the closet he’d indicated, and found all my own clothing. Boggle. On closer inspection it proved to be copies of nearly every piece of clothing I owned, all the ones Jinny had seen. They were not quite identical copies. For one thing, in nearly every case the quality of the copy was slightly better than that of the original. Suddenly I felt vastly tired. I didn’t feel like boggling anymore, or struggling not to. “Mister Rennick, Alex, I thank you for your offer of a tour of the North Keep, but I believe I will pass, at least for tonight.” “Certainly, Joel. If there’s nothing further I can do for you now, I’ll leave you to rest.” “I’m fine. Thank you.” “Good night.” He left. I watched through a window as he walked across the field and through the pink smoke of the door-without-a-wall. I looked around the “farmhouse,” then back out the window at a sky with two moons, and thought about bursting into tears, but I decided I was too manly “Leo?” “Yes, Mister Johnston?” “Can I get a cup of coffee?” “On the desk, sir.” I blinked, looked, a steaming cup of coffee sat on the desk beside me. It hadn’t been there a moment ago, but I hadn’t noticed it arrive. Without a word I picked it up and tried it. The superbness of the coffee was no surprise at all. The perfect drinking temperature was only a mild one. But the cream and two sugars. “Did Jinny tell you how I like my coffee, Leo?” “Miss Jinny has told me many things about you, Mister Johnston.” “Call me Joel.” “Yes, Mister Joel.” I opened my mouth, then closed it. There must be something sillier than arguing with software, but I can’t think offhand what it would be. I sat down on a rocking chair that creaked authentically, put my feet up on a hassock, and began to dismiss Leo from my mind, to prepare for the upcoming conversation with Jinny. Then a thought occurred. Carefully not addressing him by name I asked, “How long do you keep listening after I stop speaking, before you conclude I’m done and stop listening again?” Answer came there none. Which answered me: somewhere between five and ten seconds. Useful datum. “Leo?” “Yes, Mister Joel?” “Can you let me know just before Miss Jinny arrives here?” “No,” she said from the doorway. “He can’t.” We were both tired, and both emotionally upset. But we both knew there was more to be said before we could sleep. I took my feet down off the hassock, and she came and sat before me on it, and took both my hands in hers. “No more ducking and weaving. Spell it out for me,” I said. “In words of one sound bit, what’s the deal?” She was through dodging. “I’m proposing marriage, Joel. Just as we’ve discussed: lifetime, exclusive, old-fashioned matrimony. And I’m offering to support us, uh, at least until you get your degree and start to become established as a composer and start earning. I can afford it. I’m quite sure you’ll get that Kallikanzaros Scholarship, but if you don’t, it won’t matter. And best of all, we can start our first baby right away, tomorrow night, if you want.” “Huh? Skinny, what about your degree, your career?” “My second career, you mean. It’ll keep. I’ve always known what my first career has to be.” She tightened her grip on my hands and leaned slightly closer. “Stinky, maybe now you’ll understand why I’ve been so.” She blushed suddenly. “So frimpin’ stingy. So square, even for a Terran girl. Why I don’t park, or pet, or sneak out after curfew, and why our clinches never got out of hand, or even into it, so to speak. I think you know I haven’t wanted to be that way. But I had no choice. It may be all right for some other girls to bend the rules and take risks, but me, I’ve had it beaten into my head since I was three that I have responsibilities.” “The family name.” “The family name my left foot! The family genes. Stinky, I’m a female human animal; my number one job is to get married and make babies. And because I’m who I am, a member of a powerful dynasty, it makes all the difference in the world what baby I have, and who its father is.” She let go of my hands and sat up straight. “You’re it. This is not a snap decision.” It began to dawn on me that I was not merely being offered acceptance into the fringes of the Conrad family. I was being asked to father its heirs. On Ganymede I’d grown up seeing stud bulls brought in and put to work. They were always treated with great care and respect, very well fed, and certainly got all the healthy exercise a male animal could possibly want. Their DNA was vastly more successful than that of most other bulls, and their own lives vastly longer. Nobody made jokes about them in their hearing. But I couldn’t recall one who had looked very happy about the business. “Don’t look so worried, Stinky. It’s going to work out fine. You do want to marry me, we settled that, right?” I opened my mouth, realized I was harpooned, and closed it again. I had stated that only money prevented me from proposing; I didn’t have a leg to stand on. Nevertheless I found myself on my feet and being embraced. I had to admit it was a very nice embrace, warm and close and fragrant. “Then it’s all really very simple. All you need is a nice long chat with Gran’ther Richard. You’ll love him, really. And I know he’ll love you.” I stiffened in her arms, and fought with the impulse to faint. Good old Grandpa Richard. Known to the rest of the Solar System as Conrad of Conrad. The patriarch. The Chairman. I’d heard he had broken premiers. But perhaps the most awesome thing about his wealth was that, when I thought about it, I didn’t actually know a single fact about him, save his name and exalted position. I’d never read an article about him, or viewed a bio, or even seen a picture of his face. For all I knew he had taken my cloak when I arrived. Harun el-Hatchek. She released me and stepped back. “You’ll see him first thing tomorrow. He’ll explain things. And then afterward you and I will have breakfast together and start to make some plans. Good night, Stinky.” We parted without a kiss. She didn’t offer, and I didn’t try. I was starting to feel resentment at having been played for so long, and also I flatly did not believe there were no cameras on us. After she was gone, I thought about firing up that Universal Access Rennick-Smithers had mentioned, and researching the size and scope of the Conrad empire. But I knew if I did so here, now, on this computer system, Gran’ther Richard would know about it. It just smelled ripe to me. Milady brings home a handsome hick, and the first thing he does is start pricing the furniture. The thought made my cheeks burn. Instead I used that UA to google around until I had figured out the “Smithers” gag. It turned out to be just as well Rennick didn’t know the reference, if in fact he really didn’t. Jinny was comparing him to an ancient cartoon character who was a cringing bootlicker, a toady, a completely repressed monosexual, and an unrequited lover. I wondered how much of that was accurate and how much libel. And just how far the analogy was meant to go: Smithers’s employer in the cartoon, a Mister Burns, was vastly rich, impossibly old, and in every imaginable way a monster. Did he represent Jinny’s grandfather? Or father? Well, I would find out in the morning. Or maybe I would get lucky and be struck by a meteorite first. The bed turned out to be just like mine back at the dorm, except the mattress was better, the sheets were infinitely softer and lighter, and the pillow was gooshier. Was I hallucinating, or did the pillowcase really smell faintly of Jinny’s shampoo? It certainly did put a different perspective on things. It might be nice to smell that on my pillow every night from now on. And every morning. If in fact I was really smelling it now. While I was wondering, I fell asleep. Three. Joel. It’s time to wake up, dear.” Yes, that was definitely her hair I smelled. I had heard Jinny say just those words, in much that low throaty tone of voice, at the start of more than one pleasant dream. It was a novel experience to hear them at the end of one. Now if only everything else would continue to unfold as it usually did in the dream. I opened my eyes and she was not there. The scent was either vestigial or imagined. Drat. “You really need to wake up now, Joel,” she murmured insistently from somewhere nearby “Okay,” I said. “Wake up, Joel. It’s time t.” I sat up, and she chopped off in midword. She wasn’t there. Anywhere. I wake up hard. I had to sit there, lot a few seconds before I had it worked out. The speaker was not Jinny but Leo the AI server, perfectly imitating her voice while acting as an alarm clock. Doing the job well, too: I could fool my own alarm at the dorm by simply telling it I was getting up. Leo was programmed to accept nothing less than verticality as proof of compliance. Why did I need to get up now? I could tell I had not had eight hours’ sleep. I had graduated, for Pete’s sake, what was so urgent? It all came back to me at once. Oh, yes. That’s right. Today I was going to have a personal interview with one of the most powerful men in the Solar System. Had I supposed it would be scheduled for my convenience? A man like Conrad of Conrad would doubtless want to dispose of matters as trivial as meeting his grandchild’s fiance as early as possible in the business day “How soon am I expected?” I asked. “In half an hour, Mister Joel,” Leo said in his own voice. “How do I get breakfast?” “I can take your order, sir.” I started to say scrambled on toast, bucket of black coffee, liter of OJ. Then I thought to myself, this morning you are going to have a personal interview with one of the most powerful men in the Solar System. “Eggs Benedict, home fries, Tanzanian coffee, French Press, please, two sugars and eighteen percent cream, keep it coming, and squeeze a dozen oranges.” Leo returned the serve. “Very good, Mister Joel. Do you prefer peaberry or the normal bean?” “The peaberry, I think,” I managed. There was a scratching sound at the door. It opened, and a servant entered, pushing a tray ahead of him at shoulder height with two fingers. He was easily as old and as ugly as the servants I’d seen the night before, but nowhere near as surly. Maybe day shift was better. “What’s that?” I asked. He steered the tray to a table near the bed, and somehow persuaded it to sit down. “Eggs Benedict, potatoes, coffee, fresh orange juice, and this morning’s news, sir,” he said, pointing to each item as he named it. Nothing in his manner suggested that only an idiot would need these things named. I promised myself that just as soon as I had the time, I would wonder, very hard, about how any of those items could have been produced instantly, much less all of them at once. But meanwhile, there was no sense pretending they had not caught me by surprise. “If I’d known how fast the service is here, I’d have asked them to wait ten minutes, while I used the ‘fresher,” I said with a rueful grin. He turned to the tray, made some sort of mystic gesture. The food became obscured by a hemisphere of, well, it looked like shimmery air. “Take as long as you like, sir. Everything will be the same temperature and consistency when you get back out.” Oh. Of course. I wondered how the hell I would get the air to stop shimmering, but I was determined not to ask. I’d figure it out somehow “Just reach right through it, whenever you’re ready, sir,” he volunteered. “That collapses the field.” I opened my mouth to ask what kind of field, how was it generated, what were its properties, and stifled myself. There would be time for that later. “What is your name?” “Nakamura, sir.” “Thank you, Mister Nakamura. You’re very kind.” “You’re welcome, sir. And thank you.” Somehow he was gone instantly, without hurrying. I started to get out of bed, and the damned thing helped me. The part right under my knees dropped away, and the part under my butt rose, and I was on my feet. I reacted pretty much as if I’d been goosed, the physical sensations were not dissimilar. I said the word “Whoa!” louder and an octave higher than I might have wished, leaped forward a meter or so, and spun around to glare accusingly at the bed. “Is something wrong, Mister Joel?” Leo asked. I took a deep breath. And then another. “Not yet,” I stated cautiously. On the way to the ‘fresher, I passed close to the tray of food. I could see a cup of coffee in there, and wanted it so badly it brought tears to my eyes. But I knew if I “collapsed the field” now, I probably wouldn’t be able to re-create it again. And besides, there was the question of making room for the coffee. So okay, I would hurry and be out of the ‘fresher in five minutes instead of ten. I stepped in. On Ganymede we’re more reticent about such matters than Terrans, for complex sociocultural reasons I’d be perfectly happy to explain any time you have an hour to kill listening to a guy who doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. So I’ll just say that this ‘fresher was about ten times better equipped and programmed than I had ever imagined possible, and let it go at that. It was more like fifteen minutes before I was able to make myself end the sybaritic cycle. When I came out, my clothes were gone. I remarked on this, as casually as I could manage. Leo explained that they had been taken away for laundering. He invited me to wear any of the fakes in the closet that pleased me, and assured me, unnecessarily, that they would all fit me perfectly. I was not at all happy about this, but I could see my wallet, phone, and keys on the bedside table, so I postponed the matter until after coffee. By the end of the first cup, I had no strong objection to anything short of disembowelment or denial of a second cup. If you are ever given the choice, insist on the peaberry. Trust me. When I was ready to dress, I automatically reached for the copy of my best suit, comforting myself as best I could with the guess that this version of it, at least, would be freshly cleaned, and would not be worn nearly through in spots. But as I took it from the closet, I noticed an item hanging just behind it that certainly was not a copy of any garment I owned. It was a J. L. Fong suit. Top of the line, of the latest cut and style. In a color, I noticed, that would complement Jinny’s hair. It was worth more than my entire wardrobe, more than my passage to Earth had cost. The tights were just a bit daring, but I decided I had the calves to carry them off. I was unsurprised to find suitable underwear and other necessary accessories in drawers, tucked in among my own trash. The moment I put it on, that suit became an old, familiar, and valued friend, and I became taller and wider across the shoulders. It could not have fit better if it had been made on my body. It knew things about me I wouldn’t learn for years yet, and approved of them all. Wearing a suit like that, you could break up a knife fight with an admonishment, secure a million-dollar loan without being troubled for a signature, walk away from a crime scene, or obtain illicit drugs on credit. I examined the effect in the ‘fresher room mirror, and decided that on me, it looked good. Perhaps, I felt, I could even survive an interview with Conrad of Conrad without soiling it