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people minus x by raymond z. gallun chapter i ed dukas was writing letters. someone or somethingwas also writing—unseen but at his elbow. it was perhaps fifteen minutes before he noticed.conspicuous at the center of the next blank sheet of paper he reached for, part of a wordwas already inscribed: "nippe ..." the writing was faint and wavering but inthe same shade of blue ink as that in his own pen. ed dukas said "hey?" to himself, mildly.
the frown creases between his hazel eyes deepened.they were evidence of strain that was not new. the stubby forefinger and thumb of hisright hand rubbed their calloused whorls together. surprise on his square face gave way to acool watchfulness that, in the last ten years of guarded living, had been grimed into hisnature. ed dukas was now twenty-two. this era was hurtling and troubled. since his childhood,ed had become acquainted with wonder, beauty, hate, opportunity and disaster on a cosmiclevel, luxury, adventure, love. sometimes he had even found peace of mind. he put down his pen, leaving the letter hehad been writing suspended in mid-sentence: ... pardon the preaching, les. human natureand everything else seems booby-trapped. they
drummed the idea of courage and careful thinkinginto us at school. because so much that is new and changing is a big thing to handle.still, we'll have to stick to a course of action. now ed sat with his elbows on his table, thatother, no longer quite blank, sheet of paper held lightly in his hands. he sat there, astocky young man, his hair cut short like a hedge, the clues of his existence aroundhim: student banners on the walls; a stereoptic picture of his track team—in color of course;ditto for his astrophysics class; his bookcase; his tiny sensipsych set; and the delicateinstruments that any guy who hoped to reach the next human goal, the nearer stars, hadto learn about.
his girl's picture, part of any youth's patternof life for the last three centuries, smiled from beside him on the table. dark. strongas girls were apt to be, these days. beautiful in a rough-hewn way. but even with all thatstrength to rely on, he was worried about her more than ever now. times were strange.he glanced at her likeness once. then his gaze bounced back to the paper in his hands. his nerves tingled at the eerie thing thatwas happening there. he didn't know whether to feel afraid of it or hopeful. man was stumblingtoward ultimate mastery of his own flesh and the forces of the universe. but the distanceremained enormous, though technical science was moving forward, perhaps too swiftly, onall fronts. part of ed's fear before the unknown
was like the stage fright of an inexperiencedactor. you never quite knew what was ahead or how to judge anything strange that yousaw. "nippe...." at the end of the line which made the "e"there was a tiny speck of blue ink. almost imperceptibly, like the minute hand of a clock,it crept on, curving and looping to form another letter. "nipper" the word was now. this could be somebody's funny gag, ed thought.somebody with a gadget. the world is full of gadgets these days. maybe too full.
it occurred to him that a pal might be playinga joke with some simple device bought in a novelty store. but probability leaned towardsomething deeper and more costly. who knew? someone might have invented a way to makea man invisible. you didn't deny that anything could be, any more. "speak up!" he ordered softly. but no answer came, and his wondering gazefound nothing unusual in the room around him. he froze. "nipper." it could be part of amessage, an honest attempt to convey vitally important information. or it could be theforerunner of violence aimed in his direction. through no fault of his own, he had had enemiesfor ten years. tonight they might really act.
to die was still possible. in spite of vitaplasm.or the more tedious method that employed natural flesh. or the tiny cylinders hidden away invaults. lives were now in danger again. human, and almost human.... for a moment ed wanted to give a warning andto call others into consultation. he wanted to shout, "dad! mom! come here!" he didn't do so. between him and the precise,benign personality that he called dad there was a gradually growing barrier. and for hismother, beautiful and young by art and science, he had that feeling of male protectivenessthat takes the form of keeping possible dangers hidden.
ed decided to work on his own. being essentiallycareful and slow moving when it came to delicate processes, he had not touched that creepingdroplet of ink. its secret might thus be destroyed. no, he'd never do a thing so foolish. swiftly he folded the paper and fastened thewriting under his microscope. the ink speck was almost dry now, and nothing was hiddenin it. the line of the writing itself was odd under magnification. here and there itshowed tiny, irregular dots at spaced intervals, connected by fine, dragging marks. that wasall. of course he realized that nipper might beonly the first cryptic word of a message and that he had only to wait and see what wouldfollow.
until he began to wait, however, the significanceof the word itself eluded him. a child's nickname was all that it suggested. but now his mind bore down on it. and he hadthe answer almost at once. a small boy climbing the wall of a pretty garden. and his casualchristening by a pleasant stranger who met him thus for the first time. among more vividand significant details, the memory of the name itself had been mislaid. but ed dukasknew that in his boyhood one person had always called him nipper: uncle mitch prell, andnobody else. now it seemed like a secret sign. ed gulped, his reaction suspended somewherebetween shocked pleasure and a frosty sense of eeriness. to have a friend, whom he hadloved as a child, vanish into space and into
apparent nonexistence after becoming a fugitive,and then to have what seemed to be this friend try to communicate again after ten years,and in this weird manner—well—how would you say it? ghosts, of course, were pure superstition.but in this age one could still react as if to the supernatural—with tingling hide andquickened heartbeats. in fact, with the vast growth of technology, more than ever was sucha feeling possible. "uncle mitch!" ed dukas called quietly. again there was no reply. the name on thepaper still could be somebody else's trick. granger's, maybe. there were ways for himto have learned a nickname. many people might admire granger as much as others despisedhim. and it was hard to say what he might
do, or when. or how, for that matter. he wasclever. and wrong. there was still another thing to remember.ed did not altogether love the memory of his uncle, dr. mitchell prell. for this famousscientist was marked with the stigma of responsibility for a terrific mishap. no, prell did not bearthe burden alone. there were other scientists, it was said, who had poked too roughly, andwith too sharp a stick, into nature's deepest lair. nature had snarled back. ed had grownup with the public hate that had resulted. he had fought against it, yet he had feltit, until sometimes he did not know where he himself stood. now he waited for more writing to be tracedon the paper under the microscope. a minute
passed, but there was nothing more. he didnotice, however, that the letters of that one word matched roughly the austere handwritingof his uncle. once he glanced toward the window with somenervousness. outside, the night was glorious. never again would nights be hideous as theyonce had been. he saw lush gardens under silver light. if any devilish thing not known untilrecent months slithered through the shadows, it kept hidden. ed saw other neighboring houses.new trees had grown to fair size in ten years. older and larger trees remained lopsided andgnarled. but their burn scars had healed. otherwise there was nothing left to monumentthe past—except, perhaps, the sullen mutter of voices in nearby streets.
but ed dukas's mind, triggered by the namenipper and by awareness of mitchell prell, slipped briefly away from the present. hehad often explored memory to find understanding. at school, after the catastrophe, psychiatristshad made every kid do that. so that neuroses might be broken or lessened or avoided. sothat animal terror would not draw a curtain over a mental record of an interlude. so thatmemory might not be lodged, like a red coal of hysteria, in the subconscious. like a trained dog leaping through a flaminghoop, ed dukas's thoughts plunged back to that zone where his earliest memories fadedinto the mists of infancy: a birthday cake with two candles. a fountainsplashing in the patio of this same house.
a dachshund, schnitz, which a little boy putin almost the same category as the flat, rubber-tired robots that cleaned the rooms. where was thedistinction between machines and animals? flowers, hummingbirds, and butterflies inthe garden. the echoes of footsteps on stone floors. toy space ships and star ships atchristmas. the star ships were things yet to become real.... there was endless interestin life then. but even in those days there were signs of cautious and puzzled guidance. there was the sensipsych, of course. it wasa wonderful box of dark wood in the living room. a soft couch folded down from it. thereyou lay, and for a moment strange golden light flickered into your eyes. you went to sleep,but you did not really go to sleep. for you
became someone else. maybe a cartoon characterin a world where everything looked different. funny things happened to you that frightenedyou at first; but then you laughed when you found that there was no harm in them. or, instead of being in such a crazy fairyland,you might be a real boy in space armor jumping across the surface of a huge chunk of rockcalled an asteroid, while stars and a blazing white sun stared at you from blackness. youwere very busy helping others to roof the asteroid with crystal, and to put air underneath,and to build houses and factories where people might live and work. always more and morepeople spreading out and out to populate the empty worlds of space.
but you were never on that sensipsych couchfor very long, or too often. you would wake up, and there was mom saying, "enough, fella.a little of that sort of thing goes a great way, even when the experiences are ruggedand educational and not just whimsical nonsense." ed dukas would be angry and puzzled. for ithad seemed that those visions, going on without end, could bring joy forever. "you'll understand sometime, eddie," his motherwould say, consoling him. "what happens to you by sensipsych is just make-believe. whatwe call recorded sensory experience. some of it really happened to other people. someof it is just made up. it can teach you things. but too much is very bad. not so long agofolks found out."
there was something tender and hard and evenscared in his mother's words. ed's dad also had his comments. dad was somethingcalled a minerals expert. "come on, eddie, let's rassle," he'd say."stick your chin out, boy. let's see how tough you can look. no, not mean-tough.... that'sbetter. we've got to lick the times we live in. and something in ourselves. with machinesdoing so much for us, life can be soft. and sensipsych dreams are soft. everything inmoderation. dreams can make you feel as helpless as an oyster. until you despise yourself andthe whole race. yes, people found out. they were always meant to feel strong and proud,and they must have tasks equal to their increasing powers. otherwise there's spiritual rot. we'vegot to be ready for anything, feel our way,
try to be ready to keep our balance for whatevercomes. because life could be terrible, too, if the wonderful forces we control got outof hand. we've got to go on progressing—moving out to the planets, and then maybe the stars.got to go either ahead or backward. can't stand still. and it's easy to go backwardnowadays. got to fight that, eddie, or else there might be a kind of death." "what is death, dad?" ed's father would answer his son's seriousexpression with a gay grin. "a kind of myth, now, boy. just going to sleep and never wakingup. we hope it's mostly finished, for everybody. even the disease of old age turned out tobe something like rust gathering in a pipe.
simple. it can be fixed up. some people evenlet themselves get old. but they can be made young again. always." eddie had other questions. "you were born in the old way, eddie," hismother said. "but so many people are needed now to populate the solar system. so everybodycan't be born from his mother's body. there's another way; almost the same, really. babiesare born—they're made, really—in a laboratory. then they live in a youth center, like theone on the hill." eddie saw its great white spire looming amongthe trees. often he could hear voices in the gardens and playgrounds on the terraced setbacksof its many levels. the voices seemed mysterious
somehow. even then eddie sensed the groping and confusionthat was in his parents' minds. sometimes his mother would speak fervently to his father:"jack, i'd never choose to live in another age. i love it. because it's rich, endlesslyvaried, exciting. is that why i'm often scared out of my wits? even disgusted often enoughwith my selfish self and all the automatic devices? i love my work, the planning of pleasantinteriors. i'm so busy there doesn't even seem to be time for another child. yet maybethere are centuries ahead, jack. how does one fill centuries without getting fed up?and are we supposed to be something superhuman in the end? or do we wind up like the ancientmartians and the beings of the asteroid planet,
before it was blown to millions of pieces?wiped out in super-conflict, before they could progress very much further than we are now?" most of this went over eddie's head. but itleft a smoky tension to lurk in his mind behind the peaceful presence of sun and trees. peoplehad made their world more beautiful for their own relaxed enjoyment. yet even in those dayseddie sensed the turbulent undercurrent deep inside them. once his father expressed a vagrant thought:"maybe we should go out to venus sometime, eileen. start life over more simply in anuncrowded planet that's being conditioned to receive our ancient race. maybe we'll doit in just a few years." he grinned.
"yes," eddie's mother replied. "if being indefinitelyyoung and alive doesn't fool us before then. if our complicated civilization doesn't crackopen and spit fire, and vaporize everybody. death by violence is still definitely possible.you know, lots of our friends are getting their bodies and minds recorded so that theycan be restored in case of serious injury. maybe we should have done it long ago." jack dukas met her concern with a light tease:"a woman's worry matched against the stubbornness of a man—eh, eileen? there's something unnaturalabout being recorded that i rebel against. don't be too troubled, though. the centurieswon't slip from our fingers so immediately. i hardly ever touch a dangerous thing in mywork. besides, safety devices are almost perfect."
such serious, troubled thoughts did not dimthe optimism and eagerness of young ed dukas. his private dreams soared into the thrillsof someday. his small hands were impatient to grasp the shadowy shapes of the future,more legendary than the not-distant past with its still-living heroes: roland, who was largelyresponsible for the rejuvenation process; schaeffer, who developed the sensipsych, broughton the dream-world period of decay, and in the end helped harwell defeat the trap ofemasculating visions by urging mankind back toward a vigorous grip on reality; and thehundreds of others who had taken part. but the first visit of mitchell prell, whened dukas was five, was, to the boy, like acquaintance with a legend. "hi, nipper!" were the firstwords his uncle had spoken to eddie. dr. mitchell
prell was his mother's brother. he was a muchsmaller man than eddie's dad, and dark instead of blond. he was famous. and he brought gifts. "a piece of the moon, nipper," he said. "anopal imbedded naturally in gold. for your mom. and this case of instruments dug up inmartian ruins, for your dad. fifty million years old but better than anything designedby human beings for locating ores far underground. and this for you—also from mars. i haven'tbeen there for a long time. but i got an old friend to send me the stuff—to the labson the moon." maybe eddie's gift had once been a toy forthe off-spring of extinct martian monsters. it was triangular like a kite, metallic, witha faint lavender sheen. when you whistled
a certain way, a jet of air made it rise highin the sky. but it always came back. atomic power was in it somewhere. for it never ranout of energy. uncle mitch never seemed to say much. he didn'tget deep into philosophy. he set up queer apparatus in his room, and a kid could lookat it if he didn't touch. and to one of dad's questions he answered briefly, "yes, we'remaking headway in the labs on the moon. there'll be a motor for star ships. if, in our experiments,hyperspace itself doesn't burst at the seams under that level of power. no, we're not yettrying for speeds of more than a fraction of that of light. a trip to a star will takea long time." it soon came out that uncle mitch had anotherinterest. he kept in a glass tube something
that squirmed and wriggled, and felt likewarm flesh though its natural form, when at rest, was a slender cylinder of pencil size. about that he would only say, "call it aliveif you want to. but not like us. invented and artificial, and far more rugged than ourflesh. for the rest, wait and see if anything comes of it. maybe it'll become the clay ofthe superman. schaeffer, here on earth, is working on it, too." uncle mitch stayed for a week. then he wasgone, rocketing out to the labs, isolated for safety at the center of a mare on thealways hidden hemisphere of the moon. "mitch knows what he wants and is direct aboutit," was jack dukas's comment. "simple. no
conflicts. the scientist's approach. wiseor stupid? who knows?" eddie was six, and then seven. the years movedslowly, but he grew and hardened with them. by the time he was twelve, sports and studyand awareness of realities had toughened his body and matured his soul considerably. thatwas fortunate, for this was his and mankind's fateful year. the day came when the householdrobots were fixing up the guestroom specially for uncle mitch again. dad was afield, a hundredmiles away, to look over a vein of quartz crystal that was to be shipped to the lunarlaboratories. at 9:00 p.m. eddie's father had not yet returned. eddie was sprawled on his bed looking lazilyat the translucent blue font of the lamp beside
it. the color was rich and beautiful, thecarvings snaky and odd. here was another gift, ordered by uncle mitch from a friend in theregion of the asteroids. the font was an artifact of a race contemporary with the martians whohad also lost their fight to master nature and themselves through knowledge. the fonthad been found floating free in space, among the wreckage of a planet blown to pieces agesback. eddie was thinking of such things. he wasalso thinking of neighborhood pals, to whom he had bragged about his uncle and his expectedarrival. as for what happened at that moment: therewas transpatial warning, radioed out fifteen seconds ahead, telling of forces gone hopelesslyout of control in the lunar laboratories.
but eddie's set was not functioning, and hedid not hear it. beyond the windows of his room there was justcalm, pale moonlight. the moon looked little different than it always looked, except forthe blue spots of the atmosphere domes of the great mining centers. but then came the intolerable blue-white light.perhaps, somewhere, exposed instruments measured its intensity. on the roofs of meteorologicalstations, maybe. say conservatively that, for the space of a few seconds, it was fivehundred times as strong as full sunshine. night was broken off. but there was no daylike this. for one fragment of a second eddie glanced at the window. shadows seemed gone,utterly. even dark things like tree trunks
reflected so much light that they all butvanished in the shimmering glare. as yet, it was a soundless phenomenon. eddie shut his eyes and buried his face inhis pillow. this reflex action, partly as natural as terror and partly the result oftraining for emergencies at school, saved his vision. he might have screamed, had hebeen able to find his voice. distantly, he heard human sounds that increased the sicknessin his stomach. a gentle scene and mood, product of science, had been utterly shattered byforces of the same origin. he did not see the fuzzy blob of incandescencethat bloomed in the sky and expanded slowly for many seconds. in fact, no one saw it;only cameras, fitted with special dark filters,
would have been able to do so. for livingeyes would have been charred by that splendor. he heard his mother calling his name. keepinghis eyelids tightly closed and an elbow bent over them, he fumbled his way to the hall,and to her. they dropped to the floor and huddled there. outside, voices died away. by then the devilishglory in the sky was fading a little, too, at the edges. only the heart of the greatblob still blazed supernally, with its millions of degrees of heat. around it was a coolingfog of dust and gases that masked the hell within it. the world grew still for a few moments, asit does at the center of a typhoon. then there
was a great, soft roaring. the shock waveof expanded, rarefied gases, speeding at many hundreds of miles per second, striking theupper terrestrial atmosphere, and pressing down. eddie could feel the pressure of it,transmitted by the air—a light but definite punching inward of his flesh, from all sides. then there was a distant sighing of wind—air,super-heated and compressed, being forced outward. next came the resurgence of humansounds, if they were truly that any more. someone was yelling, "oh, god ... oh, god... oh, god...." there was a crackle and smell of fire. something blew up far off. then the earthquakes began. with a sharp snap,rock strata far underground broke. then came
a jolt. eddie dukas and his mother, huddledon the floor, were engulfed in a swaying sensation, smooth and vibrationless. then the groundquivered softly. after that, there was a pause, as of something hanging precariously for amoment at the jagged lip of a chasm. suddenly the pathetic hold seemed to be broken, andthe whole world was seized by a tooth-cracking chatter. a pause.... then it began again. for a second eddie's mother almost lost hercontrol. she tried to rise. "the house!" she stammered. "it'll fall on us." panic and reason fought inside eddie. "no,mom," he gasped. "the house has a steel frame. it'll probably hold together. outside, wedon't know what would happen to us."
they both braced themselves for the next seismicburst. they were both creatures of luxury, science-made. but planning, training, psychology—scienceit all was, too—had given them ruggedness and courage, a reserve of strength againsthysteria—while the earth rattled again and again. eddie's mom kept saying things, and it wasall something like a formula that had been learned, a rote, a parroted incantation: "you'reright, eddie. we've got to think before we do anything. they always tell us that lifeis an adventure. we've got to meet a bigger future or be destroyed, eddie. everythingtakes nerve." at last the earthquake shocks lessened bothin intensity and frequency. maybe the worst
was over. eddie risked an eye, and then nudged his mother. beyond the undamaged flexoglass of the windowsnight had returned, red-lit from both sky and ground. the firmament was smeared witha ruddy glow extending in a great curve, beaded with more intense blobs at several points.dust of the moon, it had to be. of its rock and pumice shell. and of its core of meteoriciron. but that sullen effulgence was fading now, as matter cooled and began simply toreflect solar light back to this dark side of earth. yet everywhere outside there was fire. thetowering glow in the east—that would be
the city, fifty miles away. destruction andconfusion there would be unimaginable. nearer at hand, trees were aflame—leaves and branchesthat minutes ago had been cool with greenness now blazed wildly. mixed with the tumult ofvoices was the clang of robot fire units. eddie rushed to the radio and turned it on,as he had been taught to do in emergencies. you listened; you obeyed directions. "... lunarblowup," someone was saying. "follow the usual precautions and measures for radioactive contaminationand flesh burns. rescue and relief units are already in action. fortunately most of ourbuildings are not made of combustible materials...." for minutes eddie was furiously busy, rubbingspecial salves and lotions into the skin of his entire body. then, dressed in fresh clothes,he and his mother just stared out of the windows
for a while. outside, metal shapes were atwork. science and civilization were working efficiently to recapture their balance afteran upset that might have been the end. eddie and his mother explored the house andfound it mostly intact. then incident piled on incident in quick succession. the firstof these began with a whimper at the door. masked with respirators against possible radioactivetaints in the outside air, they opened it. a blackened thing without eyes dragged itselfinside, quivered once, and lay still. it was death among supposed immortals. the passingof a dachshund called schnitz. eddie was dazed. child-grief or man-griefhad no chance to come to him then. events moved too fast. there was too much to be done.
a half-dozen people in radiation armor cameinto the house. at once it was converted into a first-aid station. hard law and hard drills,blueprinted long before for disaster, came into play. eddie's mother joined the crew.nor was he left out of it. there was coffee for him to prepare in the kitchen, and rugsand furniture to be cleared away, and equipment to be set up. he saw blood and death, and hysteria-twistedfaces. he saw glinting, complex instruments and apparatus, as the therapeutic methodsof the age were applied. there were blood pumps that could serve as hearts and machinesto duplicate the functions of kidneys and lungs. there were devices to teleport scatteredbody cells from a dozen healthy individuals,
converting them briefly into mobile energy,and then back into living tissue in the body of an injured person. mostly the maimed and burned remained stolidand calm. luxury had not weakened them. they, too, had known their era and had had somepreparation. eddie recognized a child of his own age amongthose who came into his own house: a neighbor boy named les payten, the son of a noted biologist.he had big ears and a freckled nose. he wasn't hurt badly. his eyes were inflamed. he hadn'tshut them quite quickly enough. he had turned sullen, and his lip trembled a bit. otherwisehe was still full of pepper. "braggin' about your uncle mitch now, eddie?"he taunted. "great stuff, that guy! he and
his pal scientists nearly got us all. betterluck next time, huh?" young ed dukas might have growled back buthe did not. as if he too carried a burden of responsibility, his jaw hardened and hischeeks hollowed. his back stiffened, as if to bear the load. he returned to the kitchen.he had not yet noticed any other signs of blame. it was too soon. the shock of cosmiccatastrophe had deadened minds. sometimes prejudice and hatred need a certain leisurelybrooding to build them up. but another raw realization had come to eddie.as soon as there was a moment to speak to his mother he said, "uncle mitch was supposedto land in the city spaceport tonight. it's a six-hour run from the moon. but now he'llnever get here."
she shook her head. and in her expressionthere was fury mixed with her sadness. he didn't think about that very long as hehelped carry a stretcher. his mind was on mitchell prell—grinning, setting up a labin the room upstairs, even modeling wax with his swift fingers. he had once molded littleheads of mom and dad. a lump gathered in eddie's throat for someone who would never be back.mitchell prell. even the name sounded nice. then slowly another question came into hismind. where was dad? he'd gone out to that quartz lode and hadn't come back! funny, thoughteddie, i hadn't even thought about that. well, it came from taking dad for granted. someonenever to worry about. someone always around, like the hills. eddie clenched his fists tosteady himself. no use worrying yet.
now the torrential rains began. steam hadbeen boiled out of the ground by heat. now it was condensing. helping, maybe, as theradio said, to wash away the poison of the radioactive meteorites and dust that werefalling to earth—wreckage that hours before had been part of the moon. somewhere out in the moaning storm a bellchimed out ten o'clock very calmly. it must have been about then that what was left ofjack dukas was brought home in a truck. eddie didn't see this happen. he was helping againwith the injured. and later, when les payten told him, mom wouldn't let him go into thelocked room where his dad had been taken. he almost told her that he had a right. buthe did not want to disturb her further.
eddie was up till 4:00 a.m. by then the rescuecrew had left the house and a tentative calm had been restored in the world. the injuredwere in hospitals, rigged in tents and public buildings. but there were far more dead. anyonecaught more than a step from shelter when the catastrophe had occurred was apt to belongto that endless list. half a planet had been scorched by heat and radiation. while the guard-robots rumbled through therain on their caterpillar treads, eddie simply passed out from weariness on the floor ofthe living room. his mother managed to arouse him a little but not enough to send him tobed. rather, she folded down the twin couches from the sensipsych set. she made her huskyyoung son climb up onto one of them and took
the other for herself. he slept, and his body was refreshed. andhe had dreams—not dreams in which he was an imaginary cartoon character; nor was hetoiling to make dead asteroids habitable; nor was he enjoying an adventure on some imaginaryplanet among the stars. no, for the present he had had enough of strain. instead he layin grass by a little lake. the sun was bright. there were boats with colored sails, and blueflamingos flying, and odd, elfin music. the sensipsych was not an opiate to fill the emptinessof soft lives now. it was rest; it was honest, relieving therapy. young ed dukas didn't see the mud-spatteredtruck arrive, to be parked some distance from
the house. he did not see the figure movingin the dense shadows. it knocked cautiously at the front door, waited for a reasonabletime, and then went around to the porch in the rear. there skillful fingers worked carefullyto release the lock. massive luggage was lifted without sound inside the door. eddie awoke with a small, hard hand shakinghis shoulder. his mother was already awake. the light was on. at first only with simpleunbelief, they beheld a slight, disheveled figure. uncle mitch's cheek was scraped. his handswere filthy. his recently neat business suit was torn. an old jauntiness about his eyesfought with worry, regret and wariness.
"hello, eileen," he said. "hi, nipper." he received no answer. somehow even eddiefelt compelled to silence. so his uncle shifted to what was a rarity with him—a kind ofhistorical or philosophical summary. "progress," he said with a forced laugh. "theworld government answering the threat of atomic war, years ago. then the greatest boon ofthe human race: eternal youth, and death's defeat except by violence, producing the problemof overpopulation, to be relieved by the colonization of the solar system. then peace and boredomand the sensipsych dreams leading to decadence, loss of pride in self and even rebelliousviolence; then the solution of vigorous, realistic action, more and more people to enjoy life,more and more colonies. then, as we reach
out for the stars, this. life. the great adventurethat can't be stopped. the rise from barbarism. is it even well begun?" his words, half appropriate and half in supremelybad taste now, as mitchell prell well knew—though he had to say them because of the need tosay something—still fell into a void of silence and echoed through the house likea cheap speech. sighing raggedly, he tried again: "yes, i'malive, eileen. the ship from the moon was in space before the blowup happened. we rodeahead of the main shock wave at high speed. so we won through. from the final warningmessage from the moon, i gather that trouble started in the warp chambers. the heat andpressure were restrained by the tight space
warp for a while, until inter-dimensionalbarriers ripped wide open. the whole mass of the moon was in the way. by old standardsit couldn't happen; but a lot of lunar atoms went all to pieces in a flare of high energy.the tough part is that we achieved a workable motor principle for stellar ships weeks ago.the blowup came from side line testing." once more no words answered mitchell prellwhen he stopped talking. he waited, but his sister's eyes remained cold. "all right, eileen," he went on at last. "you'rethinking that i am one of the specialists who is responsible for this. surely i'm theonly survivor among those research men who were on the moon. but remember this: we weren'tworking on our own. we were hired, under a
democratic system, and told what to hunt for.it was the best that could be done, except that the lab should have been put fartheraway, on some lonely asteroid. logically, then, we are not solely to blame for whathas happened. but it doesn't work that way, eileen. under grief and hysteria logic stillcollapses, even in our time. in a real crisis there continue to be many people who needscapegoats. a collective mishap, the result of a mass desire for more knowledge, thenbecomes a personal guilt. so i'm a fugitive, eileen." it was a strange, bitter thing for eddie dukasto watch—his mother and uncle facing each other, not friends, his mother's face a hardmask of coldness.
then, all at once, her icy poise crumbled."jack isn't alive any more," she said. "my husband. that's the fact that i know best.you with your glib talk, my brother, are one person directly in the chain of events thatcaused jack's death. i don't accuse you, mitch. i just say that i can't look on you now withany pleasure. that's all." then, sitting there on the sensipsych couch,she began to cry. it was painful for eddie to watch. he had never seen her do that before. but mitchell prell chuckled. he sat besidehis sister and put his arm around her. "are things so bad?" he chided. "look, eileen.people used to consider biological life the deepest secret of nature. because he was atthe top of his local life scale, man would
not have been flattered to know that the vitalforce in him wasn't the greatest, the most indecipherable of enigmas. but it's true,eileen. year after year we've learned more about cell function, genes, chromosomes, thenatural molding of living things, and the final process in protoplasm, which is thespark itself. men like schaeffer have been making simple life for years, while they tracedout more complex riddles. for a long time they've been replacing diseased or damagedorgans from scattered cells drawn from the bodies of many donors. now they've gone furtherand have grown such organs in a culture fluid, from a microscopic bit of tissue. it is alreadytheoretically possible to re-create an entire man, provided there is a pattern. it was forrepair purposes, after possible accidents,
that everyone was urged to have his body structurerecorded—especially that of his brain. all you have to do, eileen, is have jack's recordturned over to the same laboratories that do rejuvenation. in two or three years he'llcome back to you just as he was. soon there might even be a simpler, better way." eileen dukas's laugh was brittle and bitter."a roll of fine, sensitized wire," she said. "kept in a box no bigger than the first jointof a finger. supposed to be safe in a vault. the pattern of a human being. well, mitch,there just isn't any such box for jack. or for eddie or me either, for that matter. wejust didn't get around to it. jack was somehow half against it."
again there was a silence. for eddie it seemedto have the quiet of forever in it. no whistling of dad's tunes. no sly winks, or play at beingtough. just memory. "all bodies that are being picked up are beingsent through the recorder," uncle mitch offered at last. "refined radar does the trick. thefinest variations of even brain structure—the mold of mind, personality, and memory—arefound and recorded. wasn't that done for jack?" eddie's mother nodded. "only," she stammered,"the whole top of his head was charred. there wasn't enough of him left. oh, you and yourdamned science, mitch." she was weeping again. mitchell prell becameeither cruel or perhaps he spoke in self-defense. "the people that used to neglect things likeinsurance," he remarked, "are still plentiful,
aren't they? oh, well, maybe there's stilla sort of way. a makeshift. people are bound to think of it. let it go for now. i've gotlots to worry about, sister of mine." "your own skin, for instance?" she challengedhim. "why did you come here at all, mitch? the scapegoat-seekers will certainly lookfor you here first." "my own skin," mitchell prell agreed. "maybeyours, since you are a relative of mine, responsible for my sins. that is an ancient defect oflogic among certain types of people still in existence, i'm afraid—if the provocationbecomes great enough. the skins of the three of us, my most prized treasures." he smiled slightly then, and his blue eyeswere gentle. "don't worry too much, though,"
he went on. "i'll be gone sooner than mostpeople will even think of looking for me. i'll keep out of sight, not even leaving thehouse, except after dark. i have some things to deliver to schaeffer. then i've got toget away. because life goes on, in spite of everything. i'm still curious about nature,the stars and some other things. i remain eager for some vast freedom, eileen—foryou and your son, and the rest of the cussed race, whose errant qualities and usually goodintentions i share. i see no good in becoming the offering of expiation for an accidentthat came out of a general human urge to learn that can't and won't be downed." something like a truce came then. eddie dukascould feel it. family loyalty was in it and
a little of understanding and contrition. "all right, mitch," was all that eddie's mothersaid. she kissed his uncle's cheek. eddie knew that it was a woman's gesture of armistice. fires had died down. dawn was beginning toshow in the patio. the rain had stopped long ago. for no reason eddie's eyes sought outa pool of muddy water in a crack in the flagging. the water was clay colored, as it might havebeen after any shower. a robin, which had somehow escaped death, was scolding angrily. breakfast was eaten listlessly. there wereradio reports and orders. "able persons must report to their municipal centers...."
"that's for you, eddie," mitchell prell saidruefully. "and your mother. while i play hiding rat." eddie didn't know whether to hate his uncleor not. there was an inner bigness about that slightly built man that matched some obscuredrive that was eddie's own—in spite of his grief. "watch yourself, sir," he growled stiffly. the day was a day of searching for corpses,of cleanup, of tentative restoration. at least there would be no smells of death. pruningmachines were already busy on charred treetops. the world was being put back into order, likea disturbed anthill. grass and leaves would
sprout again. the scared faces of youngerchildren—many from the youth center were given small tasks to help in the cleanup,since it was not the custom now to hide reality from the young—would smile again. on thatday of sweeping the streets with a broom, eddie dukas made and lost many a brief friendship.hello.... goodbye.... fortunately the poison of radioactivity hadnot been transmitted to any great extent from across space by radiation alone. gases andfragments of the moon that were still falling as meteors bore a taint to the atmosphere;but it was now below the danger level. overhead, arching the sky like the rings ofsaturn turned ragged, was what was left of luna: rock and dust. for an hour its textureveiled the sun, until, near noon, there was
almost twilight, like that of an eclipse.that arch was a permanent monument to a night that would be remembered. there still were hysterical people around.eddie saw mrs. payten, his friend's mother. she passed in the street, muttering, "oh,ronald, you were a beast of a man, but i loved you. why were you a fool, too?... no record....none...." it had been a subject of neighborhood gossipthat ronald payten, a large, passive lug, had been a very much hen-pecked husband. hisneglect of having a record made of himself might have seemed strange for so noted a biologist.maybe it was absent-mindedness, professional difference of opinion, or even some backhandeddefiance of his wife.
there were moments when the wild taint inyoung blood and the magnificence of disaster gave eddie and others almost an outing mood.but toil, sweat and horror soon turned things grim as he worked with the men. his handswere blackened and scratched. but maybe tiredness was balm for delayed shock. maybe it was thusthat he stood at the brief funeral services—for his father, too—with less hurt. the greattrench was closed over the corpses, and the thing was done. later, back in the house, he struggled withhimself somewhat, and said, "i know it wasn't your fault, uncle mitch." eddie had seen stern faces that day, toppingtrim gray uniforms: regional police. in him
was the thought: harboring a fugitive. onewho shouldn't be called that. but who is—now. because people have taken a beating like neverbefore. even laws can be changed. ideas of justice won't stay quite the same. "have you outgrown my calling you nipper?"mitchell prell asked him seriously. "perhaps.... but i still want to show you something." young ed dukas was no sucker for easy come-ons.but his polite wariness soon dissolved, when, in the room where mitchell prell was holedup, he saw that the man who turned to face him was not his uncle. the nose and lips weremuch heavier. only the eyes and grin remained much the same, though their general effectwas made different by the difference of surrounding
features. this man looked like a good-naturedmechanic. eddie's spine chilled. but he gave a sullensnort as the man peeled his face away. underneath it was uncle mitch. "a mask, eddie. a trick for kids, you'd say."his uncle laughed. "i spent the day making it up, to help me get around more easily.that's nothing. the important fact is that it is made of vitaplasm. remember the barof it that i once had? crude stuff then. better now. alive in a way of its own. a syntheticand far tougher cousin to natural protoplasm. far less susceptible to damage by heat andcold. self-healing, like flesh. sustained by food and oxygen. but capable of drawingits energy from sunlight or radioactivity,
too. and in some of its forms less dependenton a fluid base such as water. no, it's not consistently the same substance, or combination.like the flesh we know, vitaplasm is in constant change. here and now it's just an amorphousmass, crudely molded. an unshaped building material. but, like star ships, it belongsto the future. here it's undeveloped principle, another phase of our advancing science everywhere.you could call it the clay of the superman, eddie. i want you to remember all this. becausei may be back from where i'm going to try to go. or i might get in touch sometime. wemight need each other's help." young ed dukas listened with intense interest.perhaps his deepest drive was toward the shadowy splendor of times yet to come. they seemeda part of his growing self. they must become
real! and he must take part in their fulfillment.grief or hardship could not stop him. therein he and mitchell prell traveled the same road. "you didn't invent vitaplasm, uncle mitch,"he stated. "no one could have—alone." his sullenly serious gaze lingered on themask. it was warm to his touch. it even recoiled a little. mitchell prell shook his head and chortled."no, nipper. you know that research is now far too complex for that. i helped a little.lots of men did. maybe i've added something to what is known. i've got to give my datato specialists here before i leave." eddie thought of a man he'd sometimes seenon television. no bigger than uncle mitch.
and plain looking. but great. dr. schaefferin his underground laboratory in the city. "you aren't going to try to reach a star,are you?" young ed asked. uncle mitch shook his head. "no. i won't wanderso far off." he laughed. "but in a way i'll be going farther, i suppose. though don'timagine that i mean time or hyper-dimensional travel. it's something simpler. but it's toa place where no one can journey exactly as a human being. i can't tell you much more.because i don't want other people to try to dig too much out of you. but i want to lookat things from a new angle. and from very close up, you might say. maybe i'm tryingto hide from danger, eddie. some. but the bigger reason is that i want to go on learningand exploring. maybe my being a small man
means something, too." mitchell prell ended with another light laugh.he put the mask in his pocket and snapped a large suitcase shut. when he spoke againit was on a slightly different tack: "you probably won't see me for a while, eddie.about your father, words just aren't any good at all. maybe i'll ache over his end evenharder than you. if anybody asks you questions about me, tell all you know. don't try tohide anything for my sake. they'll pry it out of you anyway. and they'll only know whati want them to know. "your mother may get a letter in a few daysasking you both to report to the city. if that letter comes, see that she conforms toits request. it will also mean that i've delivered
the results of my experiments with vitaplasm,as far as they've gone, into the proper hands and have probably succeeded in getting awayinto space. i hope that you and i and everybody make it to the big future, eddie. that's alli have to say. unless you care to remember a word that may crop up again—android." mitchell prell grinned reassuringly at hisnephew and moved to put on his mask. "you don't want to say goodbye to mom," eddiestated, half angrily. prell's look of concern deepened. his thinface was touched by a fleeting tenderness and worry. part of it was surely for his sister.then, mostly to himself, he muttered, "there's greater magnificence to come—if we can growpast the infancy of man; if new knowledge
and old wild impulses don't do us all to deathfirst." he chuckled sheepishly. "you say goodbye for me, eddie," he urged. "i hate things likethat." mitchell prell was gone then, out into theweird new night. grimly, already half a man, young ed dukas watched him go, bitternessand grief, hatred and love, mixed up inside him. but the common denominator between himselfand his uncle was the need for that future of stars and wonder and legendary betterment. "it will happen," he promised within himself.for a second his body was taut with dread. he had already experienced the fury that knowledgemade possible, and he could sense the potential of long silence beyond such things—no oneleft, anywhere! he wondered if, because life
could go on and on now, it was more preciousand death more terrible. fifteen minutes after his uncle's departurea spy beam was put into operation from a mile distance. it covered the rooms of the dukashouse and the grounds around it. the principle of the device was almost ancient. the reflectionof electro-magnetic waves. on a small screen in a distant room the plan of a house andits furnishings was outlined in a pale green glow. shadowy blobs shifted with the movementsof its occupants, robot and human. only two people were there now. eddie dukas guessed that the spy beam wasthere, though its irregularly changing wave length would have made it almost impossibleto identify, among the waves from many sources
used for communication. early on the third morning after the lunarblowup the police came to the house. they were very gentle. there was even a policewomanto ask the questions. eddie's mother was cool and wary. "have you information as to the whereaboutsof dr. mitchell prell, mrs. dukas?" she was asked. "we know that the last moon rocketlanded with him aboard." before she could lie eddie blurted, "he washere all that day. he's gone now. he didn't make his destination very clear." eileen dukas's eyes widened with panic andsurprise. she had expected eddie to be more
discreet. "you have no right to question my son!" shestated coldly. "mrs. dukas," she was informed, "when thereis an investigation of the deaths of two hundred million people, we have more than the rightto question anybody." young ed was scared. but he felt some of thehero-impulse. or the desire to follow faithfully the instructions of his idol, uncle mitch. "if you psych my memory, what little i knowwill come clearer than if i just told it," he challenged. this was done forthwith, out in the policecar parked in the street. when the helmet
of the apparatus was removed from eddie'shead, the police had certain comments of mitchell prell's to study. possibly they could puzzleout some of their hidden meaning. but this couldn't have satisfied them very much. the next day the letter prell had mentionedarrived. at least it could be assumed that it was the one. uncle mitch had managed tomake one step of his purpose anyway! under the heading of "vital section, schaeffer laboratories,"it said: mrs. dukas: will you kindly report at your earliest convenienceto the above section. this is of greatest importance. please bring your son.
sincerely, dr. m. bart ed was both cold with tension and hot witheagerness. the following day he and his mother were in the battered city. fire had scarredit. a boiling tidal wave had washed over portions of it. but the great building over the manysubterranean levels of the schaeffer labs had stood firm. quakes had not broken it down. an elevator took them below, to that steel-and lead- and concrete-shielded place which might have resisted for a while even a novaloutburst of the sun. they were requested to lie down on something like sensipsych couches.a voice—maybe dr. bart's—spoke to them
from a swift-gathering dream: "think aboutjack dukas. your husband. your father. things he said. his manner of speech. his expressions,gestures, temperament, likes and dislikes, hobbies, jokes, skills. the people that heknew. their faces and mannerisms. as many of them as possible will be contacted andpsyched like this, too. think of his memories told to you. think of everything ... everything... everything...." for eileen dukas it must have been much thesame as for her son. pearly haze seemed to float inside eddie's mind. like a millionbits of ancient news clippings always in motion, his recollections of his father seemed toburst in a thousand ever-shifting fragments within his brain. he felt an awful compulsionto recall. it sapped his strength until all
consciousness faded away. yet before thishappened he knew that the probing would go on and on. the next thing he knew he was sitting groggilyin a pneumatic tube train, with his mother, all but exhausted, too, leaning against him.almost as an afterthought, their own minds and bodies had been "recorded" there at thelaboratory. they seldom exchanged questions or speculations afterward about what had happenedto them. it had been a dream. let it be a dream. chapter ii life had become hard enough for eileen dukasand her son. while most people treated them
all right—from some they even received exaggeratedkindness—there was, very often, a certain disturbing expression in eyes that lookedat them. les payten, eddie's friend said once, "i promise,ed. no more talk about your uncle from me. finished, see? you've had enough." eddie suppressed the anger which sprang fromloyalty to mitchell prell, for he understood les payten's good intentions. at regular intervals there were police visitsat the house, and questioning. "it's partly for your protection, mrs. dukas," was onehonest comment from the detectives. but eddie sensed that there was more to it than that.subtly, the interpretation of law had changed
since the lunar blowup. it went backward,as grief sought people to blame. catastrophe had been too big for reason or fairness. andthe scapegoat himself was not around to be mobbed. a freckle-faced brat from the youth center—hername, barbara day, had been drawn out of a hat, for of course she had no known parents—offeredadvice: "you ought to go far away, eddie, where folks don't know you. it would be better." ed knew that this was good advice. many peoplewere saying and shouting and whispering that too much knowledge was a dangerous possession.and ed's uncle still represented such a thing. more than once ed had to run fast, with somebig lug chasing him. black eyes he collected
with great frequency, and delivered some,too. still, he ached inside. it was as if uncle mitch were part of him. the world began to look normal and green again.but the undercurrents of memory were still there. and ed dukas began to answer hate withhate, though he didn't like to. there was a crowd of young toughs with rocksto throw, in front of the house one night. "this is the place," eddie heard one of themsay. "both my parents are gone. and the bums that live here were in on the reason." ed had seen the boy around before: ash parker.now the rocks flew for a while, and ed and his mother crouched behind locked doors. theremight have been a lynching, except that les
payten found a neighbor with a tear-gas vialand some other neighbors with sharp tongues and courage. it was the final straw, however. "will wehave to leave, eddie?" his mother asked. "it's best," he growled. "but i'll be back!" next day the house was being boarded up. packingbegan even before the colonial travel permits were prepared. it was goodbye to les payten and barbara day,and the newly ringed planet, earth, with its billions of inhabitants and its great shopsthat still worked to give the whole solar system to mankind and maybe a segment of thelarger universe as well. the pattern of the
future seemed set, and specialists still didn'tthink that there was any real reason to make a change. in fact, they denied that any changewas possible. nobody would give up the threshold of immortality, once it was gained. nor wouldthey relinquish other triumphs that could bring idleness and decay if they were notused to accomplish bigger and bigger tasks. so, even the fearful ones were caught in therushing current of the times. ed dukas was soon on a crowded liner. becauseshe might need him, he kept close to his mother. around them were other colonists—young graduatesfrom technical schools, newlyweds and people who were physically young, too, though theywere fresh from the rejuvenation vats. they were the aged, awed by another lifetime beforethem.
the liner blasted off. a week later it landedon an asteroid of middling size. the dukases were assigned to one of a group of trim cottagesthat were not even all alike. under the great glass roof, which kept in the synthetic air,the new gardens and fruit trees were already growing. and in coiled tubes of clear plasticfilled with water, circulated green algae from which almost any kind of basic food couldbe made. to eddie it was a satisfying dip into spacethat he had so much anticipated. amid great heaps of steel and plastic and house partsand atomic machines to maintain a normal temperature so far from the sun, life went on. eddie'smother worked in the office of a shop for robot machines. he worked too—when and wherehe could—when he was not at school.
there was a little more of peace, for a whileanyway. there was the usual psychological treatment to subdue possible devils of thelunar catastrophe which might remain in his mind. there were sports and an artificiallake to swim in with his companions. however, ed dukas was wary of making deep friendships. he was then a sullen, overly matured youthof thirteen, earnest about everything he did—for he knew that the years ahead were grimly earnest.carefully he kept up with the reports in scientific journals: about the laying of the keel ofthe first star ship on a minute asteroid with only a number and no name. harwell was incharge. the propellant would be pure radiant energy—the best of them all; energy so concentratedthat it would be truly massive and hurled
at the speed of light, which was not remarkable,since it would be light, far more intense per unit area than the noval explosion ofa star! this was by no means the only major advancethat had been accomplished and was reported. technological progress was steady in all fields,across the board, making a solid front. others of its facets also had a special appeal toed dukas. biological science, in its newest interpretations, he knew to be the most importantof these. now it was no longer just simple rejuvenation—restoring rusty organs. itwas a thing that could start from a single cell, in warm, sticky fluids, giving rebirthto something that had already been. and it had a further development—bringing the sameresults but more swiftly and easily, and with
different, far more rugged flesh. it was frighteningand fascinating. knowing was like feeling the shadow of a demon or an angel. ed dukas and his mother spent four years ontheir asteroid. then one day a letter fluttered in her hand. and she seemed not to know whetherto look happy or terrified. she did not show her son the letter. "we've had enough of being here," she stated."we're going home." so they went back across the millions of miles.they cleaned up the house, on which obscene insults had been scribbled in chalk. on twosuccessive days eddie was jumped by gangs. he fought free and escaped. but on the thirdevening he was cornered. this time ash parker
was the ringleader. ed battled like a bobcat,but eight opponents were too many. he was flat on his back, and they were kicking him.his own blood was in his mouth. what might happen when he blacked out was anybody's guess.once, before medical knowledge had advanced to where it was, it would have been murderfor sure. somebody intervened—a big guy in a graybusiness suit who had come striding along the block with an eager attention. he didn't say anything at first. he just collaredthe toughs, two at a time in swift succession, and thrust them away. eddie staggered up and faced his benefactor,intent on giving him sincere thanks. "mister
... i ..." "hello, eddie!" the man said, chuckling. "isee you turned out hardy. seventeen you'd be now." young ed dukas heard the voice and lookedat the face. he stiffened. then he made a statement in a flat tone that sounded veryformal and unemotional, which it was not: "sir, you're my father." the man nodded. "just off the assembly line,pal. the same guy—because you and your mother, and some other people, remembered what i waslike. there was no record of me or of my mind. so, okay, they made one, fella. from the memoriesof me left in other minds. thanks, eddie."
"thanks?" ed dukas said in a choked voice. bloody and dirty, he stepped forward. fatherand son clung to each other. it was a moment of great triumph. ed's mind pictured filaments, as fragile atfirst as pink spiderweb but already outlining a human shape, held suspended in a kind ofjelly—growing there, forming according to a record. now even the record could be synthesized.it seemed like real freedom from death at last. ash parker had not fled. now he spoke, soundingawed, "jeez, mr. dukas. i didn't believe it. maybe my folks can come back, too."
"your parents will come back," jack dukasaffirmed. "i am the first 'memory man' to be resurrected. among those killed who hadhad their bodies and minds recorded as was recommended, about a hundred thousand arealive again, as i think you know. millions more are in process. one way or another, byrecord or by the memories of others, in flesh of the old kind or the new, almost everyonewill return." ed felt his father's hand. as far as he couldtell, it was of flesh. yet it could be something else; ed nearly trembled with excitement ashis eager wonder and primitive dread of the strange battled inside him. he thought againof mitchell prell's first samples of vitaplasm. "of which flesh are you, dad?" ed asked anxiously.
his father studied him there in the twilightof the day, while the silvery ring of lunar wreckage brightened in the sky. "the old kind, eddie," he answered. "i'm glad," ed said, feeling greatly relieved,a reaction which he knew was odd for one who loved the thought of coming miracles. jack dukas sighed as if he had escaped a terriblefate. "so am i glad, pal," he said. "i guess i was favored by family connections." herehe paused, but his wink meant uncle mitch. "however," he continued, "the old flesh takesso much longer. that's why in many cases it won't be used. there must be thousands ofandroids already among us, living like everybody
else. since personal concerns are involved,statistics are kept rather confidential. these synthetic people have organs the same as wehave. and you can't recognize them just by looking. only they're thirty per cent heavier,stronger, and they don't tire. there was a thought, once, that robots would make humanbeings obsolete and replace them. sorry, eddie. why be gruesome at a time like this? let'spatch you up and then find your mother." young ed dukas was happier than he had everbeen before. for quite a while he found peace. maybe that was true of most of humanity now—forthe past three or four years at least. there was no sharp delineation of an interval beforethe smokes of doubt began to come back. les payten was still around. and barbara daycontinued to live at the youth center on the
hill. often the three would meet. their childhoodwas behind them. barbara day's freckles had faded. her dark hair had a coppery glint.a promise of beauty had begun to blossom. and her talk expressed many whimsical thoughts. "we all know each other, eddie," she oncesaid. "so don't be offended. i sometimes think that you wonder whether your father is reallythe same person that he was—whether he ever could be more than a careful duplicate." les payten frowned. "you're speaking to me,too, babs," he pointed out. "i also have a 'memory father.' he's good to me, and mostlyi like him. but sometimes i get scared, though i don't always know why."
ed's skin tingled. "could i be myself nowand still be myself in another body, years later? could there ever be two of me—truly—constructedexactly the same? i don't deny such a thing. i simply don't know." but ed dukas continued to wonder about hisfather. there were several occasions when his dad was supposed to recognize certainpeople, casually encountered in the street. for they knew him. ed was present on one of these occasions."sorry, friend," jack dukas apologized to a burly, jovial man. "i guess they forgotto put a picture of you inside my head." les payten's father was also subtly differentfrom his original—though in a somewhat different
way. the change was even very dimly apparentin his face. he had once been a big, easy-going, timid soul, nagged by his wife. now his featuresbore a hint of brutality. he walked with a slight swagger. he did not roar, but the auraof power was there. ed's mother explained the change to his father:"memory seems not always to match facts, jack. mrs. payten fooled herself into believingthat ronald payten used to be a bully. so she even fooled schaeffer's mind-machines.and lo! ronald payten is a bully now, as far as she is concerned. no, don't worry abouther too much, jack. she may even like being pushed around." in the months that passed, from out on anasteroid came the step-by-step reports of
the building of the first huge star ship.at home, one by one, old acquaintances—or was it just their reasonable facsimiles?—reappeared.gradually most of the dead of the lunar blowup were restored to life—except for certainscientists who remained unforgiven. but a new type of population was creepinginto the fabric of human society. its humanness, in an old sense, could be debated. its firstquiet intrusion was marked by an awe that faded into a shrug; it began to be acceptedcasually and somewhat dully, as most past novelties had been accepted before. foresightcould extend into tomorrow, but its pictures remained not quite real. the skills of cool,clear thinking, which education tried to impart in an era that needed it so much, fell shortagain. no doubt it should have been remembered
that the shift from inattention to unreasonablepanic can often be swift. even young ed dukas, though dedicated in hisheart to new and coming things, sometimes lost sight of these deeper concerns becauseof his lighter interests. without much help from art, barbara day turned out to be beautiful.she had a pair of suitors automatically. ed could have had his stocky frame lengthened.les payten could have had his big ears trimmed. but young men often frown on the vanity oftampering with one's appearance. sometimes there is even a certain pride in minor ugliness. they all had their dates, their dancing, theircanoe rides—traditional pleasures, inherited from generations past. and they had the age-oldproblems of youth approaching adulthood. but
now, for them and for their increasingly complexcivilization, there was a new problem—vitaplasm, which could be grown like flesh, though faster,impressed with a shape, personality and memories. it was said that 30 per cent of those whodied in the explosion of the moon lab were brought back in this firmer, cheaper medium.but its use did not stop here. for one thing, there were certain adventurous persons, aliveand healthy, who changed the character of their bodies willfully. one fact some might forget: there were otherdead from years before, but remembered and still loved—parents, grandparents. besides,there were historical characters—washington, lincoln, edison, cleopatra.
possibly joe doakes could awaken from extinction,puzzled, wondering, frightened, but finding himself at least superficially the same, eatingmuch the same food, enjoying much the same things. then something super in his body woulddawn on him, scaring him more or making him exultant. but it all seemed good at firstglance, so a joyful world forgot its times of suspicion, even against the warnings ofspecialists, and released the new processes to almost any operator who could constructthe needed equipment. the solar system was big; the universe, optimisticallypromised, seemed endless. there was plenty of room. and the task of bringing back justthose who had perished with the moon was enormous and slow. so in cellars and out-of-the-wayplaces countless biological technicians tried
their skill. they could not have made thegrade at all if they were stupid, and their results, generally, were good. the various julius caesars and michelangelosreally came into being as novelties, side-show pieces. all were reasonable likenesses, physically.from existing minds such traits and skills as each was supposed to possess could be copiedmore or less accurately. but none of the pseudo-great amounted to very much. they enjoyed a briefpopularity; then, assuming the costumes and customs of a changed world, they sank intononentity among the populace. like most of those of the new flesh, they kept this secretas if by intuitive prudence. the many people restored in normal protoplasm were less reticent.
that there were androids around him, known,suspected and unrecognized as such, was a thrilling idea to ed dukas. it was part ofthe onward march to greater wonders—or so it seemed to him most of the time. eager tounderstand how they thought and felt, he sought them out cautiously, not wishing to offend.usually his efforts were met with coolness and evasion—which perhaps gave them away. but then ed met a very special memory man.he wasn't the copy of somebody famous. he was just a humorous legend. yet now perhapshe was the right kind of personality striking against the right sort of circumstances toproduce the type of action and fire that could affect the existing era.
ed and his two friends, les payten and barbaraday, found him in a little park feeding pigeons. or, rather, he found them. for in conformitywith an ancient village belief that no one should be a stranger to anyone else, he grinnedat them and said, "hello, there! nice young fellers. nice girl! sit and gab a while? ikeep gettin' lonesome. mixed up. got to get straightened out. or try, anyway. put yourselvesdown? that's fine!" abashed and curious after that, ed and barbaraand les sat and mostly just listened. "been around these times three months. scaredstiff at first. thought i was addled. know somethin'? i can remember all the way backto 1870. it's a fake, sure. no, they didn't make me look young, or even give me all myteeth. afraid of spoiling 'verisimilitude,'
my great-great-great-something-grandson-supposed-to-besaid. i'm a family brag. look what i keep carrying around with me. one of the firsteditions of huck finn. they found this tintype of a feller inside it. illinois farmer. andlook at this here writing in the front of the book. 'property of abel freeman.' so i'msupposed to be him, slouch hat and all—funny, i can't get used to anything else. so i writejust like that. this tintype and the writing are the only solid clues about what the originalabel freeman was really like. up to there, i'm him. the rest is mostly storybook stuff,and the idea the family has that their ancestor was a kind of pixilated hellion—the sortsome folks like to tell about. some way for a man to be born, huh? shucks, i can evenremember the night i was supposed to have
died. drunk, and kicked in the belly by myown mule, because he didn't like my smell. hell, i bet in real life that mule would ofplum enjoyed whisky!" abel freeman stopped talking. he turned palegray eyes set in a face that looked like brown leather toward his audience with expectantamusement, as if he understood the eerie impression he'd made on them and was curious about theirreactions. barbara took the lead. "we're surely gladto know you, mr. freeman," she said, shaking his big brown paw and unconsciously apinghis manner of speech. "i'm sure you could tell us plum more. what's the world ever comingto?" his grip, for an instant, was almost literallylike that of a vise. but when barbara winced
with pain, his hand relaxed, and his lookbecame honestly gentle and apologetic, though it retained a certain slyness of tricks beingplayed or unprecedented power being demonstrated. "oh, excuse me, lady!" he drawled. "this firstabel freeman—he was supposed to be a very strong and vigorous man. me—naturally i'meven a lot stronger. sometimes i just forget. but i try to be right courtly. there, i'llrub your fingers. hope i didn't break no bones." barbara laughed a bit nervously. "no, mr.freeman—i'm fine," she assured him, nodding her dark head. "now, if you'll tell us—" "oh, yes—about what the world and everythingis coming to," abel freeman went on, his tone more languid than his eyes. "well, matterscould get mighty rough. i've been studying
up—thinking. when i first got to these times,i didn't like them. everything seemed addled. guess i was homesick. i kind of resented beingmade the cheap way, too. but even way back in the years i remember, they used to saythat maybe there'd be flying machines or even balloons to the moon. so i perked up and gotacclimated, and said to myself, 'abel, my boy, take what's given to you and don't whine,even though you weren't asked if you wanted to come here. and with all that can be donenow, why not bring your old woman and her chewing tobacco? and your four ornery sons?nat was the worst. and nancy, your daughter, who was an unholy terror? of course this familythat you recollect so good probably don't match historical fact so much, being justromanticized, mostly made-up memories put
into your head. but they're plum real to you.guess when they synthesized you, they should have left those recollections out. becauseyou love that family of yours, ornery or not, and would be happy to see its members again.'and i said to myself besides, 'abel, bein' made the cheap way has got plenty of advantages.you're strong as a dozen regular men, and you won't need rejuvenation, because you'llnever get any older. you'll heal even if you're hurt something terrible. trouble is, yourkind'll be some mighty stiff competition for the present holders of the land. of coursepeople want to get along peaceably—even your sort, abel. but plenty of folks willwind up trusting your sort no more than they'd trust a billygoat under a line of wash. yep,i'm afraid there's gonna be some mighty interesting
days coming!'" abel freeman ended his conversation almostdreamily. he'd hung his slouch hat on the corner of the bench back. in his iron-grayhair, the sun picked out reddish glints. his gaze, which might have been designed especiallyfor precision squirrel-shooting, wandered down a path that curved along the park lake. ed dukas found him a fascinating mixture ofold romance and comedy, artfully concealing the most recent of wonders, the dark channelsof which held the potentials of great centuries to come, or mindless silence after destruction.the treachery was not in abel freeman himself but in the fact of his being.
ed's mouth was dry. "you're honest, mr. freeman,"he said. abel freeman answered this with a nod anda shrug. "funny," he drawled. "thought i saw a young feller i was sort of expecting. acongenial enemy, name of tom granger. look, suppose you three sidekicks of mine get onyour feet nice and easy, and walk the other way on that path. it would be safer. not toofar. just a piece." this might have been an armed robber's command,but ed sensed that it was nothing like that. without a word, he led les and barbara away. there was a blinding, blue-white flash. thebench on which they had been sitting was gone—vaporized by fearful heat. incandescent vapors rosefrom a big hole in the turf. when condensed
and solidified, they would show little flecksof gold transmuted from soil. these were the effects of the familiar midas touch pistol.it used lighter atoms to form heavier ones, while it converted a little of the total massinto energy. freeman must have leaped away at just theright instant to avoid destruction. with astonishing agility, he was pursuing his intended murderer.as freeman sprang to the youth's shoulders, they both fell in a heap on the walk and slidto a stop. freeman's hand flicked, and the weapon flew into the bushes. by then ed and barbara and les were standingover the prone forms. freeman was unruffled. "friends," he said, laughing, "meet up witha young one with a sharp viewpoint and lots
of guts in his own way. yep, tom granger." granger was panting heavily. his mass of blackhair streamed down over his thin face. he looked scarcely older than ed or les, butthese days that meant little. in repose, his large, dark eyes might have been limpid andidealistic; now they flashed fury. his shabbiness was affected. certainly, in this era, therewere no reasons for poverty. now he began to struggle again, in freeman'sgrasp. futilely, of course. "yes, i have guts!" he declared. "i wanted to kill you, freeman—withwhatever means that are left that can still accomplish that with things like you! i wantedthe incident to get into the newscast—yes, to give me public attention. and not for anystupid vanity, but for the best purpose there
ever was. i wanted a chance to be listenedto, while i tell what everyone must have begun to sense by now. damn you, freeman! let meup!" abel freeman smirked indulgently and obliged. granger rose lamely but gamely. "you seemto be impromptu acquaintances of this abel freeman," he said to ed and his companions."he has feelings, he thinks; he's even a good person. in some ways he's just an interestingrogue of the nineteenth century. but he's a device. and unless something is done, we'llbe as obsolete as the dinosaur! our science serves us no longer. it serves other masters,nearer to its meaning. others than i have realized it. in every two houses this sideof the world there is already an average of
one of these creatures of vitaplasm. is earthto be kept for us, and for the joy of being human; or are we to become—basically, andno matter how humanized—mere synthetic mechanisms, trading our birthright for a few mechanicaladvantages?" the shot from the midas touch pistol was drawinga crowd. an approaching police siren wailed. suddenly granger fixed his eyes on ed in surpriseand recognition. "dukas," he said. "let me see—edward dukas. at a time when the worldwas more reasonably watchful, your house was under surveillance. as a possible means ofcontacting one mitchell prell—who had his hand in what once happened to us, and perhapsin what is happening now. how does it feel, dukas, to be so close to such a celebrity?ah, maybe you're shy!"
flattening out granger again would have beenno useful answer to ed's memories of bitter wrongs. he smiled briefly at him. "come see me some evening when you don't feelso much like making a monkey of someone, because someone has just made a monkey out of you,"he said. then he hustled his companions away. "there'sno good in getting involved in public confusion," he told them. "anyhow not till we talk thingsout and get them straight." ten minutes later they were in a quiet restaurant. "abel freeman," les payten said. "he was quitea surprise at that." "rather, more of a pointing out of facts wealready knew," barbara remarked.
"the old robot-peril come true," less saidpensively. "humanity threatened to be replaced, not by clanking giants of metal, simple andmelodramatic, but by beings much more refined—though they are perhaps much the same thing. my ownfather is one of them." "there's truth in what granger said," ed pointedout. "there's that dread of being shouldered out of the way by something strange and tougher.i can feel it too. granger can certainly make use of it, preaching. he's clever. but he'sthe worst kind of fool." "yeah, hammering on the detonator cap of theentire earth," les said, breathing softly. the three friends, sitting around a tableunder soft lights and in pleasant surroundings, looked at one another. the food before themwas good, the music was quiet and soothing.
but at eye level, in the air where their glancespassed, seemed to hang all the elements of the complex civilization to which they belonged:its luxury and beauty, its climbing technology that could conquer death and reach for othersolar systems, but by the same or related forces could dissolve worlds, especially ifmankind, at the top, lost control of itself. "i thought things would go along smoothlyand reasonably," barbara offered. "there's certainly plenty of room for both people andandroids. i took all of that more or less on faith. but i'm afraid i'm wrong. afterall, how can human beings live beside beings that blend indistinguishably with the massand yet are stronger, quicker?" ed remembered signs of friction that he'dheard about. a minor riot here or there. he
remembered public statements by specialistslike schaeffer admitting that some confusion was on the way but declaring that in the endeverything should be better for everyone. those specialists had the calculators, thegreat electronic thought-machines, digesting trends, making profound predictions. but thenthere was another thought—had many of those scientists already converted their own bodiesto a stronger medium? ed saw that les payten had a faint sweat ofstrain on his forehead, though he knew that les was no nervous coward. his sullen poisejust after the lunar explosion long ago had proved that. "maybe the worst of all," les was saying,"is the sense of being carried along, swiftly
and helplessly, by things that are too bigand complicated. you wish you could find a ledge somewhere in the time-stream and stopfor a while to get your bearings. sometimes you feel that you are in a one-way tunnelwhere you have to keep moving. is there light at the end of the tunnel? maybe it's justa matter of personal adjustment—a taking of whatever comes." "i feel as though we're at the threshold ofsome terrible danger, ed," barbara said. "what can we do about it?" he saw how strong and earnest she looked,and it reassured him. he touched her hand briefly. "i don't know exactly," he said."but i'm for holding course toward the bigger
future that stirred me up with big dreamsof the planets, of the stars. and i'm in favor of being reasonable. i've seen too much hateand fear and unreason in people. the way things are, it doesn't have to be a lot of peopleany more—just a few gone a little crazy. the moon blew up by accident. a world wasgone. but what happened by accident can certainly happen by design or with the aid of fury.so, everywhere we go we can talk against fury and panic, and for reason. to our friends,and in the streets. everywhere that we can, and to everyone. small as that effort is,it might help." solemnly the three friends shook hands andagreed to work out the details of a plan. chapter iii
that same night, at his home in the suburbs,ed dukas read an article that had especially attracted his attention. could vitaplasm begrown into forms unknown before? could it be shaped from a plan—a blueprint—likethe metal and plastic forming a machine? heart here, lungs there, nervous system arrangedso? scaly armor, long, creeping body? or wings that fluttered through the air? the authorsaw no reason why this could not happen. monstrous things. ed dukas chuckled at the melodramaticidea. but he suspected that it was far from impossible. young dukas also had a caller that night. "you said i should come to see you," tom grangertold him when they were alone in ed's room.
ed was on guard at once. his visitor's mood seemed to have changedsince the afternoon. "sorry if i seemed out of line today," grangersaid. "my motives are good. and i didn't want to insult you." "thanks," ed responded shortly. "but you didn'tcome here just to tell me that. how does it happen that you're not in jail?" "abel freeman discreetly pressed no charges.i wish he had. but, like you, he just disappeared. there was only that hole in the ground—madeby the midas touch pistol—a feeble thing to admit for a publicity showdown. so i keptstill, and the police couldn't hold me. fact
is, most of them seem sympathetic to whati stand for—the venerable human privilege of walking on one's own green planet as anatural animal, loving one's wife and children in the ancient, simple manner." granger was a good orator. mysteriously, edwas faintly moved. perhaps the gentle argument was too plain and clear. but ed remained waryof the traps of language and feeling, and of perhaps impractical dreams. his anger sharpened. then, knowing the possiblydeadly quality of anger in these times and wishing to counteract that everywhere, heyearned desperately to be a master psychologist, always calm and smiling and supremely persuasive.but he could not be like that. he was too
human and limited. maybe too primitive. "you still haven't told me why you came here,granger," he said coldly. "why have you passed up a chance for public shouting to come andtalk to me?" granger smiled. "you're clever enough, dukas,to know that to win the nephew of mitchell prell over to my way of thinking could beto my advantage before that public. or that, if i can't make friends with him, at leastknowing him better might help. even the latter circumstance could be like having a fingeron a whole set of advantages when the showdown between human beings and androids finallycomes. oh, i admire prell! a great man—if he was a man when last seen! but his kindof greatness is poison, dukas—though millions
with short memories have foolishly forgivenhim. but if he ever turns up again, you'll know it, and so, perhaps, will i—beforehe can do any further damage. you surely must realize that he bears a double guilt: forthe blowup and for the development of vitaplasm!" granger's smile was savage and hopeful. ed laughed in his face. "you think that secretlyi might hate mitchell prell, eh, granger? but he was the idol of my childhood, a whimsical,friendly little man. so i'm stuck with loyalty. but even if i hated him blackly, i wouldn'tcome over to your side. i don't like the way you think. until the blowup happened, it wasbravo for science and empire. afterward, your hysterical soul was free from blame and whiteas snow, and he was guilty. maybe i judge
you wrongly. i hope i do. but the way i addit up, it's not the androids or any other new and inevitable development that is thebig danger; it's people like you, though maybe you don't realize it. loudmouths who stirup confusion, animosity, hatred. maybe i ought to kill you. then there'd be one less sparkin the powder barrel!" "why don't you?" granger mocked. "there'dstill be others. and i'd be brought back." ed nodded. "the benefits of our civilization,"he said. "how would you like to be an android? does the idea scare you? you know, granger,some people say that, regardless of how you're returned to the living, you're not the sameperson you were but only a superficially exact duplicate."
"you know i'd always choose to be human, dukas,"granger muttered, looking almost terrified. "sure, granger," ed taunted. "you're not afraidof death—the knowledge that science can restore you gives you courage. you can takethe benefits of scientific advancement, can't you? but assuming its responsibilities isanother thing." "i'm not dodging responsibility! i'm grabbingit, dukas! i'm striking out for sane control. i've done things already! while i worked inthe vaults, where personal recordings are kept, certain of those little cylinders disappeared.they won't be found again! some men don't deserve that much protection against mishap—amongthem your uncle! i'm proud of this, and i boast of it! no, don't accuse me! even anofficial complaint would be challenged by
many people and then buried in a heap of redtape. i can be a dirty fighter, dukas; and i'll bite and kill and kick and holler mylungs out to keep this planet from going to the machines!" the wild look in granger's face was the thingthat prompted ed to action. the admission of the theft only emphasized the ghoulishdetermination that was there. the only hope seemed in smashing that ego out of existence—fora while at least. ed chuckled. "so you'd take even the essenceof people's selves," he said. granger's gaze didn't waver. "if every lastthing i hold dear—and which i believe most real human beings hold dear in like manner—werein danger, i'd do anything."
"so would i," ed said grimly. then he struck and struck and struck again.blood spurted from granger's smashed lips and nose, as he crashed to the floor, struggledto his feet and fell again. there was movement at the door of the room.from behind, ed was gripped by a strength greater than his own. "stop it, ed," he wascommanded quietly. it was his father. through bloodied lips, granger was explaininghurriedly, "your son and i disagree. he lost his temper. all i ask is that the good partsof science—medical and so forth—be kept and the rest banned. and that life becomesimple. a thing of fields and flowers, and wholesome physical work. and not a mechanizedbedlam, full of constant danger and tension."
granger sounded very earnest, ed thought.maybe he was earnest. maybe he was a good actor. "ban this, ban that!" ed shouted. "no oneever lived happily under the kind of artificial bans you mean, granger! and what will youdo with the billions of people who disagree with your pretty vision? some of them willhate what you advocate as much as you hate existing circumstances! and if modern weaponsare once used...." "quiet, ed," his father said softly. "you'veassaulted your guest—one who, as far as i can see, has the most reasonable of views.a beautiful picture. i agree with it myself—entirely." "look, dad," ed began. "this granger hereis trying to solve today's and tomorrow's
problems with yesterday's poor answers." ed stopped. he had an odd thought: his syntheticfather had been created largely from his and his mother's memories, at a terrible timeof grief, when his mother's reactions had turned against the groping toward the stars.before that, dad had been somewhat averse to mechanization. but now he was distinctlymore so, as if that grief and aversion had marked him. jack dukas was now medicating granger's facewith antiseptics while granger preached, as if from some deep font of a new wisdom: "yousee, mr. dukas, again, as in the past, danger is creeping up on us without receiving seriousattention. beings that are really robots are
already controlling part of their own production.their creation, everywhere, should be banned or stamped out. existing androids should beconverted to flesh or destroyed.... i'll go now. thank you for your help. but i thinki'll get in touch with your son occasionally. he needs guidance." ed nodded grimly. "perhaps i do," he said."maybe everyone does. you watch me and i'll watch you, eh?" during the succeeding months ed did his bestto spread his doctrine of calm and reason, working against the agitation which he knewwas already well under way. les payten and barbara day were with him in this. all overthe world there were others, mostly unknown
to them, but with the same ideas: "use yourhead.... don't put fear before knowledge.... do you know an android? what is his name?maybe miller or johnson? you must know a few. and do they think so differently from yourself?yes, there are problems and no doubt prejudice. it may even be justified. but the answersto our difficulties must be cool-minded. everyone knows why." ed and his companions talked in this mannerto their acquaintances, spoke on street corners, sent letters to newscast agencies. and theywon many people over. the trouble was that they, and others like them, could not reacheverybody. their earth remained beautiful. there werehazy hills covered with trees; there were
soaring spires. the unrest was an undercurrent. this was a time of choosing of sides, andof buildup, while there was a sense of helpless slipping onward toward what few could trulywant. voices with another, harsher message were raised. tom granger was hardly alonethere, either. tracts were passed out as part of their method: what is our heritage?; theright to be human; technology versus wisdom. perhaps directly out of such a mixture oftruth and crude thinking the assassinations began. there were thousands in scattered places. one day ed dukas pushed into a knot of curiousonlookers and saw the body of one of the first of these. there, in the same park where edhad first met abel freeman, it had been found
in the early morning. a midas touch blasthad torn it in half. "it's howard besser, a machinist who livesin the same building with me," a man in the crowd offered. "he died once in the lunarexplosion. now it happened again. that's no joke, even though he can be brought back." ed saw the victim's torn flesh. it lookedlike flesh. but broken bones had little metallic glints in them. could you avoid rememberingthat, mated to like, these beings of vitaplasm could even reproduce their kind, to help increasetheir number? had persons like tom granger planned even this dramatization of a difference?bits of this flesh still squirmed, hours after violence.
granger had made progress. growing publicattention had won him the privilege of orating on the newscast. it was he who had first talkedabout vampires and androids—together, and to a world-wide audience. he also accomplishedan important part in winning the legal suppression of labs creating human forms in vitaplasm. "it was desecration," he declared in his speech."it is a tragedy that we could not clamp down the lid sooner. there are an estimated seventymillion of these 'improvements on nature' now in existence. and there are many hiddenestablishments still producing more. can we ever destroy them all? it is criminal to locka human soul in such substance. if, of course, the soul truly remains human, as it was meantto be...."
granger's voice was always gentle. yet tohis listeners it suggested dark, lonesome places where there is danger. which was true.for now other killings had started. familiar human blood was spilled. on a pavement ed saw a grim legend smearedin red beside a corpse: "who will inherit the universe? retribution. one good turn deservesanother." scattered throughout the americas, europeand the westernized orient were millions more of such murders. the result was a tradingof grim goods, with the far hardier android winning in the tally. and that winning wasa threat. it could seem a promise to man of the end of his era. so here was another spurto hysteria, always mounting higher.
ed dukas and his friends stayed on at theuniversity. they studied with the efficient help of the sensipsych machine and its vividlyreal visions, which could demonstrate as real experiences almost any skill, from the playingof an antique viennese zither to the probing of the inner structure of a star. they alsoput in scattered hours of work in the factories, whose products still aimed at empire in thespatial distance. but above all they kept on with their appeals for reason. their successwas great. in the main, people were reasonable and clearheaded. but a total winning-overwas far from possible. noted men such as schaeffer were shoutingon the newscast. shouting for calm—increasing the tinny babble of the choosing of sides.
more and more, ed dukas began to lose faithin the big future. "maybe we should have kept still," he saidto les payten and barbara day. "we only added our small faggot to the fire." his friends laughed with him—ruefully—asthey walked together across the campus. some minutes later les payten nodded to them,and, with a half smile, said, "so long for now. don't lose any sleep—not over worries,anyhow." he sauntered off. in matters of love, leswas a good loser. barbara day had taken a little apartment ona tree-lined street. it was nice to walk there in the twilight. not far from the apartmenta half-acre of ground had been allowed to
grow wild with trees and bushes, for contrastto the surrounding sleek neatness. there, in the thick shadows, ed dukas sawsinuous movement. he had a fleeting glimpse of something long and winding, and perhapshalf as thick as his body. then he saw it again—saw its weird glow, saw the interlockinghexagonal plates that covered it everywhere. but it did not suggest a gigantic snake atall. for one thing, its mode of locomotion was different—a rippling movement of thousandsof little prongs on its undersides seemed to be involved in its principle. it hurriedquietly now for cover. rhododendron bushes parted. it disappeared behind a great oak. barbara and ed rushed forward. the grass boreno marks. prudently, they did not venture
into the dark undergrowth. ed's skin prickled all over and felt too smallfor him. "this is it," he said in a flat tone. "what, ed?" "life plotted on the engineer's drawing board.vitaplasm. the days when nature designed all animals are over, i'm afraid." "what would it be for, ed?" "how would i really know? want to guess?" "to create more terror maybe?" barbara said."what else? to go around at night—to stir people up with a horror that they've neverknown before. they'll realize it's vitaplasm,
the stuff of the androids too. they'll linkhatreds. maybe it's another trick—a propaganda stunt to force the fight to the finish. astunt invented by somebody like granger." "it seems to fit the pattern," ed said hoarsely."you're probably right. but this thing could have been made by the other side, too. theandroid side. as a means of reprisal. i've admired them. but i don't especially trusttheir judgment, either." ed dukas felt sick. he wondered now how muchlonger anything on earth could last. barbara touched his arm gently. "ed, we shouldnotify the police. for the safety of the neighborhood." "of course. and you won't stay out here alonetonight. you'll put up at a hotel, or i'll bunk on your floor."
barbara managed to laugh. "the building isstout. my window is high. there are plenty of tenants. i'm not dangerously stupid andi don't swoon. but i rather like the idea of having you close by." ed dukas had no trouble convincing the policethat he had seen something extraordinary—which was proof enough that there had been othercalls, previously. ed slept a few hours on a divan, listening, while, outside, armedmen patrolled the streets and watched the backs of buildings, which were kept brilliantlyilluminated. floodlights lighted up that shaggy wood lot like day. low, flat robot vehiclesplowed through it. nothing was found.
but miles away, nearer the city, there werea dozen dead—all of them of the old order of life. they were crushed. not a bone intheir bodies was intact. they had been dragged from their beds while they slept. horror swept through the city. the monsteror monsters had been seen. they were of the same substance as the androids. therefore,this was an android attack, clear and simple—to minds blurred by fear and fury. scared, angry faces surrounded ed dukas inthe streets the next morning. the coldness in him was like a stone behind his heart.he seemed to be hurled along by time, helpless to change its course. even barbara lookedsullen and confused, though, walking beside
him, she tried to sound cheerfully rational. "you know, we could all be changed over intoandroids. i wonder if you or i would ever want that? i think that even you are not especiallysympathetic to them, except as something new and potentially great. damn! i wish my witswere clearer. an android is a refined machine, you might say. but to be a human being isto be a thing of soul—is that it? a creature of tradition and pride, of sentiment." ed dukas shrugged. he felt bone and brainweary. that same day there were bloody riots in scatteredlocalities—much worse trouble than before. it seemed like the start of an avalanche.
that afternoon another incident happened.les payten came to meet his friends again in their favorite restaurant. they sat chattingglumly and listening to the newscast. the androids—"the phonies," they were alreadybeing called—were slipping away to the hills, for safety and also no doubt to gather theirown not inconsiderable numbers, and to entrench themselves. les payten was called to the phone. he cameback after a minute, saying with a puzzled expression, and almost a cynical smile, "myfather committed suicide. he left a note: 'eternity is a joke. and i'm sick of beinga robot. but what's the good of being a man, either—now?' burned himself wide open witha midas touch pistol. i guess the ultimate
cruelty would be to bring him back." that night there were three times as manycrushed bodies as the night before. but there were far more deaths caused by other violentmeans. two weeks passed, each day worse than the preceding. neighbors started hurling imprecationsat neighbors: "test-tube monkey!... obsolete imbecile!..." once there was a news report: "equipment found—apower generator of a type and output similar to that for a star ship, but obviously foranother purpose: meant, it seems, to power high-energy weapons of the beam type. is thisan android or a human assembly? the equipment was ordered dismantled. it was found in alarge basement in the city."
and tom granger began his broadcasts again:"androids—your numbers are relatively few. you could not win against us. and we wouldtake you back—kindly—to become people again. most of you once were human beings.you were meant to be that..." granger's tone was softer; it was condescending. ed dukas phoned granger at the newscast studio.after a long wait, he managed to contact him. that granger agreed to speak to him at allwas no doubt due to ed's relationship to mitchell prell. "granger," he said, "i'm pleading. please,forget that you know how to say anything. no, i don't want to offend you—but it'sjust no good. i'm not guessing—i've seen.
to some you may be a great leader. to others—well—you'rea lot less. so do us a favor—again, please! go away, disappear. take a long, silent restin a place unknown." ed dukas was desperate, grasping at straws.for a fleeting moment his hope almost convinced him that his mixture of begging and ridiculemight work. "do i know you? oh, yes, dukas!" granger mocked."we should converse again when we both have the time. you still need instruction, i see.you are an incorrigible lover of fantastic novelty, edward dukas! now you're frightened." "yes, i am frightened!" ed replied, calmlynow. "if you weren't a fool and a fanatic, you could guess that millions of androids—supermen,some call them—could not be weak."
"goodbye for the present, dukas." grangerbroke the connection. ed rubbed his face with his hands. he thoughtof the sinuous thing he had once seen, and of the killing that it—and other thingsnot necessarily of the same shape but of the same substance—had done. could granger beone of those who sought to stir up more dread and fury with lab-created monsters of vitaplasm?should he try first to find out who was using and directing them? it would be slow work. so, that same afternoon,he chose another path which might lead to quicker results. he went looking for old abelfreeman, who he guessed was of the sort to be a leader among his kind. by asking around,he located the house where freeman was said
to live. but the picturesque android had longsince vacated his lodgings. ed gathered les payten and barbara. "freeman will be in the hills somewhere,"barbara pointed out. "with others like him. what if, for a lark, we rent a helicopter,and see if we can find him? what can we lose?" "we're near the end of our rope," les said."i'm willing to try anything." it was a crazy stunt, but they agreed on it.ed had picked up some information about where freeman might be found, plus a few facts ofhis recent history. naturally, freeman had a bad reputation. arriving over the wooded mountain countrywhere freeman had often been seen in the past,
ed let his craft settle into various forestglades, one after another. at first they saw no one, although certainly many androids hadnow retreated into this wilderness. however, after they had made a dozen triesin as many places, freeman himself suddenly appeared, dirty, covered with burrs, but dressednow in coveralls of modern vintage. a midas touch pistol was in his belt. "hello!" he greeted. "yes, i know you threeyoung ones! are you lost?" "we're here for neighborly conversation,"ed began. "that's mighty nice," freeman mocked witha twinkle in his hard blue eyes. "could be you're here just to snoop. could be me andthe boys should do you in."
"could be we are here to snoop—to learna little better what's going on, that is," ed replied. "and we're also here in the hopeof finding somebody with good sense and wits and influence enough to keep this planet frombecoming another asteroid belt." abel freeman's glance held a certain sparkleof admiration when he glanced at ed; then it turned grim. "you couldn't mean me," he said. "figuredon going around, minding my own business, without being crowded. got crowded plenty,though, closer to the city. gettin' crowded here, too. had to smash up quite a few people.don't figure on taking it for good. lucky we were made cheap. couldn't stand it, otherwise.hiding in the brush. eating sticks. hardly
ever sleeping. lucky we can't catch pneumonia.we could stand conditions far worse than this—but it gets awful tiresome. seen granger lately?" "you can smell him most everywhere," ed answeredbitterly. there was a loud explosion a hundred yardsto the left. a midas touch blast. ed felt the shock-pressure of it and held his breathuntil the radiation-tainted vapors cooled and blew away. "that's nat, the hellcat of my boys," abelfreeman remarked casually. then he shouted, "nat—you damnfool—don't you know there'scompany?" then ed and his companions saw them—a beetle-browedfoursome peering from the brush. the freeman
boys. they looked like a quartet of neanderthals.but in a way they were less human than neanderthal men. for they were the crystallization, viascience and vitaplasm, of someone's romanticized and comic conception of the vigor of his ancestors. behind them now appeared a girl with palegolden skin and eyes whose slant suggested the beauty of a leopard. this would be freeman'sdaughter, the inestimable nancy. there was also a leathery crone, mother of the pack,and wife of abel. nat freeman fired the midas touch again. obviouslyhe wasn't trying for accuracy. in fact, he must have miscalculated some. for the windblew the radioactive vapors against les payten, standing a little to one side. he screamedonce, writhing in their hot clutch, and collapsed.
abel freeman, the android renegade, rushedunharmed through those vapors. only his clothes charred. "nat, you stop playin'!" he ordered."and as for you three young ones—you haven't got the sense you talk about! coming here?you're enemies. and you're weak as daisies! no, i don't figure i'd ever want to be yourkind, even without the raw deal i got! lots better to be a devil in the woods until wecan come out—if there's anything left to come out of, or to! now get out of here fast—beforemy family gets annoyed." abel freeman lifted les payten's hideouslyburned body into the helicopter and then held the door open for ed and barbara. "you bettertake care of this fellow right away," freeman said. "now get on your way!"
ed guided the craft toward the city, whereles would certainly spend several weeks in a lab tank before his injured flesh was backto normal. les kept muttering in semi-delirium, "damned robots. freeman, too. and damned,ornery people. got to pick between them, don't we? so maybe zero will cancel zero. can'tstay on the fence all the time. sorry, when the going gets rough, i'm for the people.peaceful common sense? there just isn't any." les's voice sounded like a dirge for two races. barbara said, "maybe he's right. there isn'tany sense left. only a picking of sides for battle. our efforts went to waste." she sounded remote, almost unfriendly. edsuddenly felt that he was losing her, too.
chapter iv that was a bad evening for ed dukas. he leftbarbara at her house, which was now guarded. but he did not get home easily. for that wasthe evening trouble became general. john jones of old-time flesh and blood, and george smithof vitaplasm forgot all their politeness and let their smoldering thoughts come to thesurface: "so now you brew up monsters like yourselves,to attack us. i wouldn't be like you if it was the last way to be alive." "oh, no, brother? those creatures must beyours. what makes you so good? born with your own hide, eh? the elite. with jelly for insides,and a mean nature."
talk swiftly led to flying fists. but whocould hurt an android with a human fist? before their hardened knuckles a human jaw couldbecome mush. still, there were heavier primitive weapons. then, by progression, weapons thatwere not so primitive. ed didn't try any more to quell the trouble.he watched it, walked around it and away from it. the wise and careful thinking that hehad been taught to believe in seemed to have deserted his kind. the stars were only a remotefancy, lost in the chaos of local emotion. feeling beaten, ed finally got home. this was the evening when he told himselfthat anything could happen at any moment—that morning might not even come. on the newscast,he heard the report that the first star ship—to
be aimed perhaps at proxima centauri or sirius—waswithin weeks of completion out there on its asteroid. there were infinite heights to thisera of his. and terrifying depths. this was the evening when, fearing that thespoken word could no longer be heard through the din of clashing hatreds, ed dukas decidedto write letters. he meant to begin with a letter to les andthen write to his father, whose eyes had turned backward toward archaic simplicities. he wantedto write to granger, asking again for calm. but he had only completed a few paragraphsto les when that kid nickname of his appeared on a blank sheet of his paper. from nowhere: "nipper."
only mitchell prell, unheard from for tenyears, had ever called him that. his uncle. a likable little man, tainted by accusations,but part of the once thrilling thoughts of the future. mitchell prell had belonged tothe onward surging and reaching of science—and its stumbling. the lunar blowup had come asa forerunner of the first leap to the stars. and the human-and-android animosity had resultedfrom the mastery of the forces of life. wonder becoming horror. white turning black. tillyou hardly knew what to believe in, except that, being alive, you had to go on tryingto make things right. for an hour ed dukas sat in his room. nothingmore appeared on the paper which he had clamped under his microscope. "nipper." that was all.silly name of his childhood. often he looked
around him, as though expecting someone toappear. several times he said softly, "uncle mitch, you must be here, someplace...." there was no answer. the muttering tumult in the streets—theshouts, the occasional rush of feet, the curses and yells—masked the arrival of tom granger.ed was startled from his preoccupation to find granger almost at his elbow. with himwas a man who looked like a plain-clothes police official. in the background, grim andfrightened, was ed's mother. "eddie," she said. "if you know anything,tell. mitch just isn't worth any more trouble to us."
"tell what?" ed demanded, rising. "about where mitchell prell is," granger toldhim. "you said things which hinted that he might be around." ed's throat tightened. it was still a minorshock to remember that the probe beam had probably been used on this house sporadicallyfor years. the refined radar of the probe beam could, if minutely focused, make fairpictures of distant things inside walls. but ed didn't think that it could make the smallprint on a sheet of letter paper readable. but there were instruments that could pickup faint sounds from miles away—a voice, for instance—and amplify them to audibility.ed was still sure that, over distance, his
mind itself remained inviolable. ed felt cornered by the brute forces thatalways take over whenever reason is broken down by fear. once his uncle had been a scapegoatto blame for disaster. then, poor memories and triumphant years had half forgiven him.but now, during trouble, he was guilty again. and according to savage concepts of justiceso were his relatives. the confusion of half blaming his uncle lefted and was replaced by stubborn loyalty. he summoned all his self-control and grinnedcarefully. he wondered if the fright in granger's large eyes reflected realization at last ofthe angry hands, gone completely untrustworthy, that now touched the controls of modern science.was he getting intelligent so late? or was
he afraid of something simpler? ed forced a laugh. "you picked up my muttering,granger," he accused. "i wonder what you mutter about, these days? grant me the same privilegeof nervousness under strain which you could do a lot to relieve, everywhere, as i havebeen begging you to see. no, i don't know where mitchell prell is, though i wish i did." the plain-clothes man had moved over to thetable. now he peered into the microscope. soon he motioned to granger to do likewise.ed felt the roots of his hair puckering. "what does 'nipper' signify to you, dukas?"granger asked at last, levelly. "suppose it's my pet name for you, granger?"ed answered. "your friend can take the paper
along. the police laboratories might makesomething else of it. maybe i doodle with a bum pen and absent-mindedly stick the doodleunder a microscope—and right away somebody wants to make a story of it. you want to psycheme? i've humored that kind of whim from the police before. this time, for cussedness,i'll stand on my rights and demand that they get a court order before they meddle withmy most private possession, my memory. especially since hotheads and hysterics seem to havetaken over. but wait, granger. i'm sure that sensible people are still in the majority.they haven't reacted very much, yet. but they will—with matters as bad as they are now.maybe they haven't any answers to our problems, except calm and the hope of working somethingout. but that's a lot. we were schooled to
cautious thinking, granger, and that meanssomething, even though you and plenty of others can lose their wits. maybe the sensible peoplewill finally shut you up!" "we'll take the paper along all right," theplain-clothes man said. "and you, too. we already have the court order you mention." "dukas," granger said with a show of greatpatience, "will you ever realize? we're facing a soulless horror. we must be harsh if needbe. but you should be glad to give your absolute co-operation. it's your duty. we have alwaysfelt that prell is alive, somewhere. twice he has been part of disaster, even if unintentionally.we must stop him before he can bring us greater, unknown dangers."
ed eyed this thin, wily man who had managedto assume a certain unofficial power in the world. and again ed had trouble judging him.perhaps he was entirely insincere. yet he had, too, the marks of the rabid crusaderfollowing obsolete themes that needed revision; following them blindly, with both a kind ofcourage and the crassest stupidity. "tell me something, granger," ed said. "i'mcurious. and i know i have a duty, however different from what you mean. did you havea hand in the creation of the monsters of vitaplasm? i mean the real monsters, not justthe androids, the phonies. the use of terror is old in war and politics. stirring up fury,with the blame carefully implied elsewhere." granger's features stiffened, as if he hadbeen insulted, or perhaps he was just acting.
"i would not dirty my hands with things fromhell, dukas!" he snapped. "unwise as you are, you must know that! now i think the policewant to take you away." ed's mother stood in the doorway of his roomwithout saying a word. she looked strong, yet bitter and scared. he knew that her loyaltywas with him, though her views differed somewhat from his. his father must have been out of the housewhen granger and the other man arrived, ed thought. did his going out on this chaoticevening mean anything special? wanting to be loyal, and at least half sure that thewish was returned, ed didn't care to complete the thought.
he was concerned about his mother, yet hesaid, "try not to worry, mom. go to bed. they'll have to guard the house. i can still insiston it. and i don't think i can be held very long, even now." "your father will come to you as soon as heknows, eddie," she said. so edward dukas was carted off to the localbastille. a helmet was put on his head. but what was learned from him about the whereaboutsof mitchell prell must have been both confusing and disappointing. certainly, though, it musthave intrigued the police, as did that single name on the paper, which told them nothingunder the most careful scrutiny. bronson, the portly local police chief, introduceded to a man named carter loman, a bullishly
handsome character with a mouth like a trap,a smile to match, and a gimlet scrutiny. a big wheel of some sort, ed assumed. was theresomething familiar about him? "you'll have to spend the night here, dukas,"loman rumbled. ed put out the light in his cell, but as hecrept into his cot, he held a bit of paper from his coat pocket in one hand. he lefthis fountain pen open, on top of his clothes. for maybe an hour he lay quietly in the dark,listening to the scattered noises of the troubled night. then he slept. he awoke as dawn grayed the east and glancedat once at the paper in his hand, which he had kept outside the blanket. ed's heart leaped.a message had been written. perhaps it had
taken all night to toil it out at a creepingpace: "nipper—argue police—you go port smitty—mars—at once." the final e of once was already written, exceptthat a line of it was still being extended. a little dot of wet ink was still laboringacross the paper. ed had no microscope or pocket lens, but herisked turning on the light. he peered hard. he was not at all sure that he saw anythingspecial. but imbedded in the dark liquid he thought for an instant that he beheld a suggestionof form—impossible or entirely fantastic. then the tiny minuscule of ink quivered, andthe hint was gone. ed whispered, so low that he himself couldnot hear, "uncle mitch. i know that you're
around—in some form. i wish i understoodwhat you're up to." ed tore the message from the sheet of paper,chewed it to a pulp, and spat it on the floor. at least he was destroying concrete evidencethat might provoke greater attention than his psyched memories. of course they wouldpsych him again—that was why they had held him, hoping that he would learn more. buthe had learned very little. the psyching was done. chief bronson and carterloman knew all that he knew. now ed offered his proposition: "suppose i got to mars, asmitchell prell suggests? i seem to be the only man to contact him. you are aware thati myself haven't more than a wild glimmer of where the trail leads. but you know thati'm badly worried about what a human-and-android
conflict can mean, and that i want to breakthe danger somehow. if you want to find prell, track me by the best means that you know." chief bronson nodded, musingly. "hmm-m—very good!" carter loman grunted."of course you would prefer to act alone, dukas, because you are fond of prell. youoffer to combine forces with us only because it is the only way that you can do what youwant to do at all. all right, we agree." "tickets and passport will be arranged forimmediately," bronson said. "and now there is someone here to see you." it was ed's father, angry with him but moreangry with the restraint under which his son
had been put. "damn it, eddie, i tried to get to you lastnight, and they sent me away!" he stormed. "and what have you been up to? what's thisnonsense about a message from prell? damn, has everything gone completely crazy? i wasfor this man granger and his return to rustic simplicities; but he's gone wild, too! isn'tthere any way to handle what's happening? phonies, and things from a witch's caldron,but grown to elephant size. and more of them all the time! where does it stop?... well,it helps a little that lots of people went out last night breaking up fights. even somephonies did that, they say; but should we believe it? scientists were on the run everywhere,as maybe they should be for inventing so much
new trouble. the schaeffer lab is barricaded.i'm glad for your sensible people, ed, but can they hold the peace for more than a littlewhile? and would it do any final good if they could?" jack dukas, the "memory man" of old-time flesh,was more like a dad to ed again, and ed was almost as glad for that as he was for theawakening of the forces of calm and order. "thanks, dad," ed said with a cryptic meaningof his own. "it's a small lessening of danger, anyway. it's a fact, though, that the situation,at the moment, is an explosive magazine which one well-placed idiot could set off. and it'shard to see how there could ever be less than many. say that our population is split threeways. android, human and that mixed group
which is trying to keep them from each other'sthroats. it's hard to see how the latter can succeed for very long." for a moment ed and jack dukas were almostclose, in spite of differences. ed was a little reassured. "i'm going out to mars, dad," he said. "withpolice co-operation. maybe to find my uncle. and—who knows?—maybe even to find someuseful answers." jack dukas shrugged. "more science, no doubt,"he said. "well, anyway, good luck." the brief spell of companionship was broken. for a moment ed was tense with the thoughtof precious time possibly wasted, chasing
off to the red planet, when perhaps he shouldbe trying to hunt down the perpetrators of offenses to a new biology—in vitaplasm.he knew that time remained still desperately short, with nuclear hell building up. buta choice had been made, and he sensed that it was the best one. ed and barbara went to see les payten thatmorning. he lay in a bed, his body encased in an armor of plastic, under which fluidscirculated. he had mended enough to listen and speak. ed partly explained his intentions.about them, les showed a mixture of a sick man's insight and weariness: "i hope we'llsee each other again, ed. and that the world will still be around. and that you won't bechanged too much—strong, weak, big or little.
because i've got things figured out for meat last, ed. granger is right, as far as i am concerned. i was a romantic kid, but nowi've had enough! the stars are still farther out of reach than we realize. got to fightthe murdering phonies and all of the vitaplasm menace, no matter what. because there neverwas a menace like it—not to me." les grinned wanly. "so long, pals." in a park, some hours later, barbara and edwalked in the beautiful dusk, while the arch of silvery murk that had been luna maskeda few of the first stars. something with long webbed wings was visible in silhouette againstit for an instant—another creature that never existed before. it added a chill totheir low mood. ed was thinking that he must
say goodbye to barbara, too, very soon, andto all the chaotic wonder and charm that was earth. earth maybe in its last days. barbara said, "i wish i were going along,eddie." "so do i. babs, go out to the asteroids. likemy mother. it's safer there." "i meant my wish, ed," barbara protested earnestly."of course, a girl is still sometimes rated as a nuisance that a man has to take extrapains to look after—no companion for one to concentrate on the dangers ahead. maybeit's true." he looked at her sharply and gulped hard.but gay little bells seemed to tinkle in his head. "maybe a lot of things," he commented."but i think you, as much as anybody, know
what we're up against. possible death, ofcourse, which could be permanent. or some fantastic loss or change of identity. howcan we guess just what? if you can take all that mystery and hardship, too—well, i won'tsay no. maybe if you were mrs. ed dukas we could have bronson provide your tickets tomars." her smile came out, like the sun. "you'reheartlessly matter-of-fact and unromantic, ed," she told him. he drew her into the shadow of a tree. a coupleof minutes later, when he released her, they both looked dazed—as though, crazy as lifewas, it still could be heaven. she was beautiful. he'd never seen anyone so beautiful.
fifteen hours later they were aboard the moondust. chapter v as the ship rose on its column of fire someof the old love of distance and enigma came back to ed. there was also a sense of adventurousescape, like that of city workers of centuries ago, when, chucking business and office routines,they had rushed to the country on weekends to regain a little of primitive nature whilethey scorched a steak over a smoky fire in the woods. on the moon dust there were more women andchildren than men: refugees from danger. but would old mars be much safer? didn't it nowbelong to the same human civilization, with
its dark undercurrents? the dukases were smoothly hurled across thevast trajectory to mars. they landed at a high south-temperate latitude, not far belowthe farthest extent limit of the polar cap; though now, in summer, it had dwindled toa mere cake of deep hoarfrost a few hundred miles across and on high ground. around thisremnant stretched a yellow plain made up of crusting mud, swiftly drying lakes scummedwith the martian equivalent of green algae, and white patches of ancient-sea salt andalkali. but port smitty itself was in a wide, shallowvalley, or "canal," a bit farther north. its many airdomes, necessary to maintain an atmospheredense enough and sufficiently oxygenated to
sustain human life, loomed among vast greenhousesand thickets of tattered, dry-leaved plants. the central dome was topped by a statue ofold porter smith, this region's first human inhabitant; he was still alive but long gonefrom the mars he had loved. for he had associated himself with the building of star ships. port smitty already boasted a population ofhalf a million. and there were other cities of almost equal size. on mars, many of thefirst rejuvenated had settled. and many colonists of every sort had come there since. on the rusty bluff overlooking the city werethe remains of a far older metropolis—towers, domes and strange nameless structures forwhich anything manlike could have no use.
fifty million years ago the martians, likethe people of the asteroid planet, had been wiped out in war. ed dukas and his bride rode by tube trainfrom the flame-blasted spaceport to the city. their hotel room overlooked a courtyard lushwith earthly palms and flowers. birds twittered and flitted from branch to poppy bloom. fromsomewhere in the hotel came dance music. their room was supposed to be energy-shielded,but ed remained cautious. he merely left his penpoint bared in his coat pocket, with theenvelope of an old letter. he had already told barbara all he knew about uncle mitch'smessage and had added some wild guesses. so now she gave her husband a smile of understandingas he hung his coat carefully on a chair.
then she came into his arms. later that evening, dancing, they coveredtheir wariness carefully. they might be under observation in any of a hundred differentways: by probe beams, hidden cameras, or by individuals, android or human, whom they didnot know. in spite of old loyalty, ed dukas was not entirely at ease with the thoughtof contacting mitchell prell. yet, he wished to avoid being trailed so that he could actalone and separate from the dictatorial and often panic-stricken opinions of others. on mars there had been considerable violence,too, though there had been no gliding, sinuous things that brought nocturnal terror. buthere, too, there was a mingling of android
and human being, with no visible marks todistinguish the one from the other, though to many the difference was as great as thatbetween man and werewolf. barbara seemed to grow sleepy in ed's armsas they danced. ed yawned slightly. so they drifted from the room and back to their ownquarters. ed pulled the old envelope from the pocketof the coat on the chair. as he had hoped, a message was traced waveringly on it: "goport karnak—then e.s.e. into desert." both ed and his wife knew that martian desertssurpassed all earthly conceptions of desolation. they looked at each other. the challenge wasstill in barbara's eyes. the fact that she could carry a pack was a matter that had beensettled long ago.
now ed risked speaking—in the lowest ofaudible whispers: "so, instead of going to bed, as people in our position should, westart traveling—fast." he felt the safety pouch under his belt. personalrecordings were in it: tiny cylinders, a pair for each of them. a precaution. in the vaultson earth there should still be others. but one could not always be sure of those. somehad disappeared. as memory of what he thought he had seen ina tiny ink drop still clutched rather frighteningly at ed dukas's brain. it was a hint of howmitchell prell wrote his messages—in an utterly simple and heroic way, but with fantastic,dream-shot implications. could it be part of android flexibility? well, probably hisfancy had tricked him, because things couldn't
be that odd. still.... often ed had felt bitter over the confusionscreated by the advance of science. but now enigmas led him on as thrillingly as ever.there had to be wonders ahead, for thinking of mitchell prell without thinking of newscience was impossible. "let's go, babs," he whispered. casually, like ordinary guests checking out,they put two light valises into the conveyer and dropped to the main floor by elevator.the rest of their stuff they left behind. they paid their bill and took an auto cabto the central tube station. in the washrooms they changed from leisure clothes to the roughgear used in the martian wilderness: light-weight
vacuum armor and oxygen helmets equipped withair purifiers and small radios—all fitted over light trousers and shirts. the remainingcontents of their discarded valises they transferred to rucksacks. in the station they mingled with farmers,miners and homesteaders. couples such as themselves were common on mars; they were going out tomake their fortunes. they bought their tickets to port karnak.ed and barbara looked around them. a half-dozen men among the waiting passengers wore no oxygenhelmets. true, this underground depot was pressurized, but the outer thinness and oxygen-povertyof the martian air had to be prepared for. the absence of helmets, then, almost had tobe the mark of the android. to keep its vital
processes going, the versatile vigor of vitaplasmmerely disintegrated a tiny bit of its atomic substance, to make up for the shortage ofchemical energy. ed and barbara boarded the train with thecrowd. much of this underground system of transportation had merely been converted tohuman beings' use from that which had remained from the ancient culture of mars. behind theprojectilelike coaches, close fitting in the tubes, air-pressure built up. accelerationwas swift. covering the thousand-mile distance to port karnak took twenty minutes. once arrived, ed bought the additional equipmentthey needed; then in a small restaurant they ate a last civilized meal. they took an autobus out along a glassed-in, pressurized causeway
and descended at the final stop, beside afew scattered greenhouses, the outermost of which provided the city with fresh, earthlyvegetables. here the desert was at hand, utterly frigidat night, under the splinters of stars. deimos, the farther moon, hung almost stationary inthe north. irregular in shape, it looked like a speck of broken chinaware, just big enoughto make its form discernible. probably it was a small asteroid which the gravity ofmars had captured. the dukases began to plod. the desert cameunder their boots, and the solidity of the ground gave way, gradually, to a difficultfluffiness, like that of dry flour. it was millions of square miles of dust the colorof rusted iron, which, in part, it was. dust,
ground to ultimate fineness by eons of thin,swift wind. under the dim light of the sky, colors dropped in tone to a monotonous graynessthat only faintly revealed the nearest dunes, and showed plumes of soil moving on the windlike ghosts. the dust made a constant, sleepy soughing against their helmets, like an invitationto death. barbara pressed ed's gloved hand, as if inreassurance, and he pressed hers in return. maybe they had eluded all pursuit or probe-beamtracking. certainly the blowing dust itself would be an effective screen against the mostrefined radar device. yet to vanish from the view of men could mean another kind of danger.it came to ed that even when mars had teemed with millions of its own inhabitants, perhapsno one had trod within a mile of where he
and his wife were now walking. the dukases marched on for an hour withoutsaying anything. but during a momentary rest barbara gripped ed's arm, thus establishinga firm sonic channel, so that they could talk without using their helmet radios, which mightbetray them. "i hope we're not too crazy, ed," she said."going out into a wilderness like this, on the basis of a couple of strange notes, andwith blind faith that somehow we'll be guided. i hope; i hope!" her tone was light and courageous, and hewas more than ever glad. "think of our muddled home world, and makethat a prayer," ed said. "we might be doing
something to help." so they kept up their march through the nightand into the weirdly beautiful dawn. the desert was rusty dun. the sky was deep, hard blue.the dunes were dust-plumed waves, in which a footprint was quickly lost. the rocks werewind-carven spires. earth was the bluish morning star. it looked very peaceful, denying theneed for haste. its ring was a nebulous blur. barbara and ed sucked water into their mouthsthrough the tubes which led back from their helmets to the large canteens in their rucksacks.they swallowed anti-fatigue and food tablets. for a moment they even removed their oxygenhelmets. there was no great harm in that; only the distention of blood vessels underswiftly lowered air pressure and an ache and
ringing of eardrums, and of course the stingingdryness of the martian cold against their cheeks. forty-eight degrees fahrenheit, belowzero, it was just then. "no more clowning," ed said as they replacedtheir helmets. "we might get dazed by oxygen starvation and forget what we're doing." they kept up their march, through the morning,past the almost warm martian noon, and on into the frosty chill that came long beforesunset. they were still plodding on when it was dawn once more. in spite of anti-fatiguecapsules, they were getting pretty groggy. in his breast pouch ed had his pen and theenvelope on which the latest message from mitchell prell had been inked. now, surely,there had been time enough. so he ventured
to disturb the writing materials. there weremore words on the envelope: "true on course—keep moving." so they continued to follow the pointer oftheir small gyrocompass, set to stab precisely toward east-southeast. ed no longer questionedan odd miracle. it was simply there, and he was grateful. an hour later barbara glimpsed flutteringmovement near by: a fleck of bright yellow. then it was gone behind a large chip of stone.then it appeared again. ed saw it, too, for an instant. it fluttered, it chirped plaintively.it was an impossibility in the wastelands of mars, or anywhere else on the red planet,outside of an air-conditioned cage. it was
a small, earthly bird. a canary. barbara stared at it. her blue eyes were bloodshotand scared. the tired droop of her cheeks deepened. "darling," she said rather lamely. "i thinkthat fatigue is about to get the better of us." "think again," ed said. "i guess you're right," she answered. "evenwithout vitaplasm, it's not much of a stunt to give a guided missile or a spy-robot theform of a little bird, with television eyes. and a midas touch weapon, or something equallyunpleasant, built into it. at the hotel in
port smitty, it was unrecognizable among theother caged canaries. here, though, it's unmistakably identified. which means that whoever is guidingit—the police looking for your uncle mitch or friends of granger's, or whoever else—don'tcare any more that we know what it is. we're helpless now—they think." a dull fury came to ed dukas. he might haveguessed that all chances of their eluding surveillance would have been countered carefully.this birdlike mechanism must have followed them all the way from port smitty, keepingjust out of sight. then a more hopeful idea hit him. but reasonconquered it. "no," he said aloud, gripping barbara's shoulder so that she could hear."if the pseudo-canary was uncle mitch's guide
for us, it would have revealed itself sooner,and the messages on paper would not have been necessary." in a flash ed drew his own midas touch andfired it at the place among the broken rocks where the canary had just vanished. at a littledistance there was the usual spurt of incandescence, fringed now with red dust. but from the projectingboulders near its base, a small yellow form spurted with a faint and musical twitter ofmockery. then a heavy voice spoke—one which neither ed nor barbara recognized just then: "better luck next time, robot lovers. leadon!" thereafter, the false canary was careful notto show itself. and ed was left with his frustrated
anger, and with other uncertain thoughts.what if the written messages had not come from mitchell prell at all, but from someoneelse with an unknown purpose? or, what if they were from uncle mitch, but had been preparedlong ago and left to be presented to him, ed dukas, by means of some mechanical agent?what if—well—many things. using his tiny portable radar unit to locatethe bird drew only a blank. perhaps the little mechanism with a radio speaker for a voicewas effectively shielded against such detection, even at short range. to attempt evasive action would be a wasteof time and waning energy. there was nothing to do but go on, see what developed, and trustto luck. there was the certainty that real
pursuit would come, but what shape it wouldtake remained unknown. as ed and barbara plodded on through the day,their minds became fuzzy with weariness. once, in a kind of retreat from present harsh facts,ed's thoughts touched a vivid daydream that he'd had before, of a planet of some star.he looked down at imaginary dry ground under imaginary feet and saw that each pebble underthe strange, brilliant sunshine had a little hole in it. and something shaped like a cross,with four rough, brownish-gray arms that could bend in any direction, scrabbled away, flatagainst the soil, its equipment glinting. the thickets all around were stranger thanthose of mars. yes, it was just a daydream, originating fromwithin himself, like an old, half-buried hope
of some distant exploration. he wondered ifit could ever still have any fulfillment, or if that even mattered any more? perhaps,for all he knew, his wife and he were now headed for an even stranger region. ed shook his head to clear it. he did notwant to disturb the envelope in his pouch too often. to expose the ink to the dried-outmartian air, while the writing was in progress at hour-hand speed, might spoil a vital message.but at last he chanced it. it seemed that the writer was not much troubled by the presenceof the bird-thing or what it might mean. barbara and ed read avidly: "base of cappedgranite rock before you. lab." barbara nodded toward a formation which loomeda half mile ahead in the freezing cold of
late afternoon. the slab, balanced crosswiseon a slender pinnacle, identified it beyond doubt, though there were other similar spiresaround it. it cast its shadow on the sunlit dunes. or was all of that dark, irregularpatch shadow? ed dukas and his bride had not enjoyed theluxury of natural sleep for a long time. but summoning their flagging strength, they hurriedforward. ed felt that at last he was approaching the solution of ten-year-old enigmas. the darker area at one side of the cappedrock was not all shadow. but the dukases had scant attention for the bluish masses of plushystuff that grew in this aridity. at another time it might have been fascinating, for itwas vegetation related to the android as moss
is related to a man. it was a growth of vitaplasm—anotherof mitchell prell's experiments. but ed and barbara had no chance to ponder this. they located an eighteen-inch cleft at therock's base. edging into it, they found an irregular stone pivoted on steel hinges. totheir touch, it closed behind them, and bolts clicked. from the outside now the outlineof the door would seem merely a pattern of natural cracks in the granite pinnacle. atomic battery lamps lighted the passage,and there were more heavy doors, some of them of steel, for ed and barbara to bolt behindthem. the place was like a small, secret fortress. at the bottom of a spiral stair, beyond asmall airlock, was mitchell prell's latest
and perhaps last workshop. he must have blasted it from the crust ofmars without help. it was a series of a half-dozen rooms and was no larger than a fair-sizedapartment. smallest of all was the combined sleeping room and kitchen; and there the evidenceof months or perhaps years of absence was plainest. the bunk was thick with dust, andfood remnants were blackened on unwashed plates. the air, of earthy density, smelled of decayand a strange pungence. the floors and walls were crusted with patches of the tough, bluishgrowths seen outside. it was suggestive at once of both fungus and moss but was reallylike neither. it had a pretty color under the lamps, which had certainly been burningfor a long time.
ed and barbara removed their oxygen helmetsand began a swift exploration of the premises. the rooms had all the marks of lone bacheloroccupancy by a man too fearfully busy with his own deep pursuits to waste time on morethan the barest attempts at housekeeping. apparatus was everywhere. there were evenrecognizable parts of a helicopter—the one, no doubt, which had brought prell and hisequipment to this refuge. at first they thought that he might sincehave fallen victim to some violence or accident. and then they found his body in a rectangular,plastic-covered tank, submerged in a cloudy, viscous fluid. it was a standard sort of vat,much used in laboratories in repairing extensive injury and restoring a destroyed body froma personal recording—either in protoplasm
or vitaplasm. near by, there were three similarvats, which, when opened, proved to contain only fluid. barbara and ed looked for a long moment atmitchell prell's forever young face. it was peaceful in death that was not quite death;for of the latter you could never be sure any longer, unless it was the death of thespecies. if there were guile behind that gentle face,it did not show. if there were darkness of purpose, or stubborn unwillingness to recognizeerrors that he had committed in a civilization that tottered as it reached for greatness,it could not be seen. but in this refuge, one fact was plain: mitchell prell had goneon with his work in a super-biology.
ed wandered over to a beautiful microscopeof a standard make. its attachments also started out from a familiar design. it was fittedwith dozens of special screws and levers. when ed, and then barbara, peered into itseye-piece, they found that each of these screws and levers could manipulate a tiny tool, almosttoo small to see with the naked eye. there were minute cutters, calipers and burnishingwheels. set up under the microscope there was even what seemed to be a tiny lathe. infact, there was an entire machine shop on an ultra-miniature scale. and there were tiny,tonglike grasping members, intended to serve—on such a reduced scheme of things—as hands,where the human hand, working directly, would have been hopelessly mountainous.
in addition to this equipment, there wereexact duplicates of the vats across the room and their attendant apparatus, except thateach entire assembly was less than a half-inch long. in one vat there was a human figuremuch smaller than a doll, yet perfect. barbara laughed nervously. even in this centuryof wonders, the human mind had its limitations for making swift adjustments. the laugh wasa denial of what her eyes beheld. ed dukas's wide face looked at once avid andhaggard. beside the tiny vats there was also another microscope, complete in every detail,yet of the same relative dimensions as the little figure in the vat. but this lessermicroscope was of the electron variety. it had to be. for at this reduced size lightwaves themselves were too coarse in texture
to be effective for close-range work. ed turned slowly toward his young wife, whoseeyes were alert and wonder-filled in spite of her weariness. he noticed the pleasantwave in her hair. he noted the charming curve of her brow, the tiny and pleasing irregularityof her nose. and what was all this attention but a clinging to an object of love when facinga strangeness so great that it scared him as he had never been scared before. ed dukasknew that his face must have gone gray. now his words came slowly and precisely: "babs,i've told you that i watched part of mitchell prell's first message being written. thatin the moving speck of wet ink, for an instant something looked like a man the size of amote! i thought i'd imagined it. but is that
what uncle mitch is now? an android so smallthat the only way for him to write a note to a person of usual dimensions is to surroundhis own body with a droplet of ink and to drag himself across the paper, making thelines and loops of script?" barbara looked at him obliquely, doubtinghis seriousness. "aw, now, eddie-boy, take it a little biteasy," she said. "please do." he didn't answer her. he let his unchangingexpression and many seconds of silence do the answering for him. his pulses drummedin his ears. at last he said, "no, darling, i mean it.there's no reason why an android no bigger than the smallest insects can't exist. andthe signs of what mitchell prell did in this
laboratory are plain enough. "working at first with the larger microscopeand the miniature tools and machinery under it, he duplicated a now common kind of biologicalapparatus in half-inch size. in its tank he caused to grow the simulacrum of himself thatyou can see. aside from the difference in dimensions, that much has been both possibleand fairly common practice for years. its brain having been stamped with all phasesof his memory and personality, it became him when it awoke. his own body he left inertand preserved in the large vat. but he was not finished. he had made just one step towardthe degree of smallness that he wanted to reach. so he started over from scratch, constructingfirst another microscope and then relatively
minute machinery and tools, fine beyond oursight. under that tiny electron microscope i'll bet there's another, smaller machineshop, and a smaller tank from which a mote-sized mitchell prell emerged. it must all have beenquite a job. it's not hard to see where those ten years went." barbara was silent for a long time. finally,she said, "it sounds reasonable—superficially. but still, is it possible? consider a brain.it can come in many sizes, from an ant's to a human being's. but all are made of moleculesof the same dimensions. and it has been pretty well determined that a brain must be alwaysabout as big as a human being's to be truly intelligent. trying to cram such intelligenceinto a smaller lump of gray matter—composed
of the familiar molecules—would be liketrying to weave fine cloth out of rope. how can you get around that, ed?" "maybe i can guess," he said. "with smallerunits. how about the electron, babs? far smaller than the molecule, certainly. and it's beenthe soul of the best calculators—thought machines—for a couple of centuries. thereisn't any doubt that a brain of microscopic size could function by far finer electronicpatterning. no, it probably wouldn't work in natural protoplasm. but we already knowthe flexibility of vitaplasm: easy to redesign, capable of drawing its energy even from anuclear source. well, you figure it out. what have we here but other android advantages?i think my uncle once told me that he meant
to go where no one could go exactly as a humanbeing." "all right, eddie," she conceded. "i guessi'm persuaded. proud girl, me. i've got a smart boyfriend. and your uncle—he skipsblithely from the bigness of the interstellar regions in his thoughts to the smallness ofdust! and he seems, actually, to have done the latter—in person! is that what we'resupposed to accept as truth? if so, he must have been with you all the time, or at leastfor quite a while. on earth, even. and he must have come out to mars with us. he wasright in your pocket, riding with the paper and pen. to write, he must have gunked himselfup good with the ink inside the pen point. ugh—what a thought! and maybe he's stillin your pocket right now. he—or a tremendously
shrunken equivalent of him. does all thisstack up right in your eyes, ed?" a pallor had crept through barbara's tan. "pretty much so," ed replied heavily. "so what do we do now, ed? try to follow youruncle's path—down?" ed's flesh tingled. to follow mitchell prelldown—a course more weirdly remote than traveling to the stars. he did not answer barbara. heunzipped his pocket. he could not tell whether a minute android emerged or not. there wereno further messages on the envelope. but from a sound cone in a shadowy cornerof this workshop, there suddenly came tones that a decade had not rubbed from his memory:
"nipper-hello! or is it always ed now? sowe've come to mars together. and you with barbara! well, maybe that is an agreeablecomplication! now we can talk. here i have the right amplifying apparatus. i need help,and you always seemed the best—and enough like me. i know your doubts about science,and i don't blame you. but i'm still the same—wanting to learn everything that i can, feeling thateverything should work out right." the stillness closed in again. ed and barbaralooked at each other. technology was full of tricks—the possibility of a thousandillusions. could he even trust a voice, made so like mitchell prell's used to be? and couldhe trust the mind behind it? even if it truly was his uncle's?
"work out right!" ed growled mockingly. "thatsounds almost pious! if you are what you say you are, you were on earth and have seen everything.you know then how right things have been! i was around when the moon blew—remember?and no scared hotheads caused that. but there are plenty of them now. and from here on mars,i've expected to see earth momentarily puff up into a little nova." there was a sigh from the sound cone. "soi'm to blame—at least partly—for helping to give those fools something to be furiouslyright or mistaken about," mitchell prell's voice replied. "well, i was what i was, andi am what i am, ed. i'm sorry about many things that happened. but i can't erase them. i'veurged you to come here to help me try to counteract
them. i don't think you'll stay angry withme, ed. come where i am—you and barbara. it can be done quite quickly now. i have twoforms prepared. they will take the lines and personalities of anyone. just set the dialsabove two of the unoccupied vats at one hundred—full energy. lower yourselves into the fluid. clothes,or lack of them, won't matter. your own bodies will sink into suspended animation." again the voice from the sound cone fadedout. ed's and barbara's eyes met in a tense congress of thought. they were being askedto leave their natural, physical selves behind and to become beings of vitaplasm. to many,that was horror in itself, even without a radical change in size. then there was thefear of loss of identity. to be an exact duplicate
in mind and memory might not necessarily meanto be the same person. here was a metaphysical problem elusive and hard to answer. what othersof experience might have told you could never quite satisfy you. you had to learn for yourself. beyond all that, there was that drop, downand down into tininess, to where physical laws themselves must seem warped by the relativityof size levels, and to where nothing remained quite the same. could one's mind even endurethe difference? for a moment ed felt cornered and panicky.but something eager and questioning came into him. for the first time he wished that barbarahad not come with him. finally he said, "i've got to go down, babs.there just isn't any other way."
"what's sauce for the gander is sauce forthe goose, ed," she said. "with us, that was settled a while ago." he didn't protest. she was resourceful. she'dbe a help, not a trouble. and he knew that love of adventure was as strong in her asin himself. so the decision was made. suddenly they heard a distant clink and hammering.metal against stone. the canary had followed them to mitchell prell's underground fortress.and of course the little mechanism had been merely a scout for some larger party fartherto the rear. again the words came from the sound cone,but in a whisper, "i was pretty sure you'd be followed, ed. but we should still haveconsiderable time. it'll be hard for them
to break into here—without destroying everything.and i think they'll want to see what i've got." ed dukas had never before considered his brillianttireless uncle in any way impractical. but now he was sensing a certain inadequacy andfelt that mitchell prell truly needed him. if it was mitchell prell, of course—if thevoice itself wasn't a trick. but now ed was at least more confident that he was not beingfooled. what doubt remained had to be part of many calculated risks. "all right, uncle mitch," he said. barbara smiled at him rather wanly, but hereyes held a glint. he kissed her.
"so here goes, eh, eddie?" she said. "be seein' yuh, sweetheart," he said, takingher in his arms. chapter vi stripped of their boots and vacuum armor,they set the controls and lowered themselves into the gelatinous contents of the tanks.a warm, tingling numbness flowed into them at contact with the viscous, energized fluid.weariness stabbed into their muscles. their knees buckled, and they sank deeper into thegelatin. "all okay, babs?" he asked. "okay, ed."
then their faces went under that surface.their minds numbed and were blotted out. they no longer needed to breathe. the journey downward into a smaller, or, ina sense, a vaster region, was made without their awareness, in a single step. there wasno need to pause at middle size, represented by the tiny but easily visible doll-like figurein the minute tank. mitchell prell's labors in two size levels need not be done again,for that work was finished. the direct path was prepared. there was a flow of impulses,like that of the old-time transmission of photographs over wires. gelatins already roughlyof human form responded, swirled and moved tediously, and took sharper shape, in a still-smallervat. and it was the same with the brains meant
to harbor mind, memory and personality. theyalso were repeated in a finer medium, and by a different principle than their originals—butnonetheless repeated. so, in slightly more than an hour, the essences of two human beingswere re-created in the dimensions of motes of dust. awareness returned gradually to ed. at firstit was like a blur of dreams, out of which came realization of a successful transformation,and of where he must be. panic followed, but briefly. he was struggling violently in athick, gluey substance. his entire body, even his face, was imbedded in it. he was certainthat he would smother—yet the impulse to breathe was subdued.
fighting the sticky stuff, he knew that hepossessed great strength—relatively. some of this was the android power in him. perhapsmore of it was the increased relative toughness of everything, in lesser size. an ant wasrelatively stronger than a man—a phenomenon of smaller dimensions. and here, even a gelatinousfluid seemed like heavy glue, its molecular chains long and tough. water itself, not lyingflat, but beading into dewdrops, would have seemed almost as sticky. ed dukas, or his tiny likeness, got clearof the vat and its contents, though much of the latter still clung to him. on all fourshe dragged it with him, leaving a trail of it in his wake on a rough, glassy surface.he kept spiraling around and around until
he rid himself of most of the gelatin. with avidness and wonder and dread, his mindscrambled through a moment of time to grasp the truths of his present state and to testthem. even the act of existing in the body he now inhabited was indescribably different.his mouth was almost dry inside. he still could draw air into his nostrils, but breathingbecame unnecessary before some source of energy that was probably nuclear. his hands and hisnude body still looked slender and brown to him. and he retained memories—of peoplehe knew, sights he had seen, and of things he had learned. here he seemed to remain himself.those memories were clear enough; but were they already losing a little importance, werethey too gigantic to be concerned about in
this place? that thought, again, was panic at work—asense of separation from all that he held familiar. for the ato lamp towering over himseemed as remote as the sun. the form of the less-than-miniature electron microscope seemeda metal-sheened tower. and in his mind there was even the certainty that his present formmust be of a wholly different design inside to meet different conditions. he knew thathe could feel the thump of a heavier heart, circulating relatively more viscous fluids. and something about his vision had changed.close by, everything was slightly blurred, as if he were far-sighted. farther off, objectsbecame hazed, as by countless drifting, speeding
dots that weren't opaque but that seemed—eachof them—to be surrounded by refractive rings that distorted the view of what lay beyondthem. and because there were so many tiny centers of distortion constantly in motion,vision at this middle-distance never quite cleared but remained ashimmer. were thosetranslucent specks perhaps the auras of air molecules themselves? at a greater distance, clarity came again.for there the haze which was not haze at all but which consisted merely of seeing too muchdetail—in too coarse a grain, as under too much magnification—was lost. light and dark,and familiar rich colors. and he saw the whole room around him almost as he used to see it,except for its limitless vastness.
for a little while ed wondered further abouthis new eyes. they were responsive to familiar wave lengths of light. those wave lengthswere not too coarse—at least when reflected from farther objects. for nearer things, hewas not at all sure that he could see even as well as he could by ordinary light. washis vision, in this segment, perhaps electronic, then? did he see, close at hand, fringed hintsof strange, beautiful hues? were these electronic colors? or were there infinitely finer naturalwave lengths, far above the known spectrum, which too-massive instruments had been unableto detect? this question was dropped quickly, becausethere was too much more. now he looked again, very briefly, out into the depths of air,full of drifting debris—jagged stones that
glinted, showing a crystalline structure,twisted masses like the roots of trees, though they had the sheen of floss. all of it wasdust of one kind or another. ed could even hear the clink and rattle as bits of it collided.everywhere there were murmurings of sound, which made a constant, elfin ringing neverheard in the world he knew. gingerly now he crept across the rough glasssurface, back toward the vat from which he had emerged and its companion. barbara washis first concern. there she was, in the second vat, imbedded in a bead of gelatin. alreadyshe was trying to fight free. he reached both arms into the stuff and tugged at her shouldersto help her. he lifted her out easily and helped scrape away the adhering gelatin, whilehe worried about how she might react to a
tremendous change. to counteract the shockof it, he kept up a running flow of talk, in a voice that even seemed a little as itused to be: "... we made it, babs. down to rock bottom,you might say. i don't think that any conscious human shape could be made much smaller. orany machine, for that matter. remember some old stories? little men lost in weed jungles,fighting spiders and things? strange, unheard-of adventure, in those days! maybe we can eventry it sometime. except that a spider, or even an aphid, wouldn't notice us. we're toosmall." a little pink nymph with a rather determinedjaw, she seemed only half to listen as she stared around with large eyes.
later, like two savages, they were clothingthemselves crudely in scraps of lint torn from what looked like a sleeping pallet. afiber was knotted across it in a way that reminded ed of the safety straps by whichpassengers of planes and space ships attached themselves to their seats during take-offsand landings. here, prell, the tiny android, must take his rare moments of rest. some ofthe lint was far finer than spiderweb, but it was still coarse to ed and his wife intheir present state, as they wound its strands around them. "you look beautiful, darling," he said. "you'rejust as you were." barbara smiled slightly. "even here i'm vainenough to respond to compliments, eddie,"
she answered. "where's prell?" her voice was a thin thread in the keeningmurmur of sounds. and it was worried. ed and barbara both craved the reassuring presenceof someone of experience here, where everything was changed—where minute gusts of air seemedbent on hurling you upward, so that you would float helplessly, like a mote. you stood upgingerly, meaning to try walking a step. but that mode of locomotion seemed not only unsafehere but impractical. you could be swept away, and in the vastness all around, how couldone mote find another again? too much of what you were used to was lost already. even thehabit of walking no longer functioned properly. the air was a buoyant, resisting substance,a prickling presence of individually palpable
molecular impacts, and there was little tractionfor one's feet. perhaps, then, here you swam in the air. ed spoke at last: "my uncle can't be far away.he'll come to us. it's been only a moment." barbara clung to him, afraid. "eddie, am ime anymore? can i even find old ways of talking, and old subjects to talk about? here? everythingseems too different. damn—i never could accept the idea of there being two of anyone!us up in those other tanks—giants asleep. and yet us here! maybe we're different already—shapedby other surroundings! and remember how little we are and how helpless. moving a couple ofinches would be like walking a mile. and we came here to see if we could find a way tostraighten out the giant affairs at home.
we're androids now, aren't we? a special kind.but we still have the capacity for the old emotions. damn it again, eddie, everythingaround us in this place is so strange. but it's beautiful, too." he patted her shoulder and said nothing. buther thoughts paralleled his own. suddenly there was a rumble, like distantthunder. in a more familiar size level, it would have been a clink and a thud, comingthrough many yards of granite. they both recognized it. ed even chuckled. "whoever or whatever was following the canarymachine," he said. "remember?" just then mitchell prell's simulacrum appeared,a comic, bearded figure wrapped in a few strands
of lint that suggested woven twigs. he swamout of the depths of atmosphere—the fall-guy of an era that had stumbled over its own achievements.and in several of those very achievements, he had taken refuge. he alighted near ed and barbara and wrungtheir hands cordially. then words spilled out of him excitedly: "ed. barbara. we'vegot to hurry. but first we should put our minds straight about one another. i know thatback home you were on the side of responsibility and good sense. well, so am i. there haven'tbeen many new quirks added to my viewpoint since you first knew me, eddie. i want knowledgeto blossom into all that it can give us. i think you do, too. now tell me how you feel."
mitchell prell could still inspire ed dukas.even here, at this opposite, smaller end of the cosmos, he imagined again his splendidtowers of the future. "there were moments when i felt pretty bitter,"he said, in not too friendly a fashion. "but in the main i'm with what you just said—allthe way. i put my life on it as a pledge." barbara nodded solemnly. "thanks," prell answered, the breath thathe'd drawn for speech sighing out of him. "i'm more grateful than i can tell. you twomay think that we're too tiny—that our size makes us powerless. i don't believe that'strue. i was on earth as i am, you know. i went there and back—undetected—on spaceliners. but while on earth i missed many opportunities
to act against danger. maybe i'd been heretoo long, down close to the basic components of matter, studying them. and i went to earthpoorly equipped in both materials and experience. well, i think you can see how it was. letit go for now. visitors are at our door. i suppose we've got to try to meet them in themanner that they deserve." "call the shots!" ed said impatiently. mitchell prell smiled rather wistfully. "themain part is done," he replied. "i set the small remote controls of the large vats forrevival of the bodies in them—our larger selves. that was why i was delayed in gettingto you here. they are colossi. they cannot hide. and they must be defended. i'm sorry,they are better able to defend themselves
than we are to defend them. at least theywill have a better chance alive than inert. revival takes a little time, but in a momentyou will see." ed did not quite know what to think aboutthis action on his uncle's part—whether to agree to it or to suspect that it was somehowa mistake. circumstances were too strange here, and he was too inexperienced. and thewhole situation itself was fraught with confusion for him. two selves, both named edward dukas?it was not a new circumstance in the ideas of the times. you knew that it could be. yetit remained a muddle of identities hard to straighten out. barbara clung to him again,her feelings doubtless similar to his own. "it's happening," she whispered.
and it was. from their perch on the scored,glassy surface under a miniature electron microscope, they looked out past the minutetanks and the attendant cables, crystals and apparatus that had given them special being,and across the shimmering void of air, they saw those other vats, glassy, too, and tallas mountains. it seemed then that the mountains opened,unfolded, grew taller, disgorged atlases that stepped dripping over a cliff wall. therewas no connection of mind now—these three giants were other people, for the link hadbeen broken in the past. there was no blending of consciousness. now there were vibrations almost too heavyin this miniature region to be called sounds.
they were more like earthquake shocks. buted realized that they were just the noises of normal human movement—the giants ed,barbara and mitch putting on their boots, the grind of their footsteps. meanwhile theyconversed, it seemed; but their voices were only a quiver, a rattle, with a hint of worriedinquiry. the giant mitchell prell seemed to make suggestions. the lesser prell must still have understoodwhat was being said. for now he gripped a roughly made microphone and talked into it.his words were amplified to a seismic temblor as they emerged from the sound cone on thefar wall; but to ed and barbara they were still directly audible from the speaker'sown lips. "you've come down to me successfully.
now we must see what will happen. ed, if itis only the police at our gates, perhaps it would be best simply to present yourselvesas citizens. you and barbara have rights. and you've fulfilled your pledge to them.they can't harm you. beyond this, i must apologize to you both. you have made a difficult journeyto what must seem to you a frustrating blank wall—without experiencing anything verynew. that is a defect of being duplicated. and there is no time now to blend into yourminds the memories of the descent into smallness. i'm sorry. mitchell sandhurst prell—yes,you, my overgrown former identity—show them what to do. but for heaven's sake, move thisworkshop of mine to a slightly less exposed place!"
because he was like his old self, the smallered dukas still thought as his original did. so, after all, there was that much contact.he understood the frustration that had just been mentioned, plus the confusion of nothaving seen the reality of another size level. this failure could even involve suspicionof his uncle's purposes. but there was loyalty and belief, too. from the basis of parallelminds, the lesser ed felt all these emotions personally. so he moved quickly, closer to the tiny microphone,bent on giving reassurance. he shouted into it; and of course his words came out soundingsomewhat mad: "ed, it's me! ed! honestly! and that was a real mitchell prell speaking.take care of yourself—and babs—because
you're me—or still part of me. and we bothlove barbara—in any form. hello, barbara, darling." there was no time to say any more, for nowthere began a steady, heavy vibration, growing gradually stronger. in a moment he guessedwhat it was. a huge, high-speed drill had been brought into play against granite. verysoon now these caverns would be invaded. and more was happening. there were more seismictemblors. a colossus moved nearer, bringing its shadow; its wet clothing seemed to bewoven of cables instead of thread. the face, briefly glimpsed, was a huge, pitted mask,bearded with a forest of dark and tangled trunks. a wind came with him, caused by hismotion. he was that other prell.
"hang on!" his tiny android likeness yelled. ed of the dust-grain region drew his barbaradown. they flattened together and clutched part of the intricate but roughly made apparatusattached to the vats from which they had emerged, just as the glassy floor under them tilted,and they were almost swept away by gusts of air. wires had been disconnected, and nowthe whole assembly—large microscope with the miniature machine shop, middle-sized tankand middle-sized doll figure under it, and the lesser electron microscope with its similarthough reduced equipment—was being carried and hoisted. it was set on a high shelf. and what musthave been a translucent jar was placed in
front of it to hide it casually. maybe therewas no time for anything else, for that rough vibration of the drill was becoming rapidlymore pronounced. "they ought to put on oxygen helmets!" barbarashouted in the quaking tumult. "these vaults will be unsealed! and they aren't built tolive in martian air!" maybe the three giants even heard her, throughthe mike and sound cone. but they would know, anyway. from the twilight of the jar's shadow, edcould still see into the immensity of the room. the colossi were donning their heavygear. the vibration had become a gigantic rattlewith creaking, crackling overtones, audible
only to micro-ears. ed felt almost shakenapart and dazed by it. any instant now the drill would break through into the room. buthe didn't anticipate much real trouble. it wasn't reasonable. he felt fairly sure thatit was the police who had followed his larger self here. they had their duty to give protection,not harm. their power might be warped by the fears and prejudices of the times, but notbeyond reason. he knew that there would be a jolt when thedrill came through. so he scrambled over to the pallet and pulled from it a long bit offloss, thicker to him than a rope. quickly he bent one end around his waist and knottedit, and fastened the middle of it around barbara. the far end he passed to his uncle.
"tie on!" he shouted. "so we don't get separated.and hold tight to anything solid!" the break-through came, and it was not toobad. it felt like a monster ram hitting the world one sharp, stinging blow; then the spinningmountain of the super-hardened drill bit—all of a yard across, it must have been—brakedquickly to stationary. there was no tumultuous outrush of air of earthly composition andpressure. the drill hole had evidently been capped. ed saw the colossi there in the room—theoriginals of himself, his wife and his uncle—grimly clad for mars. they had taken up positionsa little behind this obstacle or that, not ready to trust entirely but more or less sure.he knew how it was—particularly with his
other identity. there had to be this tensemoment before someone, known or unknown, spoke. they were armed. at the hip that was stillhis own in a way hung the midas touch pistol that he remembered, though it was expandedseemingly a million fold. the outcome was different from what he couldhave hoped or expected. there was no voice of challenge or greeting from behind the drill.you could not see beyond the dark space around its jagged rim. there was only perhaps a small,intuitive warning before the neutrons of another midas touch struck, and a few of the atomsof metal and flesh and stone exploded in a narrow, sweeping curve, making a flash inwhich all visible details became lost and a volume of sound and quaking in a confinedspace that, of itself, could have killed.
the little ed dukas could be proud of hisforerunner, for he was quick enough to have half drawn his own midas touch, just as theblaze of light came. it didn't do any good. the lesser ed's androidconsciousness was rugged enough not to be lost, even as he and his companions, tetheredlike beads on a string, were sucked upward into the swirling dust of the atmosphere.so he saw how the midas touch, discharged from behind the drill, cut slantingly, likea sword blade, across the room, its narrow beam slicing through the three giants almostsimultaneously. then, for a moment, coherence of impression was lost in swirl and glareand tumbling motion. but when the tumult quieted slightly and he floated on choppy air currents,he saw the crumpled, mountainous forms. mitchell
prell—colossal version—had been choppedin two at the waist. the heads and shoulders of the other two giants had ceased to be. to ed dukas's micro-cosmic nostrils, the smellof burned flesh remained unchanged. nor was his capacity for horror any different. itcame after that small, numb pause of doubt of what he had just seen. he heard the lesserprell and the lesser barbara shout from beside him. they had not been torn loose from thejoining strand—luckily. at first he thought that the attack had comefrom someone other than those who had trailed him. but then the drill point moved forward.from behind it stepped several men, wearing the trim vacuum armor of interworld security—usuallyhonorable in the past but now sometimes made
shaky and corrupt by the doubts within itsown ranks and among the people about what, within the realm of human effort, was goodor bad. the group had a leader. ed and his companionsdrifted idly in the air, near the man's shoulders, but his helmeted head still loomed in thesky of their present world. old personality hints were hard to translate from such magnitudes;but the cocky briskness and triumph showed. there were rumblings and quakings of speech.ed began to recognize repeated patterns in the rattle of it. centuries ago, the deafhad had a way to "hear"—by sense of touch. and by feeling the heavy vibration, ed knewthat he was "hearing" syllables too heavy for his present auditory organs to detectas such: "... prell's lab ... dukas led us...."
ed could still understand only scattered scraps;but the skill was coming—now, with his body, he felt the stinging discord which must havebeen a harsh laugh. now a gust of wind from a vast swinging armlifted the strand of floss and the three who were tied to it upward. beyond the view windowof the helmet, ed saw the tremendous face—rolling plains and hills, pitted with pores and hairfollicles, and scaled with skin, beneath which the individual living cells were easily visible,the latter mysteriously haloed around the edges with a faint luminosity. the mouth wasa long, rilled valley, crescented into a hard grin. the nose was a crag. the eyes were concavelakes set in rough country and islanded with iris and pupil.
"you know him, don't you, eddie?" barbarasaid. size did not hide the bullish quality or thegimlet stare. rather, it emphasized an ugliness of character. "of course," ed answered. "carter loman, whowas with chief bronson and who spoke to us before we left. an unidentified official withwhom we made the deal to come here. nice guy. feels that he can be the whole of the lawout here in the remote martian desert." again loman addressed his henchmen. ed wasgetting better at understanding the vibrating words: "we'll clear everything out for shipmentback home. i've got to study this equipment! but before we even open a door we'll sterilizeeverything with a four per cent neutron stream.
that'll kill even that damned vitaplasm! fascinating,devilish stuff! too bad, in a way, to erase it here—because i think i know what's stillaround, and i'd like to see. but we can't take the risk. a snake i might give a chance,but not a robot or robot-lover!" loman paused, then spoke again, turning hishead this way and that, directing his words toward the invisible: "prell, you're dead,but are you still somehow here? what can't happen in the crazy age you helped create?on earth we psyched your nephew. don't think i didn't guess what you were doing. now we'vetaken your carcass into the other room to psych your dead brain. in a few minutes we'llknow. there'll be ways to stop your kind of folly!"
as the great head continued to turn here andthere questioningly, the still-living mitchell prell shouted in derision: "here i am, crusader!" but there were no microphone and sound-conein action now, and loman did not hear him. maybe barbara's present eyes were too minuteto shed tears, but her face looked as though she were weeping. "loman is the worst kindof fanatic," she said. "sure that he's right, and blind about it. sadistic, energetic and,i suppose, clever." "i'll tell you more about him," mitchell prelloffered softly. "his face gives a faint glow—a fine radiation that only our eyes can see.radioactivity. it wouldn't be visible on earth, where oxygen gives even an android bodilyenergy. but on mars—or wherever else that
oxygen is in short supply—vitaplasm adaptsreadily to other energy sources. it would be silly for him to carry air purifiers inthat helmet he's wearing." ed dukas looked down at his own arms. yes,they glowed, too, though he'd hardly noticed it before in the light of the great ato lamps. "then loman is an android who hates androids!"barbara breathed. "well, i guess that hating one's own kind has happened often enough before.but an android in the interworld police? under physical examination, he could never hidewhat he is." "legally, they still have equal rights," edanswered. "that much i'm glad for. they couldn't be kept out of the force. but there couldbe other twists, not so unprejudiced. a thief
sent to catch a thief, would you say? somethingstrong, and full of self-hatred, sent out to match strength? tom granger, and thousandsof others, might think like that." ed dukas's anger broke through at last, slowand terrible. maybe he had been too startled before for exact meanings to register. theother barbara, whom he loved, had been murdered, her body mangled. it was the same with hisown other self, and his uncle's. those bodies had been the one available route back to allfamiliar things and out of this weird place of expanded forms, warped physical laws, keeningsounds and distances multiplied a millionfold. but now those bodies were gone. and even ifbeings invisible in smallness could escape death in neutron streams from midas touchpistols turned low, there would be little
left that they, in their tininess, could workwith. they would be stranded here in a microcosmos for as long as they could survive, helplessto move even a pebble. these thoughts were fringed with a homesicknessthat ed had never before known. he wondered if a little dust-grain android could go mad.it was carter loman's fault. no, the responsibility extended further than that! to tom granger,the rabble-rouser, and those like him, and those who listened. and to a renegade androidleader of mythical origin. yes, it was mitchell prell's fault, too, and his own for cominghere and bringing barbara. with his two companions, ed dukas floatedhigh in the air, supported by molecular impacts, near the helmeted head of an atlas calledcarter loman, and felt his fury and the helpless
contrast of dimensions. this giant, aidedby his henchmen, had all of the advantage, while ed and his wife and uncle could be blownaway merely by the wind of that monster hand in motion. loman was throwing words at mitchell prellagain, his voice coming easily through the thin face plate of his helmet. it was nota true sound to micro-ears. rather, it was a heavy quiver in the air, felt with one'sentire body. "prell, i'm sure you haven't stopped existing. don't think that i can'tunderstand how. and you did things to me. there was your moonblast, but that wasn'tthe worst. everything you stand for must be stamped out. even if we all go with it."
maybe it was then that ed's thoughts becamecrystalized. his anger was turned cold and clear, as if by need. although ed was of vitaplasmhimself, he felt no loyalty to kind. in fact, he was still far from reconciled to the condition.but an enemy of reason was an enemy to all men of whatever sort. his wits were sharpened. suddenly a realizationof the power in smallness came to him—combined with the hardiness and flexibility of fleshthat made even such dimensions and powers possible. android powers. "i guess everybody must have a breaking pointof fear and exasperation," he said softly. "we were born to it. to be crowded from theearth can seem a terrible idea. but maybe
even that is as it should be, and good. ican't agree that pushing everything into extinction in an open fight can be any better. we'vegained too much. there is too much wonder ahead. and maybe, small as we are, we canquiet the leaders. under the right conditions, i think we could handle these giants—evenkill them if necessary. quieting loman and granger might help a little." "i know," mitchell prell answered. "i thoughtof it myself. perhaps i didn't have the nerve to carry the idea through. maybe that waswhy i wanted you to come to me on mars—where i had the apparatus to change you. microbesare smaller than we are, yet they used to kill men."
ed dukas saw his wife wince. but this couldn'tmake any difference now. "ed and barbara, i'm sorry for all i've gottenyou into," prell added. "don't be," ed told him. "who can regret achance to try to do some good in what seemed a hopeless conflict? now, first, let's getout of here, if we still can or ever could." ed felt some of the command switching to himself—strange,because his uncle knew far more about these regions than he did. but mitchell prell wasmade more for study than for physical action. and he was somewhat fuddled by the effectsof the miracles he had helped produce. chapter vii the colossi were piling mitchell prell's movableequipment into a corner, where midas touch
pistols, turned low, could play neutron streamsagainst it. then they would no doubt scour walls, floors and ceilings with the same corpuscularbeams. the air itself would heat up considerably. combustible floating dust, would burn to finerdust. drafts would seem blasting hurricanes. "there's a way out—if we hurry," mitchellprell said. "imitate my movements." and so they swam in the atmosphere. but withoutother aid it would have been slow going indeed. but the motion of dust particles revealedthe direction of air currents that could be gotten into and used to cover distance. still, progress back to the shelf and themicroscopes, and the tiny workshop from which they had been blown but a few minutes before,was agonizingly slow. by luck and scanty concealment
offered by the jar, this paraphernalia hadnot yet been discovered or moved by loman and his men. ed and his companions came to rest at laston the rough glass surface where little machines were arranged around the vats and their apparatus. "tools that we can use," ed said. "and materialsthat we can work. we've got to try to take some things along. to make weapons. couldwe contrive midas touch pistols that we could hold?" "maybe," prell answered. "i hope so. takethis, and that—and that over there. hurry." creatures of vitaplasm, with its complex combinationsof silicon compounds paralleling the hydrocarbons,
and its internal metabolism that could eveninvolve transmutation and subatomic energy release, still could die under sufficientlyviolent conditions. the three tiny androids scrambled to gathersupplies and to equip themselves. ed was awkward in the new conditions, where even the atmospheretried to tear him away from any firm foothold. but he loaded himself down. before they were finished gathering all thatthey could use, the rattle and flare of midas touch weapons, turned low so as not to damagemitchell prell's various apparatus, but strong enough to destroy any clinging speck of syntheticlife that carter loman might suspect the presence of, began behind them. prell's experimentalplant life withered slowly.
"lead on!" ed dukas shouted. and so, though hurricanes had begun for them,they crept across the glazed surface beneath the barrel of the little electron microscopeand dropped into the air at its edge. it was like leaping from a cliff. but it was different,too. for if they had not been so heavily burdened, they might not even have fallen. being suchsmall objects, they had a greater exposed surface than large objects, in proportionto their bulk. this greater surface, like a sail presented to the wind, offered a largerarea for speeding molecules to hit; hence, without the equipment, they would have beenas buoyant as dust particles. still lashed together by their joining strandof floss, the three fugitives drifted slowly
down to the rear of the shelf. "an inch more to go," prell shouted, in grimhumor. "a rather long one, i'm afraid." again they crept. rough stone of the cupboardlikecompartment rose around them, seemingly taller than buildings they had known. and it glowedreddish-violet. fluorescence, it must be, from the scattered radiations of the midastouch weapons. tediously the three crawled toward escape, as if through a night of fireand violence. finally they reached a minute steel door in the corner of the cupboard,half hidden in the roughness of the stone. they closed the door behind them and refastenedits crude bolt. the space around them now was narrower—more in proportion to theirown size. and there was a glow here—at least
to their final eyesight. perhaps there wasa trace of radioactive ore in the rock causing the glow. the walls were as rough as a cave's. "just a chink in the stone," barbara commented. "yes," prell replied. "a crevice leading outto the face of the rock formation. feel the draft of martian night air? it would smotherand freeze you if you were as you were born. but our flesh not only resists cold, it cancreate plenty of warmth within itself. we will be perfectly comfortable here, and safe—ithink. do you want to rest?" "no," barbara told him. "we don't really needthat, either, do we? so let's begin what must be done. what are our plans, ed?"
"we'll make a few things, if we can," ed replied."then get to a spaceport somehow. i suppose that if we pick the right wind at the righttime, it will blow us there—eh, uncle mitch? then we'll do as you did—drift into a spaceliner and get a free ride back home to earth. there—well, we'll see. if we're very, verylucky, we might even get our old selves back." just then that recovery seemed to be his greatest,most desperate yearning, with many, many obstacles in its way. even their personal recordingswere in enemy hands now. small though those cylinders were, they were far too huge forthem to move or to think of recapturing. "where can we start to work?" ed said to hisuncle. "farther along the cleft," prell told him."i've already cached some supplies there.
and there's a level space in a side cleftprotected from these constant air currents." now they leaped upward and let the draft carrythem. the muted quivers of destruction in the chambers from which they had just escaped,they left behind them. they arrived in the work area and got busy at once. near dawn they felt the quiverings of unusualsounds. so they followed air currents, betrayed by drifting particles of fluorescent dust,to a crack that showed starshot sky and the undulating desert. thus they saw carter loman'scaravan start back toward port karnak, with its booty of all that mitchell prell had madehere: the fruit of a man's mind. but to loman it was also the worst of the world's inventions.loman was an android and also, obviously,
a central figure, a personage of some importance,or he would not have been sent on this mission. but his mind remained that of a bigot. just then ed dukas found a savage pleasurein shaking one of the smallest fists ever to exist at the three retreating tractor vehicles."loman, granger and the rest of you," he said, "there'll come a time. you've been fools.you were born too late." the work went on for days—more tediouslythan ed could have imagined, even with only hand tools to use. the same old metals seemedunbelievably hard at this size level—and coarse in texture—as if the atoms themselveshad expanded. barbara could scrub and scrub with a bit of abrasive mineral, achievingonly what seemed a poor excuse for a polish.
hammering did little good in shaping suchmetals, though ed dukas and mitchell prell were relatively so much stronger than theyhad been. only cutting and pressure tools were effective, when aided by the softeningheat of a forge—a tiny speck of nuclear incandescence maintained by a neutron streamand carefully screened, though vitaplasm, being actively or latently radioactive itself,was far less endangered by radiation than protoplasm. but at last they produced three rough, cylindricaldevices and their fittings. ed dukas began to adjust to littleness. butto see boulders with their stratified layers of mica floating lazily through the thin airnever lost its wonder. crazy beauty was all
around: strange, rich colors; keening musicalnotes—fine overtones of normal sounds. sometimes, in the daylight, near cracks open to the outdoors,you saw living things seldom bigger than yourself: martian life; little pincushions of deep,translucent purple veined with red and pronged with cilia of an indescribably warm hue. thesewere martian microorganisms blown in by the breeze. and once there was something else that edand barbara both saw: something like the smallest of earthly insects, but not that, either.a thing of steel-blue filaments and great eyes, and vibrating vanes as glossy as transparentplastic. ed knew that he could shatter it with his hands. it rested in the sunshinefor a moment; then it was gone.
"i suppose that there are star worlds as oddas this," barbara commented. she was strange herself—an elfin being thatfloated in the air, her form dimly aglow whenever there was shadow or darkness. to ed, she waspart of his vast separation from earth. in accustoming himself to an environment whereeven the simple act of walking was a memory, it seemed that earth dimmed away, easily yetfrighteningly, like a dream, until ed knew that, degree by degree, his mind was becomingdifferent than it had been, and he not quite the same person. and it seemed more so withbabs. "bacon and eggs for breakfast, eddie," sheteased once, lightly. "walks under old trees beside a river. the youth center. teachersi used to know. yes, i remember. but the memory
tries to get dim. and i want to hold on. gotto, because there are things to be done. but sometimes i wonder if i shouldn't regret theduty. i think of swimming in raindrops or floating high over trees—being as whimsicalas children and poets can imagine. we could do it! it's part of being super, isn't it?and i used to be scared of becoming an android!" it was fun, and relief from grimness, to hearher talk like that. and now, too, he half agreed that being of synthetic substance wasnot so bad. yet part of him still ached savagely for his old dimensions. and here in smallnesshe sometimes felt that she was changing so much that he was losing her—that she wouldlet herself be blown away into the vastness, never to be seen again.
they ate a food-jelly, which prell had preparedlong ago for his sojourn here, and radioactive silicates. in it you could see the threadymolecular chains and the beads of moisture between. viscosity complicated etiquette.everything tried to stick to you. you laughed and shook it off as best you could. but even in fantastic moments grim facts didn'ttruly fade. hard work helped sustain them. murder and loss were too new. the danger onearth was still too plain—perhaps poised on hours or weeks of time. speed was the keynote. only once the three micro-beings peeped backinto the lab that had belonged to mitchell prell, colossus. it was empty now, glowingwith the taint of radiation left by the midas
touch pistols. no one had troubled to neutralizeit, as had surely been done with the removed equipment. mitchell prell had built a radio, like onehe had owned before. a flake of quartz dust, a few rough strands of metal, an insignificantpower supply. simple, compact. certain crystals were sensitive to radio waves. and at thesetremendously reduced dimensions, they could convert tiny induced electric currents almostdirectly into fine sound waves that infinitely refined ears could hear. so ed dukas heard the interplanetary newscastagain: "... android groups are still massing in large numbers to seek safety among theirown kind and perhaps to carry out their own
plans. there is a superficial calm. fear ofconsequences so far seems to have kept both sides in check. we hope that it can hold." later there was a broadcast from port smitty:"... this information was withheld but has now been released. the mystery of mitchellprell's disappearance is believed solved after ten years. what is claimed to be his body—muchdamaged, since he and his confederates, one of whom is supposed to be a close relative,resisted capture and had to be shot down—was brought in to port smitty and is now en routeto earth, along with some mysterious equipment. the man who tracked prell down is carter loman,a scientist in his own right, who has had a brief but brilliant career in interworldsecurity. detailed information is under seal,
but prell, a known advocate of 'improved mankind,'has been wanted for questioning and possible indictment for a long time. it has been suggestedthat his researches had gone further than most would dare to imagine." mitchell prell, micro-being, chuckled. "thefunny part," he remarked, "is that i never became a full-size android myself. my oldcarcass seemed good enough. or i didn't get around to a change." but ed didn't smile at this. and he lookedsavage when one of tom granger's speeches was rebroadcast: "prell ended? can we believeit? there is an evil that could restore him in known ways. now are there unknowns, too?haven't we had enough? some things from drunken
visions are destroyed, but others come, tomake our nights hideous. a creature with a fifty-foot wingspread swoops down on a house,and people die. are androids any different from what they create? but we are fortified,armed. if we must, we'll fight to the last." no doubt there was truth behind the melodramaticoratory—at least as far as the horror was concerned. barbara smiled sadly. "he's earnest, i think," she offered. "sothere's that much glory and courage in him, if there isn't any control. and you keep wondering,is he half right?" "i know," ed answered with some contrition."but i'd rather have what he considers a scientific hell than nothing. well, we'll soon be enroute back to earth—unseen. then maybe we'll
find out and accomplish something. lack ofsense, like granger's, or the muddled way in which laws are often interpreted now, willnever work. that's one fact i'm sure of, even in a booby-trapped situation." ed was trying to be optimistic. in three weeksthey had made equipment that they thought they could use. the three cylinders were midastouch pistols—neutron blast guns that could explode a few of the atoms of any solid orliquid that their beams touched. they also had a dozen grenades of the same principleand tubes to carry scant rations. there was a radio for each of the three—for reception,but also limitedly useful as transmitters. and there were knapsacks and clothing madefrom linten fiber pounded and divided as prell
had never bothered to do. "we'll catch the first earth-bound ship thatwe can," prell said. "queer, isn't it? if we could truly walk, going a mile would seemimpossible. but the prevailing winds and a little jockeying will get us to port karnak.the tube train will take us to the space ships." prell had spoken too soon. within that samehour, listening to the newscast, they learned: "for security reasons, interplanetary traffichas been indefinitely suspended." ed dukas winced as if in pain. he and barbaraand prell looked at one another. in ed's strange, small body, frustration and bitter anger fairlyhummed. "security reasons." that could be a blanketexcuse—minus explanations—for almost anything.
loman, knowing of something inimical and microscopic,and guessing at an intended journey from mars, could well have had a hand in the suspensionorder. he was wary, and not sure that he had destroyed his hidden enemies. the three stared down at the equipment thatthey had toiled so hard to produce. but ed, like many another man before him who had beencornered, couldn't have quit even if he had willed it. stubborn spunk, fear, need to regainlosses, self-preservation and the awareness of the danger of millions of well-intentionedindividuals, both android and human, all took part in the reason. and you could add theancient and primal lust for revenge. ed crouched with the others on the rough floorof their chink in the rock. "wait," he said
at last. "haven't small objects crossed spacenaturally—at least in hypothesis? yes! spores—living dust, their vital functions suspended. theold arrhenius theory of the propagation of life from world to world and solar systemto solar system—throughout the universe. a spore, drifting high in an atmosphere, achievesescape velocity through molecular impacts and perhaps the pressure of solar light. it'sdriven into space, and onward. uncle mitch, couldn't the same thing happen to us far morereadily, since we're not inert and we have minds to help direct our movements? sincewe have beams of massive neutrons from the midas touch weapons? and aren't we more ruggedthan the first androids? wouldn't we have a middling chance to endure raw space itself?"
mitchell prell eyed him quietly. perhaps evenhis android cheeks blanched a trifle. "something like that occurred to me once—a long timeago, ed," he remarked at last, his voice very calm. "i didn't think it through. i guessit seemed just too out of the ordinary even for me. and there wasn't any need to try it.perhaps i was scared." "there's need now," ed said. barbara's expression was a study of eagernessand half fear. "eddie, have you maybe discovered something?" she exclaimed. "uncle mitch, ifthere is any chance that it would work, i'm game to try it!" after a moment the scientist nodded. "i believethat there's a good chance it will work,"
he said. before the next sunup they were ready. clothedin garments of linten fiber, they looked like savages from fifty thousand years before.yet their present condition could have belonged to no primitive era. they were united by atough line of twisted strands, and their equipment was lashed to their backs. to human eyes theywould have been as invisible as spirits. were they to demonstrate, even unintentionally,android superiority in yet another field? maybe, maybe not. from the outlet of the crevice in the rock,they flung themselves into the atmosphere above the gray desert. their great advantageat this stage was that, at the martian dawn
fringe, there were many updrafts, for theair, chilled fearfully at night, was already warming. at once they were sucked upward,as if by a vertical wind. still, the first phase of their climb took many hours. theykept watching for upward-moving motes to guide them. short, rocketlike bursts of heavy neutronsfrom their midas touch cylinders provided the reaction or kick to get them into theswiftest vertical currents. mars dropped far below, a dun plain markedhere and there by the straight, artificial valleys or "canals." the relative vastnessof a world to beings of pinpoint dimensions was nullified by the distance of altitude,until it looked no more extensive than it would have to the eyes that used to be theirs.mars developed a visible curvature and a rim
of haze, fired to redness by the rising sun.the sky above darkened from hard, deep blue toward the blackness of space, and the starssharpened. the sun blazed whitely, and the frosty wings of its corona began to show.the thinning atmosphere seemed to develop a definite surface far beneath the three voyagers. they had spoken little in their ascent; butnow the free movement of sound was smothered by the increasing vacuum, and there were onlygestures and lip movements to convey meanings. but there was not much that really neededto be said. the plan remained simple: get into trains of upward-jetting molecules, markedby small blurs or warpings of light. absorb some of that upward surge into yourselves.how often had this same thing happened, without
conscious design? molecules move fast in ahigh vacuum. molecular velocity was heat, wasn't it? but here it could not burn. forheat is chained to matter, and here there was just not enough matter to be hot. ed thought that they must be getting closeto the martian velocity of escape now. only three-point-two miles per second. they mighthave attained it more simply by making greater use of their midas touch cylinders. therewas scarcely any reactive thrust more efficient than that of neutrons hurled at almost thespeed of light. but there was a pride in accomplishing it in a more difficult way. besides, the energysupply for the weapons must be conserved. but now prell signaled with his hand, andthey began to use the cylinders in earnest,
shifting their course little by little fromthe vertical and in the direction of the sun. for it was time to curve inward—earthward.swiftly now, there was no molecular distortion around them at all. sense of motion fadedout. their high velocity was demonstrated only by the rapid shrinking of mars behindthem; unless, from sunward there came a minute, resisting thrust. light pressure? but it wouldtake a longer time in space than they meant to be to slow them down at all. "we've done this much!" ed said with his lips,but without a voice. barbara nodded and tried to smile, and hereached out and pressed her hand. prell looked awed and bemused.
ed tried then to read part of their fortunesin the reactions of his strange, minute body to the rigors of space. it was an atomic mechanismmore than it was a chemical one. therefore, it needed no breath. and the strong, radiantenergy of the sun warmed it a little, so he did not feel cold. hard ultraviolet lightseemed not to harm it. there was only a sensation as of the shrinking of its hide—perhapsan adaptive reaction of its demoniac vitality—to protect the trace of moisture within it againstthe dryness of space. the fluid within vitaplasm could be alcohol or liquid air—it was thatadaptable. prell had said this recently. such fluids did not freeze easily. but they evaporated.so water remained the best body fluid in dry space. for in the full light of the sun, andwith a nuclear metabolism, freezing was not
a great danger. several days out from mars the three contacteda small meteor swarm—maybe a fragment of a comet moving sunward and earthward. theymoved with the swarm and landed on a chunk of whitish rock perhaps eight inches throughat its largest diameter. but to them it was an airless world into which they could burrow,blocking the entrance to their shelter with chalky dust—a fortunate thing, for in theopen the sun's glare and aridity of space were drying out even their android tissuesand blurring their minds. the meteor proved not quite lifeless, foron it clear crystalline needles crumbled and rose again. call it silicon biology, provingthat one could never know where something
might thrive. in a fall into any atmosphere,such growth would surely be burned away without a trace. ed and barbara and prell learned to understandsilent speech by watching lip movements. the need for hurry still beat in their minds,but drowsiness crept over them—perhaps another androidal adaptability was functioning here,related to the hibernation of animals in winter. it lessened loss of vitality when conditionswere not too favorable. but you could resist its compulsions if you applied your will. the meteor moved on swiftly in the generaldirection of earth. the journey would take weeks, and though ed felt that never had therebeen a crossing of distance as eerily strange
as this one, still the passage of time, andthe events it held, was always with him and his companions. there was a way for them still to experiencereal sounds, even here. the quartz-flake radio sets, pressed tight to their ears, transmittedvibrations through their own substance, when there was no air. they heard fragments ofbroadcasts coming from earth. pictures of what was happening there came to mind: a score of monsters destroyed by hunting parties.a side issue, really. for in guard post and sketchily fortified line, man faced the hardierlikeness that his knowledge had produced. when there were no clearly defined geographicalboundaries to separate the poised forces,
you never knew just where those lines wouldbe. but the scared, the pleading, the exhortingvoices, faint in the distance, gave the mood, if not the clear view. tom granger was there,and others like him. the latest claim was that vitaplasm gave off poisonous radioactiveradiations—not very true on earth, where its vital energy remained mainly chemical. those with sense also tried to be heard. andthere were other voices calling for the retreat to simplicity and the doing of work by hand.such a pastoral of white clouds, green hills and sunshine could have its appeal. but howcould its philosophy and inefficiency feed billions? even if it were not just a brightvision seen before the last battle?
and in the midst of all this babble, therewas another voice that was faint thunder: "... got things of our own now, here in thewoods! even our own newscast station. damn, we've taken enough! we phonies won't go backno further! time to be stubborn—even if we all die for it and never come back! theysay folks would like to hang me—which shows how much wits they've got! even if they gotthe chance, it wouldn't work!" with a faint smile, barbara's lips formedthe name for her companions to read: "abel freeman...." ed nodded, watching his uncle's quizzicalinterest over an individual and a legend that he had only heard them tell about. and edhad his own reactions, compounded of admiration,
humor and icy mistrust that came close tohatred. whatever else he was, abel freeman was also a figure of power. barbara's pixyish mouth—she was more thanever a pixy—shaped other words as they crouched at the entrance of a tiny cave that they hadexcavated into their meteor. outside, the sunshine blazed. "i've almost said it before, ed," she remarked."all these things happening on earth are still important to me—never fear. but i'm a littletoo different now to quite belong to it. it gets like a dream—kind of remote." ed had been feeling this himself—almostwith panic, because he was enough the person
he had been to ache inside with the importanceand tension of what happened at home. yet somehow part of him was drifting away on itsown special course. "hold on, babs, a little longer," he urged. they fell into torpid sleep after they haddevised a mechanism to arouse them with an electric shock at an appointed time. it conservedtheir strength and allowed them to pass the long interval quickly. ed dukas's slumber was not altogether dreamless.like shadows, people moved in his mind. his parents. his old friend les payten, who perhapshad shown the white feather and had been lost to a small viewpoint. schaeffer, one of thegreatest scientists, barricaded in his underground
lab in the city. and harwell, the efficientbut daring adventurer—another legend of his boyhood, who sometime was supposed tocommand the first star ship. and perhaps most of all, there was that fantastic android bigot,carter loman, who aroused his black fury. perhaps ed slept lighter than the others andawoke more quickly to the tingling prickle of electricity, because he had to run theshow. the major burden of responsibility was his. he shook his wife and his uncle awake andpointed to the blue-green bead that was the earth, still several million miles away. lashingtheir equipment to their shoulders and tying onto one another's waists like alpine climbers,they leapt back into space one more, pushed
by the neutron thrust of their midas touchcylinders. they had to make the rest of their trip apart from their meteor, which wouldnot pass any nearer to earth. when the home planet was expanded by nearnessto a great, mottled, fuzzy bubble, ed tugged at the line for attention and spoke withoutsound in the stinging silence: "we've talked everything over before," he said. "so we knowgenerally what to do—though only generally. we'd like to stick together. but there isjust no way to do that and work fast—which may be a vital point. so we'll soon have toscatter. but we'll listen on our receivers. at least one of us should be able to finda way to communicate back. failing that, we still know where to meet. remember—the oakby my old house. the valley made by the trunk
and the lowest branch." prell's brows knitted, his mind probably steepedin the swift, strange action to come. barbara gave a soundless laugh. "the crotch of an oak!" her lips commented."what a trysting place! but it seems natural enough. are we mad, or were we once just dull?" was her gaiety just bravado, or was she ascool as she seemed? ed hoped that she was cool. tugging at the linten line that joinedthem, ed drew himself close to her. "you don't have to speak, eddie," she toldhim. "i know what you're thinking. but why shouldn't i—and all of us—be all right?"
her face had sobered. she looked strong. andso he was somewhat relieved. he kissed her. perhaps it was odd that dust-mote beings stillcould do that. chapter viii ed and barbara and prell came to the partingof the ways sooner than they had intended. without instruments, it was hard to judgevelocity. they did not use their midas touch cylinders quite long enough to check speedsufficiently as they approached the great blue-green planet with its blurred ring. theyhit the atmosphere, not really fast, but fast enough. briefly, sound was reborn around themin a shrieking whistle, like a vast, thin wind. they tumbled over and over, and thestrand that kept them together was broken.
tumultuous currents of the high ionosphereseparated and scattered them as they plummeted lower. ed was unhurt. and did he hear—more in hisimagination than his ears, here in the muffling semi-vacuum—a distant laugh and shout: "it'sall right, eddie ..."? the impression faded away, like the voice of some gay sprite vanishing.he'd thought before of losing barbara. now they were two specks, separated from eachother in the infinity of the terrestrial atmosphere. even with the logic of plan and method, therewas still some unbelief about how they would ever find each other again. using his radio, he tried to call. but therewas no answer. the microscopic instrument
could pick up messages from powerful stationsmillions of miles away. but for transmission, its range and that of those like it had tobe ridiculously short: perhaps a score of yards—a fair distance in proportionate units. ed was drifting now, alone and high, as hiswife and uncle must be, too. well, they'd meant this to happen soon anyway. so therewas no real difference, was there? get down to work quickly, down to the surface, wherethe high clouds seemed to lie flat on the gray atlantic and on the nearby greenery ofthe continent. ed's cylinder flamed, forcing him lower toward the city. his first chosentask was to find carter loman, a key enemy. prell's objective was tom granger; then hewould try to contact the androids, perhaps
through abel freeman. and barbara was to tryto spike the trigger of violence by whatever means she could. that, in fact, was the greatestpurpose of them all. downdrafts aided ed's descent, while he listenedto his quartz-chip radio. was one who figured as prominently as loman in the strained newsof the day ever difficult to find? ed did not anticipate too much trouble in locatinghim. many people would know where loman was and mention of the place would be frequent.crowds would follow him everywhere. as ed watched a wolfish patrol of armed spacecraft,flying low on their atmospheric foils, the information came easily enough: "... carterloman's quarters at the three worlds hotel are constantly under guard."
ed was far more proficient now in gettingaround swiftly in the region of smallness. erratically but effectively, using currentsof air and the thrust of his midas touch blast, he descended toward a sky-piercing tower.he drifted into the doorway of the hotel's sumptuous lobby, marred now by the grim additionsof radiation shields. for a few minutes ed perched on the reception desk; he was lessnoticeable there than a fleck of cigarette ash. there were constant inquiries for loman, bytelephone and in person, made mostly by newscast men. the clerks fended them off briskly. butsoon there came whispered thunder, so low that it was almost audible to ed as soundand not merely sensible as a heavy vibration:
"more mail for mr. loman...." the spark of ed's propelling cylinder wasalmost too small to see as he jetted to the heavy bundle of letters and rode up with theattendant, past the guards, and slid with a skittering envelope through a mail slot,and into carter loman's presence. he was sprawled on a bed and was clad in fullvacuum armor of a type heavier than would have been necessary even on a dead world.it was pronged with special details as well: filaments, like parts of the insides of amidas touch weapon. hovering over the vast shape, ed felt the hard, stinging punch ofa few scattered neutrons hitting his body before he ventured too close. even thoughhis own life was subatomic in principle, enough
of those infinitesimal pellets could killhim. loman had evidently grown wary and nervous, guessing with shrewd imagination what dangershe might now face. in addition to his massive costume, this android who hated his kind waswearing an aura of low-speed neutrons, constantly being projected from the filaments on hisarmor. just then, the savagery inside ed felt its bitter frustration. loman even mistrustedthe ban on space travel. the enormous face beneath him, framed beyondthe glaze of a helmet window, did not look at ease. loman was muttering. he must havebeen at it, off and on, for a long time: "i wouldn't be surprised if you were around,prell. or even you, dukas. i was right! i know all about your little self, prell. itwas all in your dead brain. you think you'll
play a reverse david against goliath, eh?if blasting out your lab didn't kill you...." no, ed dukas was not so easily defeated. theaura of neutrons thrown out only by scattered filaments was probably not of continuous intensity.at certain points there might well be chinks in it, at which time he could slip to closequarters without having his own nuclear metabolism speeded up to the point of his destruction.but before he did anything final, he had to find out where prell's stolen equipment was. ed felt the whir of the air-filtering apparatusin the room and smiled. and there was a television globe nearby. ed could have found ways, now,to make his own tiny voice audible to his enemy and to challenge him. but ed decidedagainst this for the present. he mustn't waste
precious time, yet he suspected that he coulddepend on the restlessness of a nervous foe not to wait here quietly very long. again he was right. perched on a ledge madeby an irregularity of the wall, ed waited less than five minutes before carter lomanjumped up from the bed, cursed, and dashed from the room. ed's midas touch cylinder reddenedin his hand as he jetted after him. of firmer flesh than other men, loman hurried untiring,even in his massive armor and plastic helmet, down a back stairs, passing a hundred levels. then he was in a small, powerful car racingalong a civic speedway that ed remembered well. clinging to plush that was like a denseforest under him, ed remained undislodged
by the tornadoes of air that came from speed. around him passed beauty that he used to know,expanded so enormously that much of the familiar mood of it was lost; and he himself seemedcut off from it, like a ghost coming back. but there was other, perhaps greater beauty,too—closer to the heart of what he was now. there'd been a controlled shower induced bythe weather towers. now the sun shone again, and the air sparkled, not with dust, but withcountless tiny droplets of moisture—crystal globes, clear as lenses, but breaking thesunshine into brilliant prismatic hues. ed's brief rambling of mind ended when lomandid an odd thing. he stopped in ed's old neighborhood, after having passed a half-dozen road blockswhere uniformed men had entrenched themselves,
covering their ugly vehicles with cut branches.loman had only flashed his interworld security badge at each post, to receive respectfulpermission to go on. loman stopped his car abruptly before a houseadjacent to ed's own—one ed knew well. but ed had an odd feeling that this was not asstrange as it seemed. this suburb, close to the city, harbored many of the noted and notorious.besides, many recent turbulent events had been centered within these few hundred squaremiles. and loman had been in the neighborhood before, in the company of police chief bronson.also, had there always been something disturbingly familiar about loman's manner? ed tingled at the unraveling of an enigma,as loman hurried up the walk to the house.
loman found the door locked, but if this annoyedhim, it stopped him not at all. an armored shoulder, backed up by the muscles of hiskind—their power rarely demonstrated publicly—battered the door to splinters and loman stepped through. ed followed him—as unobtrusive as part ofthe atmosphere—up a stairway and into a pleasant student room seen in colossal scale. it was les payten's room which had thus beeninvaded without ceremony. nor was the intruding colossus the least abashed that the giantles, somewhat thinned down and pallid after his long convalescence from a visit to abelfreeman, was present. ed saw his old friend's startled expression,then felt the vibration of his words: "chummy,
aren't you, bursting in like this? the police,eh? what have i done? my god, i've seen your picture! you're loman!" the other giant's smirk was half gentle, halfbullishly humorous. "that's my name—if you prefer," he said. "i've had you watched, lesterpayten, for various reasons. you've been ill. then why do you stay so close to what maybecome the battle lines? you're an odd guy, lester. too much fear, courage and conscience.wanting to be a hero, but half a martyr. recently one of the 'reasonable' kind. soon there won'tbe any of those left. not when a few more see those they love torn open, crisped orperhaps crushed by created things more hideous than tyrannosaurus rex. such facts destroythe folly of thoughtfulness. and, good! for
in that way the showdown comes against anotherkind of slime that desecrates the form of man! you're a mixed-up kid, lester—maybeeven thinking of some old companions. but in your heart you know that you're all human.me, i'm still sentimental, so i had to come to you at last. you ought to be safe amongthe asteroids, like your timid mother." being an audience to these comments, ed'sfirst puzzlement changed slowly toward comprehension of a weird truth. drifting with the air moleculesnear the center of the room, he watched les payten sitting quietly at his desk, his lookalso showing that he was at the fringe of understanding. but maybe his mind half refusedto plunge into the starkness of fact beyond. too much had become possible. sometimes itmight be a land too strange for human wits.
maybe primitive terror prompted les to suddenviolence. or it was the sickening cynicism in loman's words. in a flash of movement lestried to get a weapon from his desk. confronted by a human being, he might have succeeded.but loman even dared, first, to shut off the neutronic aura around his armor, so as notto burn or kill the one he had come to see. then quick fingers latched onto les's wrists.les fought with all his might but was pushed down on the floor. dazed, he looked up athis conqueror. "yes, your memory-man father killed himself,"loman said. "but he could always return by recording, couldn't he? before that, it wasall arranged—with many who sympathized with the human cause. the mind probe showed thatmy expressed views were truthful. interworld
security could use someone who was clever,unknown, and supremely active. umhm-m—maybe i'm even harder than they hoped! yes, i'mstill an android, les, because i have to be strong for battle. i hardly care who learnsof it now, because the fight is sure to come. but i'll be a man again, when and if i can.and, like a man, i love my son. things will become very difficult soon, lester. so i wantyou with me." loman's heavy growl might have sounded paternalto common ears. but he capped it with a light tap to les's jaw. les crumpled. for a momentthis fantastic echo of his original sire, changed in face and form, stood over him,an armored demon by any standard. the sun had set. from the twilight beyondthe window came blue flashes, light heat lightning,
off toward the wooded hills. they glintedon loman's plastic face window, which had muffled his words scarcely at all. loman seemedto match those flickers: science misused; wisdom, once reached for so carefully, fading;the collected armaments, improvised quickly by a master technology hidden in tunnel andon mountain-top, by both sides. and the guts of a star ship engine perverted. once, ona lost moon, a thing like that had exploded, just by error or chance. there had been nowild speeches to bring it about. nor any panic. and there had been no lomans to help in amore savage way. unless driving impulses were checked, theend could come this very night. ed even wondered if he might waste valuable time sticking closeto loman any longer. would it lead to more
answers, as he had felt it must? well, hestill was sure of that, and loman also seemed driven by haste. so ed alighted on les's shoulderand burrowed into the cloth. it was the safest thing to do. for whatever weapon might beused, it probably would not be directed at les. loman picked up the unconscious form and dashedout to his car. there followed a wild ride along winding roads through the woods. distantly,on a hilltop, ed saw a metal framework slanting skyward. it held a cylinder whose neutronbeam could level anything. but its power supply could mean complete destruction in a lastresort to madness, for revenge—if someone lost control of himself, smashed the safetystops on controls, pushed levers a little
beyond them. there were wrecks on the road. horror hadbeen exchanged already, as refugees fled the city. beside one broken car, half fused toa puddle of fire lay the body of a child, briefly glimpsed. and ed detected a man'scries and protests, flung wildly at the sky from among the shadowy trees. or could ithave come just as well from an android throat? if it was jones of common human clay or smith,an android, could it make any difference? yet it was an old thing—a reasonable man'sanguish against wrong. still, was it hard to see a sequel, when somethingsnapped in the brain? a kind of explosion. then, before horror and rage, immortalityor death could become equally meaningless.
good sense and kindness, once clung to desperately,could then become zero, and earth, sky and humanity empty phantoms. then could you picturethe wronged one awaiting someone of the other kind? could you picture him aiming his ownweapon at another car and holding its trigger down until his own curses were lost in theroar of incandescence? ed dukas rode on through the dusk in loman'scar, still clinging to the fabric at the shoulder of his inert friend, les payten. the sky stillflickered—warning barrages, not yet aimed to kill. an aircraft swooped, its weaponsshredding a high-flying horror that was not of metal. some had been destroyed, but othersalways came—though they never had been truly numerous. a few other cars sped along theroad—persons fleeing the dangerous congestion
of the city. ed wondered if the steady ping ping ping inhis quartz-chip radio was the ultra-sonic evidence of a spy beam in action, perhapsmeant to trace loman's course? at last the forces of law might do that to their own,if some of them disagreed with loman's zeal or suspected that it had become too extreme.chief bronson, for one, had seemed a likable man. besides, even after a mind probe, manywould mistrust an android. ed reasoned that this must be a flight toa hide-out, which he had to see. the car careened for a mile along a narrowside road, where, behind high banks, the pinging stopped. had loman counted on their shieldingeffect? deeper in the woods, a block of undergrowth
folded upward on a hinge, and the car rolledinside. then the great trap door closed behind it. ed was not surprised even by so elaboratea retreat as this. now, with his neutronic aura cut off, loman bore les through a lowdoorway, into a great, low chamber fused out of bedrock. could loman and mitchell prellbe as alike as this in their choice of secret places? queer—and yet not so queer. bothwere scientists. prell had invaded the field of biology and loman, in his original incarnationas ronald payten, had been a biologist from the start. ed might have attacked, now that loman's aurawas inactive. but it could be restored in an instant. better to wait. a clearer chancemight well come. his enemy might even be trying
to lure any small, unseen intruder close tothe coils of the aura. besides, in the soft artificial light, answerslay—answers that ed had only dimly suspected, in spite of loman's background. since he hadlearned who loman was, there hadn't been time enough for him to understand. but now thesolution to a dreadful mystery came easily, because ed could intrude here unseen. there were vats here, too, vaster than anyed had ever seen from any viewpoint and webbed with their attendant apparatus. beneath theglossy surface of the fluid, like smooth oceans in the floor, various shapes were visible—alldevilish but half transparent in their undeveloped state, their smooth plates of vitaplasm muscleand scale showing, but already alive and in
slight, undulating motion. and no doubt thesethings were only in the embryonic state. they could grow much huger after being set freeto hide and kill. here, then, was the devil's brewpot of creation. here the first slitheringsynthetic monsters must have been blueprinted and created. it was ronald payten's work—theproduct of his skill and his secret quirks. madness in vitaplasm, to help build hate betweenandroid and man and bring the conflict to a climax. and there was more. against one wall was theplunder of mitchell prell's laboratory on mars—or most of it. the tanks were empty.but on a table stood the larger microscope, as if what could be seen through its eye-piecehad been under examination. perhaps the doll-like
shape, the other vats, the machine shop andthat tiny electron microscope were still there. and what lay at a still lower size level.across such a void of distance, ed dukas could not see such detail. but he felt the minglingof hope and frustration. no path back to normal circumstances was here, yet. and the timewas certainly not ripe—if it would ever come. besides, did all of him really wantto return, even if part of him fairly ached for it? carter loman, or ronald payten, bent closeto les, his pronged helmet and wide face, beyond the curve of plastic and radiationshielding, like an ugly world in the sky. but if you had the mind to notice, perhapsloman's expression was almost gentle just
then. his voice came to ed's senses as a subduedand modulated quake: "lester! wake up! i didn't hit you that hard." les seemed to have been lowered onto a couchof some kind. perhaps he had already regained consciousness moments ago and had since beenbent on quiet scrutiny of his surroundings, seeking out comprehension and the core ofhis own feelings. ed could guess at some of this: an enigma revealed; ronald payten—creatorof monsters; les payten's pseudo-father. then, for les, horror, shame, fury. for ed, the world seemed to rock as les leaped.les was not strong now and was still in his convalescence. and maybe he had been waveringand unsure, or even wrong in his past choices.
but at this moment he was not at all in doubt,though the attack he made could have been pure, wild fright. "father, indeed! i'll kill you—phony!" hescreamed. then he was grappling with loman with all the strength that muscle and emotioncould muster. for that moment at least, he was ed dukas'sally, willing or otherwise. for he held loman's attention diverted. and because of les's attackloman's neutronic aura remained turned off. ed leaped and jetted, his tiny midas toucha scarcely visible spark as it flamed. he landed on the fabric near the back of loman'sneck and at the base of his helmet. holding tight, ed let his weapon flare again, thistime using it to blast a tiny hole. he braved
the violent spurt of energy from the dissolvingrubberized fabric and then the moment of exposure to radiation and heat as he crept through.now he floated in loman's private atmosphere, within the great oxygen helmet, as loman'sstruggle with les went on. now was the time to test a plan: the speck-sizedman against a being of human dimensions—comparatively as huge as a mountain. and it was androidagainst android, advantage against advantage. loman's lungs, active now to give breath toa chuckle of triumph, breathed ed in deeply. with his full equipment still lashed to hisshoulders, he tumbled down through moist and faintly ruddy gloom. when the air currentsquieted, he clung, a sharp splinter of obsidian rising and falling in his hand, as he cutthrough soft tissue.
thus he reached a small artery and was bornealong by the flow within it. it was a world of warm, buried rivers. dim, rosy light sometimesfound its way through the walls of flesh. or was it, still the radioactive glow thatloman's body, adapting to the shortage of oxygen, had shown on mars? but its physicalstructure, apart from its substance, remained human: the disklike red blood corpuscles pumpedalong in the gloom. only wait now to be circulated to the rightposition. ed knew when he passed the great thumping valves and chambers of loman's heart.but, no, this was not the place for action. he could feel himself rising now. good! wasthe darkness within the skull denser than elsewhere? ed forced his way into constantlynarrowing channels. around him he still saw
very dimly the living cells themselves. herethey had long, interlocking filaments. they were the brain cells, beyond question. he dared not use his midas touch here. thefluid at its very muzzle would have exploded. but he had grenades of much the same function.set the fuse of one and leave it lodged here. before ed was pumped back to the huge lungs,he felt the heavy concussion. then came the wild gyrations of the colossus. a spark ofatomic incandescence had exploded within its head, opening arteries to hemorrhage and destroyingsurrounding tissue with heat and radiation. a demoniac vitality of body might linger on,but a mind was dead. had total death come quickly, all movement ceasing, ed might havehad to tunnel his way tediously from the gigantic
corpse. but his luck held out. he reached the lungs,and a great burst of air flung him forth into the oxygen helmet again. loman's form still twitched on the floor.one enemy was erased from the immediate future at least. loman—or the pseudo ronald payten—hadbeen removed as an active force of history, but the fury he had helped stir up was bynow self-sustaining. ed gave him a brief, almost rancorless thought. a woman had losther husband in the moonblast. and he was her memory re-created. she had had reason to hatescience. and he had been warped and marked by her view. he was a bitter product of histimes—impossible in the centuries that came
before. ed knew that he himself—as he wasnow, certainly—was also the child of his era. his uncle must always have been that.babs—wherever she was now—was also of these years. and his dad, and countless others.maybe, therein you had to find a tiny spark of tolerance for loman, though not much. andwould anyone ever want to bring him back to life, even if the world went on existing? chapter ix ed's score stood at two points gained—lomanout of the way and the source of the monsters revealed. but these were small victories comparedwith what must be gained if there was to be any hope. masses of human beings and androidsfaced each other, their emotions inflamed
to the point of final folly. and the end ofone troublemaker and the revelation of his tools were small items beside all that. ed got out of loman's oxygen helmet the wayhe had entered. les payten, a dazed atlas, was stumbling around. ed felt cut off fromhis old friend by a strange, great distance. but he could talk to him at least. ed floated to the radio in a corner of theworkshop, found his way through a vent in its back, and touched a wire with the minutecontact points of a crude microphone as large as his hand. the infinitesimal electric currentsit bore were amplified and converted into sound. ed's voice came forth loud and clear:"les! it's me—ed dukas. i'm here, just as
prell came to me once. i'm an android justa few thousandths of an inch tall. i'm inside the radio, les. first, i want to know howyou feel about all this. yes, i killed loman." there were world tremors of footsteps approachingwith slow caution. a panel of the set was opened. the giant stared inside. ed was nowsufficiently accustomed to the vibrations of human speech to interpret the mood behindthem. there was a brief, hard chuckle, controlledand distant and unfriendly. "yes, dukas, i'm quite sure it's as you say.it's odd, maybe, but i'm not surprised at all. in our time, you have to accept too much.thanks for finishing loman—not my father. dad died on the lunar blowup, as you know,a victim of technology or history, as we all
will probably soon be. i've told you beforehow i feel about everything. and what has happened to me tonight can scarcely have mademy view of the androids any kinder. once upon a time, in my callow youth, i thought i belongedto this crazy period. how wrong can you get? you take your strength and durability. i wonderwhat finer flavors of life you've lost. so there's my standard, and i'll live and dieby it, dukas. it's sad to lose a pal, but as you are, i guess you'll have to be an enemy.it's like an instinct, dukas." les had spoken calmly and firmly. but ed sensedthe bitterness and uncertainty that lurked beneath the words. "i won't argue, les," he answered. "but wheni'm thinking straight, the truth to me is
still as it was. in championing man aboveandroid, or vice versa, you can only come to zero. only in fair play between them isthere a chance. so, if the urge ever comes over you, you might still do me a favor. acrossthis room is a microscope and attached equipment that are vital to me and to barbara, who islike me, somewhere. guard it, les. no place that you could reach is perhaps truly safefor it. but i was thinking that if you could gamble again—as we all must—you mighttake it to abel freeman. i know that you were almost killed in his camp, les. but i believethat the old reprobate is fundamentally sound and not as bitterly against such a deviceas some human beings might be. thanks if you consider it, les."
still unseen by his one-time friend, ed jettedto the vaulted ceiling and escaped through a ventilator pipe that emerged among concealingbushes. he rose above the trees, and a night wind pushed him on, while he listened to thequartz chip he carried. his first impulse now was to locate tom granger as his nextcandidate for silence. it was not necessary. the news was on theair: "granger was stricken in his quarters just before eight o'clock. the cause is notyet clear. he had just begun to write his new speech: 'i am frightened. we are all frightened.but this can change nothing of our purpose. in vitaplasm we are confronted by a vampirishfact: an identity of face masking a difference of spirit. a treachery. a slow, dreadful encroachment....'"
prell had gotten to granger, then. if thiswas murder, maybe it was justified—if earth was one per cent less in danger with one exhorterquieted, for a while if not forever. but what had been accomplished so far was small besidethe threat that had been stirred up in many minds and machines across the countryside. the sky was heavy with thickening clouds.weather control, working through its ionic towers had already been smashed. the nightwas alternately a stygian hole or a glare-lit holocaust full of battering vibrations whichmight mean that real battle had already begun. so far, only neutron streams were being used.where a mountain peak was hit there would be a blaze of light that even an android hadbetter not look at. then another mountain,
looming over a different fortified line, wouldflare up and glow with moving lava. and the power that energized the weapons was the sameas that which could reach the stars. rising high and jetting forward with his midastouch, ed went to work. he thought of abel freeman's camp, which lay somewhere beyondthe carpet of flaming woods which flanked one slope. but that was not his immediatedestination now. he had dived for a power station house in a great trailer—and didit matter whether it belonged to the older race or the newer? he took great risks gettinginto its busy vitals. the constricting pressure of space warps, creating a gravity pressureof billions of tons to the square inch, eased gradually. a marble-sized bit of super-densematter, crushed and compressed by the force
and hidden by its opaqueness, began to expandto meter-wide size and to lose its blinding heat and fury as the processes within it stopped.soon the power plant, turning out a flood of electricity out of all proportion to itssmall size, ceased to function. scattered atoms of hydrogen and lithium became inert. there was no easily visible cause for thebreakdown, until puzzled eyes found minute holes burned in vacuum tubes, allowing airto enter, oxidizing grids and filaments and stopping their action. two great weapons died, their energy cut off.but the power stations themselves were the far greater threat, for they harbored thatsun-stuff within them. now the controls of
one, which some enraged person might contriveto push too far in spite of the watchfulness of others, were temporarily useless. working both sides of the line, ed sabotagedanother energy source, and another. then he lost count, not because of a high score, butbecause heat and radiation had fogged his mind somewhat. yet he kept at his labors becausethere was no other way. within every square mile there was enough potential power to endhis planet. around him, curses came vibrating from giants:"men, eh? jelly for insides!..." "stinking phonies—hell-born or prell-born!... jim,i was wondering, this fizz-out looks fishy. do you suppose the bastards have something?"
the front had quieted. it could be that, asfar as he had gone, ed had actually held the earth together by spiking a few danger points.but he could take no pride for himself out of this. the job could go on and on, likea few buckets of water poured on a forest fire. it helped briefly, yet if there hadbeen a thousand like him, but truly indestructible, the situation might still be without promise.the mass of the populace was too enormous and scattered; the natural suspicion and theforces which had stirred it up were too deep. the ghosts of loman and granger still walkedin memory and maybe now in martyrdom. and the technology was still there. so ed knewthat, unless there was another way, he could only go on attempting to lessen a threat,until heat and radiation or its fulfillment
zeroed him out. it took him over an hour to stop one powerstation because his demoniac vitality was ebbing and because it had begun to rain heavily.the great drops could not kill him, but like falling lakes, they could hammer him intothe mud, from which it might take days for him to extricate himself. he waited in theshelter of a loose bit of bark on the trunk of a tree. there he felt the helpless sideof his smallness. as he waited, his mind rambled. had severalgroups of weapons quit without his noticing, or was this only something that he wishedwere so? where was barbara now? would he ever see her again?... now he lost himself in afantasy. he saw them leaving earth's atmosphere
the way they had come—she and he together;maybe finding beauty and peace out there. perhaps there were even tiny worlds—meteors—inhabitedby crystalline things such as they had once seen but advanced to a state where they couldthink and build, and be friendly. and, almost wistfully, he thought of anotheridyl—his father's, and even granger's, among millions of others. he could almost see thecrude charm of the houses, the gardens and the flocks. but how did one erect a wall againstscience—with science? it seemed harder to do than diking the water out of the deepestocean and trying to live in the hole thus made. the rain ended. ed was air-borne again. hecaused one more power station to break down.
but there were others. and some that he hadspiked might already be repaired. and from his quartz chip he heard other exhorting voices—notgranger's, but like granger's. the old and human traits that granger had representedcould go on without him, fighting maturer thoughts as if in a drive toward suicide.who could be everywhere, to quiet such clamoring? in the darkness before dawn, ed felt desperateand hopeless. his mind was on abel freeman again—the memory man, somebody's cockeyedfamily legend. it was an instinctive thing to seek out the strong for advice, for discussionand perhaps for a joining of forces. ed had only part of an energy cartridge leftfor his midas touch. but this was more than enough to jet him across the mountains tothe camp of the quaint android chieftain with
whom he must now admit a kinship of flesh.freeman was certainly a local leader now among those of the same mark who had fled from thecity, where the population was predominantly of the old kind. technicians, craftsmen, specialistsof every sort, would be among freeman's following. just as first daylight began, ed drifted overthe vast, hodge-podge encampment hidden in the woods and the marshes. part of the groundit covered had been fused to hot, glassy consistency, perhaps by a small aerial bomb. maybe a hundredphonies had died there—which fact added nothing to the cause of peace. abel freeman himself was not too hard to find,for he occupied a central, commanding position among various equipment housed in great trailerscarefully concealed from any observer in an
aircraft. but abel freeman, true to his legend,was sitting inside a rude shelter of boughs, which effectively concealed the light of hisato lamp. before him was a sensipsych training device and a vast pile of books on many subjects,ranging from military tactics to atomics, on which he was obviously endeavoring to getcaught up. he was savagely intent upon book learning, for which he had little aptitude.but ed, seeing him in mountainous proportions, was perhaps better able than others to understandwhy androids in need of leadership flocked to his stamping grounds. abel freeman lookedlike the essence of rough and ready ability. among android leaders, he was certainly thegreatest. freeman had a small radio receiver besidehim. ed dukas did not try to read the meaning
of its blaring vibrations, for he was awareof their general tone. to him the instrument was chiefly a possible bridge of communicationbetween himself and freeman. but ed was not now given the chance to makesuch contact. for something else happened. from the pages of an opened book in abel freeman'shands coiled a thread of smoke, as charred words were written rapidly across the paper.ed was close enough in the air to read them, too: "i am mitchell prell, who helped makeyour kind possible. i am one of you now—though undersize. help keep the peace. make no movesto start trouble." ed himself was startled. his uncle was here,then! they had arrived at almost the same time. and prell had chosen a more dramaticmeans of communication—not ink, not an amplified
voice, but the spiderweb-thin beam of hismidas touch used as a long stylus, while he clung, perhaps, to a hair on the back of freeman'shand! for an instant, abel freeman was gripped bysurprise. but then, with rattlesnake-swift movement, his own midas touch was in his hand.his whole self seemed to take on the smooth flow of perfect alertness which nothing butan utterly refined machine could have equaled. "prell or a liar?" he challenged. "or prellwith a conscience—for his own first people and against his brain children? yes, i'veheard how little you might be now." ed had only glimpsed his uncle far off amongthe scattered motes of the air—another mote among them—a foot away he must be, at least.but ed hadn't waited for contact. instead
he darted quickly inside freeman's radio,touched the contacts of his microphone to the proper surface, and spoke: "maybe you'llremember me, too, freeman. i'm dukas, prell's nephew. you and i have talked before, manto man. prell is no liar. and the conscience is there—for everybody, android or otherwise.yes, i'm with him, the same size. and there's a problem, everybody's problem, the toughestone that i've ever heard of. so where do we get any answer that makes sense? some of ithas got to come quickly, i'm afraid, freeman." amplified, ed's voice had boomed out tillit was like an earthquake to him. once again a plastic box was opened above him and a giganticface was overhead. in the tinkling overtones of smallness, there was almost a silence fora moment. then came the rattle of freeman's
hard, amused laugh, as he said, "i'll be damned!smaller than snuff and made the cheap way. people. something better. yep, it must beso, even if i can't even see you. that puts us way ahead, i guess. and it ain't a whiskyvision. well, i guess it still don't make any difference. the old-time kind of folkshate us, and they'll never stop while both of us and them are alive. and us phonies havebeen crowded all we can take. they've fired on us here, just barely trying to miss. couldbe we've done the same to them. it's a mighty ticklish proposition. in winktime they couldfinish us all here, nice and clean and no grease left. so could we burn them quickerthan gunpowder. so who gets trigger crazy and does it first? we've fixed them: an answer,under the ground. maybe they can spoil our
other weapons, like it seems they can, butnot this one. it's buried deep enough. let 'em try to hit us hard, and it'll set everythingoff. your old moonblast will be beat a thousand times. us phonies are bullheaded. we weremade on earth, same as them. it's ours as much as theirs. we came alive, and we canfade out again, young fella!" the vibrations of freeman's tones rose andfell, with humor, fatalism and stubbornness. two races, one born of the knowledge originatedby the other, seemed to have driven each other into corners of no return. at some indefiniteinstant, the big zero would come. ed saw this garish picture more clearly thanever before. his strange little body fairly quivered with it. he looked at mitchell prell,who had come beside him now, where the pieces
of apparatus that made up the interior ofa small receiving set loomed, and he saw in his face the puzzled, tired fear of a scientistwhose researches had always aimed at doing good. just then ed dukas, micro-android, wasfar from separated from the big earth as he used to know it. so now, in desperation, heclutched at a vision which had once seemed almost a fact. "freeman," he said, "maybe men can't backdown or co-operate with supermen. doing that can seem like embracing extinction. but hasn'tthere always been an obvious thing for us to do?" "umhm-m—you mean we should back down," freemanreplied softly. "set out for the wide-open
spaces that we were meant for. leave the poorclodhoppers behind. young fella, could be that you and me see things bigger. for otherslike us, it ought to be like that, only it ain't—yet. most of the new people are butcher,baker and candlestick maker, earth-born, and earth-tied in their minds, like anybody. there'sa ship, sure. but the stars are still awful far off, and never touched, and you can goaddled just thinkin' about them. lots of our sort would leave in their own sweet time,same as regular folks, sure. it's in their blood. you might say they got wings. but whoreally knows how to use 'em yet? and crowd our kinfolks off their home world? when they'respunky and sore like any human being? nope. sorry!"
ed's faint hope faded before the old android'srealism. for years the movement of migration had been farther and farther outward intospace. it was at once a fact, a dream and a philosophy, like getting nearer to the eternalunknown. but most of the worth-while solar system was already owned by the original dominantspecies. beyond was only the distance, not a beaten path at all, an untried and fearsomenovelty. one star ship was about completed, yes. fast it would be, but its speed wouldstill fall far short of the velocity of light. so the nearer stars were decades, centuries,millenniums away. an idea so familiar that it seems almost anaccomplished fact can lose some of its charm in the hard glare of real obstacles. ed feltsomething like a chill inside him. though
he knew the strangeness of a micro-cosmicviewpoint, others did not have this training and boldness for the unknown. he saw the majorityof them balking fatally. but he still had to try something, to change as much of thisas he could—if he could change any of it at all. "i don't know whether or not to blame youand the others for the revenge you say is rigged here and elsewhere, freeman," he said."i can see why both sides felt driven to do it. but i'm going to borrow your newscastfacilities, freeman. or someone else's. because rumor can be a powerful force. and i thinki can give it a little push." mitchell prell was still beside him. his grinwas encouraging and sly. "best of luck in
what you intend, eddie," he remarked. "needa charge for your midas touch?... meanwhile, i might try drawing the teeth of some dragons,as you seem to have been doing. got to be careful, though, that both sides don't blameeach other and get nervous. granger, poor knothead, was easy. i hope that somehow circumstanceswill be right so that he can come back and learn. about loman and the things he made,i can feel differently." "you heard?" ed asked. "it was on the air," prell replied. "somebodyphoned the news in from near that lab. at least the overwise ones will know that theyguessed wrong about which faction contrived a biological horror: a rabid old-race sympathizer,but an android, too! can that make either
side proud?" a minute later ed landed on the roof of thetrailer which housed freeman's wireless equipment. he crept past an immense drop of rain waterthat loomed like a rounded mesa beside him and entered a vent. soon he touched the terminalsof his microphone to the proper contacts. the transmitter was active. during the firstpause between the temblors of other words and signals and coded information, ed spokequickly, half like a mischievous sprite. "this is no ghost voice. we hear that many androidswant to take all of their kind beyond the solar system." the station did not stop sending at once.blame that on the startled monitor, who must
have been listening. ed took advantage ofhis opportunity. he was granted another moment to speak: "it is only natural that they shouldwant to do that. their kind of vigor matches the stars. they don't need, or really want,the earth. their departure in peace could be a perfect answer to everything." that much ed got out before the transmitterclicked to silence. he knew he hadn't said anything original and that he had pushed anargument intensely, like a high-pressure salesman without full belief. what he had said wasthe way things should be, perhaps, but were not. yet, again, like a romantic kid, hadhe felt the glamorous impact of his own words? he was aware that androids would hear andmillions of the old race—intent on communications
from an enemy station—as well. a mysterious,informal voice was always a thing to draw attention, and his remarks had been ratherstartling. that they would be repeated and discussed a thousand times from other stationswas probable. for they were like a chink of hope in one of two granite walls of obstinaterighteousness and strength. but ed decided that he'd build no bright picturesof what his speech would accomplish but would wait for hard facts. he wished desperatelythat he'd had a moment more to speak on the transmitter, to call out barbara's name. now he drifted again in a morning sunshine.luck had held out this far at least. but over woods and crude shelters and hidden equipmentand grimy grim-faced hordes that looked as
human as refugees could, there were interruptionsthat denied optimism. a patrolling rocket ship sailed high; an intensified neutron beamturned a finger of air white hot behind it—very close. and mountaintops, already truncatedand smoking, still would flare up dazzlingly. android muscles and backs strained and bentto build fortifications as nothing merely human could. the toilers were both men andwomen. could android children cry? yes, some did. another thing happened. ed, floating unseenlow in the air, felt the buzz of shouts and cries. a man who seemed to be near collapsewas being helped forward by a youth whose sidearms dangled near the knees of his torndungarees. at a little distance, where size
seemed more as it used to be, ed saw thatthe exhausted man was les payten. he was mud from head to foot; his face and arms werebloodied by brambles, his suit was a rag. he was brought straight to abel freeman'sshelter. there, supported by the armed youth, he spoke his piece: "i'm here again, freeman,because a friend of mine asked me to bring you something for him. does that make me afool? i know it does. because he's only my remembrance of a friend now. damn you all!" les payten fainted. a package wrapped in aplastic sheath fell from his hands, but abel freeman caught it. a couple of abel's ornerysons looked on, exchanging puzzled scowls. freeman warned them away with a clenched fist,knotty as an oaken club, and then shouted,
"nancy! oh, nancy-y-y!" but there was no timefor ed to observe freeman's hellion daughter functioning as a nurse. he went inside freeman'sradio again, and spoke, "freeman, this is dukas. i came to you to give and receive help.that means that i've tried to guess right about you. i believe i have. when your neo-biologistsexamine what payten has brought, they will be able to guess its value to me and mine.and i think that they will be able to combine its uses with those of their own equipmentfor something i'd like to see done. but there are other matters. some of your power plantsbroke down, but so did others across the line. i did most of that. prell must be doing moreof it right now. what i said over your wireless was meant to gain a little time."
ed paused. freeman did not open the radiocase again. ed couldn't see him. he could only feel small thuds and clinkings—theandroid leader opening the package that les payten had brought. ed wondered if he couldever imagine what was going on in freeman's head, the thousand problems and feelings thatmust be seething there. freeman might be no good at book learning.and his roots were in a century when even a flying machine was a wild thought. but hehad to be shrewd to match the legend behind him. and he had to take tough situations witha light shrug for the same reason. finally ed felt the rumble of his chuckle."you mean i'm one of your 'reasonable' variety," he said. "meantime you smash my stuff, eh,little bug in the air! i ought to get damn
unreasonable! you might even finish me off!i'm kind of curious about that! but i don't think you have to bother. i know that theold-time folks are moving lots more hell machines up. and they're awful mad, because we gotquite a few of them in one place last night—sort of by miscalculation. what's this talk aboutus androids matching the stars? well, young fella, go 'head and talk some more. yep, onour wireless rig. what's left to lose? and i'm still curious." on the way to the radio trailer, ed lookedback to the ugly, humping shapes of weapons creeping up a high, blackened slope a fewmiles away. this was fresh action by men of the old kind who had lost friends or familyand who saw no future in a demoniac succession.
they were exposed, an easy target. but ifthey were destroyed, others would come. so they dared and defied, and the vicious spiraltoward big zero continued to mount. ed tried to forget this for a moment. hisfirst words by wireless were a call for his wife: "babs, this is ed, at freeman's camp!barbara, come to us if you can. at least, try to communicate with us. you know how.barbara!..." she had her own quartz chip, active all thetime, so she must hear! and if she did, she could send a message just as he did, fromsome other station. but though ed now had help, at freeman's orders, no reply from hiswife was sifted from the countless communications that were received.
but his previous attempt to spread a rumorhad brought some expected results. the morning air was full of conflicting comments: "... acruel joke ... psychological warfare ... perhaps, but what if the phonies mean to leave? somealready deny it.... who spoke? let him speak again." ed was glad to oblige, even revealing hisname, his present dimensions and how a being of such size, equipped with a midas touch,might wreck a power station. he explained this last item because he did not want a misplacedblame to stir up more tension on both sides. otherwise, he addressed himself mostly tothe androids, aware that the old race would listen, too.
"... we were made on earth, but not for earth.we were meant to go much farther. since we have so much, to be other than generous wouldbe stupid. we have peace and the future, and most of what man ever hoped for, in our hands.that, or oblivion for everyone." though the ominous movement on the burned-outslope continued, the actual flash of weapons seemed suspended. the quiet was either promisingor it was ominous. he was lulled into enough confidence so thatat noon he took a break. he went back to freeman's shelter and into the tiniest workshop thatmitchell prell had made and that les payten had rescued. he dropped from the air besideminute machines and the vats that had given barbara and him their micro-android formson mars.
the whole piece—the greater microscope togetherwith all the much lesser equipment—abel freeman had unwrapped hastily, so that entryinto the twilight within the plastic cover had been easy. freeman himself was not around. for a moment ed felt alone and wistful, clingingto the rough glass floor of the shop. but then he saw a faintly luminous elfin figure. "barbara!" he exclaimed. her laughter tinkled. "think i wasn't comeback, eddie?" she teased. "that i couldn't share any interest in what happens to a bigworld?" her blitheness almost angered him. her expression sobered at once, and he sawthat she looked worn. "i know," she said.
"it's not funny. we might have burned up withthe earth—far apart. but i kept busy. i tried to call you yesterday from a stationin the city. but i wasn't sure i touched the proper contacts. and last night i had to bea good saboteur. i got three weapon-feeding power houses—though i guess that the fineequipment could be shielded against us easily enough. later, i was lost—high up in thewind. with you along, it could have been wonderful. of course, i heard news broadcasts. aboutloman's lab. and from freeman's station, a report of how les arrived with a strange device.this morning i heard your call, but there was no way to answer. eddie, freeman's expertscould copy us in normal size quite easily and quickly, couldn't they? and in bettervitaplasm. the methods have been improved.
our personal recordings, perhaps lost, wouldn'tbe needed. should we try to have it done? then there'd be two of each of us, in differentsizes. two...." ed chuckled. "not a word about returning tothe old flesh, eh?" he said. "so have we learned? android freedom to go anywhere, to be almostanything. yep, magic almost. i think you'd rather perch on thistledown or a sunset cloud,or be pushed by light pressure, like sleeping spores, to a thousand light-years away! well,it could still happen. part of us has been changed enough by things like that to belongthere. but the older part seems much like it was and belongs to the size plane thatwe first knew about." they hugged each other and laughed. and theywere reassured by the comparative calm around
them. but the forces were still there, onlyawaiting someone's ultimate madness. and what can a world's end be like, coming in a splitinstant, to one's dissolving senses? certainly it must be a quick, almost trivial experience. ed became aware of a bluish flicker. thenthere was something like an awful thud; he could scarcely tell whether a crash of soundtook part in it or not. around him everything was dazzling whiteness, without shadow orform. then there was nothing. chapter x consciousness came back to him, bringing acloudy surprise. rough rocky walls were around him. this was an artificial cavern crowdedwith neo-biological equipment, most of which
he could recognize. he lay firmly on a hardcouch contrived of planks and a folded blanket, part of the latter covering him. a pair ofdungarees and a mended shirt had been tossed casually across his bare torso. someone who looked like a young medico laughednear him. "one week's time, dukas—that's all we neednow for a major transformation," he said. "you must have thought that we were all goners;it would have seemed like that to you. but it was just a freak attempt at sniping fromthe hills, with a midas touch focused to a thin beam. whoever tried it must have beenaiming at our chief's shelter. only he wasn't there! still down in miniature, you were caughtin the backlash of the blast. but it only
knocked you out and singed you a little. youkept holding onto some solid object. your wife and the equipment were scarcely hurtat all. then prell showed up again. they talked with our chief the way you did before. theyengineered the transformation. i thought you'd want to know all this quickly." the youthful android looked good-humoredlyawed. "they just stepped out," he added. "they'll be back in a minute." ed began to slide into his dungarees. he wasgrateful for his return to something like what he had been. his memories of an interludewhen people were mountain tall were clear, yet they didn't seem quite to belong to himself.
he thought briefly of how he must have beenbrought back to normal size—his micro-form in one of the vats of similar proportionsacting as a pattern, electronic brain and all. in another vat, which freeman's specialistshad connected, the gelatins must have filmed and solidified slowly, taking shape, whilein brain cells and filaments—different from electronic swirls but capable of assumingthe same connecting arrangements—a personality was reproduced without destroying the pattern.with barbara and prell it had been the same. "the world goes on, i see," ed remarked. the android biologist smiled wryly. "someof that is your fault, dukas," he said. "a matter of advertising. you made enough old-timershalf believe that the earth will go on being
theirs. that cooled them off some. as forour kind, what you said started lots of them thinking again along what ought to be a naturaltrack. certainly the prompt departure of almost all of us is the only answer that can reallysolve anything. yes, if that isn't far too large an order! though i rather wish it werepossible.... here come prell and your lady. i'll disappear." they looked almost as they used to look—beforeanything about them was changed. blame the loss of some trifling birthmark or scar hereand there on the simplification of details that had occurred during a step down to smallness.yet mitchell prell's china-blue eyes were as good-humored as ever and barbara's smileas bright and warm.
"so here we are, eddie," she said gaily. "andwhat we recently were are still around somewhere—alive and aware, and the same as we were, thoughnot quite us any more. separate, but still helping, i'm sure. and if we all get throughall right, well, their universe is as wonderful and even vaster than ours." prell scowled for a moment, as if he enviedhis lesser likeness the continued chance to study the structure of matter, down wheremolecules themselves seemed bigger and nearer. but then his shoulders jerked almost angrily,as if to shake off the scientist's woolgathering. "come on, ed," he snapped. "abel freeman hasbeen pushing the idea you expressed, talking it around the world to all the androids. hesays that, crazy though it is, he'll encourage
it." they emerged from the cavern into the afternoonsunshine of the camp. a sudden quiet had come over it. eyes were staring up toward the east,while bodies tensed for a dive for whatever shelter was at hand. something moved therewith seeming slowness, though its gray hue, like a distant mountain peak, told that itwas seen through all the murky heights of the atmosphere and was in free space beyond.its motors were inactive. high sunshine brought metallic glints from its prow. it was certainlymiles in length. its presence could mean doomsday. but it was magnificent! if it could set humanblood to coursing more swiftly, how must it affect an android?
"the star ship!" someone shouted. others tookup the cry: "the star ship.... the star ship...." now abel freeman's voice boomed from a soundsystem: "yep, you're right. i sent a call for it to come in from the asteroids. figuredit would be good for all our tough-gutted breed to look at! uh-huh, tough gutted, isaid, but might be i'll have to take that back. anyhow, a man made for a mule lovesa mule on sight. so how about men and a ship made for the stars? but might be you ain'tthat kind of folks—you only seem that way. might be you can only see the mud on the groundand not the sky. i dunno. moving all of us fast would take an awful lot of insides. butain't she a beauty? i figure that the folks that brought her here didn't like to disobeyorders, but they figured that letting us see
was necessary. maybe they're phonies, too.i figure that harwell, who bossed her construction, would be that now. her kind of purpose demandsit. but maybe you ain't up to what she's for. and you folks of the old kind, what do yousay? what if we did leave you alone on earth? what if you gave us this first star ship andlet us build more, out on a moon of saturn where you don't go much? let's hear some answers!" obviously, abel freeman's words were alsobeing broadcast. meanwhile the star ship glided into the sunset. someone spoke briefly fromher by radio. harwell? "i hope you convince everybody, freeman. ibelieve it does make sense. not a cinch, though, even for us."
that, too, came out of the address system,as the ship headed back toward its base. in his newer self, here on earth, ed breathedagain, and his breathing was rapid. once more the unseen future was a thrill. yet he mustnot let glamour gild harsh uncertainties too much. he looked at the faces around him. some werestern, some grinned in bravado under abel freeman's challenging sarcasm, but in mostof them there was a special, eager light, almost avid. it looked as if freeman's talkand the great craft that had come with it were turning the trick. but these were trivialdramatics, too. the real source of success—if it was that—was in a basic kinship of androidvigor with the stars. awakened, it could relinquish
the earth without regret. these people couldfeel a little like lesser gods now. their strength and endurance matched the next stepof progress. now the fantastic gulf of distance didn't seem as wide as freeman had once thought. from scattered android camps, messages camein, pointing generally toward deeper space. yes, doubts were expressed. "shall we leave our homes without even anargument? are we complete fools?" "yes, fools if we don't leave. we can makea mass departure. and remember that this is the only solution. are they still too primitivefor us to live with? the same fault might be ours. i wonder what they will say to ourproposition?"
communications also flashed back and forthamong the old race: "... they look like us but aren't. their disguiseand their powers hold a warning. no wonder so many of us think of them as something likemedieval demons. can we trust what they say? or is it a trick to disarm us? how can weknow? yet they intrigue us. man has always sought to borrow strength and permanence fromthe rocks and hills. are they that achievement? and we ourselves have wanted the stars." crouched over the small receiver in freeman'srestored shelter during that still-ominous afternoon, ed and barbara listened and waited.around them they found both humor and pathos. in another shelter, dug into the rocks andsoil, they located les payten, whose misfortunes
with the phonies had been many. his bitterfrankness had won him dislike here. he had been put under restraint. there was the bearishtenderness and nursing of the gorgeous and powerful nancy, freeman's daughter, who stoodbeside him now, her big blue eyes expressing a mixture of soulful devotion and hunger aboutas rapacious as that of a starved hound-dog six inches from a fat rabbit. les didn't seemto appreciate it at all. but he still tried to be a friend to his companions of a lostyouth. "babs! ed!" he exclaimed at sight of them. "so you got back—to size, anyhow!but you could go back to where you began, as natural creatures! damn, once we were youngidiots, dazzled by a sense of wonder into too much tolerance. i don't want to be somethingsynthetic! can't you two realize the fundamental
truth of that—for yourselves? good glory!wake up!" ed's grin was one-sided. "for one thing, isuspect that going back all the way wouldn't quite work, les," he said mildly. "we arewhat we are now, that's all. there's a cloudy sort of limit on switching bodies. there cannever truly be two of anyone. besides, we like being what we are. and should i remindyou that, in common with all animals, man is a natural machine? as for being synthetic,i assure you that both love and poetry are there as well. so what do you imagine thatwe lack that the old timers always had? a taste for turkey or cake? just lead us toit! we're human, les—our forms and ideals and feelings are as they always were. we'renot devils. we're not truly separated from
the old race in any part of sympathy. we'rejust people gone on—i hope!—a little further." ed spoke gently, as he must to a tired, confusedfriend. or was it to a whole, vast section of humanity, dumfounded by hurtling technology,proud and stubborn about what had seemed its eternal self, and dreading any change whichcould seem so darkly drastic? barbara tried, too. "why don't you join us,les?" she urged. "if you became like us, you would know! besides, even if all the androidsleave the earth, the knowledge of how to mold vitaplasm won't be taken away with us. peoplehere will continue to be destroyed in accidents, as has always happened. so that knowledgewill be needed and used. besides, some persons will change willingly. some people may wantto shut themselves away from such realities.
but i don't think that they can. they'll haveto learn to accept facts." les payten looked at his old companions oddly,as if tempted by an old soaring of the fancy. then the light died in his eyes. "nice logic,"he said coldly. "i could almost trust it if i didn't remind myself. a mechanical treachery.my ed dukas and barbara day are dead." his tone was calm, yet there was a quiverin it—perhaps of revulsion for these imponderable likenesses before him, whose hearts he thoughthe could not—or did not—want to see. ed was exasperated before a stubbornness ofthought habit which was partly fear, though les payten was no coward. some human mindswere quick to adjust, taking even the radical newness of the last half century in theirstride. but there had always been many others
who were slow. perhaps it was a childish taint,a resisting of maturity. and how could they keep pace now? but right there, ed had toremind himself not to be too sure of himself. the next day or minute might trip him up. there seemed no further way to argue withles. ed could only express his sincere thanks for a favor, offer good wishes, and shruglightly and in some mockery, for one who refused what seemed a simple truth. if that shrugwas superficially unkind, perhaps it was also a goad in the right direction. a favor toa pal. an hour later, when ed told freeman of lespayten's reactions, the colorful android leader had a similar comment: "there's maybe billionslike that—one reason why we got to leave.
they'll change. but right now, who cares totake the ornery kid brothers fishing? give 'em time to grow up a little more, first.it won't be so long. just now we got our own problems and jobs. they ain't small, and nothing'scertain. there's no hole to jump into that's as deep as deep space! i thought once thatit couldn't happen. but now it looks as if we're gonna get the chance to try!" abel freeman was right. that evening a messagecame from the world capital: "let us meet and confer with android representatives andearnestly apply ourselves to a binding solution." that was the beginning. it seemed that reasonhad won out after all. freeman and prell were flown to the capital. ed did not go, for heforesaw a bleak conference with the single
purpose of getting an arrangement made assoon as possible. this proved to be true. to the androids went the first star ship,its asteroid base, provisions to be delivered regularly over a ten-year period, suppliesand equipment of all kinds, and the use of titan, largest of distant saturn's moons. to the vast majority of the androids thiswas enough. to the few grumblers there would be scant choice. let them view themselvesas exiles, borne along by the eager mass of their kind. when freeman and prell returned to camp afterthe signing of the treaty, les payten had already left for the city. for a while nancyfreeman would look wistful. she was strong
and beautiful, and perhaps not as wild asher personal legend. briefly, mitchell prell's eyes rested on her. then he chuckled. "sirius," he said. "nine light-years away.not the nearest star, and not perfect. but the best bet of the nearest. alpha centauriis a binary, too. bad for stable planetary orbits. but in the sirian system, at leastwe know now that there are many planets. come on, freeman. there are more plans to straightenout." preparations began, and the weeks passed.once ed even went shopping with his wife—for the pretty things, symbols of the luxury andsophistication of earth, that she wanted to take with her into the unknown. was that thecrassest kind of optimism before the harshness
that could be imagined? ed, barbara and prell would be among the manythousands to be packed into the first star ship for the first long jump. they had earnedthe privilege of choice. abel freeman had elected to stay behind, to help direct operationson titan. interplanetary craft were moving out in asteady stream, transporting migrants and the prefabricated parts needed to set up a vastglassed-in camp that few of the old blood could ever have tried to build. the androidsmight even have endured the cold poison of titan's methane atmosphere without protection.but they had inherited, and could not easily throw off, earthly conceptions of comfort.and they had their rights. the countless things
needed to build other star ships would soonbegin to follow them. the first group of interstellar migrants didn'thave to go anywhere near titan. the star ship came to earth again, to orbit around it. smallrocket tenders were there to bring the passengers up to the boarding locks. at the take-off platforms, ed dukas saw hisparents for the last time. jack dukas, who had chosen to remain on earth with his wife,shook ed's hand warmly. let them try their simple life of thatched stone houses on hillsides,ed thought, let them defy what seemed a too involved civilization. perhaps after the androidexodus, some few would even make it work—on venus, if not at home.
ed hugged his mother. they had memories. nowed stretched optimism considerably. "at last there can be a lot of time, mom," he said."enough so that we might even see each other again, someplace...." soon he and barbara were up there in the greatship. to his touch, her arm was as smooth and soft as ever. her hair was dark and thick,her eyes were bright with adventure, her skin a golden tan. and was it a loss that she couldhave bent crowbar with her bare hands, or have braved a vacuum at near absolute-zerotemperature without harm? "you're insulting me in your mind, ed," shejoshed gaily. "not that i'm much bothered. so the robot stoops to conquer, eh? of coursewe have no souls, eddie."
"certainly not!" he responded in the samemanner. "all our hopes spring from human sources. even our firmer flesh was a human dream. yetyou can practically hear our mechanical joints creak. the old race was created perfect. whocould ever dare to make it any better?" ed's sarcasm was honest. yet he knew thatbefore the unprobed distance, even the ruggedest of his kind were disposed to do a little whistlingin the dark. around them in the ship's huge assembly room,there were shouts, greetings, jokes and laughter. a young couple chatted brightly. a child studieda toy with serious petulance. a man consulted a notebook. perhaps few here yet realizedtheir range, power and freedom or just what they faced. their environment had been narrow,like all earthly history. no doubt many were
afraid of the strangeness and time and distanceahead. they had reason to be. out there in the black pit of the galaxy, even giant starscould perish. mitchell prell had not yet come aboard. abelfreeman had already left for titan—without his willful daughter. schaeffer, the scientist,had gone with him. under harwell's commands, the colossal craftkept taking on migrants at top speed for thirty hours. they boarded in numbers out of allproportion to the available living space. meanwhile there were needles to submit to.vitaplasm could be more rugged and adaptable now than when it was first used. the fluidsfrom hollow needles were the means of imparting the improvements.
at last the ship quivered slightly. in contactwith the heat of fusion of hydrogen and lithium to form the gaseous stellar ash called helium,any material rocket chamber would have been scattered instantly as incandescent vapor.but space warps stood firm in their place, squeezing with an atom-crushing pressure oftheir own, natural only at the centers of stars. and now there was no secondary arrangementfor the conversion of such power as was released into electricity. even the helium became pureradiation that emerged in a stream. it was a continuous, directed explosion of light,far stronger within its narrow limits than the outburst of a supernova. it had been knownfor centuries that light had both mass and pressure, and here it was concentrated matter—theultimate in propulsive thrust—changed completely
to energy. on the sullen earth, neither mannor android dared watch that thin thread of fury, while slowly the ship began to acceleratetoward a five-figure number of miles per second. it was the start of the departure of fearfrom an ancient race. or so it was meant to be. from earth, curses no doubt followed theship—and sighs of relief, and regrets, and good wishes. this setting forth should havebeen a human triumph. many would insist that it was not that. others knew that it was. braced in a cubicle two meters long, one wideand half a meter high, ed dukas held his wife's hand. tiered rows of other cubicles were aroundthem. mitchell prell had been with them minutes ago, and he had simply said, "good night,"half jokingly. or was it more whistling in
the dark? "just good night. that's how it'll be, sweet,"ed whispered now. "the years won't mean anything. in the old mythology, the demigods could sleepfor a millennium." so the small spark of dread flickered outin them, as they invoked a power which they had used before, in smaller android bodies,and for a much shorter interval. no drug was needed. their sleep became suspended animation. fine dust began to settle on them. but afterforty years, measured by the ship's chronometers—on the basis of a retarded time imparted to objectsmoving at high velocity, a somewhat longer interval must have passed on earth—ed wasawakened to help patrol the vessel.
with a few other silent men, he moved throughits ghostly, dimly lighted corridors and compartments inhabited by the living dead. the stillnesswas all around, and outside only the stars burned in the void. the decades had been likethe passing of a night of sleep; yet now awake, ed was aware that the time had gone, buildingup an unimaginable distance. here was the abyss. it was a cold awareness which madehim neither confident nor happy. sometimes he looked down at barbara's quiet face, buthe did not wish her to awaken now. ahead was sirius, brighter than before. besideit, visible at least to the unaided eye, was the dim speck of its companion star, a whitedwarf, shrunken and old, little larger than the earth, but incredibly massive, the veryatoms at its core compressed by its fearsome
gravity and the weight of material above them.this dwarf's internal substance, largely pure nuclear matter, would have weighed tons percubic inch. instruments, brought nearer to a destination,now showed more clearly, by the irregularities in the movements of this binary system, theexistence of planets pursuing changing paths in the complicated cross drags of two stellarbodies revolving around a common center. those worlds, known of on earth for a quarter century,were still out of telescopic view. their seasons must be crazy—hot, cold, uncertain. yetother, nearer star systems had the same, and worse, drawbacks. and sirius was relativelynear, too. besides, need an android worry about the fluctuations of mad climates somuch?
after a month, ed dukas relinquished his dutiesto others who were aroused briefly. he slept again, for more decades, and on through thefirst contact with a sirian world. his mind still slightly blurred, he came down in atender from the orbiting star ship, after others had landed. barbara was with him. somewherefar ahead, among hills rapidly shedding their glacial coat under hot sunshine, was mitchellprell. the sunshine came from sirius itself, fartheraway than the distance from earth to uranus; hence its size and brilliance were counteracted.yet this world did not attend sirius directly. it belonged to the white-hot speck at zenith—thedwarf with an almost equal attraction—tiny, but much closer. the planet hurried like amoon around this miniature sun.
ed looked up at thin fish-scale clouds thatwere rose-tinted. before him was a prairie covered with waving stalks bearing white plumes.might you call them flowers blown by the wind? high up among the melting ice he saw a towerand maybe a roadway. later he beheld two shapes, brown and rough, with four tapered, flexiblelimbs radiating from a central lump. man, with his arms and legs, also has vaguely theform of a cross. but these were different, though sometimes they almost walked, and metaldevices glinted in the equipment they wore. had he dreamed all this somewhere years ago?...sometimes they rolled quickly like wheels, or they crept along, their limbs coiling.once they flew, with bright flashes and without wings. but that was artificial. they movedoff at last beside a shallow, salt-rimmed
sea. "we can't stay here, eddie," barbara stated."it could be fascinating, but it would be worse than on earth." "as everyone will realize," ed dukas answered. so the explorers came back to the tender.nearer to the dwarf sun they found a world with a more stable orbit and less extremesof cold and heat. if it was nearer the dwarf with its almost negligible radiance, it alsodid not approach as close to sirius, nor swing so far away. it was a chilly little planetthat had once been inhabited, too; but now there were only shattered stone and glassand rusted steel. much of it was desert. but
there were forests here and there, and highglaciers. high on a clifftop in the thin, cold atmosphere,the refugees built their first city. it began with houses of rough logs and stone. but astime passed and the population increased, its metal-sheathed towers began to soar. inits glassed-in gardens, terrestrial flowers and trees thrived, while out of doors beautifulplants of a neo-biology easily surpassed in vigor the hardy local growths. there weretheaters, stores and libraries. there was feminine fashion. thus, nostalgically, anold earthly way was copied, though earth was lost. there was no method to speak acrossthe light-years. earth might even belong to a somewhat different branch of time. but allthis did not include the major point of separation.
that was expressed in the way these peopleclimbed the highest mountains without tiring and let the hoarfrost of fearsome cold gatheron their bare faces without discomfort. sometimes, on blizzard nights, while theytook the sleep that they did not need for more than the pleasure of it, barbara anded would leave the windows open to the storm. "roofs, buildings—why do we even botherwith them?" ed would say jokingly. his wife would look at him somewhat worriedly,as if he meant it. as if here there were a bitter strangeness that lowered all earthlyart and charm and comfort and sense of home to a futility. but then she'd manage to laughlightly, though often she didn't quite feel that way. "you know why we bother, ed," she'danswer. "because we want to stay somewhat
as we once were. didn't you always agree tothat? because it's hard to change old habits and limitations, and grasp the freedom you'rethinking about, eddie. sometimes i even suspect that we try to hide from that freedom." ed would scowl, feeling all of these thoughts,too. they had all the freedom that men had envisioned long ago: practical freedom fromdeath, except from extreme violence; freedom from aging, freedom of mind, of action, ofshape and size; the freedom of peace and plenty, and boundless energy. but beyond all this,like a goad, there often was, already, much more than a ghost of that ancient human restlessnessthat always had thrived on strength. "are you happy here, babs?" ed asked oncewhen there had been time to doubt.
by then they already had two young sons, bornof new flesh in an old way. "of course—reasonably," she chuckled. "thoughi have my moods. then i don't quite know.... but, eddie, this is the great, marvelous future,isn't it—the one we looked forward to with longing and wonder? we ought to appreciateit completely." "it is that future. but now, sweetheart, it'salso just the present." there were incidents to match such restlesstalk and thinking. there was mitchell prell, always groping for new things, shouting downfrom a cragtop, or from his laboratory, "hey, ed! barbara! come here!" maybe he'd discovered a vein of ore that mightbe mined, or a strange specimen of hitherto
unnoticed local fauna or flora. he remaineda scientist, while ed had become a mere builder of buildings. more than likely, the woman prell had marriedwould be with him—she had been nancy freeman of a fantastic origin. that he had separatedhimself enough from his studies to take a wife was a minor miracle. that these so-differenttwo should be together was certainly another. that she had learned to be both tasteful andpoised, though no less vigorous than ever, had perhaps been hoped for by the first romancingthought that had given her real being on earth. to live in peace, comfort and beauty, ed nowrealized, was not a final goal. the wild nomad, like prell, shouting down from mountaintops,always seeking the unknown and straining to
be bigger than his powers—however greatthey might have become—still had to be served. otherwise pride was insulted, the urge tolearn and progress was defeated; boredom set in, and centuries of life were not worth living. besides, belatedly, after years, there werevoices, speaking out of wireless equipment in a way that ed and barbara dukas and mitchellprell had reason to remember. that this world was now haunted by beings that floated withthe dust in the air was a fact which in itself had an eerie, nomadic charm. three tiny beings.no, now there were four. "hello! did you guess that we came with youon the star ship?... but we stayed on that first planet. then we visited others. oncewe slept under a glacier—we don't know how
long. now we have built another biologicalworkshop. so we will not be lonely. there will be many of us. i see you have done well.what comes next?" ed had the odd and startling impression ofhaving been spoken to by himself. but he and a tiny speck of the clay of the half-godswere entirely distinct, even if their names were the same. the vast difference in size,enforcing separate thought patterns to meet the problems of different environment, hadwidened the gap further. "it's us!" barbara said. mitchell prell and nancy were also presentjust then, in the dukas house. perhaps the visitors had waited for them to be there.
"i know who you mean," nancy remarked. "yourlittle folk, mitch. tell them something. or do they embarrass you by being so strange?have you forgotten?" prell laughed somewhat unsteadily. other interestshad long ago taken his attention away from the small regions that were within the reachof android powers. "they're special friends," he said. "we won'thave any trouble talking to them. hello yourselves!" so it was, for an hour. there was a mood ofelfin charm, of expanded dimensions, of soft, rich colors; of physical laws wonderfullydifferent in effect. the memory was haunting. but the larger ed and barbara had no presentwish to return to that fantastic land. it was not their destiny.
"so long for now...." the voices faded awayplayfully. but as sirian time built terran years, they were occasionally heard again,bearing a note of challenge. the new city had grown huge. the surroundingcountry was becoming populous. and the inevitable happened, like part of a plan implanted inthe nature of man from the beginning—to grow, to reach out, to be bigger in all thingsthan he was before, though perhaps even to imagine the final goal itself was still beyondhis intelligence and his experience. now a more rugged body only made the drives strongerand the outcome more sure. still orbiting around this first colonialworld, outside the old solar system and linked to the history of earth, was the star ship,kept always in careful order. but on a small,
jagged moon, a larger, better craft was underconstruction. it would have thrilled ancient blood; it could stir an android more. something sultry began to ache in ed dukas'smind at the thought of restraint. "some of us will have to go on, babs," hesaid one dwarf-lit half-night. "blame it on fundamental biological law—in me, and theboys, too. call it building an empire too big for any government. maybe it's an intendedstep—toward some other condition still out of sight. no doubt we're far from the endof what we can become. i don't know. i don't really care. i'm just a man and glad of it.i only know how i feel, and i suspect that, deep down, you feel the same!"
for a moment barbara was angry and sad. shestill had a woman's wish for permanence. she knew that ed was thinking of other stars andtheir systems—red giants, flickering variables, bursting novae—a whole universe of mysterybeckoning to a new kind of human. even the ugly coal-sack clouds of cosmic dust couldhave their appeal. she herself was not beyond being intrigued by such things. she walked across her pleasant room, whichhad begun to bore her a little, as ed knew. "i'm game," she said mildly. inconceivably far off were other galaxies.maybe ed read her mind a little, as she thought of the vast, tilted swirl of the one in andromeda,almost as big as their native milky way. it
was the nearest, but so distant that all thelight-years they had crossed could seem a mile by comparison. as a child she used tolook at a picture of it and think that everything she could imagine, and much more, was there:books, musical instruments, summer nights, dark horror. ed and she were like the pagan divinitiesdreamed up wistfully long ago. yet now she felt very humble. "ed—" "yes?" "i was just wondering where god lives," shesaid.
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