Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Sunday, January 26, 2025

The Haunted Mind by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 



The Haunted Mind


By


Nathaniel Hawthorne


Word Count: 1,777

Genre: Gothic, Literary

Published 1835 in The Token and Atlantic Souvenir


What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing your eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you find yourself for a single instant wide awake in that realm of illusions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed. The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of your dream. While yet in suspense another clock flings its heavy clang over the slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner; You count the strokes—one, two; and there they cease with a booming sound like the gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest enough to take off the pressure of yesterday’s fatigue, while before you, till the sun comes from “Far Cathay” to brighten your window, there is almost the space of a summer night—one hour to be spent in thought with the mind’s eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and two in that strangest of enjoyments the forgetfulness alike of joy and woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and appears so distant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has already vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged from the future. You have found an intermediate space where the business of life does not intrude, where the passing moment lingers and becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, when he thinks nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to take breath. Oh that he would fall asleep and let mortals live on without growing older!

Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion would dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocably awake, you peep through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observe that the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frost-work, and that each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will be time enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to breakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass where the silvery mountain-peaks of the frost-scenery do not ascend, the most conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs you to the wintry lustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguish the figures on the clock that has just told the hour. Such a frosty sky and the snow-covered roofs and the long vista of the frozen street, all white, and the distant water hardened into rock, might make you shiver even under four blankets and a woollen comforter. Yet look at that one glorious star! Its beams are distinguishable from all the rest, and actually cast the shadow of the casement on the bed with a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate an outline.

You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow is drifting over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour.

In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music and revelry, above may cause us to forget their existence and the buried ones or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength—when the imagination is a mirror imparting vividness to all ideas without the power of selecting or controlling them—then pray that your griefs may slumber and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late. A funeral train comes gliding by your bed in which passion and feeling assume bodily shape and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye. There is your earliest sorrow, a pale young mourner wearing a sister’s likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetness in her melancholy features and grace in the flow of her sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness with dust among her golden hair and her bright garments all faded and defaced, stealing from your glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach: she was your fondest hope, but a delusive one; so call her Disappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles, a look and gesture of iron authority; there is no name for him unless it be Fatality—an emblem of the evil influence that rules your fortunes, a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life, and were bound his slave for ever by once obeying him. See those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger touching the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly at which you would blush even in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your shame.

Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable, a fiercer tribe do not surround him—the devils of a guilty heart that holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the features of an injured friend? What if the fiend should come in woman’s garments with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie down by your side? What if he should stand at your bed’s foot in the likeness of a corpse with a bloody stain upon the shroud? Sufficient without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul, this heavy, heavy sinking of the spirits, this wintry gloom about the heart, this indistinct horror of the mind blending itself with the darkness of the chamber.

By a desperate effort you start upright, breaking from a sort of conscious sleep and gazing wildly round the bed, as if the fiends were anywhere but in your haunted mind. At the same moment the slumbering embers on the hearth send forth a gleam which palely illuminates the whole outer room and flickers through the door of the bedchamber, but cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your eye searches for whatever may remind you of the living world. With eager minuteness you take note of the table near the fireplace, the book with an ivory knife between its leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat and the fallen glove. Soon the flame vanishes, and with it the whole scene is gone, though its image remains an instant in your mind’s eye when darkness has swallowed the reality. Throughout the chamber there is the same obscurity as before, but not the same gloom within your breast.

As your head falls back upon the pillow you think—in a whisper be it spoken—how pleasant in these night solitudes would be the rise and fall of a softer breathing than your own, the slight pressure of a tenderer bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart, imparting its peacefulness to your troubled one, as if the fond sleeper were involving you in her dream. Her influence is over you, though she have no existence but in that momentary image. You sink down in a flowery spot on the borders of sleep and wakefulness, while your thoughts rise before you in pictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by a pervading gladsomeness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons that glitter in the sun is succeeded by the merriment of children round the door of a schoolhouse beneath the glimmering shadow of old trees at the corner of a rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain of a summer shower, and wander among the sunny trees of an autumnal wood, and look upward at the brightest of all rainbows overarching the unbroken sheet of snow on the American side of Niagara. Your mind struggles pleasantly between the dancing radiance round the hearth of a young man and his recent bride and the twittering flight of birds in spring about their new-made nest. You feel the merry bounding of a ship before the breeze, and watch the tuneful feet of rosy girls as they twine their last and merriest dance in a splendid ball-room, and find yourself in the brilliant circle of a crowded theatre as the curtain falls over a light and airy scene.

With an involuntary start you seize hold on consciousness, and prove yourself but half awake by running a doubtful parallel between human life and the hour which has now elapsed. In both you emerge from mystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can but imperfectly control, and are borne onward to another mystery. Now comes the peal of the distant clock with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a temporary death. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen among the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change—so undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the soul to its eternal home.

Friday, January 24, 2025

The Barbarians by Tom Godwin

 



THE BARBARIANS

BY TOM GODWIN

The execution violated the basic laws of Tharnar.
But the danger was too great—The Terrans couldn't
be permitted to live under any circumstances....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Tal-Karanth, Supreme Executive of Tharnar, signed the paper and dropped it in to the out-going slot of the message dispatch tube. It was an act that would terminate one hundred and eighty days of studying the tapes and records on the Terran ship and would set the final hearing of the Terran man and woman for that day.

And, since the Terrans were guilty, their execution would take place before the sun rose again on Tharnar.

He went to the wide windows which had automatically opened with the coming of the day's warmth and looked out across the City. The City had a name, to be found in the books and tapes of history, but for fifty thousand years it had been known as the City. It was the city of all cities, the center and soul of Tharnarian civilization. It was a city of architectural beauty, of flowered gardens and landscaped parks, a city of five hundred centuries of learning, a city of eternal peace.

The gentle summer breeze brought the sweet scent of the flowering lana trees through the window and the familiar sound of the City as it went about its day's routine; a sound soft and unhurried, like a slow whisper. Peace for fifty thousand years; peace and the unhurried quiet. It would always be so for the City. The Supreme Executives of the past had been chosen for their ability to insure the safety of the City and so had he.

He turned away from the window and back to his desk, to brush his hand across the gleaming metal top of it. No faintest scratch marred the eternalloy surface, although the desk had been there for more than thirty thousand years. It was permanent and never-changing, like the robot-operated fleet that guarded Tharnar, like the white and massive Executive Building, like the way of life on Tharnar.

The Terrans would have to die, lest the peace and the way of life on Tharnar be destroyed. They were of a young race; a race so young that his desk had already been in place for fifteen thousand years when they began emerging from their caves. They were a dangerously immature race; it had been only three hundred years since their last war with themselves. Three hundred years—three normal Tharnarian lifetimes. And the Tharnarians had not known war for six hundred lifetimes.

A race so young could not possess a civilized culture. The Terrans were—he searched for a suitable description—barbarians in spaceships. They lacked the refinement and wisdom of the Tharnarians; they were a dangerous and unpredictable race. It could be seen in their history; could be seen in the way the two Terrans had reacted to their capture.

He pressed one of the many buttons along the edge of his desk and a three-dimensional projection appeared; the scene that had taken place one hundred and eighty days before when the Terrans were brought to Tharnar.

The ship of the Terrans stood bright silver in the sunlight, slim and graceful against the bulk of the Executive Building behind it. The Terrans descended the boarding ramp, the left wrist of the man chained to the right wrist of the girl. Two armed robots walked behind them, their faces metallically impassive, and four armed Tharnarian guards waited at the bottom of the ramp to help take the Terrans to their place of imprisonment.

The Terrans approached the guards with a watchfulness that reminded him of the old films of the coast wolves that had once lived on Vendal. They did not walk with the studied, practiced, leisure of the Tharnarians but as though they held some unknown vitality barely in check. The face of the man was lean and hard, the black eyes inscrutable as flint. The girl looked at the guards with a bold nonchalance, as though they were really not formidable at all. Somehow, by contrast with the Terrans, the guards appeared to be not grimly vigilant but only colorless.

There seemed to be a menace in the way the man watched the guards; there was the impression that he would overpower them and sieze their weapons if given a shadow of a chance. And the girl—what would she do, then? Would she flash in beside him to help him, as the female coast wolves always helped their mates?

He switched off the projection, feeling a little repugnance at the thought of executing the Terrans. They were living, sentient beings, and intelligent, for all their lack of civilization. It would have been better if they had been of some repulsive and alien physical form, such as bloated, many-legged giant insects. But they were not at all repulsive; they were exactly like the Tharnarians.

Exactly?

He shook his head. Not exactly. The similarity was only to the eye—and not even to the eye when one looked closely, as he had looked at the images. There was a potential violence about them, lurking close beneath their deceptively Tharnarian physical appearance. The Terrans were not like the Tharnarians. There was a difference of fifty thousand years between them; the difference between savage barbarianism and a great and peaceful civilization.

He looked again across the City, listening to its softly murmuring voice. In hundreds of centuries the City had known no strife or violence. But what if the barbarians should come, not two of them, but thousands? What would they do?

He was sure he knew what they would do to the gentle, peaceful City and the faint twinge of remorse at the thought of executing the Terran man and girl paled into insignificance.

Under no circumstance could they be permitted to live and tell the others of Tharnar and the City.


Bob Randall shifted his position a little in the wide seat and the chain that linked his wrist with Virginia's rattled metallically, sounding unduly loud in the quiet of the room.

Virginia's black hair brushed his cheek as she turned her face up to him, to ask in a whisper so low it could not be heard by the four guards who stood beside and behind them:

"It's almost over, isn't it?"

He nodded and she turned her attention back to the five judges seated at the row of five desks before them. The gray-haired one at the center desk, Bob knew, was the one in charge of the proceedings and his name was Vor-Dergal. He had gained the knowledge by watching and listening and it was the only information he had acquired. He did not know the names of the other four judges, nor even for sure that they were judges and that it was a trial. There had been no introductions by the Tharnarians, no volunteering of information.

Vor-Dergal spoke to them:

"In brief, the facts are these: You claim that your mission was of a scientific nature, that the two of you were sent from Earth to try to reach the center of the galaxy where you hoped to find data concerning the creation of the galaxy. Your ship carried only the two of you and is one of several such ships sent out on such missions. Since the voyages of these small exploration ships were expected to require an indefinite number of years and since the occupants would have to endure each other's company for those years, your government thought it more feasable to let the crew of each ship consist of a man and a woman, rather than two men."

He saw Virginia's cheek quiver at the words, but she managed to restrain the smile.

"Our system was reached in your journey," Vor-Dergal continued, "and you swung aside to investigate our sister planet, Vendal. You were met by a guard ship before reaching Vendal and it fired upon you. Instead of turning back, you destroyed it with a tight-beam adaptation of your meteor disintegrator."

Vor-Dergal waited questioningly and Bob said:

"Our instruments showed us that the guard ship was robot-operated. They could discern nothing organic in the ship, nothing alive. The same instruments showed us that this planet, Vendal, possessed operating mines and factories and no organic life other than small animals. We knew that machines neither voluntarily build factories nor reproduce other machines, yet the mines and factories were operating. We thought it might be a world where the inhabitants had all died for some reason and the robots were still following the production orders given them when the race lived."

"And so you wilfully destroyed the guard ship that would have turned you back?"

"We did. It was a machine, operated by machines. And so far as we knew, it was protecting a race that had died a thousand years before. It was all a mystery and we wanted to find the answer to it."

Vor-Dergal and the others accepted the explanation without change of expression. Vor-Dergal resumed:

"Three more guard ships appeared when you were near Vendal. In the battle that followed, you severely damaged one of them. And when your ship was finally caught in the guard cruiser's tractor beams, you resisted the robots. When they boarded your ship, you destroyed several of them and were subdued only when the compartments of your ship were flooded with a disabling gas."

"That's true," Bob said.

"In summary: You deliberately invaded Tharnarian territory, deliberately damaged and destroyed Tharnarian ships, and would have landed on Vendal had the guard ships not prevented it.

"Your guilt is both evident and admitted. Are there any extenuating circumstances that have not been presented at this hearing?"

"No," Bob said.

None had been presented all day for the good reason that there was not a single factor of the circumstances that the Tharnarians would consider extenuating.

"Your guilt was evident from the beginning," Vor-Dergal said. "We have spent the past one hundred and eighty days in studying the books and tapes in your ship. What we learned of your history and your form of civilization leaves us no alternative in the sentence we must pass upon you."

The chain clinked faintly as Virginia lifted her hand to lay it on his arm and she gave him a quick glance that said, "Here it comes!"

Vor-Dergal pronounced sentence upon them:

"Tomorrow morning, at thirty-three twelve time, you will both be put to death by a robot firing squad."

Virginia's breath stopped for a moment and her hand gripped his arm with sudden pressure but she gave no other indication of emotion and her eyes did not waver from Vor-Dergal's face.

Vor-Dergal looked past her to the guards. "Return them to their cell."

The guards produced another chain, to link their free arms together behind their backs, and they were marched across the room and out the door.

Outside, the sun was setting, already invisible behind a low-lying cloud. Bob calculated the designated time of their execution in relation to the Terran time as given by his watch and found that thirty-three twelve would be about halfway between daylight and sunrise.


Tal-Karanth stood by the open windows and watched the guards return the Terrans to their cell. Extra guards, both robot and Tharnarian, had been posted inside and outside the prison building for the night to prevent any possibility of an escape. Other robots stood guard around the Terran ship, although it was inconceivable that the Terrans could ever overpower the prison guards and reach their ship.

But it had been inconceivable that a ship as small as the Terran ship could ever destroy a Tharnarian guard cruiser. The tight-beam adaptation circuit of the meteor disintegrators was very ingenious.

Why had the Tharnarian cruisers not had the same weapon? They possessed the same general type of meteor disintegrators; the same adaptation circuit would transform a Tharnarian cruiser's meteor disintegrators into terrible weapons. Why had no one ever thought of doing such a thing? Why had it been taken for granted for fifty thousand years that the cruiser's blasters were the ultimate in weapons?

What other weapons did the Terrans on Earth possess? How invincible would their cruisers be if a small exploration ship could destroy a Tharnarian cruiser?

The captive Terrans could not be permitted to return to Earth and tell the others of Tharnar. Neither could they be permitted to live out their lives in prison on Tharnar. Someday, somehow, they might escape and return to Earth, or send a message to Earth. The robot fleet of Tharnar could never withstand an attack by a Terran fleet; the fate of Tharnar and the quiet and gentle City would be written in blood and dust and ashes.

There was the sound of rubber-padded metal feet in the distance and he saw six more robots marching out to add their numbers to the robots already guarding the Terran ship. The ship, itself, was not far from the Executive Building; close enough that his eyes, still sharp despite his seventy years, could make out the name on it: The Cat.

The Cat. And a cat was—he recalled the definition to be found among the Terran books—any of various species of carnivorous and predatory animals, noted for their stealth and quickness, and their ferocity when angered.


The robot shoved the plastic food tray under the cell door and went back down the corridor. Virginia turned away from the single window, where The Cat could be seen as a silhouette merging into the darkness.

"Last supper, Bob," she said. "Let's eat, drink, and be merry."

He went to the door to get the tray and noticed the three robots and two Tharnarian guards down the left hand stretch of corridor and the same number down the right. Virginia came up beside and said, "They're not taking any chances we won't be here in the morning, are they?"

"No," he said, picking up the tray. "None to speak of."

He carried the tray to the little table in the center of the room and Virginia seated herself across from him as she had done each meal for the past six months. But she toyed with the plastic spoon and did not begin to eat at once.

"I wonder why they made it a firing squad?" she asked. "You'd think they would have used something ultra-civilized and refined, such as some painless and flower-scented gas."

"Spies were executed with firing squads during the last Terran war, three hundred years ago," he said. He smiled thinly. "I suppose they consider us spies and want us to feel at home in the morning."

"I'm glad they do. I don't want it to be shut up in a room—I would rather be out under the open sky." She poked at the rim of her tray again. "They never did tell us why, Bob. They didn't tell us anything, only that they had no alternative. We didn't hurt any Tharnarians; we only destroyed one of their ships and some of their robots."

"We upset their sense of security and showed them they're not secure at all. I suppose they're afraid of an attack from Earth."

"They didn't tell us anything," she said again. "They act as though we were animals."

"No," he said, "they don't seem to have a very high opinion of our low position on the social evolution scale."

He began to eat in the manner of one who knows the body needs nourishment to take advantage of any opportunity for escape, even though the mind may be darkly certain that no such opportunity shall arise.

"You ought to eat a little, Ginny," he said.

She tried, and gave up after a few bites.

"I guess I'm just not hungry—not now," she said. She glanced at the darkened window where The Cat had become invisible. "How long until daylight again, Bob?"

He looked at his watch. "Seven hours."

"Seven hours?" A touch of wistfulness came into her voice. "I never noticed, before, how short the nights are."


The robot laid the material Tal-Karanth had requested on his desk, the records and tapes from the Terran ship, and withdrew. Tal-Karanth sighed wearily as he inserted the first tape in the projector, wondering again why he felt the vague dissatisfaction and wondering why he hoped to find an answer among the material from the Terran ship. It would be an all night task—and he could hardly expect to find more than he already knew. Tharnar was not safe and secure from discovery by Terrans in the years to come and faith in the robot fleet had been an illusion.

Before setting the projector in operation he put through a call to his daughter.

Thralna's image appeared before him, reclining on a couch while two robots worked at caring for her finger nails. She raised up a little as his image appeared before her and the robots stepped back.

"Yes, Father?" she asked.

She waited for him to speak, her wide gray eyes on his image and her jet-black curls framing her young and delicately beautiful face. For a moment she reminded him of someone; someone more mature and stronger—

With something of a shock he realized it was the Terran girl his daughter reminded him of; that the Terran girl seemed the more mature of the two although Thralna was twenty-eight and the Terran girl was twenty-one. They had the same gray eyes and black curls, the same curve to the jaw, the same chin and full lips....

But the similarity was only incidental. There was a grace and a gentleness to Thralna's beauty; a grace and gentleness that was the result of fifty thousand years of civilization. Beneath the superficial beauty of the barbarian girl lay only an animal-like vitality and potential violence....

"Yes, Father?" Thralna asked again in her carefully modulated voice.

"Are you going to the theatre tonight, Thralna?"

"Yes. Tonight's play was written by D'ret-Thon and it's supposed to be almost as good as one of the classics. Why do you ask, Father?"

"I called to tell you that I have to work late tonight. I may not be home until morning."

"Couldn't you let a robot do it?"

"No. I have to do it, myself."

"Does it have to do with those two aliens?"

"Yes."

A little frown of worry appeared and as quickly disappeared. Her slim fingers touched her forehead for a moment, to smooth away any vestige of a wrinkle, then she said, "It will be such a relief when they're finally disposed of. Whenever I think of how they might escape and get into the City, it frightens me. Are you sure they can't escape, Father?"

"There is no possibility of their escaping," he said. "You go ahead with your plans for the evening. Will you come home when the show is over?"

"Not for a while. Kin is taking me dancing, afterward."

"Where you went last time—the place where they were reviving the old dances?"

"No. Nobody goes there anymore. Those old dances were rather fun but they were so—so tiring. Our modern dances are much slower and more graceful, you know."

"All right, Thralna," he said in dismissal. "Enjoy yourself."

"Yes, Father."

She was reclining on the couch again, her eyes closed, when he switched off the image. He sat for a little while before turning on the tape projector, recalling his conversation with her and a feeling growing within him that he was almost on the verge of discovering still another menace to Tharnar.


Virginia held her hands to her face to shade her eyes as she looked out the window. "What you can see of the city from here is all bright with lights," she said, "but there's no one on the streets. Only some robots. Everyone in the city must be in bed."

"That's the way it's been every night," he said. "Early to bed and late to rise—they're an odd race. I've wondered what they do to pass away the time. But what they're doing now is something you should be doing—resting."

She turned away from the window. "I'm not sleepy. I keep thinking of The Cat out there waiting for us and how we might get to it if we could only get hold of a blaster."

"Which we can't try to do until they come for us in the morning. Some rest now might mean a lot then."

"All right, Bob." She went to him and sat beside him on his cot. "What is it now—how much more time?"

"About three hours."

She leaned her head against him and he put his arm around her. "I guess I am a little tired," she said. "But don't let me go to sleep."

"All right, Ginny."

"It's only three hours and never any more, if we aren't lucky in the morning. And if we aren't lucky, I don't want to have wasted our last three hours."


Tal-Karanth stood before the window again and watched the City as it slept in the pre-dawn darkness. How many slept in the City? Once there had been three million in the City but each census found the population to be less. Five years before there had been less than a million—two-thirds of the City was a beautiful shell that housed only the robots that cared for it.

What was wrong? And why had it never occurred to him before that there was something wrong?

He went back to his desk, where the material from the Terran ship littered the eternalloy top of it, and sat down again. He was tired, and frustrated. A menace faced Tharnar, and no one seemed to realize it. The coming of the barbarians had awakened him to the fallacy of trusting the robot fleet, but there was still another danger. And the robot fleet would be more helpless before the newly discovered danger than it would be before the Terran ships.

He pressed a button and music filled the room; music that had always before been soothing and restful to hear. But it sounded flat and meaningless compared with the throbbing barbarian music he had heard that night and he switched it off again.

What was wrong? It was one of the latest compositions; one that had been acclaimed as almost as good as one of the classics.

Almost as good.... Like the play Thralna had attended, like the art exhibits, the athletic records, the scientific discoveries, like everything in the City and on Tharnar. Almost as good—but never quite as good as they had been fifty thousand years before.

Was that part of the answer?

No—not part of the answer. Part of the problem, part of the danger greater than a barbarian invasion. There was no answer that he could see. Something had been lost by the Tharnarians fifty thousand years before and he was neither sure what it was nor how to give it back to them.

He pressed the button that would connect him with Security Officer Ten-Quoth. Of the two problems, it was only within his power to handle the immediate phase of the first problem; to make the final authorization of the execution of the Terrans.


Bob looked again at the window which had lightened to a pale gray square. It was already daylight outside; it would not be long until the guards came for them. Virginia had fallen asleep at last, more tired than she had thought, and she still slept with her head against his shoulder and with his arm around her to support her. He straightened his legs slowly, not wanting them to be numb from lack of circulation when the guards came and not wanting to awaken Virginia to grim reality any sooner than he had to.

But the slight movement was enough. She opened her eyes drowsily, then the sleepiness gave way to the hard jolt of remembrance and realization. She looked at the gray window and asked, "How much longer?"

"Within a few minutes."

"I wish you hadn't let me sleep."

"You were tired."

"I didn't want to sleep—I didn't think I would." Then she changed the subject, as though to keep it from going into the sentimental. "I see the robot never did come back for the tray. We'll be leaving a messy room, won't we? I wonder if they'll disinfect it to make sure it's clean when we're gone? You know"—she smiled a little—"fleas and things."

She lifted her face to kiss him on the cheek, then she rose and moved to the window.

"It's cloudy," she said. "There's a mist of rain falling and it's cloudy outside. I guess it's already later than we thought."

He went over to stand beside her and saw that the morning was alight with near-sunrise behind the gray clouds.

"It's out there waiting for us—The Cat," she said.

He saw it, standing silver-white in the gray morning, gleaming in the rain and with its slim, dynamic lines making it look as though it might at any moment hurl itself roaring into the sky.

"It's a beautiful ship," she said. "I wonder what they will do with it when they—"

A sound came from the far end of the corridor; a snapped command in Tharnarian. The command was followed at once by the sound of footsteps approaching their cell; the heavy tread of robots and the lighter, softer steps of the guards.

Virginia turned away from the window and they faced the cell door as they waited.

"This is it," she said.

"Are you afraid, Ginny?"

"Afraid?" She laughed up at him, a laugh that came only a little too quickly. "It's like a play, set a long time ago on Earth. Coffee and pistols at dawn. Only I don't think they're bringing us any coffee and if we get a pistol, it will have to be one of theirs."

"It isn't over with till the end—and maybe we can change the ending of this play for them."

"I'll be watching you, Bob, so I can help you the moment you make the try."

The Tharnarian guards stopped outside the door, their blasters in their hands. One of them unlocked the door and two robots entered, guards locking the big door behind the robots the moment they were inside. The robots carried no blasters, nothing but three lengths of chain.

The Tharnarian leader outside the door rasped a command:

"You will both turn to face the window, with your hands behind you."

Bob did not obey at once, but appraised the situation. The robots were massive things—more than six hundred pounds in weight, their metal bodies invulnerable to any attack he could make with his bare hands. But there was one chance in ten thousand: if he could catch the first robot by surprise and send it toppling into the cell door, its weight might be enough to break the lock of the door.

He struck it with his shoulder, all his weight and strength behind the attack, and Virginia's small body struck it a moment later.

But it was like shoving against a stone wall. The robot rocked for the briefest instant, then it threw out a foot to regain its balance. The other robot snapped a chain around his wrists while Virginia fought it.

"Don't, Ginny," he said, ceasing his own struggles. "It's no use, honey."

She stopped, then, and the robot jerked her arms around behind her back, to lock the second chain around her wrists.

She smiled up into his dark and sombre face. "We tried, Bob. They were just too big for us."

A third chain, longer than the first two, was produced. He felt the cool metal of it encircle his neck and heard the lock snap shut. The other end of it was locked around Virginia's neck.

The cell door was opened and the guard leader commanded, "Step forward. The robots will guide you."

They stepped forward, the robots beside them, gripping their arms with steel fingers. The chain around their necks rattled from the movement of walking, linking them together like a pair of captive wild animals. Bob wondered if the chain had been solely as another precaution to prevent their escape or if it had been a deliberate act of contempt. The Tharnarians feared them and, because they feared them, they hated them. Did it bolster the morale of the Tharnarians to deliberately treat them as though they were animals?

They stepped out into the cool dawn, into a small courtyard with a black stone wall at its farther side. The sky was bleakly gray and the rain was falling as a cold mist, dampening Virginia's face as she looked up at him.

"The last mile, Bob."

"Walk it straight and steady, Ginny. They're watching."

"How else would we walk it?" she asked calmly.

They came to the wall, where a metal ring had been set in the stone. There was a chain fastened to the ring and when the robots had swung them around with their backs to the wall, the free end of the chain was locked to the center of the chain around their necks.

Again, it could be an added precaution. Or it could be the final attempt to let their execution be like the killing of a pair of dangerous animals. It did not really matter, of course....

Two of the armed robots who had walked with the guards took up a position twenty feet in front of them, blasters in their metal hands. The robots who had chained them stepped to one side, away from the line of fire. The leader of the guards lifted his arm to look at his watch and said something to the robots. The robots lifted their blasters at the words and leveled them, one aimed at Virginia's heart and one at Bob's.

But the expected blast did not come. The guard leader continued to observe his watch. Apparently the first command had meant only: "Aim." The "Fire" command would come when the hands of the watch reached the thirty-three twelve mark.

Virginia's shoulder was warm against his arm. But her hand, when it found his behind their backs, was cold.

"They cheated us," she said. "We were supposed to have a whole firing squad."

The guard leader gave another command and there was a double click as the robots pressed the buttons that would ready their blasters for firing. Virginia swayed a little for the first time, a movement too small for the Tharnarians to see and one from which she recovered almost at once.

"It's—I'm all right," she said. "I'm not afraid, Bob."

"Of course you're not, Ginny—of course you're not."

The guard leader had returned his attention to his watch and the seconds went by; long seconds in which the only sound was the almost inaudible whisper of the rain against the stone wall behind them. Virginia looked up at him for the last time, the cold mist wet on her face.

"We've had a lot of fun together, Bob. We never expected it to end so soon, but we knew all the time that it might. We'll go together and that's the way we always wanted it to be, wherever and whenever it might happen."

Then she faced forward again and they waited, the rain whispering on the wall behind them and forming in crystal drops on the chain around their necks. She did not waver again as she stood beside him and he knew she would not when the end came.

The guard leader dropped his arm, as though he no longer needed to refer to his watch. He glanced at them very briefly then turned to the robots, his face revealing the command he was going to give.

Virginia's hand tightened on his own in farewell and he could feel the pulse of her wrist racing hard and fast. But she stood very straight as she looked into the blaster and they heard the final command to their robot-executioners:

"Dorend thendar!"


Thirty-three one.

Tal-Karanth looked again at the timepiece on the wall. Thirty-three one. At the end of eleven more small fractions of time, the Terrans would no longer exist.

What was life? What was the purpose behind it all? In fifty thousand years the Tharnarians were no nearer the answer than their ancestors had been. Why should there be life at all? Why not the suns and planets, created by chance, and devoid of life? And why even the suns and planets, the millions of galaxies racing outward across the illimitable expanse of space and time? Why the universe and why the life it contained? Why not just—nothing?

The barbarians had set out to find the answer within a hundred years after the building of their first interstellar ship. And Tharnar's interstellar ships had not been outside the system for fifty thousand years; no Tharnarian had been as far as Vendal for fifteen thousand years.

Why had the Tharnarians lost their curiosity; the curiosity and desire to learn that had created the past glory of Tharnar?

He thought again of what he had discovered that night; of one of the reasons why the Terrans had named their ship The Cat. It was not because a cat was a dangerous animal, as he and the others had thought. It was because the mission of The Cat would be to explore in unknown territory, because of an old Terran proverb: Curiosity killed a cat. He did not yet understand the second reason behind the name, but the first reason showed that the Terrans were not without a sense of humor. How long had it been since he had heard a Tharnarian laugh at himself, at his own failings or possibility of failure? Never.

Yet—wasn't that pride? What was wrong with the high-headed pride that admitted no inferiority, no failure? Wasn't fifty thousand years of civilization something of which to be extremely proud?

Thirty-three five.

He went to the window and pressed the button that would open it against the mechanical will of the automatic health-guard equipment. It slid open and he breathed the cool, moist air that smelled of wet earth and grass and the odor of the lana tree flowers; flowers that were closed against the rain and would not open until the sun came out.

The City was quiet in the gray of the morning. He could see one pedestrian and three moving vehicles in the entire visible portion of the City. The City, like the flowers of the lana trees, would not open into life until the storm was over and the sun was shining again.

Thirty-three nine.

The City, like the flowers of the lana trees. The beauty and perfection of them both was the result of fifty thousand years of breeding to bring about that perfection. The City, like the flowers of the lana trees....

But flowers were without purpose; were only—vegetation.

And what was the purpose of the City?

He did not know. He was the Supreme Executive of Tharnar, and he did not know.

Thirty-three ten.

He went back to his desk and switched on the three-dimensional projection of the scene that would be taking place in the courtyard behind the prison.




The man and girl stood chained to the wall and the robots were waiting for the third and last command from the guard leader, the blasters in their hands as steady as though held in vises and their metal faces impassive. He increased the magnification of the scene, drawing the images of the man and girl closer to him. There was no reading the man's face, other than the hardness and lack of fear. But on the face of the girl was a defiance that seemed to shine like a radiance about her. He was reminded of the physical similarity between the barbarian girl and his daughter. But now the similarity had faded to a shadow. There was something vital and alive about the barbarian girl, there was a beauty to her in the way she waited for death that was strange and wild by Tharnarian standards.

What had Thralna said the night before? "... Whenever I think of how they might escape and get into the City, it frightens me."

it frightens me

What if it was Thralna who stood before the robots? Would she have her Tharnarian pride as she looked into the black muzzle of the blaster and knew she had only a few more heart beats of life left? Would she stand with the bold defiance of the barbarian girl? Or would she drop to the ground and plead for her life?

He knew the answer. But it was not Thralna's fault that she was as she was. She was only like all the others of Tharnar.

Thirty-three eleven.

How different they were, the two barbarians and the men and women of Tharnar. Yet the difference would cease to exist within a few moments. When the man and girl were dead, when all the life and restless drive were gone from them and they lay still on the cold, wet ground, they would look the same as Tharnarians.

How did it feel to die in the cold dawn, on an alien world a thousand lightyears from your own? But they had known such a thing might happen to them. They had named their ship The Cat because of that. Because of that, and something else....

Suddenly, clearly, he understood the second reason for the name of their ship.

Thirty-three twelve.


The guard leader dropped his arm, to give the last command to the robots. Tal-Karanth's mind raced and he saw two things with vivid clarity:

He saw the inexorable decline of Tharnar and the City continuing down the centuries until the little spark that was left smouldered its last and was gone. And he saw the way death would obliterate the wild and savage beauty of the barbarian girl, knew that it would go when the life went from her, to leave her with a beauty that would be colorless by contrast, that would be like the beauty of a lana blossom—or a Tharnarian woman.

And he thought he could see the answer to the menace that faced Tharnar and the City.

"Dorend—"

The guard leader's first word of command came. Tal-Karanth's finger stabbed at one of the buttons along his desk. He shoved it down, to deactivate the robot-executioners, and they were frozen in immobility when the final word came:

"—thendar!"

He snapped the switch which connected him with the office of Security Officer Ten-Quoth and said:

"Have the chains taken from the Terrans and see that they are given comfortable and unguarded quarters. Tell them they have been pardoned by the Supreme Executive and that they are free to leave Tharnar whenever they wish."


It was mid-morning of the next day, bright and warm with a few fleecy white clouds drifting across the blue sky. Tal-Karanth stood before the window again, Vor-Dergal beside him, and watched the City come to life; slowly and leisurely, as it had come to life each mid-morning for the past fifty thousand years.

Vor-Dergal looked toward The Cat, where the boarding ramps had already been withdrawn and the airlocks closed.

"They're ready to go," he said. "I hope you haven't made a mistake in what you did. The other Terrans will learn of us now, and when they come...." He let the sentence trail off, unfinished.

"We have a great deal to gain by the coming of the Terrans," Tal-Karanth said, "and little to lose."

"Little to lose?" Vor-Dergal asked. "We have Tharnar and the City to lose; we have our lives and our civilization to lose."

"Yes, our civilization," Tal-Karanth said. "Our god that we worshipped—our civilization. Look, Vor—listen to what I have to say:

"I did some thinking the night the Terrans were waiting to be executed. I'm afraid it was probably one of the few times for thousands of years that a Tharnarian ever tried to critically examine the Tharnarian way of life. I started from the beginning, more than fifty thousand years ago, when the interstellar ships of Tharnar were actually interstellar and were manned by men instead of robots.

"It was a good start we made in interstellar exploration, but it didn't last very long. We wanted to associate with our cultural peers, and there weren't any. We didn't attempt to make any contact with the primitive races we found. We felt that there would be no point in doing so. Tharnar possessed the highest—and the only—civilization in all the explored regions of the galaxy and younger races had nothing to offer us.

"The time came when no more exploration ships were sent out. We retired to Tharnar and Vendal and surrounded them with a robot-operated fleet, to keep out the inferior races when they finally did learn how to build spaceships. We devoted ourselves to our social culture and became imbued with self-satisfaction, with the assurance that we of Tharnar possessed the full flowering of culture and progress. We withdrew into a shell of complacency and each generation lived out its life with comfortable, methodical, sameness. And our robot-operated fleet was on guard to prevent any other race from annoying us, from disturbing us in the wisdom and serenity of our way of life.

"Fifteen thousand years ago, the last of us on Vendal returned to the more ideal world of Tharnar. And there was plenty of room for them on Tharnar by then. The population had been decreasing for thousands of years—it's decreasing right now. Women don't want to have children anymore—it's an inconvenience for them. They want comfort; the full stomach, the soft couch, the attention of their robots. And men are the same.

"There is no longer any incentive for living on Tharnar other than to duplicate the lives of our ancestors. There is nothing new, nothing to be done that has not already been done better. So we lapse into an existence of placid satisfaction with the status quo—we vegetate. We're like plants that have been seeded in the same field for so many centuries that the fertility of the soil is exhausted. This barren field in which we grow is our own form of culture.

"Do you see what the ultimate end will have to be, Vor?"

He had thought old Vor-Dergal would reply with a heated defense of Tharnarian civilization, but he did not. Instead, he said, "If the present trend continues, there will come a time when there will be more robots in the guard ships than there will be Tharnarians for them to guard. But is the other better, the destruction at the hands of the barbarians?"

"Destruction? It's within their power to destroy us, but why should they? It will be unpleasant for many Tharnarians to contemplate, but an unbiased study of the Terrans shows that they would not want the things we have on Tharnar and in the City; that they would not consider Tharnar and the City worth the trouble of conquest."

"A conjecture," Vor-Dergal said. "And, even if you are right and the Terrans never come to destroy us—what have we to gain by taking this risk?"

"New life. We've been too long in the barren field of our own culture. We've lost our curiosity, our desire to learn, our sense of humor that would permit us to make honest self-evaluations, our pride and courage. And in losing these things, we lost our racial urge to survive.

"Look at the City this morning, Vor. See how slowly it moves; listen to how still it is for a city that contains almost a million people. Do you know what this day is for the City? It's one more act, to be added to all the thousands of acts in the past, in the City's rehearsal for extinction.

"The Terrans have what we lost. They're a young race with a vitality that's like a fire where our own is like a dying spark. That's why I let those two go; why I want the others of their kind to know of Tharnar and come here. It's not too late for us; not yet too late for contact with these Terrans to give back to us all these things we lost."


In the pause following his words the quiet of the City was suddenly shattered by the thunder of The Cat's drives. It lifted, shining and slender and graceful, and hurled itself up into the blue sky. Tal-Karanth watched it until it was a bright star, far away and going out into the universe beyond, until the sound of its drives had faded and gone.

He looked away from the sky and back to the slowly moving, softly whispering City; the City that was dying and did not know it. He felt the stirring of an uneasiness within him; a strange non-physical desire for something. It was the first time in his life he had ever felt such a sensation; it was something so long gone from the Tharnarians that the Tharnarian word for it was obsolete and forgotten. But the Terran word for it was wanderlust.

"I almost wish I could have gone with them, Vor," he said. "They're going to try to reach the heart of the galaxy and see if they can find the answer to Creation. And we on Tharnar spend our lives sipping sweet drinks as we discuss trifles and wait for the sun to shine warm enough for us to emerge from our air-conditioned houses."

"If you're right in thinking that Terrans won't come to plunder Tharnar and the City," Vor-Dergal said, "then it would be interesting to know what those two find when they reach the center of the galaxy. If they don't get killed long before they reach it."

"I think any hostile forms of life they encounter will find them hard to kill," Tal-Karanth said. "We paid a high price for their capture, remember? There were two Terran proverbs behind the name of their ship. It took me quite a while to understand the second one but when I did, I realized the true extent of Terran determination and self-confidence.

"Their mission was to explore across the unknown regions of space. They knew it would be dangerous, very dangerous. So they named their ship 'The Cat' partly because of an old Terran proverb: 'Curiosity killed a cat.' But that was only half the reason behind the name. They intended to reach the center of the galaxy and they didn't intend to let anything stop them. So there was a second meaning behind the naming of their ship:

"'A cat has nine lives.'"

Friday, January 17, 2025

The Helpful Hand of God by Tom Godwin


The Helpful Hand of God ...

... Can be very helpful indeed. But of course, it's long been known that God helps those who wisely help themselves....

BY TOM GODWIN

 

ILLUSTRATED BY BARBERIS


(From "Vogarian Revised Encyclopedia":

SAINTS: Golden Saints, properly, Yellow Saints, a term of contempt applied by the Vogarian State Press to members of the Church Of The Golden Rule because of their opposition to the war then being planned against Alkoria. See CHURCHES.

CHURCH, GOLDEN RULE, OF THE: A group of reactionary fanatics who resisted State control and advocated social chaos through "Individual Freedom." They were liquidated in the Unity Purge but for two-thousand of the more able-bodied, who were sentenced to the moon mines of Belen Nine. The prison ship never arrived there and it is assumed that the condemned Saints somehow overpowered the guards and escaped to some remote section of the galaxy.)

 

Kane had observed Commander Y'Nor's bird-of-prey profile with detached interest as Y'Nor jerked his head around to glare again at the chronometer on the farther wall of the cruiser's command room.

"What's keeping Dalon?" Y'Nor demanded, transferring his glare to Kane. "Did you assure him that I have all day to waste?"

"He should be here any minute, sir," Kane answered.

"I didn't find the Saints, after others had failed for sixty years, to then sit and wait. The situation on Vogar was already very critical when we left." Y'Nor scowled at the chronometer again. "Every hour we waste waiting here will delay our return to Vogar by an hour—I presume you realize that?

"It does sound like a logical theory," Kane agreed.

Y'Nor's face darkened dangerously. "You will—"

Quick, hard-heeled footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. The guard officer, Dalon, stepped through the doorway and saluted; his eyes like ice under his pale brows and his uniform seeming to bristle with weapons.

"The native is here, sir," he said to Y'Nor.

He turned, and made a commanding gesture. The leader of the Saints appeared; the man whose resistance Y'Nor would have to break.

A frail, white-bearded old man, scuffed uncertainly into the room in straw sandals, his faded blue eyes peering nearsightedly toward Y'Nor.

"Go to the commander's desk," Dalon ordered in his metallic tones.

The old man obeyed and stopped before Y'Nor's desk, his hands clasped together as though to hide their trembling.

"You are Brenn," Y'Nor said, "and you hold, I believe, the impressive titles of Chief Executive of the Council Of Provinces and Supreme Elder of the Churches Of The Golden Rule?"

"Yes, sir." There was a faint quaver in old Brenn's voice. "I welcome you to our world, sir, and offer you our friendship."

"I understand you can produce Elusium X fuel?"

"Yes, sir. Our Dr. Larue told me the process is within our ability. We—" He hesitated. "We know you haven't enough fuel to return to Vogar."

Y'Nor stiffened in his chair. "What makes you think that?"

"It requires a great deal of fuel to get through the Whirlpool star cluster—and even sixty years ago, the Elusium ores of Vogar were almost exhausted."

Y'Nor smiled thinly. "That reminds me—you would be one of the Saints who murdered their guards and stole a ship to get here."

"We killed no guards, sir. In fact, all of them eventually joined our church."

"Where is the ship?"

"We had to cut it up for our start in mechanization."

"I presume you know you will pay for it?"

"It was taking us to our deaths in the radium mines—but we will pay whatever you ask."

"The first installment will be one thousand units of fuel, to be produced with the greatest speed possible."

"Yes, sir. But in return"—the old man stood a little straighter and an underlying resolve was suddenly revealed—"you must recognize us as a free race."

"Free? A colony founded by escaped criminals?"

"That is not true! We committed no crime, harmed no living thing...."

The hard, cold words of Y'Nor cut off his protest:

"This world is now a Vogarian possession. Every man, woman, and child upon it is a prisoner of the Vogarian State. There will be no resistance. This cruiser's disintegrators can destroy a town within seconds, your race within hours. Do you understand what I mean?"

The visible portion of old Brenn's face turned pale. He spoke at last in the bitter tones of frightened, stubborn determination:

"I offered you our friendship; I hoped you would accept, for we are a peaceful race. I should have known that you came only to persecute and enslave us. But the hand of God will reach down to help us and—"

Y'Nor laughed, a raucous sound like the harsh caw of the Vogarian vulture, and held up a hairy fist.

"This, old man, is the hand for you to center your prayers around. I want full-scale fuel production commenced within twenty-four hours. If this is done, and if you continue to unquestioningly obey all my commands, I will for that long defer your punishment as an escaped criminal. If this is not done, I will destroy a town exactly twenty-five hours from now—and as many more as may be necessary. And you will be publicly executed as a condemned criminal and an enemy of the Vogarian State."

Y'Nor turned to Dalon. "Take him away."


Scared sheep," Y'Nor said when Brenn was gone. "Tomorrow he'll say that he prayed and his god told him what to do—which will be to save his neck by doing as I command."

"I don't know—" Kane said doubtfully. "I think you're wrong about his conscience folding so easily."

"You think?" Y'Nor asked. "Perhaps I should remind you that the ability to think is usually characteristic of commanders rather than sub-ensigns. You will not be asked to try to think beyond the small extent required to comprehend simple commands."

Kane sighed with weary resignation. An unexpected encounter with an Alkorian battleship had sent the Vogarian cruiser fleeing through the unexplored Whirlpool star cluster—Y'Nor and Kane the two surviving commissioned officers—with results of negative value to those most affected: the world of the Saint had been accidentally discovered and he, Kane, had risen from sub-ensign to the shakily temporary position of second-in-command.

Y'Nor spoke again:

"Since Vogarian commanders do not go out and mingle with the natives of a subject world, you will act as my representative. I'll let Brenn sweat until tomorrow, then you will go see him. In that, and in all subsequent contacts with the natives, you will keep in mind the fact that I shall hold you personally responsible for any failure of my program."


The next afternoon, two hours before the deadline, Kane went out into the sweet spring air of the world the Saints had named Sanctuary.

It was a virgin world, rich in the resources needed by Vogar, with twenty thousand Saints as the primary labor supply. It was also, he thought, a green and beautiful world; almost a familiar world. The cruiser stood at the upper edge of the town and in the late afternoon sun the little white and brown houses were touched with gold, half hidden in the deep azure shadows of the tall trees and flowering vines that bordered the gently curving streets.

Restlessness stirred within him as he looked at them. It was like going back in time to the Lost Islands, that isolated little region of Vogar that had eluded collectivization until the year he was sixteen. It had been at the same time of year, in the spring, that the State Unity forces had landed. The Lost Island villages had been drowsing in the sun that afternoon, as this town was drowsing now—

He forced the memories from his mind, and the futile restlessness they brought, and went on past a golden-spired church to a small cottage that was almost hidden in a garden of flowers and giant silver ferns.

Brenn met him at the door, his manner very courteous, his eyes dark-shadowed with weariness as though he had not slept for many hours, and invited him inside.

When they were seated in the simply-furnished room, Brenn said, "You came for my decision, sir?"

"The commander sent me for it."

Brenn folded his thin hands, which seemed to have the trembling sometimes characteristic of the aged.

"Yesterday evening when I came from the ship, I prayed for guidance and I saw that I could only abide by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

"Which means," Kane asked, "that you will do what?"

"Should we of the Church be stranded upon an alien world, our fuel supply almost gone, we would ask for help. By our own Golden Rule we can do no less than give it."

"Eighteen hours ago I issued the order for full-scale, all-out fuel production. I've been up all night and day checking the operation."

Kane stared, surprised that Y'Nor should have so correctly predicted Brenn's reaction. He tried to see some change in the old man, some evidence of the personal fear that must have broken him so quickly, but there was only weariness, and a gentleness.

"So much fuel—" Brenn said. "Is Vogar still at war with Alkoria?"

Kane nodded.

"Once I saw some Alkorian prisoners of war on Vogar," Brenn said. "They are a peaceful, doglike race. They never wanted to go to war with Vogar."

Well—they still didn't want war but on Alkoria were Elusium ores and other resources that the Vogarian State had to have before it could carry out its long-frustrated ambition of galactic conquest.

"I'll go, now," Kane said, getting out of his chair, "and see what you're having done. The commander doesn't take anybody's word for anything."


Brenn called a turbo-car and driver to take him to the multi-purpose factory, which was located a short distance beyond the other side of town. The driver stopped before the factory's main office, where a plump, bald man was waiting, his scalp and glasses gleaming in the sunshine.

"I'm Dr Larue, sir," he greeted Kane. He had a face that under normal circumstance would have been genial. "Father Brenn said you were coming. I'm at your service, to show you what we're doing."

They went inside the factory, where the rush of activity was like a beehive. Machines and installations not needed for fuel production were being torn out as quickly as possible, others taking their place. The workers—he craned his neck to verify his astonished first-impression.

All of them were women.

"Father Brenn's suggestion," Larue said. "These girls are as competent as men for this kind of work and their use here permits the release of men to the outer provinces to procure the raw materials. As you know, our population is small and widely scattered—"

A crash sounded as a huge object nearby toppled and fell. Kane took an instinctive backward step, and bumped into something soft.

"Oh ... excuse me, sir!"

He turned, and had a confused vision of an apologetic smile in a pretty young face, of red curls knocked into disarray—and of amazingly short shorts and a tantalizingly wispy halter.

She recovered the notebook she had dropped and hurried on, leaving a faint cloud of perfume in her wake and a disturbing memory of curving, golden tan legs and a flat little stomach that had been exposed both north and south to the extreme limits of modesty.

"A personnel supervisor from Beachville," Larue said. "She was sunbathing when the plane arrived to pick her up and had no time to obtain other clothing. Father Brenn firmly insisted upon losing not one minute of time during this emergency."

A crane rumbled into view and its grapples seized the huge object that had fallen.

"Our central air-conditioning unit," Larue said. "It had to go."

"You're putting something else in its place, of course?"

"Oh yes. We must have more space but Father Brenn opposed the plan of building an annex as too dangerously time consuming. The only alternative is to tear out everything not absolutely essential."

Kane left shortly afterward, satisfied that the Saints were doing as Brenn had said.


He went back out in the spring sunshine where the turbo-car was still waiting for him, debated briefly with himself, and dismissed the driver. After so many weeks in the prison-like ship, it would be pleasant to walk again.



A grassy, tree-covered ridge ran like the swell of a green sea between the plant and the town. He stopped on top of it, where the town was almost hidden from view, and looked out across the wide valley. Shadows moved lazily across it as cotton-puff clouds drifted down the blue dome of the sky, great white birds like swans were soaring overhead, calling to one another in voices like the singing of violins, bringing again the memories of the Lost Islands—

"And the Vogarian lord gazed upon his world and found it good!"

He swung around, his hand dropping to his holstered blaster, and looked into the green, mocking eyes of a tawny-haired girl. She was beautiful, in the savage way that the hill leopards of Vogar were beautiful, and her hand was on a pistol in her belt.

Her eyes flickered from his blaster up to his face, bright with challenge.

"Want to try it?" she asked.

She wore a short skirt of some rough material and her knees were dusty, as though she had walked for a long way. These things he noticed only absently, his eyes going back to the bold, beautiful face. For twenty years he had been accustomed to the women of Vogar; colorless in their Party uniforms and men's haircuts, made even more drab by the masculine mannerisms they affected. Not since the spring the Lost Islands died had he seen a girl like the one before him.

"Well?" she asked. "Do you think you'll know me next time?"

He walked to her, while she watched him with catlike wariness.

"Hand me that pistol," he ordered.

"Try to take it, you Vogarian ape!"

He moved, and a moment later she was sitting on the ground, her eyes wide with dismayed surprise as he shoved the pistol in his own belt.

"Resisting a Vogarian with a deadly weapon calls for the death penalty," he said. "I suppose you know what I can do?"

She got up, defiance like a blaze about her.

"I'll tell you what you can do—you can go to hell!"

The thought came to him that there might be considerable pleasure in laying her over his knee and raising some blisters where they would do her the most good. He regretfully dismissed the idea as too undignified for even a sub-ensign and asked:

"Who are you, and what are you doing here with that pistol?"

She hesitated, then answered with insolent coolness:

"My name is Barbara Loring. I heard that you Vogarians had demanded that we agree to surrender. I came down from the hills to disagree."

"Is a resistance force meeting here?"

"Do you think you could make me tell you?"

"There are ways—but I'm not here to use them. I am not your enemy."

A little of the hostility faded from her face and she asked, "But how could a Vogarian ever not be our enemy?"

He could find no satisfactory answer to the question.

"I can tell you this," she said. "I know of no resistance organization. I can also tell you that we're not the race of cowards you think and we'll fight the instant Father Brenn gives the word."

"For one who speaks respectfully of Brenn," he said, "your recent words and actions weren't very religious and refined."

Fire flashed in the green eyes again. "Up in the Azure Mountains, where I come from, we're not very refined and we like being that way!"

"And why do you carry guns?" he asked.

"Because all along our frontier lines are rhino-stags, cliff bears, thunder hawks, and a lot of other overgrown carnivora that don't like us—that's why."

"I see." He took the pistol from his belt and held it out to her. "Go back to your mountains, where you belong, before you do something to get yourself executed."


Y'Nor, waiting impatiently in the ship, was grimly pleased by the news of Brenn's change of attitude.

"Exactly as I predicted, as you no doubt recall. How long until they can have a thousand units of fuel produced?"

"Larue estimated fourteen days at best."

Y'Nor tapped his thick fingers on his desk, scowling thoughtfully. "As little as seven extra days might force Vogar to accept the Alkorian peace terms because of lack of fuel—the natives can work twice as hard as they expected to. Tell old Brenn they will be given exactly seven days from sunrise tomorrow.

"And summon Dalon and Graver. I want them to make use of every man on the ship for a twenty-four hour guard-and-inspection system in the plant. The natives will get no opportunities for stalling or sabotage."


Brenn was writing at his book-laden table when Kane went into his cottage the next morning.

"These are called edicts," Brenn said, after greeting him, "but I possess no law-making powers and they are really only suggestions."

Brenn shoved the paper to one side. The script was somewhat different from that of Vogar.

The Vogarian inspection and guard system is no more than an expected precaution against sabotage. The Vogarians must be regarded as potential friends who now treat us with suspicion and arrogance only because they do not yet realize the sincerity of our desire to help them to any extent short of surrender—

Kane looked up from the uncompleted, surprisingly humble, edict and Brenn asked:

"Your commander, sir—he is now pleased with our actions?"

"Not exactly. He will disintegrate a town seven days from sunrise this morning if all the fuel isn't produced by then."

"Seven—only seven days?" There was startled disbelief on Brenn's face. "But how can he expect us to produce so much fuel in so short a time?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry—it's something I would have argued against if I hadn't had too much sense to try."

"Seven days—" Brenn said again. "We can only pray that God will let it be time enough."


Kane walked on to the plant. The hilltop where he had met the girl was deserted and he felt a vague disappointment.

The plant was hot without the air-conditioner, especially in the vicinity of the electronic roasters. The girls looked flushed and uncomfortable, but for the redhead who still wore her scanty sunsuit. The armed Vogarians looked incongruously out of place among the girls and were sweating profusely. Kane made a mental note to have them ordered into tropical uniforms.

He found Dalon prowling like a wolf among his guards.

"It's inconceivable that these women could ever be a menace," Dalon said, "but I'm taking no chances."

He saw Graver, the cruiser's Chief Technician; a thin, dry man who seemed to be as emotionless as the machines and electronic circuits that were his life.

"They're doing everything with astonishing competence," Graver said. "My technicians are watching like hawks, though."

Larue was not in his office. His secretary, a brown-eyed woman of strikingly intelligent appearance, said, "I'm sorry, sir—Dr. Larue had to go back to town for a few minutes. May I give him your message?"

"No, thanks," he said. "Father Brenn is probably performing that unpleasant chore right now."


Since Dalon and Graver seemed to have the situation at the plant well in hand, Kane decided to make a tour of the outer provinces where the ores were being mined. An efficient plant would be worthless if it did not receive sufficient ore.

He spent four days on the inspection tour; much longer than he had expected to be gone but made necessary by the fact that the small Elusium mines were widely scattered in rugged, roadless areas and he had to walk most of the distance. The single helicopter on Sanctuary was being used to fly the ore out but it was operating on a schedule that caused him to miss it each time.

Each mine was being worked by full day-and-night crews; in fact, by more men than necessary. The reason for that, and for the way the men silently withheld their hostility, was made apparent in a bit of conversation between two miners that he overheard one day:

"... So why all of us here when not this many are needed?"

"They say Father Brenn wanted to get all the men out of town, away from the cruiser, so there would be no trouble—and you know there would have been if we had stayed. He wants to get the cruiser on its way back to Vogar, they say, so we can get busy producing weapons to fight the Occupation force...."

He returned on the fifth evening of the allotted seven days and stopped by Brenn's cottage before going on to the ship. The old man was working in his garden, his trembling hands trying to tie up a red-flowered vine.

Kane tied it for him and he said, "Thank you, sir. Did you find the mining to be as I had said?"

"I found more than that. You know, don't you, that Y'Nor will return with the Occupation force a hundred days after leaving here?"

"Yes—I know that that is his intention."

"I understand that you're going to try to build weapons while he's gone. Don't, if you think anything of your people, let them do it. Nothing you could build in a hundred days would last a minute against a cruiser's disintegrators."

"I know," Brenn said. "We are supposed to choose between bloody, hopeless resistance and eternal slavery, aren't we? But why should either fate befall a peaceful race?"

Kane asked the logical question: "Why shouldn't it?"

"The laws of God have always been laws of justice and mercy. Not even the Vogarian State can change them."

He thought of the way the State had changed the Lost Islands in one bloody, violent afternoon. Brenn, watching his face, said:

"You are skeptical and bitter, my son—but you will learn that a harmless old man can speak with wisdom."

"No," he said. "There is neither justice nor mercy in the universe. I know from experience. A man can only choose between the lesser of two evils—and almost anything is less evil than Y'Nor when he's mad."


He went to the plant the next morning. Inside, wherever he looked, he saw girls in shorts and halters. The place seemed to be alive with partially clad women. He went to the nearest bulletin board and read Brenn's edict of four days before:

Since the excessively warm temperature of the plant causes much discomfort and thereby impairs the efficiency of all workers, and since maximum efficiency will be required to produce the fuel in the extremely short time permitted us, it is suggested that the cool sunsuits of the Beachville girls become the standard work uniform until further notice. These may be obtained for the asking in Department 5-A.

The next day's edict read:

Some have hesitated to follow yesterday's edict through a sense of modesty. This is most commendable. However, the situation is very critical, our lives depend upon the highest degree of efficiency we can attain, and a hot, miserable worker is not efficient. Your bodies are God's handwork—do not be ashamed of them.

The edict for the next day read simply, warningly:

THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.


The Vogarian guards and inspectors, now in tropical uniforms, still looked out of place with their holstered weapons but their former cold arrogance was gone and the attitude of the girls had changed from polite reserve to laughing, chattering friendliness.

He found Dalon in a far corner; cornered, literally, by the red-haired personnel supervisor who was spitting like a cat as she said:

"... Then tell your commander how one of your men tried to make one of my girls and got hit with a wrench for it! Ask him whether he wants us to produce fuel or make love! Go ahead—ask him! Or let me—I'll ask him!"

"You'll have to see to it that your girls don't lead my men on." Dalon ran his finger around his collar, worry on his face. "Florence, are you trying to get me ruined?"

"Then inform your men that there is a certain commandment we all believe in and anything beyond our willingness to be friends calls for marriage first."

"Marriage?" Dalon spluttered the word, recovered his poise with an effort, and said stiffly, "My men are soldiers, not suitors. I want them respected as such."

He strode away without seeing Kane. The girl stared after him, fuming, and Kane went in search of Graver.

Graver and the brown-eyed secretary were in Larue's office, their heads together over a flow sheet of some kind. The secretary excused herself and when she was gone, Kane asked:

"Where's Larue?"

"Checking the catalytic processors, I think, sir." Graver answered, almost vaguely. "Mar ... his secretary was just showing me how they improvised so much of their equipment so quickly." There was a strange light in Graver's usually expressionless eyes. "It's incredible!"

"Well—the commander gave them no time to waste, you know."

"Sir? Oh ... I was referring to her intelligence, sir. It's amazing that a woman should have such a thorough knowledge of such a complex process."

Kane felt the birth pains of the first dark premonition.

"If you don't want a thorough knowledge of the interior of State prison," he said in grim warning, "you'd better get that silly look off your face and concentrate on your duties. Tell Dalon the same order applies to him. And tell Larue that the commander reminds him they now have less than forty hours to finish the job."


He decided, again, to walk back to the ship. There was now a multitude of paths through the grass were girls had been walking to and from work. Two groups from the last shift-change were a short distance ahead of him, several of Dalon's guards and Graver's technicians among them, all of them talking and laughing.

In that area they could not be spied upon by Y'Nor with the ship's view-screen scanners and even as he watched, a tall, dark young guard put his arm around the girl walking close beside him. She twisted away from him and ran on to the next group, there to look back with a teasing toss of her head.

Kane watched both groups disappear over the hill, then followed, muttering thoughtfully. He felt he could safely assume—if anything could be said to be safe about the situation—that the lack of discipline he had just witnessed was typical of all the men. They were all young and healthy and for sixteen hours out of each day they were side by side with the almost nude, provocatively feminine, Sanctuary girls.

Their weakness was understandable. It was also very dangerous. Heads would roll if Y'Nor ever learned what was going on and it required no psychic ability to guess whose head would roll the fastest and farthest.

He would have to have it stopped, at once.

He took a short cut to Brenn's cottage, by a sleepy, shady street he had never been down before. Halfway along it was an open-air eating place of some kind, with tables placed about under the trees. There seemed to be no customers at the moment but he stopped, anyway, to take a closer look for errant guards.

A tawny head lifted at a table half hidden by a nearby tree and he looked into the surprised face of the mountain girl, Barbara.

"Well!" she said. "Come on over and let me offer you a glass of cyanide."

He walked over to her table. She was wearing a blouse and skirt similar to that of the day he had met her but the pistol was gone.

"I thought I told you to go back to your hills," he said.

"I decided it would be more fun to work in the plant and sabotage things."

"Let Y'Nor learn you said that and you'll be in a fix I can't help you out of."

"Should a Vogarian care?" But the jeering was gone as she said, "When you gave my pistol back to me—I thought it was a trick of some kind."

"I told you I wasn't your enemy."

"I know ... but it's hard for a Saint to believe any Vogarian could ever be anything else."

"It doesn't seem to be very hard for the girls in the plant," he observed glumly.

"Oh ... that's different." She made a gesture of light dismissal. "Those soldiers and technicians are good boys at heart—they haven't been brain-washed like you officers."

"That's interesting to know, I'm sure. I suppose—"

He stopped as a gray-haired woman came and set down a tray containing a sandwich and a mug. From the foamy top of the mug came the unmistakable aroma of beer.

"Do you Saints drink?" he asked incredulously.

"Sure. Why?"

"But your church—"

"Earth churches used to ban alcohol as sinful because it would cause a mean person to show his true character. My church is more sensible and works to change the person's character, instead."



She took a bite of the sandwich. "Cliff bear steak—it and beer go perfectly together. Shall I order you some?"

"No," he said, thinking of Y'Nor's fury if Y'Nor should learn he had had a friendly lunch with a native girl. "About your church—what kind of a church is it, anyway?"

"What its name implies. Heaven isn't for sale at the pulpit—everybody has to qualify for it by his own actions. We have to practice our belief—just looking pious and saying that we believe doesn't count."

He revised his opinion of the Saints, then asked, "But were you practicing your Golden Rule when you came to this town with a gun to shoot Vogarians?"

"For Vogarians we have a special Golden Rule that reads: Do unto Vogarians as they have come to do unto you. And you came here to enslave or kill us—remember?"

It could not be denied. When he did not answer she smiled at him; a smile surprisingly gentle and understanding.

"You honestly would like to be our friend, wouldn't you? The State psychiatrists didn't do a good job of brainwashing you, after all."

It was the first time since he was sixteen that anyone had spoken to him with genuine kindness. It gave him a strange feeling, a lonely sense of something rising up out of the past to mock him, and he changed the subject:

"Are the Azure Mountains the edge of your frontier?"

She nodded. "Beyond is the Emerald Plain, a great, wide plain, and beyond it are mountain ranges that have never been named or explored. I'm going into them some day and—"


Time passed with astonishing speed as he talked with the girl and it was late in the afternoon when he continued on to Brenn's cottage. He put the thoughts of her from his mind and told Brenn of the too-warm association between the girls and the Vogarians.

"But it is only friendship," Brenn said soothingly. "You can assure your commander that nothing immoral is being done."

"If he knew what was going on, it would be my neck. It has to be stopped. Write an edict—do anything that will stop it at once."

Brenn stroked his white beard thoughtfully. "I'm sorry this unforeseen situation has occurred, sir. Will you have strict orders to the same effect given your men?"

"There's a severe penalty for unauthorized fraternization. I'll see that they're well reminded of it."

"I'll write another edict, at once, forbidding the girls to speak to your men, sir."


Y'Nor was pacing the floor when Kane went to the ship, his face black and ugly with anger.

"Have you been blind?" he demanded.

Kane tried to swallow a sinking feeling, wondering just how much Y'Nor had seen, and said, "Sir?"

"My guards—my so-called guards—how long have they been strolling back from the plant in company with the native women?"

"Oh," he said, feeling a great relief that Y'Nor had not seen the true situation, "it's only that some of the out-going shifts coincide, sir, and—"

"You know, don't you, that military men march to and from duty in military formation?"

"Yes, sir."

"You are aware of the importance of discipline?"

"Yes, sir."

"You are further aware of the fact that you, Dalon, and Graver, will be guilty of treason if this lack of discipline imperils my plans in any way?"

"Yes, sir."

"You have heard of the punishment for treason?"

"Yes, sir."


He went below when the unpleasant business with Y'Nor was finally over. It was the beginning of the eight-hour sleep period for Dalon and Graver but they were still up, sitting on their bunks and staring dreamily into space. It was only belatedly, almost fuzzily, that they became aware of his glowering presence in the doorway.

"I bring you glad tidings," he said, "from the commander's own lips. The multiple-gallows at State prison is still in perfect working order, especially the first three trapdoors—"

The last day dawned, bright and sunny, and he went to see Brenn.

"I had the new edict posted immediately," Brenn said. "I hope it will undo the damage."

"Let's see it," Kane requested and Brenn handed him the handwritten original. It was:

Despite our affection for the Vogarians among us, we must not endanger them by any longer talking to them. A Vogarian military rule is now being enforced which forbids Vogarians to speak to Sanctuary girls except in the line of duty. There is a severe penalty for those who disobey this rule.

It must also be pointed out, sternly to the Sanctuary girls and respectfully to the Vogarians, that flight into the uninhabited Sanctuary mountains would result in execution for the fleeing couples if Commander Y'Nor should ever find them.

"What's this?" Kane demanded, pointing to the last paragraph.

"Why—a warning, sir."

"Warning ... it's a suggestion!"

"A suggestion?" Brenn lifted his hands in shocked protest. "But, sir, how could anyone think—"

"I, personally, wouldn't give a damn if the entire crew was too love-sick to eat. But the commander does and my future welfare, including the privilege of breathing, depends upon my retaining what passes for his good will."

"Good heavens—I shall have this edict removed from the bulletin boards at once!"

"A great idea. It should fix up everything to lock the stable door now that the horse is stolen."


He went to the plant and felt the air of resentment as soon as he stepped inside. Dalon was patrolling among his men, his haggard face becoming more haggard each time the red-haired personnel supervisor went by with her hips swinging and her head held high in hurt, aloof silence. The guards were pacing their beats in wordless quiet, Graver's technicians were speaking only in the line of duty. The girls were not talking even to one another but in the soft, melting glances they gave the Vogarians they said We understand in a manner more eloquent than any words.

In fact, far too eloquent. He considered the plan of having Brenn forbid the girls to look at the guards, discarded that as impractical, for a moment wildly considered ordering the guards not to look at the girls, discarded that as even more impractical, and went, muttering, to Larue's office.

Larue was at his desk, his face lined with fatigue.

"It's been a difficult job," he said, "but we'll meet the deadline."

"Good," Kane answered. "Did Brenn phone you about having that edict removed?"

"Ah—which one?"

"Which one? You mean...."

He turned and ran from the office.

A girl was removing the offending edict from the nearest bulletin board. Another, later, one proclaimed:

We must abandon as hopeless the suggestion of some that if there must be an Occupation force, we would like for it to be these men whom we have come to respect, and many of us to love. This can never be. Only Commander Y'Nor will leave the ship at Vogar, there to select his own Occupation force, while the men now among us continue directly on to the Alkorian war from which many of them will never return.

We must not resent the fact that on this, their last day among us, these men are forbidden to speak to us or to let us speak to them nor say that this is unfair when Commander Y'Nor's Occupation troops will be permitted to associate freely with us. These things are beyond our power to change. We must accept the inevitable and show only by our silent conduct the love we have for these warriors whom we shall never see again.

Kane gulped convulsively, read it again, and hurried back to Larue's office.

"How long has that last edict been up?" he demanded.

"About twelve hours."

"Then every shift has seen it?"

"Ah ... yes. Why—is something wrong with it?"

"That depends on the viewpoint. I want them removed at once. And tell that sanctified old weasel that if this last edict of his gets me hanged, which it probably will, I'll see to it that he gets the same medicine."

He went back into the plant and made his way through the bare-legged, soft-eyed girls, looking for Dalon. He overheard a guard say in low, bitter tones to another: "... Maybe eight hours on Vogar, and we can't leave the ship, then on to the battle front for us while Y'Nor and his home guard favorites come back here and pick out their harems—"

He found Dalon and said to him, "Watch your men. They're resentful. Some of them might even desert—and Y'Nor wasn't joking about that gallows for us last night."

"I know." Dalon ran his finger around the collar that seemed to be getting increasingly tighter for him. "I've warned them that the Occupation troops would get them in the end."


He found Graver at a dial-covered panel. The brown-eyed secretary—her eyes now darker and more appealing than ever—was just leaving, a notebook in her hand.

"Since when," Kane asked, "has it been customary for technicians to need the assistance of secretaries to read a dial?"

"But, sir, she is a very good technician, herself. Her paper work is now done and she was helping me trace a circuit that was fluctuating."

Kane peered suspiciously into Graver's expressionless face.

"Are you sure it was a circuit that was doing the fluctuating?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you know that half of Dalon's guards seem to be ready to jump ship?"

"Yes, sir. But their resentment is not characteristic of my technicians."

He realized, with surprise, that that was true. And Graver, in contrast to Dalon's agitation, had the calm, purposeful air of a man who had pondered deeply upon an unpleasant future and had taken steps to prevent it.

"I have no desire to hang, sir, and I have convinced my men that it would be suicide for part of them to desert. I shall do my best to convince Dalon's guards of the same thing."

He went back through the plant, much of his confidence restored, and back to the ship.

Y'Nor was pacing the floor again, his impatience keying him to a mood more vile than ever.

"This ship will leave at exactly twenty-three fifteen, Vogar time," Y'Nor said. "Any man not on it then will be regarded as a deserter and executed as such when I return with the Occupation force."

He stopped his pacing to stare at Kane with the ominous anticipation of a spider surveying a captured fly.

"Although I can operate this ship with a minimum of two crewmen, I shall expect you to make certain that every man is on board."

Kane went back out of the ship, his confidence shaken again, and back to the plant.


Night came at last and, finally, the first shielded tank of fuel was delivered to the ship. Others followed, one by one, as the hours went by.

It was almost morning when Graver came to him and said, "My duties and those of my men are finished here, sir. Shall we go to prepare the ship for flight?"

"Yes—get busy at it," Kane answered. "Don't give the commander any excuse to get any madder than he already is."

An hour later the last of the fuel went into the last tank and was hauled away. Someone said, "That's all," and a switch clicked. A machine rumbled off into silence, followed by others. Control panels went dark. Within a minute there was not a machine running, not a panel lighted.

Dalon's whistle for Guard Assembly sounded, high and shrill. A girl's voice called to one of the guards: "Hurry back to your ship, Billy—the thunder hawks might get you if you stayed—" and broke on a sob. Another girl said, "Hush, Julia—it's not his fault."

He went out of the plant, and past Larue's office. He saw that the brown-eyed secretary was gone, her desk clean. Larue was still there, looking very tired. He did not go in. The fuel had been produced, he would never see Larue again.

He took the path that led toward town. Part of the Whirlpool star cluster was still above the horizon, a white blaze of a thousand suns, and the eastern sky was lightening with the first rays of dawn. A dozen girls were ahead of him, their voices a low murmur as they hurried back toward town. There was an undertone of tension, all of the former gaiety gone. The brief week of make-believe was over and the next Vogarians to come would truly be their enemy.

He came to the hilltop where he had met the mountain girl, thought of her with irrational longing, and suddenly she was there before him.

The pistol was again in her belt.

"You came with all the stealth of a plains ox," she said. "I could have shot you a dozen times over."

"Are we already at war?" he asked.

"We Saints have to let you Vogarians kill some of us, first—our penalty for being ethical."

"Listen to me," he said. "We tried to fight the inevitable in the Lost Islands. When the sun went down that day, half of us were dead and the rest prisoners."

"And you rose from prisoner to officer because you were too selfish to keep fighting for what was right."

"I saw them bury the ones who insisted on doing that."

"And you want us to meekly bow down, here?"

"I have no interest of any kind in this world—I'll never see it again—but I know from experience what will happen to you and your people if you try to fight. I don't want that to happen. Do you think that because a man isn't a blind chauvinist, he has to be a soulless monster?"

"No," she said in a suddenly small voice. "But I had hoped ... we were talking that day of the mountains beyond the Emerald Plain and a frontier to last for centuries ... it was just idle talk but I thought maybe that when the showdown came you would be on our side, after all."

She drew a deep breath that came a little raggedly and said with a lightness that was too forced:

"You don't mind if I have a silly sentimental fondness for my world, do you? It's the only world I have. Maybe you would understand if you could see the Azure Mountains in the spring ... but you never will, will you? Because you lied when you said you weren't my enemy and now I know you are and I"—the lightness faltered and broke—"am yours ... and the next time we meet one will have to kill the other."

She turned away, and vanished among the trees like a shadow.

He was unaware of the passage of time as he stood there on the hill that was silent with her going and remembered the day he had met her and the way the song swans had been calling. When he looked up at the sky, it was bright gold in the east and the blazing stars of the Whirlpool were fading into invisibility. He looked to the west, where the road wound its long way out of the valley, and he thought he could see her trudging up it, tiny and distant. He looked at his watch and saw he had just time enough to reach the ship before it left.


Brenn was standing by his gate, watching the dawn flame into incandescence and looking more frail and helpless than ever. The cruiser towered beyond, blotting out half the dawn sky like a sinister omen. A faint, deep hum was coming from it as the drive went into the preliminary phase that preceded take-off.

"You have only seconds left to reach the ship," Brenn said. "You have already tarried almost too long."

"You're looking at a fool," he answered, "who is going to tarry in the Azure Mountains and beyond the Emerald Plain for a hundred days. Then the Occupation men will kill him."

There was no surprise on Brenn's face but it seemed to Kane that the old man smiled in his beard. For the second time since he was sixteen, Kane heard someone speak to him with gentle understanding:

"Although you have not been of much help to my plans, your intentions were good. I was sure that in the end this would be your decision. I am well pleased with you, my son."

A whine came from the ship and the boarding ramp flicked up like a disappearing tongue. The black opening of the air lock seemed to wink, then was solid, featureless metal as the doors slid shut.

"Bon voyage, Y'Nor!" Kane said. "We'll be waiting for you with our bows and arrows."

"There is no one on the ship but Y'Nor," Brenn said. "Graver saw to it that the Ready lights were all going on the command room control board, then he and all the others followed my ... suggestion."

Kane remembered Graver's calmness and his statement concerning his men: "... It would be suicide for part of them to desert."

For part of them. But if every last one deserted—

The drives of the ship roared as Y'Nor pushed a control button and the ship lifted slowly. The roaring faltered and died as Y'Nor pushed another button which called for a crewman who was not there. The ship dropped back with a ponderous thud, careened, and fell with a force that shook the ground. It made no further sound or movement.

He stared at the silent, impotent ship, finding it hard to realize that there would be no hundred-day limit for him; that the new world, the boundless frontier—and Barbara—would be his for as long as he lived.

"Poor Commander Y'Nor," Brenn said. "The air lock is now under the ship and we shall have to dig a tunnel to rescue him."

"Don't hurry about it," Kane advised. "Let him sweat in the dark for a few days with his desk wrapped around his neck. It will do him good."

"We are a kind and harmless race, we could never do anything like that."

"Kind? I believe you. But harmless? You made monkeys out of Vogar's choicest fighting men."

"Please do not use such an uncouth expression. I was only the humble instrument of a greater Power. I only ... ah ... encouraged the natural affection between man and maid, the love that God intended them to have."

"But did you practice your Golden Rule? You saw to it that fifty young men were forced to associate day after day with hundreds of almost-naked girls. Would you really have wanted the same thing done to you if you had been in their place?"

"Would I?" There was a gleam in the old eyes that did not seem to come from the brightness of the dawn. "I, too, was once young, my son—what do you think?"