X Marks the Pedwalk by Fritz Leiber

---

X MARKS THE PEDWALK

BY FRITZ LEIBER

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

---

This is how it all began—the terrible
civil strife that devastates our world!

---

Based in material in Ch. 7--"First Clashes of the Wheeled and Footed Sects"--of Vol. 3 of Burger's monumental History of Traffic, published by the Foundation for Twenty-Second Century Studies.

The raggedy little old lady with the big shopping bag was in the exact center of the crosswalk when she became aware of the big black car bearing down on her.

Behind the thick bullet-proof glass its seven occupants had a misty look, like men in a diving bell.

She saw there was no longer time to beat the car to either curb. Veering remorselessly, it would catch her in the gutter.

Useless to attempt a feint and double-back, such as any venturesome child executed a dozen times a day. Her reflexes were too slow.

Polite vacuous laughter came from the car's loudspeaker over the engine's mounting roar.

From her fellow pedestrians lining the curbs came a sigh of horror.

The little old lady dipped into her shopping bag and came up with a big blue-black automatic. She held it in both fists, riding the recoils like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bronco.

Aiming at the base of the windshield, just as a big-game hunter aims at the vulnerable spine of a charging water buffalo over the horny armor of its lowered head, the little old lady squeezed off three shots before the car chewed her down.

From the right-hand curb a young woman in a wheelchair shrieked an obscenity at the car's occupants.

Smythe-de Winter, the driver, wasn't happy. The little old lady's last shot had taken two members of his car pool. Bursting through the laminated glass, the steel-jacketed slug had traversed the neck of Phipps-McHeath and buried itself in the skull of Horvendile-Harker.

Braking viciously, Smythe-de Winter rammed the car over the right-hand curb. Pedestrians scattered into entries and narrow arcades, among them a youth bounding high on crutches.

But Smythe-de Winter got the girl in the wheelchair.

Then he drove rapidly out of the Slum Ring into the Suburbs, a shred of rattan swinging from the flange of his right fore mudguard for a trophy. Despite the two-for-two casualty list, he felt angry and depressed. The secure, predictable world around him seemed to be crumbling.

---

While his companions softly keened a dirge to Horvy and Phipps and quietly mopped up their blood, he frowned and shook his head.

"They oughtn't to let old ladies carry magnums," he murmured.

Witherspoon-Hobbs nodded agreement across the front-seat corpse. "They oughtn't to let 'em carry anything. God, how I hate Feet," he muttered, looking down at his shrunken legs. "Wheels forever!" he softly cheered.

The incident had immediate repercussions throughout the city. At the combined wake of the little old lady and the girl in the wheelchair, a fiery-tongued speaker inveighed against the White-Walled Fascists of Suburbia, telling to his hearers, the fabled wonders of old Los Angeles, where pedestrians were sacrosanct, even outside crosswalks. He called for a hobnail march across the nearest lawn-bowling alleys and perambulator-traversed golf courses of the motorists.

At the Sunnyside Crematorium, to which the bodies of Phipps and Horvy had been conveyed, an equally impassioned and rather more grammatical orator reminded his listeners of the legendary justice of old Chicago, where pedestrians were forbidden to carry small arms and anyone with one foot off the sidewalk was fair prey. He broadly hinted that a holocaust, primed if necessary with a few tankfuls of gasoline, was the only cure for the Slums.

Bands of skinny youths came loping at dusk out of the Slum Ring into the innermost sections of the larger doughnut of the Suburbs slashing defenseless tires, shooting expensive watchdogs and scrawling filthy words on the pristine panels of matrons' runabouts which never ventured more than six blocks from home.

Simultaneously squadrons of young suburban motorcycles and scooterites roared through the outermost precincts of the Slum Ring, harrying children off sidewalks, tossing stink-bombs through second-story tenement windows and defacing hovel-fronts with sprays of black paint.

Incident—a thrown brick, a cut corner, monster tacks in the portico of the Auto Club—were even reported from the center of the city, traditionally neutral territory.

The Government hurriedly acted, suspending all traffic between the Center and the Suburbs and establishing a 24-hour curfew in the Slum Ring. Government agents moved only by centipede-car and pogo-hopper to underline the point that they favored neither contending side.

The day of enforced non-movement for Feet and Wheels was spent in furtive vengeful preparations. Behind locked garage doors, machine-guns that fired through the nose ornament were mounted under hoods, illegal scythe blades were welded to oversize hubcaps and the stainless steel edges of flange fenders were honed to razor sharpness.

While nervous National Guardsmen hopped about the deserted sidewalks of the Slum Ring, grim-faced men and women wearing black armbands moved through the webwork of secret tunnels and hidden doors, distributing heavy-caliber small arms and spike-studded paving blocks, piling cobblestones on strategic roof-tops and sapping upward from the secret tunnels to create car-traps. Children got ready to soap intersections after dark. The Committee of Pedestrian Safety, sometimes known as Robespierre's Rats, prepared to release its two carefully hoarded anti-tank guns.

---

At nightfall, under the tireless urging of the Government, representatives of the Pedestrians and the Motorists met on a huge safety island at the boundary of the Slum Ring and the Suburbs.

Underlings began a noisy dispute as to whether Smythe-de Winter had failed to give a courtesy honk before charging, whether the little old lady had opened fire before the car had come within honking distance, how many wheels of Smythe-de's car had been on the sidewalk when he hit the girl in the wheelchair and so on. After a little while the High Pedestrian and the Chief Motorist exchanged cautious winks and drew aside.

The red writhing of a hundred kerosene flares and the mystic yellow pulsing of a thousand firefly lamps mounted on yellow sawhorses ranged around the safety island illumined two tragic, strained faces.

"A word before we get down to business," the Chief Motorist whispered. "What's the current S.Q. of your adults?"

"Forty-one and dropping," the High Pedestrian replied, his eyes fearfully searching from side to side for eavesdroppers. "I can hardly get aides who are halfway compos mentis."

"Our own Sanity Quotient is thirty-seven," the Chief Motorist revealed. He shrugged helplessly.... "The wheels inside my people's heads are slowing down. I do not think they will be speeded up in my lifetime."

"They say Government's only fifty-two," the other said with a matching shrug.

"Well, I suppose we must scrape out one more compromise," the one suggested hollowly, "though I must confess there are times when I think we're all the figments of a paranoid's dream."

Two hours of concentrated deliberations produced the new Wheel-Foot Articles of Agreement. Among other points, pedestrian handguns were limited to a slightly lower muzzle velocity and to .38 caliber and under, while motorists were required to give three honks at one block distance before charging a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Two wheels over the curb changed a traffic kill from third-degree manslaughter to petty homicide. Blind pedestrians were permitted to carry hand grenades.

Immediately the Government went to work. The new Wheel-Foot Articles were loudspeakered and posted. Detachments of police and psychiatric social hoppers centipedaled and pogoed through the Slum Ring, seizing outsize weapons and giving tranquilizing jet-injections to the unruly. Teams of hypnotherapists and mechanics scuttled from home to home in the Suburbs and from garage to garage, in-chanting a conformist serenity and stripping illegal armament from cars. On the advice of a rogue psychiatrist, who said it would channel off aggressions, a display of bull-fighting was announced, but this had to be canceled when a strong protest was lodged by the Decency League, which had a large mixed Wheel-Foot membership.

At dawn, curfew was lifted in the Slum Ring and traffic reopened between the Suburbs and the Center. After a few uneasy moments it became apparent that the status quo had been restored.

---

Smythe-de Winter tooled his gleaming black machine along the Ring. A thick steel bolt with a large steel washer on either side neatly filled the hole the little old lady's slug had made in the windshield.

A brick bounced off the roof. Bullets pattered against the side windows.

Smythe-de ran a handkerchief around his neck under his collar and smiled.

A block ahead children were darting into the street, cat-calling and thumbing their noses. Behind one of them limped a fat dog with a spiked collar.

Smythe-de suddenly gunned his motor. He didn't hit any of the children, but he got the dog.

A flashing light on the dash showed him the right front tire was losing pressure. Must have hit the collar as well! He thumbed the matching emergency-air button and the flashing stopped.

He turned toward Witherspoon-Hobbs and said with thoughtful satisfaction, "I like a normal orderly world, where you always have a little success, but not champagne-heady; a little failure, but just enough to brace you."

Witherspoon-Hobbs was squinting at the next crosswalk. Its center was discolored by a brownish stain ribbon-tracked by tires.

"That's where you bagged the little old lady, Smythe-de," he remarked. "I'll say this for her now: she had spirit."

"Yes, that's where I bagged her," Smythe-de agreed flatly. He remembered wistfully the witchlike face growing rapidly larger, her jerking shoulders in black bombazine, the wild white-circled eyes. He suddenly found himself feeling that this was a very dull day.

Heavenly Gifts by Aaron L. Kolom

---

HEAVENLY GIFTS

BY AARON L. KOLOM

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

---

Heartfelt prayers deserve
an answer—but it may be
in a peculiar way!

---

A blur of silent motion tugged suddenly at the corner of Mrs. Frisbee's eye. She looked up from her knitting. An electric blanket, deep blue with satiny edges, was materializing, neatly folded, in the center of her tiny kitchen table.

She closed her eyes briefly for a silent prayer of thanks. At midnight she would send out those thanks, followed by a request for a bicycle for the paper boy.

Contentedly she raised herself from her chair. She weighed mentally whether there was time to wrap the blanket as a gift before she had to leave for work. She decided against it. It wasn't as if it were an anniversary or birthday present. It was just something she knew her nice landlady, Mrs. Upjohn, needed but couldn't afford.

Mrs. Upjohn was in her room. With an embarrassed dismissal of thanks Mrs. Frisbee presented the blanket to her, then hurried to catch the bus at the corner.

The corridor clock showed a few minutes to midnight as Mrs. Frisbee, carrying her mop and pail, entered the control room. At the slight noise Dr. Morrow looked up from his paper-littered desk. A vague smile and wave were directed generally in her direction. With a glance at his watch he sighed and returned to his work. Mrs. Frisbee waited patiently and quietly. A few minutes later Dr. Morrow looked up again, then yawned and stretched luxuriously.

"Time for lunch, I guess." He stood up, setting a few dials on the glistening control panel before him. "See you in forty-five minutes," he called cheerily.

With the sound of his heels echoing down the hall, Mrs. Frisbee gingerly sat down in his chair. Taking a sheet of paper from her apron, she meticulously marked down the dial settings, exactly as he had left them.

Except for the diminishing sound of footsteps, the laboratory building was silent, with the unique quiet of a deserted structure. Through the window she could see the gigantic antenna aiming toward the stars. As always she experienced a momentary thrill of combined excitement and reverential awe.

She waited till she heard the closing of the front door of the building. Then with practiced fingers she flicked some switches. The equipment hummed quietly. She swung toward the keyboard and began picking out letters with her forefingers. Finally she took a page from a mail-order catalogue from her purse and slowly typed out the catalogue numbers. She didn't hurry. Dr. Morrow would now be finishing his lunch in his car. Afterwards he would take a stroll around the laboratory grounds. He was a man of regular, dependable habit.

---

It had all begun one evening about five months before, when Mrs. Frisbee had attended a revivalist meeting. Simple soul that she was, with her increasing years and the passing of many of her friends, Mrs. Frisbee had begun to experience a desire to make peace with her maker.

"You are all sinners," the preacher had thundered, "and you need the most powerful voice in the world to speak for you!"

It made quite an impression!

It seemed the hand of providence when Mrs. Frisbee learned that a newly completed astronomical-radio station was seeking janitorial personnel. She quickly applied and was hired.

It was at first only a vague germ of an idea. Slowly the idea crystallized as she inquired of the technicians just how it was operated.

It wasn't really difficult, she learned. An electronic typewriter was used, converting letters and words into mathematical language, then automatically beaming the data out into the vastness of space. It took time, but she even learned what dials and switches to operate so there would be no record of her messages.

The station had been established to try to contact intelligences on other planets or star systems. An idiotic waste, the critics complained. Mrs. Frisbee agreed. Except for occasional space static nothing had ever been received. Mrs. Frisbee knew this from hearing the men talk. Still they kept trying, constantly listening, and at regular intervals transmitting basic mathematics, recognizable by any civilization.

She had arranged her work so that her midnight break came when she was cleaning the control room. There was only a single scientist on night duty, currently Dr. Morrow, who left the equipment on automatic reception while on his lunch break. Mrs. Frisbee never needed but half the time he was gone.

Her first prayer had been a brief one. Gripped with religious fervor Mrs. Frisbee had typed awkwardly, one finger at a time. The whirring of the equipment as it transmitted her words of devotion out to the farthest reaches of space was as balm to her soul.

It was a month later that she decided to test her contact with the divine with a simple request, an apron she had seen in a catalogue. It would be an ideal birthday present for Mrs. Upjohn, she thought. Days and weeks passed and Mrs. Frisbee had almost lost faith, when suddenly one evening, as she was quietly sewing, the apron appeared, bright and gay on her small table. She rubbed her eyes. It was truly wondrous. The thanks she gave in that evening's message were profuse.

As time passed she asked for other items from the catalogue for gifts for other friends. All were delivered miraculously after a few days.

Mrs. Frisbee was at peace—with the world, with herself, and with her maker. Her simple life was full. She had a proven faith, with miracles occurring as she desired them. There was no end to the people she met who needed things, and seemingly no difficulty in having her requests fulfilled. Quite often she was tempted to explain it all to her good friend, Mrs. Upjohn. But something always kept her from telling, a feeling that it might be sacrilegious somehow to discuss it.

Only one thing occasionally puzzled Mrs. Frisbee. Though she always ordered the presents from the mail-order catalogue, they seemed superior in quality and workmanship to any purchased articles....

---

The barracks-room language coming from General Collin's office caused his aide to raise his eyebrows. He hadn't heard the General use such terms since Korea.

General Collin was even more incredulous than the colonel, the major and the captain had been before him, as each was told.

"It's impossible," he exploded into the telephone. "When did you blankety idiots first discover it?" After a brief pause he barked, "Double the guard!" A moment later he barked again, "Damn it, then triple it!"

He sat back stunned. What would the chief say? He shuddered at the thought.

His eyes narrowed reflectively, and after a moment he reached again for the phone.

"Have you contacted any other bases?" His voice was now quiet and low. After a brief pause he added, "Come to my office as soon as possible with everything you have on the situation."

He steeled himself for the next call, reluctantly reaching for the special red telephone. His orderly mind presented the facts he had learned as clearly as possible.

"I don't know," he answered a question. "No sir, I haven't contacted AEC or State yet. I'd like to check on it further." Then finally, "Complete secrecy, yes, sir. I'm making a thorough security check."

An undercurrent of frantic excitement quickly engulfed Washington's top councils, involving even the President. The National Security Council and Chiefs of Staff were called into emergency session. Grim-visaged star-shouldered officers hurried through Pentagon corridors. Newsmen knew only that something quite serious was taking place, something that vitally affected the national security. Whispers of a "secret Russian weapon" began to be heard. From the Pentagon, orders went out to every military base. CIA agents and military scientists were hurriedly called, were asked enigmatic questions and were given grim instructions.

A few days later, a call came again to General Collin. He had half-expected it. He reached again for the red phone.

"It's happened again!" He bit off his words in his exasperation. "Yes! Right in front of a television monitor. The film is being rushed to Washington." He listened a moment, then nodded. "That's right, just disappeared! Completely dematerialized!"

He received a bit of a shock in turn. "Two other bases also? Good God!" Then, "Yes, sir, I'll fly in to-night."

At the top level meeting the next morning the Under-Secretary of State interrupted the discussion. "We have just received a peculiar message from the British Embassy," he said. "They are asking about the security of—" He lowered his voice even though the room was sound-proof.

Everyone about the table looked soberly at each other.

Security Council meetings became continuous around-the-clock sessions. The top civilian scientists of the country were brought in and the situation explained to them. As one they shook their heads.

A Nobel prize winner in Physics put it flatly. "It is beyond our comprehension, far beyond the state of our knowledge!"

---

Central intelligence reported daily on the political and scientific activities in key spots of the world. A spurt of high-level meetings in Moscow was noticed and duly reported.

This ominous news was received with a depression bordering on hysteria.

"We have underestimated their technological advancement again," said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We must increase our production efforts. We must solve this puzzle—" he spoke slowly, in measured tones of the utmost gravity—"even at the expense of all other research efforts! This must have the highest possible priority!"

Orders to this effect were quickly issued.

"I don't understand the Soviet mind," puzzled the Secretary of State. "At the diplomatic level they are seemingly going farther than ever before in making concessions and overtures toward peace!"

"And while they try to lull us politically," fumed the Secretary of Defense, "they are leaving us practically defenseless with their scientific thievery!"

He slammed the table with his fist. "We must be on our guard! We must increase our research efforts! And SAC must be placed on an emergency alert, ready for instant retaliation!"

And each day, despite the frenzied increase in mining and refining activity, a report on the dwindling military capabilities of the United States was given the President. The day finally arrived when he gravely addressed the Security Council.

"As of today," the President said, "we are unable adequately to defend our country! Our production capabilities cannot keep up with what we are losing. We are left only with our conventional weapons." He paused. "God help us, we are at their mercy!"

A worried-looking Under-Secretary rushed into the Council chamber and whispered something into the President's ear. The President's face grew white. He rose slowly.

"Gentlemen." His quiet voice reflected a rigid control. "Mr. Khrushchev is placing a personal call to me on a matter, which he says, is of the utmost urgency." He paused. "Please wait until I return."

The group of men, carrying on their shoulders the responsibility of the defense of the United States of America and all the free world, sat in quiet dejection, heads bowed. Long minutes passed. No one felt up to meeting the eyes of anyone else about the table.

As the President re-entered the chamber, the members of the Security Council rose. The atmosphere was heavy with foreboding.

He spoke slowly and clearly, his face expressionless. "Mr. Khrushchev says he desires to establish a true peace with us. He will agree to all our terms: complete inspection, atomic test ban, disarmament, anything of a reasonable nature!"

He looked around the shocked room. Relief, puzzlement, suspicion, were mirrored on various faces.

"I'm sure I don't understand all this," the President continued. "I doubt if any of you do. But if the Soviet Union is sincere in desiring a true peace—!" His voice became very quiet. "We shall certainly meet them halfway!"

---

Veux looked up from the account book with a grunt of approval, then reached for the drink his partner held out.

"Well," Tai said. "Didn't I tell you business would be good this period?"

Veux nodded and downed his drink. "Excellent, but I see that most of our profit came from native trade!" His eyes narrowed. "It looks illegal! Are you supplying arms for a revolution somewhere?"

Tai's smile became contemptuous. "No, it's just local products, native trivia. We drop-chuted survey robots, then called them back and installed a delivery system. The robot picks up samples by dematerialization and I synthesize them."

"But so much profit! Aren't there any complaints?"

Tai laughed. "On the contrary, I get thanked after each delivery, plus a request for something else. Natives are the same everywhere. Just suckers, waiting to be trimmed!"

"I don't want to get into any trouble over this!" Veux looked dubious.

Tai refilled the glasses. "Well, our business charter says we must fill and deliver any legitimate order we get!"

"If it's legitimate!" Veux studied the deep ruby of his drink. "Which of our colonies is it?"

Tai hesitated slightly. "It's not one of our colonies. The orders are from subsystem CQ!"

"What!" Veux's eyes flashed. "You know we're not supposed to have any contact at all with them! They're under official observation!"

"Don't worry, don't worry." Tai's voice exuded confidence. "No one can prove we've broken a single law."

"I don't understand."

Tai's expression was one of exaggerated innocence. "Everything is automatic. Radio orders for goods are received, translated and filled, with robot delivery." He winked at his partner. "How can anyone prove I ever bothered to check the source?"

"But the profit? What do you trade?"

"Aha! I was waiting for you to ask that. I set the robot to detect and take a unit of energy metal each trip!"

"Energy metal?" Veux jerked upright.

"Yes, but they're running out." Tai sighed. "The robot reports he has had to go clear to the other side of the planet to fill his quota. There's only enough scattered around for a few more trips!"

"I guess we can't complain," Veux said.

They clinked their glasses.

Where the PHPH Pebbles Go by Miriam Allen DeFord

---

WHERE THE PHPH PEBBLES GO

By MIRIAM ALLEN DeFORD

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

---

It was a strange world and a deadly
one, the incredible alien planet—

---

Gral and Hodnuth were playing phph. In case you are not a phph fan, and haven't ever seen Bliten's classic Ways of Improving Your Phph Game, its essence consists in lobbing pebbles at a target as near the horizon as your skill permits. After each throw, you fly over to see how far you went.

It sounds like a simple game, but it has complicated restrictions and rules, and a good phph player can command any amount of heavy service from the spectators. Since a lot of the Ground Dwellers are also phph addicts (they could never become players, of course, being far too small and light to handle the phph pebbles), this means that a real champion never has to do any kind of work again, being fed, clothed, housed and entertained by his admirers, and can devote all his time to the game.

Gral and Hodnuth, having alternated as champions for many a long ganath, had it pretty easy. But neither of them was given to lying back on his laurels and growing soft. This meant that when a match was announced, Ground Dwellers as well as we Real People came by the hanthoids from zygils around to watch through viewing-tubes—and whichever of the two won piled up a lot of bilibs of voluntary service. (Voluntary service, as most economists admit, is true wealth, since the pledge is incumbent on the offerer's heirs until it is fully satisfied, and can likewise be willed by the recipient to his heirs).

Naturally, no phph player is absolutely perfect; if he were, there would be no contest and nobody would bother to attend a game. Pebbles fall short, they go awry, and sometimes they are thrown so hard that they escape altogether from our light gravity and fly into outer space. At the end of the game period the referee (usually a superannuated former champion) tots up the score and announces how many times each player missed the target and by which of these errors he missed it. By a rather confusing arithmetical computation he then determines which of them won, and the winner collects his pledges—and the fans collect the side bets they have been making all through the game.

In this particular game Hodnuth won. But then he won about half the time, so that wasn't what gave it its importance. The Ground Dwellers, as everyone knows, are an excitable and volatile race (which is why we conquered them so easily, with the added advantage of our command of levitation and our immensely greater size and strength), so just an ordinary phph game often looks like a riot. When anything out of the way occurs, such as the appearance of a new young contender to take on one of the champions, the Ground Dwellers simply go wild. And this time they practically exploded. I confess that even we Real People were amazed.

One of the Thinkers was discovered attending the game.

---

Now, when we first arrived here, and cleaned up on the Ground Dwellers and established them in their proper subservient position, the Thinkers were our leaders. It was they who had figured out the whole invasion, had headed the Sixty Hastgunt Flight, and had worked out the tactics and logistics of the Great Conquest. But once we were settled and things were going smoothly, they called a last General Meeting and told us that their part was finished, and that now they were going to retire to the Far Colony and go on with their Thinking. Since then, if a problem arises that our own Council can't handle, one of us has to fly to the Far Colony and obtain the advice of a Thinker. They live together there with their families (supported of course by all of us) and spend all their time in study and research. It is one of the natural advantages of us Real People that we have these specialized Thinkers to do all our intellectual and cultural tasks and teach us what we need to know, leaving us others free for the truly satisfying functions of government and commerce.

Never in all the ganaths since that last General Meeting had a Thinker been seen among us, and that so august a being should condescend to attend a mere phph game was unbelievable. Yet there he was—easily recognizable, naturally, since all Thinkers have long white hair and long white beards. (Even the female Thinkers—though some heretics say their beards are artificial.) In fact, that is the way one knows that a new Thinker has been born. Soon after birth his hair and beard begin to grow, both white, and as soon as he is weaned we fly him to the Far Colony to be reared and educated by his own. If a Thinker has a child who isn't one, they send him back to us.

As soon as the spectators realized that a Thinker was among them, the excitement reached boiling point. The Ground Dwellers almost went crazy—for, of all things, the Thinker had seated himself not in the perches of honor of the Real People, in front, but in the Ground Dwellers' bleachers. We ourselves noticed all the scrambling and heaving, and when some of us flew over to investigate we could hardly believe our eyes.

When I say scrambling and heaving, I don't mean they were mobbing him. They're much too afraid of us for that, and anyway their reverence for the Thinkers is positively religious—much more so than ours. After all the Thinkers are simply specialized members of our own race, and though we revere them we could scarcely worship them, as the Ground Dwellers do. No, they were clearing a respectful space all around him, but then they kept gazing at him in awe, half of them falling on their knees in his presence. I sneaked a glance at the phph players, and as I suspected they were looking anything but happy. Phph champions are pretty vain. They don't care for rival attractions.

One of our party—it was Sephar, who as usual pushed himself forward—bowed to the Thinker and asked if he wouldn't be more comfortable among us. But he shook his white head and said no, he could see better where he was. (I wonder if Thinkers may not have a bit of vanity too, and if he wasn't enjoying seeing all those poor creatures prostrate themselves around him!)

"Then will Your Honor join us when the game is over?" persisted Sephar. "If you would enter my poor pit of a dwelling, it would overwhelm me with pleasure to have you feast with us."

His poor pit of a dwelling, indeed! I wish you could see the palace he lived in—the roof-opening is plated with solid nagh!

---

I was just about bursting with indignation, but I should have known you can trust a Thinker to deflate a fellow like that.

"Thank you, brother," he said mildly, "but I'm here doing some research and I'll have to fly back right after the game."

Sephar opened his mouth to argue, but by that time I had him by the wing and I pulled him back—he said rudely, I say firmly. "Do you want to give us a bad name for presumption, brother?" I whispered. "Don't interfere with a Thinker when he's Thinking!"

Some of the rest of us nodded agreement, so Sephar shut up. But he had a nasty gleam in his eye and I braced myself for trouble later. We bowed and returned to our places. Thanks to Sephar and his performance, I missed the last throw Gral made, which lost him the contest. But I heard the moan from the spectators who weren't watching the Thinker instead, so I knew he'd lobbed a too-high one. It must have been a humdinger—one of the throws into space. I glanced back as I was flying away, and the Thinker was standing up and gazing intently after it. Well, I thought to myself, imagine a Thinker getting worked up over a phph throw!

The game was over soon after that, and Hodnuth went around collecting his pledges while Gral was being consoled by his backers. When I got a chance to look again where the Thinker had been sitting, he had disappeared.

The one who hadn't disappeared was Sephar. He was waiting for me, just as I'd expected.

"Not here!" I snarled at him. "Do you want the Ground Dwellers to see Real People in a brawl?"

So we adjourned to Marnag's courtyard, which was the nearest dueling place, and it was a nice little fight, and I won. Quite a group gathered around, and I was pleased to see that several of my friends were making bets on me. Some of Sephar's sycophants lugged him off to the hospital to have a fractured wing-tip treated. The rest came home with me and we spent our winnings on a good dinner with plenty of mastonyi to wash it down.

Several of us speculated about the Thinker, and we wondered if his "research" wasn't a fake and if he'd just decided to enjoy a game like the rest of us.

"After all," Marnag pointed out, "he might be only a boy. You can't tell with a Thinker. I suppose young Thinkers can be frivolous and rebellious like our own youngsters."

Nipar, who is something of a wag, yelled: "Hey, listen to Marnag—he's Thinking! Come on, Marnag, are you really a Thinker in disguise? Let's see if that green hair of yours is dyed—you could have shaved the beard!"

And he poured a pitcher of mastonyi right over Marnag's head to find out if the color would come off. After that, the party got really rough, and I don't remember the rest of it.

---

A whole ganath after that, the Thinkers sent one of their messengers to tell us in the Council that we were summoned to a meeting in the Far Colony. That doesn't happen often, so we knew something extremely important must be up. I for one was all of a twitter.

Not one of us connected the summons with that Thinker who had come to the phph contest between Gral and Hodnuth. That was our stupidity. We should have guessed it when we found the two champions had been sent for also. Gral flew next to me on the trip, and of all things, both he and Hodnuth were carrying with them several phph pebbles which the Thinkers had ordered them to bring along.

It's hard to tell the Thinkers apart—at least for us who aren't Thinkers—but I recognized the one who had been at the game. He sat right by Hledo, who always acts as their spokesman when we consult them about anything.

"Welcome and thank you for coming so promptly," Hledo began. "Did you two phph players bring the pebbles?"

Gral and Hodnuth handed over the load, and Hledo passed it on to the one we knew.

"This is Myrwan," Hledo said, "and he will tell you the urgent thing he has Thought."

"I became interested a long time ago," Myrwan began in the rather rusty voice all the Thinkers except Hledo have—they spend most of their time in study and meditation, and don't talk much among themselves—"in a question that seems never to have occurred to any of Us.

"Where do phph pebbles go when they are thrown beyond our feeble gravity and escape into outer space? What becomes of them in the end? And who, if anyone, collects them, and what conclusions about them and our world do such persons draw?"

I raised my hand to ask a question, and Myrwan nodded.

"I don't understand." I said politely. (Meaning he was being too abstruse for any of us, for it is understood that there is no keener apprehension in the council than my own.) "Is Your Honor implying that there exist outside our world other intelligences that would be capable of observing and drawing conclusions from the pebbles?"

"Exactly. I know that the general belief is that it is impossible that extraplanetary beings can exist, least of all intelligent beings. That was the belief of my own colleagues until I gave them the results of my recent Thought. It is the reason We have summoned you here.

"For some time now We have been receiving peculiar radio waves from outside the world. We have considered them merely manifestations of random radiation from other planets and stars. But now they have suddenly become—shall I say rhythmical? Measured? Directional? They leave the impression that someone, or something, is trying to communicate with us.

"The astronomers among Us have become more and more concerned. We have finally been led to the reluctant belief that Our former theories have been wrong—that this actually is not the only inhabited planet.

"Now, I need not tell you how disastrous it would be for us if that were true. If there are intelligent beings on other planets, if they are trying to communicate with us, then the next step would be that they would try to visit us."

Marnag raised his hand.

"What harm would that do? If such beings exist, and if they could come here, why couldn't we go there too—wherever it is—and wouldn't that enrich our lives? Of course I'm not a Thinker—" I had a fleeting vision of Nipar and the pitcher of mastonyi!—"but I'm a Real Man and I can see no reason why it would hurt us to find we are not alone in the universe."

"No," said Myrwan dryly. "You are not a Thinker, my friend. We enjoy here a completely stable civilization. It is the best of all possible social systems. We do not want it disturbed."

"I see," said Marnag, and several others nodded. I confess that a heretical idea crossed my mind—that any such disturbance might well dethrone the Thinkers first of all—but I suppressed it. Myrwan went on:

"And that is where the phph pebbles come in. In the course of my researches on these previously unknown waves, I began to wonder what, if anything, had initiated the interest of outsiders in our planet, assuming that outsiders exist. Certainly we had made no move toward trying either to reach or to communicate with any putative dwellers on other planets. There had been no major changes on our planet that could have enlisted the attention of outside astronomers, even granting that they have telescopes as powerful as our own.

"Only one thing, so far as I can ascertain, has ever left this planet for outer space. And that was the phph pebbles.

"We call them pebbles. To beings who might consider us giants—and if there really are intelligent beings in other worlds they might well be of an entirely different size from us, though no less dangerous for all that—they might seem huge meteors. Suppose that, though most of them would undoubtedly burn up and all of them be considerably reduced before they struck another planet as meteorites, some of them at least might still be sufficiently large to be analyzed chemically? And suppose that where they struck there existed beings capable of analyzing them?"

---

This was getting a little deep for anybody not a Thinker to take in. Several Council members raised their hands plaintively and so indicated.

"All right, I'll try to make it plainer," Myrwan said. "Let us pretend that instead of the little fragments of space debris that fall harmlessly in the annual meteor showers here, we were pelted with enormous chunks of matter, perhaps causing major damage to property and life. Wouldn't We immediately undertake an intensive study to determine whence they came, and of what, precisely, they consisted?

"And if We found that these residual meteorites contained material indicating their origin in an inhabited world—still worse, in a world sufficiently evolved to entail the possibility or probability that its highest life-forms might be intelligent or even civilized—wouldn't we take steps at once to investigate? Moreover, wouldn't we be outraged to the point where our primary object would be to avenge ourselves?

"Of course we would. And so of course would any beings on other planets, under similar circumstances."

"You mean," Marnag asked, "that if beings came here from space they would attack us?"

"That too. But even if that were not their reaction, curiosity alone could be enough to spur them on to exploration."

"But—but what can we do?" quavered old Gantes. He is really growing too senile to be on the Council much longer.

"We can discourage them. And we can mislead them."

"How?"

"We can make certain that nothing reaches them in the future which gives them the least sign that any but the lowest forms of life, if even those, exist in our world.

"I studied this whole question systematically, as We always do. I came to the conclusion that only the phph pebbles could possibly betray us. I attended a phph game to see for myself if a pebble actually could be thrown with sufficient force to become, as it were, an artificial meteor. I found that it could. Indeed, I saw Gral make such a throw."

Gral looked stricken. He fell flat on his face, groveling before the Thinkers.

"Oh, Your Reverences," he cried, "I never dreamt—I never—"

"Get up, Gral," Myrwan ordered. "Nobody's blaming you. Nobody expects anyone but a Thinker to Think."

"We'll make it a rule from now on to hold our shots. We'll bar anyone from the game forever who lobs a pebble too hard," Hodnuth promised fervently.

"Far from it," said Myrwan. "On the contrary, in the future you must concentrate on supra-gravity shots. Give extra points to anyone who performs one."

"Why?" several of us murmured, completely bewildered.

"Because I have already analyzed three pebbles I brought back with me from the game. With the ones you have brought, I shall be able to make further tests. If they confirm my previous findings, I Think We shall be able to mislead any potential attackers.

"Every phph pebble henceforth will be doctored. To use any unauthorized pebble will become a felony. What has happened in the past we can't change, but there may still be time to save ourselves. From this time forth there are going to be more 'meteors' shot off our atmosphere than ever before—and every one of them is going to tell a completely false story about conditions in their place of origin.

"Of course We may be entirely wrong. These new waves may be due to purely physical causes. Other planets may all be as devoid of intelligent life as We have always assumed. But if there is the faintest possibility—and I feel there is—that we are in danger, it would be fatal not to take such measures as we can to avert it."

"What's in the pebbles now that could tell anything about us?" Gral asked. "And if something is, how could you alter it?"

---

Myrwan froze up a little. The Thinkers don't like to have us ask detailed questions. But he realized that Gral was still upset, and answered kindly.

"It wouldn't mean a lot to you if I told you. But you can understand this much—chemical analysis of the pebbles I've looked at so far shows fragments of embedded fossils."

"Of plants, you mean?"

Myrwan smiled.

"Plants don't become fossilized," he said. "In one pebble there was a microscopic piece of a metal knife. In another there was half of a fossilized tooth. Ground Dweller relics, true, but human. You must remember that all the hills around here from which you gather the pebbles are really million-ganath-old burial places of the Ground Dwellers. We haven't bothered to dig up most of them because we're so rich in prehistoric remains, with our immensely old civilization, that we have all the fossils and ancient artifacts we need.

"But let's imagine an alien civilization a great deal younger than ours. Let's imagine that in even one of those pebbles—which would be meteorites to them—even a minute trace of that kind of thing should be left. What would they Think?—for they would have to have Thinkers too, to be civilized at all.

"I'll tell you what they'd Think. They'd decide that somewhere out in space there is a rich, undiscovered planet full of valuable knowledge and, even better, valuable artifacts. Probably a world with a culture much more advanced than their own. And they'd try hard to trace the direction from which those meteorites came, and to calculate the distance. Then suppose they had some means of transportation in space.

"That may well be what these new radio waves mean. They may be attempts at communication—if we were foolish enough to respond to them. We don't dare to take any chances.

"So from now on there are going to be swarms and swarms of those meteoroids—and every one of them is going to be a real artifact on its own—a manufactured one, made according to Our specifications, carrying an unmistakable message. A false one!

"They will be cunningly constructed from forms of matter injurious to any conceivable variety of life. We'll cover them all. And they'll be barren of even the most primitive bacteria. They will carry in themselves a silent warning: 'Approach the planet from which these come at peril of your instant death ... not matter what kind of being you are!' That should save us forever."

I'd been wondering why Sephar had kept his big mouth shut all this time. To my way of feeling, he should never have been with us at all. He would never have been a Council member if he hadn't been a multibilibaire. But I'd won a fair fight with him, and officially we had to be friends, so I hadn't protested when I found he was included in the summons.

But now the big blowhard had to put his two grocs' worth.

"Your Reverence—Your Honor—" he spluttered. "May I ask a question?"

"Certainly, brother."

"Since players have been lobbing pebbles out into space for thousands and thousands of ganaths, and as Your Honor says, some of them must long ago have landed somewhere, who knows what dead give-aways may have been in any of them?"

"Is that your question?"

"No, I have two. First, why haven't these intelligent beings whose existence you're presupposing—" I saw Myrwan's face set, and I knew he'd noted that rude and insulting word, but I managed to conceal my smile—"why haven't they come here before this? And since they haven't come, if they're smart enough to figure out our whereabouts why aren't they also smart enough to realize the difference between the old pebbles and these new ones, and to know that we're putting something over on them?"

We sometimes say that though the Thinkers are of course overwhelmingly our superiors mentally, they lack the emotional control which is the great characteristic of the rest of us Real People. I wish those scandalmongers could have seen Myrwan then. His face was as white as his beard and his wings quivered, but he let Sephar have his say out and he answered him very quietly.

"As to your first question, brother," (and if anybody ever called me "brother" in that tone I'd know it was a case of fight or run) "the only logical reason is that it must be only recently that such beings have reached a state of culture where they are able to analyze the pebbles and draw the right conclusions from them.

"And the answer to your second question is that we can only hope. Hope that all of the pebbles already in their possession are free of—shall we say, incriminating evidence? All we can guarantee is that all they find in the future will be. Does that answer you satisfactorily?"

"It will have to," muttered Sephar sullenly. I moved away from him and was glad to notice that I was not the only one.

"What I have said to you," continued the Thinker calmly, "you may communicate to any of the Real People you wish. You will naturally keep it from the Ground Dwellers; there is no reason to agitate them at present. Time enough for that if we should ever need them as soldiers—which I devoutly hope we never shall."

"But who will make the artificial pebbles if the Ground Dwellers aren't to know about them?" asked Marnag. "What about our slogan—'Thought from the Thinkers, government and administration from the Real People, technical skill and heavy labor from the Ground Dwellers'?"

"We shall handle that. When you go home, tell Earnig I want to see him at once. Brief him first. He and his Bureau will see that the job is done, and the Ground Dwellers needn't be told just what they are making. They'll be delighted to hear that We are planning a new kind of phph pebble to increase the interest of the game—they love it whenever one is batted clear away."

---

Well, all this was last ganath. The new pebbles are in use. So far nothing has happened—unless you count the fact that, according to Myrwan, those peculiar radio waves have ceased. Let us hope that if his whole theory is correct—and Thinkers don't talk about their Thoughts till they're pretty sure of them—those alien beings have given up, decided either that they were mistaken and there is no intelligence here able to communicate, or that they themselves haven't the ability to interpret our answers.

Sephar? Oh, he isn't around any more. One of the Thinkers is doing some experiments in Psychological Adjustment. Hledo asked the Council's recommendation of somebody they could commandeer as a test subject, according to the Agreement on Thinkers' Privileges, and I got them to suggest Sephar. He was very nasty about it, but I ignored his underbred invective. I felt it my duty also respectfully to remind Hledo of Sephar's past indiscretions, in case they'd forgotten.

Usually when the Thinkers have finished with a subject he's no longer of much use and they put him in a rest home for the remainder of his life. So since I've done pretty well for myself lately, I was able to buy Sephar's home, with its nagh-plated roof-opening, and move into it.

He had a very attractive wife, who of course couldn't go with him to the Far Colony. It just goes to show that virtue (as one of the Thinkers once remarked wittily) is its own reward.