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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Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Amateur in Chancery by George O. Smith


AMATEUR IN CHANCERY

By GEORGE O. SMITH

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]



The creature from Venus didn't know right from
left—and life and death hung in the balance!


Paul Wallach came into my office. He looked distraught. By some trick of selection, Paul Wallach, the director of Project Tunnel, was one of the two men in the place who did not have a string of doctor's and scholar's degrees to tack behind their names. The other was I.

"Trouble, Paul?" I asked.

He nodded, saying, "The tunnel car is working."

"It should. It's been tested enough."

"Holly Carter drew the short straw."

"Er—" I started and then stopped short as the implication became clear. "She's—she's—not—?"

"Holly made it to Venus all right," he said. "Trouble is we can't get her back."

"Can't get her back?"

He nodded again. "You know, we've never really known very much about the atmosphere of Venus."

"Yes."

"Well, from what little came through just before Holly blacked out, it seems that there must be one of the cyanogens in the atmosphere in a concentration high enough to effect nervous paralysis."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning," said Paul Wallach in a flat tone, "that Holly Carter stopped breathing shortly after she cracked the airlock. And her heart stopped beating a minute or so later."

"Holly—dead?"

"Not yet, Tom," he said. "If we can get her back in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, modern medicine can bring her back."

"But there'll be brain damage!"

"Oh, there may be some temporary impairment. Nothing that retraining can't restore. The big problem is to bring her back."

"We should have built two tunnel cars."

"We should have done all sorts of things. But when the terminal rocket landed on Venus, everybody in the place was too anxious to try it out. Lord knows, I tried to proceed at a less headlong pace. But issuing orders to you people is a waste of time and paper."

I looked at him. "Doc," I asked, giving him the honorary title out of habit, "Venus is umpty-million miles from here. We haven't another tunnel car, and no rocket could make it in time to do any good. So how can we hope to rescue Holly?"

"That's the point," said Wallach. "Venus, it appears, is inhabited."

"Oh?"

"That's what got Holly caught in the first place. She landed, then saw this creature approaching. Believing that no life could exist in an atmosphere dangerous to life, she opened the airlock and discovered otherwise."

"So?"

"So now all we have to do is to devise some way of explaining to a Venusian the difference between left and right. I thought you might help."

"But I'm just a computer programmer."

"That's the point. We all figured that you have developed a form of communication to that machine of yours. The rest of the crew, as you know, have a bit of difficulty in communicating among themselves in their own jargon, let alone getting through to normal civilians. When it comes to a Venusian, they're licked."

I said, "I'll try."


Project Tunnel is the hardware phase of a program started a number of years ago when somebody took a joke seriously.

In a discussion of how the tunnel diode works, one of the scientists pointed out that if an electron could be brought to absolute rest, its position according to Heisenberg Uncertainty would be completely ambiguous. Hence it had as high a possibility of being found on Venus as it had of being found on Earth or anywhere else. Now, the tunnel diode makes use of this effect by a voltage bias across the diode junction. Between narrow limits, the voltage bias is correct to upset the ambiguity of Mr. Heisenberg, making the electron nominally found on one side of the junction more likely to be found on the other.

Nobody could deny the operability of the tunnel diode. Project Tunnel was a serious attempt to employ the tunnel effect in gross matter.

The terminal rocket mentioned by Paul Wallach carried the equipment needed to establish the voltage bias between Venus and the Earth. Once established, Project Tunnel was in a state that caused it to maroon the most wonderful girl in the world.

Since the latter statement is my own personal opinion, my pace from the office to the laboratory was almost a dead run.

The laboratory was a madhouse. People stood in little knots, arguing. Those who weren't talking were shaking their heads in violent negation.

The only one who appeared un-upset was Teresa Dwight, our psi-girl. And here I must confess an error. When I said that Paul Wallach and I were the only ones without a string of professorial degrees, I missed Teresa Dwight. I must be forgiven. Teresa had a completely bland personality, zero drive, and a completely unstartling appearance. Teresa was only fourteen. But she'd discovered that her psi-power could get her anything she really wanted. Being human, therefore, she did not want much. So forgive me for passing her by.

But now I had to notice her. As I came in, she looked up and said, "Harla wants to know why can't he just try."


Wallach went white. "Tell that Venusian thing 'NO!' as loud as you can."

Teresa concentrated, then asked, "But why?"

"Does this Harla understand the Heisenberg Effect?"

She said after a moment, "Harla says he has heard of it as a theory. But he is not quite prepared to believe that it does indeed exist as anything but an abstract physical concept."

"Tell Harla that Doctor Carter's awkward position is a direct result of our ability to reduce the tunnel effect to operate on gross matter."

"He realizes that. But now he wants to know why you didn't fire one of the lower animals as a test."

"Tell him that using animals for laboratory experiments is only possible in a police state where the anti-vivisection league can be exiled to Siberia. Mink coats and all. And let his Venusian mind make what it can of that. Now, Teresa—"

"Yes?"

"Tell Harla, very carefully, that pressing the left-hand button will flash the tunnel car back here as soon as he closes the airlock. But tell him that pushing the right-hand button will create another bias voltage—whereupon another mass of matter will cross the junction. In effect, it will rip a hole out of this laboratory near the terminal, over there, and try to make it occupy the same space as the tunnel car on Venus. None of us can predict what might happen when two masses attempt to occupy the same space. But the chances are that some of the holocaust will backfire across the gap and be as violent at this end, too."

"Harla says that he will touch nothing until he has been assured that it is safe."

"Good. Now, Tom," he said, addressing me, "how can we tell right from left?"

"Didn't you label 'em?"

"They're colored red on the right and green on the left."

"Is Harla color-blind?"

"No, but from what I gather Harla sees with a different spectrum than we do. So far as he is concerned both buttons look alike."

"You could have engraved 'em 'COME' and 'GO'."

Frank Crandall snorted. "Maybe you can deliver an 'English, Self-Taught' course through Teresa to the Venusian?"

I looked at Crandall. I didn't much care for him. It seemed that every time Holly Carter came down out of her fog of theoretical physics long enough to notice a simpleton who had to have a machine to perform routine calculations, we were joined by Frank Crandall who carted her off and away from me. If this be rank jealousy, make the most of it. I'm human.

"Crandall," I said, "even to a Hottentot I could point out that the engraved legend 'GO' contains two squiggly symbols, whereas the legend 'RETURN' contains 'many'."


Wallach stepped into the tension by saying, "So we didn't anticipate alien life. But now we've got the problem of communicating with it."

Crandall didn't appear to notice my stiff reply. He said, "Confound it, what's missing?"

"What's missing," I told him, "is some common point of reference."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that I could define left from right to any semi-intelligent human being who was aware of the environment in which we live."

"For example?"

I groped for an example and said, lamely, "Well, there's the weather rule, valid for the northern hemisphere. When the wind is blowing on your back, the left hand points to the low pressure center."

"Okay. But how about Venus? Astronomical information, I mean."

I shook my head.

"Why not?" he demanded. "If we face north, the sun rises on our right, doesn't it?"

"Yes. Even in the southern hemisphere."

"Well, then. So it doesn't make any difference which hemisphere they're in."

"You're correct. But you're also making the assumptions that Venus rotates on its axis, that the axis is aligned parallel to the Earth's and that the direction of rotation is the same."

"We know that Venus rotates!"

"We have every reason to believe so," I agreed. "But only because thermocouples measure a temperature on the darkside that is too high to support the theory that the diurnal period of Venus is equal to the year. I think the latest figures say something between a couple of weeks and a few months. Next, the axis needn't be parallel to anything. Shucks, Crandall, you know darned well that the solar system is a finely made clock with no two shafts aligned, and elliptical gears that change speed as they turn."


"Practically everything in the solar system rotates in the same direction."

I looked at him. "Would you like to take a chance that Venus agrees with that statement? You've got a fifty percent chance that you'll be right. Guess wrong and we have a metric ton of hardware trying to occupy the same space as another metric ton of matter."

"But—"

"And furthermore," I went on, "we're just lucky that Polaris happens to be a pole star right now. The poles of Mars point to nothing that bright. Even then, we can hardly expect the Venusian to have divided the circumpolar sky into the same zoo full of mythical animals as our forebears—and if we use the commonplace expression, maybe the Venusian never paused to take a long-handled dipper of water from a well. Call them stewpots and the term is still insular. Sure, there's lots of pointers, but they have to be identified. My mother always insisted that the Pleiades were—er—was the Little Dipper."

Teresa Dwight spoke up, possibly for the second or third time in her life without being spoken to first. She said, "Harla has been listening to you through me. Of astronomy he has but a rudimentary idea. He is gratified to learn from you that there is a 'sun' that provides the heat and light. This has been a theory based upon common sense; something had to do it. But the light comes and goes so slowly that it is difficult to determine which direction the sun rises from. The existence of other celestial bodies than Venus is also based on logic. If, they claim, they exist, and their planet exists, then there probably are other planets with people who cannot see them, either."

"Quoth Pliny the Elder," mumbled Paul Wallach.

I looked at him.

"Pliny was lecturing about Pythagoras' theory that the Earth is round. A heckler asked him why the people on the other side didn't fall off. Pliny replied that on the other side there were undoubtedly fools who were asking their wise men why we didn't fall off."

"It's hardly germane," I said.

"I'm sorry. Yes. And time is running out."


The laboratory door opened to admit a newcomer, Lou Graham, head of the electronics crew.

He said, "I've got it!"

The chattering noise level died out about three decibels at a time. Lou said, "When a steel magnet is etched in acid, the north pole shows selective etching!"

I shook my head. "Lou," I said, "we don't know whether Venus has a magnetic field, whether it is aligned to agree with the Earth's—nor even whether the Venusians have discovered the magnetic compass."

"Oh, that isn't the reference point," said Lou Graham. "I'm quite aware of the ambiguity. The magnetic field does have a vector, but the arrow that goes on the end is strictly from human agreement."

"So how do you tell which is the north pole?"

"By making an electromagnet! Then using Ampere's Right Hand Rule. You grasp the electromagnet in the right hand so that the fingers point along the winding in the direction of the current flow. The thumb then points to the north pole."

"Oh, fine! Isn't that just the same confounded problem? Now we've got to find out whether Harla is equipped with a right hand complete with fingers and thumbs—so that we can tell him which his right hand is!"

"No, no," he said. "You don't understand, Tom. We don't need the right hand. Let's wind our electromagnet like this: We place the steel bar horizontally in front of us. The wire from 'Start' leaves us, passes over the top of the bar, drops below the bar on the far side, comes toward us on the under side, rises above the bar on the side toward us, and so on around and around until we've got our electromagnet wound. Now if the 'start' is positive and the 'end' is negative, the north pole will be at the left. It will show the selective etching in acid."

I looked at him. "Lou," I said slowly, "if you can define positive and negative in un-ambiguous terms as well as you wound that electromagnet, we can get Holly home. Can you?"

Lou turned to Teresa Dwight. "Has this Harla fellow followed me so far?"

She nodded.

"Can you speak for him?"

"You talk, I hear, he reads me. I read him and I can speak."


"Okay, then," said Lou Graham. "Now we build a Le Clanche cell. Ask Harla does he recognize carbon. A black or light-absorbing element. Carbon is extremely common, it is the basis of life chemistry. It is element number six in the periodic chart. Does Harla know carbon?"

"Harla knows carbon."

"Now we add zinc. Zinc is a light metal easily extracted from the ore. It is fairly abundant, and it is used by early civilizations for making brass or bronze long before the culture has advanced enough to recognize zinc as an element. Does Harla know zinc?"

"He may," said Teresa very haltingly. "What happens if Harla gets the wrong metal?"

"Not very much," said Lou. "Any of the light, fairly plentiful metals that are easily extracted from the ore will suffice. Say tin, magnesium, sodium, cadmium, so on."

"Harla says go on."

"Now we make an electrolyte. Preferably an alkaline salt."

"Be careful," I said. "Or you'll be asking Harla to identify stuff from a litmus paper."

"No," said Lou. He faced Teresa and said, "An alkaline substance burns the flesh badly."

"So do acids," I objected.

"Alkaline substances are found in nature," he reminded me. "Acids aren't often natural. The point is that an acid will work. Even salt water will work. But an alkaline salt works better. At any rate, tell Harla that the stuff, like zinc, was known to civilized peoples many centuries before chemistry became a science. Acids, on the other hand, are fairly recent."

"Harla understands."

"Now," said Lou Graham triumphantly, "we make our battery by immersing the carbon and the zinc in the electrolyte. The carbon is the positive electrode and should be connected to the start of our electromagnet, whereas the end of the winding must go to the zinc. This will place the north pole to the left hand."

"Harla understands," said Teresa. "So far, Harla can perform this experiment in his mind. But now we must identify which end of the steel bar is north-pole magnetic."

"If we make the bar magnetic and then immerse it in acid, the north magnetic pole will be selectively etched."

"Harla says that this he does not know about. He has never heard of it, although he is quite familiar with electromagnets, batteries, and the like."

I looked at Lou Graham. "Did you cook this out of your head, or did you use a handbook?"

He looked downcast. "I did use a handbook," he admitted. "But—"

"Lou," I said unhappily, "I've never said that we couldn't establish a common frame of reference. What we lack is one that can be established in minutes. Something physical—" I stopped short as a shadowy thought began to form.


Paul Wallach looked at me as though he'd like to speak but didn't want to interrupt my train of thoughts. When he could contain himself no longer, he said, "Out with it, Tom."

"Maybe," I muttered. "Surely there must be something physical."

"How so?"

"The tunnel car must be full of it," I said. "Screws?"

I turned to Saul Graben. Saul is our mechanical genius; give him a sketch made on used Kleenex with a blunt lipstick and he will bring you back a gleaming mechanism that runs like a hundred-dollar wrist watch.

But not this time. Saul shook his head.

"What's permanent is welded and what's temporary is snapped in with plug buttons," he said.

"Good Lord," I said. "There simply must be something!"

"There probably is," said Saul. "But this Harla chap would have to use an acetylene torch to get at it."

I turned to Teresa. "Can this psi-man Harla penetrate metal?"

"Can anyone?" she replied quietly.

Wallach touched my arm. "You're making the standard, erroneous assumption that a sense of perception will give its owner a blueprint-clear grasp of the mechanical details of some machinery. It doesn't. Perception, as I understand it, is not even similar to eyesight."

"But—" I fumbled on—"surely there must be some common reference there, even granting that perception isn't eyesight. So how does perception work?"

"Tom, if you were blind from birth, I could tell you that I have eyesight that permits me to see the details of things that you can determine only by feeling them. This you might understand basically. But you could never be made to understand the true definition of the word 'picture' nor grasp the mental impression that is generated by eyesight."

"Well," I persisted, "can he penetrate flesh?"

"Flesh?"

"Holly's heart has stopped," I said. "But it hasn't been removed. If Harla can perceive through human flesh, he might be able to perceive the large, single organ in the chest cavity near the spine."

Teresa said, "Harla's perception gives him a blurry, incomplete impression." She looked at me. "It is something like a badly out-of-focus, grossly under-exposed x-ray solid."

"X-ray solid?" I asked.

"It's the closest thing that you might be able to understand," she said lamely.

I dropped it right there. Teresa had probably been groping in the dark for some simile that would convey the nearest possible impression. I felt that this was going to be the nearest that I would ever get to understanding the sense of perception.

"Can't he get a clear view?"

"He has not the right."

"Right!" I exploded. "Why—"

Wallach held up his hand to stop me. "Don't make Teresa fumble for words, Tom. Harla has not the right to invade the person of Holly Carter. Therefore he can not get a clearer perception of her insides."

"Hell!" I roared. "Give Harla the right."

"No one has authority."

"Authority be dammed!" I bellowed angrily. "That girl's life is at stake!"


Wallach nodded unhappily. "Were this a medical emergency, a surgeon might close his eyes to the laws that require authorization to operate. But even if he saved the patient's life, he is laying himself open to a lawsuit. But this is different, Tom. As you may know, the ability of any psi-person is measured by their welcome to the information. Thus Teresa and Harla, both willing to communicate, are able."

"But can't Harla understand that the entire bunch of us are willing that he should take a peek?"

"Confound it, Tom, it isn't a matter of our permission! It's a matter of fact. It would ease things if Holly were married to one of us, but even so it wouldn't be entirely clear. It has to do with the invasion of privacy."

"Privacy? In this case the very idea is ridiculous."

"Maybe so," said Paul Wallach. "But I don't make the rules. They're natural laws. As immutable as the laws of gravity or the refraction of light. And Tom, even if I were making the laws I might not change things. Not even to save Holly Carter's life. Because, Tom, if telepathy and perception were as free and unbounded as some of their early proponents claimed, life would be a sheer, naked hell on earth."

"But what has privacy to do with it? This Harla isn't at all humanoid. A cat can look at a king—"

"Sure, Tom. But how long would the cat be permitted to read the king's mind?"

I grunted. "Has this Harla any mental block about examining the outside?"

He looked at me thoughtfully. "You're thinking about a scar or some sort of blemish?"

"Yes. Birthmark, maybe. No one is perfect."

"You know of any?"

I thought.

It was not hard for me to conjure up a picture of Holly Carter. Unfortunately, I looked at Holly Carter through the eyes of love, which rendered her perfect. If she had bridgework, I hadn't found it out. Her features were regular and her hair fell loose without a part. Her complexion was flawless ... at least the complexion that could be examined whilst Holly sunned herself on a deck chair beside the swimming pool.

I shook my head. Then I faced an unhappy fact. It hurt, because I wanted my goddess to be perfect, and if she were made of weak, mortal flesh, I did not want to find it out by asking the man who knew her better than I did.

Still, I wanted her alive. So I turned to Frank Crandall.

"Do you?" I asked.

"Do I what?"

"Know of any scars or birthmarks?"

"Such as?"

"Oh, hell," I snapped. "Such as an appendix scar that might be used to tell left from right."

"Look, Tom, I'm not her physician, you know. I can only give you the old answer: 'Not until they wear briefer swim suits.'"

My heart bounced lightly. That Holly was still in mortal danger was not enough to stop my elation at hearing Frank Crandall admit that he was not Holly's lover, nor even on much better terms than I. It might have been better to face the knowledge that Holly was all woman and all human even though the information had to come from someone who knew her well enough to get her home.

Then I came back to earth. I had my perfect goddess—in deadly peril—instead of a human woman who really did not belong to any man.


I hadn't seen Saul Graben leave, but he must have been gone because now he opened the door and came back. He was carrying a heavy rim gyroscope that was spinning in a set of frictionless gymbals. He looked most confused.

He said, "I've spent what seems like an hour. You can't tell me that this gizmo is inseparable from the selfish, insular intellect of terrestrial so-called homo sapiens."

He turned the base and we all watched the gymbal rings rotate to keep the gyro wheel in the same plane. "It should be cosmic," he said. "But every time I start, I find myself biting myself on the back of the neck. Look. If you make the axle horizontal in front of you and rotate the gyro with the top edge going away from you, you can define a common reference. But motion beyond that cannot be explained. If the axle is depressed on the right side, the gyro will turn so the far edge looks to the right. But that's defining A in terms of A. So I'm licked."

Frank Crandall shook his head. "There's probably an absolute to that thing somewhere, but I'm sure none of us know it. We haven't time to find it. In fact, I think the cause is lost. Maybe we'd better spend our time figuring out a plausible explanation."

"Explanation?" blurted Wallach.

"Let's face it," said Crandall. "Holly Carter's life is slipping away. No one has yet come close to finding a common reference to describe right from left to this Harla creature."

"So what's your point?"

"Death is for the dying," Crandall said in a monotone. "Let them have their hour in peace and dignity. Life is for the living, and for the living there is no peace. We who remain must make the best of it. So now in about five minutes Holly will be at peace. The rest of us have got to answer for her."

"How do you mean?"

"How do you propose to explain this unfortunate incident?" asked Crandall. "Someone will want to know what happened to the remains of Holly Carter. I can see hell breaking loose. And I can see the whole lot of us getting laughed right off the Earth because we couldn't tell right from left. And I can see us all clobbered for letting the affair take place."

"You seem to be more worried about your professional reputation than about Holly Carter's life!"

"I have a future," he said. "Holly doesn't seem to. Hell," he groaned, "we can't even gamble on it."

"Gamble?"

"How successful do you think you'd be in getting this Venusian to risk his life by closing his eyes and making a fifty-fifty stab in the dark at one of those buttons?"

"Well—" started Wallach—"we'd be gambling too, you know. But—"


"Wait a moment," I said. "I've got a sort of half-cracked theory. May I try?"

"Of course."

"Not 'of course.' I'll have to have quiet, with just Teresa to communicate through."

"If you have any ideas, try them," said Wallach.

"Do you really know what you're doing?" demanded Frank Crandall.

"I think so," I replied. "If it works, it'll be because I happen to feel close to Holly."

"Could be," he said with a shrug. I almost flipped. Duels have been fought over less. But instead of taking offense, Crandall topped it off by adding, "You could have been a lot closer if you'd tried. She always said you had the alert, pixie-type mind that was pure relaxation instead of a dead let-down after a period of deep concentration. But you were always scuttling off somewhere. Well, go ahead and try, Tom. And good luck!"

I took a deep breath.

"Teresa?" I asked.

"Yes, Mr. Lincoln?"

"Tell Harla to concentrate on the buttons."

"He is."

"There is a subtle difference between them."

"This he knows, but he does not know what it is."

"There is a delicate difference in warmth. One button will be faintly warmer than the other."

"Harla has felt them."

I dropped the third-person address and spoke to Teresa as if she were but one end of a telephone line. "Harla," I said, "only part of the difference lies in the warmth to physical touch. There should be another kind of warmth. Are you not affected by a feeling that one is better than the other?"

Harla's reply came direct through Teresa: "Why yes, I am indeed drawn to the warmer of the two. Were this a game I would wager on it. But that is emotion and hardly suitable as a guide."

"Ah, but it is!" I replied quickly. "This is our frame of reference. Press the warmer of the but—"

I was violently interrupted. Wallach shook me violently and hurled me away from Teresa. Frank Crandall was facing the girl, shouting, "No! No! The warm one will be the red one! You must press the green—"

And then he, too, was interrupted.

Displaced air made a near-explosive woosh! and the tunnel car was there on its pad. In it was a nightmare horror holding a limp Holly Carter across its snakelike tentacles. A free tentacle opened the door.

"Take her while I hold my breath," said Harla, still talking through Teresa. "I'll return the tunnel car empty. I can, now that I know that warmth is where the hearth is."

Harla dropped the unconscious girl in my arms and snapped back into the car. It disappeared, then returned empty just as the doctor was bending over Holly.


So now I have my Holly, but every now and then I lie awake beside her in a cold sweat. Harla could have guessed wrong. Just as Wallach and Crandall had been wrong in assuming the red button would be warmer than the green. Their reaction was as emotional as Harla's.

I hope Harla either forgives me or never finds out that I had to sound sure of myself, and that I had to play on his emotions simply to get him to take the fifty-fifty chance on his—hers—our lives.

And I get to sleep only after I've convinced myself that it was more than chance ... that somehow our feelings and emotions guided Harla where logic and definition fail.

For right and left do not exist until terrestrial man defines them.

Sunday, June 5, 2016

New Lamps by Robert Moore Williams


NEW LAMPS

By Robert Moore Williams

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Other Worlds May 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Ronson came to the Red Planet on the strangest mission of all ... he only knew he wanted to see Les Ro, but he didn't know exactly why. It was because he knew that Les Ro had the answer to something that had never been answered before, if indeed, it had ever been asked! For Les Ro traded new lamps for old—and they were the lamps of life itself!


On Mars, the dust is yellow, and microscopically fine. With the result that it penetrates to the sensitive lung tissues of a human being, causing distress. Crossing the street toward the dive set into the towering wall of the cliff overhead, Jim Ronson sneezed violently. He wished fervidly that he might get another glimpse of what Robert Heinlein, two centuries before, had nostalgically called The Cool Green Hills of Earth, and again smell air that had no dust in it. Deep inside of him a small voice whispered that he would be very lucky if he ever saw the green hills of Earth again.

Somewhere ahead of him, in the granite core of the mountain, was something that no human had ever seen. Rumors of what was here had reached Jim Ronson. They had been sufficiently exciting to lift him out of an Earth laboratory and to bring him on a space ship to Mars, feverishly sleep-learning the Martian language as he made the hop, to investigate what might be here in this granite mountain near the south pole of the Red Planet. Some Martians knew what was here. In Mars Port, Ronson had talked to one who obviously knew. But the Martian either could not or would not tell what he knew.

Across the street, squatting against the wall, were a dozen Martians. One was segregated from the rest. They watched the human get out of the dothar drawn cart that had brought him from the jet taxi that had landed on the sand outside this village, pay his fare, and come toward them. Taking a half-hitch around his courage, Ronson moved past them. He glanced down at the one sitting apart from the rest, then averted his eyes, unease and discomfort rising in him. The Martian was a leper. Ronson forced himself to look again. The sores were clearly visible, the eyes were dull and apathetic, without hope. As if some of the leper's hopelessness were communicated to him, Ronson felt a touch of despair. In this place, if the rumors were true, how could there be a leper? How—He paused as one of the Martians squatting on the sidewalk rose to bar his way.

On the Red Planet, humans were strictly on their own. If they got themselves into trouble, no consular agent was available to help them. If they got killed, no representative of Earth law came to ask why or to bring the killers to human justice. No amount of argument or persuasion on the part of delegates from Earth had ever produced a treaty guaranteeing the lives or even the safety of humans who went beyond the limits of Mars Port. The Martians simply could not see any reason for protecting these strange creatures who had come uninvited across space. Let humans look out for themselves!

The Martian who rose in front of Ronson was big and looked mean. Four knives hung from the belt circling his waist. Ronson did not doubt that the fellow could stab very expertly with the knives or that he could throw them with the accuracy of a bullet within a range of thirty feet. In the side pocket of the heavy dothar-skin coat that he wore, Ronson had a zen gun which he had purchased before leaving Mars Port. The little weapon threw an explosive bullet guaranteed to change forever the mind of any human or any Martian who got in the way of it. Ronson did not doubt that he could draw and fire the gun before the Martian could use one of the knives but he also knew that he did not want to start a fight here in the street. What was inside the mountain was too important to risk.

"Happy wind time," Ronson said. This greeting was good manners anywhere on Mars. He bowed to the Martian. As he bowed, the fellow snatched his hat, held it aloft as a trophy.

Laughter echoed through the watching Martians. Only the leper was unmoved. The Martian put the hat on his own head, where it sank down over his ears. He wiggled his scalp and the hat danced. The laughter grew stronger.

Ronson kept his temper. "I'll take my hat back," he said, politely.

"Ho!" the Martian said. "Try and get it."

"I want my hat back," Ronson said, a little less politely. Inside, he was coming to a boil. Like a stupid child, this Martian was playing a silly game. To them, this was fun. To the human, it was not fun. A wrong move on his part, or even no move, and they might be on him like wolves, endangering the purpose that had brought him here. Or had Les Ro, catching wind somehow of his visit, set these stupid creatures across his path? At the thought, the anger rising inside of him became a feeling of cold.

"I want—"

Another squatting Martian rose. "I'll take his coat," the second one announced.

A third was rising. "Me for his breeks!"

They were going to disrobe him, strip him naked, for the sake of his clothes. Ronson did not in the least doubt that they would do it, or try to do it. The only law protecting humans on this planet was what they could make up as individuals and enforce for themselves. He reached for the gun in the side pocket of the dothar skin coat.

The Martian who had taken his hat reached out and grabbed his arm. The fellow had steel claws for hands instead of flesh and blood. The claws clamped over Ronson's arm with a paralyzing grip that seemed to squeeze the very nerves in their sheaths.

Ronson slugged with his left fist, very hard and very fast, a blow that landed flush on the jaw of the Martian. The fellow blinked but was not damaged. He grinned. "Ho! Human wants to fight!" He seemed to find satisfaction in the idea. He reached out with his other hand, grasping for Ronson's neck this time.

Ronson had not been in a rough and tumble fight since he was a kid but he discovered that he had not forgotten how to bring up his knee and jab his antagonist in the stomach. Only this time it didn't work. The Martian brought down an elbow and deflected the rising leg. His groping fingers found Ronson's neck, closed there with a grip that was as tight as the grip around the human's right arm. The other Martians drew closer. As soon as Te Hold had subdued this alien, they intended to have his clothes right down to the skin. Maybe they would take the skin too, if they could find any value in it. They were so engrossed in watching Te Hold tame this human that they did not notice the door of the joint open behind them. Nor did they see the girl come out.

She was not in the least surprised at the fight in the street, nor was she in any doubt as to what to do about it. In her hand, she had a spring gun, one of those little weapons that are spring powered and which throw steel needles coated with the extremely powerful synthetic narcotic, thormoline. Hardly seeming to take aim, she shot the Martian who was holding Ronson in the back. Te Hold jumped as the needle stung him but he did not let go of Ronson. The spring gun pinged again as the girl put another needle in his back.

Te Hold jumped again. He released his grip on Ronson's throat. The human gulped air, and slugged Te Hold again, harder this time. The fast-acting narcotic was already taking effect. Te Hold went over like a falling tree.

Jim Ronson snatched the zen gun from his pocket, then saw that he did not need it. The girl had been busy with the needle weapon. Two of the Martians were also down and the rest were in full flight, except the leper, who had not moved. Standing in front of the door, the girl was calmly shooting needles at their legs as they ran.

Not until then did Ronson really see the girl. He blinked startled eyes at her. Human women were rare on Mars, here in this place near the south pole they should not exist at all. No woman in her right mind would come here. But one was here, and a darned attractive one at that. She was tall, lithe, and full breasted. The hair peeping out from under the tight fitting-helmet was a shade of red. If she had a fault in her figure, it was the fact that her hips were too narrow—she was as slender as a boy—but Ronson was not inclined to criticize her for that. Not when she had just saved his clothes and maybe his life.

As the last Martian dodged around the corner, she turned her attention to him. A smile lit her face.

"Dr. Ronson! A privilege to meet you, sir." Hand outstretched, smiling, she moved around the victims of her needle gun and came toward him.

Ronson stared at her in bewildered consternation. He had not thought that anyone on Mars would even know his name, he had not wanted anyone to know his identity. Especially not in this place. He barely remembered his manners in time to take the hand offered him.

"I'm Jennie Ware," the girl said.

"It's nice to meet you, Miss Ware." Where had he heard or seen this name before? "I want—ah—to thank you for helping me out of a spot."

"It was nothing," she said smiling. "Always glad to help my fellow men."

"You certainly went into action fast." He glanced at Te Hold, sleeping in the street. On the sidewalk near the corner, another Martian was taking a nap. Only the leper was still in sight and awake.

"I had these needles coated with a special narcotic designed to affect the Martian nervous system. As to my going into action fast, I've discovered that you have to be firm with these Martians," she answered smiling.

Stooping, he retrieved his hat. "How did you know me?"

A little flicker of amusement showed in her eyes. "Why shouldn't I recognize Earth's foremost bio-physicist and leading authority on cellular structure? Come on in. I'll buy you a drink. You'll love this place. They've even got a waiter who thinks he can speak English."

"Thanks," Ronson said. "I'll take you up on that." He was astonished and bewildered by this woman. He had spent most of his life in the laboratories of Earth. The women who had been there had been flat-breasted, pale creatures in low-heeled shoes who had called him "Sir," and "Doctor," and who had obviously been greatly in awe of him but who had apparently never had a red-blooded thought in their lives. He had regarded them as a sort of neuter sex, creatures who had obviously been intended by nature to be female but who had gotten their hormones mixed up somewhere along the line. This girl was different.

Her name, somehow, had a haunting familiarity, as if he had heard it somewhere before. But he couldn't remember where.

She went through the door ahead of him. As Ronson passed through, a Martian thrust his head around the corner outside and threw a knife. The steel blade buried in the door facing within six inches of the human's head. He hastily ducked through the door.

Looking annoyed, the girl started back to the street outside. "I'll fix him," she said, pulling the needle gun.

Ronson caught her shoulder. "Let well enough alone," he said firmly. "Anyhow you were going to buy me a drink."

Her eyes held a curious mixture of annoyance, defiance, and longing. Her gaze went down to his hand on her shoulder. Ronson grinned at her. "You look as if you are about to bite me," he said. "Go ahead, if you want to." He did not move his hand.

Wonder came into her face. "A great many men have tried to paw me, without getting very far. But somehow, I don't think you're trying to do that."

"About that drink?" Ronson said.

"Sure." She moved toward a table set against the far wall.

Ronson dared to breathe again. Whatever else this girl was, she was certainly full of fight and fury. She could have gone out into the street, in the face of thrown knives, if he hadn't stopped her. As she moved toward the table, he had a chance to look at the place in which he found himself.

What he saw was not reassuring. Except for a big circle in the center of the room, the place was crammed with Martian males of all sizes and descriptions. Waiters scurried through the crowd. The circle on the floor was outlined in red. No customer and no Martian ventured within it. Ronson glanced at it, asked the girl a question.

"I just got here too," she said. "I haven't had time to find out about it. Some superstition of theirs, I think." She led him to the table. Two glasses were already on it. A waiter appeared out of nowhere. "This is the one who speaks English. Talk to the gentleman, Tocko."

"Oh, yessen, missen. Me talken ze English and but very gooden. Me learnen ze human talken at Mars Porten. Don't I talk him gooden?" The last was directed at Ronson.

"You speak him very wonderfullen," Ronson answered. The waiter beamed.

"Bring the gentleman a mariwaukee," the girl said.

"Oh, yessen, missen."

"On second thought, make it a double shot," the girl said. "The gentleman looks like he needs it." She nodded brightly to Ronson as if she had selected the very medicine he needed. "Now tell me what you are doing on Mars, Dr. Ronson?"

Ronson glanced hastily at the waiter, to make certain that he was out of earshot. "I—I came here on a vacation," he said firmly and loudly. "I've wanted to see Mars ever since I was a kid. Who—ah—was sitting here with you before I came?"

"A man," she answered. "He went to the little boy's room just before you got into trouble in the street. I guess he's still there, if some Martian hasn't slit his throat. Are you enjoying your vacation?"

"Of course."

"Do you mind if I call you Jim?" She smiled at him.

"I would be very pleased."

"Good. You can call me Jennie."

"Thanks."

"Then you are enjoying your vacation." Her smile was very sweet. "Are you also enjoying trying to lie to me—Jim?"

Ronson caught his start of surprise. Jennie Ware bewildered him but this was a game that two could play. "Of course I'm enjoying it. Lying to a woman as beautiful as you are is always a pleasure—Jennie." He grinned at her and watched the anger come up on her face. Why should she be angry?

The anger was gone as swiftly as it had come. She leaned across the table, put her hand on his. "I like you Jim. I really do. And not because you called me a beautiful woman but because you kicked me in the teeth with my own act. I had it coming and you gave it to me very neatly."

The touch of her hand was very pleasant. "No hard feelings. What—ah—are you doing here, Jennie?"

She smiled sweetly at him. "I'm on a vacation too, Jim."

"Touche!" The females in the laboratories back on earth had never touched his hand or called him by his first name. He wondered about the man with whom she had been drinking. Also he was very uneasy about her real reason for being here. No woman with good sense would make the rough rocket trip to Mars for a vacation; presuming she did come to Mars, she would not willingly come to this place. But Jennie Ware was here, an enigma wrapped up in a beautiful smile. He took his eyes off her long enough to look around the place again.

In Mars Port, he had seen the native dives, but Mars Port had nothing like this. To the natives, this was a place of pleasure, filled with sights, sounds, and smells that made them happy. Over against the farther wall a tribal chieftan was absorbing narseeth through the skin of his hands, thrusting them again and again into the sirupy, smoky-colored mixture in the bowl in front of him. Every so often he stopped, whereupon the Martian female with him carefully dried his hands. After they were dry, he made fumbling passes at her. She accepted the passes without resistance. Ronson stared at the sight.

"Relax. You'll get used to it," Jennie Ware said.

At another table a huge Martian was sitting. Two others were with him. One sat facing the rear, the other faced the front. Ronson had the impression of two alert dogs guarding their master. A little chill passed through him at the thought.

Odors were in the place, of sweat dried into dothar skin garments, of stale drinks. Dim but distinct was the all-pervading clinging, cloying odor of tamil, the Martian equivalent of musk. Through an opening at the right, Ronson could see females lounging at ease in what was apparently a reception room to a brothel.

Unease came up in him again. How could this place be the way to Les Ro? But the rumors he had picked up and carefully checked in Mars Port had all been in agreement, if you wanted to see Les Ro, you came here. What happened after that was obviously fate.

Watching, Ronson saw that no Martian entered the circle on the floor.

He nodded toward the Martian females. "What do you think of this?"

"Oh, a girl has to live," she said, shrugging. "What do you think?"

"Oh, a Martian has to have fun, I suppose." His shrug was as indifferent as hers had been. For an instant, he thought she was going to spit at him.

The waiter arrived with the drink.

"I have putten you on ze listen," he said, confidentially, to Ronson.

"On the listen?"

"He means list," Jennie Ware said.

"What list?" Ronson asked.

"On ze listen of zozen waiten to see ze great Les Ro," the waiter answered.

Inside of him, Ronson felt cold come up. Strictly on his own, he had to decide how he was going to handle this. He made up his mind on impulse. "Who the devil is Les Ro?"

Across the table, Jennie Ware lifted startled eyes toward Ronson. The waiter's face showed astonishment, then embarrassment, at the idea that anyone existed who had not heard of Les Ro, Ronson thought. "You do not knowen ze great Les Ro. He is ze greatest zinker, ze greatest doer, ze greatest—"

"Stinker?" Jennie Ware said. "That sounds about right."

"You are maken ze kidden wiz me," the waiter said, indignation in his voice. "You have hearden of ze great Les Ro. You came here to see him. You musten haven. Everybody who comes here, comes to see him." The waiter spoke with authority.

"I'm sorry," Ronson said. "If he is that important, I would like to talk to him, of course. But do you mean all of these Martians are waiting to see him?" A wave of his hand indicated the group in the room.

The waiter, mollified, leered at Ronson. "Ze girls didn't. Ze girls come here for anuzzer purpose." The leering gesture included Jennie Ware in it. It said that obviously she had come here for the same purpose. What other purpose was there?

The girl gasped. Fire shot from her eyes. "I'll have you know—"

"Shut up," Ronson said.

Fire flashed at him. "Hasn't it occurred to you that you are in danger of getting your pretty little throat slit if you talk out of turn here?" Ronson whispered.

"Even ze noffers outside are on ze listen," the waiter added.

"What about me? Am I on it?" Jennie asked.

The waiter showed great astonishment. "But of course not. You are a female."

"What difference does that make?" This time the fire really shot from her eyes.

"How long do you have to wait after you're on the listen?" Ronson hastily asked.

The waiter spread his hands and twisted his shoulders. "Who knows? Some of ze noffers outside have been waiting since last wind time—"

"Almost an Earth year," Ronson said, calculating rapidly. Once during each circle of the sun the great winds blew across Mars. This was the biggest natural event on the planet. Since it occurred with the regularity of clock work, it served as the starting point for their year.

"Sometimes ze great Les Ro call you right away," the waiter said.

"How will I know if I'm called?" Ronson said.

A shudder passed over the waiter. "You vill know. Of a most certain, you vill know. Ze Messenger vill call." The shudder came again. As if he had already said too much, the waiter hurried away. Ronson turned back to Jennie Ware. She was sparkling with fury.

"If they think they're going to keep me from seeing Les Ro just because I'm a woman—"

"Why do you want to see him? He probably isn't pretty."

"Because I want to write a book about him."

"A book—" Ronson's memory suddenly came alive and he remembered where he had seen her name before. He stared at her, startled and almost aghast. Back on Earth, this woman was almost a legend. Every tabloid and every Sunday supplement had carried her picture and stories about her. The programs beamed to space had carried tales of her exploits. She had explored the depths of the Venusian jungles, she had ridden a dothar across half of Mars. When Deep Space Flight One had blasted off from Pluto, bound for the exploration of deep space, the news telecasts back to Earth had carried the information that a stowaway had been discovered and ejected from the ship just before blast off. No one had been surprised when this stowaway had turned out to be Jennie Ware. Subsequent rumors had whispered that she had practically torn Pluto Dome apart because she had been ejected from the ship. Even the fact that the ship had never returned had not cooled her anger.

In addition, she was also a very competent author. Ronson had read two of her books and had admired her deft touch with words and the deep sincerity that had showed through in even the most hard-boiled and raucous passages. Unquestionably Jennie Ware was a very unusual human being.

But in spite of this, Ronson stared at her in growing horror. Her reputation across the solar system was that of an uninhibited vixen. Here in this place, where their lives might ride on the blinking of an eye-lash, or on not blinking it, a temper tantrum thrown by Jennie Ware—or by anybody else—was the last thing he wanted to see.

A tall figure loomed beside the table. A deep voice asked, laughingly, "Well, Jim, since you've already met our lady authoress, how do you like her?"

Ronson looked up, then got up, his hand going out, a grin spurting to his face. The man standing there, Sam Crick, took the outstretched hand and grinned back at him.

Crick was tall and lean. His skin was tanned a deep brown, a color that had resulted from facing all the winds that had ever blown on Mars and all the sun that had ever shown there. Crick was something of a legend on the Red Planet. He was the eternal adventurer, the lonely wanderer of the waste place, the type of human who was always looking for something that lay just over the edge of the horizon.

Jim Ronson and Sam Crick had grown up together as boys on Earth. Ronson had gone into a laboratory, Crick had hopped a freighter bound for Mars. Ronson had not seen his old friend in many years, but he had heard from him and about him. A feeling of deep warmth came up inside the scientist at the sight of the tanned face grinning at him.

"Then you did get my space radio?" Ronson said. "I couldn't locate you in Mars Port and I was never sure." Relief at finding Crick here was a surging feeling deep within him. With Crick here, he not only had a man experienced in Martian ways and customs to help him, but what was more important, he had a friend.

Crick's face lost its smile. Wrinkles showed on his forehead. "What space radio, Jim?"

"The one I sent you, asking you to meet me here. Quit kidding me. If you didn't get my space radio, how does it happen that you're here? Don't tell me this is a coincidence."

Crick shook his head. A doleful expression appeared on his face. "I sure didn't get it, Jim. As to what I'm doing here, I'm chaperoning our lady authoress. Meet my boss." He nodded to Jennie Ware.

Ronson turned startled eyes toward the girl.

"I caught him flat broke in Mars Port just before you arrived," she answered. "Since he was broke, I took advantage of him and hired him as my bodyguard. Not that I would really need a bodyguard, but in case I fell and broke a leg, he might be handy. But his being here wasn't a coincidence."

"Eh?" Ronson said. It was difficult to follow her thinking. She seemed to say a lot, or nothing, all with the same words, the only difference being the voice tone she used. If she chose, she had all the gifts of a man in concealing her true feelings and real opinions.

Her voice was calm, her face expressionless. "The grapevine in Mars Port said the Earth's top-flight bio-physicist was coming here, that old Les Ro was thought to have something that human scientists were all hotted up about, and that you were coming here to investigate, and to chisel Les Ro out of a piece of it, if he would stand still for such treatment."

Ronson blinked at her. She had delivered a bombshell and she had done it as if she thought what she said was of no importance: "I'm not trying to chisel Les Ro or anybody out of anything." His calm matched her aplomb.

"That's not the way the grapevine had it."

"I don't care how the grapevine had it. I know my own motives and my purpose in coming here." An edge crept into his voice as he realized one possible result of what she was saying.

"That may be true. But do the Martians know them?"

Ronson was silent, his thinking perturbed.

"So I hired Sam and came here," Jennie Ware continued. "If Les Ro was big enough to attract you, he was also big enough to provide me with copy for my next book."

"So you could find copy for a damned book, you risked my neck!" Ronson said, his voice hot.

"I didn't risk it a tenth as much as you're doing, by yelling at the top of your lungs where half of Mars can hear you. Anyhow, I saved your clothes and maybe your hide out in front a while ago. Doesn't that count for something?"

"Sorry," Ronson said abruptly. "I lost my temper."

"I'd like to make one point," Crick said. "We've got a mighty hot collection of thieves, crooks, and killers present in this joint."

Jennie Ware and Jim Ronson stared at him.

Crick gestured toward the Martian with the two guards. "That's Tal Bock. He belongs in the upper lentz country, where he is the leader of a gang of killers and thieves. The one over there soaking his hands in smoke is Kus Dorken. He's not any better than Tal Bock."

"What are they doing here?" the girl asked.

"I don't know," Crick answered. "Unless maybe they've been listening in on the grapevine too."

For a moment, it looked as if Jennie Ware was about to cry. She seemed, suddenly, to become a small girl who had done something wrong and was very sorry for it and was trying to find some way to express her sorrow. Her hand came across the table again, touched Ronson's hand hesitantly.

"I'm sorry, Jim, if I got you into trouble. But I knew your reputation. If you were coming here, something big was here. I—I wanted to be in on it. I guess all my life I've wanted to be in on something big. If I actually got you into trouble, Sam and I are here to help you get out of it. Isn't that right, Sam?"

"Right, Jennie." A growl sounded in the tall adventurer's voice. "Thanks, both of you," Ronson said. He was deeply touched. In spite of the shell of bravado that she wore, and her sudden spurting anger, he liked this girl. She might have the reputation of an uninhibited vixen, but somewhere inside of her was a small girl looking out from awed and wondering eyes at the vastness of the world.

"Watch it!" Crick's whisper was shrill and sharp. His eyes were focused on the ceiling.

All the sounds of the place, the rattle of glasses, the sharp giggling of soliciting women, the deep voices of the Martian males, had gone into sudden and complete silence. Like Crick, they were looking upward. Ronson followed their gaze to the ceiling. Jennie Ware gave a quick cry. Glass tinkled and broke as she dropped her drink.

Jim Ronson did not hear the sound. His entire attention was focused on what was happening on the ceiling.

The dive itself had been cut into the side of the cliff. The solid rock of the ceiling had not been disguised or masked.

At first glance, Ronson thought his eyes were deceiving him. The solid stone itself seemed to be in motion. A sort of melting, shifting flow seemed to be taking place as if the molecules and perhaps even the atoms themselves were dissolving.

"That's atomic disintegration, or atomic shifting, under control!" Sam Crick gasped.

"It's a mirage," Jennie Ware whispered. "It must be."

"If it's a mirage, everybody in the place is seeing it," Ronson said.

There was not a sound in the huge room. The waiters had come to attention like trained soldiers. The females had abruptly lost all interest in what they were doing. Out of the corner of his eyes, Ronson saw one female make a sudden darting movement across the room. One foot touched the circle on the floor as she ran. She took two more steps and fell, sagging downward as if every muscle in her body had suddenly refused to function. She lay on the floor without moving. Not a head was turned toward her, not a Martian moved to help her. In her action Ronson saw one reason why the Martians avoided the circle on the floor. Something was definitely wrong with that circle. Looking at the roof, he saw the reason.

The flowing, shifting movement there had formed into a circle the same size as the circle on the floor and directly above it. Little flickers of light, like the discharge of high frequency currents, were flowing between the two circles. Swiftly the flickers of light became an opaque cylinder of misty flame extending from the ceiling to the floor.

From the opaque cylinder of light, a Martian stepped.

Without quite knowing how he knew it, Ronson knew that this was Les Ro's Messenger.

The Messenger was old, perhaps as old as the granite mountain above them, if the network of fine wrinkles on his face were an accurate indication of his age. With age, calmness and serenity had come to this Martian. His eyes gave the impression that they had seen everything. What they had not seen, the brain behind them had imagined. Peace was in the eyes and on the face, the deep peace that many human saints had sought and had found.

"I like him," Jennie Ware whispered.

The Messenger carried himself with a sureness that was full of meaning. He glanced around the room. His eyes settled on the three humans at the table. A sort of a glow appeared on his face, lighting it as if with a halo. He moved toward them, stopped and stood looking down at them. For a moment, his face was blank, and even his eyes seemed to be withdrawn.

"ESP!" Crick whispered. "Guard your thinking."

The eyes flicked toward Crick, then came to Ronson. The human felt a touch that was feather-light appear in his brain. It seemed to run like lightning through the nerve cells. Then it was withdrawn. The smile came back to the face of the Messenger.

"Les Ro has waited a long time for one like you, my son. He will see you." The voice was deep and pleasant. Somewhere in it were tones that were bell pure.

Ronson rose to his feet.

"Watch it!" Crick whispered. "This may not be on the up and up."

"I came here to see Les Ro." Ronson answered. "I'm not going to back out now. Which way do I go?" The last was spoken to the Messenger.

The Martian bowed. The wave of his hand indicated the cylinder of misty radiance flowing from the ceiling to the floor. "Just step into the light, my son."

"Jim!" Jennie's voice had a frantic plea in it.

"May my friends go with me?" Ronson said.

The Messenger shook his head. His face said he was very sorry but that the answer was no. "I have no instructions for them. Only you, my son. Les Ro has waited very long for someone like you."

Ronson did not know whether he was pleased or not. But he knew he was greatly excited. If the rumors had been right, if the grapevine had reported correctly, something was here in the heart of the Martian mountain that had never existed before in the solar system—and perhaps not in the universe. He stepped boldly into the opaque radiance.

To Jennie Ware and Sam Crick it looked as if he had stepped out of existence.

To Jim Ronson, when he stepped into the light, it seemed to him that millions of tiny hands instantly grasped him. They lifted him upward. It seemed as if they changed directions, but he could not be sure of that. The motion stopped. He felt a firm substance under his feet. The tiny hands released him, the opaque light fell away from him. He was standing in the center of a circle in a room cut out of solid stone, a room that had no exit and no entrance except the one under his feet, the solid stone floor through which the microscopic hands had lifted him.

Panic came up in him then and his hand dived for the gun in his coat pocket. It came away empty. The gun had been removed without his knowledge on the transit upward. Examination revealed that every bit of metal had been removed from his pockets. Only his wrist watch had been left and that apparently because the metal strap around his wrist had resisted removal. Automatically he pushed the button on the side of the watch. On the dial the tiny green light glowed. Neither the light that had lifted him upward nor this room contained lethal radiations. The sight of the green light made him feel better. But not much. Sweat appeared on his skin as he waited. Inside his chest, he felt his heart begin to speed up its beating.

Light danced in the wall. The stone seemed to dissolve. The Messenger came through. The wrinkles on the fine face glowed like ivory at the sight of Ronson.

"I hope you will forgive me for keeping you waiting. Other—ah—tasks demanded my attention at the moment."

"It's quite all right. Finding myself here unexpectedly was a little hard on my nerves but the chance to see Les Ro will be worth the shock to my nervous system. I assume this is the way." Ronson moved toward the light dancing on the wall, then stopped as he saw the Martian was not following. "What's wrong?"

The smile was gone from the face of the Messenger. "One must prove himself worthy of seeing Les Ro."

"Eh?" A little touch of fear came up in the human. "Worthy?"

"Also, it would be well to tell me why you want to see Les Ro. I will carry your request to him."

"But you said Les Ro wanted to see me, that he had waited a long time for someone like me. Though how he knows anything about me—" Ronson's voice went into uneasy silence. Had the grapevine reported his coming here? Or had Crick's whisper about extra-sensory perception in operation had some basis in fact?

"I said Les Ro waited a long time for someone like you." For a moment hope showed on the wrinkled face. "But not necessarily for you. You have certain qualities that Les Ro seeks, but until you have proved that you have other qualities as well—" Sadness replaced the hope. "Tell me what you seek here?"

Ronson felt rebellion come up in him. Then he remembered that on Mars the only law protecting humans was what they could make and enforce for themselves. "Rumors have reached us on Earth of Les Ro's great accomplishments. It is our hope that we can share our knowledge, pool our discoveries. It is our belief that great advances can come from this sharing—for both humans and Martians."

Ronson spoke quietly. Only the tone of his voice expressed the very deep and very real feeling he was putting into words. Yet in the quietly spoken words his dream was expressed—and the dream of every real scientist in the history of Earth—of progress, of forward motion, of leaving behind them a world a little better than the one they had known. Once this dream had been only for humans. Now it included Martians too, and every other race within the solar system.

The Messenger smiled at the words. But under the smile was concern.

"Do you mean that you humans still face problems that you cannot solve? But you have made tremendous scientific advances, much greater than we of Mars have made. Space flight is only one illustration—"

"Unfortunately, many of our scientific advances have brought more problems than they have solved." Grimness crept into Ronson's voice "Before atomic energy was released, it was prophesied that the release of this energy would solve all the problems of our planet. This was over two hundred years ago. We are still striving to regain the losses suffered in the first and second atomic wars."

"Wars?" The face of the Martian showed amazement. "You humans are fools."

"We are trying to stop being fools. Or some of us are. But something seems to defeat our efforts."

"Yes." Keen interest showed on the face of the Martian. "Do you have this problem too? I wonder if it's the same something—"

"We live in the same universe."

"Can you state the problem more exactly?"

"I can give you an illustration of it. At the same time, I will give you my reason for being here." Ronson took a deep breath, considered the words he was going to use. "I'm a bio-physicist. This means that my specialty is the living cell and the changes that can and do take place in it. We have a name for one of the changes that may take place there—cancer."

"A disease."

"Yes. And a very serious one. Often tied up with radioactivity, it is a change that takes place in the interior of a living cell."

"I know—"

"No less than eight times in the past hundred years, human doctors have found a cure for this mutation within the cell. Each cure worked, perfectly, for a time."

"And then—"

"Then this something defeated their efforts. A change took place. A new form of cancer appeared, which did not yield to the treatment that had been effective previously." Ronson found his breathing was becoming heavier.

The Messenger moved up and down the cell, pacing, his right hand rubbing his chin. "Yes, it is the same something. Les Ro has talked of it often. It has defeated even him. He calls it change. There seems to be a law in this universe against anything remaining the same—But why did you come here? Do you seek a new way to cure this disease called cancer?"

"Yes. A permanent way. A way that goes behind the law of change."

"Do you think you could find such a thing here?"

"Yes. And here I have proof. Detailed reports from human physicians at Mars Port. In three instances, Martian patients admitted to the human hospital there were found to be suffering from inoperable cancer. Each was discharged, as incurable. Within the following two years, each patient returned to the hospital there, one to have a knife wound treated, a second to have a broken bone set, a third because of injuries suffered in an accident. As soon as they were admitted, the records were checked, and the previous diagnosis of cancer was found. Each case of cancer had been cured. Each Martian told the same story, that he had been here, and that Les Ro had cured the disease."

"And you came here seeking the ninth solution from Les Ro for your people?"

"Yes. And for one other reason."

"Eh?"

"The cancer I am trying hardest to cure is—here." Very gently, Jim Ronson rubbed his chest. At the action, and at his thought, his heart picked up an anxious beat.

For an instant, the face of the Martian showed blank astonishment. Compassion followed the astonishment, a flood of it. "My son!" The voice had pity and understanding and sympathy in it. "Les Ro will see you."

"Good!" Relief surged up inside Jim Ronson. He had travelled many a weary mile for this moment. He had faced frustration and despair. The best doctors on Earth had told him they could do nothing for him. Now, here, in the heart of a mountain near the south pole of Mars—

"Follow me," the Messenger said.

The wall swirled in front of him. He stepped into the misty opaqueness and Ronson followed him. Inside the light, the human felt the millions of microscopic hands take hold of him. Their touch was gentle and caressing, softly tender. Suddenly their touch was firm and strong. He felt them seize his clothing and rip it from his body. Their gentle, caressing touch was gone. In its place was an almost manic fury. A scream ripped involuntarily from his throat.

The scream was flung into complete silence. No echo of it came back to his ears.

Blackness beat at him, flowed in over him, flowed through him. The blackness ransacked every nook and corner of his body. It probed to the bottom of his soul.

It swallowed him whole. It dissected his consciousness, tore it to shreds, then yanked away even the shreds. He seemed to be falling into a black hole that had no end.

Ronson did not know how long the blackness lasted. The first sense to come back was hearing. Somewhere near him he heard a grunt. Then the sense of feeling came back and he realized he was lying naked on sand. He didn't much want to open his eyes. Finally he forced them open. His vision was blurred and vague. When it cleared he saw the source of the grunt.

The sound had come from Tal Bock, squatting on the sand near him. Tal Bock was also naked. Unlike Ronson, the millions of microscopic hands in the darkness had not left even a wrist watch on the Martian.

"Happy—ah—wind time," Ronson said. Tal Bock grunted, but did not answer.

"Where are we?"

"Hell," Tal Bock said. He got up and walked into the shrubbery behind him.

Ronson rose. He was shaky, his legs seemed too long to reach the sand, a subjective impression that almost amused him, but didn't quite. To the left another Martian was squatting cross-legged on the sand. Ronson looked, then looked again. He moved toward the Martian to make certain.

It was the leper who had been on the street outside the dive. Without the rags, the Martian was hardly recognizable. The sores provided a certain means of identification. There was no mistaking them.

"How did you get here?" Ronson asked.

The leper made a weak gesture with his hands which said, "Go away." His attitude was resigned but about his manner was an air of expectancy.

Ronson discovered that the place in which he had found himself was a cavern about half a mile in diameter. It was adequately lighted though the light sprang from no source that he could detect. The place was pleasant enough. There was water here. It flowed in little rills set in stonework. Grass and desert shrubs grew here. The air was moist, with a fragrant sweetness somewhere about it.

Something was in the air besides the moisture and the fragrant sweetness. It was intangible, almost imperceptible. Ronson cocked his head, trying to catch this something. It was always out of the range of his sensory perception, an intangible, elusive quality that perplexed him.

"Subliminal," he thought. "Maybe super-sonic sound just above the range of hearing."

Why super-sonic sound? He did not know. He felt dazed. There was a heavy feeling through his whole body. Why was he here? He had been told he would see Les Ro. There was also talk about a man proving if he was worthy—

He did not like this thinking. He tried to shut it off, but it was a persistent gadfly that returned to buzz again and again in his brain.

The out-of-hearing sound seemed to buzz with it, slipping in and out of hearing too fast for the mind to grasp it. Each time it slipped into hearing for the fractional part of a second, it brought a flick of agony with it. At the touch, he became almost giddy. Alarm bells rang suddenly inside his head. The note went out of hearing again, the giddiness passed, the alarm bells went into silence.

In the shrubbery ahead of him, a figure moved—Kus Dorken.

Two of the worst killers on Mars were here in this place. A leper. A human. Unease came up inside Jim Ronson, a sharp stab of it. Inside his chest a surge of pain broke through the barriers he had erected around it, reminding him of what was there.

He had come here seeking relief for that surge of pain. Instead of getting what he had asked for, he had been thrust into place. With two killers and a leper and—A shout broke into his thinking. A Martian was running along the walls, seeking for an exit. It was Te Hold. Te Hold had recovered from the effect of the thormoline and had been brought here. Ronson watched the Martian run along the walls, searching desperately for a way out. Te Hold screamed as he ran but he didn't find an exit. The screams died out as he reached the far end of the oval, then grew stronger as he came back again upon his own steps.

Kus Dorken slid out of sight. Tal Bock was somewhere in that shrubbery too, where, Ronson didn't know. And didn't care. A feeling of hopelessness was coming up in him. He moved back to the leper, squatted on the sand beside the man, asked a question.

The leper's eyes flicked at him in response but there was no other answer. An ecstacy was in the eyes now. The leper was so lost in this ecstacy that such things as grunted noises from a member of an alien race made no impression on him. Ronson envied him. The leper was close to death but he was so lost in some inner ecstacy that death was unimportant to him.

"Did Les Ro's Messenger promise you that you would be cured of your leprosy?" Ronson asked, persisting.

The leper nodded. Again his hand waved in the "Go away," gesture.

"Go away and let you die in peace?" Ronson said.

"Just go away," the leper answered.

Ronson rose to his feet, angry. What farce was being perpetrated here? What—The super-sonic note came into hearing. Pain stabbed at his chest.

He lifted his hand involuntarily. The sight of the dial on his wrist watch forced itself through the pulses of pain.

As a part of his research into cell structure, Ronson had worked extensively with radioactivity. In order to protect himself, he had had a microscopically small radiation detector built into the watch itself. Three tiny glow tubes were set into the dial. If the green tube glowed, radiation was present but was safe. If the amber light glowed, be wary. If the red light glowed, get out fast!

The red light was glowing now. As Ronson stared, it winked out. Before he could take his eyes away from the dial, the red light flicked on again. The super-sonic note came with it. A flick of very real pain came with the note. The red light flicked out, the note vanished. The pain was gone.

"Regular pulsations of radiation are being poured through this place!" Ronson whispered.

It was being done deliberately. The whole cavern was being flooded periodically with bursts of radiation. This meant deliberate intention, purpose, plan. He did not know what impact this radiation might have on Martian flesh but he could guess the effect it might have on human tissue.

Fear came up in him, a flood of it. Anger followed it. The lights on his watch danced. Pain, agony, and the shrill note of the super-sonic came again. Grimly, he began to prowl the cavern, searching for the source of the radiations. The radiation counter in his watch led him to it, by the increased intensity of its glow. The radiations were coming from a single spot in the wall of the cavern. So far as he could tell, the wall was solid stone at this place, but he had seen solid stone walls dissolve in this madhouse. Behind this spot there was intelligent direction of the bursts of radiation.

Back there Les Ro, or someone with him, was playing games of life and death with—

Te Hold came past him, screaming. The Martian was beginning to stumble as he ran. The screams were only gasping sounds in his throat.

Voices rose in shouted argument somewhere in the shrubbery. Ronson moved away.

"What's going on there?" he asked the leper.

"Tal Bock—and Kus Dorken—have disagreed—as to which is the bigger killer—and therefore which is the more worthy. They fight—to decide the problem."

The words were quietly spoken. The tone said the matter was of no importance. After he had finished speaking, the leper's eyes went back to the inner ecstacy that he seemed to be watching. Or was it future ecstacy that he was imagining?

"I hope there is a heaven for Martians," Ronson said. So far as he knew, only in heaven could this leper's health be restored. Was the same true for him?

Voices screamed in the shrubbery. Giving ground before the heavy blows Tal Bock was striking at him, Kus Dorken came stumbling backward. He slipped in the sand and fell heavily. Tal Bock leaped at him. Kus Dorken screamed once, a sound that gasped into silence as Tal Bock's fingers closed over his throat. For a time, they threshed in the sand. Then Kus Dorken went limp. Viciously Tal Bock slapped his foe across the face. When there was no response, he poured sand into Kus Dorken's mouth, scooping it up in handfuls and cramming it down his foe's gullet.

Tal Bock got to his feet. The scream that ripped from his lips was pure triumph. Utterly naked, he stood beside the body of his victim, shaking his fist at the roof of the cavern, screaming defiance at the universe.

Ronson fervidly hoped that the radiation flowing through the Martian would strike him dead. The scream went into silence. Tal Bock's gaze fell on the leper, he moved in that direction. Viciously he kicked the leper.

The sick Martian slipped from his squatting position and lay inert.

Ronson moved forward. With all the strength that he possessed, he hit Tal Bock behind the ear. As he struck the blow, the super-sonic note screamed through him.

Ronson's blow knocked Tal Bock sprawling. Like a gigantic cat, the Martian came to his feet.

Ping!

Tal Bock moved toward Ronson in little short steps. He was like a cat getting ready to pounce. The grin on his face said he was going to anticipate destroying this human.

Ping!

Tal Bock lost his footing. He fell heavily and tried to rise. A confused expression was on his face. The effort to rise was more than he could manage. Collapsing, he lay without moving.

"Jim! Here! Quick!" The voice came from the shrubbery. His first thought was that he was hallucinating. Jennie Ware and Sam Crick could not be there in that shrubbery, fully clothed, Jennie beckoning frantically to him, Crick with a needle gun in his hand.

They came to him, on the run. Jennie caught one arm, Crick caught the other. Supporting him between them, they ran through the shrubbery. In the opposite wall, a hole showed, an honest opening, not a light-swirling mirage. Inside it, Crick swung shut a door. A Martian lay on the floor of the tunnel.

"How—how did you get here?" Ronson gasped.

Crick nodded to the Martian on the floor. "We persuaded Tocko to bring us. He knew a little more about this place than he ever let on. After he brought us here, we gave him a needle, to keep him quiet while we rescued you." The tall adventurer grinned as he spoke.

"Come on, Jim. We know the way out of here. If we get out before they discover what has happened—" The girl was all frantic motion moving toward escape.

"I'm not going," Ronson said.

"What?" the girl gasped.

Ronson turned to Crick. "Do you have an extra gun?"

"Of course. But, Jim—"

"Lend it to me, will you? I may need it before I'm finished here."

"Eh?" Crick was startled.

Ronson explained what he meant. Crick's face grew grim. He took an extra needle gun out of his coat pocket. "I guess maybe you could use a little help on this job, Jim. Eh, Jennie?" He glanced at the girl.

Fear was on her face. She wanted to run, to get away, forever, from this place of horror. But some things were more important than running.

"We'll make it a threesome," she said.

"Good girl!" Ronson spoke.

A passage circled the oval cavern. With Ronson in the lead, they followed it until they came to the spot from which the radiations were being poured into the cavern. Here was a large room. The passage led directly into it.

Inside the room was a tremendous array of complex electrical apparatus. Ronson had never seen anything as good as this in even the best laboratories back on Earth. He could not even guess the purpose of most of the equipment, it had been designed by a Martian mind and constructed by Martian hands—with a Martian goal in view.

Set in the middle of the room were the control panels of the equipment. Directly above the panels was a smoky visio screen that revealed dimly what was happening in the cavern. Just rising from his place at the controls was—the Messenger.

He looked up and into the muzzle of the needle gun Ronson was holding. A tiny startled reaction played across his poised face, disturbing the many wrinkles there, then was gone. A smile replaced it.

"Ah, yes. I had just discovered you were missing and I was starting to look for you."

Behind him, Ronson heard Jennie Ware catch her breath. He knew she was thinking that they should have run while they had the chance.

"We saved you the trouble, Les Ro," Ronson said.

The startled reaction was more pronounced this time. "You guessed?"

"That Les Ro and his Messenger were one and the same? It was obvious when you did not need to communicate what I had said to Les Ro. How many others are here with you?"

The question was important. Their own survival depended on the number of Martians here.

The startled reaction was very real this time. "No one else is here?"

"You are alone!"

"I am alone. Many times I have longed—"

"Watch him Jim." Crick whispered. "This doesn't smell right to me."

"Do you mean to tell me that you alone built this apparatus?" Ronson gestured toward the array of equipment in the room.

"This? This is only a part. It was a long task. Many weary years I have spent here—"

"He's telling the truth, Jim," Jennie Ware whispered.

"But one pair of hands, to build all of this." Shock was in Ronson, perhaps even greater shock than he had experienced in the cavern. He stared at Les Ro. Respect was in him and admiration, if not liking. "Then you are indeed a genius. The rumors were partly right, after all."

"Thank you."

"But why couldn't you get someone to help you?"

Sadness showed on Les Ro's face. "You have seen the people in the drinking room below. Which of them could understand how an electron circles in its orbit? Many times I have tried to train the brightest of them. The result was inevitable failure. That is why, when you came—" Longing came into Les Ro's eyes.

"Watch him, Jim," Crick whispered.

"I know it doesn't track," Ronson said. His voice grew grim and hard. Bitterness boiled in it. He was facing his own frustration here, in the failure of his deep hopes in coming to this place. A touch of pain moving through his chest told him what that failure meant to him. He gestured toward the cavern. "Out there I saw Martians destroying each other. In this, they were wiser than they knew. The ones who died quickly were lucky. The choice was between a quick death and slow, horrible death from the radiation pouring through that place."

Pain and consternation showed on Les Ro's face. He seemed to hear only Ronson's last words. "How did you detect the radiation?"

"With this." Ronson nodded toward his watch.

"This is wonderful. You humans actually have a reliable method of detecting radiation! I have striven so hard to build such a device. Let me see it." He moved toward Ronson as if nothing else were of any importance in comparison to the detector.

"Stand back. Kus Dorken and Te Hold and the leper would not have thought the radiation pouring through them was wonderful, if they had known about it. Nor will Tal Bock, before he dies."

Real pain darkened the fine patina of the Martian's face. "Do you really believe this of me?"

"I saw it happen," Ronson answered. "I was there. I saw Tal Bock destroy Kus Dorken—"

"One moment, please." Les Ro's hand moved among the controls. Ronson's hand tightened on the trigger. He held off firing. Somewhere a relay thudded home. Power surged. The wall in the front of the room began to glow with light.

"Wait, please! Walt!"

The leper came first through the swirling mistiness. He walked erect, his back straight and his head up. The light of eager anticipation was still in his eyes but something new had been added now—realization.

"But Tal Bock killed him. I saw it," Ronson whispered.

"No," Les Ro gently negated. "When Tal Bock attacked him, I put him into a trance condition, to save him."

Ronson hardly heard the answer. His eyes were fixed on something else. "The sores—" The sores were not gone but they had diminished in size. Replacing the rotten tissue, new flesh had already begun to form.

"This is what he asked, when he came to me," Les Ro said. "This is what he got."

"But this is a miracle."

Again Les Ro denied the statement. "This is natural law in operation, though to you the laws may be unknown. Watch."

The leper would have dropped to his knees and kissed Les Ro's hand, but the Martian forbade it, sending him to wait elsewhere.

Te Hold came through the swirling light—a Te Hold who was without fear. Then, Kus Dorken came. He was still spitting sand out of his mouth but the bluster and the bravado and the anger were gone from him. He was a new Kus Dorken. Inside, he had been subtly changed. Flowing outward, the change showed on his face as a gentle kindliness.

"He was a killer when I saw him first," Jennie Ware said. "Now—he looks like a saint."

Les Ro smiled at her. "He will be a saint, from now on. He knows how to be one, now. As to Tal Bock, he has not yet recovered from your needles. When he does recover, he will come out of the cavern a saint too."

"But why didn't you tell me about this?" Ronson whispered. "Why did you just thrust me, and presumably the others too, in there without warning. Why didn't you tell us?"

"To have told you, might have defeated my purpose, or prolonged its achievement. I put all who come to me in the cavern. There, the killer will try to kill, the coward will run, the brave man will fight. As the killer tries to kill, he will use the reaction patterns he has known all his life. As he uses them, I throw bursts of energy at him. I disconnect the kill patterns. The energy penetrates right down to the levels of the cells, and even goes lower than that, changing old patterns—"

"New lamps for old," the girl whispered.

Ronson was silent. His thinking was perturbed, almost bewildered. What Les Ro had said made sense. Reaction patterns had to change down to and through the cellular level. If the patterns were struck by bursts of radiant energy—but this was the method nature used! This was the method of the something they had sought but which had always eluded them. The change in the cells that was called cancer—again pain flicked through his chest—more often than not this change was brought about by radiant energy operating on cellular structure! Les Ro had organized this something, this wild talent of nature, and was making it do useful work.

"But it did not work for me," Ronson protested.

"Human cellular structure and Martian cellular structure are different," Les Ro answered. "This is the first opportunity I have had to work with humans. More time is needed to produce the changes in them. That is all." A beatific smile lit the face of the old Martian. It went slowly away as his eyes came to focus on the girl. Ronson turned, gasped when he saw what she was doing.

She was stripping herself. Without embarrassment and shame, she took off her clothes. She stood before them, naked.

"A human woman!" Les Ro said.

"Outside, I'm a woman," Jennie Ware answered. "But inside I've got more of the organization of a man than a woman. The result has been that all my life there's been a fight within me. Instead of being a woman, I have only succeeded in being a bitch, all jangle of nerves, always trying to do what the men did, but knowing I really couldn't, because I was a woman. I'm tired of this. I'm sick and tired of it!" Her voice grew frantic for a moment. Then she was calm again.

"I want to be a woman. Do you think that if I went in there—" she gestured toward the cavern, "that you could help me be a—woman?" The appeal in her eyes and in her voice begged for one answer.

"I have never worked with a human woman—"

"Then use me as a guinea pig!" As if the answer were predetermined, her chin up, with not a look behind her, she moved through the misty light and out of sight—like Eve stepping into the Garden of Eden in the dawn of a new world.

Les Ro's hands moved over the switches.

Jim Ronson dropped the needle gun. For a split second, he hesitated. Then he walked toward the swirling light.

Les Ro's voice stopped him. "When you are cured, my son, when you are finished in there, come back, and we will work together on the problems of your world and mine. This I have dreamed of since the first day I began work here, that someone with sufficient intelligence might come to work beside me."

Ronson smiled, nodded. As he stepped into the mistiness, Les Ro's face beamed at him, enhaloed, like a saint.

The girl was wandering through the shrubbery. She seemed not to see him but when he came into step beside her, she looked up and smiled. Arm in arm, they walked together, in a place that had been hell, but was now heaven, waiting for the miracle to take place within them. And little by little, in minute bursts of spurting quanta, Jim Ronson felt the pain in his chest go away.

The girl beside him was no longer the bitter harriden who had almost turned Pluto Dome upside down when she had been ejected from a space ship that never returned. She was no longer the unhappy roamer who had wandered the paths of the planets, defying all creation and herself. She was becoming something else—a woman. The fact showed in the gentleness of her smile.

His arm went around her and she came closer without hesitation. A glow came up inside of both them, and grew stronger.

THE END

Thursday, May 5, 2016

The Wives of the Dead by Nathaniel Hawthorne

THE WIVES OF THE DEAD

By

Nathaniel Hawthorne



The following story, the simple and domestic incidents of which may be deemed scarcely worth relating, after such a lapse of time, awakened some degree of interest, a hundred years ago, in a principal seaport of the Bay Province. The rainy twilight of an autumn day,—a parlor on the second floor of a small house, plainly furnished, as beseemed the middling circumstances of its inhabitants, yet decorated with little curiosities from beyond the sea, and a few delicate specimens of Indian manufacture,—these are the only particulars to be premised in regard to scene and season. Two young and comely women sat together by the fireside, nursing their mutual and peculiar sorrows. They were the recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman, and two successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic. The universal sympathy excited by this bereavement drew numerous condoling guests to the habitation of the widowed sisters. Several, among whom was the minister, had remained till the verge of evening; when, one by one, whispering many comfortable passages of Scripture, that were answered by more abundant tears, they took their leave, and departed to their own happier homes. The mourners, though not insensible to the kindness of their friends, had yearned to be left alone. United, as they had been, by the relationship of the living, and now more closely so by that of the dead, each felt as if whatever consolation her grief admitted were to be found in the bosom of the other. They joined their hearts, and wept together silently. But after an hour of such indulgence, one of the sisters, all of whose emotions were influenced by her mild, quiet, yet not feeble character, began to recollect the precepts of resignation and endurance which piety had taught her, when she did not think to need them. Her misfortune, besides, as earliest known, should earliest cease to interfere with her regular course of duties; accordingly, having placed the table before the fire, and arranged a frugal meal, she took the hand of her companion.

"Come, dearest sister; you have eaten not a morsel to-day," she said. "Arise, I pray you, and let us ask a blessing on that which is provided for us."

Her sister-in-law was of a lively and irritable temperament, and the first pangs of her sorrow had been expressed by shrieks and passionate lamentation. She now shrunk from Mary's words, like a wounded sufferer from a hand that revives the throb.

"There is no blessing left for me, neither will I ask it!" cried Margaret, with a fresh burst of tears. "Would it were His will that I might never taste food more!"

Yet she trembled at these rebellious expressions, almost as soon as they were uttered, and, by degrees, Mary succeeded in bringing her sister's mind nearer to the situation of her own. Time went on, and their usual hour of repose arrived. The brothers and their brides, entering the married state with no more than the slender means which then sanctioned such a step, had confederated themselves in one household, with equal rights to the parlor, and claiming exclusive privileges in two sleeping-rooms contiguous to it. Thither the widowed ones retired, after heaping ashes upon the dying embers of their fire, and placing a lighted lamp upon the hearth. The doors of both chambers were left open, so that a part of the interior of each, and the beds with their unclosed curtains, were reciprocally visible. Sleep did not steal upon the sisters at one and the same time. Mary experienced the effect often consequent upon grief quietly borne, and soon sunk into temporary forgetfulness, while Margaret became more disturbed and feverish, in proportion as the night advanced with its deepest and stillest hours. She lay listening to the drops of rain, that came down in monotonous succession, unswayed by a breath of wind; and a nervous impulse continually caused her to lift her head from the pillow, and gaze into Mary's chamber and the intermediate apartment. The cold light of the lamp threw the shadows of the furniture up against the wall, stamping them immovably there, except when they were shaken by a sudden flicker of the flame. Two vacant arm-chairs were in their old positions on opposite sides of the hearth, where the brothers had been wont to sit in young and laughing dignity, as heads of families; two humbler seats were near them, the true thrones of that little empire, where Mary and herself had exercised in love a power that love had won. The cheerful radiance of the fire had shone upon the happy circle, and the dead glimmer of the lamp might have befitted their reunion now. While Margaret groaned in bitterness, she heard a knock at the street door.

"How would my heart have leapt at that sound but yesterday!" thought she, remembering the anxiety with which she had long awaited tidings from her husband.

"I care not for it now; let them begone, for I will not arise."

But even while a sort of childish fretfulness made her thus resolve, she was breathing hurriedly, and straining her ears to catch a repetition of the summons. It is difficult to be convinced of the death of one whom we have deemed another self. The knocking was now renewed in slow and regular strokes, apparently given with the soft end of a doubled fist, and was accompanied by words, faintly heard through several thicknesses of wall. Margaret looked to her sister's chamber, and beheld her still lying in the depths of sleep. She arose, placed her foot upon the floor, and slightly arrayed herself, trembling between fear and eagerness as she did so.

"Heaven help me!" sighed she. "I have nothing left to fear, and methinks I am ten times more a coward than ever."

Seizing the lamp from the hearth, she hastened to the window that overlooked the street-door. It was a lattice, turning upon hinges; and having thrown it back, she stretched her head a little way into the moist atmosphere. A lantern was reddening the front of the house, and melting its light in the neighboring puddles, while a deluge of darkness overwhelmed every other object. As the window grated on its hinges, a man in a broad-brimmed hat and blanket-coat stepped from under the shelter of the projecting story, and looked upward to discover whom his application had aroused. Margaret knew him as a friendly innkeeper of the town.

"What would you have, Goodman Parker?" cried the widow.

"Lackaday, is it you, Mistress Margaret?" replied the innkeeper. "I was afraid it might be your sister Mary; for I hate to see a young woman in trouble, when I have n't a word of comfort to whisper her."

"For Heaven's sake, what news do you bring?" screamed Margaret.

"Why, there has been an express through the town within this half-hour," said Goodman Parker, "travelling from the eastern jurisdiction with letters from the governor and council. He tarried at my house to refresh himself with a drop and a morsel, and I asked him what tidings on the frontiers. He tells me we had the better in the skirmish you wot of, and that thirteen men reported slain are well and sound, and your husband among them. Besides, he is appointed of the escort to bring the captivated Frenchers and Indians home to the province jail. I judged you would n't mind being broke of your rest, and so I stepped over to tell you. Good night."

So saying, the honest man departed; and his lantern gleamed along the street, bringing to view indistinct shapes of things, and the fragments of a world, like order glimmering through chaos, or memory roaming over the past. But Margaret stayed not to watch these picturesque effects. Joy flashed into her heart, and lighted it up at once; and breathless, and with winged steps, she flew to the bedside of her sister. She paused, however, at the door of the chamber, while a thought of pain broke in upon her.

"Poor Mary!" said she to herself. "Shall I waken her, to feel her sorrow sharpened by my happiness? No; I will keep it within my own bosom till the morrow."

She approached the bed, to discover if Mary's sleep were peaceful. Her face was turned partly inward to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within. Happy is it, and strange, that the lighter sorrows are those from which dreams are chiefly fabricated. Margaret shrunk from disturbing her sister-in-law, and felt as if her own better fortune had rendered her involuntarily unfaithful, and as if altered and diminished affection must be the consequence of the disclosure she had to make. With a sudden step she turned away. But joy could not long be repressed, even by circumstances that would have excited heavy grief at another moment. Her mind was thronged with delightful thoughts, till sleep stole on, and transformed them to visions, more delightful and more wild, like the breath of winter (but what a cold comparison!) working fantastic tracery upon a window.

When the night was far advanced, Mary awoke with a sudden start. A vivid dream had latterly involved her in its unreal life, of which, however, she could only remember that it had been broken in upon at the most interesting point. For a little time, slumber hung about her like a morning mist, hindering her from perceiving the distinct outline of her situation. She listened with imperfect consciousness to two or three volleys of a rapid and eager knocking; and first she deemed the noise a matter of course, like the breath she drew; next, it appeared a thing in which she had no concern; and lastly, she became aware that it was a summons necessary to be obeyed. At the same moment, the pang of recollection darted into her mind; the pall of sleep was thrown back from the face of grief; the dim light of the chamber, and the objects therein revealed, had retained all her suspended ideas, and restored them as soon as she unclosed her eyes. Again there was a quick peal upon the street-door. Fearing that her sister would also be disturbed, Mary wrapped herself in a cloak and hood, took the lamp from the hearth, and hastened to the window. By some accident, it had been left unhasped, and yielded easily to her hand.

"Who's there?" asked Mary, trembling as she looked forth.

The storm was over, and the moon was up; it shone upon broken clouds above, and below upon houses black with moisture, and upon little lakes of the fallen rain, curling into silver beneath the quick enchantment of a breeze. A young man in a sailor's dress, wet as if he had come out of the depths of the sea, stood alone under the window. Mary recognized him as one whose livelihood was gained by short voyages along the coast; nor did she forget that, previous to her marriage, he had been an unsuccessful wooer of her own.

"What do you seek here, Stephen?" said she.

"Cheer up, Mary, for I seek to comfort you," answered the rejected lover. "You must know I got home not ten minutes ago, and the first thing my good mother told me was the news about your husband. So, without saying a word to the old woman, I clapped on my hat, and ran out of the house. I could n't have slept a wink before speaking to you, Mary, for the sake of old times."

"Stephen, I thought better of you!" exclaimed the widow, with gushing tears and preparing to close the lattice; for she was no whit inclined to imitate the first wife of Zadig.

"But stop, and hear my story out," cried the young sailor. "I tell you we spoke a brig yesterday afternoon, bound in from Old England. And who do you think I saw standing on deck, well and hearty, only a bit thinner than he was five months ago?"

Mary leaned from the window, but could not speak. "Why, it was your husband himself," continued the generous seaman. "He and three others saved themselves on a spar, when the Blessing turned bottom upwards. The brig will beat into the bay by daylight, with this wind, and you'll see him here to-morrow. There's the comfort I bring you, Mary, and so good night."

He hurried away, while Mary watched him with a doubt of waking reality, that seemed stronger or weaker as he alternately entered the shade of the houses, or emerged into the broad streaks of moonlight. Gradually, however, a blessed flood of conviction swelled into her heart, in strength enough to overwhelm her, had its increase been more abrupt. Her first impulse was to rouse her sister-in-law, and communicate the new-born gladness. She opened the chamber-door, which had been closed in the course of the night, though not latched, advanced to the bedside, and was about to lay her hand upon the slumberer's shoulder. But then she remembered that Margaret would awake to thoughts of death and woe, rendered not the less bitter by their contrast with her own felicity. She suffered the rays of the lamp to fall upon the unconscious form of the bereaved one. Margaret lay in unquiet sleep, and the drapery was displaced around her; her young cheek was rosy-tinted, and her lips half opened in a vivid smile; an expression of joy, debarred its passage by her sealed eyelids, struggled forth like incense from the whole countenance.

"My poor sister! you will waken too soon from that happy dream," thought Mary.

Before retiring, she set down the lamp, and endeavored to arrange the bedclothes so that the chill air might not do harm to the feverish slumberer. But her hand trembled against Margaret's neck, a tear also fell upon her cheek, and she suddenly awoke.