IV

That was a bad evening for Ed Dukas. He left Barbara at her house,

which was now guarded. But he did not get home easily. For that was the

evening trouble became general. John Jones of old-time flesh and blood,

and George Smith of vitaplasm forgot all their politeness and let their

smoldering thoughts come to the surface:

"So now you brew up monsters like yourselves, to attack us. I wouldn't

be like you if it was the last way to be alive."

"Oh, no, brother? Those creatures must be yours. What makes you so

good? Born with your own hide, eh? The elite. With jelly for insides,

and a mean nature."

Talk swiftly led to flying fists. But who could hurt an android

with a human fist? Before their hardened knuckles a human jaw could

become mush. Still, there were heavier primitive weapons. Then, by

progression, weapons that were not so primitive.

Ed didn't try any more to quell the trouble. He watched it, walked

around it and away from it. The wise and careful thinking that he had

been taught to believe in seemed to have deserted his kind. The stars

were only a remote fancy, lost in the chaos of local emotion. Feeling

beaten, Ed finally got home.

This was the evening when he told himself that anything could happen

at any moment--that morning might not even come. On the newscast, he

heard the report that the first star ship--to be aimed perhaps at

Proxima Centauri or Sirius--was within weeks of completion out there

on its asteroid. There were infinite heights to this era of his. And

terrifying depths.

This was the evening when, fearing that the spoken word could no longer

be heard through the din of clashing hatreds, Ed Dukas decided to write

letters.

He meant to begin with a letter to Les and then write to his father,

whose eyes had turned backward toward archaic simplicities. He wanted

to write to Granger, asking again for calm. But he had only completed a

few paragraphs to Les when that kid nickname of his appeared on a blank

sheet of his paper. From nowhere:

"_Nipper._"

Only Mitchell Prell, unheard from for ten years, had ever called him

that. His uncle. A likable little man, tainted by accusations, but

part of the once thrilling thoughts of the future. Mitchell Prell

had belonged to the onward surging and reaching of science--and its

stumbling. The lunar blowup had come as a forerunner of the first leap

to the stars. And the human-and-android animosity had resulted from the

mastery of the forces of life. Wonder becoming horror. White turning

black. Till you hardly knew what to believe in, except that, being

alive, you had to go on trying to make things right.

For an hour Ed Dukas sat in his room. Nothing more appeared on the

paper which he had clamped under his microscope. "_Nipper._" That

was all. Silly name of his childhood. Often he looked around him,

as though expecting someone to appear. Several times he said softly,

"Uncle Mitch, you must be here, someplace...."

There was no answer.

The muttering tumult in the streets--the shouts, the occasional rush of

feet, the curses and yells--masked the arrival of Tom Granger. Ed was

startled from his preoccupation to find Granger almost at his elbow.

With him was a man who looked like a plain-clothes police official. In

the background, grim and frightened, was Ed's mother.

"Eddie," she said. "If you know anything, tell. Mitch just isn't worth

any more trouble to us."

"Tell what?" Ed demanded, rising.

"About where Mitchell Prell is," Granger told him. "You said things

which hinted that he might be around."

Ed's throat tightened. It was still a minor shock to remember that the

probe beam had probably been used on this house sporadically for years.

The refined radar of the probe beam could, if minutely focused, make

fair pictures of distant things inside walls. But Ed didn't think that

it could make the small print on a sheet of letter paper readable.

But there were instruments that could pick up faint sounds from miles

away--a voice, for instance--and amplify them to audibility. Ed was

still sure that, over distance, his mind itself remained inviolable.

Ed felt cornered by the brute forces that always take over whenever

reason is broken down by fear. Once his uncle had been a scapegoat

to blame for disaster. Then, poor memories and triumphant years had

half forgiven him. But now, during trouble, he was guilty again. And

according to savage concepts of justice so were his relatives.

The confusion of half blaming his uncle left Ed and was replaced

by stubborn loyalty. He summoned all his self-control and grinned

carefully. He wondered if the fright in Granger's large eyes reflected

realization at last of the angry hands, gone completely untrustworthy,

that now touched the controls of modern science. Was he getting

intelligent so late? Or was he afraid of something simpler?

Ed forced a laugh. "You picked up my muttering, Granger," he accused.

"I wonder what _you_ mutter about, these days? Grant me the same

privilege of nervousness under strain which you could do a lot to

relieve, everywhere, as I have been begging you to see. No, I don't

know where Mitchell Prell is, though I wish I did."

The plain-clothes man had moved over to the table. Now he peered into

the microscope. Soon he motioned to Granger to do likewise. Ed felt the

roots of his hair puckering.

"What does '_Nipper_' signify to you, Dukas?" Granger asked at last,

levelly.

"Suppose it's my pet name for you, Granger?" Ed answered. "Your friend

can take the paper along. The police laboratories might make something

else of it. Maybe I doodle with a bum pen and absent-mindedly stick

the doodle under a microscope--and right away somebody wants to make a

story of it. You want to psyche me? I've humored that kind of whim from

the police before. This time, for cussedness, I'll stand on my rights

and demand that they get a court order before they meddle with my most

private possession, my memory. Especially since hotheads and hysterics

seem to have taken over. But wait, Granger. I'm sure that sensible

people are still in the majority. They haven't reacted very much, yet.

But they will--with matters as bad as they are now. Maybe they haven't

any answers to our problems, except calm and the hope of working

something out. But that's a lot. We were schooled to cautious thinking,

Granger, and that means something, even though you and plenty of others

can lose their wits. Maybe the sensible people will finally shut you

up!"

"We'll take the paper along all right," the plain-clothes man said.

"And you, too. We already have the court order you mention."

"Dukas," Granger said with a show of great patience, "will you ever

realize? We're facing a soulless horror. We must be harsh if need be.

But you should be glad to give your absolute co-operation. It's your

duty. We have always felt that Prell is alive, somewhere. Twice he has

been part of disaster, even if unintentionally. We must stop him before

he can bring us greater, unknown dangers."

Ed eyed this thin, wily man who had managed to assume a certain

unofficial power in the world. And again Ed had trouble judging him.

Perhaps he was entirely insincere. Yet he had, too, the marks of

the rabid crusader following obsolete themes that needed revision;

following them blindly, with both a kind of courage and the crassest

stupidity.

"Tell me something, Granger," Ed said. "I'm curious. And I know I have

a duty, however different from what you mean. Did you have a hand in

the creation of the monsters of vitaplasm? I mean the real monsters,

not just the androids, the Phonies. The use of terror is old in war and

politics. Stirring up fury, with the blame carefully implied elsewhere."

Granger's features stiffened, as if he had been insulted, or perhaps

he was just acting. "I would not dirty my hands with things from hell,

Dukas!" he snapped. "Unwise as you are, you must know that! Now I think

the police want to take you away."

Ed's mother stood in the doorway of his room without saying a word. She

looked strong, yet bitter and scared. He knew that her loyalty was with

him, though her views differed somewhat from his.

His father must have been out of the house when Granger and the other

man arrived, Ed thought. Did his going out on this chaotic evening mean

anything special? Wanting to be loyal, and at least half sure that the

wish was returned, Ed didn't care to complete the thought.

He was concerned about his mother, yet he said, "Try not to worry, Mom.

Go to bed. They'll have to guard the house. I can still insist on it.

And I don't think I can be held very long, even now."

"Your father will come to you as soon as he knows, Eddie," she said.

So Edward Dukas was carted off to the local bastille. A helmet was

put on his head. But what was learned from him about the whereabouts

of Mitchell Prell must have been both confusing and disappointing.

Certainly, though, it must have intrigued the police, as did that

single name on the paper, which told them nothing under the most

careful scrutiny.

Bronson, the portly local police chief, introduced Ed to a man named

Carter Loman, a bullishly handsome character with a mouth like a trap,

a smile to match, and a gimlet scrutiny. A big wheel of some sort, Ed

assumed. Was there something familiar about him?

"You'll have to spend the night here, Dukas," Loman rumbled.

Ed put out the light in his cell, but as he crept into his cot, he held

a bit of paper from his coat pocket in one hand. He left his fountain

pen open, on top of his clothes. For maybe an hour he lay quietly in

the dark, listening to the scattered noises of the troubled night. Then

he slept.

He awoke as dawn grayed the east and glanced at once at the paper in

his hand, which he had kept outside the blanket. Ed's heart leaped.

A message had been written. Perhaps it had taken all night to toil

it out at a creeping pace: "_Nipper--argue police--you go Port

Smitty--Mars--at once_."

The final _e_ of _once_ was already written, except that a line of it

was still being extended. A little dot of wet ink was still laboring

across the paper.

Ed had no microscope or pocket lens, but he risked turning on the

light. He peered hard. He was not at all sure that he saw anything

special. But imbedded in the dark liquid he thought for an instant that

he beheld a suggestion of form--impossible or entirely fantastic. Then

the tiny minuscule of ink quivered, and the hint was gone.

Ed whispered, so low that he himself could not hear, "Uncle Mitch. I

know that you're around--in some form. I wish I understood what you're

up to."

Ed tore the message from the sheet of paper, chewed it to a pulp, and

spat it on the floor. At least he was destroying concrete evidence that

might provoke greater attention than his psyched memories. Of course

they would psych him again--that was why they had held him, hoping that

he would learn more. But he had learned very little.

* * * * *

The psyching was done. Chief Bronson and Carter Loman knew all that

he knew. Now Ed offered his proposition: "Suppose I got to Mars, as

Mitchell Prell suggests? I seem to be the only man to contact him.

You are aware that I myself haven't more than a wild glimmer of where

the trail leads. But you know that I'm badly worried about what a

human-and-android conflict can mean, and that I want to break the

danger somehow. If you want to find Prell, track me by the best means

that you know."

Chief Bronson nodded, musingly.

"Hmm-m--very good!" Carter Loman grunted. "Of course you would prefer

to act alone, Dukas, because you are fond of Prell. You offer to

combine forces with us only because it is the only way that you can do

what you want to do at all. All right, we agree."

"Tickets and passport will be arranged for immediately," Bronson said.

"And now there is someone here to see you."

It was Ed's father, angry with him but more angry with the restraint

under which his son had been put.

"Damn it, Eddie, I tried to get to you last night, and they sent me

away!" he stormed. "And what have you been up to? What's this nonsense

about a message from Prell? Damn, has everything gone completely crazy?

I was for this man Granger and his return to rustic simplicities; but

he's gone wild, too! Isn't there any way to handle what's happening?

Phonies, and things from a witch's caldron, but grown to elephant size.

And more of them all the time! Where does it stop?... Well, it helps a

little that lots of people went out last night breaking up fights. Even

some Phonies did that, they say; but should we believe it? Scientists

were on the run everywhere, as maybe they should be for inventing so

much new trouble. The Schaeffer lab is barricaded. I'm glad for your

sensible people, Ed, but can they hold the peace for more than a little

while? And would it do any final good if they could?"

Jack Dukas, the "memory man" of old-time flesh, was more like a dad

to Ed again, and Ed was almost as glad for that as he was for the

awakening of the forces of calm and order.

"Thanks, Dad," Ed said with a cryptic meaning of his own. "It's a small

lessening of danger, anyway. It's a fact, though, that the situation,

at the moment, is an explosive magazine which one well-placed idiot

could set off. And it's hard to see how there could ever be less than

many. Say that our population is split three ways. Android, human

and that mixed group which is trying to keep them from each other's

throats. It's hard to see how the latter can succeed for very long."

For a moment Ed and Jack Dukas were almost close, in spite of

differences. Ed was a little reassured.

"I'm going out to Mars, Dad," he said. "With police co-operation. Maybe

to find my uncle. And--who knows?--maybe even to find some useful

answers."

Jack Dukas shrugged. "More science, no doubt," he said. "Well, anyway,

good luck."

The brief spell of companionship was broken.

For a moment Ed was tense with the thought of precious time possibly

wasted, chasing off to the Red Planet, when perhaps he should be

trying to hunt down the perpetrators of offenses to a new biology--in

vitaplasm. He knew that time remained still desperately short, with

nuclear hell building up. But a choice had been made, and he sensed

that it was the best one.

Ed and Barbara went to see Les Payten that morning. He lay in a bed,

his body encased in an armor of plastic, under which fluids circulated.

He had mended enough to listen and speak. Ed partly explained his

intentions. About them, Les showed a mixture of a sick man's insight

and weariness: "I hope we'll see each other again, Ed. And that

the world will still be around. And that you won't be changed too

much--strong, weak, big or little. Because I've got things figured out

_for me_ at last, Ed. Granger is right, as far as I am concerned. I was

a romantic kid, but now I've had enough! The stars are still farther

out of reach than we realize. Got to fight the murdering Phonies and

all of the vitaplasm menace, no matter what. Because there never was a

menace like it--not to me." Les grinned wanly. "So long, pals."

In a park, some hours later, Barbara and Ed walked in the beautiful

dusk, while the arch of silvery murk that had been Luna masked a few

of the first stars. Something with long webbed wings was visible in

silhouette against it for an instant--another creature that never

existed before. It added a chill to their low mood. Ed was thinking

that he must say goodbye to Barbara, too, very soon, and to all the

chaotic wonder and charm that was Earth. Earth maybe in its last days.