IX

Ed's score stood at two points gained--Loman out of the way and the

source of the monsters revealed. But these were small victories

compared with what must be gained if there was to be any hope. Masses

of human beings and androids faced each other, their emotions inflamed

to the point of final folly. And the end of one troublemaker and the

revelation of his tools were small items beside all that.

Ed got out of Loman's oxygen helmet the way he had entered. Les Payten,

a dazed Atlas, was stumbling around. Ed felt cut off from his old

friend by a strange, great distance. But he could talk to him at least.

Ed floated to the radio in a corner of the workshop, found his way

through a vent in its back, and touched a wire with the minute contact

points of a crude microphone as large as his hand. The infinitesimal

electric currents it bore were amplified and converted into sound. Ed's

voice came forth loud and clear: "Les! It's me--Ed Dukas. I'm here,

just as Prell came to me once. I'm an android just a few thousandths of

an inch tall. I'm inside the radio, Les. First, I want to know how you

feel about all this. Yes, I killed Loman."

There were world tremors of footsteps approaching with slow caution.

A panel of the set was opened. The giant stared inside. Ed was now

sufficiently accustomed to the vibrations of human speech to interpret

the mood behind them.

There was a brief, hard chuckle, controlled and distant and unfriendly.

"Yes, Dukas, I'm quite sure it's as you say. It's odd, maybe, but I'm

not surprised at all. In our time, you have to accept too much. Thanks

for finishing Loman--not my father. Dad died on the lunar blowup, as

you know, a victim of technology or history, as we all will probably

soon be. I've told you before how I feel about everything. And what

has happened to me tonight can scarcely have made my view of the

androids any kinder. Once upon a time, in my callow youth, I thought

I belonged to this crazy period. How wrong can you get? You take your

strength and durability. I wonder what finer flavors of life you've

lost. So there's my standard, and I'll live and die by it, Dukas. It's

sad to lose a pal, but as you are, I guess you'll have to be an enemy.

It's like an instinct, Dukas."

Les had spoken calmly and firmly. But Ed sensed the bitterness and

uncertainty that lurked beneath the words.

"I won't argue, Les," he answered. "But when I'm thinking straight, the

truth to me is still as it was. In championing man above android, or

vice versa, you can only come to zero. Only in fair play between them

is there a chance. So, if the urge ever comes over you, you might still

do me a favor. Across this room is a microscope and attached equipment

that are vital to me and to Barbara, who is like me, somewhere. Guard

it, Les. No place that you could reach is perhaps truly safe for it.

But I was thinking that if you could gamble again--as we all must--you

might take it to Abel Freeman. I know that you were almost killed in

his camp, Les. But I believe that the old reprobate is fundamentally

sound and not as bitterly against such a device as some human beings

might be. Thanks if you consider it, Les."

Still unseen by his one-time friend, Ed jetted to the vaulted ceiling

and escaped through a ventilator pipe that emerged among concealing

bushes. He rose above the trees, and a night wind pushed him on, while

he listened to the quartz chip he carried. His first impulse now was to

locate Tom Granger as his next candidate for silence.

It was not necessary. The news was on the air: "Granger was stricken in

his quarters just before eight o'clock. The cause is not yet clear. He

had just begun to write his new speech: 'I am frightened. We are all

frightened. But this can change nothing of our purpose. In vitaplasm

we are confronted by a vampirish fact: an identity of face masking a

difference of spirit. A treachery. A slow, dreadful encroachment....'"

Prell had gotten to Granger, then. If this was murder, maybe it was

justified--if Earth was one per cent less in danger with one exhorter

quieted, for a while if not forever. But what had been accomplished so

far was small beside the threat that had been stirred up in many minds

and machines across the countryside.

The sky was heavy with thickening clouds. Weather Control, working

through its ionic towers had already been smashed. The night was

alternately a Stygian hole or a glare-lit holocaust full of battering

vibrations which might mean that real battle had already begun. So

far, only neutron streams were being used. Where a mountain peak was

hit there would be a blaze of light that even an android had better

not look at. Then another mountain, looming over a different fortified

line, would flare up and glow with moving lava. And the power that

energized the weapons was the same as that which could reach the stars.

Rising high and jetting forward with his Midas Touch, Ed went to work.

He thought of Abel Freeman's camp, which lay somewhere beyond the

carpet of flaming woods which flanked one slope. But that was not his

immediate destination now. He had dived for a power station house in a

great trailer--and did it matter whether it belonged to the older race

or the newer? He took great risks getting into its busy vitals. The

constricting pressure of space warps, creating a gravity pressure of

billions of tons to the square inch, eased gradually. A marble-sized

bit of super-dense matter, crushed and compressed by the force and

hidden by its opaqueness, began to expand to meter-wide size and to

lose its blinding heat and fury as the processes within it stopped.

Soon the power plant, turning out a flood of electricity out of all

proportion to its small size, ceased to function. Scattered atoms of

hydrogen and lithium became inert.

There was no easily visible cause for the breakdown, until puzzled

eyes found minute holes burned in vacuum tubes, allowing air to enter,

oxidizing grids and filaments and stopping their action.

Two great weapons died, their energy cut off. But the power stations

themselves were the far greater threat, for they harbored that

sun-stuff within them. Now the controls of one, which some enraged

person might contrive to push too far in spite of the watchfulness of

others, were temporarily useless.

Working both sides of the line, Ed sabotaged another energy source, and

another. Then he lost count, not because of a high score, but because

heat and radiation had fogged his mind somewhat. Yet he kept at his

labors because there was no other way. Within every square mile there

was enough potential power to end his planet.

Around him, curses came vibrating from giants: "Men, eh? Jelly for

insides!..." "Stinking Phonies--Hell-born or Prell-born!... Jim, I

was wondering, this fizz-out looks fishy. Do you suppose the bastards

_have_ something?"

The front had quieted. It could be that, as far as he had gone, Ed

had actually held the Earth together by spiking a few danger points.

But he could take no pride for himself out of this. The job could go

on and on, like a few buckets of water poured on a forest fire. It

helped briefly, yet if there had been a thousand like him, but truly

indestructible, the situation might still be without promise. The mass

of the populace was too enormous and scattered; the natural suspicion

and the forces which had stirred it up were too deep. The ghosts of

Loman and Granger still walked in memory and maybe now in martyrdom.

And the technology was still there. So Ed knew that, unless there was

another way, he could only go on attempting to lessen a threat, until

heat and radiation or its fulfillment zeroed him out.

It took him over an hour to stop one power station because his demoniac

vitality was ebbing and because it had begun to rain heavily. The great

drops could not kill him, but like falling lakes, they could hammer

him into the mud, from which it might take days for him to extricate

himself. He waited in the shelter of a loose bit of bark on the trunk

of a tree. There he felt the helpless side of his smallness.

As he waited, his mind rambled. Had several groups of weapons quit

without his noticing, or was this only something that he wished were

so? Where was Barbara now? Would he ever see her again?... Now he lost

himself in a fantasy. He saw them leaving Earth's atmosphere the way

they had come--she and he together; maybe finding beauty and peace

out there. Perhaps there were even tiny worlds--meteors--inhabited by

crystalline things such as they had once seen but advanced to a state

where they could think and build, and be friendly.

And, almost wistfully, he thought of another idyl--his father's, and

even Granger's, among millions of others. He could almost see the crude

charm of the houses, the gardens and the flocks. But how did one erect

a wall against science--with science? It seemed harder to do than

diking the water out of the deepest ocean and trying to live in the

hole thus made.

The rain ended. Ed was air-borne again. He caused one more power

station to break down. But there were others. And some that he had

spiked might already be repaired. And from his quartz chip he heard

other exhorting voices--not Granger's, but like Granger's. The old and

human traits that Granger had represented could go on without him,

fighting maturer thoughts as if in a drive toward suicide. Who could be

everywhere, to quiet such clamoring?

In the darkness before dawn, Ed felt desperate and hopeless. His mind

was on Abel Freeman again--the memory man, somebody's cockeyed family

legend. It was an instinctive thing to seek out the strong for advice,

for discussion and perhaps for a joining of forces.

Ed had only part of an energy cartridge left for his Midas Touch. But

this was more than enough to jet him across the mountains to the camp

of the quaint android chieftain with whom he must now admit a kinship

of flesh. Freeman was certainly a local leader now among those of

the same mark who had fled from the City, where the population was

predominantly of the old kind. Technicians, craftsmen, specialists of

every sort, would be among Freeman's following.

Just as first daylight began, Ed drifted over the vast, hodge-podge

encampment hidden in the woods and the marshes. Part of the ground it

covered had been fused to hot, glassy consistency, perhaps by a small

aerial bomb. Maybe a hundred Phonies had died there--which fact added

nothing to the cause of peace.

Abel Freeman himself was not too hard to find, for he occupied a

central, commanding position among various equipment housed in great

trailers carefully concealed from any observer in an aircraft. But

Abel Freeman, true to his legend, was sitting inside a rude shelter of

boughs, which effectively concealed the light of his ato lamp. Before

him was a sensipsych training device and a vast pile of books on many

subjects, ranging from military tactics to atomics, on which he was

obviously endeavoring to get caught up. He was savagely intent upon

book learning, for which he had little aptitude. But Ed, seeing him

in mountainous proportions, was perhaps better able than others to

understand why androids in need of leadership flocked to his stamping

grounds. Abel Freeman looked like the essence of rough and ready

ability. Among android leaders, he was certainly the greatest.

Freeman had a small radio receiver beside him. Ed Dukas did not try to

read the meaning of its blaring vibrations, for he was aware of their

general tone. To him the instrument was chiefly a possible bridge of

communication between himself and Freeman.

But Ed was not now given the chance to make such contact. For something

else happened. From the pages of an opened book in Abel Freeman's hands

coiled a thread of smoke, as charred words were written rapidly across

the paper. Ed was close enough in the air to read them, too: "_I am

Mitchell Prell, who helped make your kind possible. I am one of you

now--though undersize. Help keep the peace. Make no moves to start

trouble._"

Ed himself was startled. His uncle was here, then! They had arrived at

almost the same time. And Prell had chosen a more dramatic means of

communication--not ink, not an amplified voice, but the spiderweb-thin

beam of his Midas Touch used as a long stylus, while he clung, perhaps,

to a hair on the back of Freeman's hand!

For an instant, Abel Freeman was gripped by surprise. But then, with

rattlesnake-swift movement, his own Midas Touch was in his hand. His

whole self seemed to take on the smooth flow of perfect alertness which

nothing but an utterly refined machine could have equaled.

"Prell or a liar?" he challenged. "Or Prell with a conscience--for his

own first people and against his brain children? Yes, I've heard how

little you might be now."

Ed had only glimpsed his uncle far off among the scattered motes of the

air--another mote among them--a foot away he must be, at least. But Ed

hadn't waited for contact. Instead he darted quickly inside Freeman's

radio, touched the contacts of his microphone to the proper surface,

and spoke: "Maybe you'll remember me, too, Freeman. I'm Dukas, Prell's

nephew. You and I have talked before, man to man. Prell is no liar. And

the conscience is there--for everybody, android or otherwise. Yes, I'm

with him, the same size. And there's a problem, everybody's problem,

the toughest one that I've ever heard of. So where do we get any answer

that makes sense? Some of it has got to come quickly, I'm afraid,

Freeman."

Amplified, Ed's voice had boomed out till it was like an earthquake

to him. Once again a plastic box was opened above him and a gigantic

face was overhead. In the tinkling overtones of smallness, there was

almost a silence for a moment. Then came the rattle of Freeman's hard,

amused laugh, as he said, "I'll be damned! Smaller than snuff and made

the cheap way. People. Something better. Yep, it must be so, even if

I can't even see you. That puts us way ahead, I guess. And it ain't a

whisky vision. Well, I guess it still don't make any difference. The

old-time kind of folks hate us, and they'll never stop while both of us

and them are alive. And us Phonies have been crowded all we can take.

They've fired on us here, just barely trying to miss. Could be we've

done the same to them. It's a mighty ticklish proposition. In winktime

they could finish us all here, nice and clean and no grease left. So

could we burn them quicker than gunpowder. So who gets trigger crazy

and does it first? We've fixed them: an answer, under the ground. Maybe

they can spoil our other weapons, like it seems they can, but not this

one. It's buried deep enough. Let 'em try to hit us hard, and it'll

set everything off. Your old Moonblast will be beat a thousand times.

Us Phonies are bullheaded. We were made on Earth, same as them. It's

ours as much as theirs. We came alive, and we can fade out again, young

fella!"

The vibrations of Freeman's tones rose and fell, with humor, fatalism

and stubbornness. Two races, one born of the knowledge originated by

the other, seemed to have driven each other into corners of no return.

At some indefinite instant, the Big Zero would come.

Ed saw this garish picture more clearly than ever before. His strange

little body fairly quivered with it. He looked at Mitchell Prell, who

had come beside him now, where the pieces of apparatus that made up the

interior of a small receiving set loomed, and he saw in his face the

puzzled, tired fear of a scientist whose researches had always aimed at

doing good. Just then Ed Dukas, micro-android, was far from separated

from the Big Earth as he used to know it. So now, in desperation, he

clutched at a vision which had once seemed almost a fact.

"Freeman," he said, "maybe men can't back down or co-operate with

supermen. Doing that can seem like embracing extinction. But hasn't

there always been an obvious thing for _us_ to do?"

"Umhm-m--you mean _we_ should back down," Freeman replied softly.

"Set out for the wide-open spaces that we were meant for. Leave the

poor clodhoppers behind. Young fella, could be that you and me see

things bigger. For others like us, it ought to be like that, only it

ain't--yet. Most of the new people are butcher, baker and candlestick

maker, Earth-born, and Earth-tied in their minds, like anybody. There's

a ship, sure. But the stars are still awful far off, and never touched,

and you can go addled just thinkin' about them. Lots of our sort would

leave in their own sweet time, same as regular folks, sure. It's in

their blood. You might say they got wings. But who really knows how to

use 'em yet? And crowd our kinfolks off their home world? When they're

spunky and sore like any human being? Nope. Sorry!"

Ed's faint hope faded before the old android's realism. For years the

movement of migration had been farther and farther outward into space.

It was at once a fact, a dream and a philosophy, like getting nearer

to the Eternal Unknown. But most of the worth-while solar system was

already owned by the original dominant species. Beyond was only the

distance, not a beaten path at all, an untried and fearsome novelty.

One star ship was about completed, yes. Fast it would be, but its speed

would still fall far short of the velocity of light. So the nearer

stars were decades, centuries, millenniums away.

An idea so familiar that it seems almost an accomplished fact can

lose some of its charm in the hard glare of real obstacles. Ed felt

something like a chill inside him. Though he knew the strangeness of a

micro-cosmic viewpoint, others did not have this training and boldness

for the unknown. He saw the majority of them balking fatally. But he

still had to try _something_, to change as much of this as he could--if

he could change any of it at all.

"I don't know whether or not to blame you and the others for the

revenge you say is rigged here and elsewhere, Freeman," he said. "I can

see why both sides felt driven to do it. But I'm going to borrow your

newscast facilities, Freeman. Or someone else's. Because rumor can be a

powerful force. And I think I can give it a little push."

Mitchell Prell was still beside him. His grin was encouraging and sly.

"Best of luck in what you intend, Eddie," he remarked. "Need a charge

for your Midas Touch?... Meanwhile, I might try drawing the teeth

of some dragons, as you seem to have been doing. Got to be careful,

though, that both sides don't blame each other and get nervous.

Granger, poor knothead, was easy. I hope that somehow circumstances

will be right so that he can come back and learn. About Loman and the

things he made, I can feel differently."

"You heard?" Ed asked.

"It was on the air," Prell replied. "Somebody phoned the news in from

near that lab. At least the overwise ones will know that they guessed

wrong about which faction contrived a biological horror: a rabid

old-race sympathizer, but an android, too! Can that make either side

proud?"

* * * * *

A minute later Ed landed on the roof of the trailer which housed

Freeman's wireless equipment. He crept past an immense drop of rain

water that loomed like a rounded mesa beside him and entered a vent.

Soon he touched the terminals of his microphone to the proper contacts.

The transmitter was active. During the first pause between the temblors

of other words and signals and coded information, Ed spoke quickly,

half like a mischievous sprite. "This is no ghost voice. We hear that

many androids want to take all of their kind beyond the solar system."

The station did not stop sending at once. Blame that on the startled

monitor, who must have been listening. Ed took advantage of his

opportunity. He was granted another moment to speak: "It is only

natural that they should want to do that. Their kind of vigor matches

the stars. They don't need, or really want, the Earth. Their departure

in peace could be a perfect answer to everything."

That much Ed got out before the transmitter clicked to silence. He knew

he hadn't said anything original and that he had pushed an argument

intensely, like a high-pressure salesman without full belief. What he

had said was the way things should be, perhaps, but were not. Yet,

again, like a romantic kid, had he felt the glamorous impact of his own

words?

He was aware that androids would hear and millions of the old

race--intent on communications from an enemy station--as well. A

mysterious, informal voice was always a thing to draw attention, and

his remarks had been rather startling. That they would be repeated and

discussed a thousand times from other stations was probable. For they

were like a chink of hope in one of two granite walls of obstinate

righteousness and strength.

But Ed decided that he'd build no bright pictures of what his speech

would accomplish but would wait for hard facts. He wished desperately

that he'd had a moment more to speak on the transmitter, to call out

Barbara's name.

Now he drifted again in a morning sunshine. Luck had held out this

far at least. But over woods and crude shelters and hidden equipment

and grimy grim-faced hordes that looked as human as refugees could,

there were interruptions that denied optimism. A patrolling rocket

ship sailed high; an intensified neutron beam turned a finger of air

white hot behind it--very close. And mountaintops, already truncated

and smoking, still would flare up dazzlingly. Android muscles and backs

strained and bent to build fortifications as nothing merely human

could. The toilers were both men and women. Could android children cry?

Yes, some did.

Another thing happened. Ed, floating unseen low in the air, felt the

buzz of shouts and cries. A man who seemed to be near collapse was

being helped forward by a youth whose sidearms dangled near the knees

of his torn dungarees. At a little distance, where size seemed more

as it used to be, Ed saw that the exhausted man was Les Payten. He was

mud from head to foot; his face and arms were bloodied by brambles, his

suit was a rag.

He was brought straight to Abel Freeman's shelter. There, supported by

the armed youth, he spoke his piece: "I'm here again, Freeman, because

a friend of mine asked me to bring you something for him. Does that

make me a fool? I know it does. Because he's only my remembrance of a

friend now. Damn you all!"

Les Payten fainted. A package wrapped in a plastic sheath fell from

his hands, but Abel Freeman caught it. A couple of Abel's ornery sons

looked on, exchanging puzzled scowls. Freeman warned them away with a

clenched fist, knotty as an oaken club, and then shouted, "Nancy! Oh,

Nancy-y-y!" But there was no time for Ed to observe Freeman's hellion

daughter functioning as a nurse. He went inside Freeman's radio again,

and spoke, "Freeman, this is Dukas. I came to you to give and receive

help. That means that I've tried to guess right about you. I believe I

have. When your neo-biologists examine what Payten has brought, they

will be able to guess its value to me and mine. And I think that they

will be able to combine its uses with those of their own equipment for

something I'd like to see done. But there are other matters. Some of

your power plants broke down, but so did others across the line. I did

most of that. Prell must be doing more of it right now. What I said

over your wireless was meant to gain a little time."

Ed paused. Freeman did not open the radio case again. Ed couldn't see

him. He could only feel small thuds and clinkings--the android leader

opening the package that Les Payten had brought. Ed wondered if he

could ever imagine what was going on in Freeman's head, the thousand

problems and feelings that must be seething there.

Freeman might be no good at book learning. And his roots were in a

century when even a flying machine was a wild thought. But he had to

be shrewd to match the legend behind him. And he had to take tough

situations with a light shrug for the same reason.

Finally Ed felt the rumble of his chuckle. "You mean I'm one of your

'reasonable' variety," he said. "Meantime you smash my stuff, eh,

little bug in the air! I ought to get damn unreasonable! You might even

finish me off! I'm kind of curious about that! But I don't think you

have to bother. I know that the old-time folks are moving lots more

hell machines up. And they're awful mad, because we got quite a few of

them in one place last night--sort of by miscalculation. What's this

talk about us androids matching the stars? Well, young fella, go 'head

and talk some more. Yep, on our wireless rig. What's left to lose? And

I'm still curious."

On the way to the radio trailer, Ed looked back to the ugly, humping

shapes of weapons creeping up a high, blackened slope a few miles away.

This was fresh action by men of the old kind who had lost friends

or family and who saw no future in a demoniac succession. They were

exposed, an easy target. But if they were destroyed, others would

come. So they dared and defied, and the vicious spiral toward Big Zero

continued to mount.

Ed tried to forget this for a moment. His first words by wireless were

a call for his wife: "Babs, this is Ed, at Freeman's camp! Barbara,

come to us if you can. At least, try to communicate with us. You know

how. Barbara!..."

She had her own quartz chip, active all the time, so she must hear! And

if she did, she could send a message just as he did, from some other

station. But though Ed now had help, at Freeman's orders, no reply

from his wife was sifted from the countless communications that were

received.

But his previous attempt to spread a rumor had brought some expected

results. The morning air was full of conflicting comments: "... A cruel

joke ... Psychological warfare ... Perhaps, but what if the Phonies

mean to leave? Some already deny it.... Who spoke? Let him speak

again."

Ed was glad to oblige, even revealing his name, his present dimensions

and how a being of such size, equipped with a Midas Touch, might wreck

a power station. He explained this last item because he did not want a

misplaced blame to stir up more tension on both sides. Otherwise, he

addressed himself mostly to the androids, aware that the old race would

listen, too.

"... We were made on Earth, but not _for_ Earth. We were meant to go

much farther. Since we have so much, to be other than generous would be

stupid. We have peace and the future, and most of what man ever hoped

for, in our hands. That, or oblivion for everyone."

Though the ominous movement on the burned-out slope continued, the

actual flash of weapons seemed suspended. The quiet was either

promising or it was ominous.

He was lulled into enough confidence so that at noon he took a break.

He went back to Freeman's shelter and into the tiniest workshop that

Mitchell Prell had made and that Les Payten had rescued. He dropped

from the air beside minute machines and the vats that had given Barbara

and him their micro-android forms on Mars.

The whole piece--the greater microscope together with all the much

lesser equipment--Abel Freeman had unwrapped hastily, so that entry

into the twilight within the plastic cover had been easy. Freeman

himself was not around.

For a moment Ed felt alone and wistful, clinging to the rough glass

floor of the shop. But then he saw a faintly luminous elfin figure.

"Barbara!" he exclaimed.

Her laughter tinkled. "Think I wasn't come back, Eddie?" she teased.

"That I couldn't share any interest in what happens to a big world?"

Her blitheness almost angered him. Her expression sobered at once, and

he saw that she looked worn. "I know," she said. "It's not funny. We

might have burned up with the Earth--far apart. But I kept busy. I

tried to call you yesterday from a station in the City. But I wasn't

sure I touched the proper contacts. And last night I had to be a good

saboteur. I got three weapon-feeding power houses--though I guess that

the fine equipment could be shielded against us easily enough. Later,

I was lost--high up in the wind. With you along, it could have been

wonderful. Of course, I heard news broadcasts. About Loman's lab. And

from Freeman's station, a report of how Les arrived with a strange

device. This morning I heard your call, but there was no way to answer.

Eddie, Freeman's experts could copy us in normal size quite easily and

quickly, couldn't they? And in better vitaplasm. The methods have been

improved. Our personal recordings, perhaps lost, wouldn't be needed.

Should we try to have it done? Then there'd be two of each of us, in

different sizes. Two...."

Ed chuckled. "Not a word about returning to the old flesh, eh?" he

said. "So have we learned? Android freedom to go anywhere, to be almost

anything. Yep, magic almost. I think you'd rather perch on thistledown

or a sunset cloud, or be pushed by light pressure, like sleeping

spores, to a thousand light-years away! Well, it _could_ still happen.

Part of us has been changed enough by things like that to belong there.

But the older part seems much like it was and belongs to the size plane

that we first knew about."

They hugged each other and laughed. And they were reassured by the

comparative calm around them. But the forces were still there, only

awaiting someone's ultimate madness. And what can a world's end be

like, coming in a split instant, to one's dissolving senses? Certainly

it must be a quick, almost trivial experience.

Ed became aware of a bluish flicker. Then there was something like an

awful thud; he could scarcely tell whether a crash of sound took part

in it or not. Around him everything was dazzling whiteness, without

shadow or form. Then there was nothing.

X

Consciousness came back to him, bringing a cloudy surprise. Rough rocky

walls were around him. This was an artificial cavern crowded with

neo-biological equipment, most of which he could recognize. He lay

firmly on a hard couch contrived of planks and a folded blanket, part

of the latter covering him. A pair of dungarees and a mended shirt had

been tossed casually across his bare torso.

Someone who looked like a young medico laughed near him.

"One week's time, Dukas--that's all we need now for a major

transformation," he said. "You must have thought that we were all

goners; it would have seemed like that to you. But it was just a freak

attempt at sniping from the hills, with a Midas Touch focused to a thin

beam. Whoever tried it must have been aiming at our chief's shelter.

Only he wasn't there! Still down in miniature, you were caught in the

backlash of the blast. But it only knocked you out and singed you a

little. You kept holding onto some solid object. Your wife and the

equipment were scarcely hurt at all. Then Prell showed up again. They

talked with our chief the way you did before. They engineered the

transformation. I thought you'd want to know all this quickly."

The youthful android looked good-humoredly awed. "They just stepped

out," he added. "They'll be back in a minute."

Ed began to slide into his dungarees. He was grateful for his return

to something like what he had been. His memories of an interlude when

people were mountain tall were clear, yet they didn't seem quite to

belong to himself.

He thought briefly of how he must have been brought back to normal

size--his micro-form in one of the vats of similar proportions acting

as a pattern, electronic brain and all. In another vat, which Freeman's

specialists had connected, the gelatins must have filmed and solidified

slowly, taking shape, while in brain cells and filaments--different

from electronic swirls but capable of assuming the same connecting

arrangements--a personality was reproduced without destroying the

pattern. With Barbara and Prell it had been the same.

"The world goes on, I see," Ed remarked.

The android biologist smiled wryly. "Some of that is your fault,

Dukas," he said. "A matter of advertising. You made enough old-timers

half believe that the Earth will go on being theirs. That cooled them

off some. As for our kind, what you said started lots of them thinking

again along what ought to be a natural track. Certainly the prompt

departure of almost all of us is the only answer that can _really_

solve anything. Yes, if that isn't far too large an order! Though I

rather wish it _were_ possible.... Here come Prell and your lady. I'll

disappear."

They looked almost as they used to look--before anything about them

was changed. Blame the loss of some trifling birthmark or scar here

and there on the simplification of details that had occurred during a

step down to smallness. Yet Mitchell Prell's china-blue eyes were as

good-humored as ever and Barbara's smile as bright and warm.

"So here we are, Eddie," she said gaily. "And what we recently were

are still around somewhere--alive and aware, and the same as we were,

though not quite us any more. Separate, but still helping, I'm sure.

And if we all get through all right, well, their universe is as

wonderful and even vaster than ours."

Prell scowled for a moment, as if he envied his lesser likeness the

continued chance to study the structure of matter, down where molecules

themselves seemed bigger and nearer. But then his shoulders jerked

almost angrily, as if to shake off the scientist's woolgathering. "Come

on, Ed," he snapped. "Abel Freeman has been pushing the idea you

expressed, talking it around the world to all the androids. He says

that, crazy though it is, he'll encourage it."

They emerged from the cavern into the afternoon sunshine of the camp.

A sudden quiet had come over it. Eyes were staring up toward the east,

while bodies tensed for a dive for whatever shelter was at hand.

Something moved there with seeming slowness, though its gray hue, like

a distant mountain peak, told that it was seen through all the murky

heights of the atmosphere and was in free space beyond. Its motors

were inactive. High sunshine brought metallic glints from its prow.

It was certainly miles in length. Its presence could mean doomsday.

But it _was_ magnificent! If it could set human blood to coursing more

swiftly, how must it affect an android?

"The star ship!" someone shouted. Others took up the cry: "The star

ship.... The star ship...."

Now Abel Freeman's voice boomed from a sound system: "Yep, you're

right. I sent a call for it to come in from the asteroids. Figured it

would be good for all our tough-gutted breed to look at! Uh-huh, tough

gutted, I said, but might be I'll have to take that back. Anyhow, a man

made for a mule loves a mule on sight. So how about men and a ship made

for the stars? But might be you ain't that kind of folks--you only seem

that way. Might be you can only see the mud on the ground and not the

sky. I dunno. Moving all of us fast would take an awful lot of insides.

But ain't she a beauty? I figure that the folks that brought her here

didn't like to disobey orders, but they figured that letting us see

was necessary. Maybe they're Phonies, too. I figure that Harwell, who

bossed her construction, would be that now. Her kind of purpose demands

it. But maybe you ain't up to what she's for. And you folks of the old

kind, what do you say? What if we did leave you alone on Earth? What if

you gave us this first star ship and let us build more, out on a moon

of Saturn where you don't go much? Let's hear some answers!"

Obviously, Abel Freeman's words were also being broadcast. Meanwhile

the star ship glided into the sunset. Someone spoke briefly from her by

radio. Harwell?

"I hope you convince everybody, Freeman. I believe it does make sense.

Not a cinch, though, even for us."

That, too, came out of the address system, as the ship headed back

toward its base.

In his newer self, here on Earth, Ed breathed again, and his breathing

was rapid. Once more the unseen future was a thrill. Yet he must not

let glamour gild harsh uncertainties too much.

He looked at the faces around him. Some were stern, some grinned in

bravado under Abel Freeman's challenging sarcasm, but in most of

them there was a special, eager light, almost avid. It looked as if

Freeman's talk and the great craft that had come with it were turning

the trick. But these were trivial dramatics, too. The real source of

success--if it was that--was in a basic kinship of android vigor with

the stars. Awakened, it could relinquish the Earth without regret.

These people could feel a little like lesser gods now. Their strength

and endurance matched the next step of progress. Now the fantastic gulf

of distance didn't seem as wide as Freeman had once thought.

From scattered android camps, messages came in, pointing generally

toward deeper space. Yes, doubts were expressed.

"Shall we leave our homes without even an argument? Are we complete

fools?"

"Yes, fools if we don't leave. We _can_ make a mass departure. And

remember that this is the _only_ solution. Are they still too primitive

for us to live with? The same fault might be ours. I wonder what they

will say to our proposition?"

Communications also flashed back and forth among the old race:

"... They look like us but aren't. Their disguise and their powers

hold a warning. No wonder so many of us think of them as something

like medieval demons. Can we trust what they say? Or is it a trick to

disarm us? How can we know? Yet they intrigue us. Man has always sought

to borrow strength and permanence from the rocks and hills. Are they

that achievement? And we ourselves have wanted the stars."

Crouched over the small receiver in Freeman's restored shelter during

that still-ominous afternoon, Ed and Barbara listened and waited.

Around them they found both humor and pathos. In another shelter, dug

into the rocks and soil, they located Les Payten, whose misfortunes

with the Phonies had been many. His bitter frankness had won him

dislike here. He had been put under restraint. There was the bearish

tenderness and nursing of the gorgeous and powerful Nancy, Freeman's

daughter, who stood beside him now, her big blue eyes expressing a

mixture of soulful devotion and hunger about as rapacious as that of

a starved hound-dog six inches from a fat rabbit. Les didn't seem

to appreciate it at all. But he still tried to be a friend to his

companions of a lost youth. "Babs! Ed!" he exclaimed at sight of them.

"So you got back--to size, anyhow! But you could go back to where you

began, as natural creatures! Damn, once we were young idiots, dazzled

by a sense of wonder into too much tolerance. I don't want to be

something synthetic! Can't you two realize the fundamental truth of

that--for yourselves? Good Glory! Wake up!"

Ed's grin was one-sided. "For one thing, I suspect that going back all

the way wouldn't quite work, Les," he said mildly. "We are what we are

now, that's all. There's a cloudy sort of limit on switching bodies.

There can never truly be two of anyone. Besides, we like being what we

are. And should I remind you that, in common with all animals, man is

a natural machine? As for being synthetic, I assure you that both love

and poetry are there as well. So what do you imagine that we lack that

the old timers always had? A taste for turkey or cake? Just lead us to

it! We're human, Les--our forms and ideals and feelings are as they

always were. We're not devils. We're not truly separated from the old

race in any part of sympathy. We're just people gone on--I hope!--a

little further."

Ed spoke gently, as he must to a tired, confused friend. Or was it to

a whole, vast section of humanity, dumfounded by hurtling technology,

proud and stubborn about what had seemed its eternal self, and dreading

any change which could seem so darkly drastic?

Barbara tried, too. "Why don't _you_ join _us_, Les?" she urged. "If

you became like us, you would know! Besides, even if all the androids

leave the Earth, the knowledge of how to mold vitaplasm won't be taken

away with us. People here will continue to be destroyed in accidents,

as has always happened. So that knowledge will be needed and used.

Besides, some persons will change willingly. Some people may want to

shut themselves away from such realities. But I don't think that they

can. They'll have to learn to accept facts."

Les Payten looked at his old companions oddly, as if tempted by an old

soaring of the fancy. Then the light died in his eyes. "Nice logic,"

he said coldly. "I could almost trust it if I didn't remind myself. A

mechanical treachery. My Ed Dukas and Barbara Day are dead."

His tone was calm, yet there was a quiver in it--perhaps of revulsion

for these imponderable likenesses before him, whose hearts he thought

he could not--or did not--want to see.

Ed was exasperated before a stubbornness of thought habit which was

partly fear, though Les Payten was no coward. Some human minds were

quick to adjust, taking even the radical newness of the last half

century in their stride. But there had always been many others who were

slow. Perhaps it was a childish taint, a resisting of maturity. And how

could they keep pace now? But right there, Ed had to remind himself not

to be too sure of himself. The next day or minute might trip him up.

There seemed no further way to argue with Les. Ed could only express

his sincere thanks for a favor, offer good wishes, and shrug lightly

and in some mockery, for one who refused what seemed a simple truth. If

that shrug was superficially unkind, perhaps it was also a goad in the

right direction. A favor to a pal.

An hour later, when Ed told Freeman of Les Payten's reactions, the

colorful android leader had a similar comment: "There's maybe billions

like that--one reason why we got to leave. They'll change. But right

now, who cares to take the ornery kid brothers fishing? Give 'em time

to grow up a little more, first. It won't be so long. Just now we got

our own problems and jobs. They ain't small, and nothing's certain.

There's no hole to jump into that's as deep as deep space! I thought

once that it couldn't happen. But now it looks as if we're gonna get

the chance to try!"

Abel Freeman was right. That evening a message came from the World

Capital: "Let us meet and confer with android representatives and

earnestly apply ourselves to a binding solution."

That was the beginning. It seemed that reason had won out after all.

Freeman and Prell were flown to the Capital. Ed did not go, for he

foresaw a bleak conference with the single purpose of getting an

arrangement made as soon as possible. This proved to be true. To the

androids went the first star ship, its asteroid base, provisions to be

delivered regularly over a ten-year period, supplies and equipment of

all kinds, and the use of Titan, largest of distant Saturn's moons.

To the vast majority of the androids this was enough. To the few

grumblers there would be scant choice. Let them view themselves as

exiles, borne along by the eager mass of their kind.

When Freeman and Prell returned to camp after the signing of the

treaty, Les Payten had already left for the City. For a while Nancy

Freeman would look wistful. She was strong and beautiful, and perhaps

not as wild as her personal legend. Briefly, Mitchell Prell's eyes

rested on her. Then he chuckled.

"Sirius," he said. "Nine light-years away. Not the nearest star, and

not perfect. But the best bet of the nearest. Alpha Centauri is a

binary, too. Bad for stable planetary orbits. But in the Sirian System,

at least we know now that there _are_ many planets. Come on, Freeman.

There are more plans to straighten out."

Preparations began, and the weeks passed. Once Ed even went shopping

with his wife--for the pretty things, symbols of the luxury and

sophistication of Earth, that she wanted to take with her into the

unknown. Was that the crassest kind of optimism before the harshness

that could be imagined?

Ed, Barbara and Prell would be among the many thousands to be packed

into the first star ship for the first long jump. They had earned the

privilege of choice. Abel Freeman had elected to stay behind, to help

direct operations on Titan.

Interplanetary craft were moving out in a steady stream, transporting

migrants and the prefabricated parts needed to set up a vast glassed-in

camp that few of the old blood could ever have tried to build. The

androids might even have endured the cold poison of Titan's methane

atmosphere without protection. But they had inherited, and could not

easily throw off, earthly conceptions of comfort. And they had their

rights. The countless things needed to build other star ships would

soon begin to follow them.

The first group of interstellar migrants didn't have to go anywhere

near Titan. The star ship came to Earth again, to orbit around it.

Small rocket tenders were there to bring the passengers up to the

boarding locks.

At the take-off platforms, Ed Dukas saw his parents for the last time.

Jack Dukas, who had chosen to remain on Earth with his wife, shook Ed's

hand warmly. Let them try their simple life of thatched stone houses

on hillsides, Ed thought, let them defy what seemed a too involved

civilization. Perhaps after the android exodus, some few would even

make it work--on Venus, if not at home.

Ed hugged his mother. They had memories. Now Ed stretched optimism

considerably. "At last there can be a lot of time, Mom," he said.

"Enough so that we might even see each other again, someplace...."

Soon he and Barbara were up there in the great ship. To his touch, her

arm was as smooth and soft as ever. Her hair was dark and thick, her

eyes were bright with adventure, her skin a golden tan. And was it a

loss that she could have bent crowbar with her bare hands, or have

braved a vacuum at near absolute-zero temperature without harm?

"You're insulting me in your mind, Ed," she joshed gaily. "Not that I'm

much bothered. So the robot stoops to conquer, eh? Of course we have no

souls, Eddie."

"Certainly not!" he responded in the same manner. "All our hopes spring

from human sources. Even our firmer flesh was a human dream. Yet you

can practically hear our mechanical joints creak. The old race was

created perfect. Who could ever dare to make it any better?"

Ed's sarcasm was honest. Yet he knew that before the unprobed distance,

even the ruggedest of his kind were disposed to do a little whistling

in the dark.

Around them in the ship's huge assembly room, there were shouts,

greetings, jokes and laughter. A young couple chatted brightly. A child

studied a toy with serious petulance. A man consulted a notebook.

Perhaps few here yet realized their range, power and freedom or just

what they faced. Their environment had been narrow, like all earthly

history. No doubt many were afraid of the strangeness and time and

distance ahead. They had reason to be. Out there in the black pit of

the galaxy, even giant stars could perish.

Mitchell Prell had not yet come aboard. Abel Freeman had already left

for Titan--without his willful daughter. Schaeffer, the scientist, had

gone with him.

Under Harwell's commands, the colossal craft kept taking on migrants

at top speed for thirty hours. They boarded in numbers out of all

proportion to the available living space. Meanwhile there were needles

to submit to. Vitaplasm could be more rugged and adaptable now than

when it was first used. The fluids from hollow needles were the means

of imparting the improvements.

At last the ship quivered slightly. In contact with the heat of fusion

of hydrogen and lithium to form the gaseous stellar ash called helium,

any material rocket chamber would have been scattered instantly

as incandescent vapor. But space warps stood firm in their place,

squeezing with an atom-crushing pressure of their own, natural only

at the centers of stars. And now there was no secondary arrangement

for the conversion of such power as was released into electricity.

Even the helium became pure radiation that emerged in a stream. It

was a continuous, directed explosion of light, far stronger within

its narrow limits than the outburst of a supernova. It had been known

for centuries that light had both mass and pressure, and here it

was concentrated matter--the ultimate in propulsive thrust--changed

completely to energy. On the sullen Earth, neither man nor android

dared watch that thin thread of fury, while slowly the ship began to

accelerate toward a five-figure number of miles per second.

It was the start of the departure of fear from an ancient race. Or so

it was meant to be. From Earth, curses no doubt followed the ship--and

sighs of relief, and regrets, and good wishes. This setting forth

should have been a human triumph. Many would insist that it was not

that. Others knew that it was.

Braced in a cubicle two meters long, one wide and half a meter high, Ed

Dukas held his wife's hand. Tiered rows of other cubicles were around

them. Mitchell Prell had been with them minutes ago, and he had simply

said, "Good night," half jokingly. Or was it more whistling in the dark?

"Just good night. That's how it'll be, sweet," Ed whispered now. "The

years won't mean anything. In the old mythology, the demigods could

sleep for a millennium."

So the small spark of dread flickered out in them, as they invoked a

power which they had used before, in smaller android bodies, and for a

much shorter interval. No drug was needed. Their sleep became suspended

animation.

Fine dust began to settle on them. But after forty years, measured by

the ship's chronometers--on the basis of a retarded time imparted to

objects moving at high velocity, a somewhat longer interval must have

passed on Earth--Ed was awakened to help patrol the vessel.

With a few other silent men, he moved through its ghostly, dimly

lighted corridors and compartments inhabited by the living dead. The

stillness was all around, and outside only the stars burned in the

void. The decades had been like the passing of a night of sleep;

yet now awake, Ed was aware that the time had gone, building up an

unimaginable distance. Here was the abyss. It was a cold awareness

which made him neither confident nor happy. Sometimes he looked down at

Barbara's quiet face, but he did not wish her to awaken now.

Ahead was Sirius, brighter than before. Beside it, visible at least

to the unaided eye, was the dim speck of its companion star, a white

dwarf, shrunken and old, little larger than the Earth, but incredibly

massive, the very atoms at its core compressed by its fearsome gravity

and the weight of material above them. This dwarf's internal substance,

largely pure nuclear matter, would have weighed tons per cubic inch.

Instruments, brought nearer to a destination, now showed more clearly,

by the irregularities in the movements of this binary system, the

existence of planets pursuing changing paths in the complicated cross

drags of two stellar bodies revolving around a common center. Those

worlds, known of on Earth for a quarter century, were still out of

telescopic view. Their seasons must be crazy--hot, cold, uncertain.

Yet other, nearer star systems had the same, and worse, drawbacks. And

Sirius was relatively near, too. Besides, need an android worry about

the fluctuations of mad climates so much?

After a month, Ed Dukas relinquished his duties to others who were

aroused briefly. He slept again, for more decades, and on through the

first contact with a Sirian world. His mind still slightly blurred, he

came down in a tender from the orbiting star ship, after others had

landed. Barbara was with him. Somewhere far ahead, among hills rapidly

shedding their glacial coat under hot sunshine, was Mitchell Prell.

The sunshine came from Sirius itself, farther away than the distance

from Earth to Uranus; hence its size and brilliance were counteracted.

Yet this world did not attend Sirius directly. It belonged to

the white-hot speck at zenith--the dwarf with an almost equal

attraction--tiny, but much closer. The planet hurried like a moon

around this miniature sun.

Ed looked up at thin fish-scale clouds that were rose-tinted. Before

him was a prairie covered with waving stalks bearing white plumes.

Might you call them flowers blown by the wind?

High up among the melting ice he saw a tower and maybe a roadway.

Later he beheld two shapes, brown and rough, with four tapered,

flexible limbs radiating from a central lump. Man, with his arms and

legs, also has vaguely the form of a cross. But these were different,

though sometimes they almost walked, and metal devices glinted in the

equipment they wore. Had he dreamed all this somewhere years ago?...

Sometimes they rolled quickly like wheels, or they crept along, their

limbs coiling. Once they flew, with bright flashes and without wings.

But that was artificial. They moved off at last beside a shallow,

salt-rimmed sea.

"We can't stay here, Eddie," Barbara stated. "It could be fascinating,

but it would be worse than on Earth."

"As everyone will realize," Ed Dukas answered.

So the explorers came back to the tender. Nearer to the dwarf sun they

found a world with a more stable orbit and less extremes of cold and

heat. If it was nearer the dwarf with its almost negligible radiance,

it also did not approach as close to Sirius, nor swing so far away. It

was a chilly little planet that had once been inhabited, too; but now

there were only shattered stone and glass and rusted steel. Much of it

was desert. But there were forests here and there, and high glaciers.

High on a clifftop in the thin, cold atmosphere, the refugees built

their first city. It began with houses of rough logs and stone. But as

time passed and the population increased, its metal-sheathed towers

began to soar. In its glassed-in gardens, terrestrial flowers and trees

thrived, while out of doors beautiful plants of a neo-biology easily

surpassed in vigor the hardy local growths. There were theaters, stores

and libraries. There was feminine fashion. Thus, nostalgically, an old

earthly way was copied, though Earth was lost. There was no method to

speak across the light-years. Earth might even belong to a somewhat

different branch of time. But all this did not include the major point

of separation. That was expressed in the way these people climbed the

highest mountains without tiring and let the hoarfrost of fearsome cold

gather on their bare faces without discomfort.

Sometimes, on blizzard nights, while they took the sleep that they did

not need for more than the pleasure of it, Barbara and Ed would leave

the windows open to the storm.

"Roofs, buildings--why do we even bother with them?" Ed would say

jokingly.

His wife would look at him somewhat worriedly, as if he meant it. As

if here there were a bitter strangeness that lowered all earthly art

and charm and comfort and sense of home to a futility. But then she'd

manage to laugh lightly, though often she didn't quite feel that way.

"You know why we bother, Ed," she'd answer. "Because we want to stay

somewhat as we once were. Didn't you always agree to that? Because it's

hard to change old habits and limitations, and grasp the freedom you're

thinking about, Eddie. Sometimes I even suspect that we try to hide

from that freedom."

Ed would scowl, feeling all of these thoughts, too. They had all the

freedom that men had envisioned long ago: practical freedom from death,

except from extreme violence; freedom from aging, freedom of mind,

of action, of shape and size; the freedom of peace and plenty, and

boundless energy. But beyond all this, like a goad, there often was,

already, much more than a ghost of that ancient human restlessness that

always had thrived on strength.

"Are you happy here, Babs?" Ed asked once when there had been time to

doubt.

By then they already had two young sons, born of new flesh in an old

way.

"Of course--reasonably," she chuckled. "Though I have my moods. Then I

don't quite know.... But, Eddie, this is the great, marvelous future,

isn't it--the one we looked forward to with longing and wonder? We

ought to appreciate it completely."

"It is that future. But now, sweetheart, it's also just the present."

There were incidents to match such restless talk and thinking. There

was Mitchell Prell, always groping for new things, shouting down from a

cragtop, or from his laboratory, "Hey, Ed! Barbara! Come here!"

Maybe he'd discovered a vein of ore that might be mined, or a strange

specimen of hitherto unnoticed local fauna or flora. He remained a

scientist, while Ed had become a mere builder of buildings.

More than likely, the woman Prell had married would be with him--she

had been Nancy Freeman of a fantastic origin. That he had separated

himself enough from his studies to take a wife was a minor miracle.

That these so-different two should be together was certainly another.

That she had learned to be both tasteful and poised, though no less

vigorous than ever, had perhaps been hoped for by the first romancing

thought that had given her real being on Earth.

To live in peace, comfort and beauty, Ed now realized, was not a final

goal. The wild nomad, like Prell, shouting down from mountaintops,

always seeking the unknown and straining to be bigger than his

powers--however great they might have become--still had to be served.

Otherwise pride was insulted, the urge to learn and progress was

defeated; boredom set in, and centuries of life were not worth living.

Besides, belatedly, after years, there were voices, speaking out of

wireless equipment in a way that Ed and Barbara Dukas and Mitchell

Prell had reason to remember. That this world was now haunted by beings

that floated with the dust in the air was a fact which in itself had an

eerie, nomadic charm. Three tiny beings. No, now there were four.

"Hello! Did you guess that we came with you on the star ship?... But

we stayed on that first planet. Then we visited others. Once we slept

under a glacier--we don't know how long. Now we have built another

biological workshop. So we will not be lonely. There will be many of

us. I see you have done well. What comes next?"

Ed had the odd and startling impression of having been spoken to

by himself. But he and a tiny speck of the clay of the half-gods

were entirely distinct, even if their names were the same. The vast

difference in size, enforcing separate thought patterns to meet the

problems of different environment, had widened the gap further.

"It's us!" Barbara said.

Mitchell Prell and Nancy were also present just then, in the Dukas

house. Perhaps the visitors had waited for them to be there.

"I know who you mean," Nancy remarked. "Your little folk, Mitch. Tell

them something. Or do they embarrass you by being so strange? Have you

forgotten?"

Prell laughed somewhat unsteadily. Other interests had long ago taken

his attention away from the small regions that were within the reach of

android powers.

"They're special friends," he said. "We won't have any trouble talking

to them. Hello yourselves!"

So it was, for an hour. There was a mood of elfin charm, of expanded

dimensions, of soft, rich colors; of physical laws wonderfully

different in effect. The memory was haunting. But the larger Ed and

Barbara had no present wish to return to that fantastic land. It was

not their destiny.

"So long for now...." The voices faded away playfully. But as Sirian

time built Terran years, they were occasionally heard again, bearing a

note of challenge.

The new city had grown huge. The surrounding country was becoming

populous. And the inevitable happened, like part of a plan implanted

in the nature of man from the beginning--to grow, to reach out, to

be bigger in all things than he was before, though perhaps even to

imagine the final goal itself was still beyond his intelligence and his

experience. Now a more rugged body only made the drives stronger and

the outcome more sure.

Still orbiting around this first colonial world, outside the old solar

system and linked to the history of Earth, was the star ship, kept

always in careful order. But on a small, jagged moon, a larger, better

craft was under construction. It would have thrilled ancient blood; it

could stir an android more.

Something sultry began to ache in Ed Dukas's mind at the thought of

restraint.

"Some of us will have to go on, Babs," he said one dwarf-lit

half-night. "Blame it on fundamental biological law--in me, and the

boys, too. Call it building an empire too big for any government. Maybe

it's an intended step--toward some other condition still out of sight.

No doubt we're far from the end of what we can become. I don't know.

I don't really care. I'm just a man and glad of it. I only know how I

feel, and I suspect that, deep down, you feel the same!"

For a moment Barbara was angry and sad. She still had a woman's wish

for permanence. She knew that Ed was thinking of other stars and their

systems--red giants, flickering variables, bursting novae--a whole

universe of mystery beckoning to a new kind of human. Even the ugly

coal-sack clouds of cosmic dust could have their appeal. She herself

was not beyond being intrigued by such things.

She walked across her pleasant room, which had begun to bore her a

little, as Ed knew. "I'm game," she said mildly.

Inconceivably far off were other galaxies. Maybe Ed read her mind

a little, as she thought of the vast, tilted swirl of the one in

Andromeda, almost as big as their native Milky Way. It was the nearest,

but so distant that all the light-years they had crossed could seem

a mile by comparison. As a child she used to look at a picture of it

and think that everything she could imagine, and much more, was there:

books, musical instruments, summer nights, dark horror.

Ed and she were like the pagan divinities dreamed up wistfully long

ago. Yet now she felt very humble.

"Ed--"

"Yes?"

"I was just wondering where God lives," she said.

* * * * *