The _Perseus_ snapped out of overdrive near the point of interest and
Hilton stared, motionless and silent.
Space was full of madly warring ships. Half of them were bare, giant
skeletons of steel, like the "derelict" that had so unexpectedly
blasted away from them. The others were more or less like the _Perseus_,
except in being bigger, faster and of vastly greater power.
Beams of starkly incredible power bit at and clung to equally capable
defensive screens of pure force. As these inconceivable forces met, the
glare of their neutralization filled all nearby space. And ships and
skeletons alike were disappearing in chunks, blobs, gouts, streamers and
sparkles of rended, fused and vaporized metal.
Hilton watched two ships combine against one skeleton. Dozens of beams,
incredibly tight and hard, were held inexorably upon dozens of the
bulges of the skeleton. Overloaded, the bulges' screens flared through
the spectrum and failed. And bare metal, however refractory, endures
only for instants under the appalling intensity of such beams as those.
The skeletons tried to duplicate the ships' method of attack, but
failed. They were too slow. Not slow, exactly, either, but hesitant; as
though it required whole seconds for the commander--or operator? Or
remote controller?--of each skeleton to make it act. The ships were
winning.
"Hey!" Hilton yelped. "Oh--that's the one we saw back there. But what
in all space does it think it's doing?"
It was plunging at tremendous speed straight through the immense fleet
of embattled skeletons. It did not fire a beam nor energize a screen; it
merely plunged along as though on a plotted course until it collided
with one of the skeletons of the fleet and both structures plunged, a
tangled mass of wreckage, to the ground of the planet below.
Then hundreds of the ships shot forward, each to plunge into and explode
inside one of the skeletons. When visibility was restored another wave
of ships came forward to repeat the performance, but there was nothing
left to fight. Every surviving skeleton had blinked out of normal space.
The remaining ships made no effort to pursue the skeletons, nor did they
re-form as a fleet. Each ship went off by itself.
* * * * *
And on that distant planet of the Stretts the group of mechs watched
with amazed disbelief as light after light after light winked out on
their two-miles-long control board. Frantically they relayed orders to
the skeletons; orders which did not affect the losses.
"Brain-pans will blacken for this ..." a mental snarl began, to be
interrupted by a coldly imperious thought.
"That long-dead unit, so inexplicably reactivated, is approaching the
fuel world. It is ignoring the battle. It is heading through our fleet
toward the Oman half ... _handle_ it, ten-eighteen!"
"It does not respond, Your Loftiness."
"Then blast it, fool! Ah, it is inactivated. As encyclopedist, Nine,
explain the freakish behavior of that unit."
"Yes, Your Loftiness. Many cycles ago we sent a ship against the Omans
with a new device of destruction. The Omans must have intercepted it,
drained it of power and allowed it to drift on. After all these cycles
of time it must have come upon a small source of power and of course
continued its mission."
"That can be the truth. The Lords of the Universe must be informed."
"The mining units, the carriers and the refiners have not been affected,
Your Loftiness," a mech radiated.
"So I see, fool." Then, activating another instrument, His Loftiness
thought at it, in an entirely different vein, "Lord Ynos, Madam? I have
to make a very grave report...."
* * * * *
In the _Perseus_, four scientists and three Navy officers were arguing
heatedly; employing deep-space verbiage not to be found in any
dictionary. "Jarve!" Karns called out, and Hilton joined the group.
"Does anything about this planet make any sense to you?"
"No. But you're the planetographer. 'Smatter with it?"
"It's a good three hundred degrees Kelvin too hot."
"Well, you know it's loaded with uranexite."
"That much? The whole crust practically jewelry ore?"
"If that's what the figures say, I'll buy it."
"Buy _this_, then. Continuous daylight everywhere. Noon June Sol-quality
light _except_ that it's all in the visible. Frank says it's from
bombardment of a layer of something, and Frank admits that the whole
thing's impossible."
"When Frank makes up his mind what 'something' is, I'll take it as a
datum."
"Third thing: there's only one city on this continent, and it's
protected by a screen that nobody ever heard of."
Hilton pondered, then turned to the captain. "Will you please run a
search-pattern, sir? Fine-toothing only the hot spots?"
The planet was approximately the same size as Terra; its atmosphere,
except for its intense radiation, was similar to Terra's. There were two
continents; one immense girdling ocean. The temperature of the land
surface was everywhere about 100°F, that of the water about 90°F. Each
continent had one city, and both were small. One was inhabited by what
looked like human beings; the other by usuform robots. The human city
was the only cool spot on the entire planet; under its protective dome
the temperature was 71°F.
Hilton decided to study the robots first; and asked the captain to take
the ship down to observation range. Sawtelle objected; and continued to
object until Hilton started to order his arrest. Then he said, "I'll do
it, under protest, but I want it on record that I am doing it against my
best judgment."
"It's on record," Hilton said, coldly. "Everything said and done is
being, and will continue to be, recorded."
The _Perseus_ floated downward. "_There's_ what I want most to see,"
Hilton said, finally. "That big strip-mining operation ... that's it ...
hold it!" Then, via throat-mike, "Attention, all scientists! You all
know what to do. Start doing it."
Sandra's blonde head was very close to Hilton's brown one as they both
stared into Hilton's plate. "Why, they look like giant armadillos!" she
exclaimed.
"More like tanks," he disagreed, "except that they've got legs, wheels
_and_ treads--and arms, cutters, diggers, probes and conveyors--and
_look_ at the way those buckets dip solid rock!"
The fantastic machine was moving very slowly along a bench or shelf that
it was making for itself as it went along. Below it, to its left,
dropped other benches being made by other mining machines. The machines
were not using explosives. Hard though the ore was, the tools were so
much harder and were driven with such tremendous power that the stuff
might just have well have been slightly-clayed sand.
Every bit of loosened ore, down to the finest dust, was forced into a
conveyor and thence into the armored body of the machine. There it went
into a mechanism whose basic principles Hilton could not understand.
From this monstrosity emerged two streams of product.
One of these, comprising ninety-nine point nine plus percent of the
input, went out through another conveyor into the vast hold of a vehicle
which, when full and replaced by a duplicate of itself, went careening
madly cross-country to a dump.
The other product, a slow, very small stream of tiny, glistening black
pellets, fell into a one-gallon container being held watchfully by a
small machine, more or less like a three-wheeled motor scooter, which
was moving carefully along beside the giant miner. When this can was
almost full another scooter rolled up and, without losing a single
pellet, took over place and function. The first scooter then covered its
bucket, clamped it solidly into a recess designed for the purpose and
dashed away toward the city.
[Illustration]
Hilton stared slack-jawed at Sandra. She stared back.
"Do you make anything of that, Jarve?"
"Nothing. They're taking _pure_ uranexite and _concentrating_--or
converting--it a thousand to one. I _hope_ we'll be able to do something
about it."
"I hope so, too, Chief; and I'm _sure_ we will."
"Well, that's enough for now. You may take us up now, Captain Sawtelle.
And Sandy, will you please call all department heads and their
assistants into the conference room?"
* * * * *
At the head of the long conference table, Hilton studied his fourteen
department heads, all husky young men, and their assistants, all
surprisingly attractive and well-built young women. Bud Carroll and
Sylvia Bannister of Sociology sat together. He was almost as big as
Karns; she was a green-eyed redhead whose five-ten and one-fifty would
have looked big except for the arrangement thereof. There were Bernadine
and Hermione van der Moen, the leggy, breasty, platinum-blonde
twins--both of whom were Cowper medalists in physics. There was Etienne
de Vaux, the mathematical wizard; and Rebecca Eisenstein, the
black-haired, flashing-eyed ex-infant-prodigy theoretical astronomer.
There was Beverly Bell, who made mathematically impossible chemical
syntheses--who swam channels for days on end and computed planetary
orbits in her sleekly-coiffured head.
"First, we'll have a get-together," Hilton said. "Nothing recorded; just
to get acquainted. You all know that our fourteen departments cover
science, from astronomy to zoology."
He paused, again his eyes swept the group. Stella Wing, who would have
been a grand-opera star except for her drive to know everything about
language. Theodora (Teddy) Blake, who would prove gleefully that she was
the world's best model--but was in fact the most brilliantly promising
theoretician who had ever lived.
"No other force like this has ever been assembled," Hilton went on. "In
more ways than one. Sawtelle wanted Jeffers to head this group, instead
of me. Everybody thought he _would_ head it."
"And Hilton wanted Eggleston and got _me_," Sandra said.
"That's right. And quite a few of you didn't want to come at all, but
were told by the Board to come or else."
The group stirred. Eyes met eyes, and there were smiles.
* * * * *
"I myself think Jeffers _should_ have had the job. I've never handled
anything half this big and I'll need a lot of help. But I'm stuck with
it and you're all stuck with me, so we'll all take it and like it.
You've noticed, of course, the accent on youth. The Navy crew is normal,
except for the commanders being unusually young. But we aren't. None of
us is thirty yet, and none of us has ever been married. You fellows look
like a team of professional athletes, and you girls--well, if I didn't
know better I'd say the Board had screened you for the front row of the
chorus instead of for a top-bracket brain-gang. How they found so many
of you I'll never know."
"Virile men and nubile women!" Etienne de Vaux leered enthusiastically.
"_Vive le Board!_"
"Nubile! Bravo, Tiny! _Quelle delicatesse de nuance!_"
"Three rousing cheers for the Board!"
"Keep still, you nitwits! Let me ask a question!" This came from one of
the twins. "Before you give us the deduction, Jarvis--or will it be an
intuition or an induction or a ..."
"Or an inducement," the other twin suggested, helpfully. "Not that _you_
would need very much of that."
"You keep still, too, Miney. I'm asking, Sir Moderator, if I can give my
deduction first?"
"Sure, Bernadine; go ahead."
"They figured we're going to get completely lost. Then we'll jettison
the Navy, hunt up a planet of our own and start a race to end all human
races. Or would you call this a _see_-duction instead of a
_dee_-duction?"
This produced a storm of whistles, cheers and jeers that it took several
seconds to quell.
"But seriously, Jarvis," Bernadine went on. "We've all been wondering
and it doesn't make sense. Have you any idea at all of what the Board
actually did have in mind?"
"I believe that the Board selected for mental, not physical, qualities;
for the ability to handle anything unexpected or unusual that comes up,
no matter what it is."
"You think it wasn't double-barreled?" asked Kincaid, the psychologist.
He smiled quizzically. "That all this virility and nubility and glamor
is pure coincidence?"
"No," Hilton said, with an almost imperceptible flick of an eyelid.
"Coincidence is as meaningless as paradox. I think they found out
that--barring freaks--the best minds are in the best bodies."
"Could be. The idea has been propounded before."
"Now let's get to work." Hilton flipped the switch of the recorder.
"Starting with you, Sandy, each of you give a two-minute boil-down. What
you found and what you think."
* * * * *
Something over an hour later the meeting adjourned and Hilton and Sandra
strolled toward the control room.
"I don't know whether you convinced Alexander Q. Kincaid or not, but you
didn't quite convince me," Sandra said.
"Nor him, either."
"Oh?" Sandra's eyebrows
"No. He grabbed the out I offered him. I didn't fool Teddy Blake or
Temple Bells, either. You four are all, though, I think."
"Temple? You think _she's_ so smart?"
"I don't _think_ so, no. Don't fool yourself, chick. Temple Bells looks
and acts sweet and innocent and virginal. Maybe--probably--she is. But
she isn't showing a fraction of the stuff she's really got. She's heavy
artillery, Sandy. And I mean _heavy_."
"I think you're slightly nuts there. But do you really believe that the
Board was playing Cupid?"
"Not trying, but doing. Cold-bloodedly and efficiently. Yes."
"But it wouldn't _work_! We aren't going to get lost!"
"We won't need to. Propinquity will do the work."
"Phooie. You and me, for instance?" She stopped, put both hands on her
hips, and glared. "Why, I wouldn't marry _you_ if you ..."
"I'll tell the cockeyed world you won't!" Hilton broke in. "Me marry a
damned female Ph.D.? Uh-uh. Mine will be a cuddly little brunette that
thinks a slipstick is some kind of lipstick and that an isotope's
something good to eat."
"One like that copy of Murchison's Dark Lady that you keep under the
glass on your desk?" she sneered.
"Exactly...." He started to continue the battle, then shut himself off.
"But listen, Sandy, why should we get into a fight because we don't want
to marry each other? You're doing a swell job. I admire you tremendously
for it and I like to work with you."
"You've got a point there, Jarve, at that, and I'm one of the few who
know what kind of a job _you're_ doing, so I'll relax." She flashed him
a gamin grin and they went on into the control room.
It was too late in the day then to do any more exploring; but the next
morning, early, the _Perseus_ lined out for the city of the humanoids.
* * * * *
Tula turned toward her fellows. Her eyes filled with a happily
triumphant light and her thought a lilting song. "I have been telling
you from the first touch that it was the Masters. It _is_ the Masters!
The Masters are returning to us Omans and their own home world!"
* * * * *
"Captain Sawtelle," Hilton said, "Please land in the cradle below."
"_Land!_" Sawtelle stormed. "On a planet like _that_? Not by ..." He
broke off and stared; for now, on that cradle, there flamed out in
screaming red the _Perseus'_ own Navy-coded landing symbols!
"Your protest is recorded," Hilton said. "Now, sir, land."
Fuming, Sawtelle landed. Sandra looked pointedly at Hilton. "First
contact is my dish, you know."
"Not that I like it, but it is." He turned to a burly youth with
sun-bleached, crew-cut hair, "Still safe, Frank?"
"Still abnormally low. Surprising no end, since all the rest of the
planet is hotter than the middle tail-race of hell."
"Okay, Sandy. Who will you want besides the top linguists?"
"Psych--both Alex and Temple. And Teddy Blake. They're over there. Tell
them, will you, while I buzz Teddy?"
"Will do," and Hilton stepped over to the two psychologists and told
them. Then, "I hope I'm not leading with my chin, Temple, but is that
your real first name or a professional?"
"It's real; it really is. My parents were romantics: dad says they
considered both 'Golden' and 'Silver'!"
Not at all obviously, he studied her: the almost translucent,
unblemished perfection of her lightly-tanned, old-ivory skin; the clear,
calm, deep blueness of her eyes; the long, thick mane of hair exactly
the color of a field of dead-ripe wheat.
"You know, I like it," he said then. "It fits you."
"I'm glad you said that, Doctor...."
"Not that, Temple. I'm not going to 'Doctor' you."
"I'll call you 'boss', then, like Stella does. Anyway, that lets me tell
you that I like it myself. I really think that it did something for me."
"_Something_ did something for you, that's for sure. I'm mighty glad
you're aboard, and I hope ... here they come. Hi, Hark! Hi, Stella!"
"Hi, Jarve," said Chief Linguist Harkins, and:
"Hi, boss--what's holding us up?" asked his assistant, Stella Wing. She
was about five feet four. Her eyes were a tawny brown; her hair a
flamboyant auburn mop. Perhaps it owed a little of its spectacular
refulgence to chemistry, Hilton thought, but not too much. "Let us away!
Let the lions roar and let the welkin ring!"
"Who's been feeding _you_ so much red meat, little squirt?" Hilton
laughed and turned away, meeting Sandra in the corridor. "Okay, chick,
take 'em away. We'll cover you. Luck, girl."
And in the control room, to Sawtelle, "Needle-beam cover, please; set
for minimum aperture and lethal blast. But no firing, Captain Sawtelle,
until I give the order."
* * * * *
The _Perseus_ was surrounded by hundreds of natives. They were all
adult, all naked and about equally divided as to sex. They were
friendly; most enthusiastically so.
"Jarve!" Sandra squealed. "They're _telepathic_. Very strongly so! I
never imagined--I never felt anything like it!"
"Any rough stuff?" Hilton demanded.
"Oh, no. Just the opposite. They love us ... in a way that's simply
indescribable. I don't like this telepathy business ... not clear ...
foggy, diffuse ... this woman is _sure_ I'm her long-lost
great-great-a-hundred-times grandmother or something--_You!_ Slow down.
Take it _easy_! They want us all to come out here and live with ... no,
not _with_ them, but each of us alone in a whole house with them to wait
on us! But first, they all want to come aboard...."
"_What?_" Hilton yelped. "But are you _sure_ they're friendly?"
"Positive, chief."
"How about you, Alex?"
"We're all sure, Jarve. No question about it."
"Bring two of them aboard. A man and a woman."
"You won't bring _any_!" Sawtelle thundered. "Hilton, I had enough of
your stupid, starry-eyed, ivory-domed blundering long ago, but this
utterly idiotic brainstorm of letting enemy aliens aboard us ends all
civilian command. Call your people back aboard or I will bring them in
by force!"
"Very well, sir. Sandy, tell the natives that a slight delay has become
necessary and bring your party aboard."
The Navy officers smiled--or grinned--gloatingly; while the scientists
stared at their director with expressions ranging from surprise to
disappointment and disgust. Hilton's face remained set, expressionless,
until Sandra and her party had arrived.
"Captain Sawtelle," he said then, "I thought that you and I had settled
in private the question or who is in command of Project Theta Orionis at
destination. We will now settle it in public. Your opinion of me is now
on record, witnessed by your officers and by my staff. My opinion of
you, which is now being similarly recorded and witnessed, is that you
are a hidebound, mentally ossified Navy mule; mentally and
psychologically unfit to have any voice in any such mission as this. You
will now agree on this recording and before these witnesses, to obey my
orders unquestioningly or I will now unload all Bureau of Science
personnel and equipment onto this planet and send you and the _Perseus_
back to Terra with the doubly-sealed record of this episode posted to
the Advisory Board. Take your choice."
Eyes locked, and under Hilton's uncompromising stare Sawtelle weakened.
He fidgeted; tried three times--unsuccessfully--to blare defiance. Then,
"Very well sir," he said, and saluted.
* * * * *
"Thank you, sir," Hilton said, then turned to his staff. "Okay, Sandy,
go ahead."
Outside the control room door, "Thank God you don't play poker, Jarve!"
Karns gasped. "We'd all owe you all the pay we'll ever get!"
"You think it was the bluff, yes?" de Vaux asked. "Me, I think no. Name
of a name of a name! I was wondering with unease what life would be like
on this so-alien planet!"
"You didn't need to wonder, Tiny," Hilton assured him. "It was in the
bag. He's incapable of abandonment."
Beverly Bell, the van der Moen twins and Temple Bells all stared at
Hilton in awe; and Sandra felt much the same way.
"But suppose he _had_ called you?" Sandra demanded.
"Speculating on the impossible is unprofitable," he said.
"Oh, you're the most _exasperating_ thing!" Sandra stamped a foot.
"Don't you--_ever_--answer a question intelligibly?"
"When the question is meaningless, chick, I can't."
At the lock Temple Bells, who had been hanging back, cocked an eyebrow
at Hilton and he made his way to her side.
"What was it you started to say back there, boss?"
"Oh, yes. That we should see each other oftener."
"That's what I was hoping you were going to say." She put her hand under
his elbow and pressed his arm lightly, fleetingly, against her side.
"That would be indubitably the fondest thing I could be of."
He laughed and gave her arm a friendly squeeze. Then he studied her
again, the most baffling member of his staff. About five feet six.
Lithe, hard, trained down fine--as a tennis champion, she would be.
Stacked--_how_ she was stacked! Not as beautiful as Sandra or Teddy ...
but with an ungodly lot of something that neither of them had ... nor
any other woman he had ever known.
"Yes, I am a little difficult to classify," she said quietly, almost
reading his mind.
"That's the understatement of the year! But I'm making some progress."
"Such as?" This was an open challenge.
"Except possibly Teddy, the best brain aboard."
"That isn't true, but go ahead."
"You're a powerhouse. A tightly organized, thoroughly integrated,
smoothly functioning, beautifully camouflaged Juggernaut. A reasonable
facsimile of an irresistible force."
"My God, Jarvis!" That had gone deep.
"Let me finish my analysis. You aren't head of your department because
you don't want to be. You fooled the top psychs of the Board. You've
been running ninety per cent submerged because you can work better that
way and there's no glory-hound blood in you."
She stared at him, licking her lips. "I knew your mind was a razor, but
I didn't know it was a diamond drill, too. That seals your doom, boss,
unless ... no, you can't _possibly_ know why I'm here."
"Why, of course I do."
"You just think you do. You see, I've been in love with you ever since,
as a gangling, bony, knobby-kneed kid, I listened to your first
doctorate disputation. Ever since then, my purpose in life has been to
land you."