IX

As has been intimated, no Terran can know what researches Larry and Tuly

and the other Oman specialists performed, or how they arrived at the

conclusions they reached. However, in less than a week Larry reported to

Hilton.

"It can be done, sir, with complete safety. And you will live even more

comfortably than you do now."

"How long?"

"The mean will be about five thousand Oman years--you don't know that an

Oman year is equal to one point two nine three plus Terran years?"

"I didn't, no. Thanks."

"The maximum, a little less than six thousand. The minimum, a little

over four thousand. I'm very sorry we had no data upon which to base a

closer estimate."

"Close enough." He stared at the Oman. "You could also convert my wife?"

"Of course, sir."

"Well, we might be able to stand it, after we got used to the idea.

Minimum, over five thousand Terran years ... barring accidents, of

course?"

"No, sir. No accidents. Nothing will be able to kill you, except by

total destruction of the brain. And even then, sir, there will be the

pattern."

"I'll ... be ... damned...." Hilton gulped twice. "Okay, go ahead."

"Your skins will be like ours, energy-absorbers. Your 'blood' will carry

charges of energy instead of oxygen. Thus, you may breathe or not, as

you please. Unless you wish otherwise, we will continue the breathing

function. It would scarcely be worth while to alter the automatic

mechanisms that now control it. And you will wish at times to speak. You

will still enjoy eating and drinking, although everything ingested will

be eliminated, as at present, as waste."

"We'd add uranexite to our food, I suppose. Or drink radioactives, or

sleep under cobalt-60 lamps."

"Yes, sir. Your family life will be normal; your sexual urges and

satisfactions the same. Fertilization and period of gestation unchanged.

Your children will mature at the same ages as they do now."

"How do you--oh, I see. You wouldn't change any molecular linkages or

configurations in the genes or chromosomes."

"We could not, sir, even if we wished. Such substitutions can be made

only in exact one-for-one replacements. In the near future you will, of

course, have to control births quite rigorously."

"We sure would. Let's see ... say we want a stationary population of a

hundred million on our planet. Each couple to have two children, a boy

and a girl. Born when the parents are about fifty ... um-m-m. The gals

can have all the children they want, then, until our population is about

a million; then slap on the limit of two kids per couple. Right?"

"Approximately so, sir. And after conversion you alone will be able to

operate with the full power of your eight, without tiring. You will

also, of course, be able to absorb almost instantaneously all the

knowledges and abilities of the old Masters."

Hilton gulped twice before he could speak. "You wouldn't be holding

anything else back, would you?"

"Nothing important, sir. Everything else is minor, and probably known to

you."

"I doubt it. How long will the job take, and how much notice will you

need?"

"Two days, sir. No notice. Everything is ready."

Hilton, face somber, thought for minutes. "The more I think of it the

less I like it. But it seems to be a forced put ... and Temple will blow

sky high ... and _have_ I got the guts to go it alone, even if she'd let

me...." He shrugged himself out of the black mood. "I'll look her up and

let you know, Larry."

* * * * *

He looked her up and told her everything. Told her bluntly; starkly;

drawing the full picture in jet black, with very little white.

"There it is, sweetheart. The works," he concluded. "We are not going to

have ten years; we may not have ten months. So--if such a brain as that

can be had, do we or do we not have to have it? I'm putting it squarely

up to you."

Temple's face, which had been getting paler and paler, was now as nearly

colorless as it could become; the sickly yellow of her skin's light tan

unbacked by any flush of red blood.

Her whole body was tense and strained.

"There's a horrible snapper on that question.... Can't _I_ do it? Or

_anybody_ else except you?"

"No. Anyway, whose job is it, sweetheart?"

"I know, but ... but I know just how close Tuly came to killing you. And

that wasn't _anything_ compared to such a radical transformation as

this. I'm afraid it'll kill you, darling. And I just simply couldn't

_stand_ it!"

She threw herself into his arms, and he comforted her in the ages-old

fashion of man with maid.

"Steady, hon," he said, as soon as he could lift her tear-streaked face

from his shoulder. "I'll live through it. I thought you were getting the

howling howpers about having to live for six thousand years and never

getting back to Terra except for a Q strictly T visit now and then."

She pulled away from him, flung back her wheaten mop and glared. "So

_that's_ what you thought! What do I care how long I live, or how, or

where, as long as it's with you? But what makes you think we can

possibly live through such a horrible conversion as that?"

"Larry wouldn't do it if there was any question whatever. He didn't say

it would be painless. But he did say I'd live."

"Well, he knows, I guess ... I hope." Temple's natural fine color began

to come back. "But it's understood that just the second you come out of

the vat, I go right in."

"I hadn't ought to let you, of course. But I don't think I could take it

alone."

That statement required a special type of conference, which consumed

some little time. Eventually, however, Temple answered it in words.

"Of course you couldn't, sweetheart, and I wouldn't let you, even if you

could."

There were a few things that had to be done before those two secret

conversions could be made. There was the matter of the wedding, which

was now to be in quadruplicate. Arrangements had to be made so that

eight Big Wheels of the Project could all be away on honeymoon at once.

All these things were done.

* * * * *

Of the conversion operations themselves, nothing more need be said. The

honeymooners, having left ship and town on a Friday afternoon, came back

one week from the following Monday[1] morning. The eight met joyously in

Bachelors' Hall; the girls kissing each other and the men

indiscriminately and enthusiastically; the men cooperating zestfully.

[1] While it took some time to recompute the exact Ardrian calendar,

Terran day names and Terran weeks were used from the first. The Omans

manufactured watches, clocks, and chronometers which divided the Ardrian

day into twenty-four Ardrian hours, with minutes and seconds as usual.

Temple scarcely blushed at all, she was so engrossed in trying to find

out whether or not anyone was noticing any change. No one seemed to

notice anything out of the ordinary. So, finally, she asked.

"Don't _any_ of you, really, see anything different?"

The six others all howled at that, and Sandra, between giggles and

snorts, said: "No, precious, it doesn't show a bit. Did you really think

it would?"

Temple blushed furiously and Hilton came instantly to his bride's

rescue. "Chip-chop the comedy, gang. She and I aren't human any more.

We're a good jump toward being Omans. I couldn't make her believe it

doesn't show."

That stopped the levity, cold, but none of the six could really believe

it. However, after Hilton had coiled a twenty-penny spike into a perfect

helix between his fingers, and especially after he and Temple had each

chewed up and swallowed a piece of uranexite, there were no grounds left

for doubt.

"That settles it ... it _tears_ it," Karns said then. "Start all over

again, Jarve. We'll listen, this time."

Hilton told the long story again, and added: "I had to re-work a couple

of cells of Temple's brain, but now she can read and understand the

records as well as I can. So I thought I'd take her place on Team One

and let her boss the job on all the other teams. Okay?"

"So you don't want to let the rest of us in on it." Karns's level stare

was a far cry from the way he had looked at his chief a moment before.

"If there's any one thing in the universe I never had _you_ figured for,

it's a dog in the manger."

"Huh? You mean you actually _want_ to be a ... a ... hell, we don't even

know _what_ we are!"

"I do want it, Jarvis. We all do." This was, of all people, Teddy! "No

one in all history has had more than about fifty years of really

productive thinking. And just the idea of having enough time ..."

"Hold it, Teddy. Use your brain. The Masters couldn't take it--they

committed suicide. How do you figure we can do any better?"

"Because we'll _use_ our brains!" she snapped. "They didn't. The Omans

will serve us; and that's _all_ they'll do."

"And do you think you'll be able to raise your children and

grandchildren and so on to do the same? To have guts enough to resist

the pull of such an ungodly habit-forming drug as this Oman service is?"

* * * * *

"I'm sure of it." She nodded positively. "And we'll run all applicants

through a fine enough screen to--that is, if we ever consider anybody

except our own BuSci people. And there's another reason." She grinned,

got up, wriggled out of her coverall, and posed in bra and panties.

"Look. I can keep most of this for five years. Quite a lot of it for

ten. Then comes the struggle. What do _you_ think I'd do for the

ability, whenever it begins to get wrinkly or flabby, to peel the whole

thing off and put on a brand-spanking-new smooth one? You name it, I'll

do it! Besides, Bill and I will _both_ just simply and cold-bloodedly

murder you if you try to keep us out."

"Okay." Hilton looked at Temple; she looked at him; both looked at all

the others. There was no revulsion at all. Nothing but eagerness.

Temple took over.

"I'm surprised. We're both surprised. You see, Jarve didn't want to do

it at all, but he had to. I not only didn't want to, I was scared green

and yellow at just the idea of it. But I had to, too, of course. We

didn't think anybody would really want to. We thought we'd be left here

alone. We still will be, I think, when you've thought it clear through,

Teddy. You just haven't realized yet that we aren't even human any more.

We're simply nothing but _monsters_!" Temple's voice became a wail.

"I've said my piece," Teddy said. "You tell 'em, Bill."

"Let me say something first," Kincaid said. "Temple, I'm ashamed of you.

This line isn't at all your usual straight thinking. What you actually

are is _homo superior_. Bill?"

"I can add one bit to that. I don't wonder that you were scared silly,

Temple. Utterly new concept and you went into it stone cold. But now we

see the finished product and we like it. In fact, we drool."

"I'll say we're drooling," Sandra said. "I could do handstands and

pinwheels with joy."

"Let's see you," Hilton said. "That we'd all get a kick out of."

"Not now--don't want to hold this up--but sometime I just will. Bev?"

"I'm for it--and _how_! And won't Bernadine be amazed," Beverly laughed

gleefully, "at her wise-crack about the 'race to end all human races'

coming true?"

"I'm in favor of it, too, one hundred per cent," Poynter said. "Has it

occurred to you, Jarve, that this opens up intergalactic exploration? No

supplies to carry and plenty of time and fuel?"

"No, it hadn't. You've got a point there, Frank. That might take a

little of the curse off of it, at that."

"When some of our kids get to be twenty years old or so and get married,

I'm going to take a crew of them to Andromeda. We'll arrange, then, to

extend our honeymoons another week," Hilton said. "What will our policy

be? Keep it dark for a while with just us eight, or spread it to the

rest?"

"Spread it, I'd say," Kincaid said.

"We can't keep it secret, anyway," Teddy argued. "Since Larry and Tuly

were in on the whole deal, every Oman on the planet knows all about it.

Somebody is going to ask questions, and Omans always answer questions

and always tell the truth."

* * * * *

"Questions have already been asked and answered," Larry said, going to

the door and opening it.

Stella rushed in. "We've been hearing the _damnedest_ things!" She

kissed everybody, ending with Hilton, whom she seized by both shoulders.

"Is it actually true, boss, that you can fix me up so I'll live

practically forever and can eat more than eleven calories a day without

getting fat as a pig? Candy, ice cream, cake, pie, eclairs, cream puffs,

French pastries, sugar and gobs of thick cream in my coffee...?"

Half a dozen others, including the van der Moen twins, came in. Beverly

emitted a shriek of joy. "Bernadine! The mother of the race to end all

human races!"

"You whistled it, birdie!" Bernadine caroled. "I'm going to have ten or

twelve, each one weirder than all the others. I told you I was a

prophet--I'm going to hang out my shingle. Wholesale and retail

prophecy; special rates for large parties." Her voice was drowned out

in a general clamor.

"Hold it, everybody!" Hilton yelled. "Chip-chop it! _Quit_ it!" Then, as

the noise subsided, "If you think I'm going to tell this tall tale over

and over again for the next two weeks you're all crazy. So shut down the

plant and get everybody out here."

"Not _everybody_, Jarve!" Temple snapped. "We don't want scum, and

there's some of that, even in BuSci."

"You're so right. Who, then?"

"The rest of the heads and assistants, of course ... and all the lab

girls and their husbands and boy-friends. I know they are all okay. That

will be enough for now, don't you think?"

"I do think;" and the indicated others were sent for; and in a few

minutes arrived.

The Omans brought chairs and Hilton stood on a table. He spoke for ten

minutes. Then: "Before you decide whether you want to or not, think it

over very carefully, because it's a one-way street. Fluorine can not be

displaced. Once in, you're stuck for life. _There is no way back._ I've

told you all the drawbacks and disadvantages I know of, but there may be

a lot more that I haven't thought of yet. So think it over for a few

days and when each of you has definitely made up his or her mind, let me

know." He jumped down off the table.

* * * * *

His listeners, however, did not need days, or even seconds, to decide.

Before Hilton's feet hit the floor there was a yell of unanimous

approval.