XI

The Stretts' fuel-supply line had been cut long since. Many Strett

cargo-carriers had been destroyed. The enemy would of course have a very

heavy reserve of fuel on hand. But there was no way of knowing how large

it was, how many warships it could supply, or how long it would last.

Two facts were, however, unquestionable. First, the Stretts were

building a fleet that in their minds would be invincible. Second, they

would attack Ardane as soon as that fleet could be made ready. The

unanswerable question was: how long would that take?

"So we want to get every ship we have. How many? Five thousand? Ten?

Fifteen? We want them converted to maximum possible power as soon as we

possibly can," Sawtelle said. "And I want to get out there with my boys

to handle things."

"You aren't going to. Neither you nor your boys are expendable.

Particularly you." Jaw hard-set, Hilton studied the situation for

minutes. "No. What we'll do is take your Oman, Kedy. We'll re-set the

Guide to drive into him everything you and the military Masters ever

knew about arms, armament, strategy, tactics and so on. And we'll add

everything I know of coordination, synthesis, and perception. That ought

to make him at least a junior-grade military genius."

"You can play _that_ in spades. I wish you could do it to me."

"I can--if you'll take the full Oman transformation. Nothing else can

stand the punishment."

"I know. No, I don't want to be a genius that badly."

"Check. And we'll take the resultant Kedy and make nine duplicates of

him. Each one will learn from and profit by the mistakes made by

preceding numbers and will assume command the instant his preceding

number is killed."

"Oh, you expect, then...?"

"Expect? No. I know it damn well, and so do you. That's why we Ardans

will all stay aground. Why the Kedys' first job will be to make the

heavy stuff in and around Ardane as heavy as it can be made. Why it'll

all be on twenty-four-hour alert. Then they can put as many thousands of

Omans as you please to work at modernizing all the Oman ships you want

and doing anything else you say. Check?"

Sawtelle thought for a couple of minutes. "A few details, is all. But

that can be ironed out as we go along."

Both men worked then, almost unremittingly for six solid days; at the

end of which time both drew tremendous sighs of relief. They had done

everything possible for them to do. The defense of Ardvor was now

rolling at fullest speed toward its gigantic objective.

Then captain and director, in two Oman ships with fifty men and a

thousand Omans, leaped the world-girdling ocean to the mining operation

of the Stretts. There they found business strictly as usual. The

strippers still stripped; the mining mechs still roared and snarled

their inchwise ways along their geometrically perfect terraces; the

little carriers still skittered busily between the various miners and

the storage silos. The fact that there was enough concentrate on hand to

last a world for a hundred years made no difference at all to these

automatics; a crew of erector-mechs was building new silos as fast as

existing ones were being filled.

Since the men now understood everything that was going on, it was a

simple matter for them to stop the whole Strett operation in its

tracks. Then every man and every Oman leaped to his assigned job. Three

days later, all the mechs went back to work. Now, however, they were

working for the Ardans.

The miners, instead of concentrate, now emitted vastly larger streams of

Navy-Standard pelleted uranexite. The carriers, instead of one-gallon

cans, carried five-ton drums. The silos were immensely larger--thirty

feet in diameter and towering two hundred feet into the air. The silos

were not, however, being used as yet. One of the two Oman ships had been

converted into a fuel-tanker and its yawning holds were being filled

first.

The _Orion_ went back to Ardane and an eight-day wait began. For the

first time in over seven months Hilton found time actually to loaf; and

he and Temple, lolling on the beach or hiking in the mountains, enjoyed

themselves and each other to the full.

All too soon, however, the heavily laden tanker appeared in the sky over

Ardane. The _Orion_ joined it; and the two ships slipped into sub-space

for Earth.

* * * * *

Three days out, Hilton used his sense of perception to release the

thought-controlled blocks that had been holding all the controls of the

_Perseus_ in neutral. He informed her officers--by releasing a

public-address tape--that they were now free to return to Terra.

Three days later, one day short of Sol, Sawtelle got Five-Jet Admiral

Gordon's office on the sub-space radio. An officious underling tried to

block him, of course.

"Shut up, Perkins, and listen," Sawtelle said, bruskly. "Tell Gordon I'm

bringing in one hundred twenty thousand two hundred forty-five metric

tons of pelleted uranexite. And if he isn't on this beam in sixty

seconds he'll never get a gram of it."

The admiral, outraged almost to the point of apoplexy, came in.

"Sawtelle, report yourself for court-martial at ..."

"Keep still, Gordon," the captain snapped. In sheer astonishment old

Five-Jets obeyed. "I am no longer Terran Navy; no longer subject to your

orders. As a matter of cold fact, I am no longer human. For reasons

which I will explain later to the full Advisory Board, some of the

personnel of Project Theta Orionis underwent transformation into a form

of life able to live in an environment of radioactivity so intense as to

kill any human being in ten seconds. Under certain conditions we will

supply, free of charge, FOB Terra or Luna, all the uranexite the Solar

System can use. The conditions are these," and he gave them. "Do you

accept these conditions or not?"

"I ... I would vote to accept them, Captain. But that weight! One

hundred twenty thousand _metric tons_--incredible! Are you _sure_ of

that figure?"

"Definitely. And that is minimum. The error is plus, not minus."

"This crippling power-shortage would really be over?" For the first time

since Sawtelle had known him, Gordon showed that he was not quite solid

Navy brass.

"It's over. Definitely. For good."

"I'd not only agree; I'd raise you a monument. While I can't speak for

the Board, I'm sure they'll agree."

"So am I. In any event, your cooperation is all that's required for this

first load." The chips had vanished from Sawtelle's shoulders. "Where do

you want it, Admiral? Aristarchus or White Sands?"

"White Sands, please. While there may be some delay in releasing it to

industry ..."

"While they figure out how much they can tax it?" Sawtelle asked,

sardonically.

"Well, if they don't tax it it'll be the first thing in history that

isn't. Have you any objections to releasing all this to the press?"

"None at all. The harder they hit it and the wider they spread it, the

better. Will you have this beam switched to Astrogation, please?"

"Of course. And thanks, Captain. I'll see you at White Sands."

Then, as the now positively glowing Gordon faded away, Sawtelle turned

to his own staff. "Fenway--Snowden--take over. Better double-check

micro-timing with Astro. Put us into a twenty-four-hour orbit over White

Sands and hold us there. We won't go down. Let the load down on remote,

wherever they want it."

* * * * *

The arrival of the Ardvorian superdreadnought _Orion_ and the _UC-1_

(Uranexite Carrier Number One) was one of the most sensational events

old Earth had ever known. Air and space craft went clear out to

Emergence Volume Ninety to meet them. By the time the _UC-1_ was coming

in on its remote-controlled landing spiral the press of small ships was

so great that all the police forces available were in a lather trying to

control it.

This was exactly what Hilton had wanted. It made possible the completely

unobserved launching of several dozen small craft from the _Orion_

herself.

One of these made a very high and very fast flight to Chicago. With all

due formality and under the aegis of a perfectly authentic Registry

Number it landed on O'Hare Field. Eleven deeply tanned young men

emerged from it and made their way to a taxi stand, where each engaged a

separate vehicle.

Sam Bryant stepped into his cab, gave the driver a number on Oakwood

Avenue in Des Plaines, and settled back to scan. He was lucky. He would

have gone anywhere she was, of course, but the way things were, he could

give her a little warning to soften the shock. She had taken the baby

out for an airing down River Road, and was on her way back. By having

the taxi kill ten minutes or so he could arrive just after she did.

Wherefore he stopped the cab at a public communications booth and dialed

his home.

"Mrs. Bryant is not at home, but she will return at fifteen thirty," the

instrument said, crisply. "Would you care to record a message for her?"

He punched the RECORD button. "This is Sam, Dolly baby. I'm right behind

you. Turn around, why don't you, and tell your ever-lovin' star-hoppin'

husband hello?"

The taxi pulled up at the curb just as Doris closed the front door; and

Sam, after handing the driver a five-dollar bill, ran up the walk.

He waited just outside the door, key in hand, while she lowered the

stroller handle, took off her hat and by long-established habit reached

out to flip the communicator's switch. At the first word, however, she

stiffened rigidly--froze solid.

Smiling, he opened the door, walked in, and closed it behind him.

Nothing short of a shotgun blast could have taken Doris Bryant's

attention from that recorder then.

"That simply is not so," she told the instrument firmly, with both eyes

resolutely shut. "They made him stay on the _Perseus_. He won't be in

for at least three days. This is some cretin's idea of a joke."

"Not this time, Dolly honey. It's really me."

Her eyes popped open as she whirled. "SAM!" she shrieked, and hurled

herself at him with all the pent-up ardor and longing of two hundred

thirty-four meticulously counted, husbandless, loveless days.

After an unknown length of time Sam tipped her face up by the chin,

nodded at the stroller, and said, "How about introducing me to the

little stranger?"

"_What_ a mother I turned out to be! That was the first thing I was

going to rave about, the very first thing I saw you! Samuel Jay the

Fourth, seventy-six days old today." And so on.

Eventually, however, the proud young mother watched the slightly

apprehensive young father carry their first-born upstairs; where

together, they put him--still sound asleep--to bed in his crib. Then

again they were in each other's arms.

* * * * *

Some time later, she twisted around in the circle of his arm and tried

to dig her fingers into the muscles of his back. She then attacked his

biceps and, leaning backward, eyed him intently.

"You're you, I know, but you're different. No athlete or any laborer

could ever possibly get the muscles you have all over. To say nothing of

a space officer on duty. And I know it isn't any kind of a disease.

You've been acting all the time as though I were fragile, made out of

glass or something--as though you were afraid of breaking me in two.

So--what is it, sweetheart?"

"I've been trying to figure out an easy way of telling you, but there

isn't any. I am different. I'm a hundred times as strong as any man ever

was. Look." He upended a chair, took one heavy hardwood leg between

finger and thumb and made what looked like a gentle effort to bend it.

The leg broke with a pistol-sharp report and Doris leaped backward in

surprise. "So you're right. I _am_ afraid, not only of breaking you in

two, but killing you. And if I break any of your ribs or arms or legs

I'll never forgive myself. So if I let myself go for a second--I don't

think I will, but I might--don't wait until you're really hurt to start

screaming. Promise?"

"I promise." Her eyes went wide. "But _tell_ me!"

He told her. She was in turn surprised, amazed, apprehensive, frightened

and finally eager; and she became more and more eager right up to the

end.

"You mean that we ... that I'll stay just as I am--for thousands of

_years_?"

"Just as you are. Or different, if you like. If you really mean any of

this yelling you've been doing about being too big in the hips--I think

you're exactly right, myself--you can rebuild yourself any way you

please. Or change your shape every hour on the hour. But you haven't

accepted my invitation yet."

"Don't be silly." She went into his arms again and nibbled on his left

ear. "I'd go anywhere with you, of course, any time, but _this_--but

you're positively _sure_ Sammy Small will be all right?"

"Positively sure."

"Okay, I'll call mother...." Her face fell. "I _can't_ tell her that

we'll never see them again and that we'll live ..."

"You don't need to. She and Pop--Fern and Sally, too, and their

boy-friends--are on the list. Not this time, but in a month or so,

probably."

Doris brightened like a sunburst. "And your folks, too, of course?" she

asked.

"Yes, all the close ones."

"Marvelous! How soon are we leaving?"

* * * * *

At six o'clock next morning, two hundred thirty-five days after leaving

Earth, Hilton and Sawtelle set out to make the Ardans' official call

upon Terra's Advisory Board. Both were wearing prodigiously heavy lead

armor, the inside of which was furiously radioactive. They did not need

it, of course. But it would make all Ardans monstrous in Terran eyes and

would conceal the fact that any other Ardans were landing.

Their gig was met at the spaceport; not by a limousine, but by a

five-ton truck, into which they were loaded one at a time by a hydraulic

lift. Cameras clicked, reporters scurried, and tri-di scanners whirred.

One of those scanners, both men knew, was reporting directly and only to

the Advisory Board--which, of course, never took anything either for

granted or at its face value.

Their first stop was at a truck-scale, where each visitor was weighed.

Hilton tipped the beam at four thousand six hundred fifteen pounds;

Sawtelle, a smaller man, weighed in at four thousand one hundred ninety.

Thence to the Radiation Laboratory, where it was ascertained and

reported that the armor did not leak--which was reasonable enough,

since each was lined with Masters' plastics.

Then into lead-lined testing cells, where each opened his face-plate

briefly to a sensing element. Whereupon the indicating needles of two

meters in the main laboratory went enthusiastically through the full

range of red and held unwaveringly against their stops.

Both Ardans felt the wave of shocked, astonished, almost unbelieving

consternation that swept through the observing scientists and, in

slightly lesser measure (because they knew less about radiation) through

the Advisory Board itself in a big room halfway across town. And from

the Radiation Laboratory they were taken, via truck and freight

elevator, to the Office of the Commandant, where the Board was sitting.

The story, which had been sent in to the Board the day before on a

scrambled beam, was one upon which the Ardans had labored for days. Many

facts could be withheld. However, every man aboard the _Perseus_ would

agree on some things. Indeed, the Earthship's communications officers

had undoubtedly radioed in already about longevity and perfect health

and Oman service and many other matters. Hence all such things would

have to be admitted and countered.

Thus the report, while it was air-tight, perfectly logical, perfectly

consistent, and apparently complete, did not please the Board at all. It

wasn't intended to.

* * * * *

"We cannot and do not approve of such unwarranted favoritism," the

Chairman of the Board said. "Longevity has always been man's prime goal.

Every human being has the inalienable right to ..."

"Flapdoodle!" Hilton snorted. "This is not being broadcast and this room

is proofed, so please climb down off your soapbox. You don't need to

talk like a politician here. Didn't you read paragraph 12-A-2, one of

the many marked 'Top Secret'?"

"Of course. But we do not understand how purely mental qualities can

possibly have any effect upon purely physical transformations. Thus it

does not seem reasonable that any except rigorously screened personnel

would die in the process. That is, of course, unless you contemplate

deliberate, cold-blooded murder."

That stopped Hilton in his tracks, for it was too close for comfort to

the truth. But it did not hold the captain for an instant. He was used

to death, in many of its grisliest forms.

"There are a lot of things no Terran ever will understand," Sawtelle

replied instantly. "Reasonable, or not, that's exactly what will

happen. And, reasonable or not, it'll be suicide, not murder. There

isn't a thing that either Hilton or I can do about it."

Hilton broke the ensuing silence. "You can say with equal truth that

every human being has the _right_ to run a four-minute mile or to

compose a great symphony. It isn't a matter of right at all, but of

ability. In this case the mental qualities are even more necessary than

the physical. You as a Board did a very fine job of selecting the BuSci

personnel for Project Theta Orionis. Almost eighty per cent of them

proved able to withstand the Ardan conversion. On the other hand, only a

very small percentage of the Navy personnel did so."

"Your report said that the remaining personnel of the Project were not

informed as to the death aspect of the transformation," Admiral Gordon

said. "Why not?"

"That should be self-explanatory," Hilton said, flatly. "They are still

human and still Terrans. We did not and will not encroach upon either

the duties or the privileges of Terra's Advisory Board. What you tell

all Terrans, and how much, and how, must be decided by yourselves. This

also applies, of course, to the other 'Top Secret' paragraphs of the

report, none of which are known to any Terran outside the Board."

"But you haven't said anything about the method of selection," another

Advisor complained. "Why, that will take all the psychologists of the

world, working full time; continuously."

"We said we would do the selecting. We meant just that," Hilton said,

coldly. "No one except the very few selectees will know anything about

it. Even if it were an unmixed blessing--which it very definitely is

_not_--do you want all humanity thrown into such an uproar as that would

cause? Or the quite possible racial inferiority complex it might set up?

To say nothing of the question of how much of Terra's best blood do you

want to drain off, irreversibly and permanently? No. What we suggest is

that you paint the picture so black, using Sawtelle and me and what all

humanity has just seen as horrible examples, that nobody would take it

as a gift. Make them shun it like the plague. Hell, I don't have to tell

you what your propaganda machines can do."

* * * * *

The Chairman of the Board again mounted his invisible rostrum. "Do you

mean to intimate that we are to falsify the record?" he declaimed. "To

try to make liars out of hundreds of eyewitnesses? You ask us to

distort the truth, to connive at ..."

"We aren't asking you to do _anything_!" Hilton snapped. "We don't give

a damn what you do. Just study that record, with all that it implies.

Read between the lines. As for those on the _Perseus_, no two of them

will tell the same story and not one of them has even the remotest idea

of what the real story is. I, personally, not only did not want to

become a monster, but would have given everything I had to stay human.

My wife felt the same way. Neither of us would have converted if there'd

been any other way in God's universe of getting the uranexite and doing

some other things that simply _must_ be done."

"What other things?" Gordon demanded.

"You'll never know," Hilton answered, quietly. "Things no Terran ever

will know. We hope. Things that would drive any Terran stark mad. Some

of them are hinted at--as much as we dared--between the lines of the

report."

The report had not mentioned the Stretts. Nor were they to be mentioned

now. If the Ardans could stop them, no Terran need ever know anything

about them.

If not, no Terran should know anything about them except what he would

learn for himself just before the end. For Terra would never be able to

do anything to defend herself against the Stretts.

"Nothing whatever can drive _me_ mad," Gordon declared, "and I want to

know all about it--right now!"

"You can do one of two things, Gordon," Sawtelle said in disgust. His

sneer was plainly visible through the six-ply, plastic-backed lead glass

of his face-plate. "Either shut up or accept my personal invitation to

come to Ardvor and try to go through the wringer. That's an invitation

to your own funeral." Five-Jet Admiral Gordon, torn inwardly to ribbons,

made no reply.

"I repeat," Hilton went on, "we are not asking you to do anything

whatever. We are offering to give you; free of charge but under certain

conditions, all the power your humanity can possibly use. We set no

limitation whatever as to quantity and with no foreseeable limit as to

time. The only point at issue is whether or not you accept the

conditions. If you do not accept them we'll leave now--and the offer

will not be repeated."

"And you would, I presume, take the _UC-1_ back with you?"

"Of course not, sir. Terra needs power too badly. You are perfectly

welcome to that one load of uranexite, no matter what is decided here."

"That's one way of putting it," Gordon sneered. "But the truth is that

you know damned well I'll blow both of your ships out of space if you so

much as ..."

"Oh, chip-chop the jaw-flapping, Gordon!" Hilton snapped. Then, as the

admiral began to bellow orders into his microphone, he went on: "You

want it the hard way, eh? Watch what happens, all of you!"

* * * * *

The _UC-1_ shot vertically into the air. Through its shallow dense layer

and into and through the stratosphere. Earth's fleet, already on full

alert and poised to strike, rushed to the attack. But the carrier had

reached the _Orion_ and both Ardvorian ships had been waiting,

motionless, for a good half minute before the Terran warships arrived

and began to blast with everything they had.

"Flashlights and firecrackers," Sawtelle said, calmly. "You aren't even

warming up our screens. As soon as you quit making a damned fool of

yourself by wasting energy that way, we'll set the _UC-1_ back down

where she was and get on with our business here."

"You will order a cease-fire at once, Admiral," the chairman said, "or

the rest of us will, as of now, remove you from the Board." Gordon

gritted his teeth in rage, but gave the order.

"If he hasn't had enough yet to convince him," Hilton suggested, "he

might send up a drone. We don't want to kill anybody, you know. One with

the heaviest screening he's got--just to see what happens to it."

"He's had enough. The rest of us have had more than enough. That

exhibition was not only uncalled-for and disgusting--it was outrageous!"

The meeting settled down, then, from argument to constructive

discussion, and many topics were gone over. Certain matters were,

however, so self-evident that they were not even mentioned.

Thus, it was a self-evident fact that no Terran could ever visit Ardvor;

for the instrument-readings agreed with the report's statements as to

the violence of the Ardvorian environment, and no Terran could possibly

walk around in two tons of lead. Conversely, it was self-apparent to the

Terrans that no Ardan could ever visit Earth without being recognized

instantly for what he was. Wearing such armor made its necessity starkly

plain. No one from the _Perseus_ could say that any Ardan, after having

lived on the furiously radiant surface of Ardvor, would not be as

furiously radioactive as the laboratory's calibrated instruments had

shown Hilton and Sawtelle actually to be.

Wherefore the conference went on, quietly and cooperatively, to its

planned end.

One minute after the Terran battleship _Perseus_ emerged into normal

space, the _Orion_ went into sub-space for her long trip back to Ardvor.

* * * * *

The last two days of that seven-day trip were the longest-seeming that

either Hilton or Sawtelle had ever known. The sub-space radio was on

continuously and Kedy-One reported to Sawtelle every five minutes. Even

though Hilton knew that the Oman commander-in-chief was exactly as good

at perceiving as he himself was, he found himself scanning the

thoroughly screened Strett world forty or fifty times an hour.

However, in spite of worry and apprehension, time wore eventlessly on.

The _Orion_ emerged, went to Ardvor and landed on Ardane Field.

Hilton, after greeting properly and reporting to his wife, went to his

office. There he found that Sandra had everything well in hand except

for a few tapes that only he could handle. Sawtelle and his officers

went to the new Command Central, where everything was rolling smoothly

and very much faster than Sawtelle had dared hope.

The Terran immigrants had to live in the _Orion_, of course, until

conversion into Ardans. Almost equally of course--since the Bryant

infant was the only young baby in the lot--Doris and her Sammy Small

were, by popular acclaim, in the first batch to be converted. For little

Sammy had taken the entire feminine contingent by storm. No Oman female

had a chance to act as nurse as long as any of the girls were around.

Which was practically all the time. Especially the platinum-blonde

twins; for several months, now, Bernadine Braden and Hermione Felger.

"And you said they were so hard-boiled," Doris said accusingly to Sam,

nodding at the twins. On hands and knees on the floor, head to head with

Sammy Small between them, they were growling deep-throated at each other

and nuzzling at the baby, who was having the time of his young life.

"You couldn't have been any wronger, my sweet, if you'd had the whole

Octagon helping you go astray. They're just as nice as they can be, both

of them."

Sam shrugged and grinned. His wife strode purposefully across the room

to the playful pair and lifted their pretended prey out from between

them.

"Quit it, you two," she directed, swinging the baby up and depositing

him a-straddle her left hip. "You're just simply spoiling him rotten."

"You think so, Dolly? Uh-uh, far be it from such." Bernadine came

lithely to her feet. She glanced at her own taut, trim abdomen; upon

which a micrometrically-precise topographical mapping job might have

revealed an otherwise imperceptible bulge. "Just you wait until Junior

arrives and I'll show you how to _really_ spoil a baby. Besides, what's

the hurry?"

"He needs his supper. Vitamins and minerals and hard radiations and

things, and then he's going to bed. I don't approve of this no-sleep

business. So run along, both of you, until tomorrow."