Ross tried to force words—any words, to protest, to plead, to

vilify—through his clogged throat. All he managed was a croaking sound;

and Helena, by his side, nudged him sharply to silence. He turned to her

sharply, and realized that this was the best chance he’d be likely to

get. He clutched at her, rolled up his eyes, slumped to the floor in as

close an imitation of Bernie’s swoon as he could manage.

The judge was visibly annoyed, and this time she didn’t stop the

attendants when they rushed in to kick him erect. But he had the

consolation of seeing a flash of understanding cross Helena’s face, and

her hand dart to a pocket with the paper he had handed her. In the

confusion no one saw.

The rest of the courtroom scene was kaleidoscopic in Ross’s

recollection. The only part he remembered clearly was the judge’s voice

as she said to him and Bernie, “——for the rest of your lives, as long as

Almighty God shall, in Her infinite wisdom, permit you the breath of

life, be banished from Azor and all of its allied worlds to the prison

hulk in ‘Orbit Minerva.’”

And they were hustled out as the judge, even more wrathful than before,

turned to pronounce sentence on Helena.

..... 9

THE guard spat disgustedly. “Fine lot of wrecks we’re getting,” she

complained. “Not like the old days. They used to send real men here.”

She glowered at Ross and Bernie, holding their commitment papers loosely

in her hand. “And for treason, too!” she added. “Used to be it took guts

to commit a crime against the state.” She shook her head, then made a

noise of distaste and scribbled initials on the commitment papers. She

handed them back to the pilot who had brought them up from Azor, who

grinned, waved, and got out of there. “All right,” said the guard, “we

have to take what we get. I’ll have to put you two on construction;

you’ll never stand up under hard work. Keep your noses clean, that’s

all. Up at 0500; breakfast till 0510; work detail till 1950; dinner and

recreation till 2005; then lights out. Miss a formation and you miss a

meal. Miss two, and you get punishment detail. Nobody misses three.”

Ross and Bernie found themselves sharing a communal cell. They had all

of five minutes to look around and get oriented; then they were out on

their first work detail.

It wasn’t so bad as it sounded. Their shiftmates were a couple of dozen

ragged-looking wrecks, half-heartedly assembling a sort of meccano-toy

wall out of sheets of perforated steel and clip-spring bolts. All the

parts seemed well worn; some of the bolts hardly closed. It took Ross

the better part of his first detail, whispering when the guards were

looking the other way, to find out why. Their half of the prisoners were

Construction; the other half was Demolition. What Construction in the

morning put up, Demolition in the evening tore down. Neither side was

anxious to set any speed records, and the guards without exception were

too bored to care.

With any kind of luck, Ross found, he could hope eventually to get a

real job—manning the “Minerva’s” radar, signal, or generating

facilities, working in the kitchens or service shops, perhaps even as an

orderly in the guard quarters. (Although Ross quite by accident chanced

to see a guard’s orderly as he passed through a corridor near the work

area, a handkerchief held daintily to his nose. And though the orderly’s

clothing was neat and his plump cheeks indicated good eating, the

haunted expression in his eyes made Ross think twice.)

The one thing he could not do, according to the testimony of every man

he spoke to, was escape.

The fifth time Ross got that answer, the guard had stepped out of the

room. Ross took the opportunity to thrash the thing through. “Why?” he

demanded. “Back where I come from we’ve got lots of prisons. I never

heard of one nobody escaped from.”

The other prisoner laughed shortly. “Now you have,” he said. “Go ahead,

try. Every one of us has tried, one time or another. There’s only one

thing stopping you—there’s no place to go. You can get past the guards

easy enough—they’re lazy, when they’re not either drunk or boy-chasing.

You can roam around ‘Minerva’ all you like. You can even get to the

spacelock, and if you want to you can walk right through it. But not in

a spacesuit, because there aren’t any on board. And not into the tender

that brings us up from Azor, because you aren’t built right.”

Ross looked puzzled. “Not built right?”

“That’s right. There’s telescreens and remote-control locks built into

that tender. The pilot brings you up, but once she couples with

‘Minerva’ the controls lock. And the only way they get unlocked is when

three women, in three different substations down on Azor, push the RC

releases. And they don’t do that until they look in their screens, and

see that everybody who has turned up in the tender has stripped down to

nothing at all, and every one of them is by-God female. Any further

questions?” He grinned wryly. “Don’t even think about plastic surgery,

if that happens to cross your mind,” he said. “We have two men here who

tried it. You don’t have much equipment here; you can’t do a neat enough

job.”

Ross gulped. “Hadn’t given it a thought,” he assured the other man. “You

can’t even hide away in a trunk or something?”

The prisoner shook his head. “Aren’t any trunks. Everything’s one

way—Azor to ‘Minerva’—except pilots and guards. No men ever go back.

When you die, you go out the lock—without a ship. Same with everything

else that they want to get rid of.”

Ross thought hard. “What if they—well, what if you’re sent up here and

all, and then some new evidence turns up and you’re found innocent?

Don’t they send you back then?”

“Found innocent?” The man looked at Ross pityingly. “Man, you _are_ new.

Hey,” he called. “Hey, Chuck! This guy wants to know what happens if

they find out back on Azor that he’s innocent!”

Chuck exploded into laughter. Wiping his eyes, he walked over to Ross.

“Thanks,” he grinned. “Haven’t had a good laugh in fifteen years.”

“I don’t see that that’s so funny,” Ross said defensively. “After all,

the judge can make a mistake, none of us is per—awk!”

“Shut up!” Chuck hissed, holding a hand over Ross’s mouth. “Do you want

to get us all in _real_ trouble? Some of these guys would rat to the

guards for an extra hunk of bread! The judges never make a mistake.” And

his lips formed the silent word: “Officially.”

He let go of Ross and stood back, but didn’t walk away. He scratched his

head. “Say,” he said, “you ask some stupid questions. Where are you

from, anyhow?”

Ross said bitterly, “What’s the use? You won’t believe me. I happen to

be from a place called Halsey’s Planet, which is a good long distance

from here. About as far as light will travel in two hundred years, if

that gives you an idea. I came here in an F-T-L—that is, a

faster-than-light ship. You don’t know what that is, of course, but I

did. It was a mistake, I admit it. But here I am.”

Somewhat to Ross’s surprise, Chuck didn’t laugh again. He looked

dubious, and he scratched his head some more, but he didn’t laugh. To

the other prisoner he said, “What do you think, Sam?”

Sam shrugged. “So maybe we were wrong,” he observed.

Ross demanded, “Wrong about what?”

“Well,” Chuck said hesitantly, “there’s a guy here named Flarney. He’s a

pretty old son-of-a-gun by now, must be at least ninety, and he’s been

here a good long time. Dunno how long. But he talks crazy, just like

you. No offense,” he added, “it’s just that we all thought he’d gone

space-happy. But maybe we’re wrong. Unless——” his eyes narrowed “unless

the two of you are both space-happy, or trying to kid us, or something.”

Ross said urgently, “I swear, Chuck, there’s no such thing. It’s true.

Who’s this Flarney? Where does he say he came from?”

“Who can make sense out of what he says? All I know is, he talked a lot

about something faster than light. That’s crazy; that’s like saying

slower than dark, or bigger than green, or something. But I don’t know,

maybe it means something.”

“Believe me, Chuck, it does! Where is this man—can I see him?”

Chuck looked uncertain. “Well, sure. That is, you can see him all right.

But it isn’t going to do you a whole hell of a lot of good, because he’s

dead. Died yesterday; they’re going to pitch him out into space sometime

today.”

Sam said, “This is when Whitker flips. One week without his old pal

Flarney and he’ll begin to look funny. Two weeks and he starts acting

funny. Three and he’s talking funny and the guards begin to crack down.

I give him a month to get shot down and heaved through the locker.”

Old pal? Ross demanded, “Who’s this Whitker? Where can I get in touch

with him?”

“Him and Flarney were both latrine orderlies. That’s where they put the

feeble old men, mopping and polishing. Number Two head, any hour of the

day or night. Old buzzard has his racket—we’re supposed to get a hank of

cellosponge per man per day, but he’s always ‘fresh out’—unless you slip

him your saccharine ration every once in a while.”

Ross asked the way to Number Two head and the routine. But it was an

hour before he could bring himself to ask the hulking guard for

permission.

“Sure, sonny,” she boomed. “I’ll show you the way. Need any help?”

“No, thanks, ma’am,” he said hastily, and she roared with laughter. So

did the members of the construction gang; it must have been an ancient

gag. He hurried on his way thinking dark and bloody thoughts.

“Whitker?” he asked a tottering ancient who nodded and drowsed amid the

facilities of the head.

The old man looked up blearily and squeaked: “Fresh out. Fresh out. You

should’ve saved some from yesterday.”

“That’s all right. I’m a new man here. I want to ask you about your

friend Flarney——”

Whitker bowed his head and began to cry noiselessly.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Whitker. I heard. But there’s something we can do about

it—maybe. Flarney was a faster-than-light man. He must have told you

that. So am I. Ross, from Halsey’s Planet.”

He hadn’t the faintest idea as to whether any of this was getting

through to the ancient.

“It seems Flarney and I were both on the same mission, finding out how

and why planets were dropping out of communication. You and he used to

talk a lot, they tell me. Did he ever tell you anything about that?”

Whitker looked up and squeaked dimly. “Oh, yes. All the time. I humored

him. He was an old man, you know. And now he’s dead.” The tears leaked

from his rheumy eyes and traced the sad furrows beside his nose.

Was he getting through? “What did he _say_, Mr. Whitker? About

faster-than-light?”

The old man said, “L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus

T-over-two-N.”

That damned formula again! “But what does it mean, Mr. Whitker? What did

he say it meant?” Ross softly urged.

The old man looked surprised. “Genes?” he asked himself hazily.

“Generations? I don’t remember. But you go to Earth, young man. Flarney

said _they’d_ know, and know what to do about it, too, which is more

than he did. His very words, young man!”

Ross didn’t dare stay longer. Furthermore he suspected that the old

man’s attention span had been exhausted. He started from the room with a

muttered thanks, and was stopped at the door by Whitker’s hand on his

shoulder.

“You’re a good boy,” Whitker squeaked. “Here.”

Ross found himself walking down the corridor with an enormous wad of

cellosponge in his hand.

The bunks were hard, but that didn’t matter. Dormitories were the

outermost layer of the hulk, pseudogravity varies inversely as the

fourth power of the distance, and the field generator was conventionally

located near “Minerva’s” center. When your relative weight is

one-quarter normal you can sleep deliciously on a gravel driveway. This

was the dormitory’s only attractive feature. Otherwise it was too many

steel slabs, tiered and spotted too close, too many unwashed males, too

much weary snoring. The only things in short supply were headroom and

air.

Not everybody slept. Insomniacs turned and grunted; those who had given

up the struggle talked from bunk to bunk in considerately low tones.

Bernie muttered from a third-tier bunk facing Ross’s: “I wonder if she

made it.”

Ross knew what he meant. “Unlikeliest thing in the world,” he said. “But

I think she went fast and never knew what hit her.” He thought of the

formula and “They’d know on Earth—and know what to do about it too.”

Earth the enigma, from which all planetary peoples were supposed to be

derived. Earth—the dot on the traditional master charts, Earth—from

which and to which no longliners ever seemed to travel. Haarland had

told him no F-T-L ship had in recent centuries ever reported again after

setting out for Earth. Another world sunk in barbarism? But Flarney had

said—no; that was not data. That was the confused recollections of a

very old man, possibly based on the confused recollections of another

very old man. Perhaps it had got mixed up with the semilegendary origin

story.

Poor sweet Helena! He hoped it had happened fast, that she had been

thinking of some pleasant prospect on Halsey’s Planet. In her naïve way

she’d think it just around the corner, a mere matter of following

instructions....

* * * * *

So thought Ross, the pessimist.

In his gloom he had forgotten that this was exactly what it was. In his

snobbishness he never realized that he was guilty of the most frightful

arrogance in assuming that what he could do, she could not. In his

ignorance he was not aware that since navigation began, every new

instrument, every technique, has drawn the shuddery warnings of savants

that uneducated skippers, working by rote, could not be expected to

master these latest fruits of science—or that uneducated skippers since

navigation began have cheerfully adopted new instruments and techniques

at the drop of a hat and that never once have the shuddery warnings been

justified by the facts.

Up the aisle somebody was saying in a low, argumentative tone, “I saw

the drum myself. Naturally it was marked Dulsheen Creme, but the guards

here never did give a damn whether their noses were dull or bright

enough to flag down a freighter and I don’t think they’ve suddenly

changed. It was booze, I tell you. Fifty liters of it.”

“Gawd! The hangovers tomorrow.”

“We’ll all have to watch our steps. I hope they don’t do anything worse

than getting quietly drunk in their quarters. Those foot-kissing

orderlies’ll get a workout, but who cares what happens to an orderly?”

“They haven’t been on a real tear since I’ve been here.”

“Lucky you. Let’s hope they don’t bust loose tonight. It’s a break in

the monotony, sure—but those girls play rough. Five prisoners died last

time.”

“They beat them up?”

“One of them.”

“What about the others? Oh! Oh, Gawd—fifty liters, you said?”

Bernie began to whimper: “Not again! Not those plug-uglies! I swear I’ll

throw myself through the spacelock if they make a pass at me. Ross,

isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Seems not, Bernie. Maybe they won’t come in. Or if they do, maybe

they’ll pass you by. There certainly isn’t any place to hide.”

A raucous female voice roared through the annunciator: “Bed check five

minutes, boys. Anybody got any li’l thing to do down the hall, better do

it now. See you lay-terrr!” Hiccup and drunken giggle.

For the first time in his life Ross suddenly and spontaneously acted

like a tri-di hero, with the exception that he felt like a silly ass

through it all.

“Got an idea,” he muttered. “Get out of your bunk.” He pulled the wad of

cellosponge, old Whitker’s present, from his pocket and yanked it in

half, one for him and one for Bernie.

The Pullover said faintly: “Thanks, but I don’t have to——”

Ross didn’t bother to answer. He was carefully fluffing the stuff out to

its maximum dimensions. He unzipped his coveralls and began wadding them

with cellosponge.

“I get it,” Bernard said softly. He stepped out of his one-piece garment

and followed suit. In less than a minute they had creditable dummies

lying on their bunks.

The others watched their activity with emotions ranging between awe and

envy. One giant of a man proclaimed grimly to whoever cared to listen:

“These are a couple of smart guys. I wish them luck. And I want you guys

to know that I will personally break the back of any sneaking rat who

tips off a guard about this.”

“Sure, Ox. Sure,” came a muted chorus.

Arranged in a fetal sleeping position, face down, the dummies astonished

even their creators. It would take a lucky look in a fair light to note

that the heads were earless, fibrous globes.

“They’ll do,” Ross snapped. “Come on, Bernie.”

They walked quietly from the dormitory in their singlet underwear toward

the dormitory latrine—and past it. Into the corridor. Through a doorless

opening into a storeroom piled with crates of rations. “This’ll do,”

Ross said quietly. They ducked into a small cavern formed by sloppy

issuing of stock and hunched down.

“The dummies will fool the bed check. It’s only a sweep with a

hundred-line TV system. If the guards do raid the dormitory tonight

we’ll have to count on them ignoring the dummies or thinking they’re a

joke or being too busy with other things to care. They’ll be drunk,

after all. Then in the morning things’ll be plenty disorganized. We’ll

be able to sneak back into formation—and that’ll be that for a matter of

years. They can’t often bribe the pilots with enough to guarantee a real

ripsnorting drunk. Now try and get some sleep. There’s nothing more we

can do.”

They actually did doze off for a couple of hours, and then were awakened

by drunken war whoops.

“It’s them!” Bernie wailed.

“Shut up. They’re heading for the dormitory. We’re safe.”

“Safe!” Bernie echoed derisively. “Safe until when?”

Ross threatened him with the side of his hand and Bernie was quiet,

though his lips were mumbling soundlessly. The guards lurched giggling

past and Ross said:

“We’ll sneak into the lockroom. There won’t be anybody there tonight; at

least we’ll get a night’s sleep.”

“Big deal,” grumbled Bernie, but he followed, complaining inarticulately

to himself. Ross thought tiredly: All this work for a night’s sleep! And

saw, half-formed, the dreadful procession of days and nights and years

ahead....

They reached the lockroom and stumbled in breathlessly.

“Dearie!” Two guards, playing a card game on the floor with a ring of

empty bottles around them, looked up in drunken delight. “Dearie!”

repeated the bigger of the two. “Angela, _look_ what _we’ve_ got!”

Ross said stupidly. “But you shouldn’t be here——”

The guard made a clumsy pass at fluffing up her back hair and giggled.

“Duty comes first, dearie. Angela, just lock that door, will you?” The

other guard scrambled unevenly to her feet and weaved over to the door.

It was locked before Ross or Bernie could move.

The big guard stood up too, leering at Bernie. “Wow!” she said. “New

merchandise. Just be patient, dearie. We’ve got a little something to

attend to in a couple of minutes, but we’ll have _lots_ of time after

that.”

Then things began to happen rapidly. There was Angela the guard,

inarticulate, falling-down drunk; she waved bonelessly at a brightly

flickering light on the far side of the lockroom. There was the other

guard, reaching out for Bernie with one hand, pawing at a bottle with

the other. There was Ross, a paralyzed spectator.

And there was Bernie.

Bernie’s eyes bulged wide as the guard came toward him. He babbled

hysterically, “No! Nonononono! I said I’d kill myself and I——”

He stiff-armed the big guard and leaped for the lock door. Ross suddenly

came to life. “Bernie!” he bellowed. “Hold it! Don’t jump!”

But it was too late. The one guard sprawling, the other staggering

helplessly across the floor, Bernie was clear. He scrabbled at the

lockwheels, spun them open. Ross tensed himself for the sudden, awful

rush of expanding air; he leaped after Bernie just as Bernie flung the

lock door open and jumped.

Ross jumped after.

There was no rush of air. They were not in space. Around them was no

ripping, sucking void, no flaming backdrop of stars; around them were

six walls and a Wesley board, and Helena peering at them wide-eyed and

delighted.

“Well!” she said. “_That_ was fast!”

* * * * *

Ross said, “But——”

Helena, hanging from the acceleration loops, smiled maternally. “Oh, it

was nothing,” she said. “Ross don’t you think we’re far enough away

yet?”

Ross said hopelessly, “All right,” and cut the drive. The starship hung

in space in the limbo between stars. Azor, “Minerva,” and the rest were

light-years behind, far out of range of challenge.

Helena wriggled free from the loops and rubbed her arms where the

retaining straps had gripped them. “After all,” she said demurely, “you

_told_ me how to run the ship, and _really_, Ross, I’m not quite

_stupid_.”

Ross said, “But——”

“But what, Ross? It isn’t as if I were some sort of brainless little

thing that had never run a machine in her life. My goodness, Ross——” She

wrinkled her nose. “_You_ should remember. All those days in the dye

vats? Don’t you think I had to learn a little something about machines

_there_?”

Ross swore incredulously. To compare those clumsy constructs of wheels

and rollers with the subtle subelectronic flows of the Wesley force—and

to make it work! He said, unbelievingly, “And the ‘Minerva’ helped you

vector in? They gave you the co-ordinates and radared your course?”

“Certainly.” Helena turned to Bernie, who was staring dazedly around

him. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked.

Ross turned his back on them and faced the Wesley Christmas tree of

controls. Don’t question it, he told himself; take a miracle for what it

is. God wanted you out of “Minerva”—and God moves in most mysterious

ways His wonders to perform.

Anyway, they had to get going. When the court had exiled Helena in the

starship they had gone through the customary rituals; not only was

everything that looked like a weapon gone, along with all but a teacup

of fuel for the auxiliary jets, but the food locker was stripped

entirely. He put everything else out of his mind and began to calculate

a setting.

Bernie said over his shoulder, “Home, huh? That place you call Halsey’s

Planet?”

Ross shook his head. “Not this time. I got this far and I’m still alive;

maybe I can finish the job. Anyway, I’ll try. The first solid suggestion

I’ve had ever since I took off was what that half-witted old moron——” He

ignored a little gasp from Helena. “——said back on ‘Minerva.’ If Flarney

had lived, he would have gone there; we’ll go there now.” He finished

manipulating the calculator and began to set it up on the board. He

said, “The name of the place is—Earth.”

..... 10

IT took Ross a while to learn a lesson, but when he learned it, it

stuck. This time, he promised himself, _no spaceport_.

They sneaked into the solar system that held fabulous old Earth from far

outside the ecliptic, where the chance of radar detection was least;

they came to a relative dead halt millions of miles from the planet and

cautiously scanned the surrounding volume of space with their own radar.

No ships seemed to be in space. Earth’s solar system turned out to be a

trivial affair, only five planets, scarcely a half-dozen moons among

them. None of the planets except Earth itself was anything like

inhabitable.

“Hold tight,” said Ross grimly, “I’m not so good at this fine

navigation.” He cautiously applied power along a single vector; the

starship leaped and bucked. He corrected with another; and the distant

sun swelled in their view plates with frightening rapidity. The alarm

beeps bleated furiously, and the automatic cutoff restored all controls

to neutral.

Ross, sweating, picked himself up from the floor and staggered back to

the panel. Helena said carefully, “You’re doing _fine_, Ross, but if

you’d like _me_ to take over for a minute——”

Ross swallowed his pride and stood back. After one wide-eyed stare of

shock—she wasn’t even calculating!—he gripped the loops and closed his

eyes and waited for death.

There was a punishing bump and his eyes flew open. Helena was looking at

him apologetically. “You would have done it better,” she lied, “but

anyway we’re down.”

Ross lied, “Of course, but I’m glad you had the practice. Where—uh,

where are we?”

Helena silently showed him the radar plot. Earth, it seemed, had a

confusing multiplicity of continents; they were on one in the northern

hemisphere, a large one as Earth’s continents went, and smack in the

middle of it. It was night on their side of Earth just then; and, by the

plot, a largish city was only a dozen or so miles away.

“Okay,” said Ross wearily, “landing party away. Helena, you stay here

while Bernie and I——”

Helena said simply, “No.”

Ross stared at her a minute, then shrugged. “All right. Then Bernie will

stay while——”

“I will not!” said Bernie.

Clearly it was time for a showdown. Ross roared: “Who’s the captain

here, anyway?”

“You are,” Helena said promptly. “As long as I don’t have to stay here

alone.”

“Yeah,” said Bernie.

Ross said, “Oh.” He thought for a while and then said, “Well, let’s all

go.” They thought it was a wonderful idea.

Earth wasn’t a very unusual planet—lots of green sand and purple

vegetation. Either the master star chart was wrong or the gravity meter

was off; the former, strangely enough, gave Earth’s gravity as 1.000000

and the latter as 0.8952, a whopping ten per cent discrepancy. Further,

the principal inert gas in Earth’s atmosphere was, according to the

master chart’s planetary supplement, nitrogen; and according to the

ship’s instruments was indubitably neon. A terrific aurora polaris

display constantly flickering in the northern sky bore that out.

But the gap between the chart and the facts didn’t particularly worry

Ross as they swung along overland. So the chart was off, or perhaps

things had changed. This was—according to Flarney via Whitker—the place

where people knew about the formula, where his questions would be

answered. After this, he thought happily, it’s off to Halsey’s Planet

and an unspecified glorious future, revered as the savior of humanity

instead of a lousy Yards clerk pushing invoices around. And Helena, he

thought sentimentally....

He turned to smile at her and found she and Bernie were giggling.

“Listen, you two!” Captain Ross roared. “Haven’t you learned anything

yet? What’s the good of us exploring if we stroll along with our silly

heads in the clouds, not paying attention? Do you realize that this

place may be as dangerous as Azor or worse?”

“Ross——” Helena said.

“Don’t interrupt! What this outfit needs is some discipline—tightening

up. You two have got to accept your responsibilities. Keep alert! Be on

the lookout! Any single thing out of the ordinary may be a deathtrap.

Watch for——”

Helena was looking not at Ross but over his shoulder. Bernie was making

strangled noises and pointing.

Ross turned. Behind him stood a mechanical monstrosity vaguely

recognizable as a heavily-armed truck, its motor faintly humming. A man

leaned darkly from the cab and transfixed them to the ground with a

powerful spotlight. From the dazzling circle of light his voice came,

hasty and furtive. “Thought it was two women and a man, but I guess

you’re the ones. Ugh, those faces on you! Yes, you’re the ones. Get in.

Fast.”

The light blinked out. When their eyes adjusted to the dimmer

illumination of the stars and the aurora display they saw a side door in

the body of the truck standing open. Too, one of the long, slim gun

barrels with which the truck seemed copiously supplied swiveled to cover

them.

Ross stupidly read aloud a sign on the truck: “Jones Floor-Cover

Company. Finest Tile on Jones. Wall-to-Wall a Specialty. ‘Rugs Fit For a

Jones’.”

“Yeah,” the man said. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t try to buy any. Get in,

for Jones’ sake! If I’d of known you were half-wits I wouldn’t of taken

this job for a million Joneses, cash. Get in!” His voice was hysterical

and the gun covering them moved ominously. “If this is a frame——” he

began to shrill.

“Get in,” Ross said shakily to the others. They climbed in and the door

slammed violently and automatically. Helena began to cry in a

preoccupied sort of way and Bernie began a long, mumbling inventory of

his own mental weaknesses for ever getting involved in this

crackbrained, imbecilic, feeble-minded....

There were windows in the truck body and Ross turned from one to

another. He saw the guns on the cab telescope into stubs, the stubs fold

into the mounts, the mounts smoothly descend flush with the sheet metal.

He saw the cursing driver manipulate a dozen levers as the car began to

glide across the green sand, purple-dotted with vegetation. Finally,

through the rear window, he saw three figures racing across the sand

waving their arms, rapidly being left behind. All he could make out was

that they seemed to be two women and a man.

Helena was wailing softly, “——and I am _not_ ugly and just because we’re

young and we’re strangers isn’t any reason to go around insulting

people——”

From Bernie: “——fatheaded, goggly-eyed, no-browed, slobber-lipped,

dim-witted——”

“Shut up,” Ross said softly. “Before I bang both your heads together.”

They stared.

“Thank you. We’ve got to think. What’s this spot we’re in? What can we

do about it? I don’t have any F-T-L contact name for Earth and obviously

this fellow picked us up by mistake. I saw two women and a man—remember

what he said?—just now trying to catch up with us. He seems to be some

kind of criminal. Otherwise why a disguised gun-carrier? Why floor

coverings ‘but don’t try to buy any’? And Jones seems to be the name of

the local political subdivision, the name of the local deity and the

currency. That’s important. It points to a rigid one-man

dictatorship—Jones, of course, or possibly his dynasty. What course of

action should we take? Kick it around. Helena, what do you think?”

“He shouldn’t have said we were ugly,” she pouted. “Isn’t _that_

important?”

“Women!” Ross said grimly. “If you’ll kindly forget the trivial affront

to your vanity perhaps we can figure something out.”

Helena said stubbornly: “But he _shouldn’t_. We’re not. What if they

just _think_ we are because they all look alike and we don’t look like

them?”

Ross collapsed. After a long pause during which he tried and almost

failed to control his temper he said slowly: “Thank you, Helena. You’re

wrong, of course, but it was a contribution. You see, you can’t build up

such a wild, far-fetched theory from the few facts available.” His voice

was beginning to choke with anger. “It isn’t reasonable and it isn’t

really any help. In fact it’s the God-damndest stupidest imitation of

reasoning I have ever——”

“City,” Bernard croaked, pointing. The jolting ride had become smoother,

and gliding past the windows were green tiled buildings and street

lights.

“Fine,” Ross said bitterly. “We had a few clear minutes to think and now

we find they were wasted by the crackpot dissertation of a female and my

reasonable attempt to show her the elements of logical thinking.” He put

his head in his hands and tried to ignore them, tried to reason it out.

But the truck made a couple of sharp turns and jolted to a stop.

The door opened and the voice of their driver said, again from behind a

flashlight’s dazzling circle: “Out. Walk ahead of me.”

They did, into a fair-sized, well-lighted room with eight people in it

whom they studied in amazement. Every one of the eight was exactly the

same height—six feet. Every one had straight red hair of exactly the

same shade, sprouting from an identical hairline. Every one had

precisely the same build—gangling but broad-shouldered. Their sixteen

eyes were the identical blue under sixteen identical eyebrows. Head to

toe, they were duplicates. One of them spoke—in exactly the same voice

as the truckdriver’s.

“So you want to be Joneses, do you?” he said.

“Absolutely impossible.”

“But we took their money.”

“Give it back. Reasonable changes, yes, but look at them!”

“We can’t give it back. Look what we spent already. Anyway, Sam,——” It

sounded like “Sam” to Ross. “——anyway, Sam, look at some of the work

you’ve done already. You can do it. I doubt if anybody else could, but

you can.”

Ross felt his eyes crossing, and gave up the effort of trying to tell

which Jones was speaking to which. Even the clothing was nearly

identical—purple pantaloons, scarlet jacket, black cummerbund sash,

black shoes. Then he noticed that Third-from-the-left Jones—the one who

seemed to be named Sam—wore a frilly shirt of white under the scarlet

jacket. Only a lacy edge showed at the open collar; but where his was

white, the others were all muted pastels of pink and green.

Sam said coldly, “I know nobody else can do it. Anybody else! Who else

_is_ there?”

A Jones with a frill of chartreuse pursed his lips. “Well,” he said

thoughtfully, “there’s Northside Tim Jones——”

“Northside Tim Jones,” Sam mimicked. “Eight of his jobs are in the

stockade right now! Paraffin, for Jones’s sake—he still uses paraffin to

mold a face!”

“I know, Sam, but after all, these people need help. If you won’t do it

for them, what’s left?”

Sam shrugged morosely. “Well——” he said. Then he shook his head, sighed,

and came forward to look at the three travelers. With an expression of

revulsion he said, “Strip.”

Ross hesitated. “Hold it!” he said sharply to Helena, already half out

of her coveralls. “Sir, there may have been some mistake. Would you mind

explaining just what you propose to do?”

“The usual thing,” Sam said irritably. “Fix your hair, build up your

frames, level you off at standard Jones height. The works. Though I must

say,” he added bitterly, “I never saw such unpromising specimens in my

life. How the Jones have you managed to stay out of trouble this long?

Whose garrets have you been hiding in?”

Ross licked his lips. “You mean,” he said, “you want to make us look

more like you gentlemen, is that it?”

“_I_ want!” Sam repeated in bafflement. Over his shoulder he roared,

“Ben, what kind of creeps are you saddling me with?”

Ben, looking worried, said, “Holy Jones, Sam, I don’t get it either. It

was a perfectly normal deal. This guy came up to me in Jones’s Joint and

made a pitch. He knew the setup all right, and he had the money with

him. Six hundred Joneses, cold cash; and it wasn’t funny money, either.”

His face clouded. “I did think, though,” he mentioned, “that he said two

women and one man. But Paul Jones picked them up right at the

rendezvous, so it must’ve been the right ones.”

He glowered suspiciously at Ross and the others. “Come to think of it,”

he said, “maybe not. Tell you what, Sam, you just sit tight here for

twenty minutes or so.” And he hurried out of the room.

One of the other Joneses said curtly, “Sit down.” Ross, Bernie, and

Helena found chairs lined up against a wall; they sat. A different Jones

rummaged in a stack of papers on a table; he handed something to each of

them. “Relax,” he advised. Obediently the three spacefarers opened the

magazines he gave them. When they were settled, most of the Joneses,

after a whispered conference, went out. The one that was left said, “No

talking. If we made a mistake, we’re sorry. Meanwhile, you do what

you’re told.”

Ross found that his magazine was called _By Jones_; it seemed to be a

periodical devoted to entertaining news and gossip of sports, fashion,

and culture. He stared at an article headed “Be Glad the People’s Police

Are Watching YOU!”, but the words made little sense. He tried to think;

but somehow he couldn’t find a point at which to grasp the flickering

mass of impressions that were circling through his brain. Nothing seemed

to make a great deal of sense any more; and Ross suddenly realized that

he was very, very tired.

His mind an utter blank, he sat and waited.

It was twenty minutes and a bit more. Then the door flew open and half a

dozen Joneses burst in. Even at first sight, Ross could tell that three

of them were newcomers. For one thing, two were women; and the third,

though red-haired, tall and gangling, had a nose a full centimeter

shorter than any of the others, and his hair was crisply curled.

“All right, you Peepeece!” snarled the first Jones. “You found what you

were looking for—now try to get out!”

Helena did the talking. It wasn’t Ross’s idea, but when her heel

crunched down on his instep he was too startled to object, and from then

on he didn’t get a chance to get a word in edgewise.

He had to admit that her act was getting across with the audience. Long

before she had finished reporting their meeting, their flight to Azor,

the escape from “Minerva,” and the flight here, most of the Joneses had

put their guns away, and all were showing signs of stupefaction. “——And

then,” she finished, “we saw this truck, and that very good-looking man

picked us up. And so we’re here on Earth; and, honest to goodness,

that’s the exact truth.”

There was silence while the Joneses looked at each other. Then the

plastic-surgeon-type Jones, Sam with the white shirt front, stepped

forward. “Hold still, my dear,” he ordered. Helena bravely stood rigid

while the surgeon raked searchingly through the roots of her hair,

peered into her eyes, expertly traced the configuration of her ribs.

He stepped back, shaken. “One thing is for sure,” he told the others,

“they’re not Peepeece. Not with those bones. They’d never get in.”

Ben Jones beat his forehead and moaned. “How do I get into these

things?” he demanded.

One of the female Joneses said shrilly, “We didn’t expect anything like

this. We’re honest Jones-fearing Joneses and——”

“Shut up!” Ben Jones roared. “What about the other two, Sam? They all

right too?”

“Oh, for Jones’s sake, Ben,” Sam said disgustedly, “just look at them,

will you? Do you think the police would take in a five-inch height

deviation like that one——” he pointed to Bernie——“or a half-bald

scarecrow like that?” Ross, stung, opened his mouth to object; but

swiftly closed it again. Nobody was paying much attention to him,

anyhow, except as Exhibit A.

“So what do we do?” Ben demanded.

Sam shrugged. “The first thing we do,” he said wearily, “is to take care

of our, uh, clients here. We get them out of the way, and then we decide

what to do next.” He looked around at the other Joneses. “If you three

will come this way,” he said, “we’ll finish up your job and get you back

home. I needn’t remind you, of course, that if you should happen to

mention anything you’ve seen here tonight to the Peepeece it would——”

His voice was cut off by the closing door before Ross could catch the

nature of the threat.

Ben Jones stayed behind, scowling to himself. “You people got any

Joneses?” he demanded abruptly.

“You mean money? Not any at all,” Helena said honestly. Ross could have

kicked her.

Ben Jones growled deep in his throat. “Always it happens to me!” he

complained. “I suppose we’re going to have to feed you, too.”

“Well,” Helena said diffidently, “we haven’t eaten in a long time——”

Ben Jones swore to his god, whose name was Jones, but he stepped to the

door and ordered food. When it came it was surprisingly good; each of

the three, with their diverse backgrounds, found it delicious. While

they were eating, Ben Jones sat watching them, refreshing himself from

time to time with a greenish bubbling liquid out of a jug. He offered

some to Ross; who clutched his throat as though he’d swallowed molten

steel.

Ben Jones guffawed till his eyes ran. “First taste of Jones’s Juice,

hey? Kind of gets right down inside, doesn’t it?” He wiped his eyes,

then sobered. “I guess you people are all right,” he admitted. “What I’m

going to do with you I don’t know. I can’t take you to Earth, and I

can’t keep you here, and I can’t throw you out on the street—the

Peepeece would have you in the stockade in ten minutes.”

Ross, startled, said, “Aren’t we on Earth?”

“Naw,” Ben Jones said disgustedly. “Didn’t you hear me? You’re on Jones,

halfway between Jones’s Forks and Jonesgrad. But you came pretty close,

at that. Earth’s about fifty miles out the Jones Pike past Jonesgrad,

turn right at Jonesboro Minor.”

Ross said bewilderedly, “The planet Earth is fifty miles along the

Pike?”

“Not a planet,” Ben Jones said. “It’s an old city, kind of. Nobody lives

there any more; the Peepeece don’t permit it. I’ve never been there, but

they say it’s kind of, you know, different. Some of the buildings——” he

seemed actually to be blushing——“are as much as fifteen, twenty stories

high; and the walls aren’t even all green. Excuse me,” he added, looking

at Helena.

Sam Jones returned and said to Ben, “It’s all right. All finished.

Trivial alterations. Maybe they could have gone along for the rest of

their lives on wigs and pads—but we don’t tell them that, do we? And

anyway now they won’t worry. Healy Jones, the older man, for instance.

Very bright fellow, but it seems he was working as a snathe-handler’s

apprentice. Afraid to take the master’s test, afraid to change his line

of work—might be noticed and questioned.” He heaved a tremendous sigh

and poured himself a tremendous slug of the green fluid. Ben Jones gave

Ross a cynical wink and shrug.

“Look at my hand!” the surgeon exploded. It was shaking. He gulped the

Jones Juice and poured himself another. “Nothing physical,” he said.

“Neurosis. The subconscious coldly counting up my crimes and coldly

imposing and executing sentence. I’m a surgeon, so my hand trembles.” He

drank. “Jones is not mocked,” he said broodingly. “Jones is not mocked.

Think those three are going to be happy? Think they’re going to be

folded in Jones’s bosom just because they’re Joneses externally now? No.

Watch them five years, ten years. Maybe they’ll sentence themselves to

be hateful, vitriol-tempered lice and wonder why nobody loves them.

Maybe they’ll sentence themselves to penal servitude and wonder why

everybody pushes them around, why they haven’t the guts to hit

back—Jones is not mocked,” he told the jug of green liquid, ignoring the

others, and drank again.

Ben Jones said softly to them, “Come on,” and led them into an adjoining

room furnished with sleeping pads. He said apologetically, “The doctor’s

nerves are shot tonight. Trouble is, he’s too Jones-fearing. Me, I can

take it or leave it alone.” His laugh had a little too much bravado in

it. “There’s a little bit of nonJones in the best of us, I always

say—but not to the doctor. And not when he’s hitting the Jones juice.”

He shrugged cynically and said, “What the hell? L-sub-T equals

L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N.”

Ross had him by his shirt frill. “Say that again!”

Ben Jones shoved him away. “What’s the matter with you, boy?”

“I’m sorry. Would you please repeat that formula? What you said?” he

hastily amended when the word “formula” obviously failed to register.

Ben Jones repeated the formula wonderingly.

“What does it mean?” Ross demanded. “I’ve been chasing the damned thing

across the Galaxy.” He hastily filled Ben Jones in on its previous

appearances.

“Well,” Ben Jones said, “it means what it says, of course. I mean, it’s

obvious, isn’t it?” He studied their faces and added uncertainly, “Isn’t

it?”

“What does it mean to _you_, Ben?” Ross asked softly.

“Why, what it means to anybody, pal. Right’s right, wrong’s wrong, Jones

is in his Heaven, conform or else—it means morality, man. What else

could it mean?”

Ross then proceeded to make an unmannerly nuisance of himself. He

grilled their involuntary host mercilessly, shrugging aside all

attempted diversions of the talk into what they were going to do with

the three visitors. He ignored protestations that Ben was no

Jonesologist, Jones knew, and drilled in. By the time Ben Jones

exploded, stamped out, and locked them in for the night, he had elicited

the following:

Everybody knew the formula; they were taught it at their mother’s knee.

It was recited antiphonally before and after Jones Meetings. Ben knew it

was right, of course, and some day he was going to get right with Jones

and live up to it, but not just yet, because if he didn’t make money in

the prosthesis racket somebody else would. The formula was everywhere:

on the lintels of public buildings, hanging in classrooms, and on the

bedroom walls of the most Jones-fearing old ladies where they could see

its comforting message last thing at night and first thing in the

morning.

From a book? Well yes, he guessed so; sure it was in the Book of

Joneses, but who could say whether that was where it started. Most

people thought it was just Handed Down. Way back during the war—what

war? The War of the Joneses, of course! Anyway, in the war the last of

the holdouts against the formula had been destroyed. No, he didn’t know

anything about the war. No, not his grandfather’s time or his

grandfather’s grandfather’s time. Long ago, that war was. Maybe there

were records in the old museum in Earth. The city, of course, not some

damn planet he never heard of!

After Ben Jones slammed out and the room darkened Helena and Bernie

exchanged comforting words from adjoining sleeping pads, to Ross’s

intense displeasure. They fell asleep and at last he fell asleep still

churning over the problem.

When he woke he found that evidently the doctor, Sam Jones, had stumbled

in during the night and passed out on the pad next to him. The white

frill was stiff and green with dried Jones Juice. Helena and Bernie

still slept. He tried the door.

It was locked, but there was a tantalizing hum of voices beyond it. He

put his ear to the cold steel. The fruits of his eavesdropping were

scanty but alarming.

“——cut ’em down mumble found someplace mumble.”

“——mumble never killed yet mumble prosthesis racket.”

“——Jones’s sake, it’s their lives or mumble mumble time to get scared

mumble Peepeece are you?”

And then apparently the speakers moved out of range. Ross was cold with

sweat, and there was an abnormal hollow in the pit of his stomach that

breakfast would never fill.

He spun around as a Jones voice croaked painfully: “Hear anything good,

stranger?”

The surgeon, looking very dilapidated, was sitting up and regarding him

through bloodshot eyes. “They’re talking about killing us,” he said

shortly.

“They are not really intelligent,” Sam Jones said wearily. “They were

just bright enough to entangle me to the point where I had to work for

them—and to keep me copiously supplied with that green stuff I haven’t

the intelligence to use in moderation.”

Ross said, “How’d you like to break away from this?”

Sam Jones mutely extended his hand. It trembled like a leaf. He said,

“For his own inscrutable reason, Jones grants me steadiness of hand

during an operation designed to frustrate his grand design. He then

overwhelms me with a titanic thirst for oblivion to my shame.”

“There’s no design,” Ross said. “Or if there is, luckily this planet is

a trifling part of it. I have never heard of such arrogant pip-squeakery

in my life. You flyspecks in your shabby corner of the Galaxy think your

own fouled-up mess is the pattern of universal life. You’re wrong! I’ve

seen life elsewhere and I know it isn’t.”

The doctor passed his trembling hand over his eyes. “Jones is not

mocked,” he croaked. “L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus

T-over-two-N. You can’t fight _that_, stranger. You can’t fight that.”

Ross realized he was silently crying behind his covering hand.

He said, much more gently, “It’s nothing you have to fight. It’s

something you have to understand.” He told Sam Jones of his two previous

encounters with the formula. The doctor looked up, his eyes full of

wonder. Ross said, “How would you like to be free, doctor? Free of your

shaking hands, free of your guilt, free of these killers? How would you

like to know the truth?”

The doctor said faintly, “If I dared——”

Ross pressed, “The museum in Earth city. Get me records, facts, anything

about the War of the Joneses. If there’s any meaning to the formula

it’ll have to lie in that. It seems there was a battle about its

interpretation and we know who won. Let’s find out what the other side

said. Get me in there.” He was thinking of the disgraceful war of

fanaticism that had marred his own planet’s history. The doctor’s weak

Jones jaw was firming up, though his eyes were still haunted. “Stall

your killer friends, doctor,” Ross urged. “Tell them you can use us for

experiments that’ll cut the cost of the operations. That ought to bring

them around. And get me the facts!”

“To be free,” the doctor said wistfully. He said after a pause, “I’ll

try. But——” And rapped a code series on the steel door.

..... 11

THE doctor said with weak belligerence, “Who do you think I am? Jones? I

_had_ to leave your friends behind. I had enough trouble getting those

hoods to let me take _you_ along. After all, I’m not a miracle-worker.”

Ross said sullenly, “Okay, okay.” He glowered out of the car window and

spat out a tendril of red hair that had come loose from the fringe

surrounding his mouth. The trouble with a false beard was that it

itched, worse than the real article, worse than any torment Ross had

ever known. But at least Ross, externally and at extreme range, was

enough of a Jones to pass a casual glance.

And what would Helena and Bernie be thinking now? He hadn’t had a chance

to whisper to them; they’d been just waking when the doctor dragged him

out. Ross put that problem out of his mind; there were problems enough

right on hand.

He cautiously felt his red wig to see if it was on straight. The doctor

didn’t seem to look away from his driving, but he said: “Leave it alone.

That’s the first thing the Peepeece look for, somebody who obviously

isn’t sure if his hair is still on or not. It won’t come off.”

“Umph,” said Ross. The road was getting worse, it seemed; they had

passed no houses for several miles now. They rounded a rutted turn, and

ahead was a sign.

STOP!

RESTRICTED AREA AHEAD

WARNING: THIS ROAD IS MINED

NO TRAFFIC ALLOWED! DETOUR

“Trespassers beyond this point will be shot

without further notice.” Decree #404-5

People’s Commissariat of

Culture and Solidarity.

The doctor spat contemptuously out the window and roared past. Ross

said, “Hey!”

“Oh, relax,” said the doctor. “That’s just the Cultureniks. Nobody pays

any attention to _them_.”

Ross swallowed and sat as lightly as possible on the green leather

cushion of the car. By the time they had gone a quarter of a mile, he

began to feel a little reassured that the doctor knew what he was

talking about. Then the doctor swerved sharply to miss a rusted hulk and

almost skidded off the road. He swore and manhandled the wheel until

they were back on the straightaway.

White lipped, Ross asked, “What was that?”

“Car,” grunted the doctor. “Hit a mine. Silly fools!”

Ross squawked, “But you said——”

“Shut up,” the doctor ordered tensely. “That was weeks ago; they haven’t

had a chance to lay new mines since then.” Pause. “I hope.”

The car roared on. Ross closed his eyes, limply abandoning himself to

what was in store. But if it was bad to see what was going on, the

roaring, swerving, jolting race was ten times worse with his eyes

closed. He opened them again in time to see another sign flash past,

gone before he could read it.

“What was that?” he demanded.

“What’s the difference?” the doctor grunted. “Want to go back?”

“Well, no——” Ross thought for a moment. “Do we have to go this fast,

though?”

“If we want to get there. Crossed a Peepeece radar screen ten miles

back; they’ll be chasing us by now.”

“Oh, I see,” Ross said weakly. “Look, Doc, tell me one thing—why do they

make this place so hard to get to?”

“Tabu area,” the doctor said shortly. “Not allowed.”

“Why not allowed?”

“Because it’s not allowed. Don’t want people poking through the old

records.”

“Why not just put the old records in a safe place—or burn the damn

things up?”

“Because they didn’t, that’s why. Shut up! Expect me to tell you why the

Peepeece do anything? They don’t know themselves. It isn’t Jonesly to

destroy, I guess.”

Ross shut up. He leaned against the window, letting the air rush over

his head. They were moving through forest, purplish squatty trees with

long, rustling leaves. The sky overhead was crisp and cool looking; it

was still early morning. Ross exhaled a long breath. Back on Halsey’s

Planet he would be getting up about now, rising out of a soft, warm bed,

taking his leisurely time about breakfast, climbing into a comfortable

car to make his way to the spaceport where he was safe, respected, and

at home.... Damn Haarland!

At least, Ross thought, some sort of a pattern was beginning to shape

up. The planets were going out of communication each for its own reason;

but wasn’t there a basic reason-for-the-reasons that was the same in

each case? Wasn’t there some overall design—some explanation that

covered all the facts, pointed to a way out?

He sat up straight as they approached a string of little signs. He

scanned them worriedly as they rolled past.

“Workers, Peasants, Joneses all——”

“By these presents know ye——”

“If you don’t stop in spite of all——”

“THIS to hell will blow ye!”

“Duck!” the doctor yelled, crouching down in the seat and guiding the

careening car with one hand. Ross, startled, followed his example, but

not before he saw that “THIS” was an automatic, radar-actuated

rapid-fire gun mounted a few yards past the last sign. There was a

stuttering roar from the gun and a splatter of metal against the armored

sides of the car. The doctor sat up again as soon as the burst had hit;

evidently only one was to be feared. “Yah, yah,” he jeered at the absent

builders of the gun. “Lousy fifty-millimeters can’t punch their way

through a tin can!”

Ross, gasping, got up just in time to see the last sign in the series:

“By order of People’s Democratic Council

Of Arts & Sciences, Small Arms Division.”

He said wildly, “They can’t even write a poem properly. Did you notice

the first and third line rhyme-words?”

Surprisingly, the doctor glanced at him and laughed with a note of

respect. He took a hand off the wheel to pat Ross on the shoulder.

“You’ll make a Jones yet, my boy,” he promised. “Don’t worry about these

things; I told you this place was restricted. This stuff isn’t worth

bothering about.”

Ross found that he was able to smile. There was a point, he realized

with astonishment, where courage came easily; it was the only thing

left. He sat up straighter and breathed the air more deeply. Then it

happened.

They rounded another curve; the doctor slammed on the brakes. Suspended

overhead across the road was a single big sign:

THAT’S ALL, JONES!

——PEOPLE’S POLICE

The car bucked, slewed around, and skidded. The wheels locked, but not

in time to keep it from sliding into the pit, road wide and four feet

deep, that was dug in front of them.

Ross heard the axles crack and the tires blow; but the springing of the

car was equal to the challenge. He was jarred clear in the air and

tumbled to the floor in a heap; but no bones were broken.

Painfully he pushed the door open and crawled out. The doctor limped

after and the two of them stood on the edge of the pit, looking at the

ruin of their car.

“That one,” said the doctor, “was worth bothering about.” He motioned

Ross to silence and cocked an ear. Was there a distant roaring sound,

like another car following on the road they had traveled? Ross wasn’t

sure; but the doctor’s expression convinced him. “Peepeece,” he said

briefly. “From here on it’s on foot. They won’t follow beyond here; but

let’s get out of sight. They’ll by-Jones _shoot_ beyond here if they see

us!”

Ross stared unbelievingly. “This is Earth?” he asked.

The doctor fanned himself and blew. “That’s it,” he said, looking around

curiously. “Heard a lot about it, but I’ve never been here before,” he

explained. “Funny-looking, isn’t it?” He nudged Ross, indicating a

shattered concrete structure beside them on the road. “Notice that toll

booth?” he whispered slyly. “Eight sides!”

Ross said wearily, “Yes, mighty funny! Look, Doc, why don’t you sort of

wander around by yourself for a while? That big thing up ahead is the

museum you were talking about, isn’t it?”

The doctor squinted. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and his breathing

was fast, but he was making an attempt to seem casual in the presence of

these manifold obscenities of design. He licked his lips. “_Round

pillars_,” he marveled. “Why, yes, I think that’s the museum. You go on

up there, like you say. I’ll, uh, sort of see what there is to see.

Jones, yes!” He staggered off, staring from ribald curbing to

scatological wall in an orgy of prurience.

Ross sighed and walked through the deserted, weed-grown streets to the

stone building that bore on its cracked lintel the one surviving word,

“Earth.” This was all wrong, he was almost certain; Earth _had_ to be a

planet, not a city. But still....

The museum had to have the answers.

On its moldering double doors was a large lead seal. He read: “Surplus

Information Repository. Access denied to unauthorized personnel.” But

the seal had been forced by somebody; one of the doors swung free,

creaking.

Ross invoked the forcer of the door. If _he_ could do it....

He went in and stumbled over a skeleton, presumably that of the last

entrant. The skull had been crushed by a falling beam. There was some

sort of mechanism involved—a trigger, a spring, a release hook. All had

rusted badly, and the spring had lost its tension over the years. A

century? Two? Five? Ross prayed that any similar mantraps had likewise

rusted solid, and cautiously inched through the dismal hall of the

place, ready for a backward leap at the first whisper of a concealed

mechanism in action.

It was unnecessary. The place was—dead.

Exploring room after room, he realized slowly that he was stripping off

history in successive layers. The first had been the booby-trapped road,

lackadaisically planned to ensure that mere inquisitiveness would be

discouraged. There had been no real denial of access, for there was

almost no possibility that anybody would care to visit the place.

Next, the seal and the mantraps. An earlier period. Somebody had once

said: “This episode is closed. This history is determined. We have all

reached agreement. Only a dangerous or frivolous meddler would seek to

rake over these dead ashes.”

And then, prying into the museum, Ross found the era during which

agreement had been reached, during which it still was necessary to

insist and demonstrate and cajole.

The outer rooms and open shelves were testimonials to Jones. There were

books of Jonesology—ingenious, persuasive books divided usually into

three sections. Human Jonesology would be a painstaking effort to

determine the exact physical and mental tolerances of a Jones.

Anatomical atlases minutely gave femur lengths, cranial angles, eye

color to an angstrom, hair thickness to a micron. Moral Jonesology

treated of the dangers of deviating from these physical and more elastic

mental specifications. (Here the formula appeared again, repeatedly

invoked but never explained. Already it was a truism.) And Sacred

Jonesology was a series of assertions concerning the nature of The Jones

in whose image all other Joneses were created.

Subdivisions of the open shelves held works on Geographical Jonesology

(the distribution across the planet of Joneses) and similar works.

Ross went looking for a lower layer of history and found it in a bale of

crumbling pamphlets. “Comrades, We Must Now Proceed to Consolidate Our

Victory”; “Ultra-Jonesism, An Infantile Political Disorder”; “On The

Fallacy of ‘Jonesism In One Country’.” These Ross devoured. They added

up to the tale of a savage political battle among the victors of a

greater war. Clemency was advocated and condemned; extermination of the

opposition was casually mentioned; the Cultural Faction and the

Biological Faction had obviously been long locked in a death struggle.

Across the face of each pamphlet stood a similar logotype: the formula.

It was enigmatically mentioned in one pamphlet, which almost

incomprehensibly advanced the claims of the Biological faction to

supremacy among the Joneses United: “Let us never forget, comrades, that

the initiation of the great struggle was not caused by our will or by

the will of our sincere and valiant opponents, the Culturists. The

inexorable law of nature, L_{T}=L_{O}e-^{T/2N}, was the begetter of that

holocaust from which our planet has emerged purified——”

Was it now?

The entrance to a musty, airless wing had once been bricked up. The

mortar was crumbling and a few bricks had fallen. Above the arched

doorway a sign said Military Archives. On the floor was a fallen metal

plaque whose inscription said simply Dead Storage. He kicked the loose

bricks down and stepped through.

That was it. The place was lightless, except for the daylight filtering

through the violated archway. Ross hauled maps and orders and period

newspapers and military histories and handbooks into the corridor in

armfuls and spread them on the floor. It took only minutes for him to

realize that he had his answer. He ran into the street and shouted for

the doctor.

Together they pored over the papers, occasionally reading aloud choice

bits, wonderingly.

The simplest statement of the problem they found was in the paper-backed

“Why We Fight” pamphlet issued for the enlisted men of the Provisional

North Continent Government Army.

“What is a Jones?” the pamphlet asked rhetorically. “A Jones is just a

human being, the same as you and I. Dismiss rumors that a Jones is

supernatural or unkillable with a laugh when you hear them. They arose

because of the extraordinary resemblance of one Jones to another.

Putting a bullet through one Jones in a skirmish and seeing another one

rise up and come at you with a bayonet is a chilling experience; in the

confusion of battle it may seem that the dead Jones rose and attacked.

But this is not the case. Never let the rumor pass unchallenged, and

never fail to report habitual rumor-mongers.

“How did the Joneses get that way? Many of you were too young when this

long war began to be aware of the facts. Since then, wartime disruption

of education and normal communications facilities has left you in the

dark. This is the authoritative statement in simple language that

explains why we fight.

“This planet was colonized, presumably from the quasi-legendary planet

Earth. (The famous Earth Archives Building, incidentally, is supposed to

derive its puzzling name from this fact.) It is presumed that the number

of colonists was originally small, probably in the hundreds. Though the

number of human beings on the planet increased enormously as the

generations passed, genetically the population remained small. The same

ones (heredity units) were combined and reshuffled in varying

combinations, but no new ones were added. Now, it is a law of genetics

that in small populations, variations tend to smooth out and every

member of the population tends to become like every other member.

So-called unfixed genes are lost as the generations pass; the end

product of this process would theoretically be a population in which

every member had exactly the same genes as every other member. This is a

practical impossibility, but the Joneses whom we fight are a tragic

demonstration of the fact that the process need not be pushed to its

ultimate extreme to dislocate the life of a planet and cause endless

misery to its dwellers.

“From our very earliest records there have been Joneses. It is theorized

that this gangling redheaded type was well represented aboard the

original colonizing ship, but some experts believe one Jones type and

the workings of chance would be sufficient to produce the unhappy

situation of type-dominance.

“Some twenty-five years ago Joneses were everywhere among us and not, as

now, withdrawn to South Continent and organized into a ruthless

aggressor nation. They made up about thirty per cent of the population

and had become a closely knit organization devoted to mutual help. They

held the balance of political power in every election from the municipal

to the planetary level and virtually monopolized production and finance.

There were fanatics and rabble-rousers among them who readily exploited

a rising tide of discontent over a series of curbing laws, finally

pushed through by a planetary majority, united at last in self-defense

against the rapacity and ruthless self-interest of the Joneses.

“The Joneses withdrew en masse to South Continent. Some sincerely wished

them well; others scoffed at the secession as a sulky and childish

gesture. Only a handful of citizens guessed the terrible truth, and were

laughed at for their pains. Five years after their withdrawal the

Joneses returned across the Vandemeer Peninsula and the war had begun.

“A final word. There has been much loose talk among the troops about the

slogan of the Joneses, which goes L_{T}=L_{O}e-^{T/2N}. Some uninformed

people actually believe it is an invocation which gives the Joneses

supernatural power and invulnerability. It is not. It is merely an

ancient and well-known formula in genetics which quantitatively

describes the loss of unfixed genes from a population. By mouthing this

formula, the Joneses are simply expressing in a compact way their

ruthless determination that all genes except theirs shall disappear from

the planet and the Joneses alone survive. In the formula L_{T} means the

number of genes after the lapse of T years, L_{O} means the original

number of genes, e means the base of the natural system of logarithms

and N means number of generations.”

The surgeon said slowly and with wonder: “So _that_ was my God!” He

stretched out his hands before him. The fingers were rock-steady.

Ross left him and paced the corridor uneasily. Fine. Now he knew. Lost

genes in genetically small populations. On Halsey’s Planet, some

fertility gene, no doubt. On Azor, a male-sex-linked gene that provides

men with the backbone required to come out ahead in the incessant war of

the genders? Bernie was a gutless character. Here, all too many genes

determining somatotype. On the planets that had dropped out of

communication, who knew? Scientific-thought genes? Sex-drive-determining

genes?

One thing was clear: any gene-loss was bad for the survival of a

planetary colony. Evolution had——on Earth——worked out in a billion

trial-and-error years a working mechanism, man. Man exhibited a vast

range of variation, which was why he survived almost any conceivable

catastrophe.

Reduce man to a single type and he is certain to succumb, sooner or

later, to the inevitable disaster that his one type cannot cope with.

The problem, now stated clearly, was bigger than he had dreamed. And now

he knew only the problem—not the solution.

Go to Earth.

Well, he had tried. There had been no flaw in his calculations, no

failure in setting up the Wesley panel. Yet—this was Jones, not Earth;

the city was only a city, not the planet that the star charts logged.

And the planet, beyond all other considerations, was less like Earth

than any conceivable chart error could account for. Gravitation, wrong;

atmosphere, wrong; flora and fauna, wrong.

So. Eliminate the impossible, and what remains, however unlikely, is

true. So there had been a flaw in his calculations. And the way to check

that, once and for all, was to get back to the starship.

Ross wheeled and went back into the book room. “Doc,” he called, “how do

we get out of here?”

The answer was: on their bellies. They trudged through the forest for

hours, skirting the road, hiding whenever a suspicious noise gave

warning that someone might be in the vicinity. The Peepeece knew they

were in the woods; there was no doubt of that. And as soon as they got

past the tabu area, they had to crawl.

It was well past dark before Ross and the doctor, scratched and aching,

got to the tiny hamlet of Jonesie-on-the-Pike. By the light from the one

window in the village that gave any signs of life, the doctor took a

single horrified look at Ross and shuddered. “You wait here,” he

ordered. “Hide under a bush or something—your beard rubbed off.”

Ross watched the doctor rap on the door and be admitted. He couldn’t

hear the conversation that followed, but he saw the doctor’s hand go to

his pocket, then clasp the hand of the figure in the doorway. That was

the language all the galaxy understood, Ross realized; he only hoped

that the householder was an honest man—i. e., one who would stay bribed,

instead of informing the Peepeece on them. It was beyond doubt that

their descriptions had long since been broadcast; the road must have

been lined with TV scanners on the way in.

The door opened again, and the doctor walked briskly out. He strode out

into the street, walked half a dozen paces down the road, and waited for

Ross to catch up with him. “Okay,” the doctor whispered. “They’ll pick

us up in half an hour, down the road about a quarter of a mile. Let’s

go.”

“What about the man you were talking to?” Ross asked. “Won’t he turn us

in?”

The doctor chuckled. “I gave him a drink of Jones’s Juice out of my

private stock,” he said. “No, he won’t turn anybody in, at least not

until he wakes up.”

Ross nodded invisibly in the dark. He had a thought, and suppressed it.

But it wouldn’t stay down. Cautiously he let it seep through his

subconscious again, and looked it over from every angle.

No, there wasn’t any doubt of it. Things were definitely looking up!

* * * * *

Ben Jones roared, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Doc?”

The doctor pushed Ross through the doorway and turned to face the other

Jones. He asked mildly, “What?”

“You heard me!” Ben Jones blustered. “I let you out with this one, and

maybe I made a mistake at that. But I by-Jones don’t intend to let you

get out of here with all three of them. What are you trying to get away

with anyhow?”

The doctor didn’t change his mild expression. He took a short, unhurried

step forward. _Smack._

Ben Jones reeled back from the slap, his mouth open, hand to his face.

“Hey!” he squawked.

The doctor said levelly, “I’m telling you this just one time, Ben.

_Don’t cross me._ You’ve got the guns, but I’ve got these.” He held up

his spread hands. “You can shoot me, I won’t deny that. But you can’t

make me do your dirty work for you. From now on things go my way—with

these three people, with my own life, with the bootleg plastic surgery

we do to keep you in armored cars. Or else there won’t _be_ any plastic

surgery.”

Ben Jones swallowed, and Ross could see the man fighting himself. He

said after a moment, “No reason to act sore, Doc. Haven’t we always got

along? The only thing is, maybe you don’t realize how dangerous these

three——”

“Shut up,” said the doctor. “Right, boys?”

The other two Joneses in the room shuffled and looked uncomfortable. One

of them said, “Don’t get mad, Ben, but it kind of looks as if he’s

right. We and the doc had a little talk before you got here. It figures,

you have to admit it. He does the work; we ought to let him have

something to say about it.”

The look that Ben Jones gave him was pure poison, but the man stood up

to it, and in a minute Ben Jones looked away. “Sure,” he said distantly.

“You go right ahead, Doc. We’ll talk this over again later on, when

we’ve all had a chance to cool off.”

The doctor nodded coldly and followed Ross out. Helena and Bernie,

suitably Jonesified for the occasion, were already in the car; Ross and

the doctor jumped in with them, and they drove away. Now that the strain

was relaxed a bit the doctor was panting, but there was a grin on his

lips. “Son-of-a-Jones,” he said happily, “I’ve been waiting five years

for this day!”

Ross asked, “Is it all right? They won’t chase after us?”

“No, not Ben Jones. He has his own way of handling things. Now if we

were stupid enough to go back there, after he had a chance to talk to

the others without me around, that would be something different. But we

aren’t going back.”

Ross’s eyes widened. “Not even you, Doc?”

“Especially not me.” The doctor concentrated on his driving. Presently:

“If I take you to the rendezvous, can you find your ship from there?” he

asked.

“Sure,” said Ross confidently. “And Doc—welcome to our party.”

* * * * *

Space had never looked better.

They hung half a million miles off Jones, and Ross fumbled irritatedly

with the Wesley panel while the other three stood around and made

helpful suggestions. He set up the integrals for Earth just as he had

set them up once before; the plot came out the same. He transferred the

computations to the controls and checked it against the record in the

log. The same. The ship should have gone straight as a five-dimensional

geodesic arrow to the planet Earth.

Instead, he found by cross-checking the star atlas, it had gone in

almost the other direction entirely, to the planet of Jones.

He threw his pencil across the room and swore. “I don’t get it,” he

complained.

“It’s probably broken, Ross,” Helena told him seriously. “You know how

machines are. They’re _always_ doing something funny just when you least

expect it.”

Ross bit down hard on his answer to that. Bernie contributed his morsel,

and even Dr. Sam Jones, whose race had lost even the memory of

spaceflight, had a suggestion. Ross swore at them all, then took time to

swear at the board, at the starship, at Haarland, at Wesley, and most of

all at himself.

Helena turned her back pointedly. She said to Bernie, “The way Ross acts

sometimes you’d honestly think he was the _only_ one who’d _ever_ run

this thing. Why, my goodness, I _know_ you can’t _rely_ on that silly

board! Didn’t I have just exactly the same experience with it myself?”

Ross gritted his teeth and doggedly started all over again with the

computations for Earth. Then he did a slow double-take.

“Helena,” he whispered. “What experience did you have?”

“Why, just the same as now! Don’t you _remember_, Ross? When you and

Bernie were in jail and I had to come rescue you?”

“What happened?” Ross shouted.

“My goodness, Ross don’t _yell_ at me! There was that silly light

flashing all the time. It was driving me out of my _mind_. Well, I knew

_perfectly_ well that I wasn’t going to get anywhere if it was going to

act like _that_, so I just——”

Ross, eyes glazed, robotlike, lifted the cover off the main Wesley unit.

Down at the socket of the alarm signal, shorting out two delicately

machined helices that were a basic part of the Wesley drive, wedged

between an eccentric vernier screw and a curious crystalline lattice,

was—the hairpin.

He picked it out and stared at it unbelievingly. He marveled, “It says

in the manual, ‘On no account should any alterations be made in any part

of the Wesley driving assembly by any technician under a C-Twelve

rating.’ She didn’t like the alarm going off. So she fixed it. With a

hairpin.”

Helena giggled and appealed to Bernie. “Doesn’t he _kill_ you?” she

asked.

Ross’s eyes were glazed and his hands worked convulsively. “Kill,” he

muttered, advancing on Helena. “Kill, kill, kill——”

“Help!” she screamed.

The two men managed to subdue Ross with the aid of a needle from Dr.

Jones’s kit-pocket.

Helena was in tears and tried to explain to the others: “Just for no

reason at _all_——”

She got only icy stares. After a while she sulkily began setting up the

Wesley board for the Earth jump.

..... 12

ROSS awoke, clearheaded and alert. Helena and Bernie were looking at him

apprehensively.

He understood and said grudgingly, “Sorry I flipped. I didn’t mean to

scare you. Everything seemed to go black——”

They smothered him with relieved protestations that they understood

perfectly and Helena wouldn’t stick hairpins into the Wesley Drive ever

again. Even if the ship hadn’t blown up. Even if she had rescued the men

from “Minerva.”

“Anyway,” she said happily, “we’re off Earth. At least, it’s _supposed_

to be Earth, according to the charts.”

He unkinked himself and studied the planet through a vision screen at

its highest magnification. The apparent distance was one mile; nothing

was hidden from him.

“Golly,” he said, impressed. “Science! Makes you realize what backward

gropers we were.”

Obviously they had it, down there on the pleasant, cloud-flecked, green

and blue planet. Science! White, towering cities whose spires were laced

by flying bridges—and inexplicably decorated with something that looked

like cooling fins. Huge superstreamlined vehicles lazily coursing the

roads and skies. Long, linked-pontoon cities slowly heaving on the

breasts of the oceans. Science!

Ross said reverently, “We’re here. Flarney was right. Helena, Bernie,

Doc—maybe this is the parent planet of us all and maybe it isn’t. But

the people who built those cities _must_ know all the answers. Helena,

will you please land us?”

“Sure, Ross. Shall I look for a spaceport?”

Ross frowned. “Of course. Do you think _these_ people are savages? We’ll

go in openly and take our problem to them. Besides, imagine the radar

setup they must have! We’d never sneak through even if we wanted to.”

Helena casually fingered the controls; there was the sickening swoop

characteristic of her ship-handling, several times repeated. As she

jerked them wildly across the planet’s orbit she explained over her

shoulder, “I had the darnedest time finding a really big spaceport on

that little radar thing—oops!—but there’s a nice-looking one near that

coastal city. Whee! That was close! There was one—sorry, Ross—on a big

lake inland, but I didn’t like——Now everybody be very quiet. This is the

hard part and I have to concentrate.”

Ross hung on.

Helena landed the ship with her usual timber-shivering crash. “Now,” she

said briskly, “we’d better allow a little time for it to cool down. This

_is_ nice, isn’t it?”

Ross dragged himself, bruised, from the floor. He had to agree. It was

nice. The landing field, rimmed by gracious, light buildings (with the

cooling fins), was dotted with great, silvery ships. They didn’t, Ross

thought with a twinge of irritation, seem to be space vessels, though;

leave it to Helena to get them down at some local airport! Still—the

ships also, he noticed, were liberally studded with the fins. He peered

at them with puzzlement and a rising sense of excitement. Certainly they

had a function, and that function could only be some sort of energy

receptor. Could it be—dared he imagine that it was the long-dreamed-of

cosmic energy tap? What a bonus that would be to bring back with him!

And what other marvels might this polished technology have to give

them....

Bernie distracted him. He said, “Hey, Ross. Here comes somebody.”

But even Bernie’s tone was awed. A magnificent vehicle was crawling

toward them across the field. It was long, low, bullet-shaped—and with

cooling fins. Multiple plates of silvery metal contrasted with a glossy

black finish. All about its periphery was a lacy pattern of intricate

crumples and crinkles of metal, as though its skirts had been crushed

and rumpled. Ross sighed and marveled: What a production problem these

people had solved, stamping those forms out between dies.

Then he saw the faces of the passengers.

He drew in his breath sharply. Godlike. Two men whose brows were cliffs

of alabaster, whose chins were strong with the firmness of steady,

flamelike wisdom. Two women whose calm, lovely features made the heart

within him melt and course.

The vehicle stopped ten yards from the open spacelock of the ship. From

its tip gushed upward a ten-foot fountain of sparks that flashed the

gamut of the rainbow. Simultaneously one of the godlike passengers

touched the wheel, and there was a sweet, piercing, imperative summons

like a hundred strings and brasses in unison.

Helena whispered, “They want us to come out. Ross—Ross—I can’t face

_them_!” She buried her face in her hands.

“Steady,” he said gravely. “They’re only human.”

Ross gripped that belief tightly; he hardly dared permit himself to

think, even for a second, that perhaps these people were no longer

merely human. Hoarsely he said, “We need their help. Maybe we should

send Doc Jones out first. He’s the oldest of us, and he’s the only one

you could call a scientist; he can talk to them. Where is he?”

A raucous Jones voice bellowed through the domed control room: “Who

wansh ol’ doc, hargh? Who wansh goo’ ol’ doc?”

Good old doc staggered into the room, obviously loaded to the gills by a

very enjoyable backslide. He began to sing:

“In A. J. seven thirty-two a Jones from Jones’s Valley, He

wandered into Jones’s Town to hold a Jonesist Rally. He shocked

the gents and ladies both; his talk was most disturbing; He spoke

of seven-sided doors and purple-colored curbing——”

Jones’s eyes focused on Helena. He flushed. “’m deeply sorry,” he

mumbled. “Unf’rgivable vulgararrity. Mom’ntarily f’rgot ladies were

present.”

Again that sweet summons sounded.

“Pull yourself together, doctor,” Ross begged. “This is Earth. The

people seem—very advanced. Don’t disgrace us. Please!”

Jones’s face went pale and perspiration broke out. “’Scuse me,” he

mumbled, and staggered out again.

Ross closed the door on him and said, “We’ll leave him. He’ll be all

right; nothing’s going to happen here.” He took a deep breath. “We’ll

all go out,” he said.

Unconsciously Ross and Helena drew closer together and joined hands.

They walked together down the unfolding ramp and approached the vehicle.

One of the coolly lovely women scrutinized them and turned to the man

beside her. She remarked melodiously, “Yuhsehtheybebems!”, and laughed a

silvery tinkle.

Panic gripped Ross for a long moment. A thing he had never considered,

but a thing which he should have realized would be inevitable. Of

course! These folk—older and incomparably more advanced than the rest of

the peoples in the universe—would have evolved out of the common

language into a speech of their own, deliberately or naturally rebuilt

to handle the speed, subtlety, and power of their thoughts.

But perhaps the older speech was merely disused and not lost.

He said formally, quaking: “People of Earth, we are strangers from

another star. We throw ourselves on your mercy and ask for your

generosity. Our problem is summed up in the genetic law L-sub-T equals

L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N. Of course——”

One of the men was laughing. Ross broke off.

The man smiled: “Wha’s that again?”

They understood! He repeated the formula, slowly, and would have

explained further, but the man cut him off.

“Math,” the man smiled. “We don’ use that stuff no more. I got a lab

assistant, maybe he uses it sometimes.”

They were beyond mathematics! They had broken through into some mode of

symbolic reasoning that must be as far beyond mathematics as math was

beyond primitive languages!

“Sir,” he said eagerly, “you must be a scientist. May I ask you to——”

“Get in,” he smiled. Gigantic doors unfolded from the vehicle.

Thought-reading? Had the problem been snatched from his brain even

before he stated it? Mutely he gestured at Helena and Bernie. Jones

would be all right where he was for several hours if Ross was any judge

of blackouts. And you don’t quibble with demigods.

The man, the scientist, did something to a glittering control panel that

was, literally, more complex than the Wesley board back on the starship.

Noise filled the vehicle—noise that Ross identified as music for a

moment. It was a starkly simple music whose skeleton was three thumps

and a crash, three thumps and a crash. Then followed an antiphonal

chant—a clear tenor demanding in a monotone: “Is this your car?” and a

tremendous chorally-shouted: “NO!”

Too deep for him, Ross thought forlornly as the car swerved around and

sped off. His eyes wandered over the control board and fixed on the

largest of its dials, where a needle crawled around from a large forty

to a large fifty and a red sixty, proportional to the velocity of the

vehicle. Unable to concentrate because of the puzzling music, unable to

converse, he wondered what the units of time and space were that gave

readings of fifty and sixty for their very low rate of speed—hardly more

than a brisk walk, when you noticed the slow passage of objects outside.

But there seemed to be a whistle of wind that suggested high

speed—perhaps an effect peculiar to the cooling-fin power system,

however it worked. He tried to shout a question at the driver, but it

didn’t get through. The driver smiled, patted his arm and returned to

his driving.

They nosed past a building—cooling fins—and Ross almost screamed when he

saw what was on the other side: a curve of highway jammed solid with

vehicles that were traveling at blinding speed. And the driver wasn’t

stopping.

Ross closed his eyes and jammed his feet against the floorboards waiting

for the crash which, somehow, didn’t come. When he opened his eyes they

were in the traffic and the needle on the speedometer quivered at 275.

He blew a great breath and thought admiringly: reflexes to match their

superb intellects, of course. There _couldn’t_ have been a crash.

Just then, across the safety island in the opposing lane, there was a

crash.

The very brief flash of vision Ross was allowed told him, incredibly,

that a vehicle had attempted to enter the lane going the wrong way, with

the consequences you’d expect. He watched, goggle-eyed, as the effects

of the crash rippled down the line of oncoming traffic. The squeal of

brakes and rending of metal was audible even above the thumping music:

“Is this your car?” “NO!”

Thereafter, as they drove, the opposing lane was motionless, but not

silent. The piercing blasts of strings and trumpets rose to the heavens

from each vehicle, as did the brilliant pyrotechnic jets. A call for

help, Ross theorized. The music was beginning to make his head ache. It

had been going on for at least ten minutes. Suddenly, blessedly, it

changed. There was a great fanfare of trombones in major thirds that

seemed to go on forever, but didn’t quite. At the end of forever, the

same tenor chanted: “You got a Roadmeister?” and the chorus roared:

“_YES!_”

Ross realized forlornly that the music must contain values and

subtleties which his coarser senses and undeveloped esthetic background

could not grasp. But he wished it would stop. It was making him miss all

the scenery. After perhaps the fifteenth repetition of the Roadmeister

motif, it ended; the driver, with a look of deep satisfaction, did

something to the control board that turned off a subsequent voice before

it could get out more than a syllable.

He turned to Ross and yelled above the suddenly-noticeable rush of air,

“Talk-talk-talk,” and gave a whimsical shrug.

During the moment his attention wandered from the road, his vehicle

rammed the one ahead, decelerated sharply and was rammed by the one

behind, accelerated and rammed the one ahead again and then fell back

into place.

Ross suddenly realized that he knew what had caused those crumples and

crinkles around the periphery of the car.

“Subtle,” the driver yelled. “Indirection. Sneak it in.”

“What?” Ross screamed.

“The commersh,” the driver yelled.

It meant nothing to Ross, and he felt miserable because it meant

nothing. He studied the roadside unhappily and almost beamed when he saw

a sign coming up. Not advertising, of course, he thought. Perhaps some

austere reminder of a whole man’s duty to the race and himself, some

noble phrase that summed up the wisdom of a great thinker....

But the sign—and it had cooling fins—declared: