* * * * *
"Here! Why are you crying?" asked the big white giant. His voice was
gentle, compassionate, and he was naked except for a kilt of a strange
gleaming material like woven light.
"But I don't want to go," Saxon protested in a reedy, childish tone.
He realized in dismay that the giant wasn't a giant at all, but normal
and man-sized. "I don't want to go," he heard himself tearfully
repeating.
They were in a room, the little boy that had been Saxon and the big
white man, and a door across the room was opening. The little boy that
was Saxon shrank against the man.
A woman appeared in the doorway. She was tall and beautiful and dressed
like the man in a gleaming kilt. She smiled at Saxon, but he was not
reassured. He hung back from crossing the threshold.
Saxon saw a troubled look pass between the two. Then the man steeled
himself, picked up the squirming boy, carried him through the doorway.
It was a strange sensation that possessed the mature Saxon, stretched
on the cold deck at the head of the ladder to the engine room. He
wasn't dreaming. He was the little boy, and yet he seemed to be outside
himself, watching his own actions, appraising himself like the detached
half of a dual personality.
He was in the time field, Saxon realized. That was it! He was reliving
a segment of his life span that had taken place before he was eleven!
His heart leaped spasmodically. At last the curtain was being raised on
those blank years of childhood!
The room into which the man carried him, Saxon saw, was larger that
the anteroom and cluttered with strange machinery, ugly machinery.
The far wall was a solid bank of windows, through which he could see
a green meadow rolling gently away to blue foothills in the distance.
Light poured through the windows from a blazing sun high overhead and a
second orange sun was just rising.
The man deposited him in a chair. Saxon quit thrashing, as the woman
fitted a skull-cap over his head, making minute adjustments. A cable
led from the peak of the skull-cap to a frightening machine which the
woman bent over next, and set in operation.
Saxon could feel a rush of thought pouring into his brain. Queer
thoughts couched in semantically obscure words.
One stood out. "_Earth._" It was repeated many times before he began
to comprehend the import of the alien symbols. "_Earth is the third
planet of a star known to its inhabitants as Sol!_"
With a feeling of strangeness the Saxon who observed realized that the
boy was being taught to speak English!
* * * * *
Saxon shook his head groggily, pushed himself to his hands and knees
and found himself floating six feet in the air. He had forgotten that
the jet drive was still off.
It came back with a suddenness that flung Saxon to the metal deck.
He scrambled to his feet, his mind in a whirl. Forgotten temporarily
were the emergency orders commanding them to return to Earth. If
Villainowski had been right, then Saxon had actually relived an event
which had transpired before he was eleven.
Then who the hell was he?
He returned to the control room, stepping over the unconscious body of
Murdock, who had not yet recovered from the effects of the time field.
The dial on the control board read 1.3 parsecs!
He jumped for the scanner, clamped his eye to the aperture, and
immediately jumped back!
Dead ahead was a huge blazing sun!
It looked so close that the _Shooting Star_ appeared to be falling
straight into the maw of erupting atomic energy.
But reason returned, and he knew they must still be millions of miles
away. He went back to the scanner, spotting first a second sun not so
close, then a third, small and red like a fiery coin.
The ternary system of Alpha Centauri! They were out of the Solar System!
"Please," said a girl's voice behind him. "Stand back from the scanner!
Don't try for your gun, Saxon, or I will be forced to shoot!"
Saxon whirled around.
Ileth Urban stood in the doorway, a dart gun leveled at his stomach.
Behind her, he saw the shame-faced Murdock surrounded by the crew.
Murdock was helpless, his arms in the air.
"The crew have mutinied," said Ileth. "The ship is now under the
control of General Atomic."
Saxon's jaw sagged. He said, "So you are Q62." It wasn't so much a
question as a statement. He knew. He could read it in her thoughts. But
why hadn't he been able to see it there before?
It wasn't possible, but there could be no doubt. Ileth Urban was Q62.
Then the thoughts of the men in the corridor made themselves felt.
Every man jack of them had gone over to General Atomic, not recently,
but weeks and months ago, before they had ever left Earth.
He dropped into a chair, his head in his hands. How had they been able
to disguise their thoughts all this time?
He looked at Ileth in her chartreuse green short-waisted jacket. She
held the dart gun leveled at his chest. Her patrician features were set
in grim unhappy lines.
"Something!" Saxon thought wildly, "Something has gone terribly wrong!"