Starman's Quest

BOOKS BY ROBERT SILVERBERG

 _Starman's Quest_ _Revolt on Alpha C_ _The Thirteenth Immortal_ _Master of Life and Death_ _The Shrouded Planet_ (with Randall Garrett) _Invaders from Earth_

 Starman's Quest

 _by_

 ROBERT SILVERBERG

 GNOME PRESS [Device]

 HICKSVILLE, N. Y. 

 Copyright 1958 by Robert Silverberg

 _First Edition. All Rights Reserved_

 _This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission, except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. _

 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-8767

 MANUFACTURED IN THE U. S. A. 

Transcriber's Note:

 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant spellings have been retained. 

_Author's Preface_

This was my second novel, which I wrote when I was 19, in my junior yearat Columbia. I've written better ones since. But readers interested inthe archaeology of a writing career will probably find much to explorehere. 

 Robert Silverberg 17 May 2008

 FOR BILL EDGERTON

 1933-1956

_Prologue_

The Lexman Spacedrive was only the second most important theoreticalaccomplishment of the exciting years at the dawn of the Space Age, yetit changed all human history and forever altered the pattern ofsociocultural development on Earth. 

Yet it was only the _second_ most important discovery. 

The Cavour Hyperdrive unquestionably would have held first rank in anyhistorical assessment, had the Cavour Hyperdrive ever reached practicaluse. The Lexman Spacedrive allows mankind to reach Alpha Centauri, theclosest star with habitable planets, in approximately four and a halfyears. The Cavour Hyperdrive--if it ever really existed--would havebrought Alpha C within virtual instantaneous access. 

But James Hudson Cavour had been one of those tragic men whosepersonalities negate the value of their work. A solitary, cantankerous, opinionated individual--a crank, in short--he withdrew from humanity todevelop the hyperspace drive, announcing at periodic intervals that hewas approaching success. 

A final enigmatic bulletin in the year 2570 indicated to some thatCavour had achieved his goal or was on the verge of achieving it;others, less sympathetic, interpreted his last message as a madman'swild boast. It made little difference which interpretation was accepted. James Hudson Cavour was never heard from again. 

A hard core of passionate believers insisted that he _had_ developed afaster-than-light drive, that he had succeeded in giving mankind aninstantaneous approach to the stars. But they, like Cavour himself, werelaughed down, and the stars remained distant. 

Distant--but not unreachable. The Lexman Spacedrive saw to that. 

Lexman and his associates had developed their ionic drive in 2337, afterdecades of research. It permitted man to approach, but not to exceed, the theoretical limiting velocity of the universe: the speed of light. 

Ships powered by the Lexman Spacedrive could travel at speeds justslightly less than the top velocity of 186, 000 miles per second. For thefirst time, the stars were within man's grasp. 

The trip was slow. Even at such fantastic velocities as the LexmanSpacedrive allowed, it took nine years for a ship to reach even thenearest of stars, stop, and return; a distant star such as Bellatrixrequired a journey lasting two hundred fifteen years each way. But eventhis was an improvement over the relatively crude spacedrives then inuse, which made a journey from Earth to Pluto last for many months andone to the stars almost unthinkable. 

The Lexman Spacedrive worked many changes. It gave man the stars. Itbrought strange creatures to Earth, strange products, strange languages. 

But one necessary factor was involved in slower-than-light interstellartravel, one which the Cavour drive would have averted: the FitzgeraldContraction. Time aboard the great starships that lanced through thevoid was contracted; the nine-year trip to Alpha Centauri and backseemed to last only six weeks to the men on the ship, thanks to thestrange mathematical effects of interstellar travel at high--but notinfinite--speeds. 

The results were curious, and in some cases tragic. A crew that had agedonly six weeks would return to find that Earth had grown nine yearsolder. Customs had changed; new slang words made languageunintelligible. 

The inevitable development was the rise of a guild of Spacers, men whospent their lives flashing between the suns of the universe and who hadlittle or nothing to do with the planet-bound Earthers left behind. Spacer and Earther, held apart forever by the inexorable mathematics ofthe Fitzgerald Contraction, came to regard each other with a bitter sortof distaste. 

The centuries passed--and the changes worked by the coming of the LexmanSpacedrive became more pronounced. Only a faster-than-light spacedrivecould break down the ever-widening gulf between Earther and Spacer--andthe faster-than-light drive remained as unattainable a dream as it hadbeen in the days of James Hudson Cavour. 

 --_Sociocultural Dynamics_ Leonid Hallman London, 3876

_Chapter One_

The sound of the morning alarm rang out, four loud hard cleargong-clangs, and all over the great starship _Valhalla_ the men of theCrew rolled out of their bunks to begin another day. The great ship hadtravelled silently through the endless night of space while they slept, bringing them closer and closer to the mother world, Earth. The_Valhalla_ was on the return leg of a journey to Alpha Centauri. 

But one man aboard the starship had not waited for the morning alarm. For Alan Donnell the day had begun several hours before. Restless, unable to sleep, he had quietly slipped from his cabin in the foresection, where the unmarried Crewmen lived, and had headed forward tothe main viewscreen, in order to stare at the green planet growingsteadily larger just ahead. 

He stood with his arms folded, a tall red-headed figure, long-legged, alittle on the thin side. Today was his seventeenth birthday. 

Alan adjusted the fine controls on the viewscreen and brought Earthinto sharper focus. He tried to pick out the continents on the planetbelow, struggling to remember his old history lessons. Tutor Henrichwould not be proud of him, he thought. 

_That's South America down there_, he decided, after rejecting thenotion that it might be Africa. They had pretty much the same shape, andit was so hard to remember what Earth's continents looked like whenthere were so many other worlds. _But that's South America. And sothat's North America just above it. The place where I was born. _

Then the 0800 alarm went off, the four commanding gongs that Alan alwaysheard as _It's! Time! Wake! Up!_ The starship began to stir into life. As Alan drew out his Tally and prepared to click off the start of a newday, he felt a strong hand firmly grasp his shoulder. 

"Morning, son. "

Alan turned from the viewscreen. He saw the tall, gaunt figure of hisfather standing behind him. His father--and the _Valhalla's_ captain. 

"Good rising, Captain. "

Captain Donnell eyed him curiously. "You've been up a while, Alan. I cantell. Is there something wrong?"

"Just not sleepy, that's all, " Alan said. 

"You look troubled about something. "

"No, Dad--I'm not, " he lied. To cover his confusion he turned hisattention to the little plastic gadget he held in his hand--the Tally. He punched the stud; the register whirred and came to life. 

He watched as the reading changed. The black-on-yellow dials slidforward from _Year 16 Day 365_ to _Year 17 Day 1_. 

As the numbers dropped into place his father said, "It's your birthday, is it? Let it be a happy one!"

"Thanks, Dad. You know, it'll feel fine to have a birthday on Earth!"

The Captain nodded. "It's always good to come home, even if we'll haveto leave again soon. And this will be the first time you've celebratedyour birthday on your native world in--three hundred years, Alan. "

Grinning, Alan thought, _Three hundred? No, not really. _ Out loud hesaid, "You know that's not right, Dad. Not three hundred years. Justseventeen. " He looked out at the slowly-spinning green globe of Earth. 

"When on Earth, do as the Earthers do, " the Captain said. "That's an oldproverb of that planet out there. The main vault of the computer filessays you were born in 3576, unless I forget. And if you ask any Eartherwhat year this is he'll tell you it's 3876. 3576-3876--that's threehundred years, no?" His eyes twinkled. 

"Stop playing games with me, Dad. " Alan held forth his Tally. "Itdoesn't matter what the computer files say. Right here it says _Year 17Day 1_, and that's what I'm going by. Who cares what year it is onEarth? _This_ is my world!"

"I know, Alan. "

Together they moved away from the viewscreen; it was time for breakfast, and the second gongs were sounding. "I'm just teasing, son. But that'sthe sort of thing you'll be up against if you leave the Starmen'sEnclave--the way your brother did. "

Alan frowned and his stomach went cold. He wished the unpleasant topicof his brother had not come up. "You think there's any chance Steve willcome back, this time down? Will we be in port long enough for him tofind us?"

Captain Donnell's face clouded. "We're going to be on Earth for almost aweek, " he said in a suddenly harsh voice. "That's ample time for Steveto rejoin us, if he cares to. But I don't imagine he'll care to. And Idon't know if I want very much to have him back. "

He paused outside the handsomely-panelled door of his private cabin, onehand on the thumb-plate that controlled entrance. His lips were set in atight thin line. "And remember this, Alan, " he said. "Steve's not yourtwin brother any more. You're only seventeen, and he's almosttwenty-six. He'll never be your twin again. "

With sudden warmth the captain squeezed his son's arm. "Well, better getup there to eat, Alan. This is going to be a busy day for all of us. "

He turned and went into the cabin. 

Alan moved along the wide corridor of the great ship toward the messhall in Section C, thinking about his brother. It had been only aboutsix weeks before, when the _Valhalla_ had made its last previous stop onEarth, that Steve had decided to jump ship. 

The _Valhalla's_ schedule had called for them to spend two days on Earthand then leave for Alpha Centauri with a load of colonists for Alpha CIV. A starship's time is always scheduled far in advance, with bookingsplanned sometimes for decades Earthtime by the Galactic TradeCommission. 

When blastoff time came for the _Valhalla_, Steve had not reported backfrom the Starmen's Enclave where all Spacers lived during in-port stays. 

Alan's memories of the scene were still sharp. Captain Donnell had beenconducting check-off, making sure all members of the Crew had reportedback and were aboard. This was a vital procedure; in case anyone wereaccidentally left behind, it would mean permanent separation from hisfriends and family. 

He had reached the name _Donnell, Steve_. No answer came. CaptainDonnell called his name a second time, then a third. A tense silenceprevailed in the Common Room of the starship, where the Crew wasassembled. 

Finally Alan made himself break the angry silence. "He's not here, Dad. And he's not coming back, " he said in a hesitant voice. And then he hadhad to explain to his father the whole story of his unruly, aggressivetwin brother's plan to jump ship--and how Steve had tried to persuadehim to leave the _Valhalla_ too. 

Steve had been weary of the endless shuttling from star to star, offorever ferrying colonists from one place to another without everstanding on the solid ground of a planet yourself for more than a fewdays here, a week there. 

Alan had felt tired of it too--they all did, at some time oranother--but he did not share his twin's rebellious nature, and he hadnot gone over the hill with Steve. 

Alan remembered his father's hard, grim expression as he had been toldthe story. Captain Donnell's reaction had been curt, immediate, andthoroughly typical: he had nodded, closed the roll book, and turned toArt Kandin, the _Valhalla's_ First Officer and the Captain'ssecond-in-command. 

"Remove Crewman Donnell from the roster, " he had snapped. "All otherhands are on board. Prepare for blastoff. "

Within the hour the flaming jets of the _Valhalla's_ planetary drive hadlifted the great ship from Earth. They had left immediately for AlphaCentauri, four and a half light-years away. The round trip had taken the_Valhalla_ just six weeks. 

During those six weeks, better than nine years had passed on Earth. 

Alan Donnell was seventeen years old. 

His twin brother Steve was now twenty-six. 

 * * * * *

"Happy rising, Alan, " called a high, sharp voice as he headed past theblue-painted handholds of Gravity Deck 12 on his way toward the messhall. 

Startled, he glanced up, and then snorted in disgust as he saw who hadhailed him. It was Judy Collier, a thin, stringy-haired girl of aboutfourteen whose family had joined the Crew some five ship-years back. TheColliers were still virtual newcomers to the tight group on theship--the family units tended to remain solid and self-contained--butthey had managed to fit in pretty well by now. 

"Going to eat?" she asked. 

"Right enough, " said Alan, continuing to walk down the plastifoam-linedcorridor. She tagged along a step or two behind him. 

"Today's your birthday, isn't it?"

"Right enough, " Alan said again, more abruptly. He felt a sudden twingeof annoyance; Judy had somehow developed a silly crush on him during thelast voyage to Alpha C, and since then she had contrived to follow himaround wherever he went, bombarding him with questions. She was a sillyadolescent girl, Alan thought scornfully. 

"Happy birthday, " she said, giggling. "Can I kiss you?"

"No, " returned Alan flatly. "You better watch out or I'm going to getRat after you. "

"Oh, I'm not afraid of that little beast, " she retorted. "One of thesedays I'll chuck him down the disposal hatch like the little verminhe--_ouch!_"

"You watch out who you're calling vermin, " said a thin, dry, barely-audible voice from the floor. 

Alan glanced down and saw Rat, his pet and companion, squatting nearJudy and flicking his beady little red eyes mischievously in thedirection of the girl's bare skinny ankle. 

"He _bit_ me, " Judy complained, gesturing as if she were going to stepon the little creature. But Rat nimbly skittered to one side, leaped tothe trousers of Alan's uniform, and from there clambered to his usualperch aboard his master's shoulder. 

Judy gestured at him in frustration, stamped her foot, and dashed awayinto the mess hall. Chuckling, Alan followed and found his seat at thebench assigned to Crewmen of his status quotient. 

"Thanks, fellow, " he said softly to the little being on his shoulder. "That's kid's getting to be pretty annoying. "

"I figured as much, " Rat said in his chittering birdlike voice. "And Idon't like the way she's been looking at me. She's just the kind ofindividual who _would_ dump me in a disposal hatch. "

"Don't worry about it, " Alan said. "If she pulls anything of the sortI'll personally see to it that she goes out right after you. "

"That does _me_ a lot of good, " Rat said glumly as Alan's breakfast camerolling toward him on the plastic conveyor belt from the kitchen. 

Alan laughed and reached avidly for the steaming tray of food. He poureda little of his synthorange juice into a tiny pan for Rat, and fell to. 

Rat was a native of Bellatrix VII, an Earth-size windswept world thatorbited the bright star in the Orion constellation. He was a member ofone of the three intelligent races that shared the planet with a smallcolony of Earthmen. 

The _Valhalla_ had made the long trip to Bellatrix, 215 light-years fromEarth, shortly before Alan's birth. Captain Donnell had won thefriendship of the little creature and had brought him back to the shipwhen time came for the _Valhalla_ to return to Earth for its nextassignment. 

Rat had been the Captain's pet, and he had given Alan the small animalon his tenth birthday. Rat had never gotten along well with Steve, andmore than once he had been the cause of jealous conflicts between Alanand his twin. 

Rat was well named; he looked like nothing so much as a smallbluish-purple rodent, with wise, beady little eyes and a scaly curlingtail. But he spoke Terran clearly and well, and in every respect he wasan intelligent, loyal, and likable creature. 

They ate in silence. Alan was halfway through his bowl of protein mixwhen Art Kandin dropped down onto his bench facing him. The _Valhalla's_First Officer was a big pudgy-faced man who had the difficult job oftranslating the concise, sometimes almost cryptic commands of Alan'sfather into the actions that kept the great starship going. 

"Good rising, Alan. And happy birthday. "

"Thanks, Art. But how come you're loafing now? Seems to me you'd be busyas a Martian dustdigger today, of all days. Who's setting up the landingorbit, if you're here?"

"Oh, that's all been done, " Kandin said lightly. "Your Dad and I were upall last night working out the whole landing procedure. " He reached outand took Rat from Alan's shoulder, and began to tickle him with hisforefinger. Rat responded with a playful nip of his sharp little teeth. "I'm taking the morning off, " Kandin continued. "You can't imagine hownice it's going to be to sit around doing nothing while everyone else isworking, for a change. "

"What's the landing hour?"

"Precisely 1753 tonight. It's all been worked out. We actually are inthe landing orbit now, though the ship's gimbals keep you from feelingit. We'll touch down tonight and move into the Enclave tomorrow. " Kandineyed Alan with sudden suspicion. "You're planning to stay in theEnclave, aren't you?"

Alan put down his fork with a sharp tinny clang and stared levelly atthe First Officer. "That's a direct crack. You're referring to mybrother, aren't you?"

"Who wouldn't be?" Kandin asked quietly. "The captain's son jumpingship? You don't know how your father suffered when Steve went over thehill. He kept it all hidden and just didn't say a thing, but I know ithit him hard. The whole affair was a direct reflection on his authorityas a parent, of course, and that's why he was so upset. He's a man whoisn't used to being crossed. "

"I know. He's been on top here so long, with everyone following hisorders, that he can't understand how someone could disobey and jumpship--especially his own son. "

"I hope _you_ don't have any ideas of----"

Alan clipped off Kandin's sentence before it had gotten fully started. "I don't need advice, Art. I know what's right and wrong. Tell me thetruth--did Dad send you to sound me out?"

Kandin flushed and looked down. "I'm sorry, Alan. I didn'tmean--well----"

They fell silent. Alan returned his attention to his breakfast, whileKandin stared moodily off into the distance. 

"You know, " the First Officer said finally, "I've been thinking aboutSteve. It just struck me that you can't call him your twin any more. That's one of the strangest quirks of star travel that's been recordedyet. "

"I thought of that. He's twenty-six, I'm seventeen, and yet we used tobe twins. But the Fitzgerald Contraction does funny things. "

"That's for sure, " Kandin said. "Well, time for me to start relaxing. "He clapped Alan on the back, disentangled his long legs from the bench, and was gone. 

_The Fitzgerald Contraction does funny things_, Alan repeated tohimself, as he methodically chewed his way through the rest of his mealand got on line to bring the dishes to the yawning hopper that wouldcarry them down to the molecular cleansers. _Real funny things. _

He tried to picture what Steve looked like now, nine years older. Hecouldn't. 

_As velocity approaches that of light, time approaches zero. _

That was the key to the universe. _Time approaches zero. _ The crew of aspaceship travelling from Earth to Alpha Centauri at a speed close tothat of light would hardly notice the passage of time on the journey. 

It was, of course, impossible ever actually to reach the speed of light. But the great starships could come close. And the closer they came, thegreater the contraction of time aboard ship. 

It was all a matter of relativity. Time is relative to the observer. 

Thus travel between the stars was possible. Without the FitzgeraldContraction, the crew of a spaceship would age five years en route toAlpha C, eight to Sirius, ten to Procyon. More than two centuries wouldelapse in passage to a far-off star like Bellatrix. 

Thanks to the contraction effect, Alpha C was three weeks away, Sirius amonth and a half. Even Bellatrix was just a few years' journey distant. Of course, when the crew returned to Earth they found things completelychanged; years had passed on Earth, and life had moved on. 

Now the _Valhalla_ was back on Earth again for a short stay. On Earth, starmen congregated at the Enclaves, the cities-within-cities that grewup at each spaceport. There, starmen mingled in a society of their own, without attempting to enter the confusing world outside. 

Sometimes a Spacer broke away. His ship left him behind, and he becamean Earther. Steve Donnell had done that. 

_The Fitzgerald Contraction does funny things. _ Alan thought of thebrother he had last seen just a few weeks ago, young, smiling, his ownidentical twin--and wondered what the nine extra years had done to him. 

_Chapter Two_

Alan dumped his breakfast dishes into the hopper and walked briskly outof the mess hall. His destination was the Central Control Room, thatlong and broad chamber that was the nerve-center of the ship'sactivities just as the Common Recreation Room was the center of off-dutysocializing for the Crew. 

He found the big board where the assignments for the day were chalked, and searched down the long lists for his own name. 

"You're working with me today, Alan, " a quiet voice said. 

He turned at the sound of the voice and saw the short, wiry figure ofDan Kelleher, the cargo chief. He frowned. "I guess we'll be cratingfrom now till tonight without a stop, " he said unhappily. 

Kelleher shook his head. "Wrong. There's really not very much work. Butit's going to be cold going. All those chunks of dinosaur meat in thepreserving hold are going to get packed up. It won't be fun. "

Alan agreed. 

He scanned the board, looking down the rows for the list of cargo crew. Sure enough, there was his name: _Donnell, Alan_, chalked in under thebig double C. As an Unspecialized Crewman he was shifted from post topost, filling in wherever he was needed. 

"I figure it'll take four hours to get the whole batch crated, " Kellehersaid. "You can take some time off now, if you want to. You'll be workingto make up for it soon enough. "

"I won't debate the point. Suppose I report to you at 0900?"

"Suits me. "

"In case you need me before then, I'll be in my cabin. Just ring me. "

Once back in his cabin, a square cubicle in the beehive of single men'srooms in the big ship's fore section, Alan unslung his pack and took outthe dog-eared book he knew so well. He riffled through its pages. _TheCavour Theory_, it said in worn gold letters on the spine. He had readthe volume end-to-end at least a hundred times. 

"I still can't see why you're so wild on Cavour, " Rat grumbled, lookingup from his doll-sized sleeping-cradle in the corner of Alan's cabin. "If you ever do manage to solve Cavour's equations you're just going toput yourself and your family right out of business. Hand me mynibbling-stick, like a good fellow. "

Alan gave Rat the much-gnawed stick of Jovian oak which the Bellatricianused to keep his tiny teeth sharp. 

"You don't understand, " Alan said. "If we can solve Cavour's work anddevelop the hyperdrive, we won't be handicapped by the FitzgeraldContraction. What difference does it make in the long run if the_Valhalla_ becomes obsolete? We can always convert it to the new drive. The way I see it, if we could only work out the secret of Cavour'shyperspace drive, we'd----"

"I've heard it all before, " Rat said, with a note of boredom in hisreedy voice. "Why, with hyperspace drive you'd be able to flit all overthe galaxy without suffering the time-lag you experience with regulardrive. And then you'd accomplish your pet dream of going everywhere andseeing everything. Ah! Look at the eyes light up! Look at the radiantexpression! You get starry-eyed every time you start talking about thehyperdrive!"

Alan opened the book to a dog-eared page. "I know it can be doneeventually. I'm sure of it. I'm even sure Cavour himself actuallysucceeded in building a hyperspace vessel. "

"Sure, " Rat said drily, switching his long tail from side to side. "Surehe built one. That explains his strange disappearance. Went out like asnuffed candle, soon as he turned on his drive. Okay, go ahead and buildone--if you can. But don't bother booking passage for me. "

"You mean you'd stay behind if I built a hyperspace ship?"

"Sure I would. " There was no hesitation in Rat's voice. "I like thisparticular space-time continuum very much. I don't care at all to windup seventeen dimensions north of here with no way back. "

"You're just an old stick-in-the mud. " Alan glanced at his wristchron. It read 0852. "Time for me to get to work. Kelleher and I are packingfrozen dinosaur today. Want to come along?"

Rat wiggled the tip of his nose in a negative gesture. "Thanks all thesame, but the idea doesn't appeal. It's nice and warm here. Run along, boy; I'm sleepy. " He curled up in his cradle, wrapped his tail firmlyaround his body, and closed his eyes. 

 * * * * *

There was a line waiting at the entrance to the freezer section, andAlan took his place on it. One by one they climbed into the spacesuitswhich the boy in charge provided, and entered the airlock. 

For transporting perishable goods--such as the dinosaur meat broughtback from the colony on Alpha C IV to satisfy the heavy demand for thatodd-tasting delicacy on Earth--the _Valhalla_ used the most efficientfreezing system of all: a compartment which opened out into the vacuumof space. The meat was packed in huge open receptacles which wereflooded just before blastoff; before the meat had any chance to spoil, the lock was opened, the air fled into space and the compartment's heatradiated outward. The water froze solid, preserving the meat. It wasjust as efficient as building elaborate refrigeration coils, and a gooddeal simpler. 

The job now was to hew the frozen meat out of the receptacles and get itpacked in manageable crates for shipping. The job was a difficult one. It called for more muscle than brain. 

As soon as all members of the cargo crew were in the airlock, Kelleherswung the hatch closed and threw the lever that opened the other doorinto the freezer section. Photonic relays clicked; the metal door swunglightly out and they headed through it after Kelleher gave the go-ahead. 

Alan and the others set grimly about their work, chopping away at theice. They fell to vigorously. After a while, they started to getsomewhere. Alan grappled with a huge leg of meat while two fellowstarmen helped him ease it into a crate. Their hammers pounded down asthey nailed the crate together, but not a sound could be heard in theairless vault. 

After what seemed to be three or four centuries to Alan, but which wasactually only two hours, the job was done. Somehow Alan got himself tothe recreation room; he sank down gratefully on a webfoam pneumochair. 

He snapped on a spool of light music and stretched back, completelyexhausted. I don't ever want to see or taste a dinosaur steak again, hethought. Not ever. 

He watched the figures of his crewmates dashing through the ship, eachgoing about some last-minute job that had to be handled before the shiptouched down. In a way he was glad he had drawn the assignment he had:it was difficult, gruelingly heavy labor, carried out under nastycircumstances--it was never fun to spend any length of time doing manuallabor inside a spacesuit, because the sweat-swabbers and theair-conditioners in the suit were generally always one step behind onthe job--but at least the work came to a definite end. Once all the meatwas packed, the job was done. 

The same couldn't be said for the unfortunates who swabbed the floors, scraped out the jets, realigned the drive mechanism, or did any othertidying work. Their jobs were _never_ done; they always suffered fromthe nagging thought that just a little more work might bring theinspection rating up a decimal or two. 

Every starship had to undergo a rigorous inspection whenever it toucheddown on Earth. The _Valhalla_ probably wouldn't have any difficulties, since it had been gone only nine years Earthtime. But ships makinglonger voyages often had troubles with the inspectors. Procedure whichpassed inspection on a ship bound out for Rigel or one of the other farstars might have become a violation in the hundreds of years that wouldhave passed before its return. 

Alan wondered if the _Valhalla_ would run into any inspection problems. The schedule called for departure for Procyon in six days, and the shipwould as usual be carrying a party of colonists. 

The schedule was pretty much of a sacred thing. But Alan had notforgotten his brother Steve. If he only had a few days to get out thereand maybe find him----

Well, I'll see, he thought. He relaxed. 

But relaxation was brief. A familiar high-pitched voice cut suddenlyinto his consciousness. _Oh, oh_, he thought. _Here comes trouble. _

"How come you've cut jets, spaceman?"

Alan opened one eye and stared balefully at the skinny figure of JudyCollier. "I've finished my job, that's how come. And I've been trying toget a little rest. Any objections?"

She held up her hands and looked around the big recreation roomnervously. "Okay, don't shoot. Where's that animal of yours?"

"Rat? Don't worry about him. He's in my cabin, chewing hisnibbling-stick. I can assure you it tastes a lot better to him than yourbony ankles. " Alan yawned deliberately. "Now how about letting me rest?"

She looked wounded. "If you _want_ it that way. I just thought I'd tellyou about the doings in the Enclave when we land. There's been a changein the regulations since the last time we were here. But you wouldn't beinterested, of course. " She started to mince away. 

"Hey, wait a minute!" Judy's father was the _Valhalla's_ Chief SignalOfficer, and she generally had news from a planet they were landing ona lot quicker than anyone else. "What's this all about?"

"A new quarantine regulation. They passed it two years ago when a shipback from Altair landed and the crew turned out to be loaded with somesort of weird disease. We have to stay isolated even from the otherstarmen in the Enclave until we've all had medical checkups. "

"Do they require every ship landing to go through this?"

"Yep. Nuisance, isn't it? So the word has come from your father thatsince we can't go round visiting until we've been checked, the Crew'sgoing to have a dance tonight when we touch down. "

"A dance?"

"You heard me. He thought it might be a nice idea--just to keep ourspirits up until the quarantine's lifted. That nasty Roger Bond hasinvited me, " she added, with a raised eyebrow that was supposed to besophisticated-looking. 

"What's wrong with Roger? I just spent a whole afternoon cratingdinosaur meat with him. "

"Oh, he's--well--he just doesn't _do_ anything to me. "

I'd like to do something to you, Alan thought. Something lingering, withboiling oil in it. 

"Did you accept?" he asked, just to be polite. 

"Of course not! Not _yet_, that is. I just thought I might get some moreinteresting offers, that's all, " she said archly. 

_Oh, I see the game_, Alan thought. _She's looking for an invitation. _He stretched way back and slowly let his eyes droop closed. "I wish youluck, " he said. 

She gaped at him. "Oh--you're _horrible_!"

"I know, " he admitted coolly. "I'm actually a Neptunian mudworm, completely devoid of emotions. I'm here in disguise to destroy theEarth, and if you reveal my secret I'll eat you alive. "

She ignored his sally and shook her head. "But why do I always have togo to dances with Roger Bond?" she asked plaintively. "Oh, well. Nevermind, " she said, and turned away. 

He watched her as she crossed the recreation room floor and steppedthrough the exit sphincter. She was just a silly girl, of course, butshe had pointed up a very real problem of starship life when she asked, "_Why do I always have to go to dances with Roger Bond?_"

The _Valhalla_ was practically a self-contained universe. The Crew waspermanent; no one ever left, unless it was to jump ship the way Stevehad--and Steve was the only Crewman in the _Valhalla's_ history to dothat. And no one new ever came aboard, except in the case of theinfrequent changes of personnel. Judy Collier herself was one of thenewest members of the Crew, and her family had come aboard five shipyears ago, because a replacement signal officer had been needed. 

Otherwise, things remained the same. Two or three dozen families, a fewhundred people, living together year in and year out. No wonder JudyCollier always had to go to dances with Roger Bond. The actual range ofeligibles was terribly limited. 

That was why Steve had gone over the hill. What was it he had said? _Ifeel the walls of the ship holding me in like the bars of a cell. _ Outthere was Earth, population approximately eight billion or so. And uphere is the _Valhalla_, current population precisely 176. 

He knew all 176 of them like members of his own family--which theywere, in a sense. There was nothing mysterious about anyone, nothingnew. 

And that was what Steve had wanted: something new. So he had jumpedship. Well, Alan thought, development of a hyperdrive would change thewhole setup, if--if----

He hardly found the quarantine to his liking either. The starmen hadonly a brief stay on Earth, with just the shortest opportunity to godown to the Enclave, mingle with starmen from other ships, see a newface, trade news of the starways. It was almost criminal to deprive themof even a few hours of it. 

Well, a dance was the second best thing. But it was a pretty distantsecond, he thought, as he pushed himself up out of the pneumochair. 

He looked across the recreation room. _Speak of the devil_, he thought. There was Roger Bond now, stretched out and resting too under aradiotherm lamp. Alan walked over to him. 

"Heard the sad news, Rog?"

"About the quarantine? Yeah. " Roger glanced at his wristchron. "GuessI'd better start getting spruced up for the dance, " he said, getting tohis feet. He was a short, good-looking, dark-haired boy a year youngerthan Alan. 

"Going with anyone special?"

Roger shook his head. "Who, special? Who, I ask you? I'm going to takeskinny Judy Collier, I guess. There's not much choice, is there?"

"No, " Alan agreed sadly, "Not much choice at all. "

Together they left the recreation room. Alan felt a strange sort ofhopeless boredom spreading over him, as if he had entered a gray fog. Itworried him. 

"See you tonight, " Roger said. 

"I suppose so, " Alan returned dully. He was frowning. 

_Chapter Three_

The _Valhalla_ touched down on Earth at 1753 on the nose, to nobody'svery great surprise. Captain Mark Donnell had not missed schedule oncein his forty ship years in space, which covered a span of over athousand years of Earth's history. 

Landing procedure was rigidly set. The Crew debarked by family, in orderof signing-on; the only exception to the order was Alan. As a member ofthe Captain's family--the only other member, now--he had to wait tillthe rest of the ship was cleared. But his turn came eventually. 

"Solid ground again, Rat!" They stood on the jet-fused dirt field wherethe _Valhalla_ had landed. The great golden-hulled starship was rearedup on its tail, with its huge landing buttresses flaring out at eachside to keep it propped up. 

"Solid for _you_, maybe, " Rat said. "But the trip's just as wobbly asever for me, riding up here on your shoulder. "

Captain Donnell's shrill whistle sounded, and he cupped his hands tocall out, "The copters are here!"

Alan watched the little squadron of gray jetcopters settle to theground, rotors slowing, and headed forward along with the rest of theCrew. The copters would take them from the bare landing field of thespaceport to the Enclave, where they would spend the next six days. 

The Captain was supervising the loading of the copters. Alan saunteredover to him. 

"Where to, son?"

"I'm scheduled to go over in Copter One. "

"Uh-uh. I've changed the schedule. " Captain Donnell turned away andsignalled to the waiting crew members. "Okay, go ahead and fill upCopter One!"

They filed aboard. "Everyone get back, " the Captain yelled. A tentative_chugg-chuff_ came from the copter; its rotors went round and it lifted, stood poised for a moment on its jetwash, and shot off northward towardthe Starmen's Enclave. 

"What's this about a change in schedule, Dad?"

"I want you to ride over with me in the two-man copter. Kandin took yourplace aboard Copter One. Let's go now, " he shouted to the next group. "Start loading up Number Two. "

The Crewmen began taking their places aboard the second copter, and soonits pilot signalled through the fore window that he was loaded up. Thecopter departed. Seeing that he would be leaving the field last, Alanmade himself useful by keeping the younger Crew children from wandering. 

At last the field was cleared. Only Alan and his father remained, withthe little two-man copter and the tall gleaming _Valhalla_ behind them. 

"Let's go, " the Captain said. They climbed in, Alan strapping himselfdown in the co-pilot's chair and his father back of the controls. 

"I never see much of you these days, " the Captain said after they werealoft. "Running the _Valhalla_ seems to take twenty-four hours a day. "

"I know how it is, " Alan said. 

After a while Captain Donnell said, "I see you're still reading thatCavour book. " He chuckled. "Still haven't given up the idea of findingthe hyperdrive, have you?"

"You know I haven't, Dad. I'm sure Cavour really did work it out, beforehe disappeared. If we could only discover his notebook, or even a letteror something that could get us back on the trail----"

"It's been thirteen hundred years since Cavour disappeared, Alan. Ifnothing of his has turned up in all that time, it's not likely ever toshow. But I hope you keep at it, anyway. " He banked the copter and cutthe jets; the rotors took over and gently lowered the craft to thedistant landing field. 

Alan looked down and out at the heap of buildings becoming visiblebelow. The crazy quilt of outdated, clumsy old buildings that was thelocal Starmen's Enclave. 

He felt a twinge of surprise at his father's words. The Captain hadnever shown any serious interest in the possibility of faster-than-lighttravel before. He had always regarded the whole idea as sheer fantasy. 

"I don't get it, Dad. Why do you hope I keep at it? If I ever find whatI'm looking for, it's going to mean the end of Starman life as you knowit. Travel between planets will be instantaneous. There--there won't bethis business of making jumps and getting separated from everyone youused to know. "

"You're right. I've just begun thinking seriously about this businessof hyperdrive. There wouldn't be any Contraction effect. Think of thechanges it would mean in Starman society! No more--no more permanentseparations if someone decides to leave his ship for a while. "

Alan understood what his father meant. Suddenly he saw the reason forCaptain Donnell's abrupt growth of interest in the development of ahyperdrive. 

_It's Steve that's on his mind_, Alan thought. _If we had had ahyperspace drive and Steve had done what he did, it wouldn't havemattered. He'd still be my age. _

Now the _Valhalla_ was about to journey to Procyon. Another twenty yearswould pass before it got back, and Steve would be almost fifty by then. 

That's what's on his mind, Alan thought. He lost Steve forever--but hedoesn't want any more Steves to happen. The Contraction took one of hissons away. And now he wants the hyperdrive as much as I do. 

Alan glanced at the stiff, erect figure of his father as they clamberedout of the copter and headed at a fast clip toward the AdministrationBuilding of the Enclave. He wondered just how much pain and anguish hisfather was keeping hidden back of that brisk, efficient exterior. 

_I'll get the Cavour drive someday_, Alan thought suddenly. _And I'll begetting it for him as well as me. _

The bizarre buildings of the Enclave loomed up before him. Behind them, just visible in the purplish twilight haze, were the tips of the shiningtowers of the Earther city outside. Somewhere out there, probably, wasSteve. 

_I'll find him too_, Alan thought firmly. 

 * * * * *

Most of the _Valhalla's_ people had already been assigned rooms in thequarantine section of one of the Enclave buildings when Alan and hisfather arrived. 

The bored-looking desk clerk--a withered-looking oldster who wasprobably a retired Starman--gave Alan his room number. It turned out tobe a small, squarish room furnished with an immense old pneumochair longsince deflated, a cot, and a washstand. The wall was a dull green, withgaping cracks in the faded paint, and cut heavily with a penknife intoone wall was the inscription, BILL DANSERT SLEPT HERE, _June 28 2683_ insturdy block letters. 

Alan wondered how many other starmen had occupied the room before andafter Bill Dansert. He wondered whether perhaps Bill Dansert himselfwere still alive somewhere between the stars, twelve centuries after hehad left his name in the wall. 

He dropped himself into the pneumochair, feeling the soggy squish of thedeflated cushion, and loosened the jacket of his uniform. 

"It's not luxurious, " he told Rat. "But at least it's a room. It's aplace to stay. "

The medics started coming around that evening, checking to see that noneof the newly-arrived starmen had happened to bring back any strangedisease that might cause trouble. It was slow work--and the _Valhalla_people were told that it would take at least until the following morningbefore the quarantine could be lifted. 

"Just a precautionary measure, " said the medic apologetically as heentered Alan's room clad in a space helmet. "We really learned ourlesson when that shipload from Altair came in bearing a plague. "

The medic produced a small camera and focused it on Alan. He pressed abutton; a droning sort of hum came from the machine. Alan felt a curiousglow of warmth. 

"Just a routine check, " the medic apologized again. He flipped a leverin the back of the camera. Abruptly the droning stopped and a tapeunravelled out of the side of the machine. The medic studied it. 

"Any trouble?" Alan asked anxiously. 

"Looks okay to me. But you might get that cavity in your upper rightwisdom tooth taken care of. Otherwise you seem in good shape. "

He rolled up the tape. "Don't you starmen ever get time for a fluorinetreatment? Some of you have the worst teeth I've ever seen. "

"We haven't had a chance for fluorination yet. Our ship was built beforethey started fluorinating the water supplies, and somehow we never findtime to take the treatment while we're on Earth. But is that all that'swrong with me?"

"All that I can spot just by examining the diagnostic tape. We'll haveto wait for the full lab report to come through before I can pass youout of quarantine, of course. " Then he noticed Rat perched in thecorner. "How about that? I'll have to examine it, too. "

"I'm not an _it_, " Rat remarked with icy dignity. "I'm an intelligentextra-terrestrial entity, native of Bellatrix VII. And I'm not carryingany particular diseases that would interest you. "

"A talking rat!" The medic was amazed. "Next thing we'll have sentientamebas!" He aimed the camera at Rat. "I suppose I'll have to record youas a member of the crew, " he said, as the camera began to hum. 

After the medic had gone, Alan tried to freshen up at the washstand, having suddenly recalled that a dance was on tap for this evening. 

As he wearily went through the motions of scrubbing his face clean, itoccurred to him that he had not even bothered to speak to one of theseven or eight Crew girls he had considered inviting. 

He sensed a curious disturbed feeling growing inside him. He feltdepressed. Was this, he wondered, what Steve had gone through? The wishto get out of this tin can of a ship and really see the universe?

"Tell me, Rat. If you were me----"

"If I were you I'd get dressed for that dance, " Rat said sharply. "Ifyou've got a date, that is. "

"That's just the point. I _don't_ have a date. I mean, I didn't botherto make one. I know all those girls so well. Why bother?"

"So you're not going to the dance?"

"Nope. "

Rat clambered up the arm of the pneumochair and swivelled his headupward till his glittering little eyes met Alan's. "You're not planningto go over the hill the way Steve did, are you? I can spot the symptoms. You look restless and fidgety the way your brother did. "

After a moment of silence Alan shook his head. "No. I couldn't do that, Rat. Steve was the wild kind. I'd never be able just to get up and go, the way he did. But I've got to do _something_. I know what he meant. Hesaid the walls of the ship were pressing in on him. Holding him back. "

With a sudden impatient motion he ripped open the magnesnaps of hisregulation shirt and took it off. He felt himself changing, inside. Something was happening to him. Maybe, he thought, he was catchingwhatever it was Steve had been inflamed by. Maybe he had been lying tohimself all along, about being different in makeup from Steve. 

"Go tell the Captain I'm not going to the dance, " he ordered Rat. "Otherwise he'll wonder where I am. Tell him--tell him I'm too tired, orsomething. Tell him anything. But don't let him find out how I feel. "

_Chapter Four_

The next morning, Roger Bond told him all about the dance. 

"It was the dullest thing you could imagine. Same old people, same dustyold dances. Couple of people asked me where you were, but I didn't tellthem anything. "

"Good. "

They wandered on through the heap of old, ugly buildings that composedthe Starmen's Enclave. "It's just as well they think I was sick, " Alansaid. "I was, anyway. Sick from boredom. "

He and Roger sat down carefully on the edge of a crumbling stone bench. They said nothing, just looking around. After a long while Alan brokethe uncomfortable silence. 

"You know what this place is? It's a ghetto. A self-imposed ghetto. Starmen are scared silly of going out into the Earther cities, so theykeep themselves penned up in this filthy place instead. "

"This place is really old. I wonder how far back those run-downbuildings date. "

"Thousand years, maybe more. No one ever bothers to build new ones. Whatfor? The starmen don't mind living in the old ones. "

"I almost wish the medical clearance hadn't come through after all, "said Roger moodily. 

"How so?"

"Then we'd be still quarantined up there. We wouldn't be able to comedown and get another look at the kind of place this really is. "

"I don't know which is worse--to be cooped up in quarantine or to gowandering around a dismal hole like the Enclave. " Alan stood up, stretched, and took a deep breath. "Phew! Get a lungful of that sweet, fresh, allegedly pure Terran air! I'll take ship atmosphere, stale as itis, any time over this smoggy soup. "

"I'll go along with that. Say, look--a strange face!"

Alan turned and saw a young starman of about his own age coming towardthem. He wore a red uniform with gray trim instead of theorange-and-blue of the _Valhalla_. 

"Welcome, newcomers. I suppose you're from that ship that just put down?The _Valhalla_?"

"Right. Name's Alan Donnell, and this is Roger Bond. Yours?"

"I'm Kevin Quantrell. " He was short and stocky, heavily tanned, with asquare jaw and a confident look about him. "I'm out of the starship_Encounter_, just back from the Aldebaran system. Been in the Enclavetwo weeks now--with a lot more ahead of me. "

Alan whistled. "Aldebaran! That's--let's see, 109 years round trip. Youmust be a real old-timer, Quantrell!"

"I was born in 3403. Makes me 473 years old, Earthtime. But I'mactually only seventeen and a half. Right before Aldebaran we made a hopto Capella, and that used up 85 years more in a hurry. "

"You've got me by 170 years, " Alan said. "But I'm only seventeenmyself. "

Quantrell grinned cockily. "It's a good thing some guy thought up thisTally system of chalking up every real day you live through. Otherwisewe'd be up to here in confusion all the time. "

He leaned boredly against the wall of a rickety building which once hadproudly borne the chrome-steel casing characteristic of early 27thCentury architecture, but whose outer surface was now brown and scalyfrom rust. "What do you think of our little paradise?" Quantrell askedsarcastically. "Certainly puts the Earther cities to shame. "

He pointed out across the river, where the tall, glistening buildings ofthe adjoining Earther city shone in the morning sunlight. 

"Have you ever been out there?" Alan asked. 

"No, " Quantrell said in a tight voice. "But if this keeps up muchlonger----" He clenched and unclenched his fists impatiently. 

"What's the trouble?"

"It's my ship--the _Encounter_. We were outspace over a century, youknow, and when we got back the inspection teams found so many thingswrong with the ship that she needs just about a complete overhauling. They've been working her over for the last two weeks, and the way itlooks it'll be another couple of weeks before she's ready to go. And Idon't know how much longer I can stand being penned up in thisEnclave. "

"That's exactly how your brother----" Roger started to say, and stopped. "Sorry. "

"That's okay, " Alan said. 

Quantrell cocked an eye. "What's that?"

"My brother. I had a twin, but he got restless and jumped ship last timewe were down. He got left behind at blastoff time. "

Quantrell nodded understandingly. "Too bad. But I know what he was upagainst--and I envy the lucky so-and-so. I wish _I_ had the guts to justwalk out like that. Every day that goes by in this place, I say I'mgoing over the hill next day. But I never do, somehow. I just sit hereand wait. "

Alan glanced down the quiet sun-warmed street. Here and there a coupleof venerable-looking starmen were sitting, swapping stories of theiryouth--a youth that had been a thousand years before. The Enclave, Alanthought, is a place for old men. 

They walked on for a while until the buzzing neon signs of a feelietheater were visible. "I'm going in, " Roger said. "This place isstarting to depress me. You?"

Alan shot a glance at Quantrell, who made a face and shook his head. "Iguess I'll skip it, " Alan said. "Not just now. "

"Count me out too, " Quantrell said. 

Roger looked sourly from one to the other, and shrugged. "I think I'llgo all the same. I'm in the mood for a good show. See you around, Alan. "

After Roger left them, Alan and Quantrell walked on through the Enclavetogether. Alan wondered whether it wasn't a good idea to have gone tothe feelie with Roger after all; the Enclave was starting to depresshim, too, and those three-dimensional shows had a way of taking yourmind off things. 

But he was curious about Quantrell. It wasn't often he had a chance totalk with someone his own age from another ship. "You know, " he said, "we starmen lead an empty life. You don't get to realize it until youcome to the Enclave. "

"I decided that a long time ago, " Quantrell said. 

Alan spread his hands. "What do we do? We dash back and forth throughspace, and we huddle here in the Enclave. And we don't like either oneor the other, but we fool ourselves into liking them. When we're inspace we can't wait to get to the Enclave, and once we're down here wecan't wait to get back. Some life. "

"Got any suggestions? Some way of fixing things up for us withoutqueering interstellar commerce?"

"Yes, " Alan snapped. "I do have a suggestion. Hyperspace drive!"

Quantrell laughed harshly. "Of all the cockeyed----"

"There you are, " Alan said angrily. "First thing you do is laugh. Aspacewarp drive is just some hairbrained scheme to you. But haven't youever considered that Earth's scientists won't bother developing such adrive for us if we don't care ourselves? They're just as happy the waythings are. _They_ don't have to worry about the FitzgeraldContraction. "

"But there's been steady research on a hyperdrive, hasn't there? Eversince Cavour, I thought. "

"On and off. But they don't take it very seriously and they don't getanywhere with it. If they'd really put some men to work they'd findit--and then there wouldn't be any more Enclaves or any FitzgeraldContraction, and we starmen could live normal lives. "

"And your brother--he wouldn't be cut off from his people the way heis----"

"Sure. But you laughed instead of thinking. "

Quantrell looked contrite. "Sorry. Guess I didn't put much jet behind mythink-machine that time. But a hyperdrive would wipe out the Enclavesystem, wouldn't it?"

"Of course! We'd be able to come home from space and take a normal partin Earth's life, instead of pulling away and segregating ourselveshere. "

Alan looked up at the seemingly unreachable towers of the Earther cityjust across the river from the Enclave. Somewhere out there was Steve. And perhaps somewhere out there was someone he could talk to about thehyperdrive, someone influential who might spur the needed research. 

The Earther city seemed to be calling to him. It was a voice that washard to resist. He savagely jammed down deep inside him the tiny innervoice that was trying to object. He turned, looking backward at thedingy dreary buildings of the Enclave. 

He looked then at Quantrell. "You said you've been wanting to breakloose. You want to get out of the Enclave, eh, Kevin?"

"Yes, " Quantrell said slowly. 

Alan felt excitement beginning to pound hard in the pit of his stomach. "How'd you like to go outside there with me? See the Earther city?"

"You mean _jump ship_?"

The naked words, put just that bluntly, stung. "No, " Alan said, thinkingof how his father's face had gone stony the time Alan had told him Stevewasn't coming back. "I mean just going out for a day or so--a sort ofchange of air. It's five days till the _Valhalla's_ due to blast off, and you say the _Encounter_ is stuck here indefinitely. We could just gofor a day or so--just to see what it's like out there. "

Quantrell was silent a long time. 

"Just for a day or so?" he asked, at last. "We'll just go out, and havea look around, just to see what it's like out there. " He fell silentagain. Alan saw a little trickle of sweat burst out on Quantrell'scheek. He felt strangely calm himself, a little to his own surprise. 

Then Quantrell smiled and the confidence returned to his tanned face. "I'm game. Let's go!"

But Rat was quizzical about the whole enterprise when Alan returned tohis room to get him. 

"You aren't serious, Alan. You really are going over to the Earthercity?"

Alan nodded and gestured for the little extra-terrestrial to take hisusual perch. "Are you daring to take my word in vain, Rat?" he asked inmock histrionics. "When I say I'm going to do something, I do it. " Hesnapped closed his jacket and flipped the switch controlling the archaicfluorescent panels. "Besides, you can always stay here if you want to, you know. "

"Never mind, " Rat said. "I'm coming. " He leaped up and anchored himselfsecurely on Alan's shoulder. 

Kevin Quantrell was waiting for them in front of the building. As Alanemerged Rat said, "One question, Alan. "

"Shoot. "

"Level, now: are you coming back--or are you going over the way Stevedid?"

"You ought to know me better than that. I've got reasons for going out, but they're not Steve's reasons. "

"I hope so. "

Quantrell came up to them, and it seemed to Alan that there wassomething unconvincing about his broad grin. He looked nervous. Alanwondered whether he looked the same way. 

"All set?" Quantrell asked. 

"Set as I'll ever be. Let's go. "

Alan looked around to see if anybody he knew might be watching. Therewas no one around. Quantrell started walking, and Alan fell in behindhim. 

"I hope you know where you're going, " Alan said. "Because I don't. "

Kevin pointed down the long winding street. "We go down to the foot ofthis street, turn right into Carhill Boulevard, head down the main drivetoward the bridge. The Earther city is on the other side of the river. "

"You better be right. "

They made it at a fairly good clip through the sleepy Enclave, passingrapidly through the old, dry, dusty streets. Finally they came to theend of the street and rounded the corner onto Carhill Boulevard. 

The first thing Alan saw was the majestic floating curve of the bridge. Then he saw the Earther city, a towering pile of metal and masonry thatseemed to be leaping up into the sky ahead of them, completely fillingthe view. 

Alan pointed to the bridge-mouth. "That's where we go across, isn't it?"

But Quantrell hung back. He stopped in his tracks, staring dangle-jawedat the immense city facing them. 

"There it is, " he said quietly. 

"Sure. Let's go, eh?" Alan felt a sudden burst of impatience and startedheading toward the approach to the bridge. 

But after three or four paces he realized Quantrell was not with him. Heturned and saw the other spaceman still rooted to the ground, gazing upat the vast Earther city as if in narcoshock. 

"It's big, " Quantrell murmured. "_Too_ big. "

"_Kevin!_ What's wrong?"

"Leave him alone, " Rat whispered. "I have a hunch he won't be going withyou. "

Alan watched in astonishment as Quantrell took two steps hesitantlybackward away from the bridge, then a third. There was a strange, almostthunderstruck expression on Kevin's face. 

Then he broke out of it. He shook his head. 

"We aren't really going across--huh, Donnell?" He gave a brittle littlelaugh. 

"Of course we are!" Alan looked around nervously, hoping no one from the_Valhalla_ had spotted him in all this time. Puzzled at Quantrell'ssudden hesitation after his earlier cockiness, Alan took a couple ofshuffling steps toward the bridge, slowly, keeping his eyes on the otherstarman. 

"I can't go with you, " Kevin finally managed to say. His face wasflushed and strained-looking. He was staring upward at the seeminglytopless towers of the city. "It's too big for me. " He choked back ahalf-whimper. "The trouble with me is--the--trouble--with--me--is----"Quantrell lowered his head and met Alan's stare. "I'm afraid, Donnell. Stinking sweaty afraid. The city's too big. "

Red-faced, he turned and walked away, back up the street. 

Alan silently watched him go. 

"Imagine that. Afraid!"

"It's a big place, " Rat warned. "Don't you feel the same way? Just alittle?"

"I feel perfectly calm, " Alan said in utter sincerity. "I know why I'mgoing over there, and I'm anxious to get moving. I'm not running away, the way Steve was. I'm going to the Earther city to find my brother andto find Cavour's drive, and to bring them both back here!"

"That's a tall order, Alan. "

"I'll do it. "

Alan reached the approach to the bridge in a few more brisk steps andpaused there. The noonday sun turned the long arch of the bridge into agolden ribbon in the sky. A glowing sign indicated the pedestrianwalkway. Above that, shining teardrop autos whirred by, leaving fainttrails of exhaust. Alan followed the arrows and soon found himself onthe bridge, heading for the city. 

He glanced back a last time. There was no sign of Kevin. The Starmen'sEnclave seemed utterly quiet, almost dead. 

Then he turned and kept his gaze forward. The Earther city was waitingfor him. 

_Chapter Five_

He reached the end of the walkway and paused, a little stunned, staringat the incredible immensity of the city spread out before him. 

"It's a big place, " he said. "I've never been in a city this big. "

"You were born here, " Rat reminded him. 

Alan laughed. "But I only stayed here a week or two at most. And thatwas three hundred years ago. The city's probably twice as big now as itwas then. It----"

"Hey, you! Move on!" a harsh voice from behind snapped suddenly. 

"What's that?"

Alan whirled and saw a tall, bored-looking man in a silver-gray uniformwith gleaming luminescent bands across the sleeves, standing on a raisedplatform above the road. 

"You can't just stand here and block the walkway, " the tall man said. His words were heavily accented, thickly guttural; Alan had a littletrouble understanding them. The ship's language never changed; that ofEarth kept constantly evolving. "Get back in the Enclave where youbelong, or get moving, but don't stand here or I'll punch your ticketfor you. "

Alan took a couple of steps forward. "Just hold on a minute. Who----"

"He's a policeman, Alan, " Rat said softly. "Don't make trouble. Do as hesays. "

Throttling his sudden anger, Alan nodded curtly at the officer andstepped off the walkway. He was an outsider here, and knew he couldn'texpect the sort of warm fellowship that existed aboard the ship. 

This was a city. A crowded, uncomfortable Earther city. These were thepeople who were left behind, who never saw the stars in naked glory. They weren't going to be particularly polite. 

Alan found himself at an intersection, and wondered where he was tobegin. He had some vague idea of finding Steve in this city as easily ashe might aboard ship--just check the A Deck roster, then the B Deck, andso on until he found him. But cities weren't quite that neatlyorganized, Alan realized. 

A long broad street ran parallel to the river. It didn't seem verypromising: lined with office buildings and warehouses. At right anglesto it, though, stretching out in front of him, was a colorful, crowdedavenue that appeared to be a major artery of the city. He glancedtentatively in both directions, waited till a lull came in the steadyprocession of tiny bullet-shaped automobiles flashing by, and hastilyjogged across the waterfront street and started down the avenue. 

Maybe there was some kind of register of population at the City Hall. If Steve still lived in this city, he could look him up that way. Ifnot----

Facing him were two rows of immense buildings, one on each side of thestreet. Above every three blocks there was a lacy aerial passagewayconnecting a building on one side of the street with one on the other, high above the ground. Alan looked up and saw black dots--they lookedlike ants, but they were people--making their way across theflexi-bridges at dizzying altitudes. 

The streets were crowded. Busy stern-faced people raced madly from oneplace to the next; Alan was accustomed to the more orderly and peacefullife of a starship, and found himself getting jostled by passersby fromboth directions. 

He was surprised to find the streets full of peddlers, weary-lookinglittle men trundling along behind small slow-moving self-poweredmonocars full of vegetables and other produce. Every few moments onewould stop and hawk his wares. As Alan started hesitantly up theendless-seeming street, one of the venders stopped virtually in front ofhim and looked at him imploringly. He was a small untidy-looking manwith a dirty face and a red scar streaking his left cheek. 

"Hey, boy. " He spoke in a soft slurred voice. "Hey, boy. Got somethingnice for you here. "

Alan looked at him, puzzled. The vender reached into his cart and pulledout a long yellow fruit with a small, thick green stem at one end. "Goon, boy. Treat yourself to some of these. Guild-grown, fresh-ripened, best there are. Half a credit for this one. " He held it almost underAlan's nose. "Go on, " he said insistently. 

Alan fished in his pocket and produced one of the half-credit pieces hehad been given in the Enclave commissary. For all he knew it was thecustom of this city for a new arrival to buy the first thing offered tohim by a vender; in any event, he was hungry, and it seemed that thiswas the easiest way to get rid of the little man. He held out the coin. 

"Here. I'll take it. "

The vender handed the piece of fruit over and Alan accepted it. Hestudied it, wondering what he was supposed to do now. It had a thick, tough rind that didn't seem at all appetizing. 

The vender chuckled. "What's the matter, boy? Never seen a bananabefore? Or ain't you hungry?" The little man's derisive face was thrustup almost against Alan's chin. 

He backed away a step or two. "Banana? Oh, sure. "

He put the end of the banana in his mouth and was just about to take abite when a savage burst of laughter cut him off. 

"Looka him!" the vender cried. "Stupid spacer don't even know how to eata banana! Looka! Looka!"

Alan took the fruit out of his mouth unbitten and stareduncomprehendingly at it. He felt uneasy; nothing in his past experiencehad prepared him for deliberate hostility on the part of other people. Aboard ship, you did your job and went your way; you didn't force yourpresence on other people or poke fun at them maliciously. It was theonly way to live when you had to spend your whole lifetime with the sameshipload of men and women. 

But the little vender wasn't going away. He seemed very amused byeverything. "You--you a spacer, no?" he demanded. By now a small crowdhad paused and was watching the scene. 

Alan nodded. 

"Lemme show you how, spacer, " the vender said, mockery topmost in histone. He snatched the banana back from Alan and ripped back the rindwith three rough snaps of his wrist. "Go on. Eat it this way. She tastesbetter without the peel. " He laughed raucously. "Looka the spacer!"

Someone else in the crowd said, "What's he doing in the city anyway? Hejump ship?"

"Yeah? Why ain't he in the Enclave like all the rest of them?"

Alan looked from one to the other with a troubled expression on hisface. He didn't want to touch off any serious incident, but he wasdetermined not to let these Earthers push him around, either. He ignoredthe ring of hostile faces about him and calmly bit into the banana. Theunfamiliar taste pleased him. Despite hoots and catcalls from the crowdhe finished it. 

"Now the spacer knows how to eat a banana, " the vender commented acidly. "Here, spacer. Have another. "

"I don't want another. "

"Huh? No good? Earth fruits are _too_ good for you, starman. You betterlearn that fast. "

"Let's get out of here, " Rat said quietly. 

It was sensible advice. These people were just baiting him like a bunchof hounds ringing a hare. He flexed his shoulder in a signal that meanthe agreed with Rat's suggestion. 

"Have another banana, " the vender repeated obstinately. 

Alan looked around at the crowd. "I said I didn't want another banana, and I _don't_ want one. Now get out of my way!"

No one moved. The vender and his monocar blocked the path. 

"Get out of my way, I said. " Alan balled the slimy banana peel up in hishand and rammed it suddenly into the vender's face. "There. Chew on thata while. "

He shouldered his way past the spluttering fruit vender, and beforeanyone in the crowd could say or do anything he was halfway down thestreet, walking briskly. He lost himself in the passing stream ofpedestrians. It was easy to do, despite the conspicuous orange-and-blueof his _Valhalla_ uniform. There were so many people. 

He went on for two unmolested blocks, walking quickly without lookingback. Finally he decided he was safe. He glanced up at Rat. The littleextra-terrestrial was sitting patiently astride his shoulder, deep, asusual, in some mysterious thoughts of his own. 

"Rat?"

"What, Alan?"

"Why'd they do that? Why did those people act that way? I was a perfectstranger. They had no business making trouble for me. "

"That's precisely it--you _were_ a complete stranger. They don't loveyou for it. You're 300 years old and still 17 at the same time. Theycan't understand that. These people don't like starmen very much. Thepeople in this city aren't ever going to see the stars, Alan. Stars arejust faint specks of light that peek through the city haze at night. They're terribly, terribly jealous of you--and this is the way they showit. "

"Jealous? But why? If they only knew what a starman's life is like, withthe Contraction and all! If they could only see what it is to leave yourhome and never be able to go back----"

"They can't see it, Alan. All they can see is that you have the starsand they don't. They resent it. "

Alan shrugged. "Let them go to space, then, if they don't like it here. No one's stopping them. "

They walked on silently for a while. Alan continued to revolve theincident in his mind. He realized he had a lot to learn about people, particularly Earther people. He could handle himself pretty well aboardship, but down on Earth he was a rank greenhorn and he'd have to stepcarefully. 

He looked gloomily at the maze of streets before him and half-wished hehad stayed in the Enclave, where starmen belonged. But somewhere outahead of him was Steve. And somewhere, too, he might find the answer tothe big problem, that of finding the hyperspace drive. 

But it was a tall order. And he had no idea where to begin. First thingto do, he thought, is find someone halfway friendly-looking and ask ifthere's a central directory of citizens. Track down Steve, if possible. Time's running out. The _Valhalla_ pulls out in a couple of days. 

There were plenty of passersby--but they all looked like the kind thatwould keep on moving without answering his question. He stopped. 

"_Come right in here!_" a cold metallic voice rasped, almost back of hisear. Startled, Alan looked leftward and saw a gleaming multiform robotstanding in front of what looked like a shop of some sort. 

"Come right in here!" the robot repeated, a little less forcefully nowthat it had caught Alan's attention. "One credit can win you ten; fivecan get you a hundred. Right in here, friend. "

Alan stepped closer and peered inside. Through the dim dark blue windowhe could vaguely make out long rows of tables, with men seated beforeeach one. From inside came the hard sound of another robot voice, calling off an endless string of numbers. 

"Don't just stand there staring, friend, " the robot urged. "Go right onthrough the door. "

Alan nudged Rat quizzically. "What is it?"

"I'm a stranger here too. But I'd guess it was some sort of gamblingplace. "

Alan jingled the few coins he had in his pocket. "If we had time I'dlike to stop off. But----"

"Go ahead, friend, go ahead, " the robot crooned, his metallic tonessomehow managing to sound almost human in their urgent pleading. "Go onin. One credit can win you ten. Five can get you a hundred. "

"Some other time, " Alan said. 

"But, friend--one credit can win you----"

"I know. "

"--ten, " the robot continued, undismayed. "Five can get you a hundred. "By this time the robot had edged out into the street, blocking Alan'spath. 

"Are we going to have trouble with you too? It looks like everybody inthis city is trying to sell something. "

The robot pointed invitingly toward the door. "Why not try it?" itcooed. "Simplest game ever devised. Everybody wins! Go on in, friend. "

Alan frowned impatiently. He was getting angrier and angrier at therobot's unceasing sales pitch. Aboard ship, no one coaxed you to doanything; if it was an assigned job, you did it without arguing, and ifyou were on free time you were your own master. 

"I don't want to play your stupid game!"

The robot's blank stainless vanadium face showed no display of feelingwhatsoever. "That's not the right attitude, friend. _Everyone_ plays thegame. "

Ignoring him, Alan started to walk ahead, but the robot skipped lithelyaround to block him. "Won't you go in just once?"

"Look, " Alan said. "I'm a free citizen and I don't want to be subjectedto this sort of stuff. Now get out of my way and leave me alone before Itake a can opener to you. "

"That's not the right attitude. I'm just asking you as a friend----"

"And I'm answering you as one. Let me go!"

"Calm down, " Rat whispered. 

"They've got no business putting a machine out here to bother peoplelike this, " Alan said hotly. He took a few more steps and the robotplucked at his sleeve. 

"Is that a final refusal?" A trace of incredulity crept into the robot'svoice. "Everyone plays the game, you know. It's unconsumerlike torefuse. It's uncitylike. It's bad business. It's unrotational. It's----"

Exasperated, Alan pushed the robot out of the way--hard. The metalcreature went over surprisingly easily, and thudded to the pavement witha dull clanking sound. 

"Are you sure----" the robot began, and then the voice was replaced bythe humming sound of an internal clashing of unaligned gears. 

"I guess I broke it. " Alan looked down at the supine robot. "But itwasn't my fault. It wouldn't let me pass. "

"We'd better move on, " Rat said. But it was too late. A burly man in ablack cloak threw open the door of the gambling parlor and confrontedAlan. 

"What sort of stuff is this, fellow? What have you done to our servo?"

"That thing wouldn't let me pass. It caught hold of me and tried to dragme inside your place. "

"So what? That's what he's for. Robohucksters are perfectly legal. "Disbelief stood out on the man's face. "You mean you don't want to goin?"

"That has nothing to do with it. Even if I _did_ want to go in, Iwouldn't--not after the way your robot tried to push me. "

"Watch out, kid. Don't make trouble. That's unrotational talk. You canget in trouble. Come on inside and have a game or two, and I'll forgetthe whole thing. I won't even bill you for repairs on my servo. "

"Bill me? I ought to sue you for obstructing the streets! And I just gotthrough telling your robot that I didn't plan to waste any time gamblingat your place. "

The other's lips curled into a half-sneer, half-grin. "Why not?"

"My business, " Alan said stubbornly. "Leave me alone. " He stalkedangrily away, inwardly raging at this Earther city where things likethis could happen. 

"Don't ever let me catch you around here again!" the parlor man shoutedafter him. Alan lost himself once again in the crowd, but not before hecaught the final words: "You filthy spacer!"

_Filthy spacer. _ Alan winced. Again the blind, unreasoning hatred of theunhappy starmen. The Earthers were jealous of something they certainlywouldn't want if they could experience the suffering involved. 

Suddenly, he realized he was very tired. 

He had been walking over an hour, and he was not used to it. The_Valhalla_ was a big ship, but you could go from end to end in less thanan hour, and very rarely did you stay on your feet under full grav forlong as an hour. Working grav was . 93 Earth-normal, and that odd . 07%made quite a difference. Alan glanced down at his boots, mentallypicturing his sagging arches. 

He had to find someone who could give him a clue toward Steve. For allhe knew, one of the men he had brushed against that day was Steve--aSteve grown older and unrecognizable in what had been, to Alan, a fewshort weeks. 

Around the corner he saw a park--just a tiny patch of greenery, two orthree stunted trees and a bench, but it was a genuine park. It lookedalmost forlorn surrounded by the giant skyscrapers. 

There was a man on the bench--the first relaxed-looking man Alan hadseen in the city so far. He was about thirty or thirty-five, dressed ina baggy green business suit with tarnished brass studs. His face waspleasantly ugly--nose a little too long, cheeks hollow, chin a bit tooapparent. And he was smiling. He looked friendly. 

"Excuse me, sir, " Alan said, sitting down next to him. "I'm a strangerhere. I wonder if you----"

Suddenly a familiar voice shouted, "There he is!"

Alan turned and saw the little fruit vender pointing accusingly at him. Behind him were three men in the silver-gray police uniforms. "That'sthe man who wouldn't buy from me. He's an unrotationist! Damn Spacer!"

One of the policemen stepped forward--a broad man with a wide slab of aface, red, like raw meat. "This man has placed some serious chargesagainst you. Let's see your work card. "

"I'm a starman. I don't have a work card. "

"Even worse. We'd better take you down for questioning. You starmen comein here and try to----"

"Just a minute, officer. " The warm mellow voice belonged to the smilingman on the bench. "This boy doesn't mean any trouble. I can vouch forhim myself. "

"And who are you? Let's see _your_ card!"

Still smiling, the man reached into a pocket and drew forth his wallet. He handed a card over to the policeman--and Alan noticed that a bluefive-credit note went along with the card. 

The policeman made a great show of studying the card and succeeded inpocketing the bill with the same effortless sleight-of-hand that theother had used in handing it over. 

"Max Hawkes, eh? That you? Free status?"

The man named Hawkes nodded. 

"And this Spacer's a pal of yours?"

"We're very good friends. "

"Umm. Okay. I'll leave him in your custody. But see to it that hedoesn't get into any more jams. "

The policeman turned away, signalling to his companions. Thefruit vender stared vindictively at Alan for a moment, but saw he wouldhave no revenge. He, too, left. 

Alan was alone with his unknown benefactor. 

_Chapter Six_

"I guess I owe you thanks, " Alan said. "If they had hauled me off I'd bein real trouble. "

Hawkes nodded. "They're very quick to lock people up when they don'thave work cards. But police salaries are notoriously low. A five-creditbill slipped to the right man at the right time can work wonders. "

"Five credits, was it? Here----"

Alan started to fumble in his pocket, but Hawkes checked him with a waveof his hand. "Never mind. I'll write it off to profit and loss. What'syour name, spacer, and what brings you to York City?"

"I'm Alan Donnell, of the starship _Valhalla_. I'm an UnspecializedCrewman. I came over from the Enclave to look for my brother. "

Hawkes' lean face assumed an expression of deep interest. "He's astarman too?"

"He--was. "

"Was?"

"He jumped ship last time we were here. That was nine years agoEarthtime. I'd like to find him, though. Even though he's so much oldernow. "

"How old is he now?"

"Twenty-six. I'm seventeen. We used to be twins, you see. But theContraction--you understand about the Contraction, don't you?"

Hawkes nodded thoughtfully, eyes half-closed. "Mmm--yes, I follow you. While you made your last space jump he grew old on Earth. And you wantto find him and put him back on your ship, is that it?"

"That's right. Or at least talk to him and find out if he's all rightwhere he is. But I don't know where to start looking. This city is sobig--and there are so many other cities all over Earth----"

Hawkes shook his head. "You've come to the right one. The CentralDirectory Matrix is here. You'll be able to find out where he'sregistered by the code number on his work card. Unless, " Hawkes saidspeculatively, "he doesn't have a work card. Then you're in trouble. "

"Isn't everyone supposed to have a work card?"

"I don't, " Hawkes said. 

"But----"

"You need a work card to hold a job. But to get a job, you have to passguild exams. And in order to take the exams you have to find a sponsorwho's already in the guild. But you have to post bond for your sponsor, too--five thousand credits. And unless you have the work card and havebeen working, you don't have the five thousand, so you can't post bondand get a work card. See? Round and round. "

Alan's head swam. "Is that what they meant when they said I wasunrotational?"

"No, that's something else. I'll get to that in a second. But you seethe work setup? The guilds are virtually hereditary, even the fruitvenders' guild. It's next to impossible for a newcomer to crack into aguild--and it's pretty tough for a man in one guild to move up a notch. You see, Earth's a terribly overcrowded planet--and the only way toavoid cutthroat job competition is to make sure it's tough to get a job. It's rough on a starman trying to bull his way into the system. "

"You mean Steve may not have gotten a work card? In that case how will Ibe able to find him?"

"It's harder, " Hawkes said. "But there's also a registry of Free Statusmen--men without cards. He isn't required to register there, but if hedid you'd be able to track him down eventually. If he didn't, I'm afraidyou're out of luck. You just can't find a man on Earth if he doesn'twant to be found. "

"Free Status? Isn't that what the policeman said----"

"I was in?" Hawkes nodded. "Sure, I'm Free Status. Out of choice, though, not necessity. But that doesn't matter much right now. Let's goover to the Central Directory Matrix Building and see if we can find anytrail for your brother. "

They rose. Alan saw that Hawkes was tall, like himself; he walked witheasygoing grace. Questioningly Alan twitched his shoulder-blade in asignal that meant, _What do you think of this guy, Rat?_

_Stick with him_, Rat signalled back. _He sounds okay. _

The streets seemed a great deal less terrifying now that Alan had acompanion, someone who knew his way around. He didn't have the feelingthat all eyes were on him, any more; he was just one of the crowd. Itwas good to have Hawkes at his side, even if he didn't fully trust theolder man. 

"The Directory Building's way across town, " Hawkes said. "We can't walkit. Undertube or Overshoot?"

"What?"

"I said, do you want to take the Undertube or the Overshoot? Or doesn'tit matter to you what kind of transportation we take?"

Alan shrugged. "One's as good as any other. "

Hawkes fished a coin out of his pocket and tossed it up. "Heads forOvershoot, " he said, and caught the coin on the back of his left hand. He peered at it. "Heads it is. We take the Overshoot. This way. "

They ducked into the lobby of the nearest building and took the elevatorto the top floor. Hawkes stopped a man in a blue uniform and said, "Where's the nearest Shoot pickup?"

"Take the North Corridor bridge across to the next building. Thepickup's there. "

"Right. "

Hawkes led the way down the corridor, up a staircase, and through adoor. With sudden alarm Alan found himself on one of the bridges linkingthe skyscrapers. The bridge was no more than a ribbon of plastic withhandholds at each side; it swayed gently in the breeze. 

"You better not look down, " Hawkes said. "It's fifty stories to thebottom. "

Alan kept his eyes stiffly forward. There was a good-sized crowdgathered on the top of the adjoining building, and he saw a metalplatform of some kind. 

A vender came up to them. Alan thought he might be selling tickets, butinstead he held forth a tray of soft drinks. Hawkes bought one; Alanstarted to say he didn't want one when he felt a sharp kick in hisankle, and he hurriedly changed his mind and produced a coin. 

When the vender was gone, Hawkes said, "Remind me to explain rotation toyou when we get aboard the Shoot. And here it comes now. "

Alan turned and saw a silvery torpedo come whistling through the air andsettle in the landing-rack of the platform; it looked like a jet-poweredvessel of some kind. A line formed, and Hawkes stuffed a ticket intoAlan's hand. 

"I have a month's supply of them, " he explained. "It's cheaper thatway. "

They found a pair of seats together and strapped themselves in. With aroar and a hiss the Overshoot blasted away from the landing platform, and almost immediately came to rest on another building some distanceaway. 

"We've just travelled about half a mile, " Hawkes said. "This ship reallymoves. "

A jet-propelled omnibus that travelled over the roofs of the buildings, Alan thought. Clever. He said, "Isn't there any public surfacetransportation in the city?"

"Nope. It was all banned about fifty years ago, on account of thecongestion. Taxis and everything. You can still use a private car insome parts of the city, of course, but the only people who own them arethose who like to impress their neighbors. Most of us take the Undertubeor the Overshoot to get around. "

The Shoot blasted off from its third stop and picked up passengers atits fourth. Alan glanced up front and saw the pilot peering over anelaborate radar setup. 

"Westbound Shoots travel a hundred feet over the roof-tops, eastboundones two hundred. There hasn't been a major accident in years. But aboutthis rotation--that's part of our new economic plan. "

"Which is?"

"_Keep the money moving!_ Saving's discouraged. Spending's the thingnow. The guilds are really pushing it. Instead of buying one piece offruit from a vender, buy two. Spend, spend, spend! It's a little toughon the people in Free Status--we don't offer anything for sale, so wedon't benefit much--but we don't amount to one per cent of thepopulation, so who cares about us?"

"You mean it's sort of subversive not to spend money, is that it?" Alanasked. 

Hawkes nodded. "You get in trouble if you're too openly penny-pinching. Keep the credits flowing; that's the way to be popular around here. "

That had been his original mistake, Alan thought. He saw he had a lot tolearn about this strange, unfriendly world if he were going to stay herelong. He wondered if anyone had missed him back at the Enclave, yet. Maybe it won't take too long to find Steve, he thought. I should haveleft a note for Dad explaining I'd be back. But----

"Here we are, " Hawkes said, nudging him. The door in the Overshoot'sside opened and they got out quickly. They were on another rooftop. 

Ten minutes later they stood outside an immense building whose wallswere sleek slabs of green pellucite, shining with a radiant inner warmthof their own. The building must have been a hundred stories high, ormore. It terminated in a burnished spire. 

"This is it, " Hawkes said. "The Central Directory Building. We'll trythe Standard Matrix first. "

A little dizzy, Alan followed without discussing the matter. Hawkes ledhim through a vast lobby big enough to hide the _Valhalla_ in, pastthrongs of Earthers, into a huge hall lined on all sides by computerbanks. 

"Let's take this booth here, " Hawkes suggested. They stepped into it;the door clicked shut automatically behind them. There was a row ofblank forms in a metal rack against the inside of the door. 

Hawkes pulled one out. Alan looked at it. It said, CENTRAL DIRECTORYMATRIX INFORMATION REQUISITION 1067432. STANDARD SERIES. 

Hawkes took a pen from the rack. "We have to fill this out. What's yourbrother's full name?"

"Steve Donnell. " He spelled it. 

"Year of birth?"

Alan paused. "3576, " he said finally. 

Hawkes frowned, but wrote it down that way. 

"Work card number--well, we don't know that. And they want five or sixother numbers too. We'll just have to skip them. Better give me a fullphysical description as of the last time you saw him. "

Alan thought a moment. "He looked pretty much like me. Height 73 inches, weight 172 or so, reddish-blonde hair, and so on. "

"Don't you have a gene-record?"

Blankly, Alan said, "A what?"

Hawkes scowled. "I forgot--I keep forgetting you're a spacer. Well, ifhe's not using his own name any more it may make things really tough. Gene-records make absolute identification possible. But if you don'thave one----"

Whistling tunelessly, Hawkes filled out the rest of the form. When itcame to REASON FOR APPLICATION, he wrote in, _Tracing of missingrelative_. 

"That just about covers it, " he said finally. "It's a pretty lameapplication, but if we're lucky we may find him. " He rolled the form up, shoved it into a gray metal tube, and dropped it in a slot in the wall. 

"What happens now?" Alan asked. 

"Now we wait. The application goes downstairs and the big computer goesto work on it. First thing they'll do is kick aside all the cards of mennamed Steve Donnell. Then they'll check them all against the physicaldescription I supplied. Soon as they find a man who fits the bill, they'll 'stat his card and send it up here to us. We copy down thetelevector number and have them trace him down. "

"The _what_ number?"

"You'll see, " Hawkes said, grinning. "It's a good system. Just wait. "

They waited. One minute, two, three. 

"I hope I'm not keeping you from something important, " Alan said, breaking a long uncomfortable silence. "It's really good of you to takeall this time, but I wouldn't want to inconvenience you if----"

"If I didn't want to help you, " Hawkes said sharply, "I wouldn't bedoing it. I'm Free Status, you know. That means I don't have any bossexcept me. Max Hawkes, Esquire. It's one of the few compensations I havefor the otherwise lousy deal life handed me. So if I choose to waste anhour or two helping you find your brother, don't worry yourself aboutit. "

A bell rang, once, and a gentle red light glowed over the slot. Hawkesreached in and scooped out the container that sat there. 

Inside he found a rolled-up slip of paper. He pulled it out and read themessage typed on it several times, pursing his lips. 

"Well? Did they find him?"

"Read it for yourself, " Hawkes said. He pushed the sheet over to Alan. 

It said, in crisp capital letters, A SEARCH OF THE FILES REVEALS THATNO WORK CARD HAS BEEN ISSUED ON EARTH IN THE PAST TEN YEARS TO STEVEDONNELL, MALE, WITH THE REQUIRED PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 

Alan's face fell. He tossed the slip to the table and said, "Well? Whatdo we do now?"

"Now, " Hawkes said, "we go upstairs to the cubbyhole where they keep theFree Status people registered. We go through the same business there. Ididn't really expect to find your brother here, but it was worth a look. It's next to impossible for a ship-jumping starman to buy his way into aguild and get a work card. "

"Suppose he's not registered with the Free Status people?"

Hawkes smiled patiently. "Then, my dear friend, you go back to your shipwith your mission incomplete. If he's not listed upstairs, there's noway on Earth you could possibly find him. "

_Chapter Seven_

The sign over the office door said REGISTRY OF FREE-STATUS LABOR FORCE, and under that ROOM 1104. Hawkes nudged the door open and they went in. 

It was not an imposing room. A fat pasty-faced man sat behind a scarredneoplast desk, scribbling his signature on forms that he was taking froman immense stack. The room was lined with records of one sort oranother, untidy, poorly assembled. There was dust everywhere. 

The man at the desk looked up as they entered and nodded to Hawkes. "Hello, Max. Making an honest man of yourself at last?"

"Not on your life, " Hawkes said. "I came up here to do some checking. Alan, this is Hines MacIntosh, Keeper of the Records. Hines, want you tomeet a starman friend of mine. Alan Donnell. "

"Starman, eh?" MacIntosh's pudgy face went suddenly grave. "Well, boy, Ihope you know how to get along on an empty stomach. Free Status lifeisn't easy. "

"No, " Alan said. "You don't under----"

Hawkes cut him off. "He's just in the city on leave, Hines. His shipblasts off in a couple of days and he figures to be on it. But he'strying to track down his brother, who jumped ship nine years back. "

MacIntosh nodded. "I suppose you drew a blank in the big roomdownstairs?"

"Yes. "

"Not surprising. We get these ship-jumping starmen all the time up here;they never do get work cards, it seems. What's that thing on yourshoulder, boy?"

"He's from Bellatrix VII. "

"Intelligent?"

"I should say so!" Rat burst in indignantly. "Just because I have acertain superficial physiological resemblance to a particular species ofunpleasant Terran rodent----"

MacIntosh chuckled and said, "Ease up! I didn't mean to insult you, friend! But you'll have to apply for a visa if you're going to stay heremore than three days. "

Alan frowned. "Visa?"

Hawkes cut in: "The boy's going back on his ship, I told you. He won'tneed a visa, or the alien either. "

"Be that as it may, " MacIntosh said. "So you're looking for yourbrother, boy? Give me the specifications, now. Name, date of birth, andall the rest. "

"His name is Steve Donnell, sir. Born 3576. He jumped ship in----"

"Born _when_, did you say?"

"They're spacers, " Hawkes pointed out quietly. 

MacIntosh shrugged. "Go ahead. "

"Jumped ship in 3867--I think. It's so hard to tell what year it is onEarth. "

"And physical description?"

"He was my twin, " Alan said. "Identical twin. "

MacIntosh jotted down the data Alan gave him and transferred it to apunched card. "I don't remember any spacers of that name, " he said, "butnine years is a long time. And we get so many starmen coming up here totake out Free Status. "

"You do?"

"Oh, fifteen or twenty a year, at least--and that's in this officealone. They're forever getting stranded on leave and losing their ships. Why, there was one boy who was robbed and beaten in the Frisco Enclaveand didn't wake up for a week. Naturally he missed his ship, and noother starship would sign him on. He's on Free Status now, of course. Well, let's see about Donnell Steve Male, shall we? You realize the lawdoesn't require Free Status people to register with us, and so we maynot necessarily have any data on him in our computer files?"

"I realize that, " Alan said tightly. He wished the chubby records-keeperwould stop talking and start looking for Steve's records. It was gettingalong toward late afternoon now; he had come across from the Enclavearound noontime, and certainly it was at least 1600 by now. He wasgetting hungry--and he knew he would have to start making plans forspending the night somewhere, if he didn't go back to the Enclave. 

MacIntosh pulled himself laboriously out of his big webwork cradle andwheezed his way across the room to a computer shoot. He dropped the cardin. 

"It'll take a few minutes for them to make the search, " he said, turning. He looked in both directions and went on, "Care for a drink?Just to pass the time?"

Hawkes grinned. "Good old Hinesy! What's in the inkwell today?"

"Scotch! Bottled in bond, best syntho stuff to come out of Caledonia inthe last century!" MacIntosh shuffled back behind his desk and foundthree dingy glasses in one of the drawers; he set them out and uncorkeda dark blue bottle plainly labelled INK. 

He poured a shot for Hawkes and then a second shot; as he started topush it toward Alan, the starman shook his head. "Sorry, but I don'tdrink. Crewmen aren't allowed to have liquor aboard starships. Regulation. "

"Oh, but you're off-duty now!"

Alan shook his head a second time; shrugging, MacIntosh took the drinkhimself and put the unused third glass back in the drawer. 

"Here's to Steve Donnell!" he said, lifting his glass high. "May he havehad the good sense to register his name up here!"

They drank. Alan watched. Suddenly, the bell clanged and a tube rolledout of the computer shoot. 

Alan waited tensely while MacIntosh crossed the room again, drew out thecontents of the tube, and scanned them. The fat man's face was broken bya smile. 

"You're in luck, starman. Your brother did register with us. Here's the'stat of his papers. "

Alan looked at them. The photostat was titled, APPLICATION FOR ADMISSIONTO FREE-STATUS LABOR FORCE, and the form had been filled out in ahandwriting Alan recognized immediately as Steve's: bold, untidy, theletters slanting slightly backward. 

He had given his name as Steve Donnell, his date of birth as 3576, hischronological age as seventeen. He had listed his former occupation as_Starman_. The application was dated 4 June 3867, and a stampednotation on the margin declared that Free Status had been granted on 11June 3867. 

"So he did register, " Alan said. "But now what? How do we find him?"

Hawkes reached for the photostat. "Here. Let me look at that. " Hesquinted to make out the small print, then nodded and wrote downsomething. "His televector number's a local one. So far, so good. " Heturned the form over and glanced at the reproduced photo of Steve on theback. He looked up, comparing it with Alan. 

"Dead ringers, these two. But I'll bet this one doesn't look much likethis any more--not after nine years of Free Status!"

"It only pays off for the lucky few, eh, Max?" MacIntosh asked slyly. 

Hawkes grinned. "Some of us make out all right. You have to have theknack, though. You can get awful hungry otherwise. Come on, kid--let'sgo up a little higher, now. Up to the televector files. Thanks for thehelp, Hinesy. You're a pal. "

"Just doin' my job, " MacIntosh said. "See you tonight as usual?"

"I doubt it, " Hawkes replied. "I'm going to take the night off. I haveit coming to me. "

"That leaves the coast clear for us amateurs, doesn't it? Maybe I'llcome out ahead tonight. "

Hawkes smiled coldly. "Maybe you will. Let's go, kid. "

They took the lift tube outside and rode it as high as it went. Itopened out into the biggest room Alan had ever seen, bigger even thanthe main registry downstairs--a vast affair perhaps a hundred feet highand four hundred feet on the side. 

And every inch of those feet was lined with computer elements. 

"This is the nerve-center of the world, " Hawkes said as they went in. "By asking the right questions you can find out where anybody in theworld happens to be at this very moment. "

"How can they do that?"

Hawkes nudged a tiny sliver of metal embedded in a ring on his finger. "Here's my televector transmitter. Everyone who has a work card or FreeStatus carries one, either on a ring or in a locket round his neck orsomewhere else. Some people have them surgically embedded in theirbodies. They give off resonance waves, each one absolutely unique;there's about one chance in a quadrillion of a duplicate pattern. Theinstruments here can pick up a given pattern and tell you exactly wherethe person you're looking for is. "

"So we can find Steve without much trouble!"

"Probably. " Hawkes' face darkened. "I've known it to happen that thetelevector pattern picks up a man who's been at the bottom of the seafor five years. But don't let me scare you; Steve's probably in goodshape. "

He took out the slip of paper on which he had jotted down Steve'stelevector code number and transferred the information to an applicationblank. 

"This system, " Alan said. "It means no one can possibly hide anywhere onEarth unless he removes his televector transmitter. "

"You can't do that, though. Strictly illegal. An alarm goes out wheneversomeone gets more than six inches from his transmitter, and he's pickedup on suspicion. It's an automatic cancellation of your work card ifyou try to fool with your transmitter--or if you're Free Status a fineof ten thousand credits. "

"And if you can't pay the fine?"

"Then you work it off in Government indenture, at a thousand credits ayear--chopping up rocks in the Antarctica Penitentiary. The system'sflawless. It _has_ to be. With Earth as overpopulated as it is, you needsome system of tracking down people--otherwise crime would be ten timesas prevalent as it is now. "

"There still is crime?"

"Oh, sure. There's always somebody who needs food bad enough to rob forit, even though it means a sure arrest. Murder's a little less common. "Hawkes fed the requisition slip into the slot. "You'd be surprised whata deterrent the televector registry system is. It's not so easy to runoff to South America and hide when anybody at all can come in here andfind out exactly where you are. "

A moment went by. Then the slot clicked and a glossy pink slip camerolling out. 

Alan looked at it. It said:

 TELEVECTOR REGISTRY 21 May 3876 Location of Donnell Steve, YC83-10j6490k37618 Time: 1643:21

There followed a street map covering some fifteen square blocks, and abright red dot was imprinted in the center of the map. 

Hawkes glanced at the map and smiled. "I thought that was where he wouldbe!"

"Where's that?"

"68th Avenue and 423rd Street. "

"Is that where he lives?" Alan asked. 

"Oh, no. The televector tells you where he is right now. I'd venture tosay that was his--ah--place of business. "

Alan frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"That happens to be the address of the Atlas Games Parlor. Your brotherSteve probably spends most of his working day there, when he has enoughcash to get in. I know the place. It's a cheap joint where the payoffsare low but easy. It's the kind of place a low-budget man wouldfrequent. "

"You mean Steve's a gambler?"

Hawkes smiled. "Most Free Status men are. It's one of the few ways wecan earn a living without getting a work card. There isn't any gamblers'guild. There are a few other ways, too, but they're a lot less savory, and the televector surveillance makes it hard for a man to stay inbusiness for long. "

Alan moistened his lips. "What do _you_ do?"

"Gamble. I'm in the upper brackets, though. As I say: some of us havethe knack. I doubt if your brother does, though. After nine years hewouldn't still be working the Atlas if he had any dough. "

Alan shrugged that off. "How do we get there? I'd like to go right away. I----"

"Patience, lad, " Hawkes murmured. "There's plenty of time for that. Whendoes your ship leave?"

"Couple of days. "

"Then we don't need to rush right over to the Atlas now. Let's get somefood in ourselves first. Then a good night's rest. We can go over theretomorrow. "

"But my brother----"

"Your brother, " Hawkes said, "has been in York City for nine years, andI'll bet he's spent every night for the last eight of them sitting inthe Atlas. He'll keep till tomorrow. Let's get something to eat. "

_Chapter Eight_

They ate in a dark and unappealing restaurant three blocks from theCentral Directory Matrix Building. The place was crowded, as all Earthplaces seemed to be. They stood on line for nearly half an hour beforebeing shown to a grease-stained table in the back. 

The wall clock said 1732. 

A robowaiter approached them, holding a menu board in its metal hands. Hawkes leaned forward and punched out his order; Alan took slightlylonger about it, finally selecting protein steak, synthocoffee, andmixed vegetables. The robot clicked its acknowledgement and moved on tothe next table. 

"So my brother's a gambler, " Alan began. 

Hawkes nodded. "You say it as if you were saying, _so my brother's apickpocket_, or _so my brother's a cutpurse_. It's a perfectlylegitimate way of making a living. " Hawkes' eyes hardened suddenly, andin a flat quiet voice added, "The way to stay out of trouble on Earth isto avoid being preachy, son. This isn't a pretty world. There are toomany people on it, and not many can afford the passage out to GammaLeonis IV or Algol VII or some of the nice uncluttered colony-worlds. Sowhile you're in York City keep your eyes wide and your mouth zippered, and don't turn your nose up at the sordid ways people make theirlivings. "

Alan felt his face go red, and he was happy to have the trays of foodarrive at that moment, causing some sort of distraction. "Sorry, Max. Ididn't mean to sound preachy. "

"I know, kid. You lead a pretty sheltered life on those starships. Andnobody can adjust to Earthside life in a day. How about a drink?"

Alan started to say that he didn't drink, but kept the words back. Hewas on Earth, now, not aboard the _Valhalla_; he wasn't required to keepship's regs. And he didn't want to be trying to look superior. "Okay. How about Scotch--is that the stuff MacIntosh was drinking?"

"Fair enough, " Hawkes said. 

He signalled for a robot waiter, and after a moment the robot slitheredup to them. Hawkes punched a lever on the robot's stomach and the metalcreature began to click and glow. An instant later a panel in itsstomach slid open and two glasses appeared within. The robot's wirytentacles reached in, took out the drinks, and set them on the table. Hawkes dropped a coin in a slot in the robot's side, and the machinebustled away, its service completed. 

"There you are, " Hawkes said, pointing to the glass of amber-coloredliquid. "Drink up. " As if to set an example he lifted his own drink andtossed it down in one gulp, with obvious pleasure. 

Alan picked up the little glass and held it before his eyes, staring atthe man opposite him through its translucent depths. Hawkes appearedoddly distorted when viewed through the glass. 

He grinned. He tried to propose a toast, but couldn't think of anyappropriate words, so he simply upended the glass and drained itscontents. The stuff seemed to burn its way down his throat and explodein his stomach; the explosion rose through his gullet and into hisbrain. For a moment he felt as if the top of his head had been blownoff. His eyes watered. 

"Pretty potent stuff!"

"It's the best there is, " Hawkes said. "Those boys really know theformulas. "

Alan felt a wave of dizziness, but it passed quickly; all that was leftwas a pleasant inner warmth, now. He pulled his tray toward him andattacked the synthetic meat and vegetables. 

He ate quietly, making no attempt at conversation. Soft music bubbled uparound them. He thought about his brother. So Steve was a gambler! Anddoing poorly at it, Hawkes said. He wondered if Steve would want to goback on the ship. He wondered also how it would be if Steve did agree togo back. 

The old comradeship would be gone, he realized sadly. They had sharedeverything for seventeen years, grown up together, played together, worked together. Up till six weeks ago they had been so close that Alancould almost read Steve's mind, and Steve Alan's. They made a good team. 

But that was finished, now. Steve would be a stranger to him aboard the_Valhalla_--an older, perhaps wiser man, with nine solid years of toughEarther life behind him. He would not be able to help but regard Alan asa kid, a greenhorn; it was natural. They would never be comfortable ineach other's presence, with the old easy familiarity that was so closeto telepathy. That nine-year gulf would see to that. 

"Thinking about your brother, aren't you?"

Alan blinked. "How did you know?"

Grinning, Hawkes said, "A gambler has to know how to figure things. Andit's written in permoscript all over your forehead anyway. You'rewondering what the first face-to-face meeting's going to be like. I'llbet on it. "

"I won't cover the bet. You'd win. "

"You want to know how it'll be? I can tell you, Alan: you'll feel sick. Sick and bewildered and ashamed of the guy who used to be your brother. But that'll pass. You'll look behind the things the nine years did tohim, and you'll see your brother back there. He'll see you, too. Itwon't be as bad as you're expecting. "

Somehow Alan felt relieved. "You're sure of that?"

Hawkes nodded. "You know, I'm taking such a personal interest in thisbusiness because I've got a brother too. _Had_ a brother. "

"Had?"

"Kid about your age. Same problem I had, too: no guild. We were borninto the street sweepers' guild, but neither of us could go for that, sowe checked out and took Free Status. I went into gambling. He hungaround the Enclave. He always wanted to be a spacer. "

"What happened to him?"

"He pulled a fast one. Starship was in town and looking for a newgalley-boy. Dave did some glib talking and got aboard. It was a flukething, but he made it. "

"Which ship?" Alan asked. 

"_Startreader_. Bound out on a hop to Beta Crucis XVIII. 465light-years. " Hawkes smiled faintly. "He left a year, year and a halfago. The ship won't be back on Earth again for nine hundred thirty yearsor so. I don't figure to be around that long. " He shook his head. "Let'sget out of here. People waiting for tables. "

Out in the street again, Alan noticed that the sun was low in the sky;it was past 1800, and getting along toward evening. But the streets werenot getting dark. From everywhere a soft glow was beginning toradiate--from the pavement, the buildings, everywhere. It was a gentlegleaming brightness that fell from the air; there was no perceptiblechange from day-illumination to night-illumination. 

But it was getting late. And they would miss him back at theEnclave--unless Captain Donnell had discovered that Alan had gone intothe Earther city, in which case he wouldn't be missed at all. Alanremembered sharply the way the Captain had calmly blotted the name ofhis son Steve from the _Valhalla's_ roster as if Steve had neverexisted. 

"Are we going to go over to the Atlas now?"

Hawkes shook his head. "Not unless you want to go in there alone?"

"Huh?"

"I can't go in there with you. I've got an A card, and that's a Class Cjoint. "

"You mean even gambling places are classified and regulated andeverything?"

Hawkes nodded. "It has to be that way. This is a very complicatedsociety you've stumbled into, Alan. Look: I'm a first-rate gamesman. That's not boasting; it's empirical truth proven over and over againduring the course of a fifteen-year career. I could make a fortunecompeting against beginners and dubs and has-beens, so they legislateagainst me. You make a certain annual income from gambling and you gointo Class A, and then you can't enter any of the lower-class jointslike the Atlas. You slip under the Class A minimum three years in a rowand you lose your card. I stay over the minimum. "

"So I'll have to go after Steve myself. Well, in that case, thanks forall the help, and if you'll show me which Shoot I take to get to theAtlas----"

"Not so fast, son. " Hawkes grasped Alan's wrist. "Even in a Class C dumpyou can lose plenty. And you can't just stand around hunting for yourbrother. Unless you're there as a learner you'll have to play. "

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"I'll take you to a Class A place tonight. You can come in as a learner;they all know me. I'll try to show you enough about the game so youdon't get rooked. Then you can stay over at my place and tomorrow we'llgo up to the Atlas and look around for your brother. I'll have to waitoutside, of course. "

Alan shrugged. He was beginning to realize he was a little nervous aboutthe coming meeting with Steve--and perhaps, he thought, a little extradelay would be useful. And he still had plenty of time to get back tothe _Valhalla_ after he saw Steve, even if he stayed in the cityovernight. 

"Well?" Hawkes said. 

"Okay. I'll go with you. "

This time they took the Undertube, which they reached by following aglowing sign and then an underground passageway. Alan rode down behindHawkes on the moving ramp and found himself in a warm, brightly-litunderground world with stores, restaurants, newsboys hawking telefaxsheets, milling swarms of homebound commuters. 

They reached the entrance to a tube and Hawkes handed him a small ovalobject with figures engraved on it. "That's your tube-token. It goes inthe slot. "

They passed through the turnstile and followed signs indicating the WestSide Tube. The tube was a long sleek affair, windowless, shaped like abullet. The tube was already packed with commuters when they got aboard;there were no empty seats, of course, and everyone seemed to be jostlingeveryone else for the right to stand upright. The sign at the end of thetube said, _Tube X#3174-WS_. 

The trip took only a few minutes of seemingly effortless gliding, andthen they emerged far on the other side of the giant city. Theneighborhood they were in was considerably less crowded; it had littleof the mad hubbub of the downtown district. 

A neon sign struck his eyes at once: SUPERIOR GAMES PARLOR. Under thatin smaller letters was: CLASS A ESTABLISHMENT. A robot stood outside, agleaming replica of the one he had tussled with earlier in the day. 

"Class A only, " the robot said as they came near. "This Games Parlor isfor Class A only. "

Hawkes stepped around him and broke the photo-contact on the door. Alanfollowed him in. 

The place was dimly lit, as all Earther pleasure-places seemed to be. Alan saw a double row of tables spreading to the back of the parlor. Ateach table was an earnest-looking citizen hunched over a board, watchingthe pattern of lights in front of him come and go, change and shift. 

Another robot glided up to them. "May I see your card, please?" Itpurred. 

Hawkes passed his card before the robot's photonic scanners and therobot clicked acknowledgement, stepping to one side and letting Hawkespass. It turned to Alan and said, "May I see your card, please?"

"I don't----"

"He's with me, " Hawkes said. "A learner. "

A man in a dirty gray smock came up to them. "Evening, Max. Hinesy washere already and told me you weren't coming in tonight. "

"I wasn't, but I changed my mind. I brought a learner along withme--friend of mine name of Alan Donnell. This is Joe Luckman, Alan. Heruns this place. "

Luckman nodded absently to Alan, who mumbled a greeting in return. 

"Guess you want your usual table?" Luckman asked. 

"If it's open, " Hawkes said. 

"Been open all evening. "

Luckman led them down the long aisle to the back of the big hall, wherethere was a vacant table with one seat before it. Hawkes slid smoothlyinto the seat and told Alan to stand behind him and watch carefully. 

"We'll start at the beginning of the next round, " he said. 

Alan looked around. Everywhere men were bent over the patterns of lightson the boards before them, with expressions of fierce concentration ontheir faces. Far in the corner Alan saw the pudgy figure of MacIntosh, the Keeper of the Records; MacIntosh was bathed in his own sweat, andsat rigid as if hypnotized. 

Hawkes nudged him. "Keep your eyes on me. The others don't matter. I'mready to get started. "

_Chapter Nine_

Hawkes took a coin from his pocket and dropped it in a slot at the sideof the board. It lit up. A crazy, shifting pattern of colored lightspassed over it, restless, never pausing. 

"What happens now?"

"You set up a mathematical pattern with these keys, " Hawkes said, pointing to a row of enamelled studs along the side of the machine. "Then the lights start flashing, and as soon as they flash--at random, of course--into the pattern you've previously set up, you're the winner. The skill of the game comes in predicting the kind of pattern that willbe the winning one. You've got to keep listening to the numbers that thecroupier calls off, and fit them into your sequence. "

Suddenly a bell rang loudly, and the board went dead. Alan looked aroundand saw that all the other boards in the hall were dark as well. 

The man on the rostrum in the center of the hall cleared his throat andsang out, "Table 403 hits us for a hundred! 403! One hundred!"

A pasty-faced bald man at a table near theirs rose with a broad grin onhis face and went forward to collect. Hawkes rapped sharply on the sideof the table to get Alan's attention. 

"Look here, now. You have to get a head start. As soon as the boardslight up again, I have to begin setting up my pattern. I'm competingagainst everyone else here, you see. And the quickest man wins, usually. Of course, blind luck sometimes brings you a winner--but not veryoften. "

Alan nodded and watched carefully as Hawkes' fingers flew nimbly overthe controlling studs the instant the tables lit for the next round. Theothers nearby were busy doing the same thing, but few of them set aboutit with the air of cocky jauntiness that Hawkes wore. 

Finally he stared at the board in satisfaction and sat back. Thecroupier pounded three times with a little gavel and said, "103sub-prime 5. "

Hastily Hawkes made a correction in his equation. The lights on theboard flickered and faded, moving faster than Alan could see. 

"377 third-quadrant 7. "

Again a correction. Hawkes sat transfixed, staring intently at theboard. The other players were similarly entranced, Alan saw. He realizedit was possible for someone to become virtually hypnotized by the game, to spend days on end sitting before the board. 

He forced himself to follow Hawkes' computations as number after numberwas called off. He began to see the logical pattern of the game. 

It was a little like astrogation, in which he had had the requiredpreliminary instruction. When you worked out a ship's course, you had tokeep altering it to allow for course deflection, effects of planetarymagnetic fields, meteor swarms, and such obstacles--and you had to beone jump ahead of the obstacles all the time. 

It was the same here. The pilot board at the croupier's rostrum had aprearranged mathematical pattern on it. The idea of the game was to setup your own board in the identical pattern. As each succeedingcoordinate on the graph was called out, you recomputed in terms of thenew probabilities, rubbing out old equations and substituting new ones. 

There was always the mathematical chance that a pattern set up at randomwould be identical to the master control pattern--but that was a prettyslim chance. It took brains to win at this game. The man whose board wasfirst to match the pilot pattern won. 

Hawkes worked quietly, efficiently, and lost the first four rounds. Alancommiserated. But the gambler snapped, "Don't waste your pity. I'm stillexperimenting. As soon as I've figured out the way the numbers arerunning tonight, I'll start raking it in. "

It sounded boastful to the starman, but Hawkes won on the fifth round, matching the hidden pattern in only six minutes. The previous fourrounds had taken from nine to twelve minutes before a winner appeared. The croupier, a small, sallow-faced chap, shoved a stack of coins and afew bills at Hawkes when he went to the rostrum to claim his winnings. Alow murmur rippled through the hall; Hawkes had evidently beenrecognized. 

His take was a hundred credits. In less than an hour, he was alreadyseventy-five credits to the good. Hawkes' sharp eyes glinted brightly;he was in his element now, and enjoying it. 

The sixth round went to a bespectacled round-faced man three tables tothe left, but Hawkes won a hundred credits each on the seventh andeighth rounds, then lost three in a row, then plunged for a heavy stakein his ninth round and came out ahead by five hundred credits. 

So Hawkes had won four times in nine rounds, Alan thought. And therewere at least a hundred people in the hall. Even assuming the gamblerdid not always have the sort of luck he was having now, that meant mostpeople did not win very often, and some did not win at all. 

As the evening went along, Hawkes made it look simple. At one point hewon four rounds in a row; then he dropped off for a while, but came backfor another big pot half an hour later. Alan estimated Hawkes' night'swork had been worth more than a thousand credits so far. 

The gambler pushed his winnings to fourteen hundred credits, while Alanwatched; the fine points of the game became more comprehensible to himwith each passing moment, and he longed to sit down at the tablehimself. That was impossible, he knew; this was a Class A parlor, and arank beginner such as himself could not play. 

But then Hawkes began to lose. Three, four, five rounds in a row slippedby without a win. At one point Hawkes committed an elementary mistake inarithmetic that made Alan cry out; Hawkes turned and silenced him with afierce bleak scowl, and Alan went red. 

Six rounds. Seven. Eight. Hawkes had lost nearly a hundred of hisfourteen hundred credits. Luck and skill seemed to have deserted himsimultaneously. After the eleventh consecutive losing round, Hawkes rosefrom the table, shaking his head bitterly. 

"I've had enough. Let's get out of here. "

He pocketed his winnings--still a healthy twelve hundred credits, despite his late-evening slump--and Alan followed him out of the parlorinto the night. It was late now, past midnight. The streets, fresh andclean, were damp. It had rained while they were in the parlor, and Alanrealized wryly he had been so absorbed by the game that he had not evennoticed. 

Crowds of home-going Yorkers moved rapidly through the streets. As theymade their way to the nearest Undertube terminal, Alan broke thesilence. "You did all right tonight, didn't you?"

"Can't complain. "

"It's too bad you had that slump right at the end. If you'd quit half anhour earlier you'd be two hundred credits richer. "

Hawkes smiled. "If you'd been born a couple of hundred years later, you'd be a lot smarter. "

"What is that supposed to mean?" Alan felt annoyed by Hawkes' remark. 

"Simply that I lost deliberately toward the end. " They turned into theUndertube station and headed for the ticket windows. "It's part of asmart gambler's knowhow to drop a few credits deliberately now andthen. "

"Why?"

"So the jerks who provide my living keep on coming back, " Hawkes saidbluntly. "I'm good at that game. Maybe I'm the best there is. I can feelthe numbers with my hands. If I wanted to, I could win four out of fivetimes, even at a Class A place. "

Alan frowned. "Then why don't you? You could get rich!"

"I _am_ rich, " Hawkes said in a tone that made Alan feel tremendouslyfoolish. "If I got much richer too fast I'd wind up with a soft burn inthe belly from a disgruntled customer. Look here, boy: how long would_you_ go back to that casino if one player took 80% of the pots, and ahundred people competed with you for the 20% he left over? You'd winmaybe once a month, if you played full time every day. In a short timeyou'd be broke, unless you quit playing first. So I ease up. I let theothers win about half the time. I don't want _all_ the money the mintturns out--just some of it. It's part of the economics of the game tolet the other guys take a few pots. "

Alan nodded. He understood. "And you don't want to make them too jealousof you. So you made sure you lost consistently for the final half houror so, and that took the edge off your earlier winning in their minds. "

"That's the ticket!"

The Undertube pulled out of the station and shot bullet-like through itsdark tunnel. Silently, Alan thought about his night's experience. He sawhe still had much, very much to learn about life on Earth. 

Hawkes had a gift--the gift of winning. But he didn't abuse that gift. He concealed it a little, so the people who lacked his talent did notget too jealous of him. Jealousy ran high on Earth; people here ledshort ugly lives, and there was none of the serenity and friendliness oflife aboard a starship. 

He felt very tired, but it was just physical fatigue; he felt wide awakementally. Earth life, for all its squalor and brutality, wastremendously exciting compared with shipboard existence. It was with amomentary pang of something close to disappointment that he rememberedhe would have to report back to the _Valhalla_ in several days; therewere so many fascinating aspects of Earth life he still wanted toexplore. 

The Undertube stopped at a station labelled _Hasbrouck_. "This is wherewe get off, " Hawkes told him. 

They took a slidewalk to street level. The street was like a canyon, with towering walls looming up all around. And some of the giganticbuildings seemed quite shabby-looking by the street-light. Obviouslythey were in a less respectable part of the city. 

"This is Hasbrouck, " Hawkes said. "It's a residential section. Andthere's where I live. "

He pointed to the tarnished chrome entrance of one of the biggest andshabbiest of the buildings on the street. "Be it ever so humble, there'sno place like North Hasbrouck Arms. It's the sleaziest, cheapest, mostrun-down tenement in one hemisphere, but I love it. It's a real palace. "

Alan followed him through a gate that had once been imposing; now itswung open rather rustily as they broke the photobeam in front of it. The lobby was dark and dimly lit, and smelled faintly musty. 

Alan was unprepared for the shabbiness of the house where the gamblerlived. A moment after he spoke, he realized the question was highlyimpertinent, but by then it was too late: "I don't understand, Max. Ifyou make so much money gambling, why do you live in a place like this?Aren't there any better--I mean----"

An unreadable expression flitted briefly across the gambler's lean face. "I know what you mean. Let's just say that the laws of this planetdiscriminate slightly against Free Status people like yours truly. Theyrequire us to live in approved residences. "

"But this is practically a slum. "

"Forget the _practically_. This is the raw end of town, and no denyingit. But I have to live here. " They entered a creaky old elevatordecorated with too much chrome, most of it chipped, and Hawkes pressed_106_. "When I first moved in here, I made up my mind I'd bribe my wayinto a fancier neighborhood as soon as I had the cash. But by the time Ihad enough to spare I didn't feel like moving, you see. I'm sort oflazy. "

The elevator stopped with a jarring jolt at the hundred-sixth floor. They passed down a narrow, poorly-lit corridor. Hawkes paused suddenlyin front of a door, pressed his thumb against the doorplate, and waitedas it swung open in response to the imprint of his fingerprints againstthe sensitive electronic grid. 

"Here we are, " he said. 

It was a three-room apartment that looked almost as old and asdisreputable as the rooms in the Enclave. But the furniture was new andattractive; these were not the rooms of a poor man. An elaborate audiosystem took up one entire wall; elsewhere, Alan saw books of all kinds, tapes, a tiny mounted globe of light-sculpture within whose crystalinterior abstract colors flowed kaleidoscopically, a handsome robot bar. 

Hawkes gestured Alan to a seat; Alan chose a green lounge-chair withquivering springs and stretched out. He did not want to go to sleep; hewanted to stay up half the night and talk. 

The gambler busied himself at the bar a moment and returned with twodrinks. Alan looked at the glass a moment: the drink was bright yellowin color, sparkling. He sipped it. The flavor was gentle but striking, amixture of two or three tastes and textures that chased each other roundAlan's tongue. 

"I like it. What is it?"

"Wine from Antares XIII. I bought it for a hundred credits a bottlelast year. Still have three bottles left, too. I go easy on it; the nextship from Antares XIII won't be in for fourteen more years. "

The drink made Alan mellow and relaxed. They talked a while, and hehardly noticed the fact that the time was getting along toward 0300 now, long past his shiptime bunk-hour. He didn't care. He listened to everyword Hawkes had to say, drinking it in with the same delight he feltwhen drinking the Antarean wine. Hawkes was a complex, many-facetedcharacter; he seemed to have been everywhere on Earth, done everythingthe planet had to offer. And yet there was no boastfulness in his toneas he spoke of his exploits; he was simply stating facts. 

Apparently his income from gambling was staggering; he averaged nearly athousand credits a night, night in and night out. But a note ofplaintiveness crept into his voice: success was boring him, he had nofurther goals to shoot for. He stood at the top of his profession, andthere were no new worlds for him to conquer. He had seen and doneeverything, and lamented it. 

"I'd like to go to space someday, " he remarked. "But of course that'sout. I wouldn't want to rip myself away from the year 3876 forever. Youdon't know what I'd give to see the suns come up over Albireo V, or towatch the thousand moons of Capella XVI. But I can't do it. " He shookhis head gravely. "Well, I better not dream. I like Earth and I like thesort of life I lead. And I'm glad I ran into you, too--we'll make a goodteam, you and me, Donnell. "

Alan had been lulled by the sound of Hawkes' voice--but he snapped toattention now, surprised. "Team? What are you talking about?"

"I'll take you on as my protege. Make a decent gambler out of you. Setyou up. We can go travelling together, see the world again. You've beento space; you can tell me what it's like out there. And----"

"Hold on, " Alan said sharply. "You've got things mixed up a little bit. I'm going to Procyon on the _Valhalla_ at the end of this week. Iappreciate everything you've done for me, but if you think I'm going tojump ship permanently and spend the rest of my life----"

"You'll stay on Earth, all right, " Hawkes said confidently. "You're inlove with the place. You know yourself you don't want to spend the nextseven decades of your life shuttling around in your old man's starship. You'll check out and stay here. I know you will. "

"I'll bet you I don't!"

"That bet is herewith covered, " Hawkes drawled. "I never pass up a surething. Is ten to one okay--your hundred against my thousand that you'llstay?"

Alan scowled angrily. "I don't want to bet with you, Max. I'm going backon the _Valhalla_. I----"

"Go ahead. Take my money, if you're so sure. "

"All right, I will! A thousand credits won't hurt me!" Suddenly he hadno further desire to listen to Hawkes talk; he rose abruptly and gulpeddown the remainder of his drink. 

"I'm tired. Let's get some sleep. "

"Fair enough, " Hawkes said. He got up, touched a button in the wall, anda panel slid back, exposing a bed. "You sack out here. I'll wake you inthe morning and we'll go looking for your brother Steve. "

_Chapter Ten_

Alan woke early the next morning, but it was Rat, not Hawkes, who pulledhim out of sleep. The little extra-terrestrial was nibbling on his ear. 

Bleary-eyed, Alan sat up and blinked. "Oh--it's you. I thought you wereon a silence strike. "

"There wasn't anything I wanted to say, so I kept quiet. But I want tosay some things now, before your new friend wakes up. "

The Bellatrician had been silent all the past evening, tagging alongbehind Alan and Hawkes like a faithful pet, but keeping his mouthclosed. "Go ahead and say them, then, " Alan told him. 

"I don't like this fellow Hawkes. I think you're in for trouble if youstick with him. "

"He's going to take me to the Atlas to get Steve. "

"You can get to the Atlas yourself. He's given you all the help you'llneed. "

Alan shook his head. "I'm no baby. I can take care of myself, without_your_ help. "

The little alien creature shrugged. "Suit yourself. But I'll tell youone thing, Alan: I'm going back to the _Valhalla_, whether you are ornot. I don't like Earth, or Hawkes either. Remember that. "

"Who said I was staying here? Didn't you hear me bet Max that I'd goback?"

"I heard you. I say you're going to lose that bet. I say this Hawkes isgoing to fast-talk you into staying here--and if I had any need formoney I'd put down a side-bet on Hawkes' side. "

Alan laughed. "You think you know me better than I know myself. I neverfor a minute thought of jumping ship. "

"Has my advice ever steered you wrong? I'm older than you are, Alan, andten or twenty times smarter. I can see where you're heading. And----"

Alan grew suddenly angry. "Nag, nag, nag! You're worse than an oldwoman! Why don't you keep quiet the way you did last night, and leave mealone? I know what I'm doing, and when I want your advice I'll ask forit. "

"Have it your own way, " Rat said. His tone was mildly reproachful. Alanfelt abashed at having scolded the little alien that way, but he did notknow how to make proper amends; besides, he _was_ annoyed at Rat'spreachiness. He and Rat had been together too long. The Bellatricianprobably thought he was still only ten years old and in need of constantadvice. 

He rolled over and went back to sleep. About an hour later, he wasawakened again, this time by Hawkes. He dressed and they ate--good realfood, no synthetics, served by Hawkes' autochef--and then set out forthe Atlas Games Parlor, 68th Avenue and 423rd Street, in Upper YorkCity. The time was 1327 when they emerged on the street. Hawkes assuredhim that Steve would already be at "work"; most unsuccessful gamblersstarted making the rounds of the parlors in early afternoon. 

They took the Undertube back to the heart of the city and kept going, into the suburb of Upper York. Getting out at the 423rd Street terminal, they walked briskly through the narrow crowded streets toward 68thAvenue. 

When they were a block away Alan spotted the sign, blinking on and offin watery red letters: ATLAS GAMES PARLOR. A smaller sign proclaimed theparlor's Class C status, which allowed any mediocre player to make useof its facilities. 

As they drew near Alan felt a tingle of excitement. This was what he hadcome to the Earther city for in the first place--to find Steve. Forweeks he had been picturing the circumstances of this meeting; now itwas about to take place. 

The Atlas was similar to the other games parlor where Alan had had theset-to with the robohuckster; it was dark-windowed and a shining bluerobot stood outside, urging passersby to step inside and try their luck. Alan moistened his dry lips; he felt cold and numb inside. He won't bethere, he thought; he won't be there. 

Hawkes took a wad of bills from his wallet. "Here's two hundred creditsfor you to use at the tables while you're looking around. I'll have towait outside. There'd be a royal uproar if a Class A man ever set footinside a place like the Atlas. "

Alan smiled nervously. He was pleased that Hawkes was unable to comewith him; he wanted to handle the problem by himself, for a change. Andhe was not anxious for the gambler to witness the scene between him andSteve. 

_If_ Steve were inside, that is. 

He nodded tightly and walked toward the door. The robohuckster outsidechattered at him, "Come right on, sir, step inside. Five credits can getyou a hundred here. Right this way. "

"I'm going, " Alan said. He passed through the photobeam and into thegames parlor. Another robot came sliding up to him and scanned hisfeatures. 

"This is a Class C establishment, sir. If your card is any higher thanClass C you cannot compete here. Would you mind showing me your card, sir?"

"I don't have any. I'm an unrated beginner. " That was what Hawkes hadtold him to say. "I'd like a single table, please. "

He was shown to a table to the left of the croupier's booth. The Atlaswas a good bit dingier than the Class A parlor he had been in the nightbefore; its electroluminescent light-panels fizzed and sputtered, casting uncertain shadows here and there. A round was in progress;figures were bent busily over their boards, altering their computationsand changing their light-patterns. 

Alan slid a five-credit piece into the slot and, while waiting for theround to finish and the next to begin, looked around at his fellowpatrons. In the semi-dark that prevailed it was difficult to make outfaces. He would have trouble recognizing Steve. 

A musky odor hung low over the hall, sweet, pungent, yet somehowunpleasant. He realized he had experienced that odor before, and triedto remember--yes. Last night in the other games parlor he had smelled awisp of the fragrance, and Hawkes had told him it was a narcoticcigarette. It lay heavy in the stale air of the Class C parlor. 

Patrons stared with fanatic intensity at the racing pattern of lightsbefore them. Alan glanced from one to the next. A baldhead whose domeglinted bright gold in the dusk knotted his hands together in an anguishof indecision. A slim, dreamy-eyed young man gripped the sides of thetable frenziedly as the numbers spiralled upward. A fat woman in herlate forties, hopelessly dazed by the intricate game, slumped wearily inher seat. 

Beyond that he could not see. There were other patrons on the far sideof the rostrum; perhaps Steve was over there. But it was forbidden foranyone to wander through the rows of tables searching for a particularplayer. 

The gong rang, ending the round. "Number 322 wins a hundred credits, "barked the croupier. 

The man at Table 322 shambled forward for his money. He walked with atwisted shuffle; his body shook palsiedly. Hawkes had warned him ofthese, too--the dreamdust addicts, who in the late stages of theiraddiction became hollow shells of men, barely able to walk. He took hishundred credits and returned to his table without smiling. Alanshuddered and looked away. Earth was not a pretty world. Life was goodif you had the stream running with you, as Hawkes did--but for eachsuccessful one like Hawkes, how many fought unsuccessfully against thecurrent and were swept away into dreamdust or worse?

Steve. He looked down the row for Steve. 

And then the board lit up again, and for the first time he was playing. 

He set up a tentative pattern; golden streaks flitted across the board, mingling with red and blue blinkers. Then the first number came. Alanintegrated it hastily and realized he had constructed a totallyworthless pattern; he wiped his board clean and set up new figures, based on the one number he had. Already, he knew, he was hopelessly farbehind the others. 

But he kept with it as the minutes crawled past. Sweat dribbled down hisface and neck. He had none of Hawkes' easy confidence with the board'scontrols; this game was hard work for a beginner. Later, perhaps, someof the steps would become automatic, but now----

"Seventy-eight sub twelve over thirteen, " came the droning instructions, and Alan pulled levers and twisted ratchets to keep his pattern true. Hesaw the attraction the game held for the people of Earth: it requiredsuch deep concentration, such careful attention, that one had no time toponder other problems. It was impossible to think and compete at thesame time. The game offered perfect escape from the harsh realities ofEarther existence. 

"Six hundred twelve sigma five. "

Again Alan recompensated. His nerves tingled; he felt he must be closeto victory. All thought of what he had come here for slipped away; Stevewas forgotten. Only the flashing board counted, only the game. 

Five more numbers went by. Suddenly the gong rang, indicating thatsomeone had achieved a winning pattern, and it was like the fall of aheadsman's axe to Alan. He had lost. That was all he could think of. Hehad lost. 

The winner was the dreamy-eyed youth at Table 166, who accepted hiswinnings without a word and took his seat. As Alan drew out anotherfive-credit piece for the next round, he realized what he was doing. 

He was being caught up in the nerve-stretching excitement of the game. He was forgetting Steve, forgetting the waiting Hawkes outside. 

He stretched back in his seat and peered as far down the row as he couldsee. No sign of Steve there; he had to be on the other side of thecroupier. Alan decided to do his best to win; that way he could advanceto the rostrum and scan the other half of the hall. 

But the game fled by too quickly; he made a false computation on theeleventh number and watched in dismay as his pattern drew further andfurther away from the numbers being called off. He drove himselffuriously, trying to make amends, but it was impossible. The winner wasthe man at Table 217, on the other side. He was a lantern-jawed giantwith the powerful frame of a longshoreman, and he laughed in pleasure ashe collected his money. 

Three more rounds went by; Alan picked up increasing skill at the game, but failed to win. He saw his shortcoming, but could not do anything tohelp it: he was unable to extrapolate ahead. Hawkes was gifted with theknack of being able to extend probable patterns two or three moves intothe future; Alan could only work with the given, and so he never madethe swift series of guesses which led to victory. He had spent nearly anhour in the parlor now, fruitlessly. 

The next round came and went. "Table 111 takes us for a hundred fiftycredits, " came the croupier's cry. Alan relaxed, waiting for the luckywinner to collect and for the next round to begin. 

The winner reached the centrally located rostrum. Alan looked at him. Hewas tall, fairly young--in his thirties, perhaps--with stooped shouldersand a dull glazedness about his eyes. He looked familiar. 

Steve. 

Feeling no excitement now that the quest had reached success, Alanslipped from his seat and made his way around the croupier's rostrum anddown the far aisle. Steve had already taken his seat at Table 111. Alancame up behind him, just as the gong sounded to signal the new round. 

Steve was hunched over the board, calculating with almost desperatefury. Alan touched his shoulder. 

"Steve?"

Without looking up Steve snapped, "Get out of here, whoever you are!Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Steve, I----"

A robot sidled up to Alan and grasped him firmly by the arm. "It isforbidden to disturb the players while they are engaged in the game. Wewill have to eject you from this parlor. "

Angrily Alan broke loose from the robot's grasp and leaned over Steve. He shook him by the shoulder, roughly, trying to shake loose his mindfrom the flickering games board. 

"Steve, look up! It's me--Alan--your brother!"

Steve slapped at Alan's hand as he would at a fly. Alan saw other robotsconverging on him from various points in the room. In a minute they'dhurl him out into the street. 

Recklessly he grabbed Steve by the shoulders and spun him around in hisseat. A curse tumbled from Steve's lips; then he fell strangely silent. 

"You remember me, Steve? Your brother Alan. Your _twin_ brother, once. "

Steve had changed, certainly. His hair was no longer thick and curly; itseemed to have straightened out, and darkened a little. Wrinkles seamedhis forehead; his eyes were deep-set and surrounded by lines. He wasslightly overweight, and it showed. He looked terribly tired. Lookingat him was like looking at a comic mirror that distorted and alteredyour features. But there was nothing comic about Steve's appearance. 

In a hoarse whisper he said, "Alan?"

"Yes. "

Alan felt robot arms grasping him firmly. He struggled to break loose, and saw Steve trying to say something, only no words were coming. Stevewas very pale. 

"Let go of him!" Steve said finally, "He--he wasn't disturbing me. "

"He must be ejected. It is the rule. "

Conflict traced deep lines on Steve's face. "All right, then. We'll bothleave. "

The robots released Alan, who rubbed his arms ruefully. Together theywalked up the aisle and out into the street. 

Hawkes stood waiting there. 

"I see you've found him. It took long enough. "

"M-Max, this is my brother, Steven Donnell. " Alan's voice was shaky withtension. "Steve, this is a friend of mine. Max Hawkes. "

"You don't need to tell me who he is, " Steve said. His voice was deeperand harsher than Alan remembered it. "Every gamesman knows Hawkes. He'sthe best there is. " In the warm daylight, Steve looked even older thanthe twenty-six years that was his chronological age. To Alan's eyes heseemed to be a man who had been kicked around by life, a man who had notyet given up but who knew he didn't stand much of a chance for thefuture. 

And he looked ashamed. The old sparkle was gone from his brother's eyes. Quietly Steve said, "Okay, Alan. You tracked me down. Call me whatevernames you want to call me and let me get about my business. I don't doquite as well as your friend Hawkes, and I happen to be in need of a lotof cash in a hurry. "

"I didn't come to call you names. Let's go someplace where we can talk, "Alan said. "There's a lot for us to talk about. "

_Chapter Eleven_

They adjourned to a small tavern three doors down 68th Avenue from thegames parlor, an old-fashioned tavern with manually operated doors andstuffed moose heads over the bar. Alan and Hawkes took seats next toeach other in a booth in back; Steve sat facing them. 

The barkeep came scuttling out--no robot in here, just a tired-faced oldman--and took their orders. Hawkes called for beer, Steve for whiskey;Alan did not order. 

He sat staring at his brother's oddly changed face. Steve wastwenty-six. From Alan's seventeen-year-old vantage-point, that seemedtremendously old, well past the prime of life. 

He said, "The _Valhalla_ landed on Earth a few days ago. We're bound outfor Procyon in a few days. "

"So?"

"The Captain would like to see you again, Steve. "

Steve stared moodily at his drink without speaking, for a long moment. Alan studied him. Less than two months had passed for Alan since Stevehad jumped ship; he still remembered how his twin had looked. There hadbeen something smouldering in Steve's eyes then, a kind of rebelliousfire, a smoky passion. That was gone now. It had burned out long ago. Inits place Alan saw only tiny red veins--the bloodshot eyes of a man whohad been through a lot, little of it very pleasant. 

"Is that the truth?" Steve asked. "_Would_ he like to see me? Orwouldn't he just prefer to think I never was born at all?"

"No. "

"I know the Captain--Dad--pretty well. Even though I haven't seen him innine years. He'd never forgive me for jumping ship. I don't want to payany visits to the _Valhalla_, Alan. "

"Who said anything about visiting?"

"Then what _were_ you talking about?"

"I was talking about going back into the Crew, " Alan said quietly. 

The words seemed to strike Steve like physical blows. He shuddered alittle and gulped down the drink he held clutched in tobacco-stainedfingers. He looked up at Alan, finally. 

"I can't. It's impossible. Flatly impossible. "

"But----"

Alan felt Hawkes' foot kick him sharply under the table. He caught thehint, and changed the subject. There was time to return to it later. 

"Okay, let's skip it for now. Why don't you tell me about your life onEarth these last nine years?"

Steve smiled sardonically. "There's not much to tell, and what there isis a pretty dull story. I came across the bridge from the Enclave lasttime the _Valhalla_ was in town, and came over into York City all setto conquer the world, become rich and famous, and live happily everafter. Five minutes after I set foot on the Earther side of the river Iwas beaten up and robbed by a gang of roving kids. It was a real finestart. "

He signalled the waiter for another drink. "I guess I must have driftedaround the city for two weeks or more before the police found me andpicked me up for vagrancy. By that time the _Valhalla_ had long sincehoisted for Alpha C--and didn't I wish I was on it! Every night I usedto dream I had gone back on the ship. But when I woke up I always foundout I hadn't. 

"The police gave me an education in the ways of Earther life, completewith rubber hoses and stingrays, and when they were through with me Iknew all about the system of work cards and free status. I didn't have acredit to my name. So I drifted some more. Then I got sick of driftingand tried to find a job, but of course I couldn't buy my way in to anyof the hereditary guilds. Earth has enough people of her own; she's notinterested in finding jobs for kid spacemen who jump ship. 

"So I starved a little. Then I got tired of starving. So about a yearafter I first jumped ship I borrowed a thousand credits from somebodyfoolish enough to lend them, and set myself up as a professional gambleron Free Status. It was the only trade I could find that didn't have anyentrance requirements. "

"Did you do well?"

"Yeah. Very well. At the end of my first six months I was fifteenhundred credits in debt. Then my luck changed; I won three thousandcredits in a single month and got shifted up to Class B. " Steve laughedbitterly. "That was beautiful, up there. Inside of two more months I'dnot only lost my three thousand, I was two thousand more in hock. Andthat's the way it's been going ever since. I borrow here, win a littleto pay him back, or lose a little and borrow from someone else, win alittle, lose a little--round and round and round. A swell life, Alan. And I still dream about the _Valhalla_ once or twice a week. "

Steve's voice was leaden, dreary. Alan felt a surge of pity. Theswashbuckling, energetic Steve he had known might still be there, insidethis man somewhere, but surrounding him were the scars of nine bitteryears on Earth. 

Nine years. It was a tremendous gulf. 

Alan caught his breath a moment. "If you had the chance to go back intothe Crew, no strings attached, no recriminations--would you take it?"

For an instant the old brightness returned to Steve's eyes. "Of course Iwould! But----"

"But what?"

"I owe seven thousand credits, " Steve said. "And it keeps getting worse. That pot I won today, just before you came over to me, that was thefirst take I'd had in three days. Nine years and I'm still a Class Cgambler. We can't all be as good as Hawkes here. I'm lousy--but whatother profession could I go into, on an overcrowded and hostile worldlike this one?"

Seven thousand credits, Alan thought. It was a week's earnings forHawkes--but Steve would probably be in debt the rest of his life. 

"Who do you owe this money to?" Hawkes asked suddenly. 

Steve looked at him. "The Bryson syndicate, mostly. And Lorne Hollis. The Bryson people keep a good eye on me, too. There's a Bryson manthree booths up who follows me around. If they ever saw me going nearthe spacefield they'd be pretty sure to cut me off and ask for theirmoney. You can't welsh on Bryson. "

"Suppose it was arranged that your debts be cancelled, " Hawkes saidspeculatively. 

Steve shook his head. "No. I don't want charity. I know you're a Class Aand seven thousand credits comes easy to you, but I couldn't take it. Skip it. I'm stuck here on Earth for keeps, and I'm resigned to it. Imade my choice, and this is what I got. "

"Listen to reason, " Alan urged. "Hawkes will take care of the money youowe. And Dad will be so happy to see you come back to the shipagain----"

"Like Mars he'll be happy! See me come back, beaten up and ragged, awashed-out old man at twenty-six? No, sir. The Captain blotted me out ofhis mind a long time ago, and he and I don't have any further businesstogether. "

"You're wrong, Steve. He sent me into the Earther city deliberately tofind you. He said to me, 'Find Steve and urge him to come back to theship. ' He's forgiven you completely, " Alan lied. "Everyone's anxious tohave you come back on board. "

For a moment Steve sat silent, indecisive, frowning deeply. Then he madeup his mind. He shook his head. "No--both of you. Thanks, but I don'twant any. Keep your seven thousand, Hawkes. And you, Alan--go back tothe ship and forget all about me. I don't even deserve a second chance. "

"You're wrong!" Alan started to protest, but a second time Hawkes kickedhim hard, and he shut up. He stared curiously at the gambler. 

"I guess that about settles it, " Hawkes observed. "If the man wants tostay, we can't force him. "

Steve nodded. "I have to stay on Earth. And now I'd better get back tothe games parlor--I can't waste any time, you know. Not with a seventhousand credit backlog to make up. "

"Naturally. But there's time for one more drink, isn't there? On me. Maybe you don't want my money, but let me buy you a drink. "

Steve grinned. "Fair enough. "

He started to wave to the bartender, but Hawkes shot out an arm quicklyand blocked off the gesture. "He's an old man and he's tired. I'll go tothe bar and order. " And before Steve could protest, Hawkes had slippedsmoothly out of the booth and was on his way forward to the bar. 

Alan sat facing his brother. He felt pity. Steve had been through a lot;the freedom he had longed for aboard ship had had a heavy price. And wasit freedom, to sit in a crowded games parlor on a dirty little planetand struggle to get out of debt?

There was nothing further he could say to Steve. He had tried, and hehad failed, and Steve would remain on Earth. But it seemed wrong. Steve_did_ deserve a second chance. He had jumped ship and it had been amistake, but there was no reason why he could not return to his oldlife, wiser for the experience. Still, if he refused----

Hawkes came back bearing two drinks--another beer for himself and awhiskey for Steve. He set them out on the table and said, "Well, drinkup. Here's hoping you make Class A and stay there. "

"Thanks, " Steve said, and drained his drink in a single loud gulp. Hiseyes widened; he started to say something, but never got the words out. He slumped down in his seat and his chin thumped ringingly against thetable. 

Alan looked at Hawkes in alarm. "What happened to him? Why'd he passout?"

Hawkes smiled knowingly. "An ancient Earth beverage known as the MickeyFinn. Two drops of a synthetic enzyme in his drink; tasteless, butextremely effective. He'll be asleep for ten hours or more. "

"How'd you arrange it?"

"I told the bartender it was in a good cause, and he believed me. Youwait here, now. I want to talk to that Bryson man about your brother'sdebts, and then we'll spirit him out to the spaceport and dump himaboard the _Valhalla_ before he wakes up. "

Alan grinned. He was going to have to do some explaining to Steve later, but by that time it would be too late; the starship would be well on itsway to Procyon. It was a dirty trick to play, he thought, but it wasjustifiable. In Hawkes' words, it was in a good cause. 

Alan put his arms around his brother's shoulders and gently lifted himout of the chair; Steve was surprisingly light, for all his lack ofcondition. Evidently muscle weighed more than fat, and Steve had gone tofat. Supporting his brother's bulk without much trouble, Alan made hisway toward the entrance to the bar. As he went past the bartender, theold man smiled at him. Alan wondered what Hawkes had said to him. 

Right now Hawkes was three booths up, leaning over and taking part in anurgent whispered conference with a thin dark-faced man in a sharplytailored suit. They reached some sort of agreement; there was ahandshake. Then Hawkes left the booth and slung one of Steve's danglingarms around his own shoulder, easing the weight. 

"There's an Undertube that takes us as far as Carhill Boulevard and thebridge, " Hawkes said. "We can get a ground vehicle there that'll go onthrough the Enclave and out to the spacefield. "

The trip took nearly an hour. Steve sat propped up between Alan andHawkes, and every now and then his head would loll to one side oranother, and he would seem to be stirring; but he never woke. The sightof two men dragging a third along between them attracted not theslightest attention as they left the Undertube and climbed aboard thespacefield bus. Apparently in York City no one cared much about whatwent on; it made no difference to the busy Earthers whether Steve wereunconscious or dead. 

The ground bus took them over the majestic arch of the bridge, rapidlythrough the sleepy Enclave--Alan saw nobody he recognized in thestreets--and through the restricted area that led to the spacefield. 

The spaceport was a jungle of ships, each standing on its tail waitingto blast off. Most of them were small two-man cargo vessels, used intravel between Earth and the colonies on the Moon, Mars, and Pluto, buthere and there a giant starship loomed high above the others. Alan stoodon tiptoes to search for the golden hull of the _Valhalla_, but he wasunable to see it. Since the starship would be blasting off at the end ofthe week, he knew the crew was probably already at work on it, shapingit up for the trip. He belonged on it too. 

He saw a dark green starship standing nearby; the _Encounter_, KevinQuantrell's ship. Men were moving about busily near the big ship, andAlan remembered that it had become obsolete during its last long voyage, and was being rebuilt. 

A robot came sliding up to the three of them as they stood there at theedge of the landing field. 

"Can I help you, please?"

"I'm from the starship _Valhalla_, " Alan said. "I'm returning to theship. Would you take me to the ship, please?"

"Of course. "

Alan turned to Hawkes. The moment had come, much too suddenly. Alan feltRat twitching at his cuff, as if reminding him of something. 

Grinning awkwardly, Alan said, "I guess this is the end of the line, Max. You'd better not go out on the spacefield with us. I--I sort ofwant to thank you for all the help you've given me. I never would havefound Steve without you. And about the bet we made--well, it looks likeI'm going back on my ship after all, so I've won a thousand credits fromyou. But I can't ask for it, of course. Not after what you did forSteve. "

He extended his hand. Hawkes took it, but he was smiling strangely. 

"If I owed you the money, I'd pay it to you, " the gambler said. "That'sthe way I work. The seven thousand I paid for Steve is extra and aboveeverything else. But you haven't won that bet yet. You haven't won ituntil the _Valhalla's_ in space with you aboard it. "

The robot made signs of impatience. Hawkes said, "You'd better convoyyour brother across the field and dump him on his ship. Save thegoodbyes for later. I'll wait right here for you. Right here. "

Alan shook his head. "Sorry, Max, but you're wasting your time bywaiting. The _Valhalla_ has to be readied for blastoff, and once I checkin aboard ship I can't come back to visit. So this is goodbye, righthere. "

"We'll see about that, " Hawkes said. "Ten to one odds. "

"Ten to one, " Alan said. "And you've lost your bet. " But his voice didnot sound very convincing, and as he started off across the field withSteve dragging along beside him he frowned, and did some very intensethinking indeed in the few minutes' time it took him to arrive at theshining _Valhalla_. He was beginning to suspect that Hawkes might begoing to win the bet after all. 

_Chapter Twelve_

He felt a little emotional pang, something like nostalgia, as the_Valhalla_ came into sight, standing by itself tall and proud at the farend of the field. A cluster of trucks buzzed around it, transferringfuel, bringing cargo. He spotted the wiry figure of Dan Kelleher, thecargo chief, supervising and shouting salty instructions to theperspiring men. 

Alan tightened his grip on Steve's arm and moved forward. Kellehershouted, "You men back there, tighten up on that winch and give 'er ahoist! Tighten up, I say! Put some muscle into----" He broke off. "Alan, " he said, in a quiet voice. 

"Hello, Dan. Is my father around?"

Kelleher was staring with frank curiosity at the slumped figure of SteveDonnell. "The Captain's off watch now. Art Kandin's in charge. "

"Thanks, " Alan said. "I'd better go see him. "

"Sure. And----"

Alan nodded. "Yes. That's Steve. "

He passed between the cargo hoists and clambered onto the escalatorrampway that led to the main body of the ship. It rose, conveying himseventy feet upward and through the open passenger hatch to the innersection of the towering starship. 

He was weary from having carried Steve so long. He put the sleeping formdown against a window-seat facing one of the viewscreens, and said toRat, "You stay here and keep watch. If anyone wants to know who he is, tell them the truth. "

"Right enough. "

Alan found Art Kandin where he expected to find him--in the CentralControl Room, posting work assignments for the blastoff tomorrow. Thelanky, pudgy-faced First Officer hardly noticed as Alan stepped upbeside him. 

"Art?"

Kandin turned--and went pale. "Oh--Alan. Where in blazes have you beenthe last two days?"

"Out in the Earther city. Did my father make much of a fuss?"

The First Officer shook his head. "He kept saying you just went out tosee the sights, that you hadn't really jumped ship. But he kept sayingit over and over again, as if he didn't really believe it, as if hewanted to convince himself you were coming back. "

"Where is he now?"

"In his cabin. He's off-watch for the next hour or two. I'll ring him upand have him come down here, I guess. "

Alan shook his head. "No--don't do that. Tell him to meet me on B Deck. "He gave the location of the picture-viewscreen where he had parkedSteve, and Kandin shrugged and agreed. 

Alan made his way back to the viewscreen. Rat looked up at him; he wassitting perched on Steve's shoulder. 

"Anyone bother you?" Alan asked. 

"No one's come by this way since you left, " Rat said. 

"Alan?" a quiet voice said. 

Alan turned. "Hello, Dad. "

The Captain's lean, tough face had some new lines on it; his eyes weredarkly shadowed, and he looked as if he hadn't slept much the nightbefore. But he took Alan's hand and squeezed it warmly--in a fatherlyway, not a Captainly one. Then he glanced at the sleeping form behindAlan. 

"I--went into the city, Dad. And found Steve. "

Something that looked like pain came into Captain Donnell's eyes, butonly for an instant. He smiled. "It's strange, seeing the two of youlike this. So you brought back Steve, eh? We'll have to put him back onthe roster. Why is he asleep? He looks like he's out cold. "

"He is. It's a long story, Dad. "

"You'll have to explain it to me later, then--after blastoff. "

Alan shook his head. "No, Dad. Steve can explain it when he wakes up, tonight. Steve can tell you lots of things. I'm going back to the city. "

"What?"

It was easy to say, now--the decision that had been taking vague formfor several hours, and which had crystallized as he trudged across thespacefield toward the _Valhalla_. "I brought you back Steve, Dad. Youstill have one son aboard ship. I want off. I'm resigning. I want tostay behind on Earth. By our charter you can't deny such a request. "

Captain Donnell moistened his lips slowly. "Agreed, I can't deny. Butwhy, Alan?"

"I think I can do more good Earthside. I want to look for Cavour's oldnotebooks; I think he developed the hyperdrive, and if I stay behind onEarth maybe I can find it. Or else I can build my own. So long, Dad. Andtell Steve that I wish him luck--and that he'd better do the same forme. " He glanced at Rat. "Rat, I'm deeding you to Steve. Maybe if he hadhad you instead of me, he never would have jumped ship in the firstplace. "

He looked around, at his father, at Steve, at Rat. There was not muchelse he could say. And he knew that if he prolonged the farewell scenetoo long, he'd only be burdening his father and himself with the weightof sentimental memory. 

"We won't be back from Procyon for almost twenty years, Alan. You'll bethirty-seven before we return to Earth again. "

Alan grinned. "I have a hunch I'll be seeing you all before then, Dad. Ihope. Give everyone my best. So long, Dad. "

"So long, Alan. "

He turned away and rapidly descended the ramp. Avoiding Kelleher and thecargo crew, for goodbyes would take too long, he trotted smoothly overthe spacefield, feeling curiously lighthearted now. Part of the questwas over; Steve was back on board the _Valhalla_. But Alan knew the realwork was just beginning. He would search for the hyperdrive; perhapsHawkes would help him. Maybe he would succeed in his quest this time, too. He had some further plans, in that event, but it was not time tothink of them now. 

Hawkes was still standing at the edge of the field, and there was athoughtful smile on his face as Alan came running up to him. 

"I guess you won your bet, " Alan said, when he had his breath back. 

"I almost always do. You owe me a hundred credits--but I'll defercollection. "

They made the trip back to York City in virtual silence. Either Hawkeswas being too tactful to ask the reasons for Alan's decision orelse--this seemed more likely, Alan decided--the gambler had alreadymade some shrewd surmises, and was waiting for time to bear him out. Hawkes had known long before Alan himself realized it that he would notleave with the _Valhalla_. 

The Cavour Hyperdrive, that was the rainbow's end Alan would chase now. He would accept Hawkes' offer, become the gambler's protege, learn a fewthing about life. The experience would not hurt him. And always in thefront of his mind he would keep the ultimate goal, of finding aspacedrive that would propel a ship faster than the speed of light. 

At the apartment in Hasbrouck, Hawkes offered him a drink. "To celebrateour partnership, " he explained. 

Alan accepted the drink and tossed it down. It stung, momentarily; hesaw sadly he was never going to make much of a drinking man. He drewsomething from his pocket, and Hawkes frowned. 

"What's that?"

"My Tally. Every spaceman has one. It's the only way we can keep trackof our chronological ages when we're on board ship. " He showed it toHawkes; it read _Year 17 Day 3_. "Every twenty-four hours of subjectivetime that goes by, we click off another day. Every three hundredsixty-five days another year is ticked off. But I guess I won't beneeding this any more. "

He tossed it in the disposal unit. "I'm an Earther now. Every day thatgoes by is just one day; objective time and subjective time are equal. "

Hawkes grinned cheerfully. "A little plastic doodad to tell you how oldyou are, eh? Well, that's all behind you now. " He pointed to a button inthe wall. "There's the operating control for your bed; I'll sleep inback, where I did last night. First thing tomorrow we'll get you adecent set of clothes, so you can walk down the street without havingpeople yell '_Spacer!_' at you. Then I want you to meet a fewpeople--friends of mine. And then we start breaking you in at the ClassC tables. "

 * * * * *

The first few days of life with Hawkes were exciting ones. The gamblerbought Alan new clothing, modern stuff with self-sealing zippers andpressure buttons, made of filmy clinging materials that were incrediblymore comfortable than the rough cloth of his _Valhalla_ uniform. YorkCity seemed less strange to him with each passing hour; he studiedUndertube routes and Overshoot maps until he knew his way around thecity fairly well. 

Each night about 1800 they would eat, and then it was time to go towork. Hawkes' routine brought him to three different Class A gamblingparlors, twice each week; on the seventh day he always rested. For thefirst week Alan followed Hawkes around, standing behind him andobserving his technique. When the second week began, Alan was on hisown, and he began to frequent Class C places near the A parlors Hawkesused. 

But when he asked Hawkes whether he should take out a Free Statusregistration, the gambler replied with a quick, snappish, "Not yet. "

"But why? I'm a professional gambler, since last week. Why shouldn't Iregister?"

"Because you don't need to. It's not required. "

"But I want to. Gosh, Max, I--well, I sort of want to put my name downon something. Just to show I belong here on Earth. I want to register. "

Hawkes looked at him strangely, and it seemed to Alan there was menacein the calm blue eyes. In suddenly ominous tones he said, "I don't wantyou signing your name to anything, Alan. Or registering for Free Status. Got that?"

"Yes, but----"

"No buts! Got it?"

Repressing his anger, Alan nodded. He was used to taking orders from hisshipboard superiors and obeying them. Hawkes probably knew best. In anycase, he was dependent on the older man right now, and did not want toanger him unnecessarily. Hawkes was wealthy; it might take money tobuild a hyperdrive ship, when the time came. Alan was flatlycold-blooded about it, and the concept surprised and amused him when herealized just how single-minded he had become since resigning from the_Valhalla_. 

He turned the single-mindedness to good use at the gaming tables first. During his initial ten days as a professional, he succeeded in losingseven hundred credits of Hawkes' money, even though he did manage to wina three-hundred-credit stake one evening. 

But Hawkes was not worried. "You'll make the grade, Alan. A few moreweeks, days maybe, while you learn the combinations, limber up yourfingers, pick up the knack of thinking fast--you'll get there. "

"I'm glad _you're_ so optimistic. " Alan felt downcast. He had droppedthree hundred credits that evening, and it seemed to him that hisfumbling fingers would never learn to set up the combinations fastenough. He was just like Steve, a born loser, without the knack the gamerequired. "Oh, well, it's your money. "

"And I expect you to double it for me some day. I've got a five-to-onebet out now that you'll make Class B before fall. "

Alan snorted doubtfully. In order to make Class B, he would have to makeaverage winnings of two hundred credits a night for ten days running, orelse win three thousand credits within a month. It seemed a hopelesstask. 

But, as usual, Hawkes won the bet. Alan's luck improved as May passedand June dwindled; at the beginning of July he hit a hot streak when heseemed to be marching up to the winner's rostrum every other round, andthe other Class C patrons began to grumble. The night he came home withsix hundred newly-won credits, Hawkes opened a drawer and took out aslim, sleek neutrino gun. 

"You'd better carry this with you from now on, " the gambler said. 

"What for?"

"They're starting to notice you now. I hear people talking. They knowyou're carrying cash out of the game parlors every night. "

Alan held the cool gray weapon, whose muzzle could spit a deadly streamof energized neutrinos, undetectable, massless, and fatal. "If I'm heldup I'm supposed to use this?"

"Just the first time, " Hawkes said. "If you do the job right, you won'tneed to use it any more. There won't be any second time. "

As it turned out, Alan had no need for the gun, but he carried it withineasy reach whenever he left the apartment. His skill at the gamecontinued to increase; it was, he saw, just like astrogation, and withgrowing confidence he learned to project his moves three and sometimesfour numbers ahead. 

On a warm night in mid-July the proprietor of the games hall Alanfrequented most regularly stopped him as he entered. 

"You're Donnell, aren't you?"

"That's right. Anything wrong?"

"Nothing much, except that I've been tallying up your take the past twoweeks. Comes to close to three thousand credits, altogether. Which meansyou're not welcome around this parlor any more. Nothing personal, son. You'd better carry this with you next time out. "

Alan took the little card the proprietor offered him. It was made ofgray plastic, and imprinted on it in yellow were the letters, CLASS B. He had been promoted. 

_Chapter Thirteen_

Things were not quite so easy in the Class B games parlors. Competitionwas rough. Some of the players were, like Alan, sharp newcomers just upfrom the bottom of the heap; others were former Class A men who weresliding down again, but still did well enough to hang on in Class B. Every day, some of the familiar faces were gone, as one man afteranother failed to meet the continuing qualifications for theintermediary class. 

Alan won fairly steadily--and Hawkes, of course, was a consistent winneron the Class A level. Alan turned his winnings over to the older man, who then allowed him to draw any cash he might need without question. 

The summer rolled on through August--hot and sticky, despite the bestefforts of the local weather-adjustment bureau. The cloud-seedersprovided a cooling rain-shower at about 0100 every night to wash awaythe day's grime. Alan was usually coming home at that time, and he wouldstand in the empty streets letting the rain pelt down on him, andenjoying it. Rain was a novelty for him; he had spent so much of hislife aboard the starship that he had had little experience with it. Hewas looking forward to the coming of winter, and with it snow. 

He hardly ever thought of the _Valhalla_. He disciplined himself to keepthoughts of the starship out of his mind, for he knew that once he beganregretting his decision there would be no stopping. Life on Earth wasendlessly fascinating; and he was confident that someday soon he wouldget a chance to begin tracking down the Cavour hyperdrive. 

Hawkes taught him many things--how to wrestle, how to cheat at cards, how to throw knives. None of the things Alan learned from Hawkes wereproper parts of the education of a virtuous young man--but on Earth, virtue was a negative accomplishment. You were either quick or dead. Anduntil he had an opportunity to start work on the hyperdrive, Alan knewhe had better learn how to survive on Earth. Hawkes was a master ofsurvival techniques; Alan was a good student. 

He had his first test on a muggy night early in September. He had spenthis evening at the Lido, a flossy games parlor in the suburb ofRidgewood, and had come away with better than seven hundred credits--thesecond best single night he had ever had. He felt good about things. Hawkes was working at a parlor far across the city, and so they did notarrange to meet when the evening was over; instead, they planned to comehome separately. Usually they talked for an hour or two each nightbefore turning in, Alan reviewing his evening's work and having Hawkespick out the weak points in his technique and show him the mistakes hehad made. 

Alan reached Hasbrouck about 0030 that evening. There was no moon; andin Hasbrouck the street-lighting was not as efficient as it was in morerespectable areas of York City. The streets were dark. Alan wasperspiring heavily from the humidity. But the faint hum of thecloud-seeders' helicopters could be heard; the evening rain was on theway. He decided to wait outside a while. 

The first drops splashed down at 0045. Alan grinned gleefully as thecool rain washed away the sweat that clung to him; while pedestriansscurried for cover, he gloried in the downpour. 

Darkness lay all around. Alan heard sudden footsteps; a moment later hefelt sharp pressure in the small of his back and a hand gripping hisshoulder. 

A quiet voice said, "Hand over your cash and you won't get hurt. "

Alan froze just an instant. Then the months of Hawkes' training cameinto play. He wiggled his back tentatively to see whether the knife waspenetrating his clothing. Good; it wasn't. 

In one quick motion he whirled and spun away, dancing off to the leftand clubbing down sharply on his opponent's knife-hand. A gruntedexclamation of pain rewarded him. He stepped back two steps; as hisattacker advanced, Alan drove a fist into his stomach and leaped lithelyaway again. This time his hand emerged holding the neutrino gun. 

"Stand where you are or I'll burn you, " he said quietly. Theshadow-shrouded attacker made no move. Cautiously Alan kicked the fallenknife out of his reach without lowering his gun. 

"Okay, " Alan said. "Come on over here in the light where I can see whoyou are. I want to remember you. "

But to his astonishment he felt strong arms slipping around his andpinioning him; a quick twist and his neutrino gun dropped from hisnumbed hands. The arms locked behind his back in an unbreakable fullnelson. 

Alan writhed, but it was no use. The hidden accomplice held him tightly. And now the other man came forward and efficiently went through hispockets. Alan felt more angry than afraid, but he wished Hawkes orsomeone else would come along before this thing went too far. 

Suddenly Alan felt the pressure behind his neck easing up. His captorwas releasing him. He poised, debating whether or not to whirl andattack, when a familiar voice said, "Rule Number One: never leave yourback unguarded for more than half a second when you're being held up. You see what happens. "

Alan was too stunned to reply for several moments. In a whisper he saidfinally, "Max?"

"Of course. And lucky for you I'm who I am, too. John, step out here inthe light where he can see you. Alan, meet John Byng. Free Status, ClassB. "

The man who had originally attacked him came forward now, into the lightof the street-glow. He was shorter than Alan, with a lean, almostfleshless face and a scraggly reddish-brown beard. He looked cadaverous. His eyeballs were stained a peculiar yellowish tinge. 

Alan recognized him--a Class B man he had seen several times at variousparlors. It was not a face one forgot easily. 

Byng handed over the thick stack of bills he had taken from Alan. As hepocketed them, Alan said in some annoyance, "A very funny prank, Max. But suppose I had burned your friend's belly, or he had stabbed me?"

Hawkes chuckled. "One of the risks of the game, I guess. But I know youtoo well to think that you'd burn down an unarmed man, and John didn'tintend to stab you. Besides, I was right here. "

"And what was the point of this little demonstration?"

"Part of your education, m'boy. I was hoping you'd be held up by one ofthe local gangs, but they didn't oblige, so I had to do it myself. WithJohn's help, of course. Next time remember that there may be anaccomplice hiding in the shadows, and that you're not safe just becauseyou've caught one man. "

Alan grinned. "Good point. And I guess this is the best way to learnit. "

The three of them went upstairs. Byng excused himself and vanished intothe extra room almost immediately; Hawkes whispered to Alan, "Johnny's adreamduster--a narcosephrine addict. In the early stages; you can spotit by the yellowing of the eyeballs. Later on it'll cripple him, but hedoesn't worry about later on. "

Alan studied the small, lean man when he returned. Byng was smiling--astrange unworldly smile. He held a small plastic capsule in his righthand. 

"Here's another facet of your education, " he said. He looked at Hawkes. "Is it okay?"

Hawkes nodded. 

Byng said, "Take a squint at this capsule, boy. It'sdreamdust--narcosephrine. That's my kick. "

He tossed the capsule nonchalantly to Alan, who caught it and held it atarm's distance as if it were a live viper. It contained a yellow powder. 

"You twist the cap and sniff a little, " Hawkes said. "But don't try itunless you hate yourself real bad. Johnny can testify to that. "

Alan frowned. "What does the stuff do?"

"It's a stimulant--a nerve-stimulant. Enhances perception. It's madefrom a weed that grows only in dry, arid places--comes from EpsilonEridani IV originally, but the galaxy's biggest plantation is in theSahara. It's habit-forming--and expensive. "

"How much of it do you have to take to--to get the habit?"

Byng's thin lips curled in a cynical scowl. "One sniff. And the drugtakes all your worries away. You're nine feet tall and the world's yourplaything, when you're up on dream dust. Everything you look at has sixdifferent colors. " Bitterly Byng said, "Just one catch--after about ayear you stop feeling the effect. But not the craving. That stays withyou forever. Every night, one good sniff--at a hundred credits a sniff. And there's no cure. "

Alan shuddered. He had seen dreamdust addicts in the advancedstate--withered palsied old men of forty, unable to eat, crippled, drying up and nearing death. All that for a year's pleasure!

"Johnny used to be a starman, " Hawkes said suddenly. "That's why Ipicked him for our little stunt tonight. I thought it was about time Iintroduced you two. "

Alan's eyes widened. "What ship?"

"_Galactic Queen. _ A dreamdust peddler came wandering through theEnclave one night and let me have a free sniff. Generous of him. "

"And you--became an addict?"

"Five minutes later. So my ship left without me. That was eleven yearsago, Earthtime. Figure it out--a hundred credits a night for elevenyears. "

Alan felt cold inside. It could have happened to him, he thought--thatfree sniff. Byng's thin shoulders were quivering. The advanced stage ofaddiction was starting to set in. 

Byng was only the first of Hawkes' many friends that Alan met in thenext two weeks. Hawkes was the center of a large group of men in FreeStatus, not all of whom knew each other but who all knew Hawkes. Alanfelt a sort of pride in being the protege of such an important andwidely-known man as Max Hawkes, until he started discovering what sortof people Hawkes' friends were. 

There was Lorne Hollis, the loansman--one of the men Steve had borrowedfrom. Hollis was a chubby, almost greasy individual with flat milky grayeyes and a cold, chilling smile. Alan shook hands with him, and thenfelt like wiping off his hand. Hollis came to see them often. 

Another frequent visitor was Mike Kovak of the Bryson Syndicate--asharp-looking businessman type in ultra-modern suits, who spoke clearlyand well and whose specialty was forgery. There was Al Webber, anamiable, soft-spoken little man who owned a fleet of small ion-drivecargo ships that plied the spacelines between Earth and Mars, and whoalso exported dreamdust to the colony on Pluto, where the weed could notbe grown. 

Seven or eight others showed up occasionally at Hawkes' apartment. Alanwas introduced to them all, and then generally dropped out of theconversation, which usually consisted of reminiscences and gossip aboutpeople he did not know. 

But as the days passed, one thing became evident: Hawkes might not be acriminal himself, but certainly most of his friends operated on the farside of the law. Hawkes had seen to it that they stayed away from theapartment during the first few months of Alan's Earther education; butnow that the ex-starman was an accomplished gambler and fairly wellskilled in self-defense, all of Hawkes' old friends were returning onceagain. 

Day by day Alan increasingly realized how innocent and childlike astarman's life was. The _Valhalla_ was a placid little world of 176people, bound together by so many ties that there was rarely anyconflict. Here on Earth, though, life was tough and hard. 

He was lucky. He had stumbled into Hawkes early in his wanderings. Witha little less luck he might have had the same sort of life Steve hadhad . .. Or John Byng. It was not fun to think about that. 

Usually when Hawkes had friends visiting him late at night, Alan wouldsit up for a while listening, and then excuse himself and get somesleep. As he lay in bed he could hear low whispering, and once he woketoward morning and heard the conversation still going on. He strainedhis ears, but did not pick up anything. 

One night early in October he had come home from the games parlor and, finding nobody home, had gone immediately to sleep. Some time later heheard Hawkes and his friends come in, but he was too tired to get out ofbed and greet them. He rolled over and went back to sleep. 

But later that night he felt hands touching him, and he opened an eye tosee Hawkes bending over him. 

"It's me--Max. Are you awake?"

"No, " Alan muttered indistinctly. 

Hawkes shook him several times. "Come on--get up and put some clotheson. Some people here who want to talk to you. "

Only half comprehending, Alan clambered unwillingly from bed, dressed, and splashed cold water in his face. He followed Hawkes back inside. 

The living room was crowded. Seven or eight men were there--the onesAlan thought of as the inner circle of Hawkes' cronies. Johnny Byng, Mike Kovak, Al Webber, Lorne Hollis, and some others. Sleepily Alannodded at them and took a seat, wondering why Hawkes had dragged him outof bed for this. 

Hawkes looked at him sharply. "Alan, you know all these people, don'tyou?"

Alan nodded. He was still irritated at Hawkes; he had been sound asleep. 

"You're now facing ninety per cent of what we've come to call the HawkesSyndicate, " Hawkes went on. "These eight gentlemen and myself haveformed the organization recently for a certain specific purpose. More ofthat in a few minutes. What I got you out here to tell you was thatthere's room in our organization for one more man, and that you fit thenecessary qualifications. "

"Me?"

Hawkes smiled. "You. We've all been watching you since you came to livewith me, testing you, studying you. You're adaptable, strong, intelligent. You learn fast. We had a little vote tonight, and decidedto invite you in. "

Alan wondered if he were still asleep or not. What was all this talk ofsyndicates? He looked round the circle, and realized that this bunchcould be up to no good. 

Hawkes said, "Tell him about it, Johnny. "

Byng leaned forward and blinked his drug-stained eyes. In a quiet voice, almost a purr, he said, "It's really very simple. We're going to stage agood old-fashioned hold-up. It's a proposition that'll net us each abouta million credits, even with the ten-way split. It ought to go offpretty easy but we need you in on it. As a matter of fact, I'd say youwere indispensable to the project, Alan. "

_Chapter Fourteen_

Hawkes took over, explaining the proposition to a now very much awakeAlan. 

"There's going to be a currency transfer at the World Reserve Bankdowntown next Friday. At least ten million credits are going to bepicked up by an armored truck and taken to branch banks fordistribution. 

"Hollis, here, happens to have found out the wave-patterns of theroboguards who'll be protecting the currency shipment. And Al Webber hassome equipment that can paralyze roboguards if we know their operationalwavelength. So it's a simple matter to leave the car unprotected; wewait till it's loaded, then blank out the robots, seize the humanguards, and drive away with the truck. "

Alan frowned thoughtfully. "Why am _I_ so indispensable to thisbusiness?" He had no desire to rob banks or anything else. 

"Because you're the only one of us who isn't registered on the centraldirectory. You don't have any televector number. You can't be traced. "

Suddenly Alan understood. "So _that's_ why you didn't let me register!You've been grooming me for this all along!"

Hawkes nodded. "As far as Earth is concerned, you don't exist. If any ofus drove off with that truck, all they need to do is plot the truck'scoordinates and follow the televector patterns of the man who's drivingit. Capture is inevitable that way. But if _you're_ aboard the truck, there's no possible way of tracing your route. Get it?"

"I get it, " Alan said slowly. _But I don't like it_, he added silently. "I want to think about the deal a little longer, though. Let me sleep onit. I'll tell you tomorrow whether I'll go through with it. "

Puzzled expressions appeared on the faces of Hawkes' eight guests, andWebber started to say something, but Hawkes hastily cut him off. "Theboy's a little sleepy, that's all. He needs time to get used to the ideaof being a millionaire. I'll call each of you in the morning, okay?"

The eight were shepherded out of the apartment rapidly, and when theywere gone Hawkes turned to face Alan. Gone now was the blandfriendliness, gone the warm-hearted brotherliness of the older man. Hislean face was cold and businesslike now, and his voice was harsh as hesaid, "What's this talk of thinking it over? Who said you had any choiceabout this thing?"

"Don't I have any say in my own life?" Alan asked hotly. "Suppose Idon't want to be a bank robber? You didn't tell me----"

"I didn't need to. Listen, boy--I didn't bring you in here for myhealth. I brought you in because I saw you had the potential for thisjob. I've coddled you along for more than three months, now. Given you avaluable education in how to get along on this planet. Now I'm askingyou to pay me back, a little. Byng told the truth: you're indispensableto this project. Your personal feelings are irrelevant just now. "

"Who says?"

"I do. "

Alan stared coldly at Hawkes' transformed face. "Max, I didn't bargainfor a share in your bank-robbing syndicate. I don't want any part of it. Let's call it quits right now. I've turned over quite a few thousandcredits of my winnings to you. Give me five hundred and keep the rest. It's your pay for my room and board and instruction the last threemonths. You go your way, I'll go mine. "

Hawkes laughed sharply. "Just as simple as that? I pocket your winningsand you walk out of here? How dumb do you think I am? You know the namesof the syndicate, you know the plans, you know everything. A lot ofpeople would pay big money for an advance tip on this bit. " He shook hishead. "I'll go my way and you'll go it too, Alan. Or else. You know whatthat _or else_ means. "

Angrily Alan said, "You'd kill me, too, if I backed down now. Friendshipdoesn't mean a thing to you. 'Help us rob this bank, or else. '"

Hawkes' expression changed again; he smiled warmly, and when he spokehis voice was almost wheedling. "Listen, Alan, we've been planning thisthing for months. I put down seven thousand to clear your brother, justso I'd be sure of getting your cooperation. I tell you there's nodanger. I didn't mean to threaten you--but try to see my side of it. You_have_ to help out!"

Alan looked at him curiously. "How come you're so hot to rob the bank, Max? You earn a fortune every night. You don't need a million morecredits. "

"No. I don't. But some of them do. Johnny Byng does; and Kovak, too--heowes Bryson thirty thousand. But I organized the scheme. " Hawkes waspleading now. "Alan, I'm bored. Deadly bored. Gambling isn't gamblingfor me; I'm too good. I never lose except when I want to. So I need toget my kicks someplace else. This is it. But it won't come off withoutyou. "

They were silent for a moment. Alan realized that Hawkes and his groupwere desperate men; they would never let him live if he refused tocooperate. He had no choice at all. It was disillusioning to discoverthat Hawkes had taken him in mostly because he would be useful in arobbery. 

He tried to tell himself that this was a jungle world where moralitydidn't matter, and that the million credits he'd gain would help financehyperdrive research. But those were thin arguments that held noconviction. There was no justification for what he was going to do. Nonewhatsoever. 

But Hawkes held him in a cleft stick. There was no way out. He hadfallen among thieves--and, willy-nilly, he would be forced to become onehimself. 

"All right, " he said bitterly. "I'll drive the getaway truck for you. But after it's over, I'll take my share and get out. I won't want to seeyou again. "

Hawkes seemed to look hurt, but he masked the emotion quickly enough. "That's up to you, Alan. But I'm glad you gave in. It would have beenrough on both of us otherwise. Suppose we get some sleep. "

Alan slept poorly during what was left of the night. He kept mulling thesame thoughts round and round endlessly in his head, until he wished hecould unhinge the front of his skull and let the thoughts somehowescape. 

It irritated him to know that Hawkes had taken him in primarily becausehe fit the qualifications for a plan concocted long before, and not forhis own sake. All the intensive training the gambler had given him hadbeen directed not merely toward toughening Alan but toward preparing himfor the role he would play in the projected robbery. 

He felt unhappy about the robbery too. The fact that he was beingcoerced into taking part made him no less a criminal, and that wentagainst all his long-ingrained codes of ethics. He would be just asguilty as Hawkes or Webber, and there was no way out. 

There was no sense brooding over it, he decided finally. When it was allover he would have enough money to begin aiming for his real goal, development of a workable hyperspace drive. He would break completelywith Hawkes, move to some other city perhaps. If his quest weresuccessful, it would in some measure be an atonement for the crime hewas going to commit. Only in some measure, though. 

The week passed slowly, and Alan did poorly at his nightly work. Hismind was anywhere but on the flashing games board, and the permutationsand combinations eluded him. He lost, though not heavily. 

Each night the ten members of the Syndicate met at Hawkes' apartment andplanned each step of the crime in great detail, drilling and re-drillinguntil it was second nature for each man to recite his particular part inthe robbery. Alan's was at once the simplest and most difficult; hewould have nothing to do until the others had finished their parts, butthen he would have to board the armored car and outrace any pursuers. Hewas to drive the car far outside city limits, where he would be met andrelieved of the cash by Byng and Hollis; then he was to lose the trucksomewhere and return to the city by public transit. 

The day of the robbery dawned cold and clear; an autumn chill was in theair. Alan felt some anticipatory nervousness, but he was calmer than heexpected to be--almost fatalistically calm. By nightfall, he would be awanted criminal. He wondered whether it would be worth it, even for themillion credits. Perhaps it would be best to defy Hawkes and make somesort of escape try. 

But Hawkes, as always a shrewd judge of human character, seemedobviously aware that Alan was wavering. He kept a close watch over him, never allowing him to stray. Hawkes was taking no chances. He wascompelling Alan to take part in the robbery. 

The currency transfer was scheduled to take place at 1240, according tothe inside information that Hollis had somehow obtained. Shortly afternoon, Hawkes and Alan left the apartment and boarded the Undertube, their destination the downtown section of York City where the WorldReserve Bank was located. 

They reached the bank about 1230. The armored truck was parked outside, looking sleek and impregnable, and four massive roboguards stood watch, one by each wheel. There were three human policemen too, but they werestrictly for effect; in case of any trouble, the roboguards wereexpected to handle the rough work. 

The bank was a mighty edifice indeed--over a hundred stories high, rising in sweeping setbacks to a point where its tapering top was lostin the shimmering noonday sky. It was, Alan knew, the center of globalcommerce. 

Armed guards were bringing packages of currency from within the bank andwere placing them on the truck. Alan's heart raced. The streets werecrowded with office workers out for lunch; could he get away with it?

It was all precisely synchronized. As Hawkes and Alan strolled towardthe bank, Alan caught sight of Kovak lounging across the street, readinga telefax sheet. None of the others were visible. 

Webber, Alan knew, was at this moment sitting in an office overlookingthe bank entrance, staring out the window at the scene below. Atprecisely 1240, Webber was to throw the switch on the wave-damper thatwould paralyze the four roboguards. 

The instant the roboguards froze, the other conspirators would go intoaction. Jensen, McGuire, Freeman, and Smith, donning masks, would leapfor the three human guards of the truck and pin them to the ground. Byngand Hawkes, who would enter the bank a moment before, would stage animpromptu fist-fight with each other just inside the main entrance, thereby creating confusion and making it difficult for reinforcementguards to get past them and into the street. 

Just outside the door, Hollis and Kovak would lurk. As the quartetpounced on the truck's guards, they would sprint across and yank thedriver out of the cab. Then Alan would enter quickly from the other sideand drive off, while the remaining nine would vanish into the crowd inas many different directions as possible. Byng and Hollis, if they gotaway, would head for the rendezvous to meet Alan and take the cash fromhim. 

If it went off properly the whole thing should take less than fifteenseconds, from the time Webber threw the switch to the time Alan droveaway with the truck. If it went off properly. 

The seconds crawled by. The time was 1235, now. At 1237 Hawkes and Byngsauntered into the bank from opposite directions. Three minutes to go. Alan's false calm deserted him; he pictured all sorts of possiblecalamities. 

1238. Everyone's watch was synchronized to the second. 

1239. 1239:30. 

Thirty seconds to go. Alan took his position in a crowd of bystanders, as prearranged. Fifteen seconds to go. Ten. Five. 

1240. The roboguards were in the act of directing the locking of thetruck; the loading had been carried out precisely on schedule. The truckwas shut and sealed. 

The roboguards froze. 

Webber had been right on time. Alan tensed, caught up in the excitementof the moment and thinking now only of the part he was to play. 

The three policemen glanced at each other in some confusion. Jensen andMcGuire came leaping out at them----

And the roboguards returned to life. 

The sound of blaster shots was heard within the bank; Alan whirled, startled. Four guards came racing out of the building, blasters drawn. What had happened to Hawkes and Byng--why weren't they obstructing theentrance, as it had been arranged?

The street was a scene of wild confusion now; people milled everywhere. Alan saw Jensen writhing in the steel grip of a roboguard. Had Webber'sdevice failed? Evidently so. 

Alan was unable to move. He saw Freeman and McGuire streaking wildlydown the street with police in keen pursuit. Hollis stood staring dumblyinside the bank door. Alan saw Kovak come running toward him. 

"Everything's gone wrong!" Kovak whispered harshly. "The cops werewaiting for us! Byng and Hawkes are dead. Come on--run, if you want tosave yourself!"

_Chapter Fifteen_

Alan sat very quietly in the empty apartment that had once belonged toMax Hawkes, and stared at nothing in particular. It was five hours sincethe abortive robbery. He was alone. 

The news had been blared out over every form of communication there was;he knew the story by heart. A daring robbery had been attempted, butpolice detection methods had yielded advance warning, and the robbershad been frustrated. The roboguards had been specially equipped oneswhich could shift to an alternate wavelength in case of emergency; theyhad blanked out only momentarily. And special guards had been postedwithin the bank, ready to charge out. Byng and Hawkes had tried to blockthe doorway and they had been shot down. Hawkes was killed instantly;Byng died an hour later in the hospital. 

At least two other members of the gang had been apprehended--Jensen andSmith, both trapped by the roboguards. It was known that at least twoother men and possibly more had participated in the attempt, and thesewere being traced now. 

Alan was not worried. He had not been within a hundred feet of thecrime, and it had been easy for him to slip away unnoticed. The othershad had little difficulty either--Webber, Hollis, Kovak, McGuire, andFreeman. There was a chance that Hollis or Kovak had been recognized; inthat case, they could be tracked down by televector. But Alan was notregistered on the televector screens--and there was no other way oflinking him with the crime. 

He glanced around the apartment at Hawkes' bar and his audio system andall the dead man's other things. Yesterday, Alan thought, Hawkes hadbeen here, alive, eyes sparkling as he outlined the plans for therobbery a final time. Now he was dead. It was hard to believe that sucha many-sided person could have been snuffed out so soon, so quickly. 

A thought occurred. The police would be investigating the disposition ofHawkes' property; they would want to know the relationship betweenHawkes and Alan, and perhaps there would be questions asked about therobbery. Alan decided to forestall that. 

He reached for the phone. He would call Security, tell them he had beenliving with Hawkes and had heard of the gambler's sudden violent death, and in all innocence ask for details. He would----

The door-announcer chimed. 

Alan whirled and put down the receiver. Reaching out, he flicked on thedoorscreen and was shown a view of a distinguished-looking middle-agedman in the silver-gray uniform of the police. _So soon?_ Alan thought. _I didn't even get a chance to call----_

"Who is it?" he asked, in a surprisingly even voice. 

"Inspector Gainer of Global Security. "

Alan opened the door. Inspector Gainer smiled warmly, walked in, tookthe seat Alan offered him. Alan felt tense and jumpy, and hoped not toomuch of it showed. 

The Security man said, "Your name is Alan Donnell, isn't it? And you'rea Free Status man, unregistered, employed as a professional gamesmanClass B?"

Alan nodded. "That's right, sir. "

Gainer checked a notation on a pad he carried. "I suppose you've heardthat the man who lived here--Max Hawkes--was killed in an attemptedrobbery this morning. "

"Y-yes, sir. I heard it a little while ago, on the newscasts. I'm stilla little shaken up. W-would you care for a drink, Inspector?"

"Not on duty, thanks, " Gainer said cheerfully. "Tell me, Alan--how longdid you know Max Hawkes?"

"Since last May. I'm an ex-starman. I--jumped ship. Max found mewandering around the city and took me in. But I never knew anythingabout any robberies, Inspector. Max kept his mouth pretty well sealedmost of the time. When he left here this morning, he said he was goingto the bank to make a deposit. I never thought----"

He stopped, wondering whether he sounded convincing. At that moment along jail sentence or worse seemed inevitable. And the worst part of itwas that he had not wanted to take part in the robbery, indeed _had_ nottaken part--but in the eyes of the law he was undoubtedly as guilty asany of the others. 

Gainer raised one hand. "Don't misunderstand, son. I'm not here as acriminal investigator. We don't suspect you had any part in theattempt. "

"Then why----"

He drew an envelope from his breast pocket and unfolded the papers itcontained. "I knew Max pretty well, " he said. "About a week ago he cameto see me and gave me a sealed envelope which was to be opened only inthe event of his death on this particular day, and to be destroyedunopened otherwise. I opened it a few hours ago. I think you ought toread it. "

With trembling fingers Alan took the sheaf of papers and scanned them. They were neatly typed; Alan recognized the blocky purple characters ofthe voicewrite Hawkes kept in his room. 

He started to read. 

The document explained that Hawkes was planning a bank robbery to takeplace on Friday, October 3, 3876. He named none of his accomplices. Hewent on to state that one Alan Donnell, an unregistered ex-starman, wasliving with him, and that this Alan Donnell had no knowledge whatsoeverof the intended bank robbery. 

_Furthermore_, Hawkes added, _in the event of my death in the intendedrobbery, Alan Donnell is to be sole heir and assign of my worldly goods. This supersedes and replaces any and all wills and testaments I may havemade at any past time. _

Appended was a schedule of the properties Hawkes was leaving behind. Accounts in various savings banks totalled some three quarters of amillion credits; besides that, there were scattered investments, realestate holdings, bonds. The total estate, Hawkes estimated, was worthslightly over one million credits. 

When Alan finished, he looked up startled and white-faced at the olderman. "All of this is mine?"

"You're a pretty rich young man, " Gainer agreed. "Of course, there areformalities--the will has to be probated and contested, and you canexpect it to be contested by somebody. If you still have the full estatewhen the courts get through with you, you'll be all right. "

Alan shook his head uncomprehendingly. "The way he wrote this--it's asif he _knew_. "

"Max Hawkes always knew, " Gainer said gently. "He was the best hunch-manI've ever seen. It was almost as if he could look a couple of days intothe future all the time. Sure, he knew. And he also knew it was safe toleave this document with me--that he could trust me not to open it. Imagine, announcing a week ahead of time that you're going to rob a bankand then turning the announcement over sealed to a police officer!"

Alan started. The police had known about the robbery in advance--thatwas how Max and the dreamduster Byng had been killed. Had Gainer beenthe one who had betrayed them? Had he opened the sealed envelope aheadof time, and sent Max to his death?

No. It was inconceivable that this soft-spoken man would have done sucha thing. Alan banished the thought. 

"Max knew he was going to be killed, " he said. "And yet he went aheadwith it. Why?"

"Maybe he wanted to die, " Gainer suggested. "Maybe he was bored withlife, bored with always winning, bored with things as they were. The manwas never born who could figure out Max Hawkes, anyway. You must havefound that out yourself. "

Gainer rose. "I'll have to be moving along, now. But let me give yousome suggestions, first. "

"Sir?"

"Go downtown and get yourself registered in Free Status. Have them giveyou a televector number. You're going to be an important person when youget all that money. And be very careful about who your friends are. Maxcould take care of himself; you may not be so lucky, son. "

"Is there going to be an investigation of the robbery?" Alan asked. 

"It's under way already. You may be called down for questioning, butdon't let it worry you. I turned a copy of Max's will over to themtoday, and that exonerates you completely. "

It was strangely empty in the apartment that night; Alan wished Gainerhad stayed longer. He walked through the dark rooms, half expecting Maxto come home. But Max wasn't coming home. 

Alan realized he had been tremendously fond of Hawkes. He had neverreally shown it; he had never demonstrated much warmth toward thegambler, especially in the final days when they both lived under thepressure of the planned robbery. But Alan knew he owed much to Hawkes, rogue and rascal though he was. Hawkes had been basically a good man, gifted--_too_ gifted, perhaps--whose drives and passions led him beyondthe bounds of society. And at thirty-five he was dead, having known inadvance that his last day was at hand. 

The next few days were busy ones. Alan was called to Securityheadquarters for questioning, but he insisted he knew nothing about therobbery or Hawkes' friends, and the document Hawkes had left seemed tobear him out. He was cleared of all complicity in the robbery. 

He next went to the Central Directory Matrix and registered in FreeStatus. He was given a televector transmitter--it was surgicallyembedded in the fleshy part of his thigh--and he accepted a drink fromfat old Hines MacIntosh in remembrance of Hawkes. 

He spoke briefly with MacIntosh about the process of collecting onHawkes' estate, and learned it was a complex process, but nothing to befrightened of. The will was being sent through channels now. 

He met Hollis in the street several days later. The bloated loansmanlooked pale and harried; he had lost weight, and his skin hung flabbilyover his bones now. Little as Alan liked the loansman, he insisted ontaking him to a local restaurant for lunch. 

"How come you're still hanging around York City?" Alan asked. "I thoughtthe heat was on for any of Max's old buddies. "

"It is, " Hollis said, wiping sweat from his white shiny forehead. "Butso far I'm in the clear. There won't be much of an investigation; theykilled two and caught two, and that'll keep them happy. After all, therobbery was a failure. "

"Any notion why it failed?"

Hollis nodded. "Sure I have a notion! It was Kovak who tipped them off. "

"Mike?--but he looked okay to me. "

"And to everybody. But he owed Bryson a lot, and Bryson was anxious todispose of Max. So Kovak turned the plans of the robbery over toBryson's boys in exchange for a quitclaim on the money he owed, andBryson just forwarded it all on to the police. They were waiting for uswhen we showed up. "

That cleared Gainer, Alan thought in some relief. "How did you find allthis out?"

"Bryson himself told me. "

"What!"

"I guess he didn't know exactly who besides Max was in on the deal. Anyway, he certainly didn't know I was part of the group, " Hollis said. "Old man Bryson was laying off some bets with me and he let somethingslip about how he tipped the police to Max. Then he told me the wholething. "

"And Kovak?"

"Dead, " Hollis said bluntly. "Bryson must have figured that if he'd sellMax out he'd sell anybody out, so Kovak got taken care of. He was foundyesterday. Heart failure, the report said. Bryson has some good drugs. Say, kid--any word yet on what's going to happen to all Max's dough?"

Alan thought a moment before replying. "I haven't heard a thing. I guessthe government inherits it. "

"That would be too bad, " Hollis said speculatively. "Max was wellloaded. I'd like to get my hands into some of that dough myself. Sowould Bryson and his bunch, I'll bet. "

Alan said nothing. When he was through eating, he paid the check andthey left, Hollis heading north, Alan south. In three days, Hawkes' willwould go through the courts. Alan wondered if Bryson, who seemed to beYork City's major criminal syndic man, would try to angle some share ofMax's money. 

A Bryson man did show up at the hearing--a slick-looking operator namedBerwin. His claim was that Hawkes had been affiliated with Bryson anumber of years ago, and that Hawkes' money should revert to Bryson byvirtue of an obscure law of the last century involving the estates ofprofessional gamblers killed in criminal actions. 

The robocomputer who was in charge of the hearing pondered the request afew moments; then relays clicked and the left-hand panel on the computerface lit up with a bright red APPLICATION DENIED signal. 

Berwin spoke for three minutes, ending up with a request that therobocomputer disqualify itself from the hearing and allow itself to bereplaced by a human judge. 

The computer's decision was even quicker this time. APPLICATION DENIED. 

Berwin tossed Alan's side of the courtroom a black look and yieldedground. Alan had engaged a lawyer recommended once by Hawkes, a mannamed Jesperson. Briefly and concisely Jesperson cited Alan's claim tothe money, read the terms of the will, and stepped back. 

The computer considered Jesperson's plea a few moments, reviewing thebrief which the lawyer had taped and fed to the computer earlier. Timepassed. Then the green panel lit, and the words, APPLICATION GRANTED. 

Alan smiled. Bryson had been defeated; Max's money was his. Money thatcould be turned toward intensified research on the hyperdrive. 

"Well, son?" Jesperson asked. "How does it feel to be a millionaire?"

_Chapter Sixteen_

At the time, he had been much too excited and flustered to answeranything. But, as the next twelve months went by, he learned that beinga millionaire was quite pleasant indeed. 

There were headaches, of course. There was the initial headache ofsigning his name several hundred times in the course of the transfer ofHawkes' wealth to him. There were also the frequent visits from thetax-collectors, and the payment to them of a sum that staggered Alan tothink about, in the name of Rotation Tax. 

But even after taxes, legal fees, and other expenses, Alan found heowned better than nine hundred thousand credits, and the estate grew byinvestment every day. The court appointed a legal guardian for him, thelawyer Jesperson, who was to administer Alan's money until Alan reachedthe biological age of twenty-one. The decision was an involved one, since Alan had undeniably been born three hundred years earlier, in3576--but the robojudge that presided over that particular hearingcited a precedent seven hundred years old which stated that for legalpurposes a starman's biological and not his chronological age was to beaccepted. 

The guardianship posed no problems for Alan, though. When he met withJesperson to discuss future plans, the lawyer told him, "You can handleyourself, Alan. I'll give you free rein with the estate--with theproviso that I have veto power over any of your expenditures until yourtwenty-first birthday. "

That sounded fair enough. Alan had reason to trust the lawyer; hadn'tHawkes recommended him? "I'll agree to that, " Alan said. "Suppose westart right now. I'd like to take a year and travel around the world. Asmy legal guardian you'll be stuck with the job of managing my estate andhandling investments for me. "

Jesperson chuckled. "You'll be twice as wealthy when you get back!Nothing makes money so fast as money. "

Alan left the first week in December, having spent three weeks doingvirtually nothing but sketching out his itinerary. There were plenty ofplaces he intended to visit. 

There was London, where James Hudson Cavour had lived and where hishyperdrive research had been carried out. There was the Lexman Instituteof Space Travel in Zurich, where an extensive library of spaceliterature had been accumulated; it was possible that hidden away intheir files was some stray notebook of Cavour's, some clue that wouldgive Alan a lead. He wanted to visit the area in Siberia that Cavour hadused as his testing-ground, and from which the last bulletin had comefrom the scientist before his unexplained disappearance. 

But it was not only a business trip. Alan had lived nearly half a yearin the squalor of Hasbrouck--and because of his Free Status he wouldnever be able to move into a better district, despite his wealth. But hewanted to see the rest of Earth. He wanted to travel just for the sakeof travel. 

Before he left, he visited a rare book dealer in York City, and for anexorbitant fifty credits purchased a fifth-edition copy of _AnInvestigation into the Possibility of Faster-than-Light Space Travel_, by James H. Cavour. He had left his copy of the work aboard the_Valhalla_, along with the few personal possessions he had managed toaccumulate during his life as a starman. 

The book dealer had frowned when Alan asked for the volume under thetitle he knew. "_The Cavour Theory_? I don't think--ah, wait. " Hevanished for perhaps five minutes and returned with an old, fragile, almost impossibly delicate-looking book. Alan took it and scanned theopening page. There were the words he had read so many times: "Thepresent system of interstellar travel is so grossly inefficient as to bevirtually inoperable on an absolute level. "

"Yes, that's the book. I'll take it. "

His first stop on his round-the-globe jaunt was London, where Cavour hadbeen born and educated more than thirteen centuries before. Thestratoliner made the trip across the Atlantic in a little less thanthree hours; it took half an hour more by Overshoot from the airport tothe heart of London. 

Somehow, from Cavour's few autobiographical notes, Alan had picturedLondon as a musty old town, picturesque, reeking of medieval history. Hecouldn't have been more wrong. Sleek towers of plastic and concretegreeted him. Overshoots roared by the tops of the buildings. A busynetwork of bridges connected them. 

He went in search of Cavour's old home in Bayswater, with the nebulousidea of finding some important document wedged in the woodwork. But alocal security officer shook his head as Alan asked for directions. 

"Sorry, lad. I've never heard of that street. Why don't you try theinformation robot up there?"

The information robot was a blocky green-skinned synthetic planted in akiosk in the middle of a broad well-paved street. Alan approached andgave the robot Cavour's thirteen-century-old address. 

"There is no record of any such address in the current files, " thesteely voice informed him. 

"No. It's an old address. It dates back to at least 2570. A man namedCavour lived there. "

The robot digested the new data; relays hummed softly within it as itscanned its memory banks. Finally it grunted, "Data on the address youseek has been reached. "

"Fine! Where's the house?"

"The entire district was demolished during the general rebuilding ofLondon in 2982-2997. Nothing remains. "

"Oh, " Alan said. 

The London trail trickled out right then and there. He pursued it alittle further, managed to find Cavour's name inscribed on the honorrole of the impressive London Technological Institute for the year 2529, and discovered a copy of Cavour's book in the Institute Library. Therewas nothing else to be found. After a month in London, Alan moved oneastward across Europe. 

Most of it was little like the descriptions he had read in the_Valhalla's_ library. The trouble was that the starship's visits toEarth were always at least a decade behind, usually more. Most of thelibrary books had come aboard when the ship had first been commissioned, far back in the year 2731. The face of Europe had almost totallyaltered since then. 

Now, shiny new buildings replaced the ancient houses which had enduredfor as much as a thousand years. A gleaming bridge linked Dover andCalais; elsewhere, the rivers of Europe were bridged frequently, providing easy access between the many states of the Federation ofEurope. Here, there, monuments of the past remained--the Eiffel Tower, absurdly dwarfed by the vast buildings around it, still reared itsspidery self in Paris, and Notre Dame still remained as well. But therest of Paris, the ancient city Alan had read so much of--that had longsince been swept under by the advancing centuries. Buildings did notendure forever. 

In Zurich he visited the Lexman Institute for Space Travel, amagnificent group of buildings erected on the royalties from the LexmanSpacedrive. A radiant statue sixty feet high was the monument toAlexander Lexman, who in 2337 had first put the stars within the reachof man. 

Alan succeeded in getting an interview with the current head of theInstitute, but it was anything but a satisfactory meeting. It was heldin an office ringed with mementoes of the epoch-making test flight of2338. 

"I'm interested in the work of James H. Cavour, " Alan said almostimmediately--and from the bleak expression that appeared on thescientist's face, he knew he had made a grave mistake. 

"Cavour is as far from Lexman as possible, my friend. Cavour was adreamer; Lexman, a doer. "

"Lexman succeeded--but how do you know Cavour didn't succeed as well?"

"Because, my young friend, faster-than-light travel is flatlyimpossible. A dream. A delusion. "

"You mean that there's no faster-than-light research being carried onhere?"

"The terms of our charter, set down by Alexander Lexman himself, specifythat we are to work toward improvements in the technique of space travel. It said nothing about fantasies and daydreams. No--ah--hyperdriveresearch is taking place at this institute, and none will take place solong as we remain true to the spirit of Alexander Lexman. "

Alan felt like crying out that Lexman was a bold and daring pioneer, never afraid to take a chance, never worried about expense or publicreaction. It was obvious, though, that the people of the Institute hadlong since fossilized in their patterns. It was a waste of breath toargue with them. 

Discouraged, he moved on, pausing in Vienna to hear the opera--Max hadalways intended to spend a vacation with him in Vienna, listening toMozart, and Alan felt he owed it to Hawkes to pay his respects. Theoperas he saw were ancient, medieval in fact, better than two thousandyears old; he enjoyed the tinkly melodies but found some of the plotshard to understand. 

He saw a circus in Ankara, a football game in Budapest, a nullgravwrestling match in Moscow. He journeyed to the far reaches of Siberia, where Cavour had spent his final years, and found that what had been ableak wasteland suitable for spaceship experiments in 2570 was now athriving modern city of five million people. The site of Cavour's camphad long since been swallowed up. 

Alan's faith in the enduring nature of human endeavor was restoredsomewhat by his visit to Egypt--for there he saw the pyramids, nearlyseven thousand years old; they looked as permanent as the stars. 

The first anniversary of his leaving the _Valhalla_ found him in SouthAfrica; from there he travelled eastward through China and Japan, acrossthe highly industrialized islands of the Far Pacific, and from thePhilippines he returned to the American mainland by jet express. 

He spent the next four months travelling widely through the UnitedStates, gaping at the Grand Canyon and the other scenic preserves of thewest. East of the Mississippi, life was different; there was barely astretch of open territory between York City and Chicago. 

It was late in November when he returned to York City. Jesperson greetedhim at the airfield, and they rode home together. Alan had been gone ayear; he was past eighteen, now, a little heavier, a little stronger. Very little of the wide-eyed boy who had stepped off the _Valhalla_ theyear before remained intact. He had changed inwardly. 

But one part of him had not changed, except in the direction of greaterdetermination. That was the part that hoped to unlock the secret offaster-than-light travel. 

He was discouraged. His journey had revealed the harsh fact that nowhereon Earth was research into hyperdrive travel being carried on; eitherthey had tried and abandoned it as hopeless, or, like the Zurich people, they had condemned the concept from the start. 

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Jesperson asked. 

Alan slowly shook his head. "Not a hint. And I really covered ground. "He stared at the lawyer a moment. "How much am I worth, now?"

"Well, offhand--" Jesperson thought for a moment. "Say, a million threehundred. I've made some good investments this past year. "

Alan nodded. "Good. Keep the money piling up. I may decide to open aresearch lab of my own, and we'll need every credit we've got. "

But the next day an item arrived in the morning mail which very muchaltered the character of Alan's plans for the future. It was a small butthick package, neatly wrapped, which bore as return address the name_Dwight Bentley_, with a London number. 

Alan frowned for a moment, trying to place the name. Then it came backto him--Bentley was the vice-provost of the London Institute ofTechnology, Cavour's old school. Alan had had a long talk with Bentleyone afternoon in January, about Cavour, about space travel, and aboutAlan's hopes for developing a hyperspace drive. 

The parcel was the right size and thickness to contain a book. Alan slitthe fastenings, and folded back the outer wrapper. A note from Bentleylay on top. 

 _London 3rd November 3877_

 _My dear Mr. Donnell:_

 _Perhaps you may remember the very enjoyable chat you and I had one day at this Institute last winter, on the occasion of your visit to London. You were, I recall, deeply interested in the life and work of James H. Cavour, and anxious to carry on the developments he had achieved in the field of space travel. _

 _Several days ago, in the course of an extensive resurveying of the Institute's archives, the enclosed volume was discovered very thoroughly hidden in the dusty recesses of our library. Evidently Mr. Cavour had forwarded the book to us from his laboratory in Asia, and it had somehow become misfiled. _

 _I am taking the liberty of forwarding the book on to you, in the hopes that it will aid you in your work and perhaps ultimately bring you success. Would you be kind enough to return the book to me c/o this Institute when you are finished with it?_

 _Cordially, Dwight Bentley_

Alan let the note slip to the floor as he reached for the enclosed book. It was leather-bound and even more fragile than the copy of _The CavourTheory_ he had purchased; it looked ready to crumble at a hostilebreath. 

With mounting excitement he lifted the ancient cover and turned it over. The first page of the book was blank; so were the second and third. Onthe fourth page, Alan saw a few lines of writing, in an austere, rigidhand. He peered close, and with awe and astonishment read the wordswritten there:

 _The Journal of James Hudson Cavour. Volume 16--Jan. 8 to October 11, 2570. _

_Chapter Seventeen_

The old man's diary was a curious and fascinating document. Alan nevertired of poring over it, trying to conjure up a mental image of thequeer, plucky fanatic who had labored so desperately to bring the starsclose to Earth. 

Like many embittered recluses, Cavour had been an enthusiastic diarist. Everything that took place in his daily life was carefully noteddown--his digestion, the weather, any stray thoughts that came to him, tart observations on humanity in general. But Alan was chieflyinterested in the notations that dealt with his researches on theproblem of a faster-than-the-speed-of-light spacedrive. 

Cavour had worked for years in London, harried by reporters and mockedby scientists. But late in 2569 he had sensed he was on the threshold ofsuccess. In his diary for January 8, 2570, he wrote:

"The Siberian site is almost perfect. It has cost me nearly what remainsof my savings to build it, but out here I will have the solitude I needso much. I estimate six months more will see completion of my pilotmodel. It is a source of deep bitterness in me that I am forced to workon my ship like a common laborer, when my part should have ceased threeyears ago with the development of my theory and the designing of myship. But this is the way the world wants it, and so shall it be. "

On May 8 of that year:

"Today there was a visitor--a journalist, no doubt. I drove him awaybefore he could disturb me, but I fear he and others will be back. Evenin the bleak Siberian steppes I shall have no privacy. Work is movingalong smoothly, though somewhat behind schedule; I shall be lucky tocomplete my ship before the end of the year. "

On August 17:

"Planes continue to circle my laboratory here. I suspect I am beingspied on. The ship is nearing completion. It will be ready for standardLexman-drive flights any day now, but installation of my spacewarpgenerator will take several more months. "

On September 20:

"Interference has become intolerable. For the fifth day an Americanjournalist has attempted to interview me. My 'secret' Siberianlaboratory has apparently become a world tourist attraction. The finalcircuitry on the spacewarp generator is giving me extreme difficulties;there are so many things to perfect. I cannot work under thesecircumstances. I have virtually ceased all machine-work this week. "

And on October 11, 2570:

"There is only one recourse for me. I will have to leave Earth tocomplete the installation of my generator. The prying fools and mockerswill not leave me alone, and nowhere on Earth can I have the neededsolitude. I shall go to Venus--uninhabited, uninhabitable. Perhaps theywill leave me alone for the month or two more I need to make my vesselsuitable for interstellar drive. Then I can return to Earth, show themwhat I have done, offer to make a demonstration flight--to Rigel andback in days, perhaps----

"Why is it that Earth so tortures its few of original mind? Why has mylife been one unending persecution, ever since I declared there was away to shortcut through space? There are no answers. The answers liedeep within the dark recesses of the human collective soul, and no manmay understand what takes place there. I am content to know that I shallhave succeeded despite it all. Some day a future age may remember me, like Copernicus, like Galileo, as one who fought upstream successfully. "

The diary ended there. But in the final few pages were computations--atrial orbit to Venus, several columns of blastoff figures, statistics ongeographical distribution of the Venusian landmasses. 

Cavour had certainly been a peculiar bird, Alan thought. Probably halfthe "persecutions" he complained of had existed solely inside his ownfevered brain. But that hardly mattered. He had gone to Venus; the diarythat had found its way back to the London Institute of Technologytestified to that. And there was only one logical next step for Alan. 

Go to Venus. Follow the orbit Cavour had scribbled at the back of hisdiary. 

Perhaps he might find the Cavour ship itself; perhaps, the site of hislaboratory, some notes, anything at all. He could not allow the trail totrickle out here. 

He told Jesperson, "I want to buy a small spaceship. I'm going toVenus. "

He looked at the lawyer expectantly and got ready to put up a stiffargument when Jesperson started to raise objections. But the big manonly smiled. 

"Okay, " he said. "When are you leaving?"

"You aren't going to complain? The kind of ship I have in mind costs atleast two hundred thousand credits. "

"I know that. But I've had a look at Cavour's diary, too. It was only amatter of time before you decided to follow the old duck to Venus, andI'm too smart to think that there's any point in putting up a battle. Let me know when you've got your ship picked out and I'll sit down andwrite the check. "

But it was not as simple as all that. Alan shopped for a ship--he wanteda new one, as long as he could afford it--and after several months ofcomparative shopping and getting advice from spaceport men, he pickedthe one he wanted. It was a sleek glossy eighty-foot job, a Spacemaster3878 model, equipped with Lexman converters and conventional ion-jetsfor atmosphere flying. Smooth, streamlined, it was a lovely sight as itstood at the spacefield in the shadow of the great starships. 

Alan looked at it with pride--a slender dark-green needle yearning topierce the void. He wandered around the spaceport and heard the fuelersand oilers discussing it in reverent tones. 

"That's a mighty fine piece of ship, that green one out there. Somelucky fellow's got it. "

Alan wanted to go over to them and tell them, "That's my ship. Me. AlanDonnell. " But he knew they would only laugh. Tall boys not quitenineteen did not own late-model Spacemasters with price-tags of cr. 225, 000. 

He itched to get off-planet with it, but there were more delays. Heneeded a flight ticket, first, and even though he had had the necessarygrounding in astrogation technique and spacepiloting as an automaticpart of his education aboard the _Valhalla_, he was rusty, and needed arefresher course that took six weary months. 

After that came the physical exams and the mental checkup and everythingelse. Alan fumed at the delay, but he knew it was necessary. Aspaceship, even a small private one, was a dangerous weapon in unskilledhands. An out-of-control spaceship that came crashing to Earth at highvelocity could kill millions; the shock wave might flatten fifty squaremiles. So no one was allowed up in a spaceship of any kind without aflight ticket--and you had to work to win your ticket. 

It came through, finally, in June of 3879, a month after Alan'stwentieth birthday. By that time he had computed and recomputed hisorbit to Venus a hundred different times. 

Three years had gone by since he last had been aboard a spaceship, andthat had been the _Valhalla_. His childhood and adolescence now seemedlike a hazy dream to him, far in the back of his mind. The _Valhalla_, with his father and Steve and all the friends of his youth aboard, wasthree years out from Earth--with seven years yet to go before it reachedProcyon, its destination. 

Of course, the Crew had experienced only about four weeks, thanks to theFitzgerald Contraction. To the _Valhalla_ people only a month had passedsince Alan had left them, while he had gone through three years. 

He had grown up, in those three years. He knew where he was heading, now, and nothing frightened him. He understood people. And he had onegreat goal which was coming closer and closer with each passing month. 

Blastoff day was the fifth of September, 3879. The orbit Alan finallysettled on was a six-day trip at low acceleration across the40, 000, 000-odd miles that separated Earth from Venus. 

At the spaceport he handed in his flight ticket for approval, placed acopy of his intended orbit on file with Central Routing Registration, and got his field clearance. 

The ground crew had already been notified that Alan's ship was blastingoff that day, and they were busy now putting her in final departurecondition. There were some expressions of shock as Alan displayed hiscredentials to the ground chief and climbed upward into the controlchamber of the ship he had named the _James Hudson Cavour_, but no onedared question him. 

His eyes caressed the gleaming furnishings of the control panel. Hechecked with the central tower, was told how long till his blastoffclearance, and rapidly surveyed the fuel meters, the steering-jetresponse valves, the automatic pilot. He worked out a tape with hisorbit on it. Now he inserted it into the receiving tray of the autopilotand tripped a lever. The tape slid into the computer, clicking softlyand emitting a pleasant hum. 

"Eight minutes to blastoff, " came the warning. 

Never had eight minutes passed so slowly. Alan snapped on his viewscreenand looked down at the field; the ground crew men were busily clearingthe area as blastoff time approached. 

"One minute to blastoff, Pilot Donnell. " Then the count-down began, second by second. 

At the ten-seconds-to-go announcement, Alan activated the autopilot andnudged the button that transformed his seat into a protectiveacceleration cradle. His seat dropped down, and Alan found himselfstretched out, swinging gently back and forth in the protecting hammock. The voice from the control tower droned out the remaining seconds. Tensely Alan waited for the sharp blow of acceleration. 

Then the roaring came, and the ship jolted from side to side, struggledwith gravity for a moment, and then sprang up free from the Earth. 

Some time later came the sudden thunderous silence as the jets cut out;there was the dizzying moment of free fall, followed by the sound of thelateral jets imparting longitudinal spin to the small ship. Artificialgravity took over. It had been a perfect takeoff. Now there was nothingto do but wait for Venus to draw near. 

The days trickled past. Alan experienced alternating moods of gloom andexultation. In the gloomy moods he told himself that this trip to Venuswas a fool's errand, that it would be just another dead end, that Cavourhad been a paranoid madman and the hyperspace drive was an idiot'sdream. 

But in the moments of joy he pictured the finding of Cavour's ship, thebuilding of a fleet of hyperdrive vessels. The distant stars withinalmost instantaneous reach! He would tour the galaxies as he had twoyears ago toured Earth. Canopus and Deneb, Rigel and Procyon, he wouldvisit them all. From star to bright star, from one end of the universeto the other. 

The shining oval of Venus grew brighter and brighter. The cloud layerthat enveloped Earth's sister planet swirled and twisted. 

Venus was virtually an unknown world. Earth colonies had beenestablished on Mars and on Pluto, but Venus, with her harshformaldehyde atmosphere, had been ignored. Uninhabited, uninhabitable, the planet was unsuitable for colonization. 

The ship swung down into the cloud layer; floating wisps of gray vaporstreamed past the orbiting _Cavour_. Finally Alan broke through, navigating now on manual, following as best he could Cavour's oldcomputations. He guided the craft into a wide-ranging spiral orbit threethousand feet above the surface of Venus, and adjusted his viewscreensfor fine pickup. 

He was orbiting over a vast dust-blown plain. The sky was a fantasticcolor, mottled blues and greens and an all-pervading pink, and the airwas dull gray. No sun at all penetrated the heavy shroud of vapor thathung round the planet. 

For five hours he scouted the plain, hoping to find some sign ofCavour's habitation. It was hopeless, he told himself; in thirteenhundred years the bitter winds of Venus would have destroyed any hint ofCavour's site, assuming the old man had reached Venus successfully. 

But grimly Alan continued to circle the area. Maybe Cavour had beenforced to land elsewhere, he thought. Maybe he never got here. Therewere a million maybes. 

He computed his orbit and locked the ship in. Eyes pressed to theviewscreen, he peered downward, hoping against hope. 

This trip to Venus had been a wild gamble from the start. He wondered ifMax Hawkes would have covered a bet on the success of his trip. Max hadbeen infallible when it came to hunches. 

_Well_, Alan thought, _now I've got a hunch. Help me one more time, Max, wherever you are! Lend me some of your luck. I need it, Max. _

He circled once more. The Venusian day would last for three weeks more;there was no fear of darkness. But would he find anything?

_What's that?_

He leaped to the controls, switched off the autopilot, and broke out oforbit, going back for a return look. Had there been just the faintestmetallic glint below, as of a spaceship jutting up from the sand?

Yes. 

There was a ship down there, and a cave of some sort. Alan feltstrangely calm. With confident fingers he punched out a landing orbit, and brought his ship down in the middle of the barren Venusian desert. 

_Chapter Eighteen_

Alan brought the _Cavour_ down less than a mile away from the scene ofthe wreckage--it was the best he could do, computing the landing byguesswork--and climbed into his spacesuit. He passed through the airlockand out into the windswept desert. 

He felt just a little lightheaded; the gravity was only 0. 8 ofEarth-norm, and besides that the air in his spacesuit, being perpetuallyrenewed by the Bennerman re-breathing generator strapped to his back, was just a shade too rich in oxygen. 

In the back of his mind he realized he ought to adjust his oxygen flow, but before he brought himself to make the adjustment the surplus tookits effect. He began to hum, then to dance awkwardly over the sand. Amoment later he was singing a wild space ballad that he thought he hadforgotten years before. After ten feet he tripped and went sprawlingdown in the sand. He lay there, trickling the violet sands through thegloves of his spacesuit, feeling very lightheaded and very foolish allat the same time. 

But he was still sober enough to realize he was in danger. It was aneffort to reach over his shoulder and move the oxygen gauge back anotch. After a moment the flow levelled out and he felt his headbeginning to clear. 

He was marching through a fantastic baroque desert. Venus was a riot ofcolors, all in a minor key: muted greens and reds, an overbearing gray, a strange, ghostly blue. The sky, or rather the cloud layer, dominatedthe atmosphere with its weird pinkness. It was a silent world--a deadworld. 

In the distance he saw the wreckage of the ship; beyond it the landbegan to rise, sloping imperceptibly up into a gentle hill with bizarresculptured rock outcroppings here and there. He walked quickly. 

Fifteen minutes later he reached the ship. It stood upright--or rather, its skeleton did. The ship had not crashed. It had simply rotted away, the metal of its hide eaten by the sand-laden winds over the course ofcenturies. Nothing remained but a bare framework. 

He circled the ship, then entered the cave a hundred feet away. Hesnapped on his lightbeam. In the darkness, he saw----

A huddled skeleton, far to the rear of the cave. A pile of corrodedequipment; atmosphere generators, other tools now shapeless. 

Cavour had reached Venus safely. But he had never departed. 

To his astonishment Alan found a sturdy volume lying under the pile ofbones--a book, wrapped in metal plates. Somehow it had withstood thepassage of centuries, here in this quiet cave. 

Gently he unwrapped the book. The cover dropped off at his touch; heturned back the first three pages, which were blank. On the fourth, written in the now-familiar crabbed hand, were the words: _The Journalof James Hudson Cavour. Volume 17--October 20, 2570----_

 * * * * *

He had plenty of time, during the six-day return journey, to read andre-read Cavour's final words and to make photographic copies of thewithered old pages. 

The trip to Venus had been easy for old Cavour; he had landed preciselyon schedule, and established housekeeping for himself in the cave. But, as his diary detailed it, he felt strength ebbing away with each passingday. 

He was past eighty, no age for a man to come alone to a strange planet. There remained just minor finishing to be done on his pioneeringship--but he did not have the strength to do the work. Climbing thecatwalk of the ship, soldering, testing--now, with his opportunitybefore him, he could not attain his goal. 

He made several feeble attempts to finish the job, and on the last ofthem fell from his crude rigging and fractured his hip. He had managedto crawl back inside the cave, but, alone, with no one to tend him, heknew he had nothing to hope for. 

It was impossible for him to complete his ship. All his dreams wereended. His equations and his blueprints would die with him. 

In his last day he came to a new realization: nowhere had he left acomplete record of the mechanics of his spacewarp generator, the keymechanism without which hyperspace drive was unattainable. So, racingagainst encroaching death, James Hudson Cavour turned to a new page inhis diary, headed it, in firm, forceful letters, _For Those Who FollowAfter_, and inked in a clear and concise explanation of his work. 

It was all there, Alan thought exultantly: the diagrams, thespecifications, the equations. It would be possible to build the shipfrom Cavour's notes. 

The final page of the diary had evidently been Cavour's dying thoughts. In a handwriting increasingly ragged and untidy, Cavour had indited aparagraph forgiving the world for its scorn, hoping that some daymankind would indeed have easy access to the stars. The paragraph endedin midsentence. It was, thought Alan, a moving testament from a greathuman being. 

The days went by, and the green disk of Earth appeared in theviewscreen. Late on the sixth day the _Cavour_ sliced into Earth'satmosphere, and Alan threw it into the landing orbit he had computedthat afternoon. The ship swung in great spirals around Earth, drawingever closer, and finally began to home in on the spaceport. 

Alan busied himself over the radio transmitter, getting landingclearance. He brought the ship down easily, checked out, and hurried tothe nearest phone. 

He dialed Jesperson's number. The lawyer answered. 

"When did you get back?"

"Just now, " Alan said. "Just this minute. "

"Well? Did you----"

"Yes! I found it! I found it!"

 * * * * *

Oddly enough, he was in no hurry to leave Earth now. He was inpossession of Cavour's notes, but he wanted to do a perfect job ofreproducing them, of converting the scribbled notations into a ship. 

To his great despair he discovered, when he first examined the Cavournotebook in detail, that much of the math was beyond his depth. That wasonly a temporary obstacle, though. He hired mathematicians. He hiredphysicists. He hired engineers. 

Through it all, he remained calm; impatient, perhaps, but not overly so. The time had not yet come for him to leave Earth. All his striving wouldbe dashed if he left too soon. 

The proud building rose a hundred miles from York City: _The HawkesMemorial Laboratory_. There, the team of scientists Alan had gatheredworked long and painstakingly, trying to reconstruct what old Cavour hadwritten, experimenting, testing. 

Early in 3881 the first experimental Cavour Generator was completed inthe lab. Alan had been vacationing in Africa, but he was called backhurriedly by his lab director to supervise the testing. 

The generator was housed in a sturdy windowless building far from themain labs; the forces being channelled were potent ones, and no chanceswere being taken. Alan himself threw the switch that first turned thespacewarp generator on, and the entire research team gathered by theclosed-circuit video pickup to watch. 

The generator seemed to blur, to waver, to lose substance and becomeunreal. It vanished. 

It remained gone fifteen seconds, while a hundred researchers held theirbreaths. Then it returned. It shorted half the power lines in thecounty. 

But Alan was grinning as the auxiliary feeders turned the lights in thelab on again. "Okay, " he yelled. "It's a start, isn't it? We got thegenerator to vanish, and that's the toughest part of the battle. Let'sget going on Model Number Two. "

By the end of the year, Model Number Two was complete, and the teststhis time were held under more carefully controlled circumstances. Againsuccess was only partial, but again Alan was not disappointed. He hadworked out his time-table well. Premature success might only makematters more difficult for him. 

3882 went by, and 3883. He was in his early twenties, now, a tall, powerful figure, widely known all over Earth. With Jesperson's shrewdaid he had pyramided Max's original million credits into an imposingfortune--and much of it was being diverted to hyperspace research. ButAlan Donnell was not the figure of scorn James Hudson Cavour had been;no one laughed at him when he said that by 3885 hyperspace travel wouldbe reality. 

3884 slipped past. Now the time was drawing near. Alan spent virtuallyall his hours at the research center, aiding in the successive tests. 

On March 11, 3885, the final test was accomplished satisfactorily. Alan's ship, the _Cavour_, had been completely remodeled to accommodatethe new drive; every test but one had been completed. 

The final test was that of actual performance. And here, despite theadvice of his friends, Alan insisted that he would have to be the manwho took the _Cavour_ on her first journey to the stars. 

Nine years had passed, almost to the week, since a brash youngster namedAlan Donnell had crossed the bridge from the Spacer's Enclave andhesitantly entered the bewildering complexity of York City. Nine years. 

He was twenty-six now, no boy any more. He was the same age Steve hadbeen, when he had been dragged unconscious to the _Valhalla_ and takenaboard. 

And the _Valhalla_ was still bound on its long journey to Procyon. Nineyears had passed, but yet another remained before the giant starshipwould touch down on a planet of Procyon's. But the FitzgeraldContraction had telescoped those nine years into just a few months, forthe people of the _Valhalla_. 

Steve Donnell was still twenty-six. 

And now Alan had caught him. The Contraction had evened out. They weretwins again. 

And the _Cavour_ was ready to make its leap into hyperspace. 

_Chapter Nineteen_

It was not difficult for Alan to get the route of the _Valhalla_, whichhad been recorded at Central Routing Registration. Every starship wasrequired by law to register a detailed route-chart before leaving, andthese charts were filed at the central bureau. The reason was simple: astarship with a crippled drive was a deadly object. In case a starship'sdrive conked out, it would keep drifting along toward its destination, utterly helpless to turn, maneuver, or control its motion. And if anyplanets or suns happened to lie in its direct path----

The only way a ship could alter its trajectory was to cut speedcompletely, and with the drive dead there would be no way of picking itup again. The ship would continue to drift slowly out to the stars, while its crew died of old age. 

So the routes were registered, and in the event of drive trouble it wasthus possible for a rescue ship to locate the imperilled starship. Spaceis immense, and only with a carefully registered route could a ship befound. 

Starship routes were restricted information. But Alan had influence; hewas easily able to persuade the Routing Registration people that hisintentions were honorable, that he planned to overtake the _Valhalla_ ifthey would only let him have the coordinates. A bit of minor legaljugglery was all that was needed to give him access to the data. 

It seemed there was an ancient regulation that said any member of astarship's crew was entitled by law to examine his ship's registeredroute, if he wanted to. The rule was intended to apply to starmen whodistrusted their captains and were fearful of being shipped off to someimpossibly distant point; it said nothing at all about starmen who hadbeen left behind and were planning to overtake their ships. But nothingprohibited Alan from getting the coordinates, and so they gave them tohim. 

The _Cavour_ was ready for the departure. Alan elbowed his way throughthe crowd of curious onlookers and clambered into the redesigned controlchamber. 

He paused a moment, running his fingers over the shiny instrument panelwith its new dials, strange levers, unfamiliar instruments. OverdriveCompensator. Fuel Transmuter. Distortion Guide. Bender Index. Strangenew names, but Alan realized they would be part of the vocabulary of allfuture spacemen. 

He began to work with the new controls, plotting his coordinates withextreme care and checking them through six or seven times. At last hewas satisfied; he had computed a hyperdrive course that would loop himthrough space and bring him out in only a few days' time in the generalvicinity of the _Valhalla_, which was buzzing serenely along at near thespeed of light. 

That was practically a snail's pace, compared with hyperdrive. 

The time for the test had come. He spoke briefly with his friends andassistants in the control tower; then he checked his figures through onelast time and requested blastoff clearance. 

A moment later the count-down began, and he began setting up fordeparture. 

A tremor of anticipation shot through him as he prepared to blast off onthe first hyperdrive voyage ever made. He was stepping out into theunknown, making the first use ever of a strange, perhaps dangerous meansof travel. The drive would loop him out of the space-time continuum, into--_where?_--and back again. 

He hoped. 

He punched down the keys, and sat back to wait for the automatic pilotto carry him out from Earth. 

Somewhere past the orbit of the moon, a gong told him that the Cavourdrive was about to come into play. He held his breath. He felt atwisting sensation. He stared at the viewscreen. 

The stars had vanished. Earth, with all its memories of the last nineyears, was gone, taking with it Hawkes, Jesperson, York City, theEnclaves--everything. 

He floated in a featureless dull gray void, without stars, withoutworlds. _So this is hyperspace_, he thought. He felt tired, and he felttense. He had reached hyperspace; that was half the struggle. Itremained to see whether he would come out where he expected to come out, or whether he would come out at all. 

 * * * * *

Four days of boredom. Four days of wishing that the time would come toleave hyperspace. And then the automatic pilot came to life; the Cavourgenerator thrummed and signalled that it had done its work and wasshutting down. Alan held his breath. 

He felt the twisting sensation. The _Cavour_ was leaving hyperdrive. 

Stars burst suddenly against the blackness of space; the viewscreenbrightened. Alan shut his eyes a moment as he readjusted from the sightof the gray void to that of the starry reaches of normal space. He hadreturned. 

And, below him, making its leisurely journey to Procyon, was the greatgolden-hulled bulk of the _Valhalla_, gleaming faintly in the blacknight of space. 

He reached for the controls of his ship radio. Minutes later, he heard afamiliar voice--that of Chip Collier, the _Valhalla's_ Chief SignalOfficer. 

"Starship _Valhalla_ picking up. We read you. Who is calling, please?"

Alan smiled. "This is Alan Donnell, Chip. How goes everything?"

For a moment nothing came through the phones but astonished sputtering. Finally Collier said thickly, "_Alan?_ What sort of gag is this? Whereare you?"

"Believe it or not, I'm hovering right above you in a small ship. Suppose you get my father on the wire, and we can discuss how I'll goabout boarding you. "

Fifteen minutes later the _Cavour_ was grappled securely to the skin ofthe _Valhalla_ like a flea riding an elephant, and Alan was climbing inthrough the main airlock. It felt good to be aboard the big ship onceagain, after all these years. 

He shucked his spacesuit and stepped into the corridor. His father wasstanding there waiting for him. 

"Hello, Dad. "

Captain Donnell shook his head uncomprehendingly. "Alan--how did you--Imean--and you're so much older, too! I----"

"The Cavour Drive, Dad. I've had plenty of time to develop it. Nine goodlong years, back on Earth. And for you it's only a couple of monthssince you blasted off!"

Another figure appeared in the corridor. Steve. He looked good; the lastfew months aboard the _Valhalla_ had done their work. The unhealthy fathe had been carrying was gone; his eyes were bright and clear, hisshoulders square. It was like looking into a mirror to see him, Alanthought. It hadn't been this way for a long time. 

"Alan? How did you----"

Quickly Alan explained. "So I couldn't reverse time, " he finished. "Icouldn't make you as young as I was--so I took the opposite tack andmade myself as old as you were. " He looked at his father. "The universeis going to change, now. Earth won't be so overcrowded. And it means theend of the Enclave system, and the Fitzgerald Contraction. "

"We'll have to convert the _Valhalla_ to the new drive, " Captain Donnellsaid. He looked still stunned by Alan's sudden appearance. "Otherwisewe'll never be able to meet the competition of the new ships. There willbe new ships, won't there?"

"As soon as I return to Earth and tell them I've been successful. My menare ready to go into immediate production of hyperspace vessels. Theuniverse is going to be full of them even before your ship reachesProcyon!" He sensed now the full importance of what he had done. "Nowthat there's practical transportation between stars, the Galaxy willgrow close together--as close as the Solar System is now!"

Captain Donnell nodded. "And what are you planning to do, now thatyou've dug up the Cavour drive?"

"Me?" Alan took a deep breath. "I've got my own ship, Dad. And out thereare Rigel and Deneb and Fomalhaut and a lot of other places I want tosee. " He was speaking quietly, calmly, but with an undercurrent of innerexcitement. He had dreamed of this day for nine years. 

"I'm going to take a grand tour of the universe, Dad. Everywhere. Thehyperdrive can take me. But there's just one thing----"

"What's that?" Steve and the Captain said virtually in the same moment. 

"I've been practically alone for the last nine years. I don't want tomake this trip by myself. I'm looking for a companion. A fellowexplorer. "

He stared squarely at Steve. 

A slow grin spread over his brother's face. "You devil, " Steve said. "You've planned this too well. How could I possibly turn you down?"

"Do you want to?" Alan asked. 

Steve chuckled. "Do you think I do?"

Alan felt something twitching at his cuff. He looked down and saw abluish-purple ball of fur sitting next to his shoe, studying him with awry expression. 

"Rat!"

"Of course. Is there room for a third passenger on this jaunt of yours?"

"Application accepted, " Alan said. Warmth spread over him. The longquest was over. He was back among the people he loved, and the galaxywas opening wide before him. A sky full of bright stars, growingbrighter and closer by the moment, was beckoning to him. 

He saw the Crewmen coming from their posts now; the rumor had flittedrapidly around the ship, it seemed. They were all there, Art Kandin andDan Kelleher and a gaping Judy Collier and Roger Bond and all the restof them. 

"You won't be leaving right away, will you?" the Captain asked. "You canstay with us a while, just to see if you remember the place?"

"Of course I will, Dad. There's no hurry now. But I'll have to go backto Earth first and let them know I've succeeded, so they can startproduction. And then----"

"Deneb first, " Steve said. "From there out to Spica, and Altair----"

Grinning, Alan said, "More worlds are waiting than we can see in tenlifetimes, Steve. But we'll give it a good try. We'll get out there. "

A multitude of stars thronged the sky. He and Steve and Rat, together atlast--plunging from star to star, going everywhere, seeing everything. The little craft grappled to the _Valhalla_ would be the magic wand thatput the universe in their hands. 

In this moment of happiness he frowned an instant, thinking of a lean, pleasantly ugly man who had befriended him and who had died nine yearsago. This had been Max Hawkes' ambition, to see the stars. But Max hadnever had the chance. 

_We'll do it for you, Max. Steve and I. _

He looked at Steve. He and his brother had so much to talk about. Theywould have to get to know each other all over again, after the yearsthat had gone by. 

"You know, " Steve said, "When I woke up aboard the _Valhalla_ and foundout you'd shanghaied me, I was madder than a hornet. I wanted to breakyou apart. But you were too far away. "

"You've got your chance now, " Alan said. 

"Yeah. But now I don't want to, " Steve laughed. 

Alan punched him goodnaturedly. He felt good about life. He had foundSteve again, and he had given the universe the faster-than-light drive. It didn't take much more than that to make a man happy. 

And now a new and longer quest was beginning for Alan and his brother. Aquest that could have no end, a quest that would send them searchingfrom world to world, out among the bright infinity of suns that laywaiting for them. 

STARMAN'S QUEST

By Robert Silverberg

The Lexman Spacedrive gave man the stars--but at a fantastic price. 

Interstellar exploration, colonization, and trade became things ofreality. The benefits to Earth were enormous. But because of theFitzgerald Contraction, a man who shipped out to space could never livea normal life on Earth again. 

Travelling at speeds close to that of light, spacemen lived at anaccelerated pace. A nine-year trip to Alpha Centauri and back seemed totake only six weeks to men on a spaceship. When they returned, theirfriends and relatives had aged enormously in comparison, old customs hadchanged, even the language was different. 

So they did the only thing they could do. They formed a guild ofSpacers, and lived their entire lives on the starships, raised theirfamilies there, and never set foot outside their own Enclave duringtheir landings on Earth. They grew to despise Earthers, and the Earthersgrew to despise them in turn. There was no logical reason for it, exceptthat they were--different. That was enough. 

But not all Starmen liked being different. Alan Donnell loved space, andthe ship, and life aboard it. His father, Captain of the VALHALLA, livedfor nothing but the traditions of the Spacers. But his twin brother, Steve, couldn't stand it, and so he jumped ship. 

It had happened only a few weeks before, as Alan experienced it. ForSteve, though, he knew it would have been nine years in the past. Now, while Alan was still only 17 years old, Steve would be 26!

Thinking about it got under Alan's skin, finally. The bond between twinsis a strong one, and Alan couldn't stand to see it broken so abruptlyand permanently. There were other things, too. If Alan remained on theVALHALLA, he'd have to marry one of the girls of the ship, and thechoice of those his own age was pitifully small. And above all else, hewas convinced that the secret of the Cavour Hyperdrive was hiddensomewhere on Earth--the Cavour Hyperdrive, that would enable man to leapinterstellar distances almost instantaneously, and bring an end to thesharp differences between Earthers and Spacers. 

These forces worked quietly within him--and suddenly, without reallymeaning to, Alan in turn jumped ship and remained on Earth!

There were many times when he regretted it. He found Earth a bewilderingand utterly hostile place. To stay alive, he had to play a ruthlessgame--and he couldn't even find anyone to tell him the rules. Within thefirst few hours, he came dangerously close to being murdered and then tobeing thrown in jail. He had no clues to the whereabouts of Steve, andcouldn't even be sure his nine-years-older twin brother was still alive. And the Cavour Hyperdrive was the merest will-o'-the-wisp, dancingwildly before him in his dreams. 

Somehow, he survived. It wasn't easy, and he didn't do it withoutserious sacrifices. He became a professional gambler, and almost becamea drug addict. He became involved in a monstrous criminal syndicate, knowing that no criminal could possibly escape punishment. He betrayedthe few friends he had, and fought furiously against everyone andeverything he encountered. 

He thought longingly, often, of the VALHALLA, and his lost life aboardher. But he never completely lost hope. 

STARMAN'S QUEST is Alan Donnell's story--a story that will keep you onthe edge of your chair until the very last page. It's the most excitingbook yet from one of the most exciting new writers ever to hit thescience-fiction field. 

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