+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's note: | | | | This story was published in _Astounding Science Fiction_, June | | 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the | | U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Illustration]

THE GUARDIANS

BY IRVING COX, JR. 

_It's not always "The Truth shall set you free!"Sometimes it's "Want of the Truth shall driveyou to escape!" And that can be dangerous!_

Illustrated by van Dongen

Mryna Brill intended to ride the god-car above the rain mist. For a longtime she had not believed in the taboos or the Earth-god. She no longerbelieved she lived on Earth. This paradise of green-floored forests andrunning brooks was something called Rythar. 

Six years ago, when Mryna was fourteen, she first discovered the truth. She asked a question and the Earth-god ignored it. A simple question, really: What is above the rain mist? God could have told her. Every dayhe answered technical questions that were far more difficult. Instead, he repeated the familiar taboo about avoiding the Old Village because ofthe Sickness. 

And consequently Mryna, being female, went to the Old Village. There wasnothing really unusual about that. All the kids went through the ruinsfrom time to time. They had worked out a sort of charm that made it allright. They ran past the burned out shells of the old houses and theykept their eyes shaded to ward off the Sickness. 

But even at fourteen Mryna had outgrown charms and she didn't believe inthe Sickness. She had once asked the Earth-god what sickness meant, andthe screen in the answer house had given her a very detailed answer. Mryna knew that none of the hundred girls and thirty boys inhabitingRythar had ever been sick. That, like the taboo of the Old Village, sheconsidered a childish superstition. 

The Old Village wasn't large--three parallel roads, a mile long, linedwith the charred ruins of prefabs, which were exactly like the cottageswhere the kids lived. It was nothing to inspire either fear or legend. The village had burned a long time ago; the grass from the forest hadgrown a green mantle over the skeletal walls. 

For weeks Mryna poked through the ruins before she found anything ofsignificance--a few, scorched pages of a printed pamphlet buried deep inthe black earth. The paper excited her tremendously. It was differentfrom the film books photographed in the answer house. She had nevertouched anything like it; and it seemed wonderful stuff. 

She read the pamphlet eagerly. It was part of a promotionaladvertisement of a world called Rythar, "the jewel of the Sirian SolarSystem. "

The description made it obvious that Rythar was the green paradise whereMryna lived--the place she had been taught to call Earth. And thepamphlet had been addressed to "Earthmen everywhere. "

Mryna made her second find when she was fifteen, a textbook inastronomy. For the first time in her life she read about the spinningdust of the universe lying beyond the eternal rain mist that hid herworld. 

The solid, stable Earth of her childhood was solid and stable no longer, but a sphere turning through a black void. Nor was it properly calledEarth, but a planet named Rythar. The adjustment Mryna had to make wasshattering; she lost faith in everything she believed. 

Yet the clock-work logic of astronomy appealed to her orderly mind. Itexplained why the rain mist glowed with light during the day and turneddark at night. Mryna had never seen a clear sky. She had no visual datato tie her new concept to. 

For six years she kept the secret. She hid the papers and the astronomytext which she found in the Old Village. Later, after the metal mencame, she destroyed everything so none of the other women would know theEarth-god was a man. 

At first she kept the secret because she was afraid. For some reason theman who played at being god wanted the kids to believe Rythar was Earth, the totality of the universe enveloped in a cloud of mist. She knew thatbecause she once asked god what a planet was. The face on the screen inthe answer house became frigid with anger--or was it fear?--and theEarth-god said:

"The word means nothing. "

But late that night a very large god-car brought six metal men downthrough the rain mist. They were huge, jointed things that clanked whenthey walked. Four of them used weapons to herd the kids together intheir small settlement. The two others went to the Old Village andblasted the ruins with high explosives. 

Vaguely Mryna remembered that the metal men had been there before, whenthe kids were still very small. They had built the new settlement andthey had brought food. They lived with the children for a long time, shethought--but the memory was hazy. 

As the years passed, Mryna's fear retreated and only one thing becameimportant: she knew the Earth-god was a man. On the fertile soil ofRythar there were one hundred women and thirty men. All the boys hadtaken mates before they reached seventeen. Seventy girls were leftunmarried, with no prospect of ever having husbands. A score or morebecame second wives in polygamous homes, but plural marriage had noappeal for Mryna. She was firmly determined to possess a man of her own. And why shouldn't it be the Earth-god?

As her first step toward escape, Mryna volunteered for duty in theanswer house. For as long as she could remember, the answer house hadstood on a knoll some distance beyond the new settlement. It was asquare, one-room building, housing a speaking box, a glass screen and aconsole of transmission machinery. Anyone in the settlement couldcontact god and request information or special equipment. 

God went out of his way to deluge them with information. The simplestquestion produced voluminous data, transmitted over the screen andphotographed on reels of film. Someone had to be in the answer house tohandle the photography. The work was not hard, but it was monotonous. Most of the kids preferred to farm the fields or dig the sacrificialore. 

A request for equipment was granted just as promptly. Tools, machines, seeds, fertilizers, packaged buildings, games, clothing--everything camein a god-car. It was a large cylinder which hissed down from the rainmist on a pillar of fire. The landing site was a flat, charred fieldnear the answer house. Unless the equipment was unusually heavy, theattendant stationed in the house was expected to unload the god-car andpile aboard the sacrifice ores mined on Rythar. 

God asked two things from the settlement: the pieces of unusually heavymetal which they dug from the hills, and tiny vials of soil. In anhour's time they could mine enough ore to fill the compartment of agod-car, and god never complained if they sometimes sent the cylinderback empty. But he fussed mightily over the small vials of Earth. Hegave very explicit directions as to where they were to take the samples, and the place was never the same. Sometimes they had to travel milesfrom the settlement to satisfy that inexplicable whim. 

For two weeks Mryna patiently ran off the endless films of new books andunloaded the god-car when it came. She examined the interior of thecylinder carefully and she weighed every possible risk. The compartmentwas very small, but she concluded that she would be safe. 

And so she made her decision. Tense and tight-lipped Mryna Brill slippedaboard the god-car. She sealed the lock door, which automatically firedthe launching tubes. After that there was no turning back. 

The dark compartment shook in a thunder of sound. The weight of theescape speed tore at her body, pulling her tight against the confiningwalls. She lost consciousness until the pressure lessened. 

The metal walls became hot but the space was too confining for her toavoid contact entirely. Four narrow light tubes came on, with a dull, red glow, and suddenly a gelatinous liquid emptied out of ceiling vents. The fluid sprayed every exposed surface in the cubicle, draining throughthe shipment of sacrifice ores at Mryna's feet. It had a choking, antiseptic odor; it stung Mryna's face and inflamed her eyes. 

Worse still, as the liquid soaked into her clothing, it disintegratedthe fiber, tearing away the cloth in long strips which slowly dissolvedin the liquid on the floor. Before the antiseptic spray ceased, Mrynawas helplessly naked. Even her black boots had not survived. 

The red lights went out and Mryna was imprisoned again in the crushingdarkness. A terror of the taboos she had defied swept her mind. Shebegan to scream, but the sound was lost in the roar of the motors. 

Suddenly it was over. The god-car lurched into something hard. Mryna wasthrown against the ceiling--and she hung there, weightless. The piecesof sacrifice ore were floating in the darkness just as she was. Themotors cut out and the lock door swung open. 

Mryna saw a circular room, brightly lighted with a glaring, blue light. The nature of her fear changed. This was the house of the Earth-god, butshe could not let him find her naked. 

She tried to run into the circular room. She found that the slightestexertion of her muscles sent her spinning through the air. She could notget her feet on the floor. There was no down and no up in that room. Shecollided painfully with the metal wall and she snatched at a lightbracket to keep herself from bouncing free in the empty air again. 

The god-car had landed against what was either the ceiling or the floorof the circular room. Mryna had no way of making a differentiation. Eight brightly lighted corridors opened into the side walls. Mryna heardfootsteps moving toward her down one of the corridors; she pulledherself blindly into another. As she went farther from the circularroom, a vague sense of gravity returned. At the end of the corridor shewas able to stand on her feet again, although she still had to walk verycarefully. Any sudden movement sent her soaring in a graceful leap thatbanged her head against the ceiling. 

Cautiously she opened a thick, metal door into another hall--and shestood transfixed, looking through a mica wall at the emptiness of spacepinpointed with its billions of stars. This was the reality of thecharts she had seen in the astronomy text: that knowledge alone savedher sanity. She had believed it when the proof lay hidden above the rainmist; she must believe it now. 

From where she stood, she was able to see the place where the god-carhad brought her--like a vast cartwheel spinning in the void. The god-carwas clamped against the hub, from which eight corridors radiated outwardlike wheel spokes toward the rim. Far below the gigantic wheel Mryna sawthe sphere of Rythar, invisible behind its shroud of glowing mist. 

She moved along the rim corridor, past the mica wall, until she came toa door that stood open. The room beyond was a sleeping compartment andit was empty. She searched it for clothing, and found nothing. She wentthrough four more dormitory rooms before she came upon anything shecould use--brief shorts, clearly made for a man, and a loose, whitetunic. It wasn't suitable; it wasn't the way she wanted to be dressedwhen she faced him. But it had to do. 

Mryna was pawing through a footlocker looking for boots when she heard ahesitant step behind her. She whirled and saw a small, stooped, white-haired man, naked except for trunks like the ones she was wearing. The wrinkled skin on his wasted chest was burned brown by the hot glareof the sun. Thick-lensed glasses hung from a chain around his neck. 

"My dear young lady, " he said in a tired voice, "this is a men's ward!"

"I'm sorry. I didn't know--"

"You must be a new patient. " He fumbled for his glasses. Instinctivelyshe knew she shouldn't let him see her clearly enough to identify her asa stranger. She shoved past him, knocking the glasses from his hand. 

"I'd better find my own--ward. " Mryna didn't know the word, but shesupposed it meant some sort of sleeping chamber. 

The old man said chattily, "I hadn't heard they were bringing in any newpatients today. "

She was in the corridor by that time. He reached for her hand. "I'll seeyou in the sunroom?" It was a timid, hopeful question. "And you'll tellme all the news--everything they're doing back on Earth. I haven't beenhome for almost a year. "

She fled down the hall. When she heard voices ahead of her, she pulledback a door and slid into another room--a storeroom piled with cases ofmedicines. Behind the cartons she thought she would be safe. 

This wasn't what she had expected. Mryna thought there might be one manliving in a kind of prefab somehow suspended above the rain mist. Butthere were obviously others up here; she didn't know how many. And theold man frightened her--more than the dazzling sight of the heavensvisible through the mica wall. Mryna had never seen physical age before. No one on Rythar was older than she was herself--a sturdy, healthy, lusty twenty. The old man's infirmity disgusted her; for the first timein her life she was conscious of the slow decay of death. 

The door of the supply room slid open. Mryna crouched low behind thecartons, but she was able to see the man and the woman who had enteredthe room. A woman--here? Mryna hadn't considered that possibility. Perhaps the Earth-god already had a mate. 

The newcomers were dressed in crisp, white uniforms; the woman wore astarched, white hat. They carried a tray of small, glass cylinders fromwhich metal needles projected. While the woman held the tray, the mandrove the needles through the caps of small bottles and filled thecylinders with a bright-colored liquid. 

"When are you leaving, Dick?" the woman asked. 

"In about forty minutes. They're sending an auto-pickup. "

"Oh, no!"

"Now don't start worrying. They have got the bugs out of it by thistime. The auto-pickups are entirely trustworthy. "

"Sure, that's what the army says. "

"In theory they should be even more reliable than--"

"I wish you'd wait for the hospital shuttle. "

"And miss the chance to address Congress this year? We've worked toolong for this; I don't want to muff it now. We've all the statisticalproof we need, even to convince those pinchpenny halfwits. During thepast eight years we've handled more than a thousand cases up here. OnEarth they were pronounced incurable; we've sent better than eighty percent back in good health after an average stay of fourteen months. "

"No medical man has ever questioned the efficiency of cosmic radiationand a reduced atmospheric gravity, Dick. "

"It's just our so-called statesmen, always yapping about the budget. Butthis time we have the cost problem licked, too. For a year and a halfthe ore they send up from Rythar has paid for our entire operation. "

"I didn't know that. "

"We've kept it under wraps, so the politicians wouldn't cut ourappropriations. "

Their glass tubes were full, and they turned toward the door. "It isn'tright, " the woman persisted, "for them not to send a piloted shuttleafter you, Dick. It isn't dignified. You're our assistant medicaldirector and--"

Her words were cut off as the door slid shut behind them. Mryna tried tofit this new information into what she already knew--or thought sheknew--about the Earth-god. It didn't add up to a pretty picture. She hadonce asked for a definition of illness, and it was apparent to her thatthis place which they called the Guardian Wheel was an expensivehospital for Earthmen. It was paid for by the sacrificial ores mined onRythar. In a sense, Rythar was being enslaved and exploited by Earth. True, it was not difficult to dig out the ore, but Mryna resented thefact that the kids on Rythar had not been told the truth. She had longago lost her awe of the man called god; now she lost her respect aswell. 

Mryna was glad she had not seen him, glad no one knew she was aboard theGuardian Wheel. She would return to Rythar. After she told the otherswhat she knew, Rythar would send up no more sacrifice ores. Let theEarthmen come down and mine it for themselves!

Very cautiously she pulled the door open. The rim corridor was empty. She moved toward one of the intersecting corridors. When she heardfootsteps, she hid in another dormitory room. 

This was different from the others. It showed more evidence of permanentoccupation. She guessed it was a dormitory for the people who took careof the sick. Pictures were fastened to the curved, metal walls. Personalarticles cluttered the shelves hung beside the bunks. On a writing deskshe saw a number of typed reports. Five freshly laundered uniforms, identical to the one she had lost in the antiseptic wash, hung on a rackbehind the door. Mryna stripped off the makeshift she was wearing andput on one of the uniforms; she found boots under the desk. When she wasdressed, she stood admiring herself in the polished surface of the metaldoor. 

She was a handsome woman, and she was very conscious of that. Her facewas tanned by the mist-filtered sunlight of Rythar; her lips were redand sensuous; her long, platinum-colored hair fell to her shoulders. Shecompared herself to the small, hard-faced female she had seen in thesupply room. Was that a typical Earthwoman? Mryna's lips curled in ascornful smile. Let the gods come down to Rythar, then, and discoverwhat a real female was like in the lush, green, Rytharian paradise. 

Mryna went to the desk and glanced at the typed reports. They had beenwritten by a man who signed himself "Commander in Charge, GuardianWheel, " and they were addressed to the Congress of the world government. One typed document was a supply inventory; a second, still unfinished, was a budget report. (_You won't show a profit next time_, Mryna thoughtvindictively, _when we stop sending you the sacrifice ore_. ) Anotherreport dealt with Rythar, and Mryna read it with more interest. 

One paragraph caught her attention, "We have asked for soil samples to be taken from an area covering tenthousand square miles. Our chemical analysis has been thorough, and wefind nothing that could be remotely harmful to human life. Atmosphericsamples produce the same negative results. On the other hand, we havedirect evidence that no animal life has ever evolved on Rythar; the lifecycle is exclusively botanical. "

The soil samples, Mryna realized, would be the vials of Earth which theEarth-god had requested so often. Were the Earthmen planning to movetheir hospital down to Rythar? That idea disturbed her. Mryna did notwant her garden world cluttered up with a lot of sick, old men discardedby Earth. 

She turned to the second page of the report. "The original colonysurvived for a year. The Sickness in the Old Village developed onlyafter the first harvest of Rytharian-grown food. It is more and moreevident that the botanical cycle of Rythar must be examined before wefind the answer. To do that adequately, we shall have to send surveyteams to the surface; that requires much larger appropriations forresearch than we have had in the past. The metal immunization suits, which must, of course, be destroyed after each expedition--"

"And what, may I ask, is the meaning of this?"

Mryna dropped the report and swung toward the door. She saw a womanstanding there--another hard-faced Earthwoman, with a starched, whitecap perched on her graying hair. 

"I must have come to the wrong room, " Mryna said in a small voice. 

"Indeed! Everyone knows this is command headquarters. Who are you?" Thewoman put her hand on Mryna's arm, and the fingers bit through theuniform into Mryna's flesh. 

Mryna pulled away, drawing her shoulders back proudly. Why should shefeel afraid? She stood a head taller than this dried up stranger; sheknew the Earthwoman's strength would be no match for hers. 

"My name is Mryna Brill, " she said quietly. "I came up in a god-car fromRythar. "

"Rythar?" The woman's mouth fell open. She whispered the word as if itwere profanity. Suddenly she turned and ran down the rim corridor, screaming in terror. 

_She's afraid of me_! Mryna thought. And that made no sense at all. 

Mryna knew she had to get back to the god-car quickly. Since theEarthmen had built up the taboos in order to get their sacrifice oresfrom Rythar, they would do everything they could to prevent her return. She ran toward an intersecting spoke corridor. An alarm bell began toclang, and the sound vibrated against the metal walls. An armed mansprang from a side room and fired his weapon at Mryna. The dischargeburned a deep groove in the wall. 

So they would even kill her--these men who pretended to be gods!

Before the man could fire again, Mryna swung down a side corridor, andat once the sensation of weightlessness overtook her. She could not movequickly. She saw the armed man at the mouth of the corridor. Franticallyshe pushed open the door of a room, which was crowded with consoles oftransmission machines. Three men were seated in front of the speakers. They jumped and came toward her, clumsily fighting the weightlessness. 

Mryna caught at the door jamb and swung herself toward the ceiling. Atthe same time the armed man fired. The discharge missed her and washedagainst the transmission machinery. Blue fire exploded from the room. The three men screamed in agony. Concussion threw Mryna helplesslytoward the rim again. 

And the Guardian Wheel was plunged into darkness. Mryna's head swam; hershoulder seethed with pain where she had banged into the wall. She triedto creep toward the circular room, but she had lost her sense ofdirection and she found herself back on the rim. 

The clanging bell had stopped when the lights went out, but Mryna heardthe panic of frightened voices. Far away someone was screaming. Runningfeet clattered toward her. Mryna flattened herself against the outerwall. An indistinct body of men shot past her. 

"From Rythar, " one of them was saying. "A woman from Rythar!"

"And we've blasted the communication center. We've no way of sending thewarning back to Earth--"

They were gone. 

Mryna moved back into the spoke corridor. She felt her way silentlytoward the circular hub room and the god-car. Suddenly very close sheheard voices which she recognized--the man and the woman who had beentalking in the supply room. 

"You're still all right, Dick, " the woman said. "She hasn't been herelong enough to--"

"We don't know that. We don't know how it spreads or how quickly. Wecan't take the chance. "

"Then ... Then we've no choice?" Her voice was a small whisper, chokedwith terror. 

"None. These have been standing emergency orders for twenty years. Wealways faced the possibility that one of them would escape. If we'd beenallowed to use a different policy of education--but the politicianswouldn't permit that. The Wheel has to be destroyed, and we must diewith it. "

"Couldn't we wait and make sure?"

"It works too fast. None of us would be able to do the job--afterward. "

The voices moved away. Mryna floated toward the hub room. She found theair lock and pulled herself into the god-car. The metal lock hissedclosed and light came on. Then she knew she had made a mistake. Thisship was not the one she had used when she came up from Rythar. The tinycabin was fitted with a sleeping lounge, a food cabinet and a file ofreading films. Above the lounge a mica viewplate gave her a broad viewof the sky. 

Mryna remembered that the man in the supply room had said he was waitingfor an auto-pickup; he was on his way back to Earth. Mryna had taken hisship instead of her own. In panic she tried to open the door again, butshe found no way to do it. Machinery beneath her feet began to hum. Shefelt a slight lurch as the pickup left the hub of the Guardian Wheel. 

It swung in a wide arc. Through the viewplate she saw the enormous Wheelgrowing small behind her, silhouetted against the mist of Rythar. Suddenly the wheel glowed red with a soundless explosion. Its flamingfragments died in the void. 

Mryna dropped weakly on the lounge. Nausea spun through her mind. Theman had said they would destroy themselves. Because Mryna had comeaboard? But why were they afraid of her? What possible harm could she dothem? Mryna had left Rythar to discover the truth, and the truth wasinsanity. Was truth always like this--a bitter disillusionment, an emptyhorror?

She had something else to say to the people of Rythar now: not that thegods were men, but that men were mad. Believe in the taboos; send up thesacrificial ores. It was a small price to pay to keep that madness awayfrom Rythar. 

And Mryna knew she could not go back. With the Wheel gone, she couldnever return to Rythar; the auto-pickup was carrying her inexorablytoward Earth. The scream of the machinery slowly turned shrill, hammering against her eardrums. The stars visible in the viewplateblurred and winked out. Mryna felt a twist of vertigo as the shuttleshifted from conventional speed into a time warp. And then the soundwas gone. The ship was floating in an impenetrable blackness. 

Mryna had no idea how much time passed subjectively. When she becamehungry, she took food from the cabinet. She slept when she was tired. Topass the time, she turned the reading films through the projector. 

Most of the film stored in the shuttle covered material Mryna alreadyknew. The Earthmen, clearly, had not denied any information to Rythar. Only one thing had been restricted--astronomy. And that would have madeno difference, if Mryna had not found the text in the ruins of the OldVillage. The people on Rythar never saw the stars; they had no way ofknowing--or caring--what lay above the rain mist. 

Mryna was more interested in the history of Earth, which she had neverknown before. She studied the pictures of the great industrial centersand the crowded countryside. She was awed by the mobs in the citystreets and the towering buildings. Yet she liked her own worldmore--the forests and the clear-running brooks; the vast, uncrowded, open spaces. 

It puzzled her that the people of Earth would give the Rytharianparadise to a handful of children, when their own world was soovercrowded. Was this another form of the madness that had driven thepeople in the Wheel to destroy themselves? That made a convenientexplanation, yet Mryna's mind was too logical to accept it. 

One film referred to the founding of the original colony on Rythar, aplanet in the Sirian System which had been named for its discoverer. Rythar, according to the film, was one of a score of coloniesestablished by Earth. It was unbelievably rich in deposits of uranium. 

That, Mryna surmised, was the name of the sacrificial ore they sent upin the god-cars. 

The atmosphere and gravity of Rythar duplicated that of Earth; Rytharshould have become the largest colony in the system. The government ofEarth had originally planned a migration of ten million persons. 

"But after twelve months the survey colony was destroyed by aninfection, " Mryna read on the projection screen, "which has never beenidentified. It is called simply the Sickness. The origin of this plagueis unknown. No adult in the survey colony survived; children born onRythar are themselves immune, but are carriers of the Sickness. Thefirst rescue team sent to save them died within eight hours. No humanbeing, aside from these native-born children, has ever survived theSickness. "

Now Mryna had the whole truth. She knew the motivation for their madnessof self-destruction. It was not insanity, but the sublime courage of afew human beings sacrificing themselves to save the rest of theircivilization. They smashed the Guardian Wheel to keep the Sicknessthere. And Mryna had already escaped before that happened! She wasbeing hurled through space toward Earth and she would destroy that, too. 

If she killed herself, that would in no way alter the situation. Theship would still move in its appointed course. Her body would be aboard;perhaps the very furnishings in the cabin were now infected with thegerm of the Sickness. When the ship touched Earth, the fatal poisonwould escape. 

Dully Mryna turned up another frame on the film, and she read what theEarthmen had done to help Rythar. They built the Guardian Wheel toisolate the Sickness. Sealed in metal immunization suits, volunteers haddescended to the plague world and reared the surviving children of thecolonists until they were old enough to look out for themselves. Theanswer house had been set up as an instructional device. 

"As nearly as possible, the scientists in charge attempted to create anormal social situation for the plague carriers. They could never beallowed to leave Rythar, but when they matured enough to know the truth, Rythar could be integrated into the colonial system. Rytharian uraniumis already a significant trade factor in the colonial market. Anincidental by-product of the Guardian Wheel is the hospital facility, where advanced cases of certain cancers and lung diseases have beencured in a reduced gravity or by exposure to cosmic radiation. "

Mryna shut off the projection. The words made sense, but the results didnot. And she knew precisely why Earth had failed. When they matured--inthose three words she had her answer. 

And now it didn't matter. There was nothing she could do. Her ship was apoisoned arrow aimed directly at the heart of man's civilization. 

Mryna had slept twice when the auto-pickup lurched out of the time driveand she was able to see the stars again. Directly ahead of her she sawan emerald planet, bright in the sun. And she knew instinctively that itwas Earth. 

A speaker under the viewport throbbed with the sound of a human voice. 

"Auto-shuttle SC 539, attention. You are assigned landing slotseven-three-one, Port Chicago. I repeat, seven-three-one. Dial thatdestination. Do you read me?"

Three times the message was repeated before Mryna concluded that it wasmeant for her. She found three small knobs close to the speaker and aplastic toggle labeled "voice reply. " She snapped it shut and found thatshe could speak to the Chicago spaceport. 

Her problem was easily solved, then. She could say she came from Rythar. Without hesitation, Earth ships would be sent to blast her ship out ofthe sky before she would be able to land. But she knew she had toaccomplish more than that; the same mistake must not be repeated again. 

"How much time do I have?" she asked. 

"Thirty-four minutes. "

"Can you keep this shuttle up here any longer than that?"

"Lady, the auto-pickups are on tape-pilot. Come hell or high water, theyland exactly on schedule. "

"What happens if I don't dial the slot destination?"

"We bring you in on emergency--and you fork over a thousand buck fine. "

Mryna asked to be allowed to speak to someone in authority in thegovernment. The Chicago port manager told her the request was absurd. For nine minutes Mryna argued, with a mounting sense of urgency, beforehe gave his grudging consent. Her trouble was that she had to skateclose to the truth without admitting it directly. She could not--exceptas a last resort--let them kill her until they knew why the isolation ofRythar had failed. 

It was thirteen minutes before landing when Mryna finally heard anolder, more dignified voice on the speaker. By then the green globe ofEarth filled the sky; Mryna could make out the shapes of the continentsturning below her. The older man identified himself as a senator electedto the planetary Congress. She didn't know how much authority herepresented, but she couldn't afford to wait any longer. 

She told him frankly who she was. She knew she was pronouncing her owndeath sentence, yet she spoke quietly. She must show the same couragethat the Earthmen had when they sacrificed themselves in the GuardianWheel. 

"Listen to me for two minutes more before you blast my ship, " she asked. "I rode the god-car up from Rythar--I am coming now to spread theSickness on Earth--because I wanted to know the truth about somethingthat puzzled me. I had to know what was above the rain mist. In theanswer house you would not tell us that. Now I understand why. We werechildren. You were waiting for us to mature. And that is the mistake youmade; that blindness nearly destroyed your civilization. 

"You will have to build another Guardian Wheel. This time don't hideanything from us because we're children. The truth makes us mature, notillusions or taboos. Never forget that. It is easier to face a fact thanto have to give up a dream we've been taught to believe. Tell yourchildren the truth when they ask for it. Tell us, please. We can adjustto it. We're just as human as you are. "

Mryna drew a long breath. Her lips were trembling. Did this manunderstand what she had tried to say? She would never know. If shefailed, Earth--in spite of its generosity and its courage--would one daybe destroyed by children bred on too many delusions. "I'm ready, " Mrynasaid steadily. "Send up your warships and destroy me. "

She waited. Less than ten minutes were left. Her shuttle began to movemore slowly. She was no more than a mile above Earth. She saw thesoaring cities and the white highways twisting through green fields. 

Seven minutes left. Where were the warships? She looked anxiouslythrough the viewport and the sky was empty. 

Desperately she closed the voice toggle again. "Send them quickly!" shecried. "You must not let me land!"

No reply came from the speaker. Her auto-shuttle began to circle a largecity which lay at the southern tip of an inland lake. Three minutesmore. The ship nosed toward the spaceport. 

"Why don't you do something?" Mryna screamed. "What are you waitingfor?"

The shuttle settled into a metal rack. The lock hissed open. Mrynashrank back against the wall, looking out at what she woulddestroy--what she had already destroyed. A dignified, portly man camepanting up the ramp toward her. 

"No!" she whispered. "Don't come in here. "

"I am Senator Brieson, " he said shortly. "For ten years Dr. Jameson hasbeen telling us from the Guardian Wheel that we should adopt a differenteducational policy toward Rythar. Your scare broadcast was clever, butwe're used to Jameson's tricks. He'll be removed from office for this, and if I have anything to say about it--"

"You didn't believe me?" Mryna gasped. 

"Of course not. If a plague carrier escaped from Rythar, we would haveheard about it long before this. The trouble with you scientists is youdon't grant the rest of us any common sense. And Jameson's the worst ofthe lot. He's always contended that the sociologists should determineour Rytharian policy, not the elected representatives of the people. "

Mryna broke down and began to cry hysterically. The senator put his handunder her arm--none too gently. "Let's have no more dramatics, please. You don't know how fortunate you are, young lady. If the politicianswere as addle-witted as you scientists claim we are, we might havebelieved that nonsense and blasted your ship out of the sky. Youscientists have to give up the notion that you're our guardians; we'requite able to look out for ourselves. "

[Illustration: FIN]