Transcriber's Note:

 This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. 

 THE LOST KAFOOZALUM

 by PAULINE ASHWELL

 Illustrated by Schoenherr

 _One of the beautiful things about a delusion is that no matter how mad someone gets at it . .. He can't do it any harm. Therefore a delusion can be a fine thing for prodding angry belligerents. .. . _

 * * * * *

I remember some bad times, most of them back home on Excenus 23; theworst was when Dad fell under the reaping machine but there was alsothe one when I got lost twenty miles from home with a dud radio, atthe age of twelve; and the one when Uncle Charlie caught me practicingemergency turns in a helicar round the main weather-maker; and the oneon Figuerra being chased by a cyber-crane; and the time when Daddecided to send me to Earth to do my Education. 

This time is bad in a different way, with no sharp edges but a kind ofa desolation. 

Most people I know are feeling bad just now, because at RussettCollege we finished our Final Examination five days ago and Resultsare not due for a two weeks. 

My friend B Laydon says this is yet another Test anyone still sane atthe end being proved tough enough to break a molar on; she says alsoThe worst part is in bed remembering all the things she could havewritten and did not; The second worst is also in bed picturing how toexplain to her parents when they get back to Earth that _someone_ hasto come bottom and in a group as brilliant as Russett College CulturalEngineering Class this is really no disgrace. 

I am not worried that way so much, I cannot remember what I wroteanyway and I can think of one or two people I am pretty sure will comebottomer than me--or B either. 

I would prefer to think it is just Finals cause me to feel miserablebut it is not. 

In Psychology they taught us The mind has the faculty of concealingany motive it is ashamed of, especially from itself; seemsunfortunately mine does not have this gadget supplied. 

I never wanted to come to Earth. I was sent to Russett against my willand counting the days till I could get back to Home, Father andExcensus 23, but the sad truth is that now the longed-for moment isnearly on top of me I do not want to go. 

Dad's farm was a fine place to grow up, but now I had four years onEarth the thought of going back there makes me feel like athree-weeks' chicken got to get back in its shell. 

B and I are on an island in the Pacific. Her parents are on Caratacusresearching on local art forms, so she and I came here to be miserablein company and away from the rest. 

It took me years on Earth to get used to all this water around, itseemed unnatural and dangerous to have it all lying loose that way, but now I shall miss even the Sea. 

The reason we have this long suspense over Finals is that they willnot use Reading Machines to mark the papers for fear of cutting downcritical judgement; so each paper has to be read word by word by threeExaminers and there are forty-three of us and we wrote six paperseach. 

What I think is I am sorry for the Examiners, but B says they were theones who set the papers and it serves them perfectly right. 

I express surprise because D. J. M'Clare our Professor is one of them, but B says He is one of the greatest men in the galaxy, of course, butshe gave up thinking him perfect _years_ ago. 

One of the main attractions on this Island is swimming under water, especially by moonlight. Dad sent me a fish-boat as a birthday presenttwo years back, but I never used it yet on account of myabove-mentioned attitude to water. Now I got this feeling of CarpeDiem, make the most of Earth while I am on it because probably I shallnot pass this way again. 

The fourth day on the Island it is full moon at ten o'clock, so Ipluck up courage to wriggle into the boat and go out under the Sea. Bsays Fish parading in and out of reefs just remind her of CulturalEngineering--crowd behavior--so she prefers to turn in early and findout what nightmares her subconscious will throw up _this_ time. 

The reefs by moonlight are everything they are supposed to be, why didI not do this often when I had the chance? I stay till my oxygen isnearly gone, then come out and sadly press the button that collapsesthe boat into a thirty-pound package of plastic hoops and oxygen cans. I sling it on my back and head for the chalet B and I hired among thecoconut trees. 

 * * * * *

I am crossing an open space maybe fifty yards from it when a Thingdrops on me out of the air. 

I do not see the Thing because part of it covers my face, and the restis grabbed round my arms and my waist and my hips and whatever, Icannot see and I cannot scream and I cannot find anything to kick. TheThing is strong and rubbery and many-armed and warmish, and less thana second after I first feel it I am being hauled up into the air. 

I do not care for this at all. 

I am at least fifty feet up before it occurs to me to bite the handthat gags me and then I discover it is plastic, not alive at all. ThenI feel self and encumberance scraping through some kind of aperture;there is a sharp click as of a door closing and the Thing goes limpall round me. 

I spit out the bit I am biting and it drops away so that I can see. 

Well!

I am in a kind of a cup-shaped space maybe ten feet across but nothigher than I am; there is a trap door in the ceiling; the Thing islying all around me in a mess of plastic arms, with an extensiblestalk connecting it to the wall. I kick free and it turns overexposing the label FRAGILE CARGO right across the back. 

The next thing I notice is two holdalls, B's and mine, clamped againstthe wall, and the next after that is the opening of a trap door in theceiling and B's head silhouetted in it remarking Oh there you are Liz. 

I confirm this statement and ask for explanations. 

B says She doesn't understand all of it but it is all right. 

It is not all right I reply, if she has joined some Society such asfor the Realization of Fictitious Improbabilities that is herprivilege but no reason to involve me. 

B says Why do I not stop talking and come up and see for myself?

There is a slight hitch when I jam in the trap door, then B helps meget the boat off my back and I drop it on the Fragile Cargo and emergeinto the cabin of a Hopper, drop-shaped, cargo-carrying; I have beenin its hold till now. 

There are one or two peculiar points about it, or maybe one or twohundred, such as the rate at which we are ascending which seems to bebringing us right into the Stratosphere; but the main thing I noticeis the pilot. He has his back to us but is recognizably Ram Gopal whograduated in Cultural Engineering last year, Rumor says next to top ofhis class. 

I ask him what kind of a melodramatic shenanigan is this?

B says We had to leave quietly in a hurry without attracting attentionso she booked us out at the Hotel _hours_ ago and she and Ram havebeen hanging around waiting for me ever since. 

I point out that the scope-trace of an Unidentified Flying Object willoccasion a lot more remark than a normal departure even at midnight. 

At this Ram smiles in an inscrutable Oriental manner and B gets nearlyas cross as I do, seems she has mentioned this point before. 

We have not gone into it properly when the cabin suddenly shiftsthrough a right angle. B and I go sliding down the vertical floor andend sitting on a window. There is a jolt and a shudder and Ram muttersthings in Hindi and then suddenly Up is nowhere at all. 

B and I scramble off the window and grab fixtures so as to stay put. The stars have gone and we can see nothing except the dim glow overthe instruments; then suddenly lights go on outside. 

We look out into the hold of a ship. 

Our ten-foot teardrop is sitting next to another one, like two eggsin a rack. On the other side is a bulkhead; behind, the curve of thehull; and directly ahead an empty space, then another bulkhead and anopen door, through which after a few seconds a head pokes cautiously. 

The head is then followed by a body which kicks off against the walland sails slowly towards us. Ram presses a stud and a door slides openin the hopper; but the new arrival stops himself with a hand on eitherside of the frame, his legs trailing any old how behind him. It isPeter Yeng Sen who graduated the year I did my Field Work. 

He says, Gopal, dear fellow, there was no need for the knocking, weheard the bell all right. 

Ram grumbles something about the guide beam being miss-set, and slidesout of his chair. Peter announces that we have only just made it asthe deadline is in seven minutes time; he waves B and me out of thehopper, through the door and into a corridor where a certain irregularvibration is coming from the walls. 

Ram asks what is that tapping? And Peter sighs and says The presentgeneration of students has no discipline at all. 

At this B brakes with one hand against the wall and cocks her head tolisten; next moment she laughs and starts banging with her fist on thewall. 

Peter exclaims in Mandarin and tows her away by one wrist like areluctant kite. The rapping starts again on the far side of the walland I suddenly recognize a primitive signaling system called Regretor something, I guess because it was used by people in situations theydid not like such as Sinking ships or solitary confinement; it is doneby tapping water pipes and such. 

Someone found it in a book and the more childish element in Collegelearned it up for signaling during compulsory lectures. Interestwaning abruptly when the lecturers started to learn it, too. 

I never paid much attention not expecting to be in Solitaryconfinement much; this just shows you; next moment Ram opens a doorand pushes me through it, the door clicks behind me and Solitaryconfinement is what I am in. 

I remember this code is really called Remorse which is what I feel fornot learning when I had the chance. 

However I do not have long for it, a speaker in the wall requestseveryone to lie down as acceleration is about to begin. I strap downon the couch which fills half the compartment, countdown begins and atzero the floor is suddenly _down_ once more. 

I wait till my stomach settles, then rise to explore. 

 * * * * *

I am in an oblong room about eight by twelve, it looks as though ithad been hastily partitioned off from a larger space. The walls areprefab plastic sheet, the rest is standard fittings slung in andbolted down with the fastenings showing. 

How many of my classmates are on this ship? _Remorse_ again astapping starts on either side of me. 

Discarding such Hypotheses as that Ram and Peter are going to hold usto ransom--which might work for me, since my Dad somehow got to be amillionaire, but not for B because her parents think money isvulgar--or that we are being carried off to found an ideal Colonysomewhere--any first-year student can tell you why that won'twork--only one idea seems plausible. 

This is that Finals were not final and we are in for a Test of somesort. 

After ten minutes I get some evidence; a Reading Machine is trundledin, the door immediately slamming shut so I do not see who trundlesit. 

I prowl round it looking for tricks but it seems standard; I take aseat in it, put on the headset and turn the switch. 

Hypothesis confirmed, I suppose. 

There is a reel in place and it contains background information on aproblem in Cultural Engineering all set out the way we are taught todo it in Class. The Problem concerns developments on a planet gotsettled by two groups during the Exodus and been isolated ever since. 

Well while a Reading Machine is running there is no time to think, itcrams in data at full speed and evaluation has to wait. However mysubconscious goes into action and when the reel stops it produces aSuspicion full grown. 

The thing is too tidy. 

When we were First Year we dreamed up situations like this and arguedlike mad over them, but they were a lot too neat for real life and toodramatic as well. 

However one thing M'Clare said to us, and every other lecturer too, just before the Finals, was Do not spend time trying to figure whatthe examiner was after but answer the question as set; I am more thanhalfway decided this is some mysterious Oriental idea of a joke but Iget busy thinking in case it is not. 

 * * * * *

The Problem goes like this:

The planet is called Incognita in the reel and it is right on the edgeof the known volume of space, it got settled by two groups somewherebetween three and three and a half centuries ago. The rest of thehuman race never heard of it till maybe three years back. 

(Well it happens that way, inhabited planets are still turning upeight or ten a century, on account of during the Exodus some folk werewilling to travel a year or more so as to get away from the rest). 

The ship that spotted the planet as inhabited did not land, butreported to Central Government, Earth, who shipped observers out totake a look. 

(There was a rumor circulating at Russett that the Terry Governmentmight employ some of us on that kind of job, but it never gotofficial. I do not know whether to believe this bit or not. )

It is stated the observers landed secretly and mingled with thenatives unobserved. 

(This is not physically impossible but sounds too like a Field Trip tobe true. )

The observers are not named but stated to be graduates of the CulturalEngineering Class. 

They put in a few months' work and sent home unanimous Crash Priorityreports the situation is _bad_, getting worse and the prognosis isWar. 

Brother. 

I know people had wars, I know one reason we do not have them now isjust that with so many planets and cheap transportation, pressure hasother outlets; these people scrapped their ships for factories andnever built more. 

But. 

There are only about ten million of them and surely to goodness awhole planet gives room enough to keep out of each other's hair?

Well this is not Reasoning but a Reaction, I go back to the data foranother look. 

The root trouble is stated to be that two groups landed on the planetwithout knowing the others were there, when they met thirty yearslater they got a disagreeable shock. 

I cannot see there was any basic difference between them, they werevery similar, especially in that neither lot wanted anything to dowith people they had not picked themselves. 

So they divided the planet along a Great Circle which left two of themain land-masses in one hemisphere and two in another. 

They agree each to keep to its own section and leave the other alone. 

Twenty years later, trading like mad; each has certain minerals theother lacks; each has certain agricultural products the other finds itdifficult to grow. 

You think this leads to Co-operation Friendship and ultimateFederation?

I will not go into the incidents that make each side feel it is beinggypped, it is enough that from time to time each has a scarcity orhold-up on deliveries that upsets the other's economy; and they startexperimenting to become self-sufficient: and the exporter's economy isupset in turn. And each thinks the other did it on purpose. 

This sort of situation reacts internally leading to Politics. 

There are troubles about a medium-sized island on the dividing line, and the profits from interhemispherical transport, and the laws ofinterhemispherical trade. 

It takes maybe two hundred years, but finally each has expanded thePolice into an army with a whole spectrum of weapons not to be used onany account except for Defense. 

This situation lasts seventy years getting worse all the time, nowRumors have started on each side that the other is developing anUltimate Weapon, and the political parties not in power are agitatingto move first before the thing is complete. 

The observers report War not maybe this year or the next but withinten, and if neither side was looking for an Ultimate Weapon to beginwith they certainly are now. 

Taking all this at face value there seems an obvious solution. 

I am thinking this over in an academic sort of way when an itchytrickle of sweat starts down my vertebrae. 

Who is going to apply this solution? Because if this is anything butanother Test, or the output of a diseased sense of humor, I would besorry for somebody. 

I dial black coffee on the wall servitor and wish B were here so wecould prove to each other the thing is just an exercise; I do not doso well at spotting proofs on my own. 

Most of our class exercises have concerned something that happened, once. 

 * * * * *

After about ninety minutes the speaker requests me to write not morethan one thousand words on any scheme to improve the situation and theequipment required for it. 

I spent ten minutes verbalizing the basic idea and an hour or so on"equipment"; the longer I go on the more unlikely it all seems. In theend I have maybe two hundred words which acting on instructions I postthrough a slit in the door. 

Five minutes later I realize I have forgotten the Time Factor. 

[Illustration]

If the original ship took a year to reach Incognita, it will take atleast four months now; therefore it is more than four months sincethat report was written and will be more than a year before anyonearrives and War may have started already. 

I sit back and by transition of ideas start to wonder where this shipis heading? We are still at one gee and even on Mass-Time you cannotjuggle apparent acceleration and spatial transition outside certainlimits; we are not just orbiting but must be well outside the SolarSystem by now. 

The speaker announces Everyone will now get some rest; I smellsleep-gas for one moment and have just time to lie down. 

I guess I was tired, at that. 

When I wake I feel more cheerful than I have for weeks; analysisindicates I am glad something is _happening_ even if it is anotherExam. 

I dial breakfast but am too restless to eat; I wonder how long thisgoes on or whether I am supposed to show Initiative and break out; Iam examining things with this in mind when the speaker comes to lifeagain. 

It says, "Ladies and gentlemen. You have not been told whether theproblem that you studied yesterday concerned a real situation or animaginary one. You have all outlined measures which you think wouldimprove the situation described. Please consider, seriously, whetheryou would be prepared to take part yourself in the application of yourplan. "

Brother. 

There is no way to tell whether those who say No will be countedcowardly or those who say Yes rash idiots or what, the owner of thatvoice has his inflections too well trained to give anything awayexcept intentionally. 

D. J. M'Clare. 

Not in person but a recording, anyway M'Clare is on Earth surroundedby exam papers. 

I sit back and try to think, honestly, if that crack-brained notion Iwrote out last night were going to be tried in dead earnest, would Itake a hand in it?

The trouble is, hearing M'Clare's voice has convinced me it is a Test, I don't know whether it is testing my courage or my prudence in fact Imight as well toss for it. 

Heads I am crazy, Tails a defaulter; Tails is what it is. 

I seize my styler and write the decision down. 

There is the slit in the door. 

I twiddle the note and think Well nobody asked for it yet. 

Suppose it is real, after all?

I remember the itchy, sweaty feeling I got yesterday and try topicture really embarking on a thing like this, but I cannot work upany lather today. 

I begin to picture M'Clare reading my decision not to back up my ownidea. 

I pick up the coin and juggle it around. 

The speaker remarks When I am quite ready will I please make a noteof my decision and post it through the door. 

I go on flipping the coin up and presently it drops on the floor, itis Heads this time. 

Tossing coins is a pretty feeble way to decide. 

I drop the note on the floor and take another sheet and write "YES. Lysistrata Lee. "

Using that name seems to make it more legal. 

I slip the paper in the slit and poke till it falls through on theother side of the door. 

I am suddenly immensely hungry and dial breakfast all over again. 

 * * * * *

Just as I finish M'Clare's voice starts once more. 

"It's always the minor matters that cause the most difficulty. Thetiming of this announcement has cost me as much thought as any aspectof the arrangements. The trouble is that however honest you are--andyour honesty has been tested repeatedly--and however strong yourimagination--about half of your training has been devoted todeveloping it--you can't possibly be sure, answering a hypotheticalquestion, that you are giving the answer you would choose if you knewit was asked in dead earnest. 

"Those of you who answered the question in the negative are out ofthis. They have been told that it was a test, of an experimentalnature, and have been asked to keep the whole thing a secret. Theywill be returning to Earth in a few hours' time. I ask the rest ofyou to think it over once again. Your decision is still private. Onlythe two people who gathered you together know which members of theclass are in this ship. The list of possible helpers was compiled by acomputer. I haven't seen it myself. 

"You have a further half hour in which to make up your minds finally. Please remember that if you have any private reservations on thematter, or if you are secretly afraid, you may endanger us all. Youall know enough psychology to realize this. 

"If you still decide in favor of the project, write your name on aslip of paper and post it as before. If you are not absolutely certainabout it, do nothing. Please think it over for half an hour. "

Me, I had enough thinking. I write my name--just L. Lee--and post itstraight away. 

However I cannot stop thinking altogether. I guess I think very hard, in fact. My Subconscious insists afterwards that it did register theplop as something came through the slit, but my Conscious failed tonotice it at all. 

Hours later--my watch says twenty-five minutes but I guess theMass-Time has affected it--anyway I had three times too much solitaryconfinement--when will they let me out of here?--there is a knock atthe door and a second later it slides apart. 

I am expecting Ram or Peter so it takes me an appreciable fraction ofa moment to realize I am seeing D. J. M'Clare. 

Then I remember he is back on Earth buried in Exam papers andconclude I am having a hallucination. 

This figment of my imagination says politely, "Do you mind if I sitdown?"

He collapses on the couch as though thoroughly glad of it. 

It is a strange thing, every time I see M'Clare I am startled all overagain at how good-looking he is; seems I forget it between times whichis maybe why I never fell for him as most female students do. 

However what strikes me this time is that he looks tired, three-days-sleepless tired with worries on top. 

I guess he is real, at that. 

He says, "Don't look so accusing, Lizzie, I only just got on this shipmyself. "

This does not make sense; you cannot just arrive on a ship twenty-fourhours after it goes on Mass-Time; or can you?

M'Clare leans back and closes his eyes and inquires whether I am oneof the Morse enthusiasts?

So that is the name; I say when we get back I will learn it firstthing. 

"Well, " says he, "I did my best to arrange privacy for all of you;with so many ingenious idiots on board I'm not really surprised thatthey managed to circumvent me. I had to cheat and check that youreally were on the list; and I knew that whoever backed out you'dstill be on board. "

So I should hope he might: Horrors there is my first answer screwedup on the floor and Writing side top-most. 

However he has not noticed it, he goes on "Anyway you of all peoplewon't be thought to have dropped out because you were afraid. "

I have just managed to hook my heel over the note and get it out ofsight, M'Clare has paused for an answer and I have to dredge mySub-threshold memories for--

WHAT?

 * * * * *

M'Clare opens his eyes and says like I am enacting Last Straw, "Havesome sense, Lizzie. " Then in a different tone, "Ram says he gave youthe letter half an hour ago. "

What letter?

My brain suddenly registers a small pale patch been occupying a cornerof my retina for the last half hour; it turns out to be a letterpostmarked Excenus 23. 

I disembowel it with one jerk. It is from my Dad and runs like this:

 My dear Liz, Thank you for your last letter, glad you are keeping fit and so am I. 

 I just got a letter from your College saying you will get a degree conferred on you on September 12th and parents if on Earth will be welcome. 

 Well Liz this I got to see and Charlie says the same, but the letter says too Terran Authority will not give a permit to visit Earth just for this, so I wangled on to a Delegation which is coming to discuss trade with the Department of Commerce. Charlie and I will be arriving on Earth on August 24th. 

 Liz it is good to think I shall be seeing you again after four years. There are some things about your future I meant to write to Professor M'Clare about, but now I shall be able to talk it over direct. Please give him my regards. 

 Be seeing you Lizzie girl, your affectionate Dad

 J. X. Lee. 

Dear old Dad, after all these years farming with a weather-maker on adrydust planet I want to see his face the first time he sees realrain. 

Hell's fires and shades of darkness, I shan't be there!

M'Clare says, "Your father wrote to me saying that he will be arrivingon Earth on 24th August. I take it your letter says the same. I cameon a dispatch boat; you can go back on it. "

_Now_ what is he talking about? Then I get the drift. 

I say, "Look. So Dad will be on Earth before we get back. Whatdifference does that make?"

"You can't let him arrive and find you missing. "

Well I admit to a qualm at the thought of Dad let loose on Earthwithout me, but after all Uncle Charlie is a born Terrie and can keephim in line; Hell he is old enough to look after himself anyway. 

"You met my Dad, " I point out. "You think J. X. Lee would want anydaughter of his backing out on a job so as to hold his hand? I cansend him a letter saying I am off on a job or a Test or whatever Iplease and hold everything till I get back; what are you doing aboutpeople's families on Earth already?"

M'Clare says we were all selected as having families not on Earth atpresent, and I must go back. 

I say like Hell I will. 

He says he is my official guardian and responsible for me. 

I say he is just as responsible for everyone else on this ship. 

I spent years and years trying to think up a remark would really gethome to M'Clare; well I have done it now. 

I say, "Look. You are tired and worried and maybe not thinking so welljust now. 

"I know this is a very risky job, don't think I missed that at all. Itried hard to imagine it like you said over the speaker. I cannotquite imagine dying but I know how Dad will feel if I do. 

"I did my level best to scare myself sick, then I decided it is justplain worth the risk anyway. 

"To work out a thing like this you have to have a kind of arithmetic, you add in everybody's feelings with the other factors, then if youget a plus answer you forget everything else and go right ahead. 

"I am not going to think about it any more, because I added up the sumand got the answer and upsetting my nerves won't help. I guess youworked out the sum, too. You decided four million people were worthrisking twenty, even if they do have parents. Even if they are yourstudents. So they are, too, and you gave us all a chance to say No. 

"Well nothing has altered that, only now the values look different toyou because you are tired and worried and probably missed breakfast, too. "

Brother some speech, I wonder what got into me? M'Clare is wondering, too, or maybe gone to sleep sitting, it is some time before he answersme. 

"Miss Lee, you are deplorably right on one thing at least. I don'tknow whether I was fit to make such a decision when I made it, but I'mnot fit now. As far as you personally are concerned. .. . " He trails offlooking tireder than ever, then picks up again suddenly. "You areagain quite right, I am every bit as responsible for the other peopleon board as I am for you. "

He climbs slowly to his feet and walks out without another word. 

The door is left open and I take this as an invitation to freedom andshoot through in case it was a mistake. 

No because Ram is opening doors all along the corridor and ten ofRussett's brightest come pouring out like mercury finding its ownlevel and coalesce in the middle of the floor. 

The effect of release is such that after four minutes Peter Yeng Sen'shead appears at the top of a stairway and he says the crew is liftingthe deck plates, will we for Time's sake go along to the ConferenceRoom which is soundproof. 

 * * * * *

The Conference Room is on the next deck and like our cabins showssigns of hasty construction; the soundproofing is there but theacoustics are kind of muffled and the generator is not boxed in buthas cables trailing all over, and the fastenings have a strong buttemporary look. 

Otherwise there is a big table and a lot of chairs and a smallprojection box in front of each with a note-taker beside. 

It is maybe this very functional setup or maybe the dead flatness ofour voices in the damped room, but we do not have so much to talkabout any more. We automatically take places at the table, all at oneend, leaving seven vacant chairs near the door. 

Looking round, I wonder what principle we were selected on. 

Of my special friends Eru Te Whangoa and Kirsty Lammergaw are presentbut Lily Chen and Likofo Komom'baratse and Jean LeBrun are not; wehave Cray Patterson who is one of my special enemies but not BlazerWeigh or the Astral Cad; the rest are P. Zapotec, Nick Howard, AroMestah, Dillie Dixie, Pavel Christianovitch, Lennie DiMaggio andShootright Crow. 

Eru is at the end of the table, opposite the door, and maybe feelsthis position puts it up to him to start the discussion; he opens byremarking "So nobody took the opportunity to withdraw. "

Cray Patterson lifts his eyebrows ceilingwards and drawls out that thedecision was supposed to be a private one. 

B says "Maybe but it did not work out that way, everyone who learnedMorse knows who was on the ship, anyway they are all still here sowhat does it matter? And M'Clare would not have picked people who weregoing to funk it, after all. "

My chair gets a kick on the ankle which I suppose was meant for B; Eruis six foot five but even his legs do not quite reach; he is the onlyone of us facing the door. 

M'Clare has somehow shed his weariness; he looks stern but fresh as adaisy. There are four with him; Ram and Peter looking serious, onestranger in Evercleans looking determined to enjoy the party andanother in uniform looking as though nothing would make him. 

M'Clare introduces the strangers as Colonel Delano-Smith and Mr. Yardo. They all sit down at the other end of the table; then he frownsat us and begins like this:

"Miss Laydon is mistaken. You were not selected on any such grounds asshe suggests. I may say that I was astonished at the readiness withwhich you all engaged yourselves to take part in such a desperategamble; and, seeing that for the last four years I have been trying topersuade you that it is worth while, before making a decision of anyimportance, to spend a certain amount of thought on it, I wasdiscouraged as well. "

Oh. 

"The criterion upon which you were selected was a very simple one. AsI told you, you were picked not by me but by a computer; the one inthe College Office which registers such information as your homeaddresses and present whereabouts. You are simply that section of theclass which could be picked up without attracting attention, becauseyou all happened to be on holiday by yourselves or with other membersof the class; and because your nearest relatives are not on Earth atpresent. "

Oh, well. 

All of us can see M'Clare is doing a job of deflation on us forreasons of his own, but it works for all that. 

He now seems to feel the job is complete and relaxes a bit. 

"I was interested to see that you all, without exception, hit onvariations of the same idea. It is of course the obvious way to dealwith the problem. " He smiles at us suddenly and I get mad at myselfbecause I know he is following the rules for introducing a desiredstate of mind, but I am responding as meant. "I'll read you the mostsuccinct expression of it; you may be able to guess the author. "

Business with bits of paper. 

"Here it is. I quote: 'Drag in some outsider looks like he is goingfor both sides; they will gang up on him. '"

Yells of laughter and shouts of "Lizzie Lee!" even the two strangersproduce sympathetic grins; I do not find it so funny as all thatmyself. 

"Ideas as to the form the 'outsider' should take were more varied. This is a matter I propose to leave you to work out together, with theassistance of Colonel Delano-Smith and Mr. Yardo. Te Whangoa, youtake the chair. "

Exit M'Clare. 

 * * * * *

This leaves the two halves of the table eying one another. Ram andPeter have been through this kind of session in their time; now theyare leaning back preparing to watch us work. It is plain we aresupposed to impress the abilities of Russett near-graduates on the twostrangers, and for some moments we are all occupied taking them in. Colonel Delano-Smith is a small, neat guy with a face that has all themuscular machinery for producing an expression; he just doesn't careto use it. Mr. Yardo is taller than any of us except Eru and flesh isspread very thin on his bones, including his face which splits now andthen in a grin like an affable skeleton. Where the colonel fits isguessable enough, Mr. Yardo is presumably Expert at something but nodata on _what_. 

Eru rests his hands on the table and says we had better start; willsomebody kindly outline an idea for making the Incognitans "gang up"?The simpler the better and it does not matter whether it is workableor not; pulling it to pieces will give us a start. 

We all wait to see who will rush in; then I catch Eru's eye and see Iam elected Clown again. I say "Send them a letter postmarked OuterSpace signed BEM saying we lost our own planet in a nova and will takeover theirs two weeks from Tuesday. "

Mr. Yardo utters a sharp "Ha! Ha!" but it is not seconded; thecolonel having been expressionless all along becomes more so; Erusays, "Thank you, Lizzie. " He looks across at Cray who is opposite me;Cray says there are many points on which he might comment; to takeonly one, two weeks from Tuesday leaves little time for 'ganging up', and what happens when the BEMs fail to come?

We are suddenly back in the atmosphere of a seminar; Eru's glancemoves to P. Zapotec sitting next to Cray, and he says, "These BEMs wholost their home planet in a nova, how many ships have they? Without abase they cannot be very dangerous unless their fleet is very large. "

It goes round the table. 

Pavel: "How would BEMs learn to write?"

Nick: "How are they supposed to know that Incognita is inhabited? Howdo they address the letter?"

The Crow: "Huh. Why write letters? Invaders just invade. "

Kirsty: "We don't want to inflame these people against alien races. Wemight find one some day. It seems to me this idea might have all sortsof undesirable by-products. Suppose each side regards it as a ruse onthe part of the other. We might touch off a war instead of preventingit. Suppose they turn over to preparations for repelling the invaders, to an extent that cripples their economy? Suppose a panic starts?"

Dilly: "Say, Mr. Chairman, is there any of this idea left at all? Howabout an interim summary?"

Eru coughs to get a moment for thought, then says:

"In brief, the problem is to provide a menace against which the twogroups will be forced to unite. It must have certain characteristics. 

"It must be sufficiently far off in time for the threat to lastseveral years, long enough to force them into a real combination. 

"It must obviously be a plausible danger and they must get to know ofit in a plausible manner. Invasion from outside is the only threat sofar suggested. 

"It must be a limited threat. That is, it must appear to come from onewell-defined group. The rest of the Universe should appear benevolentor neutral. "

He just stops, rather as though there is something else to come; whilethe rest of us are waiting B sticks her oar in to the followingeffect. 

"Yes, but look, suppose this goes wrong; it's all very well to makeplans but suppose we get some of Kirsty's side-effects just the same, well what I mean is suppose it makes the mess worse instead of betterwe want some way we can sort of switch it off again. 

"Look this is just an illustration, but suppose the Menace waspirates, if it went wrong we could have an Earth ship make officialcontact and they could just happen to say By the way have you seenanything of some pirates, Earth fleet wiped them up in this sectorabout six months ago. 

"That would mean the whole crew conniving, so it won't do, but yousee what I mean. "

There is a bit of silence, then Aro says, "I think we should startfresh. We have had criticisms of Lizzie's suggestion, which was notperhaps wholly serious, and as Dilly says there is little of it left, except the idea of a threat of invasion. The idea of an alienintelligent race has objections and would be very difficult to fake. The invaders must be men from another planet. Another unknown one. Buthow do the people of Incognita come to know that they exist?"

More silence, then I hear my own voice speaking although it was myintention to keep quiet for once: it sounds kind of creaky and itsays: "A ship. A crashed ship from Outside. "

Whereupon another voice says, "Really! Am I expected to swallow this?"

 * * * * *

We had just about forgotten the colonel, not to mention Mr. Yardo whocontributes another "Ha! Ha!" so this reminder comes as a slightshock, nor do we see what he is talking about but this he proceeds toexplain. 

"I don't know why M'Clare thought it necessary to stage thisdiscussion. I am already acquainted with his plan and have had ordersto co-operate. I have expressed my opinion on using undergraduates ina job like this and have been overruled. If he, or you, imagine thatpriming you to bring out his ideas like this is going to reconcile meto the whole business you are mistaken. He might have chosen a moresuitable mouthpiece than that child with the curly hair--"

Here everybody wishes to reply at once; the resulting jam produces amoment of silence and I get in first. 

"As for curly hair I am rising twenty-four and I was only saying whatwe all thought, if we have the same ideas as M'Clare that is becausehe taught us for four years. How else would you set about it anyway?"

My fellow students pick up their stylers and tap solemnly three timeson the table; this is the Russett equivalent of "Hear! Hear!" and thecolonel is surprised. 

Eru says coldly, "This discussion has not been rehearsed. As Lizzie . .. AsMiss Lee says, we have been working and thinking together for four yearsand have been taught by the same people. "

"Very well, " says Delano-Smith testily. "Tell me this, please: Do youregard this idea as practicable?"

Cray tilts his chair back and remarks to the ceiling, "This is rathera farce. I suppose we had to go through our paces for the colonel'sbenefit--and Mr. Yardo's of course--but can't we be briefed properlynow?"

"What do you mean by that?" snaps the colonel. 

"It's been obvious right along, " says Cray, balancing his styler onone forefinger, "so obvious none of us has bothered to mention it, that accepting the normal limitations of Mass-Time, the idea ofinterfering in Incognita was doomed before it began. No conventionalship would have much hope of arriving before war broke out; and if itdid arrive it couldn't do anything effective. Therefore I assume thatthis is not a conventional ship. I might accept that the Governmenthas sent us out in a futile attempt to do the impossible, but Iwouldn't believe that of M'Clare. "

Cray is the only Terry I know acts like an Outsider's idea of one;many find this difficult to take and the colonel is plainly one ofthem. Eru intervenes quickly. 

"I imagine we all realized that. Anyway this ship is obviously not aconventional model. If you accept the usual Mass-Time relationshipbetween the rate of transition and the fifth power of the apparentacceleration, we must have reached about four times the maximumalready. "

"Ram!" says B suddenly, "What did you do to stop the Hotel scoperegistering the little ship you picked up me and Lizzie in?"

Everybody cuts in with something they have noticed about thecapabilities of this ship or the hoppers, and Lenny starts hammeringon the table and chanting! "Brief! Brief! Brief!" and others are juststarting to join in when Eru bangs on the table and glares us alldown. 

Having got silence, he says very quietly, "Colonel Delano-Smith, Idoubt whether this discussion can usefully proceed without a good dealmore information; will you take over?"

The colonel looks round at all the eager earnest interested mapshastily put on for his benefit and decides to take the plunge. 

"Very well. I suppose it is . .. Very well. The decision to usestudents from Russett was made at a very high level, and I suppose--"Instead of saying "Very well" again he shrugs his shoulders and getsdown to it. 

"The report from the planet we decided to call 'Incognita' wasreceived thirty-one days ago. The Department of Spatial Affairs hascertain resources which are not generally known. This ship is one ofthem. She works on a modified version of Mass-Time which enables herto use about a thousand channels instead of the normal limit of twohundred; for good and sufficient reasons this has not been generallyreleased. "

Pause while we are silently dared to doubt the Virtue and sufficiencyof these reasons which personally I do not. 

"To travel to Incognita direct would take about fifteen days by theshortest route. We shall take eighteen days as we shall have to make adetour. "

But presumably we shall take only fifteen days back. Hurrah we canspend a week round the planet and still be back in time forCommemoration. We shall skip maybe a million awkward questions and Ishall not disappoint Dad. 

It is plain the colonel is not filled with joy; far from it, he didnot enjoy revealing a Departmental secret however obvious, but helikes the next item even less. 

"We shall detour to an uninhabited system twelve days' transit timefrom here and make contact with another ship, the _Gilgamesh_. "

 * * * * *

At which Lennie DiMaggio who has been silent till now brings his fistdown on the table and exclaims, "You _can't_!"

Lennie is much upset for some reason; Delano-Smith gives him apeculiar look and says what does he know about it? and Lennie startsto stutter. 

Cray remarks that Lennie's childhood hobby appears to have beenspaceships and he suffers from arrested development. 

B says it is well known Lennie is mad about the Space Force and whynot? It seems to have uses Go on and tell us Lennie. 

Lennie says "_G-Gilgamesh_ was lost three hundred years ago!"

"The flaw in that statement, " says Cray after a pause, "is that thismay be another ship of the same name. "

"No, " says the colonel. "Explorer Class cruiser. They went out ofservice two hundred eighty years back. "

The Space Force, I remember, does not re-use names of lost ships: somesays Very Proper Feeling some say Superstitious Rot. 

B says, "When was she found again?"

[Illustration]

Lennie says it was j-just thirty-seven revolutions of his nativeplanet which means f-f-fifty-three Terrestrial years ago, she wasfound by an Interplanetary scout called _Crusoe_. 

Judging by the colonel's expression this data is Classified; he doesnot know that Lennie's family come from one of the oldest settledplanets and are space-goers to a man, woman, and juvenile; they pickup ship gossip the way others hear about the relations of people nextdoor. 

Lennie goes on to say that the Explorer Class were the first officialexploration ships sent out from Earth when the Terries decided to findout what happened to the colonies formed during the Exodus. _Gilgamesh_ was the first to re-make contact with Garuda, Legba, Lister, Cor-bis and Antelope; she vanished on her third voyage. 

"Where was she found?" asks Eru. 

"Near the p-p-pole of an uninhabited planet--maybe I shouldn't saywhere because that may be secret, but the rest's History if you knowwhere to look. "

 * * * * *

Maybe the colonel approves this discretion; anyway his face thaws veryslightly unless I am Imagining it. 

"_Gilgamesh_ crashed, " he says. "Near as we can make out from the log, she visited Seleucis system. That's a swarmer sun. Fifty-sevenplanets, three settled; and any number of fragments. The navigatorcalculated that after a few more revolutions one of the fragments wasgoing to crash on an inhabited planet. Might have done a lot ofdamage. They decided to tow it out of the way. 

[Illustration]

"Grappling-beams hadn't been invented. They thought they could useMass-Time on it a kind of reverse thrust--throw it off course. 

"Mass-Time wasn't so well understood then. Bit off more than theycould chew. Set up a topological relation that drained all the freeenergy out of the system. Drive, heating system--everything. 

"She had emergency circuits. When the engines came on again they tookover--landed the ship, more or less, on the nearest planet. Too late, of course. Heating system never came on--there was a safety switchthat had to be thrown by hand. She was embedded in ice when she wasfound. Hull breached at one point--no other serious damage. "

"And the . .. The crew?"

Dillie ought to know better than that. 

"Lost with all hands, " says the colonel. 

"How about weapons?"

We are all startled. Cray is looking whitish like the rest of us butmaintains his normal manner, i. E. Offensive affection while pointingout that _Gilgamesh_ can hardly be taken for a Menace unless she hassome means of aggression about her. 

Lennie says The Explorer Class were all armed--

Fine, says Cray, presumably the weapons will be thoroughly obsoleteand recognizable only to a Historian--

Lennie says the construction of no weapon developed by the SpaceDepartment has ever been released; making it plain that anyone but aNitwit knows that already. 

Eru and Kirsty have been busy for some time writing notes to eachother and she now gives a small sharp cough and having collected ourattention utters the following Address. 

"There is a point we seem to have missed. If I may recapitulate, theidea is to take this ship _Gilgamesh_ to Incognita and make it appearas though she had crashed there while attempting to land. I understandthat the ship has been buried in the polar cap; though she must havebeen melted out if the people on _Crusoe_ examined the engines. Ofcourse the cold--All the same there may have been . .. Well . .. Changes. Or when . .. When we thaw the ship out again--"

I find I am swallowing good and hard, and several of the others looksick, especially Lennie. Lennie has his eyes fixed on the colonel; itis not prescience, but a slight sideways movement of the colonel's eyecauses him to blurt out, "What is _he_ doing here?"

Meaning Mr. Yardo who seems to have been asleep for some time, withhis eyes open and grinning like the spikes on a dog collar. Thecolonel gives him another sideways look and says, "Mr. Yardo is anexpert on the rehabilitation of space-packed materials. "

This is stuff transported in un-powered hulls towed bygrappling-beams; the hulls are open to space hence no need forrefrigeration, and the contents are transferred to specially equippedorbital stations before being taken down to the planet. But--

Mr. Yardo comes to life at the sound of his name and his grin widensalarmingly. 

"Especially meat, " he says. 

 * * * * *

It is maybe two hours afterwards, Eru having adjourned the meetingabruptly so that we can . .. Er . .. Take in the implications of the newdata. Lennie has gone off somewhere by himself; Kirsty has gone afterhim with a view to Mothering him; Eru, I suspect, is looking forKirsty; Pavel and Aro and Dillie and the Crow are in a cabin arguingin whispers; Nick and P. Zapotec are exploring one of the Hoppers, cargo-carrying, drop-shaped, and I only hope they don't hop throughthe hull in it. 

B and I having done a tour of the ship and ascertained all this havewithdrawn to the Conference Room because we are tired of our cabinsand this seems to be the only other place to sit. 

B breaks a long silence with the remark that However often you see itM'Clare's technique is something to watch, like choosing my statementto open with, it broke the ice beautifully. 

I say, "Shall I tell you something?"

B says Yes if it's interesting. 

"My statement, " I inform her, "ran something like this: The best hopeof inducing a suspension of the aggressive attitude of both parties, long enough to offer hope of ultimate reconciliation, lies in theintrusion of a new factor in the shape of an outside force seen to beimpartially hostile to both. "

B says: "Gosh. Come to think of it Liz you have not written like thatin years, you have gone all pompous like everyone else; well thatmakes it even _more_ clever of M'Clare. "

Enter Cray Patterson and drapes himself sideways on a chair, announcing that his own thoughts begin to weary him. 

I say this does not surprise me, at all. 

"Lizzie my love, " says he, "you are twice blessed being not only wittyyourself but a cause of wit in others; was that bit of Primitive Leewith which M'Clare regaled us really not from the hand of themistress, or was it a mere pastiche?"

I say Whoever wrote that it was not me anyway. 

"It seemed to me pale and luke-warm compared with the real thing, "says Cray languidly, "which brings me to a point that, to quote dearKirsty, seems to have been missed. "

I say, "Yep. Like what language it was that these people wrote theirlog in that we can be _certain_ the Incognitans won't know. "

"More than that, " says B, "we didn't decide who they are or where theywere coming from or how they came to crash or anything. "

"Come to think of it, though, " I point out, "the language and a goodmany other things must have been decided already because of gettingthe right hypnotapes and translators on board. "

B suddenly lights up. 

"Yes, but look, I bet that's what we're here for, I mean that's whythey picked us instead of Space Department people--the ship's got tohave a past history, it has to come from a planet somewhere only noone must ever find out _where_ it's supposed to be. Someone will haveto fake a log, only I don't see how--"

"The first reel with data showing the planet of origin got damagedduring the crash, " says Cray impatiently. 

"Yes, of course--but we have to find a reason why they were in thatpart of Space and it has to be a _nice_ one, I mean so that theIncognitans when they finally read the log won't hate them any more--"

"Maybe they were bravely defending their own planet by hunting down aninterplanetary raider, " I suggest. 

Cray says it will take only the briefest contact with other planets toconvince the Incognitans that interplanetary raiders can't and don'texist, modern planetary alarm and defense systems put them out of thequestion. 

"That's all he knows, " says B, "some interplanetary pirates raidedLizzie's father's farm once. Didn't they, Liz?"

"Yes in a manner of speaking, but they were bums who pinched aspaceship from a planet not many parsecs away, a sparsely inhabitedmining world like my own which had no real call for an alarm system, so that hardly alters the argument. "

"Well, " says B, "the alarm system on Incognita can't be so hot or theobservation ships could not have got in, or out, for that matter, unless of course they have some other gadget we don't know about. "

"On the other hand, " she considers, "to mention Interplanetary raidersraises the idea of Menace in an Unfriendly Universe again, and this iswhat we want to cancel out. 

"These people, " she says at last with a visionary look in her eye, "come from a planet which went isolationist and abandoned spacetravel; now they have built up their civilization to a point wherethey can build ships of their own again, and the ones on Gilgameshhave cut loose from the ideas of their ancestors that led to theirgoing so far afield--"

"How far afield?" says Cray. 

"No one will ever know, " I point out to him. "Don't interrupt. "

"Anyway, " says B, "they set out to rejoin the rest of the Human Racejust like the people on _Gilgamesh_ _really_ did, in fact, a lot ofthis is the truth only kind of backwards--they were looking for theCradle of the Race, that's what. Then there was some sort of disasterthat threw them off course to land on an uninhabited section of aplanet that couldn't understand their signals. And when Incognitafinally does take to space flight again I bet the first thing thepeople do is to try and follow back to where _Gilgamesh_ came from andmake contact with them. It'll become a legend on Incognita--the LostPeople . .. The Lost . .. Lost--"

"The Lost Kafoozalum, " says Cray. "In other words we switch thesepeople off a war only to send them on a wild goose chase. "

At which a strange voice chimes in, "No, no, no, son, you've got itall _wrong_. "

 * * * * *

Mr. Yardo is with us like a well-meaning skeleton. 

During the next twenty-five minutes we learn a lot about Mr. Yardoincluding material for a good guess at how he came to be picked forthis expedition; doubtless there are many experts on Reversal OfVacuum-Induced Changes in Organic Tissues but maybe only one of them aRomantic at heart. 

Mr. Yardo thinks chasing the Wild Goose will do the Incognitans allthe good in the galaxy, it will take their minds off controversiesover interhemispherical trade and put them on to the quest of theUnobtainable; they will get to know something of the Universe outsidetheir own little speck. Mr. Yardo has seen a good deal of the Universein the course of advising on how to recondition space-packed meat andhe found it an Uplifting Experience. 

We gather he finds this desperate bit of damfoolery we are on nowpretty Uplifting altogether. 

Cray keeps surprisingly quiet but it is as well that the rest of theparty start to trickle in about twenty minutes later the firstarrivals remarking Oh _that's_ where you've got to!

Presently we are all congregated at one end of the table as before, except that Mr. Yardo is now sitting between B and me; when M'Clareand the colonel come in he firmly stays where he is evidentlyconsidering himself One of Us now. 

"The proposition, " says M'Clare, "is that we intend to take_Gilgamesh_ to Incognita and land her there in such a way as tosuggest that she crashed. In the absence of evidence to the contrarythe Incognitans are bound to assume that that was her intendeddestination, and the presence of weapons, even disarmed, will suggestthat her mission was aggressive. Firstly, can anyone suggest a bettercourse of action? or does anyone object to this one?"

We all look at Lennie who sticks his hands in his pockets and mutters"No. "

Kirsty gives her little cough and says there is a point which has notbeen mentioned. 

If a heavily-armed ship crashes on Incognita, will not the governmentof the hemisphere in which it crashes be presented with new ideas foroffensive weapons? And won't this make it _more_ likely that they willstart aggression? And won't the fear of this make the other hemisphereeven more likely to try and get in first before the new weapons arecomplete?

Hell, I ought to have thought of that. 

From the glance of unwilling respect which the colonel bestows onM'Clare it is plain these points have been dealt with. 

"The weapons on Gilgamesh were disarmed when she was rediscovered, " hesays. "Essential sections were removed. The Incognitans won't be ableto reconstruct how they worked. "

_Another_ fact for which we shall have to provide an explanation. Wellhow about this: The early explorers sent out by these people--thepeople in Gilgamesh . .. Oh, use Cray's word and call them LostKafoozalum anyway their ships were armed, but they never found anyenemies and the Idealists of B's story refused even to carry arms anymore. 

(Which is just about what happened when the Terries set out torediscover the colonies, after all. )

So the Lost Kafoozalum could not get rid of their weapons completelybecause it would have meant rebuilding the ship; so they justpartially dismantled them. 

Mr. Yardo suddenly chips in, "About that other point, girlie, surelythere must be some neutral ground left on a half-occupied planet likethat?" He beams round, pleased at being able to contribute. 

B says, "The thing is, " and stops. 

We wait. 

We have about given up hope when she resumes, "The thing is, it willhave to be neutral ground of course, only that might easily become athingummy . .. I mean a, a _casus belli_ in itself. So the _other_thing is it ought to be a place which is very hard to get at, sodifficult that neither side can really get to it first, they'll haveto reach an agreement and co-operate. "

"Yeah, " says Dillie "that sounds fine, but what sort of place isthat?"

I am sorting out in my head the relative merits of mountains, deserts, gorges, et cetera, when I an seized with inspiration at thesame time as half the group; we say the same thing in different wordsand for a time there is Babel, then the idea emerges:

"Drop her into the sea!"

The colonel nods resignedly. 

"Yes, " he says, "that's what we're going to do. "

He presses a button and our projection-screens light up, first with amap of one pole of Incognita, expanding in scale till finally we arelooking down on one little bit of coast on one of the polar islands. Aglacier descends on to it from mountains inland and there is a baybetween cliffs. Then we get a stereo scene of approximately the leasthospitable of scenery I ever did see--except maybe when Parvati LalDutt's brother made me climb up what he swore was the smallest peak inthe Himalayas. 

It is a small bay backed by tumbled cliffs. A shelving beach can bededuced from contour and occasional boulders big enough to stickthrough the snow that smothers it all. A sort of mess of rocks and mudat the back may be glacial moraine. Over the sea the ice is split inall directions by jagged rifts and channels; the whole thing is a bitlike Antarctica but nothing is high enough or white enough to upliftthe spirit, it looks not only chilly but kind of mean. 

"This place, " says the colonel, "is the only one, about which we haveany topographical information, that seems to meet the requirements. Got to know about it through an elementary planetography. One of theobservers had the sense to see we might need something of the sort. This place"--the stereo jigs as he taps his projector--"seems it's thecenter of a rising movement in the crust . .. That's not to the point. Neither side has bothered to claim the land at the poles. .. . "

I see their point if it's all like this--

". .. And a ship trying to land on those cliffs might very well pitchover into the sea. That is, if she were trying to land on emergencyrockets. "

Rockets--that brings home the ancientness of this ship_Gilgamesh_--but after all the ships that settled Incognita probablycarried emergency rockets, too. 

This settled, the meeting turns into a briefing session and mergesimperceptibly with the beginning of the job. 

 * * * * *

The job of course is Faking the background of the crash; working outthe past history and present aims of the Lost Kafoozalum. We have toinvent a planet and what's more difficult convey all the essentialinformation about it by the sort of sideways hints you gather amongpeoples' personal possessions; diaries, letters et cetera; and what iseven _more_ difficult we have to leave out anything that could lead todefinite identification of our unknown world with any known one. 

We never gave that world a name; it might be dangerous. Who speaks oftheir world by name, except to strangers? They call it "home"--or"Earth, " as often as not. 

Some things have been decided for us. Language, for instance--one oftwo thousand or so Earth tongues that went out of use late enough tobe plausible as the main language of a colonized planet. The settlerson Incognita were not of the sort to take along dictionaries of thelesser-known tongues, so the computers at Russett had a fairly widechoice. 

We had to take a hypnocourse in that language. Ditto the script, oneof several forgotten phonetic shorthands. (Designed to enable thetongues of Aliens to be written down; but the Aliens have never beenmet. It is plausible enough that some colony might have kept thescript alive; after all Thasia uses something of the sort to thisday. )

The final result of our work looks pretty small. Twenty-three"Personal Background Sets"--a few letters, a diary in some, anassortment of artifacts. Whoever stocked this ship we are on suppliedwood, of the half-dozen kinds that have been taken wherever men havegone; stocks of a few plastics--known at the time of the Exodus, oreasily developed from those known, and not associated with anyparticular planet. Also books on Design, a Form-writer for translatingdrawings into materials, and so on. Someone put in a lot of workbefore this voyage began. 

Most of the time it is like being back on Russet doing a groupProject. What we are working on has no more and no less reality thanthat. Our work is all read into a computer and checked againsteverybody else's. At first we keep clashing. Gradually a consistentpicture builds up and gets translated finally into the PersonalBackground Kits. The Lost Kafoozalum start to exist like people in aHistory book. 

Fifteen days hard work and we have just about finished; then wereach--call it Planet Gilgamesh. 

I wake in my bunk to hear that there will be brief cessation ofweight; strap down, please. 

We are coming off Mass-Time to go on planetary drive. 

Colonel Delano-Smith is in charge of operations on the planet, withRam and Peter to assist. None of the rest of us see the melting out offifty years' accumulation of ice, the pumping away of the water, thefitting and testing of the holds for the grappling-beams. We stayinside the ship, on five-eighths gee which we do not have time to getused to, and try to work, and discard the results before the computercan do so. There is hardly any work left to do, anyway. 

It takes nearly twelve hours to get the ship free, and caulked, andready to lift. (Her hull has to be patched because of Mr. Yardo'soperations which make use of several sorts of vapors). Then there is aqueer blind period with Up now one way, now another, and sudden jerksand tugs that upset everything not in gimbals or tied down;interspersed with periods when weightlessness supervenes with nowarning at all. After an hour or two of this it would be hard to saywhether Mental or physical discomfort is more acute; B consulted, however, says my autonomic system must be quite something, after fiveminutes _her_ thoughts were with her viscera entirely. 

Then, suddenly, we are back on Mass-Time again. 

Two days to go. 

 * * * * *

At first being on Mass-Time makes everything seem normal again. Bysleep time there is a strain, and next day it is everywhere. I know aswell as any that on Mass-Time the greater the mass the faster theshift; all the same I cannot help feeling we are being slowed, draggedback by the dead ship coupled to our live one. 

When you stand by the hull _Gilgamesh_ is only ten feet away. 

I should have kept something to work on like B and Kirsty who have notdone their Letters for Home in Case of Accidents; mine is signed andsealed long ago. I am making a good start on a Neurosis whenDelano-Smith announces a Meeting for one hour ahead. 

Hurrah! now there is a time-mark fixed I think of all sorts of thingsI should have done before; for instance taking a look at the controlsof the Hoppers. 

I have been in one of them half an hour and figured out most of thedials--Up down and sideways are controlled much as in a helicar, buthere a big viewscreen has been hooked in to the autopilot--whenacross the hold I see the air lock start to move. 

_Gilgamesh_ is on the other side. 

It takes forever to open. When at last it swings wide on the darktunnel what comes through is a storage rack, empty, floating onantigrav. 

What follows is a figure in a spacesuit; modern type, but the windowsof the hopper are semipolarized and I cannot make out the face insidethe bubble top. 

He slings the rack upon the bulkhead, takes off the helmet and hangsthat up, too. Then he just stands. I am beginning to muster enoughsense to wonder why when he comes slowly across the hold. 

Reaching the doorway he says: "Oh it's you, Lizzie. You'll have tohelp me out of this. I'm stuck. "

M'Clare. 

The outside of the suit is still freezing cold; maybe this is what hasjammed the fastening. After a few minutes tugging it suddenly givesaway. M'Clare climbs out of the suit, leaving it standing, and says, "Help me count these, will you?"

_These_ are a series of transparent containers from a pouch slung atone side of the suit. I recognize them as the envelopes in which weput what are referred to as Personal Background Sets. 

I say, "There ought to be twenty-three. "

"No, " says M'Clare dreamily, "twenty-two, we're saving one of them. "

"What on earth is the use of an extra set of faked documents andoddments--"

He seems to wake up suddenly and says: "What are you doing here, Lizzie?"

I explain and he wanders over to the hopper and starts to explain thecontrols. 

There is something odd about all this. M'Clare is obviously deadtired, but kind of relaxed; seeing that the hour of Danger is onlythirty-six hours off I don't understand it. Probably several of hisstudents are going to have to risk their lives--

I am on the point of seeing something important when the speakerannounces in the colonel's voice that Professor M'Clare and Miss Leewill report to the Conference Room at once please. 

M'Clare looks at me and grins. "Come along, Lizzie. Here's where wetake orders for once, you and I. "

It is the colonel's Hour. I suppose that having to work withUndergraduates is something he could never quite forget, but from the wayhe looks at us we might almost be Space Force personnel, --low-grade ofcourse but respectable. 

Everything is at last worked out and he has it on paper in front ofhim; he puts the paper four square on the table, gazes into the middledistance and proceeds to recite. 

"One. This ship will go off Mass-Time on 2nd August at 11. 27 hoursship's time. .. . 

"Thirty-six hours from now. 

". .. At a point one thousand miles vertically above Co-ordinates165OE, 7320S, on Planet Incognita, approximately one hour beforemidnight local time. 

"Going on planetary drive as close as that will indicate thatsomething is badly wrong to begin with. 

"Two. This ship will descend, coupled to _Gilgamesh_ as at present, toa point seventy miles above the planetary surface. It will thenuncouple, discharge one hopper, and go back on Mass-Time. Estimatedtime for this stage of descent forty minutes. 

"Three. The hopper will then descend on its own engines at the maximumspeed allowed by the heat-disposal system; estimated at thirty-sevenminutes. _Gilgamesh_ will complete descent in thirty-three minutes. Engines of _Gilgamesh_ will not be used except for the heat-disposaland gyro auxiliaries. The following installations have been made toallow for the control of the descent; a ring of eight rockets inpeltathene mounts around the tail and, and one outsize antigrav unitinside the nose. "Sympathizer" controls hooked up with a visiscreenand a computer have also been installed in the nose. 

"Four. _Gilgamesh_ will carry one man only. The hopper will carry acrew of three. The pilot of _Gilgamesh_ will establish the ship on theedge of the cliff, supported on antigrav a foot or so above the groundand leaning towards the sea at an angle of approximately 20° with thevertical. Except for this landing will be automatic. 

"Five. "

The colonel's voice has lulled us into passive acceptance; now we arejerked into sharper attention by the faintest possible check in it. 

"The greatest danger attaching to the expedition is that theIncognitans may discover that the crash has been faked. This would beinevitable if they were to capture (a) the hopper; (b) any of the newinstallations in Gilgamesh, especially the antigrav; (c) any member ofthe crew. 

"The function of the hopper is to pick up the pilot of _Gilgamesh_ andalso to check that ground appearances are consistent. If not, theywill produce a landslip on the cliff edge, using power tools andexplosives carried for the purpose. That is why the hopper has a crewof three, but the chance of their having to do this is slight. "

So I should think; ground appearances are supposed to show that_Gilgamesh_ landed using emergency rockets and then toppled over thecliff and this will be exactly what happened. 

"The pilot will carry a one-frequency low-power transmitter activatedby the change in magnetic field on leaving the ship. The hopper willremain at five hundred feet until this signal is received. It willthen pick up the pilot, check ground appearances, and rendezvous withthis ship at two hundred miles up at 18. 27 hours. "

The ship and the hopper both being radar-absorbent will not registeron alarm systems, and by keeping to planetary nighttime they shouldbe safe from being seen. 

"Danger (b) will be dealt with as follows. The rocket-mounts being ofpeltathene will be destroyed by half an hour's immersion in water. Theinstallations in the nose will be destroyed with Andite. "

Andite produces complete colecular disruption in a very short range, hardly any damage outside it; the effect will be as though the nosebroke off on impact; I suppose the Incognitans will waste a lot oftime looking for it on the bed of the sea. 

"Four ten-centimeter cartridges will be inserted within the noseinstallations. The fuse will have two alternative settings. The firstwill be timed to act at 12. 50 hours, seven minutes after the estimatedtime of landing. It will not be possible to deactivate it before 12. 45hours. This takes care of the possibility of the pilot's becomingincapacitated during the descent. 

"Having switched off the first fuse the pilot will get the ship intoposition and then activate a second, timed to blow in ten minutes. Hewill then leave the ship. When the antigrav is destroyed the shipwill, of course, fall into the sea. 

"Six. The pilot of _Gilgamesh_ will wear a spacesuit of the patternused by the original crew and will carry Personal Background Setnumber 23. Should he fail to escape from the ship the crew of thehopper will on no account attempt to rescue him. "

The colonel takes up the paper, folds it in half and puts it down oneinch further away. 

"The hopper's crew, " he says, "will give the whole game away shouldone of them fall into Incognitan hands, alive or dead. Therefore theydon't take any risks of it. "

He lifts his gaze ceilingwards. "I'm asking for three volunteers. "

Silence. Manning the hopper is definitely second best. Then lightsuddenly bursts on me and I lift my hand and hack B on the ankle. 

"I volunteer, " I say. 

B gives me a most dubious glance and then lifts her hand, too. 

Cray on the other side of the table is slowly opening his mouth whenthere is an outburst of waving on the far side of B. 

"Me too, colonel! I volunteer!"

Mr. Yardo proceeds to explain that his special job is over and done, he can be more easily spared than anybody, he may be too old to takecharge of _Gilgamesh_ but will back himself as a hopper pilot againstanybody. 

The colonel cuts this short by accepting all three. He then unfoldshis paper again. 

"Piloting _Gilgamesh_, " he says. "I'm not asking for volunteers now. You'll go to your cabins in four hours' time and those who want towill volunteer, secretly. To a computer hookup, Computer will selecton a random basis and notify the one chosen. Give him his finalinstructions, too. No one need know who it was till it's all over. Hecan tell anyone he likes, of course. "

[Illustration]

A very slight note of triumph creeps into the next remark. "One point. Only men need volunteer. "

Instant outcry from Kirsty and Dilly: B turns to me with a look ofawe. 

"Nothing to do with prejudice, " says the colonel testily. "Just facts. The crew of _Gilgamesh_ were all men. Can't risk one solitary womanbeing found on board. Besides--spacesuits, personal backgroundsets--all designed for men. "

Kirsty and Dilly turn on me looks designed to shrivel and B whispers"Lizzie how wonderful you are. "

 * * * * *

The session dissolves. We three get an intensive session course ofinstruction on our duties and are ordered off to sleep. Afterbreakfast next morning I run into Cray who says, Before I continueabout what is evidently pressing business would I care to kick him, hard?

Not right now I reply, what for anyway?

"Miss Lee, " says Cray, dragging it out longer than ever, "although Ihave long realized that your brain functions in a way much superior tologic I had not sense enough yesterday to follow my own instinct anddo what you do as soon as you did it; therefore that dessicated meathandler got in first. "

I say: "So you weren't picked for pilot? It was only one chance inten. "

"Oh, " says Cray, "did you really think so?" He gives me a long lookand goes away. 

I suppose he noticed that when the colonel came out with his remarksabout No women in Gilgamesh I was as surprised as any. 

Presently the three of us are issued with protective clothing; we justmight have to venture out on the planet's surface and therefore we getwhite one-piece suits to protect against Cold, heat, moisture, dessication, radioactivity, and mosquitoes, and they are quitebecoming, really. 

[Illustration]

B and I drag out dressing for thirty minutes; then we just sit whileTime crawls asymptotically towards the hour. 

Then the speaker calls us to go. 

We are out of the cabin before it says two words and racing for thehold; so that we are just in time to see a figure out of an Historicalmovie--padded, jointed, tin bowl for head and blank reflecting glasswhere the face should be--stepping through the air lock. 

The colonel and Mr. Yardo are there already. The colonel packs us intothe hopper and personally closes the door, and for once I know whathe is thinking; he is wishing he were not the only pilot in this shipwho could possibly rely on bringing the ship off and on Mass-Time atone particular defined spot of Space. 

Then he leaves us; half an hour to go. 

The light in the hold begins to alter. Instead of being softlydiffused it separates into sharp-edged beams, reflecting andcrisscrossing but leaving cones of shadow between. The air is beingpumped into store. 

Fifteen minutes. 

The hull vibrates and a hatch slides open in the floor so that theblack of Space looks through; it closes again. 

Mr. Yardo lifts the hopper gently off its mounts and lets it backagain. 

Testing; five minutes to go. 

I am hypnotized by my chronometer; the hands are crawling throughglue; I am still staring at it when, at the exact second, we go offMass-Time. 

No weight. I hook my heels under the seat and persuade my esophagusback into place. A new period of waiting has begun. Every so oftencomes the impression we are falling head-first; the colonel usingship's drive to decelerate the whole system. Then more free fall. 

The hopper drifts very slowly out into the hold and hovers over thehatch, and the lights go. There is only the glow from the visiscreenand the instrument board. 

One minute thirty seconds to go. 

The hatch slides open again. I take a deep breath. 

I am still holding it when the colonel's voice comes over the speaker:"Calling _Gilgamesh_. Calling the hopper. Good-by and Good luck. You're on your own. "

The ship is gone. 

Yet another stretch of time has been marked off for us. Thirty-sevenminutes, the least time allowable if we are not to get overheated byfriction with the air. Mr. Yardo is a good pilot; he is concentratingwholly on the visiscreen and the thermometer. B and I are free to lookaround. 

I see nothing and say so. 

I did not know or have forgotten that Incognita has many smallsatellites; from here there are four in sight. 

 * * * * *

I am still looking at them when B seizes my arm painfully and pointsbelow us. 

I see nothing and say so. 

B whispers it was there a moment ago, it is pretty cloudy downthere--Yes Lizzie there it is _look_. 

And I see it. Over to the left, very faint and far below, a pin-prickof light. 

Light in the polar wastes of a sparsely inhabited planet, and since weare still five miles up it is a very powerful light too. 

No doubt about it, as we descend farther; about fifty miles from ourobjective there are men, quite a lot of them. 

I think it is just then that I understand, _really_ understand, thehazard of what we are doing. This is not an exercise. This is in deadearnest, and if we have missed an essential factor or calculatedsomething wrong the result will be not a bad mark or a failed exam, oreven our personal deaths, but incalculable harm and misery to millionsof people we never even heard of. 

Dead earnest. How in Space did we ever have cheek enough for this?

The lights might be the essential factor we have missed, but there isnothing we can do about them now. 

Mr. Yardo suddenly chuckles and points to the screen. 

"There you are, girlies! He's down!"

There, grayly dim, is the map the colonel showed us; and right on thefaint line of the cliff-edge is a small brilliant dot. 

The map is expanding rapidly, great lengths of coastline shooting outof sight at the edge of the screen. Mr. Yardo has the cross-hairscentered on the dot which is _Gilgamesh_. The dot is changing shape;it is turning into a short ellipse, a longer one. The gyros areleaning her out over the sea. 

I look at my chronometer; 12. 50 hours exactly. B looks, too, and gripsmy hand. 

Thirty seconds later the Andite has not blown; first fuse safetyturned off. Surely she is leaning far enough out by now?

We are hovering at five hundred feet. I can actually see the whiteedge of the sea beating at the cliff. Mr. Yardo keeps making smallcorrections; there is a wind out there trying to blow us away. It iscloudy here: I can see neither moons nor stars. 

Mr. Yardo checks the radio. Nothing yet. 

I stare downwards and fancy I can see a metallic gleam. 

Then there is a wordless shout from Mr. Yardo; a bright dot hurtlesacross the screen and at the same time I see a streak of blue flametearing diagonally downwards a hundred feet away. 

The hopper shudders to a flat concussion in the air, we are all thrownoff balance, and when I claw my way back to the screen the moving dotis gone. 

So is _Gilgamesh_. 

B says numbly, "But it wasn't a meteor. It can't have been. "

"It doesn't matter what it was, " I say. "It was some sort of missile, I think. They must be even nearer to war than we thought. "

We wait. What for, I don't know. Another missile, perhaps. No morecome. 

At last Mr. Yardo stirs. His voice sounds creaky. 

"I guess, " he says, then clears his throat, and tries again. "I guesswe have to go back up. "

B says, "Lizzie, who was it? Do you know?"

Of course I do. "Do you think M'Clare was going to risk one of us onthat job? The volunteering was a fake. He went himself. "

B whispers, "You're just guessing. "

"Maybe, " says Mr. Yardo, "but I happened to see through that faceplate of his. It was the professor all right. "

He has his hand on the controls when my brain starts working again. Iutter a strangled noise and dive for the hatch into the cargo hold. Btries to grab me but I get it open and switch on the light. 

Fifty-fifty chance--I've lost. 

_No_, this is the one we came in and the people who put in the newcargo did not clear out my fish-boat, they just clamped it neatly tothe wall. 

I dive in and start to pass up the package. B shakes her head. 

"No, Lizzie. We can't. Don't you remember? If we got caught, it wouldgive everything away. Besides . .. There isn't any chance--"

"Take a look at the screen, " I tell her. 

Sharp exclamation from Mr. Yardo. B turns to look, then takes thepackage and helps me back. 

 * * * * *

Mr. Yardo maneuvers out over the sea till the thing is in the middleof the screen; then drops to a hundred feet. It is sticking out of thewater at a fantastic angle and the waves are hardly moving it. Thenose of a ship. 

"The antigrav, " whispers B. "The Andite hasn't blown yet. "

"Ten minutes, " says Mr. Yardo thoughtfully. He turns to me with suddenbriskness. "What's that, Lizzie girl? A fish-boat? Good. We may needit. Let's have a look. "

"It's mine, " I tell him. 

"Now look--"

"Tailor made, " I say. "You might get into it, though I doubt it. Youcouldn't work the controls. "

It takes him fifteen seconds to realize there is no way round it; heis six foot three and I am five foot one. Even B would find it hard. 

His face goes grayish and he stares at me helplessly. Finally he nods. 

"All right, Lizzie. I guess we have to try it. Things certainly can'tbe much worse than they are. We'll go over to the beach there. "

On the beach there is wind and spray and breakers but nothingunmanageable; the cliffs on either side keep off the worst of theforce. It is queer to feel moving air after eighteen days in a ship. It takes six minutes to unpack and expand the boat and by that time itis ten minutes since the missile hit and the Andite has not blown. 

I crawl into the boat. In my protective clothing it is a fairly tightfit. We agree that I will return to this same point and they willstart looking for me in fifty minutes' time and will give up if I havenot returned in two hours. I take two Andite cartridges to deal withall eventualities and snap the nose of the boat into place. At first Iam very conscious of the two little white cigars in the pouch of mysuit, but presently I have other things to think about. 

I use the "limbs" to crawl the last few yards of shingle into thewater and on across the sea bottom till I am beyond the line ofbreakers; then I turn on the motor. I have already set the controls to"home" on _Gilgamesh_ and the radar will steer me off anyobstructions. This journey in the dark is as safe as my trip aroundthe reefs before all this started--though it doesn't feel that way. 

It takes twelve minutes to reach _Gilgamesh_, or rather the fragmentthat antigrav is supporting; it is about half a mile from the beach. 

The radar stops me six feet from her and I switch it off and turn toManual and inch closer in. 

Lights, a very small close beam. The missile struck her about onethird of her length behind the nose. I know, because I can see thewhole of that length. It is hanging just above the water, sloping atabout 30° to the horizontal. The ragged edge where it was torn fromthe rest is just dipping into the sea. 

If anyone sees this, I don't know what they will make of it but no onecould possibly think an ordinary spaceship suffered an ordinary crash, and very little investigation would show up the truth. 

I reach up with the forward set of "limbs" and grapple on to thebreak. I now have somehow to get the hind set of "limbs" up withoutlosing my grip. I can't. 

It takes several minutes to realize that I can just open the nose andcrawl out. 

Immediately a wave hits me in the face and does its best to drag meinto the sea. However the interior of the ship is relatively shelteredand presently I am inside and dragging the boat up out of reach. 

I need light. Presently I manage to detach one of the two from theboat. I turn it down to minimum close beam and hang it round my neck;then I start up the black jag-edged tunnel of the ship. 

I have to get to the nose, find the fuse, change the setting to twentyminutes--maximum possible--and get out before it blows--out of thewater I mean. The fish-boat is not constructed to take explosions evenhalf a mile away. But the first thing is to find the fuse and I cannotmake out how _Gilgamesh_ is lying and therefore cannot find the doorthrough this bulkhead; everything is ripped and twisted. In the end Ifind a gap between the bulkhead itself and the hull, and squeezethrough that. 

In the next compartment things are more recognizable and I eventuallyfind the door. Fortunately ships are designed so that you can getthrough doors even when they are in the ceiling; actually here I haveto climb up an overhang, but the surface is provided with rungs whichmake it not too bad. Finally I reach the door. I shall have to useantigrav to get down . .. Why didn't I just turn it on and jump? Iforgot I had it. 

The door was a little way open when the missile struck; it buckled inits grooves and is jammed fast. I can get an arm through. No more. Iswitch on antigrav and hang there directing the light round thecompartment. No rents anywhere, just buckling. This compartment isdivided by a partition and the door through that is open. There willbe another door into the nose on the other side. 

I bring back my feet ready to kick off on a dive through that doorway. 

Behind me, something stirs. 

 * * * * *

My muscles go into a spasm like the one that causes a falling dream, my hold tears loose and I go tumbling through the air, rebound from awall, twist, and manage to hook one foot in the frame of the door Iwas aiming for. I pull myself down and turn off the antigrav; then Ijust shake for a bit. 

The sound was--

This is stupid, with everything torn to pieces in this ship there isno wonder if bits shake loose and drop around--

But it was not a metallic noise, it was a kind of soft dragging, verysoft, that ended in a little thump. 

Like a--

Like a loose piece of plastic dislodged from its angle of rest andslithering down, pull yourself together Lizzie Lee. 

I look through the door into the other half of this level. Shambles. Smashed machinery every which way, blocking the door, blockingeverything. No way through at all. 

Suddenly I remember the tools. Mr. Yardo loaded the fish-boat with allit would take. I crawl back and return with a fifteen inch expandingbeam-lever, and overuse it; the jammed trap door does not slide backin its grooves but flips right out of them, bent double; it flies offinto the dark and clangs its way to rest. 

I am halfway through the opening when I hear the sound again. A softslithering; a faint defeated thump. 

I freeze where I am, and then I hear the sigh; a long, long wearysound, almost musical. 

An air leak somewhere in the hull and wind or waves altering the airpressure below. 

All the same I do not seem able to come any farther through this door. 

Light might help; I turn the beam up and play it cautiously around. This is the last compartment, right in the nose; a sawn-offcone-shape. No breaks here, though the hull is buckled to my left andthe "floor"--the partition, horizontal when the ship is in the normaloperating position, which holds my trap door--is torn up; some largeheavy object was welded to a thin surface skin which has ripped awayleaving jagged edges and a pattern of girders below. 

There is no dust here; it has all been sucked out when the ship wasopen to space; nothing to show the beam except the sliding yellowellipse where it touches the wall. It glides and turns, spiralingdown, deformed every so often where it crosses a projection or a dent, till it halts suddenly on a spoked disk, four feet across and standingnearly eighteen inches out from the wall. The antigrav. 

I never saw one this size, it is like the little personal affairs as agiant is like a pigmy, not only bigger but a bit different inproportion. I can see an Andite cartridge fastened among the spokes. 

The fuse is a "sympathizer" but it is probably somewhere close. Theellipse moves again. There is no feeling that I control it; it ishunting on its own. To and fro around the giant wheel. Lower. It haltson a small flat box, also bolted to the wall, a little way below. Thisis it, I can see the dial. 

The ellipse stands still, surrounding the fuse. There is something atthe very edge of it. 

When _Gilgamesh_ was right way up the antigrav was bolted to one wall, about three feet above the floor. Now the lowest point is the placewhere this wall joins what used to be the floor. Something has fallendown to that point and is huddled there in the dark. 

The beam jerks suddenly up and the breath whoops out of me; a roundthing sticking out of the wall--then I realize it is an archaicspace-helmet, clamped to the wall for safety when the wearer took itoff. 

I take charge of the ellipse of light and move it slowly down, pastthe fuse, to the thing below. A little dark scalloping of the edge ofthe light. The tips of fingers. A hand. 

I turn up the light. 

When the missile struck the big computer was wrenched loose from thefloor. It careened down as the floor tilted, taking with it anythingthat stood in its way. 

M'Clare was just stooping to the fuse, I think. The computer smashedagainst his legs and pinned him down in the angle between the wall andthe floor. His legs are hidden by it. 

Because of the spacesuit he does not looked crushed; the thick clumsyjoints have kept their roundness, so far as they are visible; only hishands and head are bare and vulnerable looking. 

I am halfway down, floating on minimum gravity, before it reallyoccurs to me that he may be still alive. 

I switch to half and drop beside him. His face is colorless but he isbreathing all right. 

First-aid kit. I will never make fun of Space Force thoroughnessagain. Rows and rows of small plastic ampoules. Needles. 

Pain-killer, first. I read the directions twice, sweating. Emergenciesonly--this is. One dose _only_ to be given and if patient is not ingood health use--never mind that. I fit on the longest needle and jabit through the suit, at the back of the thigh, as far towards theknee-joint as I can get because the suit is thinner. Half one side, half the other. 

Now to get the computer off. At a guess it weighs about five hundredpounds. The beam-lever would do it but it would probably fall back. 

Antigrav; the personal size is supposed to take up to three times theweight of the average man. I take mine off and buckle the strapsthrough a convenient gap. I have my hands under the thing when M'Claresighs again. 

He is lying on his belly but his head is turned to one side, towardsme. Slowly his eyelids open. He catches the sight of my hand; his headmoves a little, and he says, "Lizzie. Golden Liz. "

I say not to worry, we will soon be out of here. 

His body jumps convulsively and he cries out. His hand reaches mysleeve and feels. He says, "Liz! Oh, God, I thought . .. What--"

I say things are under control and just keep quiet a bit. 

His eyes close. After a moment he whispers, "Something hit the ship. "

"A homing missile, I think. "

I ought not to have said that; but it seems to make no particularimpression, maybe he guessed as much. 

 * * * * *

I was wrong in wanting to shift the computer straight away, therelease of pressure might start a hemorrhage; I dig out ampoules ofblood-seal and inject them into the space between the suit and theflesh, as close to the damage as I can. 

M'Clare asks how the ship is lying and I explain, also how I got here. I dig out the six-by-two-inch packet of expanding stretcher and readthe directions. He is quiet for a minute or two, gathering strength;then he says sharply: "Lizzie. Stop that and listen. 

"The fuse for the Andite is just under the antigrav. Go and find it. Go now. There's a dial with twenty divisions. Marked in black--you seeit. Turn the pointer to the last division. Is that done?

"Now you see the switch under the pointer? Is your boat ready? I begyour pardon, of course you left it that way. Then turn the switch andget out. "

I come back and see by my chrono that the blood-seal should be set; Iget my hands under the computer. M'Clare bangs his hand on the floor. 

"Lizzie, you little idiot, don't you realize that even if you get meout of this ship, which is next to impossible, you'll be delayed allthe way--and if the Incognitans find either of us the whole plan'sruined? Much worse than ruined, once they see it's a hoax--"

I tell him I have two Andite sticks and they won't find us and on anight like this any story of explosions will be put down to suddengusts or to lightning. 

He is silent for a moment while I start lifting the computer, carefully; its effective weight with the antigrav full on is onlyabout twenty pounds but is has all its inertia. Then he says quietly, "Please, Lizzie--can't you understand that the worst nightmare in thewhole affair has been the fear that one of you might get injured? Oreven killed? When I realized that only one person was needed to pilot_Gilgamesh_--it was the greatest relief I ever experienced. Now yousay. .. . " His voice picks up suddenly. "Lizzie, you're beaten anyway. The . .. I'm losing all feeling. Even pain. I can't feel anythingbehind my shoulders . .. It's creeping up--"

I say that means the pain-killer I shot him with is acting asadvertised, and he makes a sound as much like an explosive chuckle asanything and it's quiet again. 

The curvature between floor and wall is not helpful, I am trying tofind a place to wedge the computer so it cannot fall back when I takeoff the antigrav. Presently I get it pushed on to a sort of ledgeformed by a dent in the floor, which I think will hold it. I ease offthe antigrav and the computer stays put, I don't like the looks of itso let's get out of here. 

I push the packaged stretcher under his middle and pull the tapebefore I turn the light on to his legs to see the damage. I cannotmake out very much; the joints of the suit are smashed some, but asfar as I can see the inner lining is not broken which means it isstill air-and-water-tight. 

I put a hand under his chest to feel how the stretcher is going; it isnow expanded to eighteen inches by six and I can feel it pushing out, but it is _slow_, what else have I to do--oh yes, get the helmet. 

I am standing up to reach for it when M'Clare says, "What are youdoing? Yes . .. Well, don't put it on for a minute. There's something Iwould like to tell you, and with all respect for your obstinacy Idoubt very much whether I shall have another chance. Keep that lightoff me, will you? It hurts my eyes. 

"You know, Lizzie, I dislike risking the lives of any of the studentsfor whom I am responsible, but as it happens I find the idea ofyou--blowing yourself to atoms particularly objectionable because . .. Ihappen to be in love with you. You're also one of my best students, Iused to think that . .. Was why I'd been so insistent on your coming toRussett, but I rather think . .. My motives were mixed even then. I meantto tell you this after you graduated, and to ask you to marry me, notthat . .. I thought you would, I know quite well . .. You never quiteforgave me, but I don't-want-to-have to remember . .. I didn't . .. Havethe guts to--"

His voice trails off, I get a belated rush of sense to the head andturn the light on his face. His head is turned sideways and his fistis clenched against the side of his neck. When I touch it his handfalls open and five discharged ampoules fall out. 

Pain-killer. 

Maximum dose, one ampoule. 

All that talk was just to hold my attention while he fixed the needlesand--

I left the kit spread out right next to him. 

While I am taking this in some small cold corner of my mind isremembering the instructions that are on the pain-killer ampoule; itdoes not say, outright, that it is the last refuge for men in theextremity of pain and despair; therefore it cannot say, outright, thatthey sometimes despair too soon; but it does tell you the name of theantidote. 

There are only three ampoules of this and they also say, maximum doseone ampoule. I try to work it out but lacking all other informationthe best I can do is inject two and keep one till later. I put thatone in my pocket. 

The stretcher is all expanded now; a very thin but quite rigid grid, six feet by two; I lash him on it without changing his position andfasten the helmet over his head. 

Antigrav; the straps just go round him and the stretcher. 

I point the thing up towards the trap door and give it a gentle push;then I scramble up the rungs and get there just in time to guide itthrough. It takes a knock then and some more while I am getting itdown to the next partition, but he can't feel it. 

This time I find the door, because the roar of noise behind it acts asa guide. The sea is getting up and is dashing halfway to the door as Icrawl through. My boat is awash, pivoting to and fro on the grips ofthe front "limbs. "

I grab it, release the limbs and pull it as far back as the door. Imaneuver the stretcher on top and realize there is nothing to fastenit with . .. Except the antigrav, I get that undone, holding thestretcher in balance, and manage to put it under the stretcher andpass the straps between the bars of the grid . .. Then round the littleboat, and the buckle just grips the last inch. It will hold, though. 

 * * * * *

I set the boat to face the broken end of the ship, but I daren't putit farther back than the doorway; I turn the antigrav to half, fastenthe limb-grips and rush back towards the nose of the ship. Silver knobunder the dial. I turn it down, hear the thing begin a fast, steadyticking, and turn and run. 

Twenty minutes. 

One and a half to get back to the boat, four to get inside it withoutoverturning. Nearly two to get down to the sea--balance difficult. Oneand a half to lower myself in. 

Thirty seconds' tossing before I sink below the wave layer; then Iturn the motor as high as I dare and head for the shore. 

In a minute I have to turn it down; at this speed the radar isbothered by water currents and keeps steering me away from them asthough they were rocks; I finally find the maximum safe speed but itis achingly slow. What happens if you are in water when Andite blowshalf a mile away? A moment's panic as I find the ship being forced up, then I realize I have reached the point where the beach starts toshelve, turn off radar and motor and start crawling. Eternal slowreach out, grab, shove, haul, with my heart in my mouth; then suddenlythe nose breaks water and I am hauling myself out with a last wavedoing its best to overbalance me. 

I am halfway out of the boat when the Andite blows behind me. There isa flat slapping sound; then an instant roar of wind as the airreceives the binding energies of several tons of matter; then a longwave comes pelting up the beach and snatches at the boat. 

I huddle into the shingle and hold the boat; I have just got theantigrav turned off, otherwise I think it would have been carriedaway. There are two or three more big waves and a patter of spray;then it is over. 

The outlet valve of the helmet is working, so M'Clare is stillbreathing; very deep, very slow. 

I unfasten the belt of the antigrav, having turned it on again, andpull the belt through the buckle. No time to take it off and rearrangeit; anyway it will work as well under the stretcher as on top of it. Idrag the boat down to the water, put in an Andite cartridge with thelongest fuse I have, set the controls to take it straight out to seaat maximum depth the radar control will allow--six feet abovebottom--and push it off. The other Andite cartridge starts burning ahole in my pocket; I would have liked to put that in too, but I mustkeep it, in case. 

I look at my chrono and see that in five minutes the hopper will come. 

Five minutes. 

I am halfway back to the stretcher when I hear a noise further up thebeach. Unmistakable. Shingle under a booted foot. 

I stand frozen in mid-stride. I turned the light out after launchingthe boat but my eyes have not recovered yet; it is murkily black. Evenmy white suit is only the faintest degree paler than my surroundings. 

Silence for a couple of minutes. I stand still. But it can't have goneaway. What happens when the hopper comes? They will see whoever it ison the infrared vision screen. They won't come--

Footsteps again. Several. 

Then the clouds part and one of those superfluous little moons shinesstraight through the gap. 

The bay is not like the stereo the colonel showed because that wastaken in winter; now the snow is melted, leaving bare shingle and mudand a tumble of rocks; more desolate than the snow. Fifty feet off isa man. 

He is huddled up in a mass of garments but his head is bare, risingout of a hood which he has pushed back, maybe so as to listen better;he looks young, hardly older than me. He is holding a long thin objectwhich I never saw before, but it must be a weapon of some sort. 

This is the end of it. All the evidence of faking is destroyed; exceptM'Clare and me. Even if I use the Andite he has seen me--and thatleaves M'Clare. 

[Illustration]

I am standing here on one foot like a dancer in a jammed movie, waiting for Time to start again or the world to end--

Like the little figure in the dance-instruction kit Dad got when I wasseven, when you switched her off in the middle. 

 * * * * *

Like a dancer--

My weight shifts on to the forward foot. My arms swing up, forwards, back. I take one step, another. 

Swing. Turn. Kick. Sideways. 

Like the silly little dancer who could not get out of the plasticblock; but I am moving forward little by little, even if I have totake three steps roundabout for every one in advance. 

Arms, up. Turn, round. Leg, up. Straighten, out. Step. 

Called the Dance of the Little Robot, for about three months Dadthought it was no end cute, till he caught on I was thinking so, too. 

It is just about the only kind of dance you could do on shingle, Iguess. 

When this started I thought I might be going crazy, but I just had nothad time to work it out. In terms of Psychology it goes like this; toshoot off a weapon a man needs a certain type of Stimulus like thesight of an enemy over the end of it. So if I do my best not to looklike an enemy he will not get that Stimulus. Or put it another waymost men think twice before shooting a girl in the middle of a dance. If I should happen to get away with this, nobody will believe hisstory, he won't believe it himself. 

As for the chance of getting away with it, i. E. , getting close enoughto grab the gun or hit him with a rock or something, I know I wouldbecome a Stimulus to shooting before I did that but there are alwaysthe clouds, if one will only come back over the moon again. 

I have covered half the distance. 

Twenty feet from him, and he takes a quick step back. 

Turn, kick, out, step. I am swinging round away from him, let's hopehe finds it reassuring. I dare not look up but I think the light isdimming. Turn, kick, out, step. Boxing the compass. Coming roundagain. 

And the cloud is coming over the moon, out of the corner of my eye Isee darkness sweeping towards us--and I see his face of sheer horroras he sees it, too; he jumps back, swings up the weapon, and firesstraight in my face. 

And it is dark. So much for Psychology. 

There is a clatter and other sounds--

Well, quite a lot for Psychology maybe, because at twenty feet heseems to have missed me. 

 * * * * *

I pick myself up and touch something which apparently is his weapon, gun or whatever. I leave it and hare back to the stretcher, next-tofall over it but stop just in time, and switch on the antigrav. Up;level it; now where to? The cliffs enclosing the bay are about thirtyyards off to my left and they offer the only cover. 

The shingle is relatively level; I make good time till I stumbleagainst a rock and nearly lose the stretcher. I step up on to the rockand see the cliff as a blacker mass in the general darkness, only ayard away. I edge the stretcher round it. 

It is almost snatched out of my hand by a gust of wind. I pull it backand realize that in the bay I have been sheltered; there is prettynear half a gale blowing across the face of the cliff. 

Voices and footsteps, away back among the rocks where the man camefrom. 

If the clouds part again they will see me, sure as shooting. 

I take a hard grip on the stretcher and scramble round the edge of thecliff. 

After the first gust the wind is not so bad; for the most part it istrying to press me back into the cliff. The trouble is that I can'tsee. I have to shuffle my foot forward, rubbing one shoulder againstthe cliff to feel where it is because I have no hand free. 

After a few yards I come to an impasse; something more than knee high;boulder, ridge, I can't tell. 

I weigh on the edge of the stretcher and tilt it up to get it over theobstacle. With the antigrav full on it keeps its momentum and goes onmoving up. I try to check it, but the wind gets underneath. 

It is tugging to get away; I step blindly upwards in the effort tokeep up with it. One foot goes on a narrow ledge, barely a toe hold. Iam being hauled upwards. I bring the other foot up and find the top ofa boulder, just within reach. Now the first foot--

And now I am on top of the boulder, but I have lost touch with thecliff and the full force of the wind is pulling the stretcher upwards. I get one arm over it and fumble underneath for the control of theantigrav; I must give it weight and put it down on this boulder andwait for the wind to drop. 

Suddenly I realize that my weight is going; bending over the stretcherputs me in the field of the antigrav. A moment later another gustcomes, and I realize I am rising into the air. 

Gripping the edge of the stretcher with one hand I reach out theother, trying to grasp some projection on the face of the cliff. Notbeing able to see I simply push farther away till it is out of reach. 

We are still rising. 

I pull myself up on the stretcher; there is just room for my toes oneither side of M'Clare's legs. The wind roaring in my ears makes itdifficult to think. 

Rods of light slash down at me from the edge of the cliff. For amoment all I can do is duck; then I realize we are still well belowthem, but rising every moment. The cliff-face is about six feet away;the wind reflecting from it keeps us from being blown closer. 

I must get the antigrav off. I let myself over the side of thestretcher, hanging by one hand, and fumble for the controls. I canjust reach. Then I realize this is no use. Antigrav controls are notmeant to go off with a click of the finger; they might get switchedoff accidentally. To work the switch and the safety you must have twohands, or one hand in the optimum position. My position is about asbad as it could be. I can stroke the switch with one finger; no more. 

I haul myself back on to the stretcher and realize we are only aboutsix feet under the beam of light. Only one thing left. I feel in mypocket for the Andite. Stupidly, I am still also bending over theoutlet valve of the helmet, trying to see whether M'Clare is stillbreathing or not. 

The little white cigar is not fused. I have to hold on with one hand. In the end I manage to stick the Andite between thumb and finger-rootsof that hand while I use the other to find the fuse and stick it overthe Andite. The shortest; three minutes. 

I think the valve is still moving--

Then something drops round me; I am hauled tight against thestretcher; we are pulled strongly downwards with the wind buffetingand snatching, banged against the edge of something, and pulledthrough into silence and the dark. 

For a moment I do not understand; then I recognize the feel of FragileCargo, still clamping me to the stretcher, and I open my mouth andscream and scream. 

Clatter of feet. Hatch opens. Fragile Cargo goes limp. 

I stagger to my feet. Faint light through the hatch; B's head. I holdout the Andite stick and she turns and shouts; and a panel slides openin the wall so that the wind comes roaring in. 

I push the stick through and the wind snatches it away and it is gone. 

After that--

 * * * * *

After that, for a while, nothing, I suppose, though I have norecollection of losing consciousness; only without any sense of breakI find I am flat on my back on one of the seats in the cabin of thehopper. 

I sit up and say "How--"

B who is sitting on the floor beside me says that when the broadcasterwas activated of course they came at once, only while they werewaiting for the boat to reach land whole squads of land cars arrivedand started combing the area, and some came up on top of the cliff andshone their headlights out over the sea so Mr. Yardo had to lurkagainst the cliff face and wait till I got into a position where hecould pick me up and it was _frightfully_ clever of me to think offloating up on antigrav--

I forgot about the broadcaster. 

I forgot about the hopper come to that, there seemed to be nothing inthe world except me and the stretcher and the enemy. 

Stretcher. 

I say, "Is M'Clare--"

At which moment Mr. Yardo turns from the controls with a wide smile oftriumph and says "Eighteen twenty-seven, girls!" and the world goesweightless and swings upside down. 

Then still with no sense of any time-lapse I am lying in the biglighted hold, with the sound of trampling all round: it is somehowfiltered and far off and despite the lights there seems to be a globeof darkness around my head. I hear my own voice repeating, "M'Clare?How's M'Clare?"

A voice says distantly, without emphasis, "M'Clare? He's dead. "

The next time I come round it is dark. I am vaguely aware of havingbeen unconscious for quite a while. 

There is a single thread of knowledge connecting this moment with thelast: M'Clare's dead. 

This is the central factor: I seem to have been debating it withmyself for a very long time. 

I suppose the truth is simply that the Universe never guaranteesanything; life, or permanence, or that your best will be good enough. 

The rule is that you have to pick yourself up and go on; and lyinghere in the dark is not doing it. 

I turn on my side and see a cluster of self-luminous objects includinga light switch. I reach for it. 

How did I get into a hospital?

On second thoughts it is a cabin in the ship, or rather two of themwith the partition torn out, I can see the ragged edge of it. There isa lot of paraphernalia around; I climb out to have a look. 

Holy horrors what's happened? Someone borrowed my legs and put themback wrong; my eyes also are not functioning well, the light is set atMinimum and I am still dazzled. I see a door and make for it to getExplanations from somebody. 

Arrived, I miss my footing and stumble against the door and on theother side someone says "Hello, Lizzie. Awake at last?"

I think my heart stops for a moment. I can't find the latch. I amvaguely aware of beating something with my fists, and then the doorgives, sticks, gives again and I stumble through and land on all foursthe other side of it. 

Someone is calling: "Lizzie! Are you hurt? Where the devil have theyall got to? Liz!"

I sit up and say, "They said you were _dead_!"

"_Who_ did?"

"I . .. I . .. Someone in the hold. I said How's M'Clare? and they saidyou were dead. "

M'Clare frowns and says gently, "Come over here and sit down quietlyfor a bit. You've been dreaming. "

Have I? Maybe the whole thing was a dream--but if so how far does itgo? Going down in the heli? The missile? The boat? Crawling throughthe black tunnel of a broken ship?

No, because he is sitting in a sort of improvised chaise longue andhis legs are evidently strapped in place under the blanket; he isfumbling with the fastening or something. 

 * * * * *

I say "Hey! Cut that out!"

He straightens up irritably. 

"Don't you start that, Lysistrata. I've been suffering the attentionsof the damnedest collection of amateur nurses who ever handled athermocouple, for over a week. I don't deny they've been veryefficient, but when it comes to--"

Over a _week_?

He nods. "My dear Lizzie, we left Incognita ten days ago. Amateurnursing again! They have some unholy book of rules which says that forExposure, Exhaustion and Shock the best therapy is sleep. I don'tdoubt it, but it goes on to say that in extreme cases the patient hasbeen known to benefit by as much as two weeks of it. I didn't find outthat they were trying it on you until about thirty-six hours ago whenI began inquiring why you weren't around. They kept me under for threedays--in fact until their infernal Handbook said it was time for myleg muscles to have some exercise. Miss Lammergaw was thering-leader. "

No wonder my legs feel as though someone exchanged the muscles forcotton wool, just wait till I get hold of Kirsty. 

If it hadn't been for her, I shouldn't have spent ten daysremembering, even in my sleep, that--

I say, "Hell's feathers, it was _you_!"

M'Clare makes motions as though to start getting out of his chair, looking seriously alarmed. I say, "It was your voice! When I asked--"

M'Clare, quite definitely, starts to blush. Not much, but some. 

"Lizzie, I believe you're right. I have a sort of vague memory ofsomeone asking how I was--and I gave what I took to be a truthfulanswer. I remember it seemed quite inconceivable that I could bealive. In fact I still don't understand it. Neither Yardo nor MissLaydon could tell me. How _did_ you get me out of that ship?"

Well, I do my best to explain, glossing over one or two points; at thefinish he closes his eyes and says nothing for a while. 

Then he says, "So except for this one man who saw you, you left notraces at all?"

Not that I know of, but--

"Do you know, five minutes later there were at least twenty men inthat bay, most of them scientists? They don't seem to have foundanything suspicious. Visibility was bad, of course, and you can'tleave foot-prints in shingle--"

Hold on, what _is_ all this?

M'Clare says, "We've had two couriers while you were asleep. Yes, Iknow it's not ordinarily possible for a ship on Mass-Time to get news. One of these days someone will have an interesting problem in CulturalEngineering, working out how to integrate some of these Space Forcesecrets into our economic and social structure without upsetting thewhole of the known volume. Though courier boats make their crews soinfernally sick I doubt whether the present type will ever come intocommon use. Anyway, we've had transcripts of a good many broadcastsfrom Incognita, the last dated four days ago; and as far as we cantell they're interpreting _Gilgamesh_ just as we meant them to. 

"The missile, by the way, was experimental, waiting to be test-firedthe next day. The man in charge saw _Gilgamesh_ on the alarm screensand got trigger-happy. The newscasters were divided as to whether heshould be blamed or praised; they all seem to feel he averted amenace, at least temporarily, but some of them think the invaderscould have been captured alive. 

"The first people on the scene came from a scientific camp; you andMiss Laydon saw their lights on the way down. You remember that areais geophysically interesting? Well, by extraordinary good luck aninternational group was there studying it. They rushed straight off tothe site of the landing--they actually saw _Gilgamesh_, and sheregistered on some of their astronomical instruments, too. They mustbe a reckless lot. What's more, they started trying to locate her onthe sea bottom the next day. Found both pieces; they're still tryingto locate the nose. They were all set to try raising the smaller piecewhen their governments both announced in some haste that they weresending a properly equipped expedition. Jointly. 

"There's been no mention in any newscast of anyone seeing fairies orsea maidens--I expect the poor devil thinks you were a hallucination. "

So we brought it off. 

 * * * * *

I am very thankful in a distant sort of way, but right now theIncognitans have no more reality for me than the Lost Kafoozalum. 

M'Clare came through alive. 

I could spend a good deal of time just getting used to that fact, butthere is something I ought to say and I don't know how. 

I inquire after his injuries and learn they are healing nicely. 

I look at him and he is frowning. 

He says, "Lizzie. Just before my well-meant but ineffective attempt atsuicide--"

Here it comes. 

I say quick If he is worrying about all that nonsense he talked inorder to distract my attention, forget it; I have. 

Silence, then he says wearily, "I talked nonsense, did I?"

I say there is no need to worry, under the circumstances anyone wouldhave a perfect right to be raving off his Nut. 

I then find I cannot bear this conversation any longer so I get upsaying I expect he is tired and I will call someone. 

I get nearly to the door when

"_No_, Lizzie! you can't let that crew loose on me just in order tochange the conversation. Come back here. I appreciate your wish tospare my feelings, but it's wasted. We'll have this out here and now. 

"I remember quite well what I said, and so do you: I said that I lovedyou. I also said that I had intended to ask you to marry me as soon asyou ceased to be one of my pupils. Well, the results of Finals wereofficially announced three days ago. 

"Oh, I suppose I always knew what the answer would be, but I didn'twant to spend the rest of my life wondering, because I never had theguts to ask you. 

"You don't dislike me as you used to--you've forgiven me for makingyou come to Russett--but you still think I'm a cold-bloodedmanipulator of other people's minds and emotions. So I am; it's partof the job. 

"You're quite right to distrust me for that, though. It is the dangerof this profession, that we end up by looking on everybody andeverything as a subject for manipulation. Even in our personal lives. I always knew that: I didn't begin to be afraid of it until I realizedI was in love with you. 

"I could have made you love me, Lizzie. I could! I didn't try. Notthat I didn't want love on those terms, or any terms. But to useprofessional . .. Tricks . .. In private life, ends by destroying allreality. I always treated you exactly as I treated my otherstudents--I think. But I could have made you think you loved me . .. Even if I am twice your age--"

This I cannot let pass, I say "Hi! According to College rumor youcannot be more than thirty-six; I'm twenty-three. "

M'Clare says in a bemused sort of way He will be thirty-seven in acouple of months. 

I say, "I will be twenty-four next week and your arithmetic is stillscrewy; and here is another datum you got wrong. I do love you. Verymuch. "

He says, "Golden Liz. "

Then other things which I remember all right, I shall keep them toremember any time I am tired, sick, cold, hungry Hundred-and-ninety--;but they are not for writing down. 

Then I suppose at some point we agreed it is time for me to go, because I find myself outside the cabin and there is ColonelDelano-Smith. 

He makes me a small speech about various matters ending that he hearshe has to congratulate me. 

Huh?

Oh, Space and Time did one of those unimitigated so-and-sos, my dearclassmates, leave M'Clare's communicator on?

The colonel says he heard I did very well in my Examinations. 

Sweet splitting photons I forgot all about Finals. 

It is just as well my Education has come to an honorable end, because . .. Well, shades of . .. Well, Goodness gracious and likewise Dear me, I amgoing to marry a _Professor_. 

Better just stick to it I am going to marry M'Clare, it makes bettersense that way. 

But Gosh we are going to have to do some re-adjusting to a changedEnvironment. Both of us. 

Oh, well, M'Clare is a Professor of Cultural Engineering and I justpast my Final Exams in same; surely if anyone can we should be able towork out how you live Happily Ever After?

 * * * * *