THE SKY IS FALLING

 By LESTER DEL REY

[Illustration: THE SKY IS FALLINGWHEN MEN RULED THE STARS--AND THE STARS RULED MEN!]

Transcriber note: Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed. 

 * * * * *

 Dave stared around the office. He went to the window and stared upwards at the crazy patchwork of the sky. For all he knew, in such a sky there might be cracks. In fact, as he looked, he could make out a rift, and beyond that a ... Hole ... A small patch where there was no color, and yet the sky there was not black. There were no stars there, though points of light were clustered around the edges, apparently retreating. 

 * * * * *

 THE SKY IS FALLING

 By LESTER DEL REY

 ace books

 A Division of Charter Communications Inc. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N. Y. 10036

Copyright © 1954, 1963 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. 

A shorter and earlier version of this story appeared as "No More Stars"under the pseudonym of Charles Satterfield in _Beyond Fantasy Fiction_for July, 1954

_First Ace printing: January, 1973_

 * * * * *

THE SKY IS FALLING

I

"Dave Hanson! By the power of the true name be summoned cells andhumors, ka and id, self and--"

Dave Hanson! The name came swimming through utter blackness, sucking athim, pulling him together out of nothingness. Then, abruptly, he wasaware of being alive, and surprised. He sucked in on the air around him, and the breath burned in his lungs. He was one of the dead--there shouldbe no quickening of breath within him!

He caught a grip on himself, fighting the fantasies of his mind, andtook another breath of air. This time it burned less, and he could forcean awareness of the smells around him. But there was none of the pungentodor of the hospital he had expected. Instead, his nostrils werescorched with a noxious odor of sulfur, burned hair and cloying incense. 

He gagged on it. His diaphragm tautened with the sharp pain oflong-unused muscles, and he sneezed. 

"A good sign, " a man's voice said. "The followers have accepted and areleaving. Only a true being can sneeze. But unless the salamander works, his chances are only slight. "

There was a mutter of agreement from others, before an older voice brokein. "It takes a deeper fire than most salamanders can stir, Ser Perth. We might aid it with high-frequency radiation, but I distrust theeffects on the prepsyche. If we tried a tamed succubus--"

"The things are untrustworthy, " the first voice answered. "And with thesky falling, we dare not trust one. "

The words blurred off in a fog of semiconsciousness and half-thoughts. The sky was falling? Who killed Foxy Loxy? I, said the spider, who satdown insider, I went boomp in the night and the bull jumped over themoon.... 

"Bull, " he croaked. "The bull sleeper!"

"Delirious, " the first voice muttered. 

"I mean--bull pusher!" That was wrong, too, and he tried again, forcinghis reluctant tongue around the syllables. "Bull _dosser_!"

Damn it, couldn't he even pronounce simple Engaliss?

The language wasn't English, however. Nor was it Canadian French, theonly other speech he could make any sense of. Yet he understood it--hadeven spoken it, he realized. There was nothing wrong with his command ofwhatever language it was, but there seemed to be no word for bulldozer. He struggled to get his eyes open. 

The room seemed normal enough, in spite of the odd smells. He lay on ahigh bed, surrounded by prim white walls, and there was even a chart ofsome kind at the bottom of the bedframe. He focused his eyes slowly onwhat must be the doctors and nurses there, and their faces looked backwith the proper professional worry. But the varicolored gowns they worein place of proper clothing were covered with odd designs, stars, crescents and things that might have been symbols for astronomy orchemistry. 

He tried to reach for his glasses to adjust them. There were no glasses!That hit him harder than any other discovery. He must be delirious andimagining the room. Dave Hanson was so nearsighted that he couldn'thave seen the men, much less the clothing, without corrective lenses. 

The middle-aged man with the small mustache bent over the chart near hisfeet. "Hmm, " the man said in the voice of the first speaker. "Marstrines Neptune. And with Scorpio so altered ... Hmm. Better add two cc. Of cortisone to the transfusion. "

Hanson tried to sit up, but his arms refused to bear his weight. Heopened his mouth. A slim hand came to his lips, and he looked up intosoothing blue eyes. The nurse's face was framed in copper-red hair. Shehad the transparent skin and classic features that occur once in amillion times but which still keep the legend of redheaded enchantressesalive. "Shh, " she said. 

He began to struggle against her hand, but she shook her head gently. Her other hand began a series of complicated motions that had aritualistic look about them. 

"Shh, " she repeated. "Rest. Relax and sleep, Dave Hanson, and rememberwhen you were alive. "

There was a sharp sound from the doctor, but it began to blur out beforeHanson could understand it. He fought to remember what he'd heard thenurse say--something about when he was alive--as if he'd been dead along time.... He couldn't hold the thought. At a final rapid motion ofthe girl's hand his eyes closed, the smell faded from his nose and allsounds vanished. Once there was a stinging sensation, as if he werereceiving the transfusion. Then he was alone in his mind with hismemories--mostly of the last day when he'd still been alive. He seemedto be reliving the events, rethinking the thoughts he'd had then. 

It began with the sight of his uncle's face leering at him. Uncle DavidArnold Hanson looked like every man's dream of himself and every woman'sdreams of manliness. But at the moment, to Dave, he looked more like apersonal demon. His head was tilted back and nasty laughter was boomingthrough the air of the little office. 

"So your girl writes that your little farewell activity didn't fare sowell, eh?" he chortled. "And you come crawling here to tell me you wantto do the honorable thing, is that it? All right, my beloved nephew, you'll do the honorable thing! You'll stick to your contract with me. "

"But--" Dave began. 

"But if you don't, you'd better read it again. You don't get one centexcept on completion of your year with me. That's what it says, andthat's what happens. " He paused, letting the fact that he meant it sinkin. He was enjoying the whole business, and in no hurry to end it. "AndI happen to know, Dave, that you don't even have fare to Saskatchewanleft. You quit and I'll see you never get another job. I promised mysister I'd make a man of you and, by jumping Jupiter, I intend to dojust that. And in my book, that doesn't mean you run back with your tailbetween your legs just because some silly young girl pulls that oldchestnut on you. Why, when I was your age, I already had.... "

Dave wasn't listening any longer. In futile anger, he'd swung out of theoffice and gone stumbling back toward the computer building. Then, in afurther burst of anger, he swung off the trail. To hell with his workand blast his uncle! He'd go on into town, and he'd--he'd do whatever hepleased. 

The worst part of it was that Uncle David could make good on his threatof seeing that Dave got no more work anywhere. David Arnold Hanson was apower to reckon with. No other man on Earth could have persuaded anyoneto let him try his scheme of building a great deflection wall acrossnorthern Canada to change the weather patterns. And no other man couldhave accomplished the impossible task, even after twelve countriespooled their resources to give him the job. But he was doing it, and itwas already beginning to work. Dave had noticed that the last winter inChicago had definitely shown that Uncle David's predictions were comingtrue. 

Like most of the world, Dave had regarded the big man who was his unclewith something close to worship. He'd jumped at the chance to work underUncle David. And he'd been a fool. He'd been doing all right in Chicago. Repairing computers didn't pay a fortune, but it was a good living, andhe was good at it. And there was Bertha--maybe not a movie doll, but asort of pretty girl who was also a darned good cook. For a man of thirtywho'd always been a scrawny, shy runt like the one in the "before"pictures, he'd been doing all right. 

Then came the letter from his uncle, offering him triple salary as amaintenance man on the computers used for the construction job. Therewas nothing said about romance and beauteous Indian maids, but Davefilled that in himself. He would need the money when he and Bertha gotmarried, too, and all that healthy outdoor living was just what thedoctor would have ordered. 

The Indian maids, of course, turned out to be a few fat old squaws whoknew all about white men. The outdoor living developed into five monthsof rain, hail, sleet, blizzard, fog and constant freezing in tractorswhile breathing the healthy fumes of diesels. Uncle David turned out tobe a construction genius, all right, but his interest in Dave seemed tolie in the fact that he was tired of being Simon Legree to strangersand wanted to take it out on one of his own family. And the easy jobturned into hell when the regular computer-man couldn't take any moreand quit, leaving Dave to do everything, including making the fieldtests to gain the needed data. 

Now Bertha was writing frantic letters, telling him how much he'd bettercome back and marry her immediately. And Uncle David thought it was ajoke!

Dave paid no attention to where his feet were leading him, only vaguelyaware that he was heading down a gully below the current constructionjob. He heard the tractors and bulldozers moving along the narrow cliffabove him, but he was used to the sound. He heard frantic yelling fromabove, too, but paid no attention to it; in any Hanson constructionprogram, somebody was always yelling about something that had to be doneday before yesterday. It wasn't until he finally became aware of his ownname being shouted that he looked up. Then he froze in horror. 

The bulldozer was teetering at the edge of the cliff as he saw it, rightabove him. And the cliff was crumbling from under it, while the treadspun idiotically out of control. As Dave's eyes took in the wholesituation, the cliff crumbled completely, and the dozer came lungingover the edge, plunging straight for him. His shout was drowned in theroar of the motor. He tried to force his legs to jump, but they werefrozen in terror. The heavy mass came straight for him, its treadschurning like great teeth reaching for him. 

Then it hit, squarely on top of him. Something ripped and splattered andblacked out in an unbearable welter of agony. 

Dave Hanson came awake trying to scream and thrusting at the bed witharms too weak to raise him. The dream of the past was already fading. The horror he had thought was death lay somewhere in the past. 

Now he was here--wherever here was. 

The obvious answer was that he was in a normal hospital, somehow stillalive, being patched up. The things he seemed to remember from his otherwaking must be a mixture of fact and delirium. Besides, how was he tojudge what was normal in extreme cases of surgery?

He managed to struggle up to a sitting position in the bed, trying tomake out more of his surroundings. But the room was dark now. As hiseyes adjusted, he made out a small brazier there, with a cadaverous oldman in a dark robe spotted with looped crosses. On his head wassomething like a miter, carrying a coiled brass snake in front of it. The old man's white goatee bobbed as he mouthed something silently andmade passes over the flame, which shot up prismatically. Clouds of whitefire belched up. 

Dave reached to adjust his glasses, and found again that he wasn'twearing them. But he'd never seen so clearly before. 

At that moment, a chanting voice broke into his puzzled thoughts. Itsounded like Ser Perth. Dave turned his head weakly. The motion set sickwaves of nausea running through him, but he could see the doctorkneeling on the floor in some sort of pantomime. The words of the chantwere meaningless. 

A hand closed over Dave's eyes, and the voice of the nurse whispered inhis ear. "Shh, Dave Hanson. It's the Sather Karf, so don't interrupt. There may be a conjunction. "

He fell back, panting, his heart fluttering. Whatever was going on, hewas in no shape to interrupt anything. But he knew that this was nodelirium. He didn't have that kind of imagination. 

The chant changed, after a long moment of silence. Dave's heart hadpicked up speed, but now it missed again, and he felt cold. He shivered. Hell or heaven weren't like this, either. It was like something out ofsome picture--something about Cagliostro, the ancient mystic. But he wassure the language he somehow spoke wasn't an ancient one. It had wordsfor electron, penicillin and calculus, for he found them in his ownmind. 

The chant picked up again, and now the brazier flamed a dull red, showing the Sather Karf's face changing from some kind of disappointmentto a businesslike steadiness. The red glow grew white in the center, anda fat, worm-like shape of flame came into being. The old man picked itup in his hand, petted it and carried it toward Dave. It flowed towardhis chest. 

He pulled himself back, but Ser Perth and the nurse leaped forward tohold him. The thing started to grow brighter. It shone now like a tinybit of white-hot metal; but the older man touched it, and it snuggleddown into Dave's chest, dimming its glow and somehow purring. Warmthseemed to flow from it into Dave. The two men watched for a moment, thenpicked up their apparatus and turned to go. The Sather Karf lifted thefire from the brazier in his bare hand, moved it into the air and said asoft word. It vanished, and the two men were also gone. 

"Magic!" Dave said. He'd seen such illusions created on the stage, butthere was something different here. And there was no fakery about thewarmth from the thing over his chest. Abruptly he remembered that he'dcome across something like it, called a salamander, in fiction once;the thing was supposed to be a spirit of fire, and dangerouslydestructive. 

The girl nodded in the soft glow coming from Dave's chest. "Naturally, "she told him. "How else does one produce and control a salamander, except by magic? Without, magic, how can we thaw a frozen soul? Ordidn't your world have any sciences, Dave Hanson?"

Either the five months under his uncle had toughened him, or the sightof the bulldozer falling had knocked him beyond any strong reaction. Thegirl had practically told him he wasn't in his own world. He waited forsome emotion, felt none, and shrugged. The action sent pain runningthrough him, but he stood it somehow. The salamander ceased its purring, then resumed. 

"Where in hell am I?" he asked. "Or when?"

She shook her head. "Hell? No, I don't think so. Some say it's Earth andsome call it Terah, but nobody calls it Hell. It's--well, it's along--time, I guess--from when you were. I don't know. In such matters, only the Satheri know. The Dual is closed even to the Seri. Anyhow, it'snot your space-time, though some say it's your world. "

"You mean dimensional travel?" Dave asked. He'd seen something aboutthat on a science-fiction television program. It made even time travelseem simple. At any event, however, this wasn't a hospital in any saneand normal section of Canada during his time, on Earth. 

"Something like that, " she agreed doubtfully. "But go to sleep now. Shh. " Her hands came up in complicated gestures. "Sleep and grow well. "

"None of that hypnotism again!" he protested. 

She went on making passes, but smiled on him kindly. "Don't besuperstitious--hypnotism is silly. Now go to sleep. For me, DaveHanson. I want you well and true when you awake. "

Against his will, his eyes closed, and his lips refused to obey hisdesire to protest. Fatigue dulled his thoughts. But for a moment, hewent on pondering. Somebody from the future--this could never be thepast--had somehow pulled him out just ahead of the accident, apparently;or else he'd been deep frozen somehow to wait for medical knowledgebeyond that of his own time. He'd heard it might be possible to do that. 

It was a cockeyed future, if this were the future. Still, if scientistshad to set up some, sort of a religious mumbo-jumbo.... 

Sickness thickened in him, until he could feel his face wet withperspiration. But with it had come a paralysis that left him unable tomove or groan. He screamed inside himself. 

"Poor mandrake-man, " the girl said softly. "Go back to Lethe. But don'tcross over. We need you sorely. "

Then he passed out again. 

II

Whatever they had done to patch him up hadn't been very successful, apparently. He spent most of the time in a delirium; sometimes he wasdead, and there was an ultimate coldness like the universe long afterthe entropy death. At other times, he was wandering into fantasies thatwere all horrible. And at all times, even in unconsciousness, he seemedto be fighting desperately to keep from falling apart painfully withinhimself. 

When he was awake, the girl was always beside him. He learned that hername was Nema. Usually there was also the stout figure of Ser Perth. Sometimes he saw Sather Karf or some other older man working withstrange equipment, or with things that looked like familiar hypodermicsand medical equipment. Once they had an iron lung around him and therewas a thin wisp over his face. 

He started to brush it aside, but Nema's hand restrained him. "Don'tdisturb the sylph, " she ordered. 

Another semirational period occurred during some excitement or dangerthat centered around him. He was still half delirious, but he could seemen working frantically to build a net of something around his bed, while a wet, thick thing flopped and drooled beyond the door, apparentlyimmune to the attacks of the hospital staff. There were shouting ordersinvolving the undine. The salamander in Dave's chest crept deeper andseemed to bleat at each cry of the monstrous thing beyond the door. 

Sather Karf sat hunched over what seemed to be a bowl of water, payingno attention to the struggle. Something that he seemed to see there heldhis attention. Then he screamed suddenly. 

"The Sons of the Egg. It's their sending!"

He reached for a brazier beside him, caught up the fire and plunged itdeep into the bowl of water, screaming something. There was the sound ofan explosion from far away as he drew his hands out, unwet by the water. Abruptly the undine began a slow retreat. In Dave's chest, thesalamander began purring again, and he drifted back into his coma. 

He tried to ask Nema about it later when she was feeding him, but shebrushed it aside. 

"An orderly let out the news that you are here, " she said. "But don'tworry. We've sent out a doppelganger to fool the Sons, and the orderlyhas been sentenced to slavery under the pyramid builder for twentylifetimes. I hate my brother! How dare he fight us with the skyfalling?"

Later, the delirium seemed to pass completely, but Dave took no comfortfrom that. In its place came a feeling of gloom and apathy. He sleptmost of the time, as if not daring to use his little strength even tothink. 

Ser Perth stayed near him most of the time now. The man was obviouslyworried, but tried not to show it. "We've managed to get sometestosterone from a blond homunculus, " he reported. "That should put youon your feet in no time. Don't worry, young man we'll keep you vivifiedsomehow until the Sign changes. " But he didn't sound convincing. 

"Everyone is chanting for you, " Nema told him. "All over the world, thechants go up. "

It meant nothing to him, but it sounded friendly. A whole world hopingfor him to get well! He cheered up a bit at that until he found out thatthe chants were compulsory, and had nothing to do with goodwill. 

The iron lung was back the next time he came to, and he was being tuggedtoward it. He noticed this time that there was no sylph, and hisbreathing seemed to be no worse than usual. But the sight of the twoorderlies and the man in medical uniform beside the lung reassured him. Whatever their methods, he was convinced that they were doing their bestfor him here. 

He tried to help them get him into the lung, and one of the men noddedencouragingly. But Dave was too weak to give much assistance. He glancedabout for Nema, but she was out on one of her infrequent other duties. He sighed, wishing desperately that she were with him. She was a lotmore proficient than the orderlies. 

The man in medical robe turned toward him sharply. "Stop that!" heordered. 

Before Dave could ask what he was to stop, Nema came rushing into theroom. Her face paled as she saw the three men, and she gasped, throwingup her hand in a protective gesture. 

The two orderlies jumped for her, one grabbing her and the other closinghis hands over her mouth. She struggled violently, but the men were toostrong for her. 

The man in doctor's robes shoved the iron lung aside violently andreached into his clothing. From it, he drew a strange, double-bladedknife. He swung toward Dave, raising the knife into striking positionand aiming it at Dave's heart. 

"The Egg breaks, " he intoned hollowly. It was a cultured voice, andthere was a refinement to his face that registered on Dave's mind evenover the horror of the weapon. "The fools cannot hold the shell. Butneither shall they delay its breaking. Dead you were, mandrake son, anddead you shall be again. But since the fault is only theirs, may no illdreams follow you beyond Lethe!"

The knife started down, just as Nema managed to break free. She shriekedout a phrase of keening command. The salamander suddenly broke fromDave's chest, glowing brighter as it rose toward the face of theattacker. It was like a bit from the center of a star. The man jumpedback, beginning a frantic ritual. He was too late. The salamander hithim, sank into him and shone through him. Then he slumped, steamed ... And was nothing but dust falling toward the carpet. The salamanderturned, heading toward the others. But it was to Nema it went, ratherthan the two men. She was trying something desperately, but fear wasthick on her face, and her hands were unsure. 

Abruptly, Sather Karf was in the doorway. His hand lifted, his fingersdancing. Words hissed from his lips in a stream of sibilants too quickfor Dave to catch. The salamander paused and began to shrink doubtfully. Sather Karf turned, and again his hands writhed in the air. One handdarted back and forward, as if he were throwing something. Again he madethe gesture. With each throw, one of the false orderlies dropped to thefloor, clutching at a neck where the skin showed marks of constrictionas if a steel cord were tightening. They died slowly, their eyes bulgingand faces turning blue. Now the salamander moved toward them, directedapparently by slight motions from Sather Karf. In a few moments, therewas no sign of them. 

The old man sighed, his face slumping into lines of fatigue and age. Hecaught his breath. He held out a hand to the salamander, petted it to agentle glow and put it back over Dave's chest. 

"Good work, Nema, " he said wearily. "You're too weak to control thesalamander, but this was done well in the emergency. I saw them in thepool, but I was almost too late. The damned fanatics. Superstition inthis day and age!"

He swung to face Dave, whose vocal cords were still taut with the shockof the sight of the knife. "Don't worry, Dave Hanson. From now on, everySer and Sather will protect you with the lower and the upper magic. TheHouse changes tomorrow, if the sky permits, and we shall shield youuntil then. We didn't bring you back from the dead, piecing yourscattered atoms together with your scattered revenant particle byparticle, to have you killed again. Somehow, we'll incarnate you fully!You have my word for that. "

"Dead?" Dave had grown numbed to his past during the long illness, butthat brought it back afresh. "Then I was killed? I wasn't just frozenand brought here by some time machine?"

Sather Karf stared at him blankly. "Time machine? Impossible. Of coursenot. After the tractor killed you, and you were buried, what good wouldsuch fantasies be, even if they existed? No, we simply reincarnated youby pooling our magic. Though it was a hazardous and parlous thing, withthe sky falling.... "

He sighed and went out, while Dave went back to his delirium. 

III

There was no delirium when he awoke in the morning. Instead, there wasonly a feeling of buoyant health. In fact, Dave Hanson had never feltthat good in his life--or his former life. He reconsidered his beliefthat there was no delirium, wondering if the feeling were not itself aform of hallucination. But it was too genuine. He knew without questionthat he was well. 

It shouldn't have been true. During the night, he'd partially awakenedin agony to find Nema chanting and gesturing desperately beside him, andhe'd been sure he was on the verge of his second death. He couldremember one moment, just before midnight, when she had stopped andseemed to give up hope. Then she'd braced herself and begun some ritualas if she were afraid to try it. Beyond that, he had no memory of pain. 

Nema came into the room now, touching his shoulder gently. She smiledand nodded at him. "Good morning, Sagittarian. Get out of bed. "

Expecting the worst, he swung his feet over the side and sat up. Afterso much time in bed, even a well man should be rendered weak and shaky. But there was no dizziness, no sign of weakness. He had made a mostremarkable recovery, and Nema didn't even seem surprised. He tentativelytouched foot to floor and half stood, propping himself against the highbed. 

"Come on, " Nema said impatiently. "You're all right now. We entered yoursign during the night. " She turned her back on him and took somethingfrom a chest beside the bed. "Ser Perth will be here in a moment. He'llwant to find you on your feet and dressed. "

Hanson was beginning to feel annoyance at the suddenly cocksure andunsympathetic girl, but he stood fully erect and flexed his muscles. There wasn't even a trace of bedsoreness, though he had been flat on hisback long enough to grow callouses. And as he examined himself, he couldfind no scars or signs of injuries from the impact of the bulldozer--ifthere had ever really been a bulldozer. 

He grimaced at his own doubts. "Where am I, anyhow, Nema?"

The girl dumped an armload of clothing on his bed and looked at him withcontrolled exasperation. "Dave Hanson, " she told him, "don't you knowany other words? That's the millionth time you've asked me that, atleast. And for the hundredth time, I'll tell you that you're here. Lookaround you; see for yourself. I'm tired of playing nursemaid to you. "She picked up a shirt of heavy-duty khaki from the pile on the bed andhanded it to him. "Get into this, " she ordered. "Dress first, talklater. "

She stalked out of the room. 

Dave did as she had ordered, busy with his own thoughts as he discoveredwhat he was to wear. He was still wearing something with a vagueresemblance to a short hospital gown, with green pentacles and someplant symbol woven into it, and with a clasp to hold it together shapedinto a silver crux ansata. He took it off and hurled it into a cornerdisgustedly. 

He picked up the khaki shirt and put it on; then, with growingcuriosity, the rest of the garments, until he came to the shoes. Khakishirt, khaki breeches, a wide, webbed belt, a flat-brimmed hat. And theshoes--they weren't shoes, but knee-length leather boots, like a dressyversion of lumberman's boots or a rougher version of riding boots. Hehadn't seen even pictures of such things since the few silent movies runin some of the little art theaters. He struggled to get them on. Theywere an excellent fit, and comfortable enough, but he felt as if hislegs were encased in hardened concrete when he was through. He lookeddown at himself in disgust. He was in all respects costumed as theepitome of the Hollywood dream of a heroic engineer-builder, ready todrive a canal through an isthmus or throw a dam across a ragingriver--the kind who'd build the dam while the river raged, instead ofwaiting until it was quiet, a few days later. He was about as far fromthe appearance of the actual blue-denim, leather-jacket engineers he hadworked with as Maori in ancient battle array. 

He shook his head and went looking for the bathroom, where there mightbe a mirror. He found a door, but it led into a closet, filled withalembics and other equipment. There was a mirror hung on the back of it, however, with a big sign over it that said "Keep Out. " He threw the doorwide and stared at himself. At first, in spite of the costume, he waspleased. Then the truth began to hit him, and he felt abruptly sure hewas still raging with fever and delirium. 

He was still staring when Nema came back into the room. She pursed herlips and shut the door quickly. But he'd already seen enough. 

"Never mind where I am, " he said. "Tell me, _who_ am I?"

She stared at him. "You're Dave Hanson. "

"The hell I am, " he told her. "Oh, that's what I remember my fatherhaving me christened as. He hated long names. But take a good look atme. I've been shaving my face for years now, and I should know it. _That_ face in the mirror wasn't it! There's a resemblance. But a darnedfaint one. Change the chin, lengthen my nose, make the eyes browninstead of blue, and it might be me. But Dave Hanson's at least fiveinches shorter and fifty pounds lighter, too. Maybe the face is plasticsurgery after the accident--but this isn't even my body. "

The girl's expression softened. "I'm sorry, Dave Hanson, " she saidgently. "We should have thought to warn you. You were a difficultconjuration--and even the easier ones often go wrong these days. We didour best, though it may be that the auspices were too strong on thesoma. I'm sorry if you don't like the way you look. But there's nothingwe can do about it now. "

Hanson opened the door again, in spite of Nema's quick frown, and lookedat himself. "Well, " he admitted, "I guess it could be worse. In fact, Iguess it was worse--once I get used to looking like this, I think I'llget to like it. But seeing it was a heck of a thing to take for a sickman. "

Nema said sharply, "Are you sick?"

"Well--I guess not. "

"Then why say you are? You shouldn't be; I told you we've entered theHouse of Sagittarius now. You can't be sick in your own sign. Don't youunderstand even that much elementary science?"

Hanson didn't get a chance to answer. Ser Perth was suddenly in thedoorway, dressed in a different type of robe. This was short and somehowconservative--it had a sincere, executive look about it. The man seemedchanged in other ways, too. But Dave wasn't concerned about that. He wasgrowing tired of the way people suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Maybethey all wore rubber-soled shoes or practiced sneaking about; it was asilly way for grown people to act. 

"Come with me, Dave Hanson, " Ser Perth ordered, without wasting words. He spoke in a clipped manner now. 

Dave followed, grumbling in his mind. It was even sillier than theirsneaking about for them to expect him to start running around beforethey bothered to check the condition of a man fresh out of his deathbed. In any of the hospitals he had known, there would have been hoursor days of X-rays and blood tests and temperature taking before he wouldbe released. These people simply decided a man was well and ordered himout. 

To do them justice, however, he had to admit that they seemed to beright. He had never felt better. The twaddle about Sagittarius wouldhave to be cleared up sometime, but meanwhile he was in pretty goodshape. Sagittarius, as he remembered it, was supposed to be one of thesigns of the Zodiac. Bertha had been something of a sucker forastrology and had found he was born under that sign before she agreed totheir little good-by party. He snorted to himself. It had done her aheck of a lot of good, which was to be expected of such nonsense. 

They passed down a dim corridor and Ser Perth turned in at a door. Inside there was a single-chair barber shop, with a barber who mightalso have come from some movie-casting office. He had the proper wavyblack hair and rat-tailed comb stuck into a slightly dirty off-whitejacket. He also had the half-obsequious, half-insulting manner Dave hadfound most people expected from their barbers. While he shaved andtrimmed Dave, he made insultingly solicitous comments about Dave's skinneeding a massage, suggested a tonic for thinning hair and practicallyinsisted on a singe. Ser Perth watched with a mixture of intentness andamusement. The barber trimmed the tufts from over Dave's ears andclipped the hair in his nose, while a tray was pushed up and aslatternly blonde began giving him a manicure. 

He began noticing that she carefully dumped his fingernail parings intoa small jar. A few moments later, he found the barber also using a jarto collect the hair and shaving stubble. Ser Perth was also interestedin that, it seemed, since his eyes followed that part of the operation. Dave frowned, and then relaxed. After all, this was a hospital barbershop, and they probably had some rigid rules about sanitation, though hehadn't seen much other evidence of such care. 

The barber finally removed the cloth with a snap and bowed. "Come again, sir, " he said. 

Ser Perth stood up and motioned for Dave to follow. He turned to look ina mirror, and caught sight of the barber handing the bottles and jars ofwaste hair and nail clippings to a girl. He saw only her back, but itlooked like Nema. 

Something stirred in his mind then. He'd read something somewhere abouthair clippings and nail parings being used for some strange purpose. Andthere'd been something about spittle. But they hadn't collected that. Orhad they? He'd been unconscious long enough for them to have gatheredany amount they wanted. It all had something to do with some kind ofmumbo-jumbo, and.... 

Ser Perth had led him through the same door by which they'd entered--but_not_ into the same hallway. Dave's mind dropped the other thoughts ashe tried to cope with the realization that this was another corridor. Itwas brightly lit, and there was a scarlet carpet on the floor. Also, itwas a short hall, requiring only a few steps before they came to abigger door, elaborately enscrolled. Ser Perth bent before it, and thedoor opened silently while he and Dave entered. 

The room was large and sparsely furnished. Sitting cross-legged on acushion near the door was Nema, juggling something in her hands. Itlooked like a cluster of colored threads, partly woven into a rathergarish pattern. On a raised bench between two windows sat the old figureof Sather Karf, resting his chin on hands that held a staff and staringat Dave intently. 

Dave stopped as the door closed behind him. Sather Karf nodded, as ifsatisfied, and Nema tied a complex knot in the threads, then pausedsilently. 

Sather Karf looked far less well than when Dave had last seen him. Heseemed older and more shriveled, and there was a querulous, pinchedexpression in place of the firmness and almost nobility Dave had come toexpect. His old eyes bored into the younger man, and he nodded. Hisvoice had a faint quaver now. "All right. You're not much to look at, but you're the best we could find in the Ways we can reach. Come here, Dave Hanson. "

The command was still there, however petty the man seemed now. Davestarted to phrase some protest, when he found his legs taking himforward to stop in front of Sather Karf, like some clockwork man whoselever has been pushed. He stood in front of the raised bench, noticingthat the spot had been chosen to highlight him in the sunset light fromthe windows. He listened while the old man talked. 

Sather Karf began without preamble, stating things in a dry voice as ifreading off a list of obvious facts. 

"You were dead, Dave Hanson. Dead, buried, and scattered by time andchance until even the place where you lay was forgotten. In your ownworld, you were nothing. Now you are alive, through the effort of menhere whose work you could not even dream of. We have created you, DaveHanson. Remember that, and forget the ties to any other world, sincethat world no longer holds you. "

Dave nodded slowly. It was hard to swallow, but there were too manythings here that couldn't be in any world he had known. And his memoryof dying was the clearest memory he had. "All right, " he admitted. "Yousaved my life--or something. And I'll try to remember it. But if thisisn't my world, what world is it?"

"The only world, perhaps. It doesn't matter. " The old man sighed, andfor a moment the eyes were shrouded in speculation, as if he werefollowing some strange by-ways of his own thoughts. Then he shrugged. "It's a world and culture linked to the one you knew only by theoriesthat disagree with each other. And by vision--the vision of those whoare adept enough to see through the Ways to the branches of Duality. Before me, there was nothing. But I've learned to open a path--adifficult path for one in this world--and to draw from it, as you havebeen drawn. Don't try to understand what is a mystery even to theSatheri, Dave Hanson. "

"A reasonably intelligent man should be able--" Dave began. 

Ser Perth cut his words off with a sharp laugh. "Maybe a man. But whosaid you were a man, Dave Hanson? Can't you even understand that? You'reonly half human. The other half is mandrake--a plant that is related tohumanity through shapes and signs by magic. We make simulacra out ofmandrakes--like the manicurist in the barber shop. And sometimes we usea mandrake root to capture the essence of a real man, in which case he'sa mandrake-man, like you. Human? No. But a very good imitation, I mustadmit. "

Dave turned from Ser Perth toward Nema, but her head was bent over thecords she was weaving, and she avoided his eyes. He remembered now thatshe'd called him a mandrake-man before, in a tone of pity. He lookeddown at his body, sick in his mind. Vague bits of fairy tales came backto him, suggesting horrible things about mandrake creatures--zombie-likethings, only outwardly human. 

Sather Karf seemed amused as he looked at Ser Perth. Then the old mandropped his eyes toward Dave, and there was a brief look of pity inthem. "No matter, Dave Hanson, " he said. "You were human, and by thepower of your true name, you are still the same Dave Hanson. We havegiven you life as precious as your other life. Pay us for that with yourservice, and that new life will be truly precious. We need yourservices. "

"What do you want?" Dave asked. He couldn't fully believe what he'dheard, but there had been too many strange things to let him disbelieve, either. If they had made him a mandrake-man, then by what little hecould remember and guess, they could make him obey them. 

"Look out the window--at the sky, " Sather Karf ordered. 

Dave looked. The sunset colors were still vivid. He stepped forward andpeered through the crystalline glass. Before him was a city, bathed inorange and red, towering like the skyline of a dozen cities he hadseen--and yet; not like any. The buildings were huge and many-windowed. But some were straight and tall, some were squat and fairy-colored andothers blossomed from thin stalks into impossibly bulbous, minareteddomes, like long-stemmed tulips reproduced in stone. Haroun-al-Rashidmight have accepted the city, but Mayor Wagner could never have believedin it. 

"Look at the sky, " the old man suggested again, and there was no mockeryin his voice now. 

Dave looked up obediently. 

The sunset colors were not sunset. The sun was bright and blindingoverhead, surrounded by reddish clouds, glaring down on the fairy city. The sky was--blotchy. It was daylight, but through the clouds brightstars were shining. A corner of the horizon was winter blue; a wholesweep of it was dead, featureless black. It was a nightmare sky, animpossible sky. Dave's eyes bulged as he looked at it. 

He turned back to Sather Karf. "What--what's the matter with it?"

"What indeed?" There was bitterness and fear in the old man's voice. Inthe corner of the room, Nema looked up for a moment, and there was fearand worry in her eyes before she looked back to her weaving of endlessknots. Sather Karf sighed in weariness. "If I knew what was happening tothe sky, would I be dredging the muck of Duality for the likes of you, Dave Hanson!"

He stood up, wearily but with a certain ease and grace that belied hisage, looking down at Dave. There was stern command in his words, but ahint of pleading in his expression. 

"The sky's falling, Dave Hanson. Your task is to put it together again. See that you do not fail us!"

He waved dismissal and Ser Perth led Dave and Nema out. 

IV

The corridor down which they moved this time was one that might havebeen familiar even in Dave's Chicago. There was the sound of typewritersfrom behind the doors, and the floor was covered with composition tile, instead of the too-lush carpets. He began to relax a little until hecame to two attendants busily waxing the floor. One held the other bythe ankles and pushed the creature's hairy face back and forth, whileits hands spread the wax ahead of it. The results were excellent, butDave found it hard to appreciate. 

Ser Perth shrugged slightly. "They're only mandrakes, " he explained. Hethrew open the door of one of the offices and led them through an outerroom toward an inner chamber, equipped with comfortable chairs and adesk. "Sit down, Dave Hanson. I'll fill you in on anything you need toknow before you're assigned. Now--the Sather Karf told you what you wereto do, of course, but--"

"Wait a minute, " Dave suggested. "I don't remember being told any suchthing. "

Ser Perth looked at Nema, who nodded. "He distinctly said you were torepair the sky. I've got it down in my notes if you want to see them. "She extended the woven cords. 

"Never mind, " Ser Perth said. He twiddled with his mustache. "I'll recapa little. Dave Hanson, as you have seen, the sky is falling and must berepaired. You are our best hope. We know that from a prophecy, and itis confirmed by the fact that the fanatics of the Egg have tried severaltimes to kill you. They failed, though one effort was close enough, buttheir attempts would not have been made at all if they had not beenconvinced through their arts that you can succeed with the sky. "

Dave shook his head. "It's nice to know you trust me!"

"Knowing that you _can_ succeed, " the other went on smoothly, "we knowthat you will. It is my unpleasant duty to point out to you the thingsthat will happen if you fail. I say nothing of the fact that you owe usyour life; that may be a small enough gift, and one quickly withdrawn. Isay only that you have no escape from us. We have your name, and thetrue symbol is the thing, as you should know. We also have cuttings fromyour hair and your beard; we have the parings of your nails, five cubiccentimeters of your spinal fluid and a scraping from your liver. We haveyour body through those, nor can you take it out of our reach. Your namegives us your soul. " He looked at Hanson piercingly. "Shall I tell youwhat it would be like for your soul to live in the muck of a swamp in amandrake root?"

Dave shook his head. "I guess not. I--look, Ser Perth. I don't know whatyou're talking about. How can I go along with you when I'm in the dark?Start at the beginning, will you? I was killed; all right, if you say Iwas, I was. You brought me to life again with a mandrake root andspells; you can do anything you want with me. I admit it; right now, I'll admit anything you want me to, because you know what's going on andI don't. But what's all this business of the sky falling? If it is andcan be falling, what's the difference? If there is a difference, whyshould I be able to do anything about it?"

"Ignorance!" Ser Perth murmured to himself. He sighed heavily. "Alwaysignorance. Well, then, listen. " He sat down on the corner of the deskand took out a cigarette. At least it looked like a cigarette. Hesnapped his fingers and lighted it from a little flame that sprang up, blowing clouds of bright green smoke from his mouth. The smoke hunglazily, drifting into vague patterns and then began to coalesce into agreen houri without costume. He swatted at it negligently. 

"Dratted sylphs. There's no controlling the elementals properly anymore. " He didn't seem too displeased, however, as he watched the thingdance off. Then he sobered. 

"In your world, Dave Hanson, you were versed in the engineeringarts--you more than most. That you should be so ignorant, though youwere considered brilliant is a sad commentary on your world. But nomatter. Perhaps you can at least learn quickly still. Even you must havehad some idea of the composition of the sky?"

Dave frowned as he tried to answer. "Well, I suppose the atmosphere isoxygen and nitrogen, mostly; then there's the ionosphere and the ozonelayer. As I remember, the color of the sky is due to the scattering oflight--light rays being diffracted in the air. "

"Beyond the air, " Ser Perth said impatiently. "The sky itself!"

"Oh--space. We were just getting out there with manned ships. Mostlyvacuum, of course. Of course, we're still in the solar atmosphere, eventhere, with the Van Allen belts and such things. Then there are thestars, like our sun, but much more distant. The planets and the moon--"

"Ignorance was bad enough, " Ser Perth interrupted in amazement. Hestared at Dave, shaking his head in disgust. "You obviously come from aculture of even more superstition than ignorance. Dave Hanson, the skyis no such thing. Put aside the myths you heard as a child. The sky is asolid sphere that surrounds Earth. The stars are no more like the sunthan the glow of my cigarette is like a forest fire. They are lights onthe inside of the sphere, moving in patterns of the Star Art, nearer tous than the hot lands to the south. "

"Fort, " Dave said. "Charles Fort said that in a book. "

Ser Perth shrugged. "Then why make me say it again? This Fort was right. At least one intelligent man lived in your world, I'm pleased to know. The sky is a dome holding the sun, the stars and the wandering planets. The problem is that the dome is cracking like a great, smashedeggshell. "

"What's beyond the dome?"

Ser Perth shuddered slightly. "My greatest wish is that I die before Ilearn. In your world, had you discovered that there were such things aselements? That is, basic substances which in combination produce--"

"Of course, " Dave interrupted. 

"Good. Then of the four elements--" Dave gulped, but kept silent, "--ofthe four elements the universe is built. Some things are composed of asingle element; some of two, some of three. The proportions vary and thehumors and spirits change but all things are composed of the elements. And only the sky is composed of all four elements--of earth, of water, of fire and of air--in equal proportions. One part each, lending eachits own essential quality to the mixture, so that the sky is solid asearth, radiant as fire, formless as water, insubstantial as air. And thesky is cracking and falling, as you have seen for yourself. The effectsare already being felt. Gamma radiation is flooding through the gaps;the quick-breeding viruses are mutating through half the world, fasterthan the Medical Art can control them, so that millions of us aresneezing and choking--and dying, too, for lack of antibiotics and propercare. Air travel is a perilous thing; just today, a stratosphere roccrashed head-on into a fragment of the sky and was killed with all itspassengers. Worst of all, the Science of Magic suffers. Because thestars are fixed on the dome of the sky. With the crumbling of that dome, the course of the stars has been corrupted. It's pitiful magic that canbe worked without regard to the conjunctions of the planets; but it isall the magic that is left to us. When Mars trines Neptune, the MedicalArt is weak; even while we were conjuring you, the trine occurred. Italmost cost your life. And it should not have occurred for another sevendays. "

There was silence, while Ser Perth let Dave consider it. But it was toomuch to accept at once, and Dave's mind was a treadmill. He'd agreed toadmit anything, but some of this was such complete nonsense that hismind rejected it automatically. Yet he was sure Ser Perth was serious;there was no humor on the face of the prissy thin-mustached man beforehim. Nor had the Sather Karf considered it a joke, he was sure. He had asudden vision of the latter strangling two men from a distance of thirtyfeet without touching them. That couldn't happen in a sane world, either. 

Dave asked weakly, "Could I have a drink?"

"With a sylph around?" Ser Perth grimaced. "You wouldn't have a chance. Now, is all clear to you, Dave Hanson?"

"Sure. Except for one thing. What am I supposed to do?"

"Repair our sky. It should not be too difficult for a man of yourreputation. You built a wall across a continent high and strong enoughto change the air currents and affect all your weather--and that in thecoldest, meanest country in your world. You come down to us as one ofthe greatest engineers of history, Dave Hanson, so great that your famehas penetrated even to our world, through the viewing pools of ourwisest historians. There is a shrine and monument in your world. 'DaveHanson, to whom nothing was impossible. ' Well, we have a nearlyimpossible task: a task of engineering and building. If our Science ofMagic could be relied upon--but it cannot; it never can be, until thesky is fixed. We have the word of history: no task is impossible to DaveHanson. "

Dave looked at the smug face and a slow grin crept over his own, inspite of himself. "Ser Perth, I'm afraid you've made a slight mistake. "

"We don't make mistakes in such matters. You're Dave Hanson, " Ser Perthsaid flatly. "Of all the powers of the Science, the greatest lies in thetrue name. We evoked you by the name of Dave Hanson. You _are_ DaveHanson, therefore. "

"Don't try to deceive us, " Nema suggested. Her voice was troubled. "Prayrather that we never have reason to doubt you. Otherwise the wisest ofthe Satheri would spend their remaining time in planning somethingunthinkable for you. "

Ser Perth nodded vigorous assent. Then he motioned to the office. "Nemawill show you to your quarters later. Use this until you leave. I haveto report back. "

Dave stared after him until he was gone, and then around at the office. He went to the window and stared upwards at the crazy patchwork of thesky. For all he knew, in such a sky there might be cracks. In fact, ashe looked, he could make out a rift, and beyond that a ... Hole ... Asmall patch where there was no color, and yet the sky there was notblack. There were no stars there, though points of light were clusteredaround the edges, apparently retreating. 

All he had to do was to repair the sky. Shades of Chicken Little!

Maybe to David Arnold Hanson, the famed engineer, no task wasimpossible. But quite a few things were impossible to that engineer'sobscure and unimportant nephew, the computer technician and generallyundistinguished man who had been christened Dave. They'd gotten theright man for the name, all right. But the wrong man for the job. 

Dave Hanson could repair anything that contained electrical circuits orran on tiny jeweled bearings, but he could handle almost nothing else. It wasn't stupidity or incapacity to learn, but simply that he had neverbeen subjected to the discipline of construction engineering. Even onthe project, while working with his uncle, he had seen little of whatwent on, and hadn't really understood that, except when it produced datathat he could feed into his computer. He couldn't drive a nail in thewall to hang a picture or patch a hole in the plaster. 

But it seemed that he'd better put on a good show of trying if he wantedto continue enjoying good health. 

"I suppose you've got a sample of the sky that's fallen?" he asked Nema. "And what the heck are you doing here, anyhow? I thought you were anurse. "

She frowned at him, but went to a corner where a small ball of someclear crystalline substance stood. She muttered into it, while a surlyface stared out. Then she turned back to him, nodding. "They are sendingsome of the sky to you. As to my being a nurse, of course I am. Allstudent magicians take up the Medical Art for a time. Surely one soskilled can also be a secretary, even to the great Dave Hanson? As towhy I'm here--" She dropped her eyes, frowning, while a touch of addedcolor reached her cheeks. "In the sleep spell I used, I invoked that youshould be well and true. But I'm only a bachelor in magic, not even amaster, and I slipped. I phrased it that I wanted you well and true. Hence, well and truly do I want you. "

"Huh?" He stared at her, watching the blush deepen. "You mean--?"

"Take care! First you should know that I am proscribed as a dulyregistered virgin. And in this time of need, the magic of my blood mustnot be profaned. " She twisted sidewise, and then turned toward the door, avoiding him. Before she reached it, the door opened to show a dullclod, entirely naked, holding up a heavy weight of nothing. 

"Your sample of sky, " she said as the clod labored over to the desk anddropped nothing with a dull clank. The desk top dented slightly. 

Dave could clearly see that nothing was on the desk. But if nothing wasa vacuum, this was an extremely hard and heavy one. It seemed to beabout twelve inches on a side, in its rough shape, and must have weighedtwo hundred pounds. He tapped it, and it rang. Inside it, a tiny pointof light danced frantically back and forth. 

"A star, " she said sadly. 

"I'm going to need some place to experiment with this, " he suggested. Heexpected to be sent to the deepest, dankest cave of all the world as alaboratory, and to find it equipped with pedigreed bats, dried unicornhorns and whole rows of alembics that he couldn't use. 

Nema smiled brightly. "Of course. We've already prepared a constructioncamp for you. You'll find most of the tools you used in your worldwaiting there and all the engineers we could get or make for you. "

He'd been considering stalling while he demanded exactly such things. Hewas reasonably sure by now that they had no transistors, signalgenerators, frequency meters or whatever else he could demand. He couldmake quite an issue out of the need to determine the characteristicimpedance of their sky. That might even be interesting, at that; wouldit be anywhere near 300 ohms here? But it seemed that stalling wasn'tgoing to work. They'd given him what they expected him to need, and he'dhave to be careful to need only what they expected, or they might justdecide he wasn't Dave Hanson. 

"I can't work on this stuff here, " he said. 

"Then why didn't you say so?" she asked sharply. She let out a cry and araven came flying in. She whispered something to it, frowned, and thenordered it off. "There's no surface transportation available, and allthe local rocs are in use. Well, we'll have to make do with what wehave. "

She darted for the outer office, rummaged in a cabinet, and came backwith a medium-sized rug of worn but gaudy design. Bad imitation Sarouk, Dave guessed. She tossed it onto the largest cleared space, gobbledsome outlandish noises, and dropped onto it, squatting near one end. Behind her, the dull clod picked up the sample of sky and fell to hisface on the rug. At her vehement signal, Dave squatted down beside her, not daring to believe what he was beginning to guess. 

The carpet lifted uncertainly. It seemed to protest at the unbalancedweight of the sky piece. She made the sounds again, and it rosereluctantly, curling up at the front, like a crazy toboggan. It movedslowly, but with increasing speed, sailed out of the office through thewindow and began gaining altitude. They went soaring over the city atabout thirty miles an hour, heading toward what seemed to be barren landbeyond. "Sometimes they fail now, " she told him. "But so far, only ifthe words are improperly pronounced. "

He gulped and looked gingerly over at the city below. As he did, shegasped. He heard a great tearing sound of thunder. In the sky, a smallhole appeared. There was a scream of displaced air, and something wentzipping downwards in front of them, setting up a wind that bounced thecarpet about crazily. Dave glanced over the edge again to see one of thetall buildings crumple under the impact. The three top stories wereripped to shreds. Then the whole building began to change. It slowlyblossomed into a huge cloud of pink gas that rifted away, to show peopleand objects dropping like stones to the ground below. Nema sighed andturned her eyes away. 

"But--it's ridiculous!" Dave protested. "We heard the rip and less thanfive seconds later, that piece fell. If your sky is even twenty milesabove us, it would take longer than that to fall. "

"It's a thousand miles up, " she told him. "And sky has no inertia untilit is contaminated by contact with the ground. It took longer thanusual for that piece to fall. " She sighed. "It gets worse. Look at thesigns. That break has disturbed the planets. We're moving retrograde, back to our previous position, out of Sagittarius! Now we'll go back tothe character we had before--and just when I was getting used to thechange. "

He jerked his eyes off the raw patch of emptiness in the sky, where afew stars seemed to be vanishing. "Your character? Isn't anything stablehere?"

"Of course not. Naturally, in each House we have a differing ofcharacter, as does the world itself. Why else should astrology be thegreatest of the sciences?"

It was a nice world, he decided. And yet the new factor explained somethings. He'd been vaguely worried about the apparent change in SerPerth, who'd turned from a serious and helpful doctor into asupercilious, high-handed fop. But--what about his recovery, if that wassupposed to be determined by the signs of the zodiac?

He had no time to ask. The carpet bucked, and the girl began speaking toit urgently. It wavered, then righted itself, to begin slidingdownwards. 

"There is a ring of protection around your camp, " Nema explained. "It isset to make entry impossible to one who does not have the words or whois unfriendly. The carpet could not go through that, anyway. The ringnegates all other magic trying to pass it. And of course we havebasilisks mounted on posts around the grounds. They're trained to hoodtheir eyes, except when they sense anyone trying to enter who shouldnot. You can't be turned to stone looking at one, you know--only byhaving one look at you. "

"You're cheering me up no end, " he assured her. 

She smiled pleasantly and began setting the carpet down. Below, hecould see a camp that looked much like the camps he had seen in the samemovies from which all his clothes had been copied. There were welllaid-out rows of sheds, beautiful lines of construction equipment andeverything in order, as it could never be in a real camp. As he beganwalking with the girl toward a huge tent that should have belonged to acircus, he could see other discrepancies. The tractors were designed forwork in mud flats and the haulers had the narrow wheels used on rockyground. Nothing seemed quite as it should be. He spotted a big generatorworking busily--and then saw a gang of about fifty men, or mandrakes, turning a big capstan that kept it going. Here and there were neat racksof miscellaneous tools. Some were museum pieces. There was even a gandycart, though no rails for it to run on. 

They were almost at the main tent when a crow flew down and yelledsomething in Nema's ear. She scowled, and nodded. "I'm needed back, " shesaid. "Most of the men here--" She pointed to the gangs that moved aboutbusily doing nothing, all in costumes similar to his, except for theboots and hat. "They're mandrakes, conjured into existence, but withoutsouls. The engineers we have are snatched from Duality just after dyingand revived here while their brains still retain their knowledge. Theyhave no true souls either, of course, but they don't know it. Ah. Theshort man there--he's Garm. Sersa Garm, an apprentice to Ser Perth. He'sto be your foreman, and he's real. "

She headed back to the outskirts, then turned to shout back. "SatherKarf says you may have ten days to fix the sky, " she called. Her handwaved toward him in friendly good-bye. "Don't worry, Dave Hanson. I havefaith in you. "

Then she was running toward her reluctant carpet. 

Dave stared up at the mottled dome above him and at the dullclod--certainly a mandrake--who was still carrying the sample. With allthis preparation and a time limit, he couldn't even afford to stall. He'd never fully understood why some plastics melted and others turnedhard when heated, but he had to find what was wrong with the dome aboveand how to fix it. And maybe the time limit could be stretched a little, once he came up with the answer. Maybe. He'd worry about that after heworried about the first steps. 

Sersa Garm proved to be a glum, fat young man, overly aware of hisimportance in training for serhood. He led Dave through the big tent, taking pride in the large drafting section--under the obvious beliefthat it was used for designing spells. Maybe it could have been usefulfor that if there had been a single man who knew anything aboutdraftsmanship. There were four engineers, supposedly. One, who had diedfalling off a bridge while drunk, was curing himself of the shock byremaining dead drunk. One had been a chemical engineer specializing inmaking yeast and dried soya meal into breakfast cereals. Another knewall about dredging canals and the last one was an electronicsengineer--a field in which Dave was far more competent. 

He dismissed them. Whatever had been done to them--or perhaps theabsence of a true soul, whatever that was--left them rigidly bound totheir past ideas and totally incapable of doing more than followingorders by routine now. Even Sersa Garm was more useful. 

That young man could offer little information, however. The sky, heexplained pompously, was a great mystery that only an adept mightcommunicate to another. He meant that he didn't know about it, Davegathered. Everything, it turned out, was either a mystery or a rumor. He also had a habit of sucking his thumb when pressed too hard fordetails. 

"But you must have heard some guesses about what started the cracks inthe sky?" Dave suggested. 

"Oh, indeed, that is common knowledge, " Sersa Garm admitted. He changedthumbs while he considered. "'Twas an experiment most noble, but throughmischance going sadly awry. A great Sather made the sun remain in oneplace too long, and the heat became too great. It was like the Classicexperiment--"

"How hot is your sun?"

There was a long pause. Then Sather Germ shrugged. "'Tis a greatmystery. Suffice to say it has no true heat, but does send forth anactivating principle against the phlogiston layer, which being excitedgrows vengeful against the air ... But you have not the training tounderstand. "

"Okay, so they didn't tell you, if they knew. " Dave stared up at thesun, trying to guess. The light looked about like what he was used to, where the sky was still whole. North light still was like what a colorphotographer would consider 5500° Kelvin, so the sun must be pretty hot. Hot enough to melt anything he knew about. "What's the melting point ofthis sky material?"

He never did manage to make Sather Garm understand what a melting pointwas. But he found that one of the solutions tried had been the bleedingof eleven certified virgins for seven days. When the blood was mixedwith dragonfeathers and frogsdown and melded with a genuinephilosopher's stone, they had used it to ink in the right path of theplanets of a diagram. It had failed. The sky had cracked and a piece hadfallen into the vessel of blood, killing a Sather who was less than twothousand years old. 

"Two thousand?" Dave asked. "How old is Sather Karf?"

"None remembers truly. He has always been the Sather Karf--at least tenthousand years or more. To attain the art of a Sather is the work of ascore of centuries, usually. "

That Sather had been in sad shape, it seemed. No one had been able torevive him, though bringing the dead back to life when the body wasreasonably intact was routine magic that even a sersa could perform. Itwas after that they'd begun conjuring back to Dave's world for all theother experts. 

"All whose true names they could find, that is, " Garm amended. "TheEgyptian pyramid builder, the man who discovered your greatest science, dianetics, the great Cagliostro--and what a time we had finding his truename! I was assigned to the helping of one who had discovered thesecrets of gravity and some strange magic which he termedrelativity--though indeed it had little to do with kinship, but was aprivate mystery. But when he was persuaded by divers means to help us, he gave up after one week, declaring it beyond his powers. They wereeven planning what might best be done to chastise him when he discoveredin some manner a book of elementary conjuration and did then devise somestrange new formula from the elements with which magic he disappeared. "

It was nice to know that Einstein had given up on the problem, Davethought bitterly. As nice as the discovery that there was no fuel forthe equipment here. He spent an hour rigging up a portable saw to use inattempting to cut off a smaller piece of the sky, and then saw themotor burn out when he switched it on. It turned out that allelectricity here was d. C. , conjured up by commanding the electrons in awire to move in one direction, and completely useless with a. C. Motors. It might have been useful for welding, but there was no electric torch. 

"'Tis obviously not a thing of reason, " Garm told him severely. "If thecurrent in such a form moves first in one direction and then in theother, then it cancels out and is useless. No, you must be wrong. "

As Dave remembered it, Tesla had been plagued by similar doubts fromsuch men as Edison. He gave up and settled finally for one of the nativewelding torches, filled with a dozen angry salamanders. The flame orwhatever it was had enough heat, but it was hard to control. By the timehe learned to use it, night had fallen, and he was too tired to tryanything more. He ate a solitary supper and went to sleep. 

During the next three days he learned a few things the hard way, however. In spite of Garm's assurance that nothing could melt the sky, he found that his sample would melt slowly under the heat of the torch. In the liquid state, it was jet black, though it cooled back to completetransparency. It was also without weight when in liquid form--a fact hediscovered when it began rising through the air and spattering overeverything, including his bare skin. The burns were nasty, but somehowseemed to heal with remarkable speed. Sersa Garm was impressed by thediscoveries, and went off to suck his thumbs and brood over the newknowledge, much to Dave's relief. 

More work established the fact that welding bits of the sky together wasnot particularly difficult. The liquid sky was perfectly willing to bondonto anything, including other bits of itself. 

Now, if he could get a gang up the thousand miles to the sky with enoughtorches to melt the cracks, it might recongeal as a perfect sphere. Thestuff was strong, but somewhat brittle. He still had no idea of how toget the stars and planets back in the right places. 

"The mathematician thought of such an idea, " Sersa Garm said sourly. "But 'twould never work. Even with much heat, it could not be done. Forsee you, the upper air is filled with phlogiston, which no man canbreathe. Also, the phlogiston has negative weight, as every school childmust know. Your liquid sky would sink through it, since negative weightmust in truth be lighter than no weight, while nothing else would risethrough the layer. And phlogiston will quench the flame of a rocket, asyour expert von Braun discovered. "

The man was a gold mine of information, all bad. The only remainingsolution, apparently, was to raise a scaffolding over the whole planetto the sky, and send up mandrakes to weld back the broken pieces. Theywouldn't need to breathe, anyhow. With material of infinitestrength--and an infinite supply of it--and with infinite time andpatience, it might have been worth considering. 

Nema came out the next day with more cheering information. Hermulti-times great grandfather, Sather Karf, regretted it, but he musthave good news to release at once; the populace was starving because thefood multipliers couldn't produce reliable supplies. Otherwise, Davewould find venom being transported into his blood in increasing amountsuntil the pain drove him mad. And, just incidentally, the Sons of theEgg who'd attacked him in the hospital had tried to reach the camp twicealready, once by interpenetrating into a shipment of mandrakes, whichindicated to what measures they would resort. They meant to kill himsomehow, and the defense of him was growing too costly unless there werepositive results. 

Dave hinted at having nearly reached the solution, giving her only a bitof his wild idea of welding the sky. She took off with that, but he wassure it wouldn't satisfy the Sather. In that, he was right. Bynightfall, when she came back from the city, he was groaning in pain. The venom had arrived ahead of her, and his blood seemed to be on fire. 

She laid a cool hand on his forehead. "Poor Dave, " she said. "If I werenot registered and certified, sometimes I feel that I might ... But nomore of that. Ser Perth sends you this unguent which will hold back thevenom for a time, cautioning you not to reveal his softness. " Ser Perth, it seemed, had reverted to his pre-Sagittarian character as expected. "And Sather Karf wants the full plans at once. He is losing patience. "

He began rubbing on the ointment, which helped slightly. She peeled backhis shirt and began helping, apparently delighted with the hair whichhe'd sprouted on his chest since his reincarnation. The unguent helped, but it wasn't enough. 

"He never had any patience to lose. What the hell does he expect me todo?" Dave asked hotly. "Snap my fingers thus, yell _abracadabra_ andgive him egg in his beer?"

He stopped to stare at his hand, where a can of beer had suddenlymaterialized!

Nema squealed in delight. "What a novel way to conjure, Dave. Let me tryit. " She began snapping her fingers and saying the word eagerly, butnothing happened. Finally she turned back to him. "Show me again. "

He was sure it wouldn't work twice, and he hesitated, not too willing tohave his stock go down with her. Then he gave in. 

"_Abracadabra!_" he said, and snapped his fingers. 

There were results at once. This time an egg appeared in his hand, tothe delighted cry of Nema. He bent to look at it uncertainly. It was astrange looking egg--more like one of the china eggs used to make hensthink they were nesting when their eggs were still being taken fromthem. 

Abruptly Nema sprang back. But she was too late. The egg was growing. Itswelled to the size of a football, then was man-sized, and growing tothe size of a huge tank that filled most of the tent. Suddenly it splitopen along one side and a group of men in dull robes and masks camespilling out of it. 

"Die!" the one in front yelled. He lifted a double-bladed knife, chargedfor Dave, and brought the knife down. 

The blades went through clothing, skin, flesh and bones, straight forDave's heart. 

V

The knife had pierced Dave's chest until the hilt pressed against hisrib cage. He stared down at it, seeing it rise with the heaving of hislungs. Yet he was still alive!

Then the numbness of shock wore off and the pain nerves carried theirmessages to his brain. He still lived, but there was unholy agonywhere the blade lay. Coughing and choking on what must be his ownblood, he scrabbled at the knife and ripped it out. Blood jetted fromthe gaping rent in his clothing. It gushed forth--and slowed; itfrothed--trickled--and stopped entirely. 

As he ripped his shirt back to look, the wound was closed already. Butthere was no easing of the pain that threatened to make him black out atany second. 

He heard shouting, quarreling voices, but nothing made sense through thehaze of his agony. He felt someone grab at him--more than oneperson--and they were dragging him willy-nilly across the ground. Something was clutched around his throat, almost choking him. He openedhis eyes just as something clicked behind him. 

The huge, translucent walls of the monstrous egg were all around him andthe opened side was closing. 

The pain began to abate. The bleeding had already stopped entirely andhis lungs seemed to have cleared themselves of the blood and froth inthem. Now with the ache of the wound ceasing, Dave could still feel thevenom burning in his blood, and the constriction around his throat wasstill there, making it hard to breathe. He sat up, trying to freehimself. The constriction came from an arm around his neck, but hecouldn't see to whom it belonged, and there was no place to move asidein the corner of the egg. 

From inside, the walls of the egg were transparent enough for him to seecloudy outlines of what lay beyond. He could see the ground sweepingaway beneath them from all points. A man had run up and was standingbeside the egg, beating at it. The man suddenly shot up like a fountain, growing huge; he towered over them, until he seemed miles high and thegiant structures Dave could see were only the turned-up toes of theman's shoes. One of those shoes was lifting, as if the man meant to stepon the egg. 

They must be growing smaller again. 

A voice said tightly: "We're small enough, Bork. Can you raise the windfor us now?"

"Hold on. " Bork's voice seemed sure of itself. 

The egg tilted and soared. Dave was thrown sidewise and had to fight forbalance. He stared unbelievingly through the crystal shell. They roselike a Banshee jet. There was a shaggy, monstrous colossus in thedistance, taller than the Himalayas--the man who had been beside them. Bork grunted. "Got it! We're all right now. " He chanted something in arapid undertone "All right, relax. That will teach them not to workresonance magic inside a protective ring; the egg knows how we couldhave got through otherwise. Lucky we were trying at the right time, though. The Satheri must be going crazy. Wait a minute, this tires thefingers. "

The man called Bork halted the series of rapid passes he had beenmaking, flexing his fingers with a grimace. The spinning egg began todrop at once, but he let out a long, keening cry, adding a slight flipof his other arm. Outside, something like a mist drew near and swirledaround them. It looked huge to Dave, but must have been a small thing infact. Now they began speeding along smoothly again. The thing wasprobably another sylph, strong enough to move them in their presentreduced size. 

Bork pointed his finger. "There's the roc!" He leaned closer to the wallof the tiny egg and shouted. The sylph changed direction, and began tobob about. 

It drifted gently, while Bork pulled a few sticks with runes written onthem toward him and made a hasty assembly of them. At once, there was afeeling of growing, and the sylph began to shrink away from them. Nowthey were falling swiftly, growing as they dropped. Dave felt hisstomach twist, until he saw they were heading toward a huge bird thatwas cruising along under them, drawing closer. It looked like a crossbetween a condor and a hawk, but its wing span must have been over threehundred feet. It slipped under the egg, catching the falling objectdeftly on a cushion-like attachment between its wings, and then struckoff briskly toward the east. 

Bork snapped the side of the egg open and stepped out while the othersfollowed. Dave tried to crawl out, but something held him back. Itwasn't until Bork's big hand reached in to help him that he made it. When all were out, Bork tapped the egg-shaped object and caught it as itshrank. When it was small enough, he pocketed it. 

Dave sat up again, examining himself, now that he had more room. Hisclothing was a mess, spattered with drying blood, but he seemed unharmednow. Even the burning of the venom was gone. He reached for the armaround his neck and began breaking it free from its stranglehold. 

From behind an incredulous cry broke out. Nema sprawled across him, staring at his face and burying her head against his shoulder. "Dave!You're not dead! You're alive!"

Dave was still amazed at that himself. But Bork snorted. "Of course heis. Why'd we take him along with you hanging on in a faint if he weredead? When the snetha-knife kills, it kills completely. They stay dead, or they don't die. Sagittarian?"

She nodded, and the big man seemed to be doing some calculations in hishead. 

"Yeah, " he decided. "It would be. There was one second there aroundmidnight when all the signs were at their absolute maximumfavorableness. Someone must have said some pretty dangerous healthspells over him then. " He turned to Dave, as if aware that the other wascomparatively ignorant of such matters. "Happened once before, withoutthis mess-up of the signs. They revived a corpse and found he wasunkillable from then on. He lasted eight thousand years, or somethinglike that, before he got burned trying to control a giant salamander. They cut off his head once, but it healed before the axe was all the waythrough. Woops!"

The bird had dipped downward, rushing toward the ground. It landed at ahundred miles an hour and managed to stop against a small entrance to acave in the hillside. Except for the one patch where the bird hadlighted, they were in the middle of a dense forest. 

Dave and Nema were hustled into the cave, while the others melted intothe woods, studying the skies. She clung to Dave, crying something abouthow the Sons of the Egg would torture them. 

"All right, " he said finally. "Who are these sons of eggs? And what havethey got against me?"

"They're monsters, " she told him. "They used to be the antimagicindividualists. They wanted magic used only when other means wouldn'twork. They fought against the Satheri. While magic produced their foodand made a better world for them, they hated it because they couldn't doit for themselves. And a few renegade priests like my brother joinedthem. "

"Your brother?"

"She means me, " Bork said. He came in to drop on his haunches and grinat Dave. There was no sign of personal hatred in his look. "I used to bea stooge for Sather Karf, before I got sick of it. How do you feel, DaveHanson?"

Dave considered it, still in wonder at the truth. "I feel good. Even thevenom they were putting in my blood doesn't seem to hurt any more. "

"Fine. Means the Sather Karf must believe we killed you--he must havethe report by now. If he thinks you're dead, there's no point in hisgiving chase; he knows I wouldn't let them kill Nema, even if she is alittle fool. Anyhow, he's not really such a bad old guy, Dave--not, likesome of those Satheri. Well, you figure how you'd like it if you werejust a simple man and some priest magicked her away from you--and thensent her back with enough magic of her own to be a witch and make lifehell for you because she'd been kicked out by the priest, but he hadn'tpulled the wanting spell off her. Or anything else you wanted andcouldn't keep against magic. Sure, they fed us. They had to, after theytook away our fields and the kine, and got everyone into the habit oftaking their dole instead of earning our living in the old way. Theymade slaves of us. Any man who lets another be responsible for him _is_a slave. It's a fine world for the Satheri, if they can keep the eggfrom breaking. "

"What's all this egg nonsense?"

Bork shrugged. "Plain good sense. Why should there be a sky shell aroundthe planet? Look, there's a legend here. You should know it, since forall I know it has some meaning for you. Long ago--or away, orwhatever--there was a world called Tharé and another called Erath. Twoworlds, separate and distinct, on their own branching time paths. Theymust have been that way since the moment of creation. One was a world ofrule and law. One plus one might not always equal two, but it had toequal something. There seems to be some similarity to your world inthat, doesn't there? The other was--well, you'd call it chaos, though ithad some laws, if they could be predicted. One plus one theredepended--or maybe there was no such thing as unity. Mass-energy wasn'tconserved. It was deserved. It was a world of anarchy, from your pointof view. It must have been a terrible place to live, I guess. "

He hesitated somberly. "As terrible as this one is getting to be, " hesaid at last. "Anyway, there were people who lived there. There were thetwo inhabited worlds in their own time lines, or probability orbits, orwhatever. You know, I suppose, how worlds of probability would separateand diverge as time goes on? Of course. Well, these two worlds_coalesced_. "

He looked searchingly at Dave. "Do you see it? The two time lines cametogether. Two opposites fused into one. Don't ask me to explain it; itwas long ago, and all I know for sure is that it happened. The twoworlds met and fused, and out of the two came this world, in what thebooks call the _Dawnstruggle_. When it was over, our world was as ithas been for thousands of centuries. In fact, one result was that intheory, neither original world could have a real past, and the fusionwas something that had been--no period of change. It's prettycomplicated. "

"It sounds worse than that, " Dave grumbled. "But while that mightexplain the mystery of magic working here, it doesn't explain your sky. "

Bork scratched his head. "No, not too well, " he admitted. "I've alwayshad some doubts about whether or not all the worlds have a shell aroundthem. I don't know. But our world does, and the shell is cracking. TheSatheri don't like it; they want to stop it. We want it to happen. Forthe two lines that met and fused into one have an analogue. Doesn't thestory of that fusion suggest something to you, Dave Hanson? Don't yousee it, the male principle of rule and the female principle of whim;they join, and the egg is fertile! Two universes join, and the result isa nucleus world surrounded by a shell, like an egg. We're a universeegg. And when an egg hatches, you don't try to put it back together!"

He didn't look like a fanatic, Dave told himself. Crazy or not, he tookthis business of the hatching egg seriously. But you could never be sureabout anyone who joined a cult. "What is your egg going to hatch into?"he asked. 

The big man shrugged. "Does an egg know it is going to become a hen--ormaybe a fish? We can't possibly tell, of course. "

Dave considered it. "Don't you even have a guess?"

Bork answered shortly, "No. " He looked worried, Dave thought, andguessed that even the fanatics were not quite sure they _wanted_ to behatched. Bork shrugged again. 

"An egg has got to hatch, " he said. "That's all there is to it. Weprophesied this, oh, two hundred years ago. The Satheri laughed. Nowthey've stopped laughing, but they want to stop it. What happens to achick when it is stopped from hatching? Does it go on being a chick, ordoes it die? It dies, of course. And we don't want to die. No, DaveHanson, we don't know what happens next--but we do know that we must gothrough with it. I have nothing against you personally--but I can't letyou stop us. That's why we tried to kill you. If I could, I'd kill younow, with the snetha-knife so they couldn't revive you. "

Dave said reasonably, "You can't expect me to like it, you know. TheSatheri, at least, saved my life--" He stopped in confusion. Bork wasstaring at him in hilarious incredulousness that broke into roars oflaughter. 

"You mean ... Dave Hanson, do you believe everything they tell you?Don't you know that the Satheri arranged to kill you first? They neededa favorable death conjunction to bring you back to life; they got it--byarranging an accident!"

Nema cried out in protest. "That's a lie!"

"Of course, " Bork said mildly. "You always were on their side, littlesister. You were also usually a darned nuisance, fond as I was of you. Come here. "

He caught her and yanked a single hair out of her head. She screamed andtried to claw him, then fought for the hair. Bork was immovable. He heldher off easily with one hand while the fingers of the other danced inthe air. He spoke what seemed to be a name, though it bore noresemblance to Nema. She quieted, trembling. 

"You'll find a broom near the entrance, little sister. Take it and goback, to forget that Dave Hanson lives. You saw him die and weredragged off with us and his body. You escaped before we reached ourhideaway. By the knot I tie in your true hair and by your secret name, this I command. "

She blinked slowly and looked around as Bork burned the knotted hair. Her eyes swept past Bork and Dave without seeing them and centered onthe broom one man held out to her, without appearing to see him, either. She seized the broom. A sob came to her throat. "The devil! The renegadedevil! He didn't have to kill Dave! He didn't--"

Her voice died away as she ran toward the clearing. Dave made noprotest. He suspected Bork was putting the spell on her for her owngood, and he agreed that she was better out of all this. 

"Now where were we?" Bork asked. "Oh, yes, I was trying to convert youand knowing I'd failed already. Of course, I don't know that they killedyou first--but those are their methods. Take it from me, I know. I wasthe youngest Ser ever to be accepted for training as a Sather. Theywanted you, so they got you. "

Dave considered it. It seemed as likely as anything else. "Why me?" heasked. 

"Because you can put back the sky. At least, the Satheri think so, and Imust admit that in some ways they are smarter than we. "

Dave started to protest, but Bork cut him off. 

"I know all about your big secret. You're not the engineer, whose truename was longer. We know all that. Our pools are closer to perfectionthan theirs, not being contaminated by city air, and we see more. Butthere is a cycle of confirmation; if prophecy indicates a thing willhappen, it will happen--though not always as expected. The prophecyfulfills itself, rather than being fulfilled. Then there are the wordson the monument--a monument meant for your uncle, but carrying your truename, because his friends felt the short form sounded better. It wassomething of a coincidence that they had the wrong true name. Butprophecy is always strongest when based on coincidence--that is a primerule. And those words coupled with our revelations prophesy that_you_--not your uncle--can do the impossible. So what are we going to dowith you?"

Bork's attitude was reassuring, somehow. It was nearer his own than anyDave had heard on this world. And the kidnapping was beginning to looklike a relief. The Sons of the Egg had gotten him off the hook withSather Karf. He grinned and stretched back. "If I'm unkillable, Bork, what can you do?"

The big man grinned back. "Flow rock around you up to your nose and tossyou into a lake. You'd live there--but you'd always be drowning andyou'd find it slightly unpleasant for the next few thousand years! It'snot as bad as being turned into a mangrove with your soul intact, but itwould last longer. And don't think the Satheri can't pull a lot worsethan that. They have your name--everyone has your secret name here--andparts of you. "

The conversation was suddenly less pleasant. Dave thought it over. "Icould stay here and join your group. I might as well, since I can'treally help the Satheri anyhow. "

"They'd spot your aura eventually. They'll be checking around here forus for a while. Of course, we might do something about it, if you reallyconverted. But I don't think you would, if you knew more. " Bork got upand headed for the entrance. "I wasn't going to let you see therisings, but now maybe I will. If you still want to join, it might beworked. Otherwise, I'll think of something else. "

Dave followed the man out into the clearing. A few men were justplanning to leave, and they looked at Dave suspiciously, but made noprotest. One, whom Dave recognized as the leader with the snetha-knife, scowled. 

"The risings are almost due, Bork, " he said. 

Bork nodded. "I know, Malok. I've decided to let Dave Hanson watch. Dave, this is our leader here, Res Malok. "

Dave felt no strong love for his would-be murderer, and it seemed to bemutual. But no protest was lodged. Apparently Bork was their topconjurer, and privileged. They crossed the clearing and went through thewoods toward another, smaller one. Here a group of some fifty men werewatching the sky, obviously waiting. Others stood around, watching themand avoiding looking up. Almost directly overhead, there was a rentplace where the strange absence of color or feature indicated a hole inthe dome over them. As it drew nearer true vertical, a chanting beganamong the men with up-turned faces. Their hands went upwards, fingersspread and curled into an unnatural position. Then they stood waiting. 

"I don't like it, " Bork whispered to Dave. "This is one of the reasonswe're growing too weak to fight the Satheri. "

"What's wrong with a ceremony of worship, if you must worship youreggshell?" Dave asked. 

"You'll see. That was all it was once--just worship. But now for weeks, things are changing. They think it's a sign of favor, but I don't know. There, watch!"

The hole in the sky was directly overhead now, and the moaning hadrisen in pitch. Across the little clearing, Malok began backing quietlyaway, carefully not looking upwards. Nobody but Dave seemed to noticehis absence. There was a louder moan. 

One of the men in the clearing began to rise upwards slowly. His bodywas rigid as it lifted a foot, ten feet, then a hundred above theground. Now it picked up speed, and rushed upwards. Another began torise, and another. In seconds, more than half of those who had waitedwere screaming upwards toward the hole in the sky. They disappeared inthe distance. 

Those who had merely stood by and those who had worshipped waited a fewseconds more, but no more rose. The men sighed and began moving out ofthe clearing. Dave arose to follow, but Bork gestured for him to wait. 

"Sometimes--" he said. 

They were alone now. Still Bork waited, staring upwards. Then Dave sawsomething in the sky. A speck appeared and came hurtling down. Inseconds, it was the body of one of the men who had risen. Dave felt hisstomach tighten and braced himself. There was no slowing as the bodyfell. It landed in the center of the clearing, without losing speed, butwith less noise than he had expected. 

When they reached the shattered body, there could be no question of itsbeing dead. 

Bork's face was solemn. "If you're thinking of joining, you'd betterknow the worst. You're too easily shocked to make a good convert unlessyou're prepared. The risings have been going on for some time. Malokswears it proves we are right. But I've seen five other bodies come downlike this. What does it mean? Are they stillborn? We don't know. ShallI revive him for you?"

Dave felt sick as he stared at the ghastly terror on the face of thecorpse. The last thing he wanted to see was its revival, but hiscuriosity about the secret in the sky could not be denied. He nodded. 

Bork drew a set of phials and implements in miniature size from underhis robe. "This is routine, " he said. He snapped his fingers andproduced a small flame over the heart of the corpse. Into that he begandusting powders, mixing them with something that looked like blood. Finally he called a name and a command. There was a sharp explosion, ahissing, and Bork's voice calling. 

The dead man flowed together and was whole. He stood up woodenly, withhis face frozen. "Who calls?" he asked in an uninflected, hollow voice. "Why am I called? I have no soul. "

"We call, " Bork answered. "Tell us what you saw at the hole in the sky. "

A scream tore from the throat of the thing, and its hands came up to itseyes, tearing at them. Its mouth worked soundlessly, and breath suckedin. Then a single word came out. 

"Faces!"

It fell onto the grass, distorted in death again. Bork shuddered. 

"The others were the same, " he said. "And he can't be revived again. Even the strongest spell can't bring back his soul. That is gone, somehow. "

Dave shivered. "And knowing that, you'd still fight against repairingthe sky?"

"Hatching is probably always horrible from inside the shell, " Borkanswered. "Do you still want to join us? No, I thought not. Well, then, let's go back. We might as well try to eat something while I thinkabout what to do with you. "

Malok and most of the others were gone when they reached the cave again. Bork fell to work with some scraps of food, cursing the configurationsof the planets as his spell refused to work. Then suddenly the scrapsbecame a mass of sour-smelling stuff. Bork made a face as he tasted it, but he ate it in silence. Dave couldn't force himself to put it in hismouth, though he was hungry by then. 

He considered, and then snapped his fingers. "Abracadabra, " he cried. Heswore as something wet and slimy that looked like seaweed plopped intohis hand. The next time he got a limp fish that had been dead far toolong. But the third try worked better. This time, a whole bunch ofbananas appeared. They were a little riper than he liked, but some ofthem were edible enough. He handed some to the other man, who quicklyabandoned his own creation. 

Bork was thoughtful as he ate. Finally he grimaced. "New magic!" hesaid. "Maybe that's the secret of the prophecy. I thought you knew nomagic. "

"I didn't, " Dave admitted. He was still tingling inside himself at thisconfirmation of his earlier discovery. It was unpredictable magic, butapparently bore some vague relationship to what he was wishing for. 

"So the lake's out, " Bork decided. "With unknown powers at your command, you might escape in time. Well, that settles it. There's one place wherenobody will look for you or listen to you. You'll be nothing but anotheramong millions, and that's probably the best hiding place for you. Withthe overseers they have, you couldn't even turn yourself back to theSatheri, though I'll admit I'm hoping you don't want them to find you. "

"And I was beginning to think you liked me, " Dave commented bitterly. 

Bork grinned. "I do, Dave Hanson. That's why I'm picking the easiestplace to hide you I can think of. It will be hell, but anything elsewould be worse. Better strip and put this cloth on. "

The thing he held out was little more than a rag, apparently torn fromone of the robes. "Come on, strip, or I'll burn off your clothes with asalamander. There, that's better. Now wrap the cloth around your waistand let it hang down in front. It'll be easier on you if you don'tattract much attention. The sky seems to indicate the planets favorteleportation now. Be quick before I change my mind and think ofsomething worse!"

Dave didn't see what he did this time, but there was a puff of flame infront of his eyes. 

The next second, he stood manacled in a long line of men loaded withheavy stones. Over their backs fell the cutting lashes of a whip. Farahead was a partially finished pyramid. Dave was obviously one of thebuilding slaves. 

VI

Sunrise glared harshly over the desert. It was already hot enough tosend heat waves dancing over the sand as Hanson wakened under the biteof a lash. The overseers were shouting and kicking the slaves awake. Overhead the marred sky shone in crazy quilt patterns. 

Hanson stood up, taking the final bite of the whip without flinching. Heglanced down at his body, noticing that it had somehow developed ahealthy deep tan during the few hours of murderous labor the day before. He wasn't particularly surprised. Something in his mind seemed also tohave developed a "tan" that let him face the bite of chance withoutflinching. He'd stopped wondering and now accepted; he meant to get awayfrom here at the first chance and he was somehow sure he could. 

It was made easier by the boundless strength of his new body. He showedno signs of buckling under physical work that would have killed him onhis own world. 

Not all the slaves got up. Two beside him didn't move at all. Sleepingthrough that brutal awakening seemed impossible. When Hanson lookedcloser, he saw that they weren't asleep; they were dead. 

The overseer raged back along the line and saw them. He must be one ofthose conjured into existence here from the real Egypt of the past. Hemight have no soul, but a lifetime of being an overseer had given himhabits that replaced the need for what had been a pretty slim soul tobegin with. 

"Quitters!" he yelled. "Lazy, worthless, work-dodging goldbrickartists!" He knelt in fury, thumbing back the eyelids of the corpses. There was little need for the test. They were too limp, too waxen to bepretending. 

The overseer cut them out of the chain and kicked at Hanson. "Movealong!" he bellowed. "Menes himself is here, and he's not as gentle as Iam. "

Hanson joined the long line, wondering what they were going to do aboutbreakfast. How the devil did they expect the slaves to put in sixteenhours of work without some kind of food? There had been nothing thenight before but a skin of water. There was not even that much thismorning. No wonder the two beside him had died from overwork, beatingsand plain starvation. 

Menes was there, all right. Hanson saw him from the distance, a skinnygiant of a man in breechclout, cape and golden headdress. He bore a whiplike everyone else who seemed to have any authority at all, but hewasn't using it. He was standing hawklike on a slight rise in the sandyearth, motionless and silent. Beside him was a shorter figure: a pudgyman with a thin mustache, on whom the Egyptian headdress lookedstrangely out of place. It could only be Ser Perth!

Hanson's staring came to an end as the lash cut down across hisshoulders, biting through to the shoulder-bone. He stumbled forward, heedless of the overseers' shouting voices. Someday, if he had thechance, he'd flay his own overseer, but that could wait. Even the agonyof the cut couldn't take his mind from Ser Perth's presence. Had Borkslipped up--did the Satheri know that Hanson was still alive, and hadthey sent Ser Perth here to locate him? It seemed unlikely, however. Theman was paying no attention to the lines of slaves. It would be hard tospot one among three million, anyhow. More likely, Hanson decided, SerPerth was supervising the supervisors, making an inspection tour of allthis. 

Of all what? Apparently then this must be another of their frenziedefforts to find a way to put back the sky. He'd heard that they hadcalled up the pyramid builder, but hadn't fully realized it would leadto this type of activity. 

He looked around him appraisingly. The long lines of slaves that hadbeen carrying rock and rubble the day before now were being formed intohauling teams. Long ropes were looped around enormous slabs of quarriedrock. Rollers underneath them and slaves tugging and pushing at themwere the only means of moving them. The huge stones slid remorselesslyforward onto the prepared beds of rubble. Casting back in his memory, Hanson could not recall seeing the rock slabs the night before. They hadappeared as if by magic--

Obviously, they had really been conjured up by magic. But if the rockscould be conjured, what was the need of all the slaves and the sadisticoverseers? Why not simply magic the entire construction, whatever it wasto be?

The whip hit him again, and the raging voice of the overseer ranted inhis ears. "Get on, you blundering slacker. Menes himself is looking atyou. Ho there--what the devil?"

The overseer's hand spun Hanson around. The man's eyes, large andopaque, stared at Hanson. He frowned cruelly. "Yeah, you're the sameone! Didn't I take the hide off your back twice already? And now youstand there without a scar or a drop of blood!"

Hanson grunted feebly. He didn't want attention called to himself whileSer Perth was around. "I--I heal quickly. " It was no more than thetruth. Either the body they'd given him or the conjuring during theright split second had enabled him to heal almost before a blow wasstruck. 

"Magic!" The overseer scowled and gave Hanson a shove that sent himsprawling. "Blithering magic again! Magic stones that melt when you getthem in place--magic slaves that the whip won't touch! And they expectus to do a job of work such as not even Thoth could dream up! They won'ttake honest work. No, they have to come snooping and conjuring andinterfering. Wheels on rollers! Tools of steel and the gods know whatinstead of honest stone. Magic to lift things instead of honest ropesthat shrink and wood that swells. Magic that fails, and rush, rush, rushuntil I'm half ready to be tortured for falling behind, and--you! Youwould, would you!" His voice trailed off into a fresh roar of rage as hecaught sight of other slaves taking advantage of his attention to Hansonto relax. He raced off, brandishing the whip. 

Hanson tried to make himself inconspicuous after that. The wounds wouldheal, and the beatings could never kill him; but there had been noprovision in his new body for the suppression of pain. He hungered, thirsted and suffered like anyone else. Maybe he was learning to takeit, here, but not to like it. 

At the expense of a hundred slaves and considerable deterioration of thewhips, one block of stone was in place before the sun was high overheadin the coppery, mottled sky. Then there was the blessing of a moment'spause. Men were coming down the long lines, handing something to theslaves. Food, Hanson anticipated. 

He was wrong. When the slave with the wicker basket came closer he couldsee that the contents were not food but some powdery stuff that wasdipped out with carved spoons into the eager hands of the slaves. Hansonsmelled his portion dubiously. It was cloying, sickly sweet. 

Hashish! Or opium, heroin, hemp--Hanson was no expert. But it wascertainly some kind of drug. Judging by the avid way the other slaveswere gulping it down, each one of them had been exposed to it before. Hanson cautiously made the pretense of swallowing his before he allowedit to slip through his fingers to mingle with the sand. Drug addictionwas obviously a convenient way to make the slaves forget their aches andfears, to keep them everlasting anxious to please whatever was necessaryto make sure the precious, deadly ration never stopped. 

There was still no sign of food. The pause in the labor was only for thelength of time it took the drug-bearing slaves to complete their task. Ten minutes, or fifteen at the outside; then the overseers were backwith the orders and the lashes. 

The slaves regrouped on new jobs, and Hanson found himself in a bunch ofa dozen or so. They were lashing the hauling ropes around a twelve-footblock of stone; the rollers were already in place, with the crudelyplaited ropes dangling loosely. Hanson found himself being lifted by acouple of the other slaves to the shoulders of a third. His clawinghands caught the top of the block and the slaves below heaved himupward. He scrambled to the top and caught the ropes that were flung upto him. 

From his vantage point he saw what he had not seen before--the amazingsize of the construction project. This was no piffling little Gizehpyramid, no simple tomb for a king. Its base was measured in kilometersinstead of yards, and its top was going to be proportionally high, apparently. It hardly seemed that there could be enough stone in thewhole world to finish the job. As far as Hanson could see, over thelevel sand, the ground was black with the suffering millions of slavesin their labor gangs. 

The idiots must be trying to reach the sky with their pyramid. Therecould be no other answer to the immense bulk planned for this structure. Like the pride-maddened men of Babel, they were building a sky-highthing of stone. It was obviously impossible, and even Menes must beaware of that. Yet perhaps it was no more impossible than all the restof the things in this impossible world. 

When the warlocks of this world had discovered that they could not solvethe problem of the sky, they must have gone into a state of purehysteria, like a chicken dashing back and forth in front of a car. Theyhad sought through other worlds and ages for anyone with a reputation asa builder, engineer or construction genius, without screening theprobability of finding an answer. The size of the ancient pyramid musthave been enough to sway them. They had used Hanson, Menes, Einstein, Cagliostro--for some reason of their own, since he'd never been abuilder--and probably a thousand more. And then they had half-suppliedall of them, rather than picking the most likely few and giving fullcooperation. Magic must have made solutions to most things so easy thatthey no longer had the guts to try the impossible themselves. A pyramidseemed like a ridiculous solution, but for an incredible task, animpossible solution had to be tried. 

And maybe, he thought, they'd overlooked the obvious in their ownsystem. The solution to a problem in magic should logically be found inmagic, not in the methods of other worlds. His mind groped for somethingthat almost came into his consciousness--some inkling of what shouldhave been done, or how they had failed. It was probably only an idlefancy, but--

"Hey!" One of the slaves below was waving at him. While Hanson lookeddown, the slave called to another, got a shoulder to lean on, and walkedhis way up the side of the block, pushed from below and helped byHanson's hands above. He was panting when he reached the top, but hecould still talk. "Look, it's your skin, but you're going to be introuble if you don't get busy. Look out for that overseer up there. Don't just stand around when he's in sight. " He picked up a loop of ropeand passed it to Hanson, making a great show of hard work. 

Hanson stared up at the overseer who was staring back at him. "Why is heany worse than the rest of this crowd?"

The slave shuddered as the dour, slow-moving overseer began walkingstiffly toward them. "Don't let the fact that he's an overseer fool you. He's smarter than most of his kind, but just as ugly. He's a mandrake, and you can't afford to mess with him. "

Hanson looked at the ancient, wrinkled face of the mandrake andshuddered. There was the complete incarnation of inhumanity in thething's expression. He passed ropes around the corners until themandrake turned and rigidly marched away, the blows of his whip fallingmetronome-like on the slaves he passed. "Thanks, " Hanson said "I wonderwhat it's like, being a true mandrake?"

"Depends, " the slave said easily. He was obviously more intelligent thanmost, and better at conserving himself. "Some mandrake-men are real. Imean, the magicians want somebody whom they can't just call back--directtranslation of the body usually messes up the brain patterns enough tomake the thinkers hard to use, especially with the sky falling. So theyget his name and some hold on his soul and then rebuild his body arounda mandrake root. They bind his soul into that, and in some ways he'salmost human. Sometimes they even improve on what he was. But the truemandrake--like that one--never was human. Just an ugly, filthysimulacrum. It's bad business. I never liked it, even though I was intraining for sersa rating. "

"You're from this world?" Hanson asked in surprise. He'd been assumingthat the man was one of the things called back. 

"A lot of us are. They conscripted a lot of the people they didn't needfor these jobs. But I was a little special. All right, maybe you don'tbelieve me--you think they wouldn't send a student sersa here now. Look, I can prove it. I managed to sneak one of the books I was studying backwith me. See?"

He drew a thin volume from his breechclout cautiously, then slipped itback again. "You don't get such books unless you're at least of studentrating. " He sighed, then shrugged. "My trouble is that I could neverkeep my mouth shut. I was attendant at one of the revivatoria, and I gotdrunk enough to let out some information about one of the importantrevival cases. So here I am. "

"Umm. " Hanson worked silently for a minute, wondering how farcoincidence could go. It could go a long ways here, he decided. "Youwouldn't have been sentenced to twenty lifetimes here by the SatherKarf, would you?"

The slave stared at him in surprise. "You guessed it. I've died onlyfourteen times so far, so I've got six more lives to go. But--hey, youcan't be! They were counting on you to be the one who really fixedthings. Don't tell me my talking out of turn did this to you. "

Hanson reassured him on that. He recognized the man now for anotherreason. "Aren't you the one I saw dead on his back right next to me thismorning?"

"Probably. Name's Barg. " He stood up to take a careful look at the netof cording around the stone. "Looks sound enough. Yeah, I died thismorning, which is why I'm fairly fresh now. Those overseers won't feedus because it takes time and wastes food; they let us die and then haveus dragged back for more work. It's a lot easier on the ones theydragged back already dead; dying doesn't matter so much without a soul. "

"Some of them seem to be Indians, " Hanson noted. He hadn't paid toomuch attention, but the slaves seemed to be from every possiblebackground. 

Barg nodded. "Aztecs from a place called Tenochtitlan. Twenty thousandof them got sacrificed in a bunch for some reason or other. Poor devils. They think this is some kind of heaven. They tell me this is easy workcompared to the type they had to undergo. The Satheri like to get bigbunches through in one conjuration, like the haul they made from thevictims of somebody named Tamerlane. " He tested a rope, then dropped toa sitting position on the edge of the block. "I'll let you stay up tocall signals from here. Only watch it. That overseer has his eyes onyou. Make sure the ropes stay tight while we see if the thing can bemoved. "

He started to slip over the side, hanging by his fingertips. Somethingcaught, and he swore. With one hand, he managed to free his breechcloutand drag out the thin volume that was lodged between his groin and theblock. "Here, hold this for me until we meet tonight. You've got moreroom to hide it in your cloth than I have. " He tossed it over quickly, then dropped from sight to land on the ground below. 

Hanson shoved the book out of sight and tried to act busy again. Themandrake overseer had started ponderously toward him. But in a momentthe thing's attention was directed to some other object of torture. 

Hanson braced himself as the lines of slaves beneath him settledthemselves to the ropes. There was a loud cracking of whips and a chorusof groans. A small drum took up a beat, and the slaves strained andtugged in unison. Ever so slowly, the enormous block of stone began tomove, while the ropes drew tighter. 

Hanson checked the rigging with half his mind, while the other halfraced in a crazy circle of speculation. Mandrakes and mandrake-men, zombie-men, from the past and multiple revivals! A sky that fell ingreat chunks. What came next in this ridiculous world in which he seemedto be trapped?

As if in answer to his question, there was a sudden, coruscating flarefrom above. 

Hanson's body reacted instinctively. His arm came up over his eyes, cutting off the glare. But he managed to squint across it, upwardstoward what was happening in the cracked dome. For a split second, hethought that the sun had gone nova. 

He was wrong, but not by too much. Something had happened to the sun. Now it was flickering and flaming, shooting enormous jets of fire fromits rim. It hovered at the edge of a great new hole and seemed to bewobbling, careening and losing its balance. 

There was a massive shriek of fear and panic from the horde of slaves. They began bellowing like the collective death-agony of a world. Most ofthem dropped their ropes and ran in blind panic, trampling over eachother in their random flight for safety. The human overseers were partof the same panic-stricken riot. Only the mandrakes stood stolidly inplace, flicking each running man who passed them. 

Hanson flung himself face down on the stone. There was a roar oftortured air from overhead and a thundering sound that was unlikeanything except the tearing of an infinity of cloth combined with asustained explosion of atomic bombs. Then it seemed as if thethunderbolt of Thor himself had blasted in Hanson's ears. 

The sky had ripped again, and this time the entire dome shook with theshock. But that wasn't the worst of it. 

The sun had broken through the hole and was falling!

VII

The fall of the sun was seemingly endless. It teetered out of the holeand seemed to hover, spitting great gouts of flame as it encountered thephlogiston layer. Slowly, agonizingly, it picked up speed and began itsdownward rush. Unlike the sky, it seemed to obey the normal laws ofinertia Hanson had known. It swelled bit by bit, raging as it drewnearer. And it seemed to be heading straight for the pyramid. 

The heat was already rising. It began to sear the skin long before thesun struck the normal atmosphere. Hanson could feel that he was beingbaked alive. The blood in his arteries seemed to bubble and boil, thoughthat must have been an illusion. But he could see his skin rise in giantblisters and heal almost at once to blister again. He screamed in agony, and heard a million screams around him. Then the other screams began todecrease in numbers and weaken in volume, and he knew that the slaveswere dying. 

Through a slit between two fingers, he watched the ponderous descent. The light was enough to sear his retinas, but even they healed fasterthan the damage. He estimated the course of the sun, amazed to find thatthere was no panic in him, and doubly amazed that he could think at allover the torture that wracked his body. 

Finally, convinced that the sun would strike miles to the south, herolled across the scorching surface of the stone block and dropped tothe north side of it. The shock of landing must have broken bones, buta moment later he could begin to breathe again. The heat was stillintense, even behind the stone block, but it was bearable--at least forhim. 

Pieces were breaking off the sun as it fell, and already striking theground. One fell near, and its heat seared at him, giving him no placeof shelter. Then the sun struck, sending up earth tremors that knockedhim from his feet. He groped up and stared around the block. 

The sun had struck near the horizon, throwing up huge masses ofmaterial. Its hissing against the ground was a tumult in his ears, andsuperheated ash and debris began to fall. 

So far as he could see, there were no other survivors in the camp. Threemillion slaves had died. Those who had found some shelter behind thestonework had lived longer than the others, but that had only increasedtheir suffering. And even his body must have been close to its limits, if it could be killed at all. 

He was still in danger. If a salamander could destroy even such a bodyas his, then the fragments of sun that were still roiling across thelandscape would be fatal. The only hope he had was to get as far awayfrom the place where the sun had struck as he could. 

He braced himself to leave even the partial shelter. There was a pile ofwater skins near the base of the block, held in the charred remains ofan attendant's body. The water was boiling, but there was still someleft. He poured several skins together and drank the stuff, forcinghimself to endure the agony of its passage down his throat. Without it, he'd be dehydrated before he could get a safe distance away. 

Then he ran. The desert was like molten iron under his bare feet, andthe savage radiation on his back was worse than any overseer's whip. His mind threatened to blank out with each step, but he forced himselfon. And slowly, as the distance increased, the sun's pyre sank furtherand further over the horizon. The heat should still have been enough tokill any normal body in fifteen minutes, but he could endure it. Hestumbled on in a trot, guiding himself by the stars that shone in thebroken sky toward a section of this world where there had been life andsome measure of civilization before. After a few hours, the tongues offlame no longer flared above the horizon, though the brilliant radiancecontinued. And Hanson found that his strong and nearly indestructiblebody still had limits. It could not go on without rest forever. He wassobbing with fatigue at every step. 

He managed to dig a small hollow in the sand before dropping off tosleep. It was a sleep of total exhaustion, lacking even a sense of time. It might have been minutes or hours that he slept, and he had no way ofknowing which. With the sun gone and the stars rocking into dizzy newconfigurations, there was no night or day, nor any way to guess thepassage of time. 

He woke to a roaring wind that sent cutting blasts of sand drivingagainst him. He staggered up and forced himself against it, away fromthe place where the sun had fallen. Even through the lashing sandstorm, he could see the glow near the horizon. Now a pillar of something thatlooked like steam but was probably vapor from molten and evaporatedrocks was rising upwards, like the mushroom clouds of his own days. Itwas spreading, apparently just under the phlogiston layer, reflectingback the glare. And the wind was caused by the great rising column ofsuperheated gases over the sun. 

He staggered on, while the sand gave way slowly to patches of green. With the sun gone and the sky falling into complete shreds, this worldwas certainly doomed. He'd assumed that the sun of this world must beabove the sky, but he'd been wrong; like the other heavenly bodies, ithad been embedded inside the shell. He had discovered that the skymaterial resisted any sudden stroke, but that other matter could beinterpenetrated into it, as the stars were. He had even been able topass his hand and arm completely through the sample. Apparently the sunhad passed through the sky in a similar manner. 

Then why hadn't the shell melted? He had no real answer. The sun musthave been moving fast enough so that no single spot became too hot, orelse the phlogiston layer somehow dissipated the heat. 

The cloud of glowing stuff from the rising air column was spreading outnow, reflecting the light and heat back to the earth. There was a chancethat most of one hemisphere might retain some measure of warmth, then. At least there was still light enough for him to travel safely. 

By the time he was too tired to go on again, he had come to thebeginnings of fertile land. He passed a village, but it had been looted, and he skirted around it rather than stare at the ghastly ghoul-work ofthe looters. The world was ending, but civilization seemed to have endedalready. Beyond it, he came to a rude house, now abandoned. He staggeredin gratefully. 

For a change, he had one piece of good luck. His first attempt at magicproduced food. At the sound of the snapping fingers and hishoarse-voiced "abracadabra, " a dirty pot of hot and greasy stew cameinto existence. He had no cutlery, but his hands served well enough. When it was gone, he felt better. He wiped his hands on thebreechclout. Whatever the material in the cloth, it had stood the sun'sheat almost as well as he had. 

Then he paused as his hand found a lump under the cloth. He drew out theapprentice magician's book. The poor devil had never achieved his twentylifetimes, and this was probably all that was left of him. Hanson staredat it, reading the title in some surprise. 

_Applied Semantics. _

He propped himself up and began to scan it, wondering what it had to dowith magic. He'd had a course of semantics in college and could see norelationship. But he soon found that there were differences. 

This book began with the axiomatic statement that the symbol is thething. From that it developed in great detail the fact that any part ofa whole bearing similarity to the whole was also the whole; that eachseven was the class of all sevens; and other details of the science ofmagical similarity followed quite logically from the single axiom. Hanson was surprised to find that there was a highly developed logic toit. Once he accepted the axiom--and he was no longer prepared to doubtit here--he could follow the book far better than he'd been able tofollow his own course in semantics. Apparently this was supposed to be adifficult subject, from the constant efforts of the writer to make hispoint clear. But after learning to deal with electron holes intransistors, this was elementary study for Hanson. 

The second half of the book dealt with the use of the true name. That, of course, was the perfect symbol, and hence the true whole. There wasthe simple ritual of giving a secret name. Apparently any man whodiscovered a principle or device could use a name for it, just asparents could give one to their children. And there were the laws forusing the name. Unfortunately, just when Hanson was beginning to makesome sense of it, the book ended. Obviously, there was a lot more to becovered in later courses. 

He tossed the book aside, shivering as he realized that his secret namewas common knowledge. The wonder was that he could exist at all. Andwhile there was supposed to be a ritual for relinquishing one name andtaking another, that was one of the higher mysteries not given. 

In the morning, he stopped to magic up some more food and the clothinghe would need if he ever found the trace of civilized people again. Thefood was edible, though he'd never particularly liked cereal. He seemedto be getting the hang of abracadabraing up what was in his mind. Butthe clothing was a problem. Everything he got turned out to be the rightsize, but he couldn't see himself in hauberk and greaves, nor in a filmynightgown. Finally, he managed something that was adequate, if thebrilliant floral sportshirt could be said to go with levi pants and amorning frock. But he felt somewhat better in it. He finally left thefrock behind, however. It was still too hot for that. 

He walked on briskly, watching for signs of life and speculating on theprinciples of applied semantics, name magic and similarity. He couldbegin to understand how an Einstein might read through one of theadvanced books here and make leaps in theory beyond what the Satheri haddeveloped. They'd had it too easy. Magic that worked tended to overcomethe drive for the discipline needed to get the most out of it. Any goodtheoretician from Hanson's world could probably make fools of thesepeople. Maybe that was why the Satheri had gone scrounging back throughother worlds to find men who had the necessary drive to get things donewhen the going was tough. 

Twice he passed abandoned villages, but there was nothing there for him. He was coming toward forested ground now, something like the country inwhich the Sons of the Egg had found refuge. The thought of that made himgo slower. But for a long time, there was no further sign of life. Thewoods thinned out to grasslands, and he went on for hours more before hespotted a cluster of lights ahead. 

As he drew nearer, he saw that the lights seemed to be fluorescents. They were coming from corrugated iron sheds that looked like aircrafthangars strung together. There was a woven-wire fence around thestructures, and a sign that said simply: _Project Eighty-Five_. In thehalf-light from the sky, he could see a well-kept lawn, and there were afew groups of men standing about idly. Most wore white coveralls, thoughtwo were dressed in simple business suits. 

Hanson moved forward purposefully, acting as if he had urgent business. If he stopped, there would be questions, he suspected; he wanted to findanswers, not to answer idle questions. 

There was no one at the desk in the little reception alcove, but heheard the sound of voices through a side door leading out. He wentthrough it, to find a larger yard with more men idling. There should besomeone here who knew more of what was going on in this world than hedid now. 

His choice, in the long run, seemed to lie between Bork and the Satheri, unless he could find some way of hiding himself from both sides. At themoment, he was relatively free for the first time since they had broughthim here, and he wanted to make sure that he could make the most use ofthe fact. 

Nobody asked anything. He slowed, drifting along the perimeter of thegroup of men, and still nobody paid him any attention. Finally, hedropped onto the ground near a group of half a dozen men who looked morealert than the rest. They seemed to be reminiscing over old times. 

 "--two thirty-eight an hour with overtime--and double time for the swing shift. We really had it made then! And every Saturday, never fail, the general would come out from Muroc and tell us we were the heros of the home front--with overtime pay while we listened to him!"

 "Yeah, but what if you wanted to quit? Suppose you didn't like your shift boss or somebody? You go down and get your time, and they hand you your draft notice. Me, I liked it better in '46. Not so much pay, but--"

Hanson pricked up his ears. The conversation told him more than heneeded to know. He stood up and peered through the windows of the shed. There, unattended under banks of lights, stood half-finished aircraftshapes. 

He wouldn't get much information here, it seemed. These were obviouslyreanimates, men who'd been pulled from his own world and set to work. They could do their duties and their memories were complete, but theywere lacking some essential thing that had gone out of them before theywere brought here. Unless he could find one among them who was either amandrake-man housing a soul or one of the few reanimates who seemedalmost fully human, he'd get little information. But he was curious asto what the Satheri had expected to do with aircraft. The rocs hadbetter range and altitude than any planes of equal hauling power. 

He located one man who seemed a little brighter than the others. Thefellow was lying on the ground, staring at the sky with his handsclasped behind his head. From time to time, he frowned, as if the sightof the sky was making him wonder. The man nodded as Hanson dropped downbeside him. "Hi. Just get here, Mac?"

"Yeah, " Hanson assented. "What's the score?"

The man sat up and made a disgusted noise. "Who knows?" he answered. There was more emotion in his voice than might be expected from areanimate; in real life on his own world, he must have had an amazingpotential for even that much to carry over. "We're dead. We're dead, andwe're here, and they tell us to make helicopters. So we make them, working like dogs to make a deadline. Then, just as the first one comesoff the line, the power fails. No more juice. The head engineer took offin the one we finished. He was going to find out what gives, but henever came back. So we sit. " He spat on the ground. "I wish they'd leftme dead after the plant blew up. I'm not myself since then. "

"What in hell would they need with helicopters?" Hanson asked. 

The man shrugged. "Beats me. But I'm beginning to figure some thingsout. They've got some kind of trouble with the sky. I figure they gotconfused in bringing us here. This shop is one that made those big cargocopters they call 'Sky Hooks' and maybe they thought the things werejust what they're called. All I know is they kept us working five solidweeks for nothing. I knew the power was going to fail; they had thecraziest damn generating plant you ever saw, and it couldn't last. Theboilers kept sizzling and popping their safety valves with no fire inthe box! Just some little old man sitting in a corner, practicing theMasonic grip or something over a smudgepot. "

Hanson gestured back to the sheds. "If there's no power, what are thoselights?"

"Witch lights, they told us, " the man explained. "Saved a lot of wiring, or something. They--hey, what's that?"

He was looking up, and Hanson followed his gaze. There was somethingwhizzing overhead at jet-plane speed. "A piece of the sky falling?" hesaid. 

The man snorted. "Falling sidewise? Not likely, even here. I tell you, pal, I don't like this place. Nothing works right. There was no fuel forthe 'copter we finished--the one we called Betsy Ann. But the littlegeezer who worked the smudgepot just walked up to it and wiggled hisfinger. 'Start your motor going, Betsy Ann, ' he ordered with some othermumbo-jumbo. Then the motor roared and he and the engineer, took off atdouble the speed she could make on high-test gas. Hey, there it isagain! Doesn't look like the Betsy Ann coming back, either. "

The something whizzed by again, in the other direction, but lower andslower. It made a gigantic but erratic circle beyond the sheds andswooped back. It looked nothing like a helicopter. It looked like aHallowe'en decoration of a woman on a broomstick. As it came nearer, Hanson saw that it _was_ a woman on a broomstick, flying erratically. She straightened out in a flat glide. 

She came in for a one-point landing a couple of yards away. The tip ofthe broom handle hit the ground, and she went sailing over it, to landon her hands and knees. She got up, facing the shed. 

The woman was Nema. Her face was masklike, her eyes tortured. She wasstaring searchingly around her, looking at every man. 

"Nema!" Hanson cried. 

She spun to face him, and gasped. Her skin seemed to turn gray, and hereyes opened to double their normal size. She took one tottering steptoward him and halted. 

"Illusion!" she whispered hoarsely, and slumped to the ground in afaint. 

She was reviving before he could raise her from the ground. She swayed amoment, staring at him. "You're not dead!"

"What's so wonderful about that around here?" he asked, but not withmuch interest. With the world going to pot and only a few days left, thegirl's face and the slim young body under it were about all the realityleft worth thinking about. He grabbed for her, pulling her to him. Bertha had never made him feel like that. 

She managed to avoid his lips and slid away from him. "But they used thesnetha-knife! Dave Hanson, you never died! It was only induced illusionby that--that Bork! And to think that I nearly died of grief while youwere enjoying yourself here! You ... You mandrake-man!"

He grunted. He'd almost managed to forget what he was, and he didn'tenjoy having the aircraft worker find out. He turned to see what thereaction was, and then stared open-mouthed at his surroundings. 

There were no lights from the plane factory. In fact, there was no planefactory. In the half-light of the sky, he saw that the plant was gone. No men were left. There was only barren earth, with a tiny, limp saplingin the middle of empty acres. 

"What happened?"

Nema glanced around briefly and sighed. "It's happening all over. Theycreated the plane plant by the law of identities from that little planetree sapling, I suppose; it is a plane plant, after all. But with theconjunctions and signs failing, all such creations are returning totheir original form, unless a spell is used continually over them. Eventhen, sometimes, we fail. Most of the projects vanished after the sunfell. "

Hanson remembered the man with whom he'd been talking before Nemaappeared. He'd have liked to know such a man before death andrevivification had ruined him. It wasn't fair that anyone with characterenough to be that human even as a zombie should be wiped out withouteven a moment's consideration. Then he remembered the man's own estimateof his current situation. Maybe he was better off returned to the deaththat had claimed him. 

Reluctantly, he returned to his own problems. "All right, then, if youthought I was dead, what are you doing here, Nema?"

"I felt the compulsion begin even before I returned to the city. Ithought I was going mad. I tried to forget you, but the compulsion grewuntil I could fight it no longer. " She shuddered. "It was a terribleflight. The carpets will not work at all now, and I could hardly controlthe broom. Sometimes it wouldn't lift. Twice it sailed so high I couldhardly breathe. And I had no hope of finding you, yet I went on. I'vebeen flying when I could for three days now. "

Bork, of course, hadn't known of her spell with which she'd forcedherself to want him "well and truly. " Apparently it had gone onoperating even when she thought he was dead, and with a built-in senseof his direction. Well, she was here--and he wasn't sorry. 

Hanson took another look across the plains toward the glowing hell ofthe horizon. He reached for her and pulled her to him. She was firm andsweet against him, and she was trembling in response to his urging. 

At the last moment she pulled back. "You forget yourself, Dave Hanson!I'm a registered and certified virgin. My blood is needed for--"

"For spells that won't work anyhow, " he told her harshly. "The sky isn'tfalling now, kid. It's down--or most of it. "

"But--" She hesitated and then let herself come a trifle closer. Hervoice was doubtful. "It's true that our spells are failing. Not even thesurest magic is reliable. The world has gone mad, and even magic is nolonger trustworthy. But--"

He was just pulling her close enough again and feeling her arms lift tohis neck when the ground shook behind them and there was a sound ofgreat, jarring, thudding steps. 

Hanson jerked around to see a great roc making its landing run, headingstraight for them. The huge bird braked savagely, barely stopping beforethey were under its feet. 

From its back, a ladder of some flexible material snaked down and menbegan descending. The first were mandrakes in the uniform of theSatheri, all carrying weapons with evil-looking blades or sharpstickers. 

The last man off was Bork. He came toward Hanson and Nema with a broadgrin on his face. "Greetings, Dave Hanson. You do manage to survive, don't you? And my little virgin sister, without whose flight I might nothave found you. Well, come along. The roc's growing impatient!"

VIII

The great roc's hard-drumming wings set up a constant sound of rushingair and the distance flowed behind them. There was the rush of wind allaround them, but on the bird's back they were in an area whereeverything seemed calm. Only when Hanson looked over toward the groundwas he fully conscious of the speed they were making. From the height, he could see where the sun had landed. It was sinking slowly into theearth, lying in a great fused hole. For miles around, smaller drops ofthe three-mile-diameter sun had spattered and were etching deeper holesin the pitted landscape. 

Then they began passing over desolate country, scoured by winds, gloomyfrom the angry, glaring clouds above. Once, two bodies went hurtlingupwards toward the great gaps in the sky. 

"Those risings were from men who were no worshippers of the egg'shatching, " Bork commented. "It's spreading. Something is drawing them upfrom all over the planet. "

Later, half a square mile of the shell cracked off. The roc squawkedharshly, but it had learned and had been watching above. By a franticeffort of the great wings, it missed the hurtling chunk. They dropped afew thousand feet in the winds that followed the piece of sky, but theiraltitude was still safe. 

Then they passed over a town, flying low. The sights below were out of aghoul's bacchanalia. As the roc swept over, the people stopped theirfrenzied pursuit of sensation and ran for weapons. A cloud of arrowshissed upwards, all fortunately too late. 

"They blame all their troubles on the magicians, " Bork explained. "They've been shooting at everything that flies. Not a happy time toassociate with the Satheri, is it?"

Nema drew further back from him. "We're not all cowards like you! Onlyrats desert a sinking ship. "

"Nobody thought it was sinking when I deserted, " Bork reminded her. "Anyhow, if you'd been using your eyes and seen the way we aretraveling, you'd know I've rejoined the crew. I've made up with theSather Karf--and at a time like this, our great grandfather was glad tohave me back!"

Nema rushed toward him in delight, but Hanson wasn't convinced. "Why?"he asked. 

Bork sobered. "One of the corpses that fell back from the risings addeda word to what the others had said. No, I'll bear the weight of itmyself, and not burden you with it. But I'm convinced now that his eggshould not hatch. I had doubts before, unlike our friend Malok, who alsoheard the words but is doubly the fanatic now. Perhaps the hatchingcannot be stopped--but I've decided that I am a man and must fight likeone against the fates. So, though I still oppose much that the Satherihave done, I've gone back to them. We'll be at the camp of the SatherKarf shortly. "

That sewed everything up neatly, Hanson thought. Before, he had beentorn between two alternatives. Now there was only one and he had nochoice; he could never trust the Sons of the Egg with Bork turnedagainst them. He stared up at the sky, realizing that more than half ofit had already fallen. The rest seemed too weak to last much longer. Itprobably didn't make much difference what he did now or who had him;time was running out for this world. 

The light was dimmer by the time they reached the great capital city--orwhat was left of it. They had left the sun pyre far to the south. Theair was growing cold already. 

The roc flew low over the city. The few people on the streets looked upand made threatening gestures, but there was no flight of arrows fromthe ground. Probably the men below had lost even the strength to hate. It was hard to see, since there was no electric lighting system now. Butit seemed to Hanson that only the oldest and ugliest buildings werestill standing. Honest stone and metal could survive, but the work ofmagic was no longer safe. 

One of the remaining buildings seemed to be a hospital, and the emptyspace in front of it was crammed with people. Most of them seemed to bedead or unconscious. Squat mandrakes were carrying off bodies toward agreat fire that was burning in another square. Plague and pestilence hadapparently gotten out of hand. 

They flew on, beyond the city toward the construction camp that had beenHanson's headquarters. The roc was beginning to drop into a long landingglide, and details below were easier to see. Along the beach beyond thecity, a crowd had collected. They had a fire going and were preparing tocook one of the mermaids. A fight was already going on over the prey. Food must have been exhausted days before. 

The camp was a mess when they reached it. One section had been rippeddown by the lash of wind from a huge piece of the sky, which now layamong the ruins with a few stars glowing inside it. There was abrighter glow beyond. Apparently one blob of material from the sun hadbeen tossed all the way here and had landed against a huge rock tospatter into fragments. The heat from those fragments cut through thechill in the air, and the glow furnished light for most of the camp. 

The tents had been burned, but there was a new building where the maintent had been. This was obviously a hasty construction job, throwntogether of rocks and tree trunks, without the use of magic. It was moreof an enormous lean-to than a true building, but it was the bestprotection now available. Hanson could see Sather Karf and Sersa Garmwaiting outside, together with less than a hundred other warlocks. 

The mandrakes prodded Hanson down from the roc and toward the newbuilding, then left at a wave of the Sather Karf's hand. The old manstared at Hanson intently, but his expression was unreadable. He seemedto have aged a thousand years. Finally he lifted his hand in faintgreeting, sighed and dropped slowly to a seat. His face seemed tocollapse, with the iron running out of it. He looked like a beaten, sickold man. His voice was toneless. "Fix the sky, Dave Hanson!"

There were angry murmurs from other warlocks in the background, butSather Karf shook his head slowly, still facing Hanson. "No--what goodto threaten dire punishments or to torture you when another day or weekwill see the end of everything? What good to demand your reasons fordesertion when time is so short? Fix the sky and claim what reward youwill afterwards. We have few powers now that the basis of astrology isruined. But repair our sky and we can reward you beyond your dreams. Wecan find ways to return you to your own world intact. You have nearimmortality now. We can fill that entire lifetime with pleasures. We'llgive you jewels to buy an empire. Or if it is vengeance against whateveryou feel we are, you shall know my secret name and the name of everyonehere. Do with us then what you like. _But fix the sky!_"

It shook Hanson. He had been prepared to face fury, or to try lying hisway out if there was a chance with some story of having needed to studyMenes's methods. Or of being lost. But he had no defense preparedagainst such an appeal. 

It was utterly mad. He could do nothing, and their demands wereimpossible. But before the picture of the world dying and the decay ofthe old Sather's pride, even Hanson's own probable death with the dyingworld seemed unimportant. He might at least give them something to hopefor while the end came. 

"Maybe, " he said slowly. "Maybe, if all of the men you brought here towork on the problem were to pool their knowledge, we might still findthe answer. How long will it take to get them here for a council?"

Ser Perth appeared from the group. Hanson had thought the man dead inthe ruins of the pyramid, but somehow he had survived. The fat was goingfrom his face, and his mustache was untrimmed, but he was uninjured. Heshook his head sadly. "Most have disappeared with their projects. Twoescaped us. Menes is dead. Cagliostro tricked us successfully. You areall we have left. And we can't even supply labor beyond those you seehere. The people no longer obey us, since we have no food to give them. "

"You're the only hope, " Bork agreed. "They've saved what they could ofthe tools from the camp and what magical instruments are still useful. They've held on only for your return. "

Hanson stared at them and around at the collection of bric-a-brac andmachinery they had assembled for him. He opened his mouth, and hislaughter was a mockery of their hopes and of himself. 

"Dave Hanson, world saver! You got the right name but the wrong man, Sather Karf, " he said bitterly. He'd been a pretender long enough, andwhat punitive action they took now didn't seem to matter. "You wanted myuncle, David Arnold Hanson. But because his friends called him Dave andcut that name on his monument, and because I was christened by the nameyou called, you got me instead. He'd have been helpless here, probably, but with me you have no chance. I couldn't even build a doghouse. Iwasn't even a construction engineer. Just a computer operator andrepairman. "

He regretted ruining their hopes, almost as he said it. But he could seeno change on the old Sather's face. It seemed to stiffen slightly andbecome more thoughtful, but there was no disappointment. 

"My grandson Bork told me all that, " he said. "Yet your name was on themonument, and we drew you back by its use. Our ancient prophecy declaredthat we should find omnipotence carved on stone in a pool of water, aswe found your name. Therefore, by the laws of rational magic, it is_you_ to whom nothing is impossible. We may have mistaken the directionof your talent, but nonetheless it is you who must fix the sky. Whatform of wonder is a computer?"

Dave shook his head at the old man's monomania. "Just a tool. It's alittle hard to explain, and it couldn't help. "

"Humor my curiosity, then. What is a computer, Dave Hanson?"

Nema's hand rested on Hanson's arm pleadingly, and he shrugged. Hegroped about for some answer that could be phrased in their language, letting his mind flicker from the modern electronic gadgets back to theold-time tide predicter. 

"An analogue computer is a machine that ... That sets up conditionsmathematically similar to the conditions in some problem and then letsall the operations proceed while it draws a graph--a prediction--of howthe real conditions would turn out. If the tides change with theposition of some heavenly body, then we can build cams that have shapeslike the effect of the moon's orbit, and gear them together in the rightorder. If there are many factors, we have a cam for each factor, shapedlike the periodic rise and fall of that factor. They're all geared tolet the various factors operate at the proper relative rate. With such amachine, we can run off a graph of the tides for years ahead. Oh, hell--it's a lot more complicated than that, but it takes the basicfacts and draws a picture of the results. We use electronic ones now, but the results are the same. "

"I understand, " Sather Karf said. Dave doubted it, but he was happy tobe saved from struggling with a more detailed explanation. And maybe theold man did understand some of it. He was no fool in his own subject, certainly. Sather Karf pondered for a moment, and then nodded withapparent satisfaction. "Your world was more advanced in understandingthan I had thought. This computer is a fine scientific instrument, obeying natural law well. We have applied the same methods, though lesselaborately. But the basic magical principle of similarity is thefoundation of true science. "

Dave started to protest, and then stopped, frowning. In a way, what theother had said was true. Maybe there was some relation between scienceand magic, after all; there might even be a meeting ground between thelaws of the two worlds he knew. Computers set up similar conditions, with the idea that the results would apply to the original. Magic usedsome symbolic part of a thing in manipulations that were to be effectivefor the real thing. The essential difference was that science waspredictive and magic was effective--though the end results were oftenthe same. On Dave's world, the cardinal rule of logic was that thesymbol was not the thing--and work done on symbols had to be translatedby hard work into reality. Maybe things were really more logical herewhere the symbol was the thing, and all the steps in between thought andresult were saved. 

"So we are all at fault, " Sather Karf said finally. "We should havestudied you more deeply and you should have been more honest with us. Then we could have obtained a computer for you and you could havesimulated our sky as it should be within your computer and forced it tobe repaired long ago. But there's no time for regrets now. We cannothelp you, so you must help yourself. Build a computer, Dave Hanson!"

"It's impossible. "

Sudden rage burned on the old man's face, and he came to his feet. Hisarm jerked back and snapped forward. Nothing happened. He grimaced atthe ruined sky. "Dave Hanson, " he cried sharply, "by the unfailing powerof your name which is all of you, I hold you in my mind and your throatis in my hand--"

The old hands squeezed suddenly, and Hanson felt a vise clamp downaround his throat. He tried to break free, but there was no escape. Theold man mumbled, and the vise was gone, but something clawed at Hanson'sliver. Something else rasped across his sciatic nerve. His kidneysseemed to be wrenched out of him. 

"You will build a computer, " Sather Karf ordered. "And you _will_ saveour world!"

Hanson staggered from the shock of the pain, but he was no longer unusedto agony. He had spent too many hours under the baking of the sun, theagony of the snetha-knife and the lash of an overseer's whip. The agonycould not be stopped, but he'd learned it could be endured. Hisfantastic body could heal itself against whatever they did to him, andhis mind refused to accept the torture supinely. He took a step towardSather Karf, and another. His hands came up as he moved forward. 

Bork laughed suddenly. "Let up, Sather Karf, or you'll regret it. By thelaws, you're dealing with a _man_ this time. Let up, or I'll free him tomeet you fairly. "

The old man's eyes blazed hotly. Then he sighed and relaxed. Theclutching hands and the pain were gone from Hanson as the Sather Karfslumped back wearily to his seat. 

"Fix our sky, " the old man said woodenly. 

Hanson staggered back, panting from his efforts. But he nodded. "Allright, " he agreed. "Like Bork, I think a man has to fight against hisfate, no matter how little chance he has. I'll do what I can. I'll buildthe damned computer. But when I'm finished, I'll wait for _your_ truename!"

Suddenly Sather Karf laughed. "Well said, Dave Hanson. You'll have myname when the time comes. And whatever else you desire. Also what poorhelp we can give you now. Ser Perth, bring food for Dave Hanson!"

Ser Perth shook his head sadly. "There is none. None at all. We hopedthat the remaining planets would find a favorable conjunction, but--"

Dave Hanson studied his helpers with more bitterness. "Oh, hell!" hesaid at last. He snapped his fingers. "Abracadabra!"

His skill must be improving, since he got exactly what he had wishedfor. A full side of beef materialized against his palm, almost breakinghis arm before he could snap it out of the way. The others swarmedhungrily toward it. At their expressions of wonder, Hanson felt moreconfidence returning to him. He concentrated and went through the littleritual again. This time loaves of bread rained down--fresh bread, andeven of the brand he had wished for. Maybe he was becoming a magicianhimself, with a new magic that might still accomplish something. 

Sather Karf smiled approvingly. "The theory of resonance, I see. Unreliable generally. More of an art than a science. But you showpromise of remarkable natural ability to apply it. "

"You know about it?" Dave had assumed that it was completely outsidetheir experience and procedures. 

"We _knew_ it. But when more advanced techniques took over, most of usforgot it. The syllables resonate in a sound pattern with your world, towhich you also still resonate. It won't work for you with anything fromthis world, nor will anything work thus for us from yours. We haddifferent syllables, of course, for use here. " Sather Karf consideredit. "But if you can control it and bring in one of your computers or theparts for one--"

Sixteen tries later, Dave was cursing as he stared at a pile of uselessitems. He'd gotten transistors at first. Then he lost control with toomuch tension or fatigue and began getting a bunch of assorted junk, suchas old 201-A tubes, a transit, a crystal vase and resistors. But thechief trouble was that he couldn't secure working batteries. He hadmanaged a few, but all were dead. 

"Like the soul, electrical charges will not transfer, " Sather Karfagreed sadly. "I should have told you that. "

There was no electricity here with which to power anything, and theirspells could not be made to work now. Even if he could build a computerout of what was obtainable, there would be no way to power it. 

Overhead, the sky shattered with a roar, and another piece fell, tearingdownwards toward the city. Sersa Garm stared upwards in horror. 

"Mars!" he croaked. "Mars has fallen. Now can there be no conjunctionever!"

He tautened and his body rose slowly from the ground. A scream rippedfrom his lips and faded away as he began rushing upwards with increasingspeed. He passed but of their sight, straight toward the new hole in thesky. 

IX

In the hours that followed, Dave's vague plans changed a dozen times ashe found each idea unworkable. His emotional balance was alsoerratic--though that was natural, since the stars were completelyberserk in what was left of the sky. He seemed to fluctuate betweenbitter sureness of doom and a stupidly optimistic belief that somethingcould be done to avert that doom. But whatever his mood, he went onworking and scheming furiously. Maybe it was the desperate need to keephimself occupied that drove him, or perhaps it was the pleading he sawin the eyes around him. In the end, determination conquered hispessimism. 

Somewhere in the combination of the science he had learned in his ownworld and the technique of magic that applied here there had to be ananswer--or a means to hold back the end of the world until an answercould be found. 

The biggest problem was the number of factors with which he had to deal. There were seven planets and the sun, and three thousand fixed stars. All had to be ordered in their courses, and the sky had to be completein his calculations. 

He had learned his trade where the answer was always to add one morecircuit in increasing complexity. Now he had to think of the simplestpossible similarity computer. Electronics was out, obviously. He triedto design a set of cams, like the tide machine, to make multipletracings on paper similar to a continuous horoscope, but finally gaveit up. They couldn't build the parts, even if there had been time. 

He had to depend on what was available, since magic couldn't produce anyneeded device and since the people here had depended on magic too longto develop the other necessary skills. When only the broadest powers ofmagic remained, they were hopeless. Names were still potent, resonanceworked within its limits, and the general principles of similarity stillapplied; but those were not enough for them. They depended too heavilyon the second great principle of contagion, and that seemed to bewrapped up with some kind of association through the signs and housesand the courses of the planets. 

He found himself thinking in circles of worry and pulled himself back tohis problem. Normally, a computer was designed for flexibility and tohandle varying conditions. This one could be designed to handle only oneset of factors. It had to duplicate the courses of the objects in theirsky and simulate the general behavior of the dome. It was not necessaryto allow for all theoretical courses, but only for the normal orbits. 

And finally he realized that he was thinking of a model--the one thingwhich is functionally the perfect analogue. 

It brought him back to magic again. Make a doll like a man and stickpins in it--and the man dies. Make a model of the universe within thesky, and any changes in that should change reality. The symbol was thething, and a model was obviously a symbol. 

He began trying to plan a model with three thousand stars in theirorbits, trying to find some simple way of moving them. The otherswatched in fascination. They apparently felt that the diagrams he wasdrawing were some kind of scientific spell. Ser Perth was closer thanthe others, studying the marks he made. The man suddenly pointed to hiscomputations. 

"Over and over I find the figure seven and the figure three thousand. Iassume that the seven represents the planets. But what is the otherfigure?"

"The stars, " Hanson told him impatiently. 

Ser Perth shook his head. "That is wrong. There were only two thousandseven hundred and eighty-one before the beginnings of our trouble. "

"And I suppose you've got the exact orbits of every one?" Hanson asked. He couldn't see that the difference was going to help much. 

"Naturally. They are fixed stars, which means they move with the sky. Otherwise, why call them fixed stars? Only the sun and the planets movethrough the sky. The stars move with the sky over the world as a unity. "

Dave grunted at his own stupidity. That really simplified things, sinceit meant only one control for all of them and the sky itself. Butdesigning a machine to handle the planets and the sun, while a lotsimpler, was still a complex problem. With time, it would have been easyenough, but there was no time for trial and error. 

He ripped up his plans and began a new set. He'd need a glass spherewith dots on it for the stars, and some kind of levers to move theplanets and sun. It would be something like the orreries he'd seen usedfor demonstrations of planetary movement. 

Ser Perth came over again, staring down at the sketch. He drowned indoubt. "Why waste time drawing such engines? If you want a model todetermine how the orbits should be, we have the finest orrery ever builthere in the camp. We brought it with us when we moved, since it would beneeded to determine how the sky should be repaired and to bring the timeand the positions into congruence. Wait!"

He dashed off, calling two of the mandrakes after him. In a few minutes, they staggered back under a bulky affair in a protective plastic case. Ser Perth stripped off the case to reveal the orrery to Hanson. 

It was a beautiful piece of workmanship. There was an enormous sphere ofthin crystal to represent the sky. Precious gems showed the stars, affixed to the dome. The whole was nearly eight feet in diameter. Insidethe crystal, Hanson could see a model of the world on jeweled-bearingsupports. The planets and the sun were set on tracks around the outside, with a clockwork drive mechanism that moved them by means of strandedspiderweb cords. Power came from weights, like those used on anold-fashioned clock. It was obviously all hand work, which must make ita thing of tremendous value here. 

"Sather Fareth spent his life designing this, " Ser Perth said proudly. "It is so well designed that it can show the position of all things fora thousand centuries in the past or future by turning these cranks onthe control, or it will hold the proper present positions for years fromits own engine. "

"It's beautiful workmanship, " Hanson told him. "As good as the best doneon my world. "

Ser Perth went away, temporarily pleased with himself, and Hanson stoodstaring at the model. It was as good as he'd said it was--and completelydamning to all of his theories and hopes. No model he could make wouldequal it. But in spite of it and all its precise analogy to the universearound him, the sky was still falling in shattered bits!

Sather Karf and Bork had come over to join Hanson. They waitedexpectantly, but Hanson could think of nothing to do. It had alreadybeen done--and had failed. The old man dropped a hand on his shoulder. There was the weight of all his centuries on the Sather, yet a curioustoughness showed through his weariness. "What is wrong with the orrery?"he asked. 

"Nothing--nothing at all, damn it!" Hanson told him. "You wanted acomputer--and you've got it. You can feed in data as to the hour, day, month and year, turn the cranks, and the planets there will turn totheir proper position exactly as the real planets should run. You don'tneed to read the results off graph paper. What more could any analoguecomputer do? But it doesn't influence the sky. "

"It was never meant to, " the old man said, surprise in his voice. "Suchpower--"

Then he stopped, staring at Hanson while something almost like awespread over his face. "Yet ... The prophecy and the monument were right!You have unlocked the impossible! Yet you seem to know nothing of thelaws of similarity or of magic, Dave Hanson. Is that crystal similar tothe sky, by association, by contagion, or by true symbolism? A part maybe a symbol for the whole--or so may any designated symbol, which mayinfluence the thing it is. If I have a hair from your head, I can modelyou with power over you. But not with the hair of a pig! That is no truesymbol!"

"Suppose we substituted bits of the real thing for theserepresentations?" Hanson asked. 

Bork nodded. "It might work. I've heard you found the sky material couldbe melted, and we've got enough of that where it struck the camp. Anyone of us who has studied elementary alchemy could blow a globe of it tothe right size for the sky dome. And there are a few stars from which wecan chip pieces enough. We can polish them and put them into the spherewhere they belong. And it will be risky, but we may even be able toshape a bit of the sun stuff to represent the great orb in the sky. "

"What about the planets?" Hanson was beginning to feel the depressionlift. "You might get a little of Mars, since it fell near here, but thatstill leaves the other six. "

"That long associated with a thing achieves the nature of the thing, "Sather Karf intoned, as if giving a lesson to a kindergarten student. "With the right colors, metals and bits of jewels--as well as moresecret symbols--we can simulate the planets. Yet they cannot besuspended above the dome, as in this orrery--they must be within thesky, as in nature. "

"How about putting some iron in each and using a magnet on the controltracks to move the planets?" Hanson suggested. "Or does cold iron ruinyour conjuring here?"

Sather Karf snorted in obvious disgust, but Bork only grinned. "Whyshould it? You must have heard peasant superstitions. Still, you'd havea problem if two tracks met, as they do. The magnets would then affectboth planets alike. Better make two identical planets for each--and twosuns--and put one on your track controls. Then one must follow theother, though the one remain within the sky. "

Hanson nodded. He'd have to shield the cord from the sun stuff, but thatcould be done. He wondered idly whether the real universe was going towind up with tracks beyond the sky on which little duplicate planetsran--just how much similarity would there be between model and realitywhen this was done, if it worked at all? It probably didn't matter, andit could hardly be worse than whatever the risers had run into beyondthe hole in the present sky. Metaphysics was a subject with which hewasn't yet fully prepared to cope. 

The model of the world inside the orrery must have been made fromearthly materials already, and it was colored to depict land and seaareas. It could probably be used. At their agreement, he nodded withsome satisfaction. That should save some time, at least. He stareddoubtfully at the rods and bearings that supported the model world inthe center of the orrery. 

"What about those things? How do we hold the globe in the center ofeverything?"

Bork shrugged. "It seems simple enough. We'll fashion supports of moreof the sky material. "

"And have real rods sticking up from the poles in the real universe?"Hanson asked sarcastically. 

"Why not?" Bork seemed surprised at Hanson's tone. "There have alwaysbeen such columns connecting the world and the sky. What else would keepus from falling?"

Hanson swore. He might have guessed it! The only wonder was that simplerods were used instead of elephants and turtles. And the doubly-damnedfools had let Menes drive millions of slaves to death to build a pyramidto the sky when there were already natural columns that could have beenused!

"There remains only one step, " Sather Karf decided after a moment more. "To make symbol and thing congruent, all must be invoked with the trueand secret name of the universe. "

Hanson suddenly remembered legends of the tetragrammaton and the talesof magic he'd read in which there was always one element lacking. "And Isuppose nobody knows that or dares to use it?"

There was hurt pride of the aged face and the ring of vast authority inhis voice. "Then you suppose wrong, Dave Hanson! Since this world firstcame out of Duality, a Sather Karf has known that mystery! Make yourdevice and I shall not fail in the invocation!"

For the first time, Hanson discovered that the warlocks could work whenthey had to, however much they disliked it. And at their ownspecialties, they were superb technicians. Under the orders of SatherKarf, the camp sprang into frenzied but orderly activity. 

They lost a few mandrakes in prying loose some of the sun material, andmore in getting a small sphere of it shaped. But the remainder gave themthe heat to melt the sky stuff. When it came to glass blowing, Hansonhad to admit they were experts; it should have come as no surprise, after the elaborate alchemical apparatus he'd seen. Once the crystalshell was cracked out of the orrery, a fat-faced Ser came in with a longtube and began working the molten sky material, getting the feel of it. He did things Hanson knew were nearly impossible, and he did them withthe calm assurance of an expert. Even when another rift in the skyappeared with a crackling of thunder, there was no faltering on hispart. The sky shell and world supports were blown into shape around theworld model inside the outer tracks in one continuous operation. The Serthen clipped the stuff from his tube and sealed the tiny openingsmoothly with a bit of sun material on the end of a long metal wand. 

"Interesting material, " he commented, as if only the technical nature ofthe stuff had offered any problem to him. 

Tiny, carefully polished chips from the stars were ready, and men beganplacing them delicately on the shell. They sank into it at once andbegan twinkling. The planets had also been prepared, and they also wentinto the shell, while a mate to each was attached to the trackingmechanism. The tiny sun came last. Hanson fretted as he saw it sink intothe shell, sure it would begin to melt the sky material. It seemed tohave no effect, however; apparently the sun was not supposed to melt thesky when it was in place--so the little sun didn't melt the shell. Oncehe was sure of that, he used a scrap of the sky to insulate the secondlittle sun that would control the first sympathetically from the track. He moved the control delicately by hand, and the little sun followeddutifully. 

The weights on the control mechanism were in place, Hanson noted. Someone would probably have to keep them wound from now on, unless theycould devise a foolproof motor. But that was for the future. He bent tothe hand cranks. Sather Karf was being called to give the exact settingsfor this moment, but Hanson had a rough idea of where the planets shouldbe. He began turning the crank, just as the Sather came up. 

There was a slight movement. Then the crank stuck, and there was awhirring of slipping gears! The fools who had moved the orrery must havebeen so careless that they'd sprung the mechanism. He bent down to studythe tiny little jeweled gears. A whole gear train was out of place!

Sather Karf was also inspecting it, and the words he cried didn't soundlike an invocation, though they were strange enough. He straightened, still cursing. "Fix it!"

"I'll try, " Hanson agreed doubtfully. "But you'd better get the man whomade this. He'll know better than I--"

"He was killed in the first cracking of the sky when a piece hit him. Fix it, Dave Hanson. You claimed to be a repairman for such devices. "

Hanson bent to study it again, using a diamond lens one of the warlockshanded him. It was a useful device, having about a hundred timesmagnification without the need for exact focusing. He stared at thejumble of fine gears, then glanced out through the open front: of thebuilding toward the sky. There was even less of it showing than he hadremembered. Most of the great dome was empty. And now there weresuggestions of ... Shadows ... In the empty spots. He looked awayhastily, shaken. 

"I'll need some fine tools, " he said. 

"They were lost in moving this, " Ser Perth told him. "This is the bestwe can do. "

The jumble of tools had obviously been salvaged from the kits on thetractors in the camp. There was one fairly small pair of pliers, a smallpick and assorted useless junk. He shook his head hopelessly. 

"Fix it!" Sather Karf ordered again. The old man's eyes were also on thesky. "You have ten minutes, perhaps--no more. "

Hanson's fingers steadied as he found bits of wire and began improvisingtools to manipulate the tiny gears. The mechanism was a piece of superbcraftsmanship that should have lasted for a million years, but it hadnever been meant to withstand the heavy shock of being dropped, as itmust have been. And there was very little space inside. It should havebeen disassembled and put back piece by piece, but there was no time forthat. 

Another thunder of falling sky sounded, and the ground heaved. "Earthquakes!" Sather Karf whispered. "The end is near!"

Then a shout went up, and Hanson jerked his eyes from the gears to focuson a group of rocs that were landing at the far end of the camp. Menwere springing from their backs before they stopped running--men indull robes with elaborate masks over their faces. At the front wasMalok, leader of the Sons of the Egg, brandishing his knife. 

His voice carried clearly. "The egg hatches! To the orrery and smash it!That was the shadow in the pool. Destroy it before Dave Hanson cancomplete his magic!"

The men behind him yelled. Around Hanson, the magicians cried out inshocked fear. Then old Sather Karf was dashing out from under the coverof the building, brandishing a pole on which a drop of the sun-stuff wasglowing. His voice rose into a command that rang out over the cries ofthe others. 

Dave reached for a heavy hammer, meaning to follow. The old Satherseemed to sense it without looking back. "Fix the engine, Dave Hanson, "he called. 

It made sense. The others could do the fighting, but only he hadtraining with such mechanisms. He turned back to his work, just as thewarlocks began rallying behind Sather Karf, grabbing up what weaponsthey could find. There was no magic in this fight. Sticks, stones, hammers and knives were all that remained workable. 

Dave Hanson bent over the gears, cursing. Now there was another rumbleof thunder from the falling sky. The half-light from the reflectedsunlight dimmed, and the ground shook violently. Another set of gearsbroke from the housing. Hanson caught up a bit of sun-stuff on the sharppoint of the awl and brought it closer, until it burned his hands. Buthe had seen enough. The mechanism was ruined beyond his chance to repairit in time. 

He slapped the cover shut and stuck the sun-tipped awl where it wouldlight as much of the orrery as possible. As always, the skills of hisown world had failed. To the blazes with it, then--when in magic land, magic had to do. 

He thought of calling Ser Perth or Sather Karf, but there was no timefor that, and they could hardly have heard him over the sounds of thedesperate fight going on. 

He bent to the floor, searching until he found a ball of the skymaterial that had been pinched off when the little opening was sealed. Further hunting gave him a few bits of dust from the star bits and someof the junk that had gone into shaping the planets. He brushed in somedirt from the ground that had been touched by the sun stuff and wasstill glowing faintly. He wasn't at all sure of how much he couldextrapolate from what he'd read in the book on Applied Semantics, but heknew he needed a control--a symbol of the symbol, in this case. It wascrude, but it might serve to represent the orrery. 

He clutched it in his hand and touched it against the orrery, trying toremember the formula for the giving of a true name. He had to improvise, but he got through a rough version of it, until he came to the end: "Iwho created you name you--" What the deuce did he name it? "I name youRumpelstilsken and order you to obey me when I call you by your name. "

He clutched the blob of material tighter in his hand, mentally trying toshape an order that wouldn't backfire, as such orders seemed to in thechildhood stories of magic he had learned. Finally his lips whisperedthe simplest order he could find. "Rumpelstilsken, repair yourself!"

There was a whirring and scraping inside the mechanism, and Hanson letout a yell. He got only a hasty glimpse of gears that seemed to be backon their tracks before Sather Karf was beside him, driving the crankswith desperate speed. 

"We have less than a minute!" the old voice gasped. 

The Sather's fingers spun on the controls. Then he straightened, movinghis hands toward the orrery in passes too rapid to be seen. There was astring of obvious ritual commands in their sacred language. Then asingle word rang out, a string of sounds that should have come from nohuman vocal chords. 

There was a wrench and twist through every atom of Hanson's body. Theuniverse seemed to cry out. Over the horizon, a great burning disc roseand leaped toward the heavens as the sun went back to its place in thesky. The big bits of sky-stuff around also jerked upwards, revealingthemselves by the wind they whipped up and by the holes they rippedthrough the roof of the building. Hanson clutched at the scrap he hadpocketed, but it showed no sign of leaving, and the tiny blob ofsun-stuff remained fixed to the awl. 

Through the diamond lens, Hanson could see the model of the world in theorrery changing. There were clouds apparently painted on it where noclouds had been. And there was an indication of movement in the green ofthe forests and the blue of the oceans, as if trees were whipping in thewind and waves lapping the shores. 

When he jerked his eyes upward, all seemed serene in the sky. Sunlightshone normally on the world, and from under the roof he could see thegaudy blue of sky, complete, with the cracks in it smoothing out as hewatched. 

The battle outside had stopped with the rising of the sun. Half thewarlocks were lying motionless, and the other half had clusteredtogether, close to the building where Hanson and Sather Karf stood. TheSons of the Egg seemed to have suffered less, since they greatlyout-numbered the others, but they were obviously more shocked by therising of the sun and the healing of the sky. 

Then Malok's voice rang out sharply. "It isn't stable yet! Destroy themachine! The egg must hatch!"

He leaped forward, brandishing his knife, while the Sons of the Egg fellin behind him. The warlocks began to close ranks, falling back to make astand under the jutting edge of the roof, where they could protect theorrery. Bork and Ser Perth were among them, bloody but hopelesslydetermined. 

One look at Sather Karf's expression was enough to convince Hanson thatMalok had cried the truth and that their work could still be undone. Andit was obvious that the warlocks could never stand the charge of theSons. Too many of them had already been killed, and there was no timefor reviving them. 

Sather Karf was starting forward into the battle, but Hanson made nomove to follow. He snapped the diamond lens to his eye and his fingerscaught at the drop of sun-stuff on the awl. He had to hold it near theglowing bit for steadiness, and it began searing his fingers. He forcedcontrol on his muscles and plunged his hand slowly through the skysphere, easing the glowing blob downward toward the spot on the globe hehad already located with the lens. His thumb and finger moved downwarddelicately, with all the skill of practice at working with nearlyinvisibly fine wires on delicate instruments. 

Then he jerked his eyes away from the model and looked out. Somethingglaring and hot was suspended in the air five miles away. He moved hishand carefully, steadying it on one of the planet tracks. The glowingfire in the air outside moved another mile closer--then another. Andnow, around it, he could see a monstrous fingertip and something thatmight have been miles of thumbnail. 

The warlocks leaped back under the roof. The Sons of the Egg screamedand panicked. Jerking horribly, the monstrous thing moved again. Forpart of a second, it hovered over the empty camp. Then it was gone. 

Hanson began pulling his hand out through the shell of the model, whimpering as his other hand clenched against the blob in his pocket. Hehad suddenly realized what horrors were possible to anyone who could usethe orrery now. "Rumpelstilsken, I command you to let no hand other thanmine enter and to respond to no other controls. " He hoped it would offerenough protection. 

His hand came free and he threw the sun-bit away with a flick of hiswrist. His hand ached with the impossible task of steadiness he had setit, and his finger and thumb burned and smoked. But the wound wasalready healing. 

In the exposed section of the camp, the Sons of the Egg were charredcorpses. There was a fire starting on the roof of the building, butothers had already run out to quench that. It sounded like the snufflingprogress of an undine across the roof! Maybe magic was working again. 

Bork turned back from the sight of his former companions. His face wassick, but he managed to grin at Hanson. "Dave Hanson, to whom nothing isimpossible, " he said. 

Hanson had located Nema finally as she approached. He caught her handand grabbed Bork's arm. Like his own, it was trembling with fatigue andreaction. 

"Come on, " he said. "Let's find some place where we can see whether it'simpossible now for you to magic up a decent meal. And a drink strongenough to scare away the sylphs. "

The sylph that found them wasn't scared by the Scotch, but there wasenough for all of them. 

X

Three days can work magic--in a world where magic works. The planetsswung along their paths again and the sun was in the most favorablehouse for conjuration. The universe was stable again. 

There was food for all, and houses had been conjured hastily to shelterthe people. The plagues were gone. Now the strange commerce and industryof this world were humming again. Those who had survived and those whocould be revived were busily rebuilding. Some were missing, of course. Those who had risen and--hatched--were beyond recall, but no one spokeof them. If any Sons of the Egg survived, they were quiet in theirdefeat. 

Hanson had been busy during most of the time. It had been taken forgranted that he would tend to the orrery, setting it for the mostfavorable conditions when some special major work of magic required it, and he had taken the orders and moved the controls as they wanted them. The orrery was housed temporarily in the reconstituted hall of theSatheri in the capital city. They were building a new hall for it, to beconstructed only of natural materials and hand labor, but that was aproject that would take long months still. 

Now the immediate pressure was gone, and Hanson was relaxing with Borkand Nema. 

"Another week, " Bork was saying. "Maybe less. And then gangs of thewarlocks can spread out to fix up all the rest of the world--and to takeover control of their slaves again. Are you happy with your victory, Dave Hanson?"

Hanson shrugged. He wasn't entirely sure, now. There was something inthe looks of the Sather who gave him orders for new settings thatbothered him. And some of the developments he watched were hardly whathe would have preferred. The warlocks had good memories, it seemed, andthere had been manifold offenses against them while the world wasfalling apart. 

He tried to put it out of his mind as he drew Nema to him. She snuggledagainst him, admiring him with her eyes. But old habits were hard tobreak. "Don't, Dave. I'm a registered and certified--"

She stopped then, blushing, and Bork chuckled. 

Ser Perth appeared at the doorway with two of the mandrakes. He motionedto Hanson. "The council of Satheri want you, " he said. His eyes avoidedthe other, and he seemed uncomfortable. 

"Why?" Bork asked. 

"It's time for Dave Hanson's reward, " Ser Perth said. The words weresmooth enough, but the eyes turned away again. 

Hanson got up and moved forward. He had been wondering when they wouldget around to this. Beside him, Bork and Nema also rose. "Never trust aSather, " Bork said softly. 

Nema started to protest, then changed her mind. She frowned, tornbetween old and new loyalties. 

"The summons was only for Dave Hanson, " Ser Perth said sternly as thethree drew up to him. But as Hanson took the arms of the other two, theSer shrugged and fell in behind. Very softly, too low for the hearing ofthe mandrakes, his words sounded in Hanson's ear. "Guard yourself, DaveHanson!"

So there was to be treachery, Hanson thought. He wasn't surprised. Hewas probably lucky to have even three friends. The Satheri would hardlyfeel very grateful to a mandrake-man who had accomplished somethingbeyond their power, now that the crisis was over. They had always been ahigh-handed bunch, apparently, and he had served his purpose. But hecovered his thoughts in a neutral expression and went forward quietlytoward the huge council room. 

The seventy leading Satheri were all present, with Sather Karfpresiding, when Hanson was ushered into their presence. He moved downthe aisle, not glancing at the seated Satheri, until he was facing theold man, drawing Nema and Bork with him. There were murmurs of protest, but nobody stopped him. Above him, the eyes of Sather Karf wereuncertain. For a moment, there seemed to be a touch of friendliness andrespect in them, but there was something else that Hanson liked farless. Any warmth that was there vanished at his first words. 

"It's about time, " Hanson said flatly. "When you wanted your worldsaved, you were free enough with offers of reward. But three days havepassed without mention of it. Sather Karf, I demand your secret name!"

He heard Nema gasp, but felt Bork's fingers press against his armreassuringly. There was a rising mutter of shock and anger from theothers, but he lifted his voice over it. "And the secret names of allthose present. That was also part of the promised reward. "

"And do you think you could use the names, Dave Hanson?" Sather Karfasked. "Against the weight of all our knowledge, do you think you couldbecome our master that easily?"

Hanson had his own doubts. There were counter-magical methods againstnearly all magic, and the book he had read had been only an elementaryone. But he nodded. "I think with your name I could get my hands on yourhearts, even if you did your worst. It doesn't matter. I claim myreward. "

"And you shall have it. The word of Sather Karf is good, " the old mantold him. "But there was no mention of when you would be given thosenames. You said that when the computer was finished you would _wait_ formy true name, and I promised that you should have it when the time came, but not what the time would be. So you will wait, or the agreement shallbe broken by you, not by me. When you are dying or otherwise beyondpower over us, you shall have the names, Dave Hanson. No, hear me!"

He lifted his hand in a brief gesture and Hanson felt a thickness overhis lips that made speech impossible. 

"We have discussed your reward, and you shall indeed have it, " SatherKarf went on. "Exactly as I promised it to you. I agreed to find ways toreturn you to your own world intact, and you shall be returned. "

For a moment, the thickness seemed to relax, and Hanson choked a fewwords out through it. "What's the world of a mandrake-man, Sather Karf?A mandrake swamp?"

"For a mandrake-man, yes. But not for you. " There was something likeamusement in the old man's voice. "I never said you were a mandrake-man. That was told you by Ser Perth who knew no better. No, Dave Hanson, youwere too important to us for that. Mandrake-men are always less thantrue men, and we needed your best. You were conjured atom by atom, idand ka and soul, from your world. Even the soul may be brought overwhen enough masters of magic work together and you were our greatestconjuration. Even then, we almost failed. But you're no mandrake-man. "

A load of sickness seemed to leave Hanson's mind. He had never fullyrealized how much the shame of what he thought himself to be had weighedon him. Then his mind adjusted to the new facts, dismissing his pastworries. 

"I promised you that we would fill your entire lifetime with pleasures, "Sather Karf went on. "And you were assured of jewels to buy an empire. All this the council is prepared to give you. Are you ready for yourreward?"

"No!" Bork's cry broke out before Hanson could answer. The big man waswrithing before he could finish the word, but his own fingers wereworking in conjurations that seemed to hold back enough of the spellsagainst him to let him speak. "Dave Hanson, your world was a world ofrigid laws. You died there. And there would be no magic to avoid thefact that there you must always be dead. "

Hanson's eyes riveted on the face of Sather Karf. The old man lookedback and finally nodded his head. "That is true, " he admitted. "It wouldhave been kinder for you not to know, but it is the truth. "

"And jewels enough to buy an empire on a corpse, " Hanson accused. "Alifetime of pleasures--simple enough when that lifetime would be overbefore it began. What were the pleasures, Sather Karf? Having you revealyour name just before I was sent back and feeling I'd won?" He grimaced. "I reject the empty rewards of your empty promises!"

"I also rejected the interpretation, but I was out-voted, " Sather Karfsaid, and there was a curious reluctance as he raised his hand. "But itis too late. Dave Hanson prepare to receive your reward. By the power ofyour name--"

Hanson's hand went to his pocket and squeezed down on the blob of skymaterial there. He opened his mouth, and found that the thickness wasback. For a split second, his mind screamed in panic as he realized hecould not even pronounce the needed words. 

Then coldness settled over his thoughts as he drove them to shape theunvoiced words in his mind. Nobody had told him that magic incantationshad to be pronounced aloud. It seemed to be the general law, but for allhe knew, ignorance of the law here might change the law. At least hemeant to die trying, if he failed. 

"Rumpelstilsken, I command the sun to set!"

He seemed to sense a hesitation in his mind, and then the impression ofjeweled gears turning. Outside the window, the light reddened, dimmed, and was gone, leaving the big room illuminated by only a few witchlights. 

The words Sather Karf had been intoning came to a sudden stop, evenbefore they could be drowned in the shouts of shock and panic from theothers. His eyes centered questioningly on Hanson and the flicker of asmile crossed his face. "To the orrery!" he ordered. "Use the manualcontrols. "

Hanson waited until he estimated the men who left would be at thecontrols. The he clutched the sky-blob again. The thoughts in his mindwere clearer this time. 

"Rumpelstilsken, let the sun rise from the west and set in the east!"

Some of the Satheri were at the windows to watch what happened thistime. Their shouts were more frightened than before. A minute later, theothers were back, screaming out the news that the manual controls couldnot be moved--could not even be touched. 

The orrery named Rumpelstilsken was obeying its orders fully, and theuniverse was obeying its symbol. 

Somehow, old Sather Karf brought order out of the frightened mob thathad been the greatest Satheri in the world. "All right, Dave Hanson, " hesaid calmly. "Return the sun to its course. We agree to yourconditions. "

"You haven't heard them yet!"

"Nevertheless, " Sather Karf answered firmly, "we agree. What else can wedo? If you decided to wreck the sky again, even you might not be able torepair it a second time. " He tapped his hands lightly together and thesound of a huge gong reverberated in the room. "Let the hall be cleared. I will accept the conditions in private. "

There were no objections. A minute later Hanson, Bork and Nema werealone with the old man. Sunlight streamed in through the window, andthere were fleecy clouds showing in the blue sky. 

"Well?" Sather Karf asked. There was a trace of a smile on his face anda glow of what seemed to be amusement in his eyes as he listened, thoughHanson could see nothing amusing in the suggestions he was making. 

First, of course, he meant to stay here. There was no other place forhim, but he would have chosen to stay in any event. Here he haddeveloped into what he had never even thought of being, and there werestill things to be learned. He'd gone a long way on what he'd found inone elementary book. Now, with a chance to study all their magical loreand apply it with the methods he had learned in his own world, therewere amazing possibilities opening up to him. For the world, a fewchanges would be needed. Magic should be limited to what magic did best;the people needed to grow their own food and care for themselves. Andthey needed protection from the magicians. There would have to be a codeof ethics to be worked out later. 

"You've got all the time you need to work things out, Sathator Hanson, "Sather Karf told him. "It's your world, literally, so take your time. What do you want first?"

Hanson considered it, while Nema's hand crept into his. Then he grinned. "I guess I want to get your great granddaughter turned into a registeredand certified wife and take her on a long honeymoon, " he decided. "Afterwhat you've put me through, I need a rest. "

He took her arm and started down the aisle of the council room. Behindhim, he heard Bork's chuckle and the soft laughter of Sather Karf. Buttheir faces were sobering by the time he reached the doorway and lookedback. 

"I like him, too, grandfather, " Bork was saying. "Well, it seems yourgroup was right, after all. Your prophecy is fulfilled. He may have alittle trouble with so many knowing his name, but he's Dave Hanson, towhom nothing is impossible. You should have considered all theimplications of omnipotence. "

Sather Karf nodded. "Perhaps. And perhaps your group was also right, Bork. It seems that the world-egg has hatched. " His eyes lifted andcentered on the doorway. 

Hanson puzzled over their words briefly as he closed the door and wentout with Nema. He'd probably have to do something about his name, butthe rest of the conversation was a mystery to him. Then he dismissedit. He could always remember it when he had more time to think about it. 

 * * * * *

It was many millenia and several universes later when Dave Hansonfinally remembered. By then it was no mystery, of course. And there wasno one who dared pronounce his true name. 

THE END. 

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 054551 The Best from Fantasy and SF 16th Series 95c 054569 The Best from Fantasy and SF 17th Series 95c 054577 The Best from Fantasy and SF 18th Series 75c 206706 England Swings SF $1. 25 363317 The Second "If" Reader 95c 572701 New Worlds of Fantasy 75c 572719 New Worlds of Fantasy 2 75c 572727 New Worlds of Fantasy 3 75c 629402 On Our Way to the Future 75c 806992 This Side of Infinity 75c 846006 Universe 1 75c 846014 Universe 2 95c 913533 World's Best 1st Series 95c 913541 World's Best 2nd Series 95c 913558 World's Best 3rd Series 95c 913566 World's Best 4th Series 95c 913525 World's Best Science Fiction 1969 95c 913574 World's Best Science Fiction 1970 95c 913582 World's Best Science Fiction 1971 95c 913590 Best Science Fiction for 1972 95c

 Available wherever paperbacks are sold or use this coupon. 

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 Don't miss these exciting adventures of

 PERRY RHODAN

 Just 75c Each

 659813 Perry Rhodan #12 Rebels of Tuglan Darlton

 659821 Perry Rhodan #13 The Immortal Unknown Darlton

 659839 Perry Rhodan #14 Venus in Danger Mahr

 659847 Perry Rhodan #15 Escape To Venus Mahr

 659862 Perry Rhodan #16 Secret Barrier X Shols

 659870 Perry Rhodan #17 The Venus Trap Mahr

 659888 Perry Rhodan #18 Menace of the Mutant Master Mahr

 659904 Perry Rhodan #19 Mutants vs. Mutants Darlton

 Available wherever paperbacks are sold or use this coupon. 

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 Don't miss these exciting adventures of

 PERRY RHODAN

 Just 75c Each

 659938 Perry Rhodan #1 Enterprise Stardust Scheer & Ernsting

 659946 Perry Rhodan #2 The Radiant Dome Scheer & Ernsting

 659953 Perry Rhodan #3 Galactic Alarm Mahr & Shols

 659961 Perry Rhodan #4 Invasion from Space Ernsting & Mahr

 659979 Perry Rhodan #5 The Vega Sector Scheer & Mahr

 659987 Perry Rhodan #6 Secret of the Time Vault Darlton

 659995 Perry Rhodan #7 Fortress of the Six Moons Scheer

 660001 Perry Rhodan #8 The Galactic Riddle Darlton

 659789 Perry Rhodan #9 Quest through Space and Time Darlton

 660027 Perry Rhodan #10 The Ghosts of Gol Mahr

 659805 Perry Rhodan #11 Planet of the Dying Sun Mahr

 Available wherever paperbacks are sold or use this coupon. 

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 ANDRE NORTON

 696823 Quest Crosstime 75c 749812 Sargasso of Space 75c 756957 Sea Siege 75c 758318 Secret of the Lost Race 75c 759910 Shadow Hawk 75c 768010 The Sioux Spaceman 60c 775510 Sorceress of Witch World 75c 780114 Star Born 75c 780718 Star Gate 60c 781914 Star Hunter & Voodoo Planet 60c 784314 The Stars Are Ours 75c 787416 Storm over Warlock 60c 808014 Three Against the Witch World 75c 812511 The Time Traders 60c 840009 Unchartered Stars 75c 873190 Warlock of the Witch World 60c 878710 Web of the Witch World 75c 897017 Witch World 60c 925511 The X Factor 75c 942516 Year of the Unicorn 60c 959619 The Zero Stone 75c

 Available wherever paperbacks are sold or use this coupon. 

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 ANDRE NORTON

 051615 Beast Master 75c 092668 Catseye 75c 123117 The Crossroads of Time 60c 137950 Dark Piper 60c 139923 Daybreak, 2250 A. D. 75c 142323 Defiant Agents 75c 166694 Dread Companion 75c 223651 Exiles of the Stars 95c 272260 Galactic Derelict 75c 337014 High Sorcery 75c 354217 Huon of the Horn 60c 358408 Ice Crown 75c 415513 Judgment on Janus 75c 436725 Key Out of Time 75c 471615 The Last Planet 60c 492363 Lord of Thunder 75c 541011 Moon of Three Rings 75c 577510 Night of Masks 60c 634105 Operation Time Search 60c 638213 Ordeal In Otherwhere 60c 668319 Plague Ship 60c 675553 Postmarked the Stars 75c

 Available wherever paperbacks are sold or use this coupon. 

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