The Best of Lester del Rey

1

The sepelora crawled along at her maximum eighty light-years an hour, as she had done for the four months since she’d left the university planet of Terra. The space-denial generators hummed on monotonously, maintaining the field around the ship where space almost ceased to exist. The big viewing panel and ports were blanked out by the effect, forming perfect mirrors. There was a steady wash of slightly stale air through the control cabin, and the pseudo-gravity on the decks was unvarying. With less than a day of superspeed left, Captain Derek should have been content.

Instead, he sat slumped loosely over the control board, staring with unfocused eyes at his image in the panel, while his fingers doodled black aces, hangman’s knots, and all the other symbols of doom for which his culture had no real referents. His deep-set eyes and the -hollows in his cheeks gave him an almost cadaverous look, borne out by the general angularity of his body. At forty-five he looked fifty, with gray speckles around his temples and lines of worry etched deeply into his face.

Abruptly a small speaker came to life with the voice of his aide, Ferad. “Psych Siryl to see you, sir.”

Derek sighed, letting his eyes focus slowly as his fingers came up in the ancient sign against evil, pointing at his own image. The physicist, Kayel, must have sent her; the man had been eyeing Derek all during the orders for instrument alert. But now that she was here, there was nothing to be done about it. “Send her in,” he acknowledged, and turned slowly to face the door that began opening.

Siryl’s bearing was more military than his, in spite of her civilian blouse. Her feet tapped across the deck precisely, her hips swayed just enough in the split skirt, and her face bore the impersonal warmth of all psychologists on duty. Under her professional pride lay the curious overdeveloped consciousness of being female possible only to women who wanted to be men. She was ten years younger than Derek and only slightly shorter, but her features and body were good, as near beauty as grooming and care could make them. Only her hair was wrong, and its black severity was deliberate.

She wasted no time. Before he could rise, she was beside him, rolling back his sleeve. There was the coldness of an antiseptic and then the faint bite of a needle. “You’ll be all right in a minute,” she said coolly. “I’d have come sooner, but all these rumors have kept me busy. I’ve been expecting this; your chart shows you’re a depressive with an irregular cycle.” Her precise smile was calculated to make it seem no more than mention of a bit of common gossip. “Come on now, Captain. Things aren’t all black.”

Now that the drug had ended his chance to wallow in the mood of his ill-fortune, he was almost glad. But her words touched it off again. The jinx was more than a mood. He was the only man of his age in the Service who rated less than sector commander. Everything he undertook went wrong, and seldom through his own failure. There had been the training ship that blew up, the girl who died from mutational weaknesses, the mislaid citation papers—and the whole affair leading to this foredoomed command.

“Optimism!” he said bitterly. “You should head an expedition that you know is bound to fail—because you head it!”

She snorted. “Superstition! Sure, you had a run of misfortune, Derek. But your real trouble came when you started to believe that jinx nonsense. You’re so sure of bad luck now that it’s sapped all your initiative. Look at you. You’ve been eyeing me for months, wanting me and being afraid to make a pass because something might go wrong!”

There was too much truth in it, and he could feel the blood rush to his face. She stood studying his reaction clinically, as if using it to gauge the progress of the anti-depressant. Then suddenly she laughed easily and dropped to the opposite chair. “Maybe you should try sometime, Derek—but not now. I’m having my hands full with the men’s rumors. Look, why not tell me the truth about this expedition? After all, we’re almost ready to cut speed.”

The drug was beginning to work now, killing some of his gloom. He was still convinced of his jinx, but he could think of other things. Now he considered her question, surprised that she hadn’t already been briefed. “How much of the background and history of the war do they teach on Terra?” he asked. Some of the distant worlds had queer legends that would make explanation difficult.

She frowned impatiently for a second. Then she apparently decided to humor him and began sketching her knowledge in. Aside from her provincial belief that men had originated on Terra, it was accurate enough. Wherever men had started, the race had seemingly discovered space travel two thousand years before and somehow had almost immediately stumbled onto some form of faster-than-light travel. They had spread over the cosmos at a fantastic rate, using up vast quantities of some power element known as uranium.

Thirteen hundred years ago, dwindling supplies of that had split them into two competing empires. An unthinkably violent war had blasted systems of suns to novas, had used the last of the uranium, and had left their culture in ruins. Except for misleading hints that it had involved negation of time, the superdrive had been lost. It had taken centuries to find new power in the fusion of boron. It had taken longer to discover how to eliminate space around the ship, leaving only a subfractional connection with the universe and using the “suction” resulting from imbalance to drive them. Then men began spreading again.

Fifty years ago, they had run into the other empire—an empire technically ahead of them and filled with hate that had been nursed for thirteen centuries. The enemy gave no quarter and began savagely wiping them out, planet by planet. For a time, the Federation had seemingly been doomed. But lately, under the drive of necessity, they had begun to match the enemy science. In a few more years…

“In a few years—or months—there won’t be a Federation, unless this mission succeeds,” he cut into her routine optimism. He fished around in a drawer to locate one of the mission briefing sheets he’d helped prepare. For a second, his lips twisted as he saw the dull, official words.

The Waraok, on its way to rendezvous with the Fifth Fleet, had cut its space-denial drive to make a fix in one of the old sun-blasted sectors at 9-17/2.47:23 Federation time. At 9-17/2.47:26 they were less than a quarter million miles from one of the planets of Sirius.

Something had thrown them more than two hundred thousand light-years instantaneously! And unless they could wipe out the enemy base or find the secret and its countersecret, that something could as easily throw boron bombs into every Federation sun! With that threat, even such harebrained schemes as this mission had to be tried.

The Sepelora and eleven other ships were hastily stocked with every possible instrument, staffed with technicians, and blasted off on a course that would bring them out of superspeed at points around the recorded original fix of the Waraok. Their instruments would be recording and their space-denial transmitters signaling as they emerged, while a fleet of battleships followed. If they ran into the mysterious weapon and were lucky, the instruments might determine its nature. Otherwise, the locations of their last signals might pin-point the enemy base for bombing. Then they could only hope it was an experimental station and the only one the enemy had.

Siryl had glanced over the paper. Now she crumpled it in sudden disgust. “They gave us this guff back on Terra! Derek, you don’t expect me or the men to believe such nonsense? Instantaneous teleportation! Could you believe it?”

He stared at her, his first thrust of anger giving place to bitterness that drove away the last physical effects of the drug. “I should be able to,” he told her. “I was captain of the Waraok when it happened!”

It had been his first command of a battleship—and his last chance at promotion; the loss of plans he had been carrying had cost the Federation a major defeat, even though it had been no fault of his. Such miracles weren’t beyond the power of his jinx.

She snorted incredulously. “Captain, even I know that a single photon would have infinite energy against a ship at infinite speed! You couldn’t keep it out without a perfect space-denial—which means ceasing to exist. This story sounds like something from those papers of Aevan’s we found. A fine mathematician from before the Collapse, but superstitious like you. He actually believed in mind reading, clairvoyance, and teleportation!”

Legends indicated that people had once had such abilities to some extent, but there was obviously no use in reminding her of that. He swore hotly. “I tell you, I was there!”

“Hypnotic implantation! Propaganda based on old superstition! You’d better look in your safe for sealed orders, Captain Der—”

Red lights erupted on the control board. The alarm system went wild, with every gong clamoring. A blare of light struck in through the viewing panel and the big radar let out a whine, with a picture and coordinates forming to show a body of planetary size less than ten thousand miles below. Needlessly, the green letters on the board blazed out the fact that the superdrive was off.

Derek silenced the gongs and began hitting his switches, trying to get information. Nobody answered. Crews were normally lax during superspeed cruising, but at least one man should have been on watch near the space-denial generators; the others should be reporting to their stations on the double. He cut into the intercom and began yelling for immediate reports.

The door of the cabin jerked open, but it was only the chubby figure of Ferad, scared white. Then another figure burst through the door, and Derek recognized the physicist, Kayel. The little man’s weak chin seemed buried in his throat and his huge Adam’s apple was bobbing horribly. He jerked one hand up, clutched around a crooked pipe he affected, and motioned tautly backward. “Gone!” he screamed. “All gone!”

Derek cursed, shoved him aside, and headed through the door. He leaped across the precabin, yanked another door open—and stopped.

Five feet ahead, the deck ended. Where the cabins, storage hatches, rec rooms, galleys, and parts of the machine shops and engine rooms had been, there was nothing! Or rather, there was only an empty hull with a single keri-bird from Sirius, squawking and beating its wings wildly in air that held the warm, wet scent of growing Sirian flowers!

Beside him, Derek heard a sharp gasp from Siryl and felt her fingers bite into his arm. Ferad stood frozen and Kayel was gasping for breath, trying to light his pipe against chattering teeth. He met Derek’s gaze, glanced at Siryl, and somehow steadied himself.

“It—it just went! I was back there—” His finger pointed toward the remains of the engine room and the beginning of the rocket chambers. “Gone! Without cutting the hull! Completely impossible!”

Derek could appreciate their shock, but after years of living with his jinx, he was practically immune. There were advantages to everything, even to regular bad luck. “What about the denial drive? Can we fix it?”

“No.” Kayel had hesitated, but his negative was definite. “Most of it’s all right, but we’d need tools we don’t have now.”

Derek nodded. “All right, see what our remaining instruments show; if we<-get back, the Federation will need those readings; Ferad, get back to the rockets. Somehow, we’ve got to make a landing on that planet under us. And Siryl, if you’re done shouting superstition at me…”

Then he grinned thinly. She was staring at the yawning emptiness with unbelieving eyes, slowly crossing herself.

Eighty men and tons of ship were gone, with only a Sirian bird and the perfume of flowers in their place. Among the missing were the pilot, navigator, and engineer. Derek hadn’t handled a rocket landing for twenty years, and he didn’t even have figures on the atmosphere and gravity of the world below. His grin vanished and he groaned to himself as he headed back to the control cabin.

2

The planet was closer when Kayel reported back with word that the instruments all showed exactly nothing. He was working with the spectroprobe, trying to get data for Derek, when Siryl came in with coffee as a peace offering. “Some of the supplies are all right,” she reported. “Enough for—for four!”

“Thanks.” Derek tasted the coffee and found it vile. But at least it was hot and wet. “Better take some back to Ferad if you can find the way. Tell him if he doesn’t report at once, I’ll skin his fat carcass.”

Kayel gulped and accepted coffee from her as if he’d never seen a woman serve food before. He probably hadn’t on Terra, judging by what she’d done to the coffee.

Derek interrupted the physicist’s stumbling compliments. “Find anything yet, Kayel?”

Siryl threw him a dirty look and went out, again on parade drill. Kayel nodded, turning back reluctantly. “One of the blasted systems, all right, sir. Spectrum looks as if the sun got a light dose, though.”

Probably one of the last suns the first war had ruined, Derek thought; men had been running low on high-numbered atoms by then. If the blast had been mild, it might even have missed the planet. In that case, they might find machinery in some of the ruined cities.

Kayel shook his head. “Planet was hit, all right. A lot of helium in the atmosphere shows that. Funny, though. A couple hundred miles of air with plenty of free oxygen—about like Terra.” He sucked on his pipe, squinting through heavy lenses at the charts he had prepared. “Umm. Density against height… must have about gravity one. Damn. Shouldn’t be free oxygen in that quantity!”

Derek muttered unhappily. The Slpelora wasn’t equipped with full-sized vanes, and an atmosphere and high gravity would make landing harder. Still, if they got down it would be handy. And while the ancient solar explosion would have ruined their hope for tools, it meant there was no danger from savages or beasts left over from the old days; some of the distant worlds had turned wild.

Ferad reported finally, complaining at the impossible job of readying the rockets by himself.

“Put Siryl to work with you,” Derek ordered. “They’ll be ready in five minutes or we’ll miss perigee.”

Their intrinsic momentum, left from their speed before cutting on the space-denial generators after takeoff, was carrying them down toward the planet hi an ellipse that would approach within some six hundred miles.

Surprisingly, Ferad reported the rockets ready and valves trimmed within the time limit. The ship groaned as the rockets went on and Derek watched his indicators grimly, expecting the worst. With so much of her interior bracing removed, she was badly weakened and completely unbalanced. With his luck, anything could happen. Usually, he managed to get out of one mess before getting into another, but there had been that time during inspection…

The Sepelora hit the atmosphere badly. There had been no time for full correction with the side rockets, and the gyroscopes were gone with the missing section.

One of the weakened girders let go with a snap that jarred his teeth.and the ship wobbled before straightening out. Derek knocked the sweat out of his eyes and tried to remember all that he’d been taught back in rocketry school. But all that came back was the instructor’s long lecture on why accident prones should be kicked out at once.

The ship righted, however, though it was close, and settled into a long, fast glide, with her hull pyrometers well into the red-hot zone but safe. A protective shield had slipped over the viewing panel, but the radar still gave them a view of the ground. They came down to twenty miles above the surface, then to fifteen.

Kayel let out a surprised whinny and pointed the stem of his pipe excitedly at the screen. Derek could see nothing, but the little man watched intently as something seemed to vanish. “A city! Straight lines—streets!”

“Ruins, probably,” Derek commented. Maybe they were in luck and the solar explosion had only touched the planet, without burning it enough to destroy buildings and major tools. After thirteen hundred years, some would be ruined; but the ancients had built things to last on the outer planets.

There was a thin layer of clouds that the ship cut through. Now the going was rougher. Without full vanes, the Sepelora had all the lift of a stone, and the glide was growing steeper asymptotically, though her temperature was finally dropping. Derek got her tail down and began using controlled blasts.

Three miles above the surface, she was falling almost straight down, going too fast and swaying badly. Correcting for the unbalanced weight was harder than he had expected.

Then he was only a mile up. With a groan, he cut on more power, hoping no other girders snapped. It was going to be a close shave, with scant seconds left.

Kayel jerked up, screaming and pointing to the screen. Derek’s eyes followed the motion before he could pull them back. Something that might have been rows of buildings showed there. But he couldn’t worry about ruins; the blast would flatten them, anyhow.

“Derek! People! They’re moving!” Kayel’s voice was screeching in his ears.

He thrust the obvious hysteria of the other from his thoughts. The last glance had ruined his timing. Now the surface was zooming up. The Sepelora wobbled, pv-ershot, and then slowly came upright. Derek’s eyes jerked to catch a quick glimpse of the screen. For a second, his hands froze. Along the regular rows that must be streets, things were scurrying madly out of his path!

There was no time to think. Conditioning against killing others, no matter what the risk, took over. His fingers bit into the side controls, and the Sepelora twisted under him, beginning to topple. For a second, the full side blasts tossed the ship backward. Then she dropped, just as he cut power in a final conditioned reflex.

Kayel had fainted. Derek stared at him and down at his own hands. The ship was still. There had been no shock. He tried to figure it out; in theory, the various forces could counterbalance to cause a dead halt at just the moment of touching surface. But the chances were so remote that no pilot could have estimated them. It was as if all the years of his incredibly consistent jinx had come to a balance in one impossible piece of blind good luck.

Kayel came to slowly, blinking. His fingers groped up to find his glasses still on his nose. “My pipe!” he squeaked, and ducked down for it. Then he straightened, staring at Derek. “We’re alive!”

“No thanks to you,” Derek said curtly. He flipped a switch and the shield over the viewing panel began sliding up, just as Siryl and Ferad came in. They looked exhausted, but less shaken than Kayel—probably because they hadn’t known what was going on. “Don’t start cheering yet. There are people here—and there shouldn’t be on any sun-grazed planet we haven’t recolonized. With my luck, I’ve probably landed us right hi the middle of an enemy colony!”

“Luck!” Siryl snorted. Then she reddened faintly at his look, but went on stubbornly. “The enemy are compulsive troglodytes—they don’t build surface dwellings. And look at that,”

The shield had come up enough to show fields around them, apparently corn and potatoes. Beyond, the edge of the town could be seen, built in low structures of crude stone and thatching.

“An agricultural culture,” Siryl guessed quickly. “Look—there’s one! See, coming through the field. We’re in luck. Primitive agricultural societies are usually peaceful.”

Several people were filing toward the ship, showing no sign of fear. They were dressed in rough pants with serapes or blankets thrown over their shoulders. The men wore beards with hair to their shoulders, all of a uniform brown except for the graybeard in front. The women were distinguished only by thick plaits around their heads. They were a healthy looking bunch.

The graybeard moved to the viewing panel, waving at them with some bit of what seemed to be stone in his hand. His motions indicated that they were to come out. Derek shrugged faintly and nodded. He headed toward the door.

Siryl caught his arm. “Where are you going?” “Out. You said they were peaceful.” “Usually peaceful,” she qualified hastily. “But—” “Unless they’re superstitious about sky devils, eh? I’m still going out.” He headed down the nearest passage that would lead to a lock. There was nothing else to do. Their few weapons were gone, along with their tools and the big space-decoupled signaling transmitter. The Sepelora was only a converted freighter and her hull was too thin to withstand any concerted attack by even primitive agriculturists. If the worst had to happen, it was better to get it over with at once.

Siryl hesitated for a second. Then her heels tapped out a steady pace behind him, while the other two followed reluctantly. She caught up with Derek and marched beside him. If she was afraid, there was no sign of it. He opened the inner lock, then the outer, and dropped to the field of stubble. As he landed, the graybeard came around the curve of the ship.

The old man’s lips parted in what might have been a smile, and words came out, slowly at first, then more rapidly in the classic greetings of Twenty-fifth-Century English.

When the words finally ceased, Derek stepped forward and began a careful reply. Classic English was the basic language from which that of his own planet had been derived, and he’d studied it during eight long years of schooling, without ever expecting to use it.

The graybeard turned back to his people and stood silently for a minute, glancing sideways at the four. Siryl was staring at Derek in surprise. “I did a paper on Ae-van’s work,” she said. “So I had to learn Classic. That’s the pure language, unchanged after thirteen hundred years! And primitive cultures don’t preserve dead languages—speech changes from century to century.”

Derek shrugged. She knew a lot of things with the certainty of the teachers who had taught her. It wouldn’t be the first time the authorities were wrong. He forgot it as the old man came forward.

“My name is Skora. I’m the—the priest of the village.” He gestured to his people. “We’ve decided that you are welcome on the planet of god. And we’re happy that you landed safely. I saw your space ship so late that there was hardly time to use the god power to land you without harm to us. If you’ll walk back with us, there will be shelter and warmth. The nights are quite cold here.”

Derek turned the offer over in his mind. He’d have preferred to stay with the ship, but wisdom dictated otherwise. “That’s kind of you. We’re much obliged.” He was proud of remembering the phrase.

The old man nodded, while his eyes examined the others. A smile etched his face as he spotted Ferad’s hungry looks at one of the younger women. “She’s unmarried,” he said. “Tell him she likes him! She shall be his!”

Siryl translated quickly. “Accept!” she urged, though Ferad’s fat face indicated no need to such advice.

“You’ll insult them otherwise. Derek, I was right. They’re primitives—hospitable, provincial, superstitious. Did you notice how he called this the planet of god? And how he thinks he landed you with some incantation?”

Derek grunted something she took for assent. Let the old man have full credit; prayer or magic was as good an explanation as any other. He studied the quiet group as they moved toward the village.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I’d like to know how your primitives knew about space ships and safe landings! And I’m curious about how he knew we had to translate the language for Ferad when both of us were pretty fluent in it. Another thing—he said the nights are cold here, as if he knew they aren’t on all the planets.”

For once, she was as silent as the natives. Derek had been hoping she’d have an answer, and her silence added to his doubts. Something was out of order on Skora’s planet of god!

3

The house assigned to them had proved surprisingly comfortable after they learned to work the peat-burning fireplace. The food had been passable, if a man liked cereals and mutton. Derek had gone to sleep readily enough, to his surprise. But dawn had found him awake. No attempt was made to stop him as he walked out of the village, past the undisturbed Sepelora, and on to the low hills beyond the tilled land. Siryl was apparently right in assuming they were safe, once bread had been broken.

But his uncertainty returned as he studied the view from the top of the nearest hill. The solar explosion had hit hard at one time; the ground was ashy in places and actually melted to slag hi others. A few plants grew here and there, but thinned out in the distance, indicating they had spread from the village. There were no trees anywhere. By all indications, rainfall must be infrequent and light. The village seemed like a bit of another world, transplanted into the wasteland.

From the top of another hill Derek spotted what must be a second village, perhaps four miles away, also green and thriving. He stared about for a road between the two towns. No path led out of either.

Men were already in the fields as he returned. Some stood quietly watching their sheep and goats; others were puttering about in ways he couldn’t understand. There was none of the grimness he’d always associated with living off the ground on backward planets.

Beside the field where the Sepelora had landed, Derek saw a young man pushing a stick along the ground, leaving a furrow of turned earth behind. There was no sign of a plowshare, aside from a piece of bent wire, and the man was using only his own muscular power, but he was obviously plowing. From his effortless motion, he was either inhumanly strong or the ground was incredibly soft. Derek reached over for a handful of dirt, but it seemed normal enough.

“Good morning, Derek. I’m Michla.” The plowman had stopped and walked over, leaving the stick standing. He took some of the dirt and rubbed it between his palms. “Too dry. I’ll have to bring some rain tonight.”

Derek shook his hand, finding it no stronger than that of any normal man. “Glad to know you, Michla. I’ve been wondering how your plow works.”

“See for yourself.” Michla led the way to it, pulling the implement up. It was only what Derek had seen—-a stick with a bit of bent wire and a curiously shaped handle made of baked clay and covered with curlicues. “I hold the amulet and guide it. God turns over the dirt. It hasn’t changed since god showed us how to farm.”

Derek could see no sign of the burrowing machine that must be located below the ground, guided by a signal from the stick. He frowned, reluctantly deciding that it was safer to accept the explanation until he could learn more about their customs. “This god you worship seems like a highly helpful one,” he commented.

“Worship?” Michla shook his head. “Nobody’s that superstitious any more, Derek. We know he was only a man like you or me-—and sometimes I think he was always a little insane. By the way, I’m planning to plow the other field. Mind if I move your ship?”

The ship’s controls were locked and there was nothing the man could do to hurt it, Derek decided. He’d have to see about moving it himself, if there was fuel enough to waste. Meantime, it might be a good idea to let Michla find that other people had secrets and that ships didn’t fly by waving wands at them. “Go ahead.”

He headed back to the house they had been given with Lari, the new wife or concubine of Ferad. Here and there, one of the villagers looked up and uttered one of the old greetings, which he returned. It was the only conversation he heard. They saluted each other just as formally, but with no further talk.

Ferad was waiting hungrily for breakfast and Lari was busy setting a stone table when Derek returned. She smiled happily at him. “Good morning, Derek. Breakfast will be ready as soon as the fruit that god showed us arrives. If you want to shave first, Skora brought up one of god’s personal razors.”

He stared after Lari’s figure as she went back to the kitchen. This lower-case god of theirs was getting to be a highly peculiar divinity. Derek went to the well-fitted bathroom in the rear, wondering where they got their water; each house had a tank on its roof, but there were no supply pipes. He found a razor that might have come from a pre-Collapse museum, lathered with a cake of their somewhat harsh soap, and tried it out. It worked well enough, once he got the hang of it.

Kayel was standing hi front of Siryl’s door as Derek left the bathroom. He blushed, bit down on his pipe stem, and hurried toward the living quarters when he saw the captain.

Derek knocked lightly on Siryl’s door and threw it open. “Come on to breakfast!”

She opened sleepy eyes. Then she screamed and began pulling frantically at the covers, trying to conceal her nude -body as if her life depended on it. Her face went white, and her voice was a thick gasp. “How dare you—?”

“Somebody had to wake you up,” he pointed out logically. He’d heard of women who considered clothes more than a matter of convenience, but the slit skirts had made him think that Terran women were normal about such things. “Why didn’t you tell me you had such religious taboos?”

She jerked upright, grabbing for the slipping cover again. Her face crimsoned, whitened again, and hardened slowly. She looked sick as she forced herself to stand up before him and her hands were shaking as she reached for her clothes. Her voice quavered. “I do not have taboos, Captain Derek! I—I simply resent your invasion of my privacy. I might have been doing—anything! How would you like it if I barged into your room like that?”

“Try it!” he suggested, grinning at her. “And don’t count too much on my fear of failure.” He watched in amusement as she finished her dressing in frenzied haste.

Then she brushed back her hair and was herself again. She smiled with forced amusement of her own. “Maybe I will, Captain. That overdose of antidepressant I gave you won’t last forever.”

He prowled and turned toward the living quarters. It was a fine crew he had left! He’d heard once that since the Collapse all men were neurotic in some way, while psychiatry had turned from a science to a farc’e. They bore out the theory. Kayel had an Oedipus complex, Ferad had turned to gluttony and hidden a good brain to avoid responsibility, and Siryl walled herself in with scorn for all men because she couldn’t be one! Maybe their whole civilization was at fault. The people of the village had seemed as relaxed as if they’d just finished a course in electro-leucotomy that somehow left them with no loss of volition.

He found a seat at the table and watched Siryl slide in beside Kayel, who tried to hide his excitement at the favor behind a labored puffing at his pipe. Skora had joined them and was seated near Ferad. He had been explaining something about one of the students at the school having trouble with something god had revealed

to him. Now the old mail smiled and reached toward a bowl of fruit in the center of the table.

“I’ve never thought of eating fruit, but I decided to try it,” he said. “I hope it’s good. When I found from god that most of the worlds like more than simple cereals for breakfast, I tried to find the type of fruit that was best.”

Derek began peeling one of the big fruits, wondering how much of that he was supposed to believe. The marel-fruit grew only on Feneris, where its export was the chief industry. He tasted the aromatic sweetness, surprised to find it fresh and fully ripe.

“It must be at least a hundred thousand light-years to Feneris,” he suggested, trying to keep his voice casual.

Skora nibbled carefully. A smile of pleasure appeared on his lips and he fell to busily. “Good. Excellent. We’ll have to adopt this. Feneris? It’s farther than that. But the fruit grew on many worlds before the sun blasting, and still grows on a few in this sector. We found from god where to get it and sent one of the boys who needed the exercise.”

“Then you have space ships!” Derek’s fruit fell to his lap as he came to his feet, his hands gripping the edge of the table. If it came from another planet of this system, it might not mean they had faster-than-light travel, but still…

Skora shrugged apologetically. “I’m afraid not, Derek. Vanir is a simple world. We have only our god and his power. The work of building space ships has always seemed too great for its reward. You’ll find us quite primitive from your views, I’m sure.”

“But—”

Siryl cut in, using Universal. “Stop it, Derek! Don’t violate any verbal taboos here, if you want to get out alive!”

“But he knew the distance to Feneris and about other planets!”

“Folk songs and sagas!” She switched back to Classic, apologizing to Skora.

Derek let it drop, but he wasn’t satisfied. The exotic fruit grew only in a saturated atmosphere, which this

planet didn’t have. This might not be a colony of the enemy or have its own space ships, but that was no proof that ships couldn’t stop here—enemy ships. With his luck, anything odd would almost certainly prove to be dangerous. He chewed on his thoughts bitterly, along with the pancakes Lari brought them.

This god of theirs might even be one of the enemy, using some strange technology to create near miracles that the villagers could only believe were magic. In that case, word of their capture must be winging back to the enemy planets. It would be only a matter of time before one of the squat, black ships landed here!

Derek got up abruptly, making hasty excuses and signaling for Kayel to follow. This was no time to waste on speculation. The ship was their only means of escape, and it had to be put in some kind of operating condition. .

Siryl followed them as Derek voiced his suspicions to Kayel. The little man’s eyes bulged and his face turned ashen as the captain poured out his doubts. The psychologist snorted in disgust.

“Stop exercising your persecution complex!” she snapped. She shook her head, putting on her superior smile of tolerance. “You men! A few things you can’t understand and probably some changes in the language we haven’t caught yet, and you picture bogy-men under every rock! There isn’t a trace of inferiority feeling here, as there would be if they’d run into a superior culture!”

Ahead of them lay the ship, and Derek saw a figure standing beside it. He broke into a faster walk, until he recognized it as Michla. The man waved at them and went back to whatever he was doing. As they came nearer, Derek saw that he was running his fingers over a large, odd-shaped stone plate with more of the curlicues on it.

“Incantations on a charm. He’s probably sure the ship is a form of life that can be commanded with the right spell,” Siryl said with satisfaction.

Michla pulled the disk to him, holding it against his chest with one hand. The other hand went out to touch the side of the ship.

As he lifted his arm, the twenty thousand tons of the Sepelora lifted a foot off the ground and began moving steadily forward beside him. He carried it along easily, heading toward a section of wasteland half a mile away.

4

By the time they reached the Sepelora, Michla had picked up his strange plow and was busy at the far end of the field. Derek fumbled his way into the ship and began switching on the strain gauges while Kayel watched. There was no evidence of harm.

“Antigravity!” The physicist’s voice was an awed whisper. “I always thought it was impossible with less than tons of equipment! And generated in the whole of the ship at once!”

Derek swung to face Siryl, but she was recovering and there was no humility in her. “Hypnotism, you mean! They must have worked on us while we slept and made us think the ship was in the other field, when it was here all along. We saw it there, and saw it being moved, by posthypnotic suggestion. Lots of primitives have some knowledge of hypnotism.”

“Make it magic and I’ll buy it,” Derek told her. “That’s a good explanation for what you can’t understand, too.”

She started to say something and then checked it. Finally she turned toward the airlock. “All right. Let them fool you. I’m going to go back to Lari. Primitive women are always easier to handle than their men. They’re less organized.”

She went out and through the fields, carefully avoiding the sight of the depression where the Sepelora had first lain. Derek and Kayel fell to work on the ruined space-denial generators and what stores were left to them.

By all standard methods, it was hopeless. Yet Kayel began sketching and checking among the small power tools. He seemed to gather momentum, now passing orders to Derek with a certainty that he showed only when working in his own field. “It won’t be good,” he admitted. “I’m having to compromise. But I think we may be able to combine enough of some of the new theories with the first methods ever used. We won’t make better than fifteen light-years an hour, but it should get us to one of the border planets.”

It was meaningless to Derek. But if they could leave, he was willing to try it. They worked on, grinding and shaping by methods that had been lost from practice for over a century. Some of the work would be trial and error, with no chance to estimate the time it would take. But it helped to take their minds off the primitives who could handle forces that civilized science couldn’t touch.

Ferad came out finally to call them in to dinner. It was already growing dark, and there was a fine rain falling. Derek stared up through it. He had looked out fifteen minutes before and had seen no clouds in the sky. There still were none he could see, but the water dropped at an. increasing rate as they moved out of the wasteland onto the cultivated fields. In the village, the covers of the water tanks were off. Derek wasn’t surprised to see that the rain poured down more heavily over the tanks.

Apparently Siryl had been checking on the ram with Lari. As they entered the house the native girl was running busily from the kitchen to the table, but she was keeping up a steady fire of conversation.

“Of course Skora brings the water at night. It’s better after all the work in the fields is done,” she explained. “Though sometimes there’s a light fall of natural rain in the daytime. That makes us all feel good. When we first started, we had to import all our water. And now we have two small oceans. Of course, god told us the planet had eight big seas before the sun exploded. I was asking Skora about it, and he says some of the worlds are all covered with water—not even a little bit of land…”

Siryl’s face showed that she had learned nothing—or at least nothing that she wanted to know.

Lari came hurrying back, carrying a huge metal pot of stew to the table. She held it at arm’s length easily, and Derek noticed one of the amulets in her hand—this time a small one with only a few simple marks on it. He pointed. “What’s that, Lari?”

“A lifting tool”. God showed us how to make all kinds of tools. There’s one that eats away the rock, and one that plows the ground—you saw that, didn’t you? Skora bakes them. They make god work for us. Come on, dinner’s ready.”

Derek picked up the little piece and turned it over. It was a twisted lump of clay, baked hard, with a series of marks on the top. It looked as if no design existed, yet there was a certain flow to the lines. He reached out for the kettle, fingering the amulet. If the kettle weighed less because of it, he couldn’t feel the difference. Nor could he find any sign of a switch buried on the surf ace of the gadget.

If there were some kind of broadcast power here, and these things were receivers tuned to convert it into special functions…

He pocketed it while Lari’s back was turned. There might be some penalty for the theft of one, but he had to risk it.

The next day when they reached the ship Kayel took it to pieces bit by bit. Lari had missed it, but had only shrugged and pulled another out of a drawer.

The piece of clay grew smaller and smaller under the grinder as Kayel worked on it. At last it was just a nub that he had to hold with pliers. Then even that was gone. On the floor was a pile of dust, with no trace of metal or foreign element in it. The two men stared at it sickly and then dropped the matter quickly as they turned back to the labor of rebuilding the damaged space-denial generators.

They worked on doggedly for three days more. Ferad had flatly refused to help them, claiming that his marriage to Lari made him a citizen of Vanir and had ended his need to work under Derek. It was a point the captain had no desire to test while his knowledge of things was so uncertain. Maybe Ferad was a citizen now, and any force exerted on him would antagonize the whole village.

It was hopelessly slow going, but they were making more progress than Siryl. She finally admitted that she was getting nowhere. There was one explanation for everything—and that was their god.

“They’re the most superstition-ridden race I’ve ever heard of,” she concluded in disgust.

Derek had his doubts. So far, every bit of superstition he had run into had proved sound empirical sense. It didn’t matter whether they called it god or magic or anything else. It worked. And they were no worse than many of the civilized people who used the tools given to them and had no other explanation than the fact that science somehow made them work.

If men lived on a world where the only cats were leopards, where black leopards were all man-eaters, and where the cats avoided men unless looking for food, it would be extremely bad luck to have a black cat cross one’s path. In such a case, the only superstition would be a denial of the facts and a belief that there had to be some other explanation of why men disappeared.

Siryl’s faith in hypnosis and primitive ignorance might be the real superstition here. Belief in god and the tools probably wasn’t.

He went out into the rain that was falling again, looking for the house of Skora. There were a few people around and he recognized one as Wolm, the brother of Lari. The man directed him toward a house that was somewhat bigger than the others, with stonework that seemed to have mellowed with time. Derek had passed it before, when a group of children from six to nine were seated silently on couches across an open porch, and had been told it was the school where they learned god’s knowledge. He should have guessed that the priest would handle the schooling here.

Skora emerged from an outbuilding that boasted the huge chimney of a kiln and invited Derek in. The walls of the building were lined with amulets of all kinds and sizes, and there was a big workbench along one wall that was covered with tools for shaping clay. It was obviously the source of the amulets.

Derek went through the formula of greeting and accepted a bottle of surprisingly good beer.

“I’m getting ready for a new baking,” the priest said. “This village has to supply some of the smaller places with tools. My usual helper married into another village. Why don’t you and Kayel join me, Derek? It beats farming, and I understand your friend knows a good deal of science. Maybe he can show us better methods of making the tools.”

“He isn’t exactly a ceramicist, but we’ll think about it,” the captain promised. He had been turning over every indirect approach to his question. Now he discarded subterfuge. In spite of SiryPs warnings, the only way to learn anything here was to risk stepping on their taboos. “Skora, I came here to ask about your god.”

Skora put aside the molds he had been cleaning and perched on the edge of the workbench. “That’s asking a lot,” he said, but there was no offense in his voice. “It takes our children several years to learn all about him, though we’ve speeded things up in the last couple of centuries. And there are some things I can’t tell you properly, for your own good, though I’ll be as honest as I can. Ummm. He’s a man—a very wise and very stupid man. He saved us after the sun was exploded in the great war and taught us how to survive. He still teaches our young people.”

Thirteen hundred years had passed since the solar explosion. Derek whistled. “He sounds like a pretty remarkable man, Skora. No other man has found the secret of immortality. Or do you mean that he dies, but a new god replaces the old one each time?”

“Neither one. No man is immortal. And there is only one god. Sometimes I used to wonder about him when I first learned to use the power. I even thought of investigating, of going to see him. But I was always too busy.”

Derek could see no evidence of deceit on Skora’s face, and there was no way he could twist the words to make them mean anything but an impossible contradiction. “Suppose / wanted to visit your god, Skora—could I talk to him?”

The priest laughed and dropped off the bench to fetch two fresh bottles of beer. “You’d have a hard time of it, Derek. God died over a hundred years ago.”

“Then when you say god helps you, I suppose you mean that you still follow his advice, using what he taught you before he died. Is that right?”

“Not exactly. Partly, I suppose. Tradition kept the use of the tools under the false, emotional label of prayer for hundreds of years before we could root it out. I suppose we still use some of the terms in ways that aren’t literally true.” The priest shrugged. “But we still need his help when some new problem comes up. We couldn’t have found where the fruit grows in time without asking him. And he still teaches the children directly.”

“But he’s dead?”

“Quite dead,” Skora assured Derek. “Sometimes I think we’re headed for trouble because of that, and it makes things a little difficult at times. But what’s a little trouble? When I first had to bring rain, it took all my thought to control it. Now I can sit here talking to you and enjoying myself, without losing control of the tool.”

He pulled his hand out of a pocket and showed a quartz amulet in his palm, where his fingers had been fondling it. “When I was younger, I had trouble enough without any distractions. Once I forgot to remove only pure water and nearly ruined the crops with natural sea water. The planet where the rain comes from has a lot of copper salts, and that doesn’t help the land.”

Derek stared at the priest with sudden shock, the bottle still tilted to his lips. He forgot to swallow and gagged as beer ran down his throat and into his windpipe.

It was the complete logic of it that hit him. The rain had to be controlled, since it fell most heavily where it was most needed. Lari had already told them that the planet here had been almost barren of water after the solar explosion. Water didn’t create itself. It had to be brought from somewhere.

He coughed up the beer, forcing some measure of calmness into his mind. The pieces began to fit, even though there was still no explanation.

They could draw water across space, without letting it freeze or evaporate—or even grow chilled in its passage. The only answer to that had to be some form of nearly instantaneous teleportation!

“You!” he said thickly. “Your people! It was you who threw my Waraok all the way to Sirius. And you were the ones who threw part of the Sepelora somewhere else this time!”

Skora nodded. “That was a mistake. When I learned about your ship and the others with it, I’d never worked through a field like the one around your ship, and had little time in which to operate. Yours was the first ship I tried to handle alone, and I bungled it. But no harm was done. I put your crew on a livable planet and set the other ships beside them—the battleships, too. Working with a tool which wasn’t made for just that use was quite tiring, or I’d have landed you with the others instead of letting you nearly crack up here. After you saw us, it was too late to move you, of course. I’m sorry, Derek, but we had to do it that way.”

The bottle dropped to the floor and smashed as Derek stared at the old man. He should have guessed. With his type of luck, it was inevitable. He’d chased out after the enemy and been caught—by this! He staggered to his feet with shock waves of pure fear rippling through his shoulders and chest. One man against. a whole flight of ships! One solitary old man…

5

His memory was unclear the next morning. He’d been nearly raving when he’d sworn and pleaded with Skora to send them back. He could remember being denied by the suddenly worried and unhappy old man, but the reasons were no longer clear. All that was left was a picture of the priest putting his rain-making amulet aside and pulling down another, before taking Derek’s arms in firm, strong hands.

“You’re sick,” Skora had said. “I had no idea. I should have known you weren’t ready to discover the truth. Well, I hope your psychologist is a better doctor than healer of minds!”

And suddenly Derek had been in his own bed here, with his clothes following him out of nowhere to drape themselves over a chair. The covers had come up over him and the door had opened itself. He had been shouting something. Siryl had come in a few seconds later , and there had been a shot of some drug….

He gave up trying to remember, knowing it was safer not to think on it now. He had been too close to insanity. After all the years of fighting against the jinx, he had developed more strength than most of his people, but there were limits. Maybe he should have let them drive him insane! What was the use…

The door opened and Siryl came in, carrying another hypo. She grabbed his arm and he felt the bite of a needle. For a moment his heart pounded and cold sweat popped out all over him. Then some of the misery lifted. Whatever she had used the night before must have been a depressant that had needed counteracting.

“Pull the covers up!” She had been staring at him with a mixture of shock and concern, but some of the worry was leaving her. “Have you no sense of shame?”

“No strength. You pull them up.” The drug was nearing the end of its first physical impact, but he could barely talk. “Didn’t you ever see a nude man before?”

She made a face of disgust. “I—we didn’t take that kind of medical course. And I’m—I’m not defiled, if that’s what you’re thinking!” She bent slowly and forced herself to cover him, carefully avoiding all contact with his body. She winced as he laughed.

Her reactions had done him more good than the drug. The thing he had learned went back into its proper place in his mind. There was nothing horrible about the teleporting of a ship across a quintillion miles of space; he’d accepted the fact when it had happened to the Waraok. If Skora had shown him a huge machine using megawatts of power, he could have accepted that. The shock had come from discovering that it had been done with nothing but a piece of clay for power. Also, he’d been sent to find an enemy secret and had found the secret where he had least expected it. That was all.

“I’m all right now,” he told her. “But I wonder if you can take it. Call Kayel in here.” He swung out of the bed and grinned as she began backing out of the room, unable to tear her eyes off him until she blundered into the edge of the door.

He was dressed when the two came back. Ferad had declared his citizenship here, and he could rot in it! But the other two had to know. He gave it to them as fully as he could.

“Tommyrot!” Siryl said automatically, though her voice was uncertain, as if she were trying to remember how he’d returned to his room. “You were just delirious. Some disease here…”

Once, Derek thought, men had developed a science of psychology, according to the old reports. But it had been lost during the Collapse, with only the mechanical tricks for relieving neuroses remaining. No wonder the worlds were filled with sick minds, if Siryl was typical of her profession.

Kayel emptied his pipe, looking at her as if he were thinking the same, with the woman-adulation gone from his eyes for the moment. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing grotesquely. But his voice was as clear as when he discussed physics. “It fits. Oh, not the stuff about the god. That’s probably mumbo-jumbo to cover some master power source and the men who run it. Maybe it’s a’ mechanical educator, too, with a library saved from before the Collapse. The machine must have prevented the Collapse here, and they’ve gone right ahead while we fell back. We’re just working on theories about immense fields of energy in space that can be tapped for antigravity, identity exchange control—all that. They use it already! Derek, we’ve got to get this back to the Federation.”

“But the way they live?” Siryl protested.

“Why not?” Derek asked. “With power like that, they don’t need the usual heavy science and gadgetry. There’s no reason not to live the simple life.”

Kayel was pacing about, sucking on an empty pipe, and wearing a flush of excitement. Normally, it was easy to overlook his mental powers, but a good physicist had to have mental flexibility; he was supposed to be one of the best. “We can’t conquer them—not when one man can handle a fleet. But we look enough like them to pass among them, once we know what to expect. We’ll drop a few small fliers into the wastelands. With any luck, they’ll find the god machine. Derek, do you think they’ll still let us work on the Sepelora, now that you know?”

It had been bothering the captain. He shrugged uncertainly.

“I told you not to break their taboos!” Siryl reminded them. “I also told you this had to be a homogenous culture! Now maybe you’ll listen to me. They have to have some neuroses; any isolated group has. What we’ve got to do is to find their weakness. Kayel, they think you’re smarter than they are. Let’s…”

Derek had heard enough. She still had a genius for remembering only when she’d been right and assuming she always would be infallible. He turned toward the door. “Coming, Kayel?”

The little man hesitated, obviously swayed by the chance to work closely with her. Then he smiled apologetically at her and followed Derek.

She sat in offended dignity through breakfast. Luckily, Wolm was there and Lari kept up a steady stream of talk, trying to get Ferad to join the boy in some project or other. Nothing was noticed by the two natives. And nobody tried to stop the two men as they headed toward the ship.

Michla was busy seeding something on the harrowed field. He’d already added nitrates and other fertilizer—probably from the same planet as the water, carefully selected and dissolved in it. He called out a greeting as they passed, and they waved back. It was all friendly and normal. Derek breathed a sigh of relief as they swung around a pile of boulders.

Where the space ship had rested there was nothing but a depression in the ground. And coming toward them from that was the graybearded priest, the serape over his shoulders whipping about him in the breeze that was blowing. His face was serious as he drew near them.

Derek stepped toward him, trying to force anger to replace the fear that was thick in him. “Where’s our ship, Skora?”

“Safe. Up there.” The old man pointed toward the sky above them. “In an orbit around Vanir.”

“So we’re prisoners?”

Skora sighed, and he seemed embarrassed. “Not exactly. We feel obligated to you for bungling the way we handled the return of your ship to Sirius, Derek, and we’d like to return you. But that must wait for further study. You have full freedom here, though. And if you are permitted to leave, the ship will be ready.”

“And I suppose you’ll make up all the time when we should be repairing it?” Derek asked grimly.

“We have already done that. We repaired it last night, before we sent it up. Not the space-denial generators—that is beyond our understanding. But from god we learned how to use what was there to set up the much better time-negation drive that was used before your Collapse.”

“But—time-negation…” Kayel swallowed, stumbling. Derek hadn’t known that the little man understood Classic. From the accent, he must have only a reading and weak hearing knowledge of it. But he obviously had understood enough.

“Yes, time-negation works.” Skora smiled at the man’s amazement. “It’s simpler in application, but much more difficult in theory, I believe, than space-denial. It was discovered by accident when our common ancestors had no right to find it. Fortunately, god knew how it worked. And your ship will be ready for you if we find we can let you return.”

He was heading back to the village, and they were following without thought. Kayel caught Derek’s arm, pulling him back out of earshot. He spoke in hasty Universal. “We’ve got to forget the ship. Now it’s up to god and his charms. Derek, I’ve got to see how those amulets are made.”

“But they were nothing but baked clay. We took one apart,” Derek protested.

The physicist shrugged. “A transistor works because of a few parts per millions of impurities. A detector works because of its crystalline structure. Take his job!”

Skora had noticed that they weren’t with him and had slowed his steps. Derek caught up, trying to look somewhat cheerful. “I guess we’ll have to get ourselves a house of our own and stop bothering Lari until you decide, then. And since we can’t use the power of your god, we’d make pretty poor farmers around here. Is the job in your kiln still open?”

“Is it?” The old man chuckled. “Do you think I like doing it by myself? And since we’d have to feed you and care for you even if you did no work, your help will be pure profit to me.”

Derek had little hope for any great revelation from the work. Either there wasn’t much of a secret to the tools, or there was something so tricky that they felt sure Kayel and he couldn’t discover it.

The work seemed to confirm his doubts. Any child could have handled it, with no more than five minutes of instruction. Skora had teleported in a big tub of soft white clay from a bank of the stuff beyond the village. They had to pack this inside metal molds, press them down firmly and let them rough-dry until they would hold their shape. Then they went into the kiln to be baked. Finally, Skora inspected them, throwing out the defective ones along with his own hand-formed failures.

The priest answered Kayel’s stumbling questions without any hesitation. The material wasn’t important, so long as the final product had the right shape and the markings on it were clear. They had a few metal tools, but these were rare and too heavy for normal use.

“You can think of them as instructions,” he suggested. “There is too much to remember easily, and these help. They—well, they describe a stress in space, more or less.”

“Then plastics would work? Because if they would, there are a thousand pounds of thermoplastic in the ship’s stores, and we’d save a lot of time here,” Kayel suggested.

Skora apparently thought it was a fine idea. He questioned the physicist about what to look for, and the stock of plastic was suddenly in front of them. They began boring small holes in the molds for pouring the plastic to make unbreakable amulets, and the work went faster after that.

On the way back to Lari’s that night, Kayel shook his head positively. “Nothing, Derek! Nothing can be concealed in our own plastic. The secret has to be in their god.”

A god who wasn’t immortal, though he had lived for at least twelve hundred years; a god who taught the children somehow, though he had been dead for a hundred years. A god who could fling a seventy-thousand ton ship quintillions of miles instantly!

Derek lingered after the second day of work. He took the bottle of beer from the priest and dropped to a seat. “Skora, I’m still curious about your god. And this time, I’ll try to behave myself. How long did^:he live?”

“Since before the sun exploded. Let’s see.” The priest tipped the capped bottle up without thinking. Beer seemed to appear just beyond the seal and run into his mouth. “He was about sixty of your years old then. He came here to see us about five years before the trouble, I think. I could find out, if you like.”

Derek took his eyes off the other’s drinking habits and swallowed his own drink, trying to find some point of exploration. “I haven’t heard any stories about his creating the world or your people, at that. No legends of that?”

“Of course not. We evolved on Terra, like your people; and this planet grew from the usual space whorl.” The old man chuckled. “This isn’t a religion—though I’m afraid sometimes it’s beginning to degenerate. God had some strange ideas that are getting distorted lately. Many of us have a belief in some divine spirit, Derek, but we try not to confuse that with god. He was just a man. Kayel knows more than he did, though not the same—and all of us are stronger than he was.”

“He didn’t teach you to worship him, then?”

“He didn’t know.” Skora shook his head sadly. “He thought we would, mostly be dead. He didn’t care and couldn’t know what happened to us. He was unconscious. And when he revived, he was sure we were dead. With his stores all ruined and nobody to save him, he went crazy. He began blasting his way out and brought down a rock on his skull. Naturally, with his medulla crushed, he died. It was just as well. He couldn’t move the rocks to get out and he’d have been afraid of the world we’d made.”

It made no sense at all. Their god couldn’t even move rocks out of his own way. Yet the rains fell, in spite of the fact that the amulets were nothing but symbols. The power had to come from some source. “So he was destroyed. Yet you say he still is!”

“He’s there, and the young learn from him still. We had to find out how to build the time-negation drive from him since you came.” Skora found another beer, remembering to open this one. He was mellowing from the liquor. “Derek, I don’t know. He’s dead and he’s deteriorating—slowly, but the changes are there. We’ve always been in danger of becoming superstitiously dependent on him without realizing how much so we are. But now, some of us are worried. As he deteriorates, he may warp our children. Sometimes I’ve thought of digging him up and destroying him.”

“Why don’t you?” Derek suggested softly.

“I’ve thought of it. As senior priest for Vanir, I could. But it’s hard… emotional attachment, I suppose. And fear of what would happen.”

Derek frowned. “Suppose I were to destroy him?”

The old priest looked up, studying him, resolution coming slowly. “You could! Of course, you could! Derek, one more beer! Then go home. And be back here early. We’ll do it!”

Skora’s hands were trembling as he reached for the bottles.

6

Siryl would have none of it.

“Nonsense,” she told them after she had heard the story, along with Kayel. “Primitive cultures don’t breed agnostics. Skora was just drunk or testing you! Probably saving face by trying not to act superstitious. Derek, if you break any more taboos—”

“They aren’t primitive! Damn it, Siryl, if you can’t get that much through your pathological skull, go outside and watch it rain for a while!”

She stiffened and then cloaked herself in professional calm. “A culture,” she recited, almost by rote, “observed in situ may have certain apparently inconsistent developments, usually as a result of some isolated individual genius or accidental discovery. These, however, do not violate the fundamental attitudes and emphases, the cultural gestalt, but are inevitably assimilated emotionally. That means, Derek, that they can have a machine left over from pre-Collapse days that makes miracles—but they still think it’s magic. If you’ll drop your persecution complex and listen to—”

He grimaced, and then grinned slowly. “My hairy-chested persecution complex, you undefiled prude!”

She drew in her breath harshly and marched out of the room, white to her lips. Kayel looked sick, starting after her and turning back. “You shouldn’t have done that, Derek!” he protested. He sighed, shook his head, and sat down slowly, reaching for his pipe. “I wonder what we’ll find—and whether Skora will do it?”

Derek had his own doubts, but they found the old man ready the next morning, with Wolm behind him, carrying a supply of amulets and two battery torches he must have pulled from the Sepelora. The priest looked as if he had been unable to sleep, and the porch where the school was usually held was locked up tightly.

He saluted them, his eyes still troubled but with no doubt in his voice. “The place is on the other side of Vanir, deep in a cave our ancestors built. He expected the explosion toward the last and had the one of them who could use his power dig two such caves—one for him, one for us. He had a machine… We almost starved and died of asphyxiation, until that one who could use the power found from god how to bring food and keep fresh air coming from another world.”

He sighed, and his eyes ran across the landscape and the growing fields. “When we came out years later, the world was a cinder, and god had to teach us to restore it and to farm it. At first, we thought of moving to another world. Even the air here had to be brought in. But we stayed near god. Well, let’s go!”

There was an abrupt, sickening shift of scenery and they were standing at the base of a mountain that stretched up as one of a huge chain, barren and forbidding. Only a few stunted plants existed there, and the sun was purpling the sky in the west. Ahead of them was a cliff that stretched up nearly half a mile, and there were two rubble-filled holes in it, near them.

The priest motioned to one of them, and Wolm moved ahead. He had what seemed to be a huge umbrella without covering. He pointed the ribs toward the fallen rocks, twisting it slowly and feeling the swiveled handle of clay. He came to the stones and continued walking. The rock seemed to flow away from the device, compacting itself against the walls of the older passage that was there.

“This is the way he taught Moskez, the only one of us who could learn the power,” Skora explained. “God came across space from Terra to study us with other scientists. When the enemy began exploding suns, he stole us to help him, taking all .the supplies he could carry. We built this cave for him, and the one beyond for ourselves. Fortunately, the sun’s explosion was a weak one.”

He was worried, but oddly determined. They were moving downward and forward. Then they hit a clear passage that wound down and down. It must have taken a great depth to protect them from the solar blowup. Ot^er peonle had tried it, without this digging device, and had failed.

They reached a long section where the passage was clear, and foul, air’rushed out at them. Skora reached for an amulet and cold, clear atmosphere blew in rapidly. Derek wondered why the old man didn’t simply teleport them into the cave where their god lay, but decided to let the question go. It was probably only a means of delaying the accomplishment. His legs ached, and Kayel was panting, but they went steadily down.

Finally it flattened out and another five minutes of walking brought them into a partially clear chamber. There was a great radium motor on one side, whirring softly. In the center stood a huge glass case, covered with thick layers of ice from the ages of slow atmospheric seepage. Oxygen tanks were beside it and stores of food and equipment lay about, all rotted and useless now. Wolm scraped off the ice at a gesture from the priest, and Derek stared into the tank.

Doubled up on the floor of the case was an old man, his face hidden by one arm, his neck bent at an imnossi-ble angle. He was naked and fat, with the waxy color of frozen flesh. One hand lay near a heavy notebook and the other clutched an archaic type of heat-projecting rifle. A rock lay near the wound on the back of his neck, and another had wedged itself into the hole at the top of the case, sealing it with the layer of ice around it. From the breakage inside the case, it was obvious that he had gone mad, to wind up shooting at the ceiling above him. The cooling system must have been cut off before he revived, but it had somehow gotten turned on again during his insane frenzy.

“Suspended animation!” Kayel said. “There were accounts that it had been developed. But no details on the cooling, chemicals in the blood, the irradiation frequencies. Skora, was he a biologist or biophysicist?”

“No, he stole the parts from the place where our people were studied,” the priest said. “Another man meant to use it, but god took it. And he didn’t adjust it right. He wanted to wait fifty years, but it was twelve hundred before it released him. We left him because we needed him and he was preserved in this.”

Wolm had drawn closer to the case, trembling. Now

he bent his white face down and stared into the case. Skora stood beside the boy, indecision working on him.

“What do we do now?” Derek asked, as gently as he could.

The old man sighed. “I don’t know. The enzymes of his body are bringing a slow decay, despite the cold. And things go wrong with the teaching of the young… but without him, god is gone and Vanir may have no power. If I could only be sure—”

He waited, while Derek stared at the case and its machinery. At first, he had wondered if it might not conceal the great machine that could perform the miracles he had seen. But Kayel had looked it over at once and had shaken his head. It seemed to be no more than it was supposed to be. And that left only their god—a fat, dead god who had gone insane because of his weakness and his fear.

“No!” Wolm broke. The boy’s shoulders heaved. He buried his face against the case, shouting and clawing at the ice. “No! Skora, you can’t. He is all we have. He’s holy! Don’t touch him! God will come again! I saw it. It is Ms thought! You can’t—”

Skora’s fingers moved .on the amulet savagely. Wolm’s body snapped out of existence, while flakes of ice trickled down where he had been.

The priest looked sicker than before. “I sent him home,” he said. “Derek, that is what our youngsters learn now. There is decay, and distinctions are going. The old emotional superstitions are stronger than later logic, and all children used to have them. Now they creep through into the minds of our young. A decaying mind and an insane one—and our children absorb that knowledge.”

He sighed heavily. “And I—even I must have absorbed some of it. I can’t destroy him! It’s—horror! Derek, it’s up to you. Do what you will. I’ll wait fifteen minutes for you and keep the air pure here for you. But I can’t even watch!”

He was suddenly gone, too.

Kayel swallowed thickly, his neck bobbing against tight muscles. He reached for his pipe, then stuffed it back. “But if he loses his power when the body is destroyed, he can’t keep air for us or get us out?”

Derek kicked at the glass case. Kayel hesitated, and then joined him. It broke finally, and they waited while the blast of freezing air wheezed out, foul and miasmic. Derek reached for the weapon, but it was too cold to touch. He kicked it around with his foot until he could point it toward the corpse, while he found a bit of cloth he could use to cover the trigger.

Kayel knocked his arm aside before he could fire. The little man pointed toward the notebook and began hastily ripping off his shirt. He scooped up the book and spread it out on a low couch, ripping off the thin plastic that protected it. “We still have fourteen minutes, Derek. And this may be our only chance to find the secret.”

The captain stepped back, feeling relief wash over him. He had been bracing himself to take the chance, but the excuse to delay it was welcome. If burning the body destroyed the power of god, Vanir would be just another primitive world—and they would almost certainly die before they could get out. If the power remained, there would still be the need to warn the Federation of the menace hers—and no clue on which to operate.

Kayel flipped the cover back and skimmed through a few pages as quickly as he could turn them. It was obviously written in Classic, heavily interspersed with strange mathematics like none Derek had ever seen. From Kayel’s puzzled glance, they were equally strange to him. He turned to the front again. Then he pointed. “Aevan—god is Aevan!”

The book was described on the first page grandiloquently as the diary and records of A. Evan, the discoverer of metadynamics, the only true science of all time—the full and final work, from which the notes the world had been unready for had been extracted.

The body of the book began with the man’s need for people with unusually developed “ability” for his experiments, and his discovery of the border world of Vanir, where scientists had bred small groups for special abilities and were studying them.

In one of those little colleges, he had found the children he needed, and one child had proved capable of manipulating space as Aevan had been sure was possible. Moskez had even been able to force a few of the other children to bridge the difficult gap and begin work on it. There were long experiments and formulae for levitation, teleportation, penetrability, and other things. It ended on a note of self-adulation for his own success, in spite of the poor material he’d had with which to work.

Derek frowned and went back carefully, looking for the missing factor. The mathematics looked good, and in time Kayel could probably figure them out. But Aevan had been unable to make them work himself. It had taken some other ability.

He found it finally, in a footnote he’d skipped. It was telepathy. Aevan had known that the mental power needed was related to telepathy, and had been forced to find a group which had been bred for that. The boys on Vanir who succeeded had had more than eleven generations in which to build up such power.

Telepathy! And since the Collapse, while Vanir went on with its exclusive breed of telepaths, the rest of the worlds had had no such power—the psychologists had proved that it had been bred out of humanity, if it had ever existed. Yet without it, the mathematics would be useless. Only Vanir could have infinite power.

There the children had been forced to use it to survive. The single advanced one had somehow taught the others, and they had stolen their ideas for survival from the mind of Aevan. In suspended animation, his thoughts were nearly still, but his memories remained, and they could be tapped. Even dead, the memory cells were preserved for a time, though now they were deteriorating at last.

The amulets were only traditions to help them—they had used them as children, probably, to remember and feel the complex mathematical formulae, and the use of the tools had become so closely associated with the power that nobody questioned it now.

Derek tossed the book to Kayel and reached for the trigger. Nothing visible came from the weapon, but the body of the god—or Aevan—charred and began to vanish, along with most of the wall of the case behind it. Fourteen minutes had gone by.

He began to tense as the seconds drifted by, picturing Skora standing up there without the symbol of the power he had used, uncertain of his own powers, afraid to try them! If the man couldn’t work without the familiar—

Abruptly, they were back at the foot of the mountain, outside the tunnel they had cleared. Skora stood there, his face strained and white and his hands shaking; but his eyes were burning with the end of more than a thousand years of slavery to a useless custom and the fear of its loss.

“It worked—the tools still have power!” His voice was hoarse, as if he had been shouting.

Derek had one final test. He turned toward the priest, keeping his lips sealed and trying to throw the words silently out of his mind toward the other. Not the tools, Skora. They were only memory aids. All you need is the knowledge and power that you have in your own mind. You were bound to a superstition!

Skora smiled wearily, his eyes moving toward the book Kayel still held. He nodded thoughtfully. “Superstition? I suppose you’re right,” he admitted. “Or conditioned reflexes of thought. Until about the age of nine, it was easier for a young telepath to explore the passive, unresisting mind of god than that of a busy adult. Eventually, it became the only way for them to learn in our culture. Now I suppose we’ll have to train teachers for the children.”

Kayel was staring at them, his mind busily adjusting to the new conditions. “Telepathy!” he said, without fear, but with a growing sense of wonder, as he knitted his brows and stood silently while Skora seemed to listen. Derek wondered why his own mind wasn’t curling up in horror at being read. But what difference would it make? He’d helped Vanir, but the Federation could never use the secret.

Skora sighed at last. “Sanity, new morals, many other things, Kayel. We only deceived you about our ability to read minds, and that for your own good. We were, afraid it might be too disturbing. And we’re doubly grateful now. If there is anything we can do…”

“Send us home on the Sepelora,” Derek suggested.

“The affairs of the rest of the universe are not ours, Derek,” the old man answered, and he seemed genuinely sorry. “We can’t risk having them brought to us by returning you. The decision of the majority went against me. Now all I can do is make you welcome here on Vanir.”

Derek stared up at the sky where the Sepelora lay out of reach but ready to carry them home. He let his eyes fall again to the planet that was to be their prison. He had come to like the people and to feel more at ease among them in many ways than among his own race. But there had been hope, until now.

“All right,” he said at last. “Keep your world, Skora, Live on it comfortably while the rest of the human race nearly kill themselves in another war. You’ll be safe. Dredge up a few more tricks from Aevan’s notes. You like being alone—most provincials do. And it won’t matter in your time. But when the children of my people find mechanical ways of doing what you do with your minds—when they sweep in here with ten battleships for each that your people can handle—remember that you could have joined us and saved us from the enemy that burned this planet once already. When that happens, cry for the brotherhood of men. See what they think of a single planet that kept its secrets to itself. Oh, damn it, send us back to Lari’s and let us alone!”

Skora reached for the amulet. Then he threw it away and stared at them, frowning in concentration without the help of tools. His hands clenched at his side.

They stood in Derek’s bedroom.

Derek lay wearily on the bed while Kayel’s low voice went on explaining things to Siryl. The woman had resented their going off without her, even though she had wanted no part of the trip. But now her hurt scorn had cooled down to an unbelieving interest. In a way, the captain thought, she had been right all along. But she didn’t seem to be enjoying it. He started to turn over.

Siryl screamed thinly. By the time he could look, she was throwing Aevan’s notebook away and whimpering. “No!” Her voice was low now, but rising slowly toward hysteria as Derek got off the bed. “No. No! It can’t be telepathy!”

“It is,” Derek assured her. “I tested it. So did Kayel.”

Her face contorted, and she swung toward him, groping for support. She found his shoulder and buried her face in it, clinging to him, her nails digging into his back as she strained closer. “Take me away! Derek, take me away. I can’t stand having them read my mind—every thought I ever had, every wish…. Derek!”

He reached up to disentangle the hands that were trying to dig through his backbone. “Siryl—” he began.

She flung herself from him and groped toward the door. But Kayel was there, his tortured face sympathetic. The little man caught her, and she dragged herself against him. He drew her closer while she sobbed, standing the pain of her hysteria as if he were being -knighted.

“I’ll protect you, Siryl. Some way I’ll protect you. They aren’t going to read your mind. I won’t let them.” He was scowling furiously with some effort as he tried to comfort her. His eyes turned toward Derek. “Maybe if they know about their god now, they’re upset! Maybe they won’t think too well. Get Lari, Derek—she’s not very suspicious, I hope. And don’t think about anything except that Siryl’s sick.”

The woman had whimpered at the mention of Lari’s name. Kayel drew her down beside him, rubbing her hair gently. “There, there, baby. Nobody is going to read your mind now.”

Derek found Lari in the kitchen, naturally, and brought her back with him. She was wearing her big apron with the amulet pockets, and moved ahead of him with the bowl in her hands clattering against one of them while she went on stirring—the picture of a quiet housewife, Derek thought bitterly. With the power of a god!

“Lari,” Kayel told her, “Siryl’s sick. We’re not just like you. We’re neurotics—we have been since the Collapse. We need things you don’t have which are on the Sepelora—Ferad will need them, too. Can you send Siryl and Derek up for them? They’ll know where to find the drugs.”

Derek started to protest. But this was more important to the physicist than escape. He was being the space knight who could slay monsters for his lady. The captain glanced at Lari, trying to keep his thoughts down. She puzzled over it, but seemed completely unsuspicious. It must have been a hard day for her already, and her mind wasn’t on the request.

“I guess so,” she answered. “If I sort of pretend god is still there and use the amulet. I’ll have to concentrate. You stir this till I work it.” She handed the bowl to Kayel, who took it quickly, keeping the swirling bubbles in the mixture going.

Lari pulled out the amulet and clutched it firmly. She bent over it, hesitated, and looked up. “No sense in two of you going for a few drugs,” she commented, and clenched her hand.

Derek found himself in the control room of the Sepelora, beside a new bank of instruments. He let out a yell of protests at the miscarriage of Kayel’s plans, but his finger hit the red button that was still marked firing pin. There was no way he could go back for them, nothing he could do to help. And he was still captain of the ship, in the service of the Federation, with a job to do.

The Sepelora came to life. There was no blanking out of the ports, but the stars began rushing by at an incredible rate, while the radar checked them and threw the ship about to :av6id a direct hit. They were making better than a thousand light-years an hour!

Derek found the instructions beside the new panel and began setting their course for Sirius. He had no idea of how the machines worked, but that would be for experts if he got back; and it was something to aid the Federation, at least.

He could feel the breath of fear blowing down his neck as he worked frantically. Lari might not be able to handle a time-negation field. She might have to waste tune in hunting for Skora. Or perhaps none of them could work through this. Perhaps there was no way to locate him. He could be sure of nothing, except that each thousand light-years gave him a slight added reason for hope—but sure that it wasn’t enough reason, even so.

He wondered about Siryl and Kayel. She might be sick at their failure, but she was probably female enough to appreciate the attempt Kayel had made more than the fact that he hadn’t delivered. And she’d been rocked by telepathy enough to seek comfort where she could find it and in the strongest manner.

Then he went back to worrying, staring back in the direction of Vanir. He had no idea of how far they could reach. Maybe they could throw things farther than they could suck them in. The Waraok had been tossed two hundred thousand light-years. But the people of Vanir had gone out only a few light-years to bring supplies. Maybe he was already safe.

He began to think so as the hours drifted by. And he began to appreciate the time-negation field more as he saw the simplicity of the generators. He could already construct another set from memory, if he had to. With this, the Federation still might win.

Worry over pursuit kept him from sleeping until fatigue finally took over. That day and the next went by. Then the next.

He went to bed with more confidence. He’d underestimated the speed of the new drive and was already half the distance back to Sirius—they should have stopped him before that, since he was now near some of the outer fringes of the Federation. He considered landing on one, but decided against it. The farther he went, the better. And the new drive should be taken directly to headquarters.

In the so-called morning, his head was aching as if the back of his skull were about to split, and the wqrry had returned. There was no reason for it, except the jinx that had become such a part of him. He swallowed anodynes and fought off some of the pain, but it kept coming back, as if something were bursting inside.

He made his way up to the control room, while the feeling that he had lost grew stronger and stronger inside him. He should have remembered that the anodyne was a depressant. It wouldn’t do to go into a fit of depression now, while he was nearing home.

He opened the door to the precabin, strode through it, and into the cabin beyond. Then he stopped.

Skora sat in a seat there, staring at the great spread of stars that streaked across the ports. This time there were no pants of homespun and no scrape over the old shoulders. The beard was still there, but shortened and trimmed. It projected over the collar of a Federation Fleet uniform—and on the side of the collar was pinned the double cluster of a galaxy commander!

The old man saluted crisply, smiling in amusement at the gesture, and waited while Derek’s arm automatically returned the honor. “As you were, Captain!” Then he sobered. “As you can see, Derek, your words made an impression on me. Vanir couldn’t stand in a backwater, hoping that men would never catch up. Nor could we forget that we belonged to the race of mankind and were all brothers. Telepaths are unusually sensitive to that argument, once it’s pointed out to them. I couldn’t convince enough of our council. But after I teleported myself to Sirius and convinced your command there, it was too late for Vanir to retrench. We aren’t limited to one planet now, clinging to the memory of a decaying god. Now there are two million of us being fitted for your uniforms—enough to win your war without having to destroy the enemy we both fought once before.”

“And I suppose headquarters took one look at what you could do and made you all officers,” Derek said bitterly, remembering the years he’d spent fighting for a mere sector commander’s rating.

The pain in his head broke over him again, and he doubled over. Skora seemed not to notice.

“It wasn’t hard, Derek. They were paralyzed with fear of new weapons until they were beginning to lose the battle. Your command had its own superstitions. And reading their minds helped me to find ways of convincing them. Then, when I could, I came to take you back. I’ve been waiting here for you for hours—though not idly.”

The pain hit a sharp peak and faded somewhat. Skora was staring at him intently, and he covered the remaining pain under automatic questions. “How’s Siryl? And I suppose Kayel is happy working out more of the mathematics for you?”

“Siryl—” Skora paused and shrugged. “Kayel had her promise to marry him, of course, and is a new man. She is recovering, we hope, since he made her a metal net and told her it would keep us from reading her mind. It won’t, if we try, but she needs her little superstition, if she’s to stop hating us.”

Derek stared out at the stars rushing by, knowing he had won what he had been sent to win—and had lost the Federation. His jinx had outgrown him, and had spread to the whole race.

Now Siryl hated and feared the men of Vanir for their power to see the things which a prude must conceal within her own mind. She might get over that; perhaps she could learn to accept their power. But in time, all the women on Federation planets would have to hate the telepaths—not for themselves, but for the sake of the children who should never be born into the life that must come.

Skora had spent a few days gaining himself the coveted rank of Galaxy Commander, while Derek had never dared to hope he could rise that high in a lifetime. And Skora’s people could have everything they wanted for the asking.

Monsters were loose on the world. Until power could corrupt them, they might be kind monsters. But they were worse than any enemy defeat could have been. They would save the Federation, but after the triumph, those most fit would own it. The men who had built the star ships would never control the future—that would be left for the conquering march of the men who .had done nothing, but had simply been given a power denied to the rest of the race.

“There was an old legend,” Skora said suddenly. “About a boy who lived with some kind of animals. When men discovered him at the age of twelve, he was a savage. He was unable to talk—and nobody learned how to teach him. Yet his powers of speech were latently as good as those of any man.”

The pain had lashed out again at the man’s words. Derek let them slip over his mind without trying to understand. Skora was reading his mind, but it didn’t matter. He went on thinking, forced to recognize that he had brought total defeat to all nontelepathic men. If there had been any hope…

But the psychologists and geneticists had looked for the power of telepathy in the current race, and had found none.

Skora stirred impatiently. “Telepathy never occurred strongly in men more than once in perhaps a billion births. Even in the group at the place where god found us, only Moskez had any great power, after all the careful breeding for it. He had to teach it to the others, so that they would not be wolf-boys in the world which the explosion left them. And Lari and Ferad are having a child—who will learn, like all the rest of us, even though Ferad is its father.”

Derek groped for the hope, and then shrugged. It was a good line for the rest of the worlds. It would give them faith in their future, while Vanir replaced them. They could believe that with a little more work and time, they would slowly develop the power—and their “teachers” would find ways of convincing them they were succeeding. Maybe they needed that faith, no matter how wrong it was. They would forget the legends that spoke of a time when the strange psi factor was bred out of the, race—for the benefit of a few, as he now knew. They would pretend there was only one race, instead of the two into which it had been split.

The pain caught him again, and Skora got up sympathetically to rub the back of his neck. It helped. “Men,” the old man told him, “have been finding ways to claim they are not all one race since there first were human beings. But it’s still wrong. And science has made mistakes, while legends are only superstitions.”

The old fingers found the spot of greatest anguish and began rubbing it out. Derek looked up, grateful in spite of his bitterness against what had been done. “The advantage of being a telepath,” he admitted. “You know where the pain is. Thanks, Skora.”

It always hurts at first, Skora’s voice said softly.

His lips had been tightly shut, and he was smiling. Derek felt his body tauten, and his eyes froze on the unmoving lips, while the voice continued quietly somewhere in his mind.

It takes time, Skora’s voice went on, with a warmth that had always been lacking in it before. And it hurts. So does the loss of some of the things we believe—that we are persecuted, that we must depend on god, that incomplete knowledge and old legends can tell us everything, or that we are more than one race. Telepathy is never easy for an adult, Derek. But with it, we can unite our whole race—perhaps even the ones we call an enemy!

The pain was gone now, leaving only a strange sense of completion behind it. Derek stumbled to his feet, choking over words that would not come.

The old man caught his mind, smiling, and led him to the viewing port.

“Sector Commander Derek,” he said aloud, while the warm soft echo of the words came into the former captain’s mind, “out there is man’s kingdom. All of space! But there’s no room there for any more of the superstitions we’ve all had too long.”

Derek looked out through the ports toward the stars

that rushed by the Sepelora, while the ship carried the two men into their future.

There was no jinx reflected in the port glass. There were only the images of two faces, smiling back at him.