A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales

The Guided Man

"All you do," said the salesman for the Telagog Company, "is flip this switch at the beginning of the crisis. That sends out a radio impulse, which is picked up here and routed by the monitor to the proper controller."

Ovid Ross peered past the salesman at the man seated in the booth. Gilbert Falck, he understood the man's name to be, but nobody would know him under that helmet, from which a thick cable passed in a sagging curve to the control board before him.

"So he takes over?" said Ross.

"Exactly. Suppose you've let yourself in for a date where there'll be dancing, and you don't know how?"

"I do, kind of," said Ovid Ross.

"Well, let's suppose you don't. We have in the booth, by prearrangement, our Mr. Jerome Bundy, who's been a ballet dancer and a ballroom dancing teacher — "

"Did somebody call me?" said a man, putting his head out of another control booth into the corridor behind the row of booths.

"No, Jerry," said the salesman, whose name was Nye. "Just using you as an example. Aren't you still on?"

"No, he gave me the over-and-out."

"See?" said the salesman. "Mr. Bundy is controlling a man — needless to say we don't mention our clients' names — who's trying to become a professional ballet dancer. He's only so-so, but with Jerry running him by remote control he puts on the finest tour-jeté you ever saw. Or suppose you can't swim —"

"Shucks," said Ovid Ross, staring at his knuckles. He was a long, big-boned young man with hands and feet large even in proportion to the rest of him, and knuckles oversized for even such hands. "I can swim and dance, kind of, and most of those things. Even play a little golf. My trouble is — well, you know."

"Well?"

"Here I am, just a big hick from Rattlesnake, Montana, trying to get on among all these slick operators in New York, where everybody's born with his hand in somebody else's pocket. When I go up against them it scares the behooligers out of me. I get embarrassed and trip over my big feet."

"In such a case," said Nye, "we choose controllers specializing in the roles of sophisticate, man-of-the-world, and so forth. Our Mr. Falck here is experienced in such parts. So are Mr. Abrams and Mr. Van Etten. Mr. Bundy is what you might call a second-string sophisticate. When he's not controlling a man engaged in dancing or athletic sports, he relieves one of the others I mentioned."

"So, if I sign up with you, and tomorrow I go see this publisher guy who eats horseshoes and spits out the nails, to ask for a job, you can take over?"

"Easiest thing in the world. Our theory is: no man is a superman! So, when faced with a crisis you can't cope with, call us in. Let a specialist take control of your body! You don't fill your own teeth or make your own shoes, do you? Then why not let our experts carry you through such crises as getting a job, proposing to a girl, or making a speech? Why not?" Nye's eyes shone.

"I dunno why not," said Ross. "But that reminds me. I got — I've got girl trouble too. Can you really take care of that?"

"Certainly. One of the controllers is the former actor Barry Wentworth. During his youth, he was the idol of frustrated women throughout the nation, and he succeeded in acquiring nine real-life wives as well as innumerable less formal romances. We'll do the courtship, the proposal, and everything for you."

Ross looked suspiciously at the salesman. "Dunno as I like that 'everything.'"

Nye spread his hands. "Only at your request. We have no thought of controlling a client beyond his desires. What we do is to compel you to do what you really wish to do, but lack the skill or the nerve to do."

"Say, here's another thing."

"Yes?"

"Is there any carry-over effect? In other words, uh, if a controller puts me through some act like swimming, will I learn to do that better from having the controller do an expert job with my carcass?"

"We believe so, though the psychologists are still divided. We think that eventually telagog control will be accepted as a necessary part of all training for forms of physical dexterity or skill, including such things as singing and speech-making. But that's in the future."

"Another thing," said Ross. "This gadget would give a controller a wonderful chance for — uh — practical jokes. Say the controllee was a preacher who hired you to carry him through a tough sermon, and the controller had it in for him, or maybe just had a low sense of humor. What would stop the controller from making the preacher tell stag-party stories from the pulpit?"

The salesman's face took on a look of pious horror. "Nobody in this organization would think of such a thing! If he did, he'd be fired before he could say 'hypospatial transmission.' This is a serious enterprise, with profound future possibilities."

Ross gave the sigh of a man making a fateful decision. "Okay, then. Guess I'll have to go without lunch for a while to pay for it, but if your service does what you say it'll be worth it. Give me the forms."

When Ross had signed the contract with the Telagog Company, the salesman said: "Now we'll have to decide which class of telagog receiver to fit you with. For full two-way communication you use this headset with this hypospatial transmitter in your pocket. It's fairly conspicuous ..."

"Too much so for me," said Ross.

"Then we have this set, which looks like a hearing aid and has a smaller pocket control unit. This doesn't let you communicate by hypospatial broadcast with the controller, but it does incorporate an off-switch so you can cut off the controller. And, if you have to communicate with him, you can write a note and hold it up for him to see with your eyes."

"Still kind of prominent. Got 'ny others?"

"Yes, this last kind is invisible for practical purposes." The salesman held up a lenticular object about the size of an eyeglass lens but thicker, slightly concave on one face and thin around the edge. "This is mounted on top of your head, between your scalp and your skull."

"How about controls?"

"You can't cut off the controller, but you can communicate by clicks with this pocket wireless key. One click means 'take over,' two is 'lay off but stand by,' and three is 'over-and-out,' or 'that's all until the next schedule.' If you want to arrange a more elaborate code with your controller, that's up to you."

"That looks like me," said Ross. "But have you got to bore holes in my skull for the wires?"

"No. That's the beauty of this Nissen metal. Although the wires are only a few molecules thick, they're so strong that when the receiver is actuated and their coils are released they shoot right through your skull into your brain without making holes you can see except under the strongest microscope."

"Okay," said Ovid Ross.

"First we'll have to fit you and install the receiver. You'll take a local anesthetic, won't you?"

"I guess so. Whatever you say."

"Then you'd better have a practice session with your controllers. They have to get used to your body, you know."

"Rather," said Gilbert Falck, taking off his helmet. He was a smallish blond young man about Ovid Ross's age. "You wouldn't want to knock your coffee-cup over because your arm is longer than mine, would you?"

The gold lettering on the frosted-glass part of the door said:

1026

HOOLIHAN PUBLICATIONS

THE GARMENT GAZETTE

Ovid Ross had stood in front of this door for fifteen awful seconds with his hand outstretched but not quite touching the knob, as if he feared an electric shock. God almighty, why did one have to be young and green and embarrassable? And from Rattlesnake, Montana? Then he remembered, reached into his pocket, and pushed the switch-button, once.

He remembered what he had been taught: as the controller took over, relax gradually. Not too suddenly, or you might fall in a heap on the floor. That would not make a good impression on a prospective employer.

The feeling of outside control stole over him with an effect like that of a heavy slug of hard liquor. He relaxed. A power outside his body was seeing with his eyes and sensing with his other senses. This power reached his arm out and briskly opened the door. Without volition on his part, he realized that he had stridden in and said to the girl at the switchboard behind the hole in the glass window, in friendly but firm and confident tones:

"Will you please tell Mr. Sharpe that Mr. Ross is here to see him? I'm expected."

Ross thought that, alone, he would have stumbled in, goggled wordlessly at the girl, stuttered, and probably ended by slinking out without seeing Sharpe at all. The control was not really complete — semi-automatic acts like breathing and walking were still partly under Ross's control — but Falck had taken over all the higher functions.

Presently he was shaking hands with Addison Sharpe, the managing editor, a small man with steel-rimmed glasses. Ross amazed himself by the glibness with which his tongue threw off the correct pleasantries:

"A very nice plant you have, sir ... I'm sure I shall enjoy it ... Yes, the salary mentioned by the agency will be satisfactory, though I hope eventually to convince you I'm really worth more ... References? Mr. Maurice Vachek of The Clothing Retailer; Mr. Joseph McCue of A. S. Glickman Fabrics ..."

Not a word to indicate that this same McCue had pounded his desk and shouted, when firing Ovid Ross: "And here you are, a college man, who couldn't sell bed-warmers to Eskimos! What the hell good's your fancy education if it don't teach you nothing useful?"

Luckily, McCue had promised to give him a good reference — provided the job were anything but selling. Ross was pleased to observe that his body's deportment under Falck's control, while much improved, was not altered out of all recognition. He still spoke his normal General American instead of with Falck's more easterly accents.

Addison Sharpe was saying: "You'll find working conditions here a little unusual."

"So?" said Falck-Ross.

"For one thing, Mr. Hoolihan likes nearness. That means everybody cleans his desk completely before he goes home at night. Everything but the telephone, the calendar, the ash tray, and the blotter pad has to be out of sight."

Ross felt his controller start a little. No wonder! This would be Ovid Ross's third trade journal, and never before had he come across such a ruling. Normally, staff writers and editors were allowed to build mares' nests of paper on their desks to suit themselves, so long as they delivered the goods.

"For another," continued Sharpe, "Mr. Hoolihan disapproves of his employees' fraternizing with each other outside of working hours. He considers it bad for discipline."

At this outrageous ukase, Ross felt Falck jerk again.

"Finally," said Sharpe, "Mr. Hoolihan has a very acute sense of time. He takes it much amiss if his employees show up so much as one minute late, so the rest of us make a habit of arriving fifteen minutes early in the morning to allow for delays. Also, I advise you not to get in the habit of taking your newspaper down to the men's room to read, or ducking out for a mid-morning cup of coffee. The staff-writer you're replacing thought he couldn't live without his ten-o'clock coffee. That's why you're here and he isn't."

Ross had an urge to ask how you got to be a trusty. However, he had no control over his vocal organs, and Falck was too well-trained for any such breaks.

"Now," said Sharpe, "we'll go in to see Mr. Hoolihan."

The tyrant overflowed his swivel chair: a big stout red-faced man with a fringe of graying hair around his pink dome of a scalp and great bushy eyebrows. Timothy Hoolihan extended a paw and wrung Ross's hand. He made. Ross's bones creak, despite the fact that Ross had gotten his start in life by pitching hay and throwing calves around.

"Glad to have you!" barked Hoolihan in a staccato voice like a burst of machine-gun fire. "You do as we tell you, no reason we can't get along. Here! Read this! Part of every new employee's indoctrination. Ever hear of Frederick Winslow

Taylor? Should have! Hundred years old and still makes sense."

Falck-Ross glanced down at the brochure: a reprint of an ancient homily by Taylor on the duties of an employee.

"Now, you hang around a couple of days, reading the files, getting oriented, and we'll put you in a definite assignment. Good luck! Take him away, Addison!"

Overawed by this human dynamo, Ross was conscious of Falck's making some glib but respectful rejoinder and directing his body out of the office.

For the first time since he had entered the office suite occupied by The Garment Gazette, Ross began to try to regain control. He urged his right hand towards the pocket in which reposed the little clicker key by which he communicated with Falck. Evidently Falck realized what he was up to, for he relaxed control long enough for Ross to get his hand into that pocket and press the knob, twice.

At once Falck's control ceased. Ross, not catching himself quite in time, stumbled and recovered. Sharpe turned his head to give him an owlish stare. The managing editor took him around and introduced him to a half-dozen other people: staff writers (called "editors" on this paper), an advertising manager, and so forth. Then Sharpe showed Ross a cubicle with a desk.

"Yours," he said. "Say, are you feeling all right?"

"Sure. Why?"

"I don't know. When we came out of Mr. Hoolihan's office your manner seemed to change. You're not sick, are you?"

"Never felt better."

"Heart all right? We wouldn't like you to conk out on us before you've worked long enough to pull your weight."

"No, sir. My heart was good enough for me to be a practicing cowboy, so I guess this won't hurt it."

Ross settled down at his new desk to read the Taylor article, the burden of which seemed to be that to get ahead one should practice abject submission to one's employer's slightest whim. While he was absorbing the eminent engineer's advice, one of the girls came in and placed on his desk a big ring binder containing last year's accumulation of file copies of The Garment Gazette, which he read.

What Mr. Hoolihan really needed, he thought, was a multiple telagog set by which he could control all his employees all at once and all the time.

During the lunch hour, Ovid Ross telephoned the Telagog Company and asked for Gilbert Falck. After some delay a voice said:

"Falck speaking."

"This is Ross, Ovid Ross. Say, it worked! I got the job!"

"Oh, I know that. I monitored you for a half-hour after you shut me off, and cut in on you at odd minutes later."

"Oh. But say, I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated it. Uh. It's wonderful. Could I — could I blow you to a drink this evening after work?"

"Wait till I look at my schedule ... Okay, five to six is free. Drop by on your way from work, eh?"

Ovid Ross did. He found Falck, in line with his role as professional man-of-the-world, cordial but not unduly impressed by his accomplishment in getting Ross a job. When the first pair of drinks had been drunk, Falck bought a second round. Ross asked:

"What I don't see is, how on earth do you do it? I have a hard enough time managing things like that for myself, let alone for some other guy."

Falck made an airy motion. "Experience, my lad, practice. And balance. A certain mental co-ordination so you automatically roll with the punch and shoot for every opening. I've got rather a tough case coming up tomorrow. Client wants to put over a merger, and it'll take all my savoir-faire to see him through it." He sipped. "Then, too, the fact that it's not my job or my business deal or my dame helps. Gives me a certain detachment I mightn't have about my own affairs."

"Like surgeons don't usually operate on their own kinfolk?"

"Exactly."

Ovid Ross did some mental calculations, subtracting the employment agency's fee and the charges of the Telagog Company from his assets, and decided that he could afford to buy one more round. By the time this had been drunk, he was in excellent spirits. He told Falck of Hoolihan's quirks. Falck commented:

"Why, the damned little Napoleon! If he said that to me, I'd tell him where to stick his job." Falck glanced at his watch. "What's next on your agenda?"

"I don't think I'll need any control for the next day or two, but as soon as I get oriented they're liable to send me out on an interview. So you better stand by."

"Okay. Try to call me a little in advance to brief me. I want to cut Bundy in on your sensory circuits in case he has to substitute for me."

When he got to the Y.M.C.A. where he lived, Ovid Ross telephoned a White Plains number and got an answer in a strong Russian accent:

"Who is cullink, pliz?"

"Mr. Ross would like to — uh — speak to Miss La Motte."

"Oh. Vait." Then after a long pause: "Is that you, Ovid?"

"Uh. Sure is. Know what? I got the job!"

"Splendid! Are you working now?"

"Yeah. It's a high-powered place as trade journals go. I only hope I can stick the boss."

"Don't you like him?"

"No, and neither does anybody else. But it's money. Say, Claire!"

"Yes?"

"I met a swell guy. Name of Falck. A real man-of-the-world. Knows his way around."

"Good. I hope you see more of him."

"How are the wild Russians?"

"About the same. I had a terrible row with Peshkova."

"Yeah? How come?"

"I was teaching the boys American history, and she claimed I wasn't putting enough dialectical materialism into it. I should have explained that the American Revolution was a plot by the American bourgeoisie to acquire exclusive exploitation of the masses instead of having to share it with the British aristocracy. And I said a few things about if even the Russians had given up that line, why should I teach it? We were yelling at one another when Peshkov came in and made peace."

"Has he made any more passes?" asked Ross anxiously.

"No, except to stare at me with that hungry expression all the time. It gives me the creeps."

"Well, some day ..." Ross's voice trailed off. He wanted to say something like: "Some day I'll marry you and then you won't have to tutor an exiled ex-commissar's brats any more."

But, in the first place, he was too shy; in the second, he did not know Claire La Motte well enough;' and, in the third, he was not in a position to take on costly commitments.

"Did you say something?" inquired Claire.

"No — that is — uh — I wondered when we'd get together again."

"I know! Are you busy Sunday?"

"Nope."

"Then come on up here. The Peshkovs will be gone all weekend, and the hired couple are going down to Coney. Bring your friend Mr. Falck, and his girl-friend if he has one."

"Uh? Swell idea! I'll ask him."

Claire La Motte gave Ross directions for reaching the estate which the Peshkovs had bought in Westchester County. After they had hung up, Ovid Ross sat staring at the telephone. He had been hoping for such an invitation. Ever since he had met Claire the previous winter, she had promised to have him to the Peshkovs' place in May or June, and now June was almost over. The Peshkovs had never absented themselves long enough.

Then his old fear of embarrassment — erythrophobia, a psychologist had told him — rose up to plague him. Suppose Falck rebuffed his invitation? The thought gave him shivers. If only he could tender the invitation while under telagog control! But since Falck was his regular controller, he could hardly work it that way. And, having promised Claire, he would have to go through with this project.

Through Wednesday and Thursday, orientation continued at The Garment Gazette. Ross read proof, helped Sharpe with makeup, and wrote heads: AUSTRALIAN WOOL DOWN; FALL FASHIONS FEATURE FUCHSIA; ILGWU ELECTS KATZ. Friday morning Addison Sharpe said:

"We're sending you out this afternoon to interview Marcus Baffin."

"The Outstanding Knitwear man?"

"Yes."

"What about? Anything special?"

"That's what you're to find out. He called up to say he was planning something new in shows. First he talked to Mr. Hoolihan, who got mad and passed the call on to me. Baffin asked if we'd like to run a paragraph or two on this show, so

I said I'd send a man. Heffernan's out so you'll have to take care of it."

"I'll do my best," said Ross.

Sharpe said: "It's about time we ran a feature on Marcus anyway. Quite a versatile and picturesque character."

"What's his specialty?"

"Oh, he plays the violin. He once went on an expedition he financed himself to find some bug in South America. Take the portrait Leica along and give him the works. His place is at 135 West Thirty-seventh Street."

Ovid Ross telephoned the Telagog Company and made a luncheon date with Gilbert Falck. During lunch he told what he knew of his impending ordeal. Falck found a spot on his schedule when he could take charge of the interview.

Ross also screwed up his nerve to pass on Claire's proposal for the week-end to Falck, who said:

"Thanks, rather. I shall be glad to. Shall we go in your car or mine?"

"Mine, since I made the invitation."

"Fine. I'll get a girl."

"Hey!" said Ross. "If you come along to Westchester you can't be in your booth controlling me if I run into an embarrassing situation."

Falck raised his blond eyebrows. "What's embarrassing about a picnic with your best girl?"

"Oh, you know."

"No I don't, unless you tell me."

Ross twisted his fingers. "I don't know her awfully well, but I think she's — she's — uh — well, I suppose you'd say I was nuts about her. And — and I always feel like I'm making a fool of myself."

Falck laughed. "Oh, that. Jerry Bundy's on Sunday, so I'll tell him to monitor you and be ready to take over."

Ross said: "You should call yourselves the John Alden Company."

Falck smiled. "Bring on your Priscilla, and we'll bundle her for you."

They parted, and Ross plunged back into the swarming garment district. He killed time, watching sweating shipping clerks push hand trucks loaded with dresses, until his controller returned to his booth and came on the hypospace. Then Ross sent in the signal.

Marcus Ballin (Outstanding Knitwear: sweaters, T-shirts, bathing suits) was a medium-sized man with sparse gray hair and somewhat the air of one of the more amiable Roman emperors. Ovid Ross soon learned that his trepidations about having the man insult him or clam up had been needless. Marcus Ballin loved to talk, he was a fascinating talker, and best of all he loved talking about himself.

Over the background noise of the knitting machines in the suite of lofts that comprised his empire, Ballin, with eloquent gestures of his cigar, poured into Falck-Ross's ears the story of his many activities. He told of his travels, his fun with his airplane and his violin, his charitable and settlement work, until Ross, a prisoner for the nonce in his own skull, wondered how this man of parts found time to be also one of the most successful garment manufacturers in New York.

Falck-Ross said: "But, sir, how about that special show?"

"Oh, that." Ballin chuckled. "Just a little stunt to help my fall line. Fm putting on a show for the buyers with a contest."

"A contest?"

"Absolutely. To choose the most beautiful bust in America."

"What? But Mr. Ballin, won't the cops interfere?"

Ballin laughed. "I wasn't intending to parade the girls in the nude. Nobody in the garment trade would encourage nudism; he'd be ostracized. They'll all be wearing Outstanding sweaters."

"But how can you be sure some of 'em aren't — ah — boosting their chances by artificial means?"

"Not this time. These sweaters will be so thin the judges can tell."

"Who are the judges?"

"Well, I'm one, and I got the sculptor Joseph Aldi for the second. The third I haven't picked out. I called that stuffed-shirt publisher of yours, but he turned me down. Let me see ..."

"Mr. Ballin," Ross to his horror heard himself say, "I'm sure I should make a good judge."

Ovid Ross was horrified for three reasons: first, to judge so intimate a matter in public would embarrass him to death; second, he thought it would impair his standing with Claire La Motte if she found out; finally, he would never, never come right out and ask anybody for anything in that crass way. He struggled to get his hand on the switch, but Gilbert Falck kept the bit in his teeth.

"Yeah?" said Ballin. "That's an idea."

"I've got good eyesight," continued Falck, ignoring the mental squirmings of Ross, "and no private axes to grind ..."

Falck continued his line of sales chatter until Ballin said: "Okay, you're in, Mr. Ross."

"Whenisittobe?"

"Next Thursday. I've already got over thirty entries, but next year if I repeat it there ought to be a lot more. We'd have to set up some sort of preliminary screening."

Falck wound up the interview and took Ross's body out of the Outstanding Knitwear offices. Ross heard his body say:

"Well, Ovid old boy, there's an opportunity most men would fight tooth and nail for. Anything to say before I sign off? Write it on your pad."

As Falck released control, Ross wrote a couple of dirty words on the pad, adding: "You got me into this; you'll have to see me through."

Falck, taking over again, laughed. "Rather! I have every intention of doing so, laddie."

Back at the Gazette, Addison Sharpe whistled when he heard Ross's story. He said:

"I don't know how the boss will like your getting in on this fool stunt. He turned Ballin down in no uncertain terms."

"I'd think it would be good publicity for the paper," said Ross.

"Well, Mr. Hoolihan has funny ideas; quite a Puritan. You wait while I speak to him."

Ross sat down and wrote notes on his interview until Sharpe said: "This way, Ovid."

The managing editor led him into Hoolihan's office, where the advertising manager was already seated. Hoolihan barked:

"Ross, call up Ballin and tell him it's no go! At once! I won't have my clean sheet mixed up in his burlesque act!"

"But, Mr. Hoolihan!" wailed the advertising manager. "Mr. Ballin has just taken a whole page for the October issue, and if you insult him he'll cancel it! And you know what our advertising account looks like right now."

"Oh?" said Hoolihan. "I don't let advertisers dictate my editorial policies!"

"But that's not all. Mike Ballin, his brother — or rather one of his brothers — is the bigshot at the Pegasus Cutting Machine Company, another advertiser."

"Hm. That's another story."

As the great man pondered his problems, the advertising manager added slyly: "Besides, if you don't let Ross judge, Ballin will simply get somebody from The Clothing Retailer or Women's Wear or one of the other sheets, and they'll get whatever benefit —"

"I see," interrupted Hoolihan. "Ross! You go through with this act as planned, but heaven help you if you bring us any unfavorable notoriety! Keep yourself in the background. Play it close to your chest. No stunts! Get me? All right, back to work!"

"Yes, Mr. Hoolihan," said Ovid Ross.

"Yes, Mr. Hoolihan," said Addison Sharpe.

"Yes, Mr. Hoolihan," said the advertising manager.

Ovid Ross spent most of Saturday shining up his small middle-aged convertible and touching up the necks in the paint. He had to journey up to the Bronx to get to it, because automobile storage fees had become prohibitively high in Manhattan.

Sunday morning, the sky was so overcast that Ross had doubts about his party. The paper, however, said fair, warm, and humid. By the time he went all the way up again by subway, got the car, and drove back to Manhattan to pick up Falck and his girl, the sun was burning its way through the overcast.

Falck directed Ross to drive around to a brownstone front house in the west seventies to get the girl, whom he introduced as a Miss Dorothea Dunkelberg. She was a plump girl, very young-looking, and pretty in a round-faced bovine way. She was the kind whom their elders describe as "sweet" for want of any more positive attribute.

They spun through a hot, humid forenoon up the Westchester parkways to the Peshkov estate near White Plains. As they turned in the driveway between the stone posts, Falck said:

"These Russkys rather did all right by themselves, didn't they?"

"Yeah," said Ross. "When they liquidated all the Commies in the revolution of '79, Peshkov was Commissar of the Treasury or something and got away with a couple of trunk-loads of foreign securities."

"And he's been allowed to keep them?"

"The new Russian Commonwealth has been trying to get hold of that dough ever since, but Peshkov keeps it hidden away or tied up in legal knots."

"And your Miss La Motte tutors his kids?"

"That's right. She doesn't like 'em much, but it's money."

"Why, what sort of folks are they?"

"Well, to give you an idea, Peskhov's idea of a jolly evening is to sit all alone in his living room with a pistol on the table beside him, drinking vodka and staring into space. Claire tells me he's been getting moodier and moodier ever since those anti-Communist Russians tried to assassinate him last year."

A tremendous barking broke out. Around the corner of the house streaked a half-dozen Russian wolfhounds with long snaky heads thrust forward and long legs pumping like steel springs. The dogs rushed to where the automobile was slowly crunching up the winding gravel driveway and began racing around it like Indians circling a prairie schooner.

"Do we have to fight our way through those?" said Dorothea Dunkelberg. "They scare me."

"Claire will handle 'em," said Ross with more conviction than he felt. "She says they're friendly but dumb."

The sun glinted on red hair as a figure in a play-suit appeared beside the mansion. Claire La Motte's voice came shrilly:

"Ilya! Olga! Come here! Here, Dmitri! Behave yourself, Anastasia!"

The dogs loped off towards the house, where the girl seized a couple by their collars and dragged them out of sight around the corner. The others followed. Presently, Claire appeared again and waved an arm towards the parking space. Ross parked and got out.

As Claire La Motte approached the car, Ovid Ross reached into his pocket and pressed his switch button, once. Now, he hoped, he would show up all right in comparison with his slick friend Falck!

He felt Jerome Bundy take over his body and stride it towards the approaching Claire. Behind him he heard a faint wolf-whistle from Falck. Instead of formally shaking hands with her and mumbling something banal while his ears pinkened and his knuckles seemed to swell to the size of baseballs, Ross heard his body bellow:

"Hi there, beautiful!"

Then it clamped its hands around Claire's small waist and hoisted her to arm's length overhead. He let her slip back into his arms, briefly hugged the breath out of her, and dropped her to the ground. As he did so he thought he caught a smothered murmur:

"Why, Ovid!"

At least, thought Ross, he was glad that Bundy hadn't made him kiss her or spank her behind. It was all very well for his controller to take an attitude of hearty familiarity, but that sort of thing could easily be carried too far. Popular mythology to the contrary notwithstanding, many girls really disliked caveman tactics.

Ross's body then affably introduced Claire La Motte to his new friends. Claire said:

"I thought we'd take a walk around the grounds and then eat a picnic lunch on the edge of the pool. Then later we can take a swim."

"Oh," said Bundy-Ross. "Gil, grab the suits and towels."

Falck brought these objects out of the rear seat of the car and walked after the others.

"Over that way," said Claire, pointing over the trees, "is the Untereiner estate. The Wyckman estate used to be beyond it, but now they're putting up apartment houses on it."

There were the conventional murmurs about the never-ending growth of New York's commutershed, both in size and in population. Claire continued:

"And over that way is the MacFadden estate, only the Mutual Fidelity bought it as a club for their employees. And in that direction is the Heliac Health Club."

"What's that?" said Dorothea Dunkelberg.

"A nudist camp."

"Oh. I thought they weren't allowed in this state?"

"They aren't, but it's become so popular the law's not enforced any more. On the other hand, it can't be repealed because the legislators are afraid the religious groups would raise a fuss."

They started towards the pool when another outbreak of barking halted them. Claire wailed:

"Oh, goodness, they got out again! Dmitri has learned to work the latch with his paw!"

The borzois boiled around the corner of the mansion as if pursuing the biggest wolf in Siberia. One made a playful fifteen-foot spring with its forepaws against Gilbert Falck, sending the telagog controller rolling on the greensward. Towels and bathing suits flew about, to be snatched up by the dogs and borne off fluttering. Claire screamed:

"Yelena! Igor! Behave yourselves!"

No attention did they pay. A couple raced off having a running tug-of-war with Dorothea Dunkelberg's suit, while another amused itself by throwing one of the bath towels into the air and catching it again.

"Playful little fellows," said Falck, getting up and brushing the grass off his pants.

"Very," said Claire, and started to apologize until Falck stopped her.

"Not your fault, lassie. Don't give it a thought." Falck wiped a drop of sweat from his nose. "I'm going to miss those suits, rather. If you find them in the woods, not too badly tattered, you might send 'em back to us."

"Sticky, isn't it?" said Claire. "Anyway we still have the lunch."

"What's to keep these Hounds of the Baskervilles from raiding our food?" asked Ross's body.

"I don't know, until I can get them shut up again and tie the gate closed."

Dorothea said in her faint squeak: "Maybe we could sit in a row on the springboard. They'd be scared to come out over the water, wouldn't they?"

And so it was done. The smell of food attracted the dogs, who lined up on the edge of the pool and whined until Claire, with the men's help, collared them two at a time and led them back to their kennels.

Gilbert Falck wiped his hands on his paper napkin and said: "Excuse me, people. I just remembered a 'phone call. May I use the Peshkov 'phone, Claire?"

He followed Claire into the Peshkovs' palatial living room, where a life-sized portrait of Stalin hung on the wall. As she was pointing out the telephone, Falck casually captured her hand and said:

"I say, Claire, that sofa looks rather comfortable. Why don't we sit down and get better acquainted?"

Claire slipped her hand out of his and said: "You make your call, Gil; I have my other guests to entertain."

Falck sighed and called the Telagog Company. He got Jerome Bundy on the line and said:

"Jerry, your control is laying an egg again. He does all right while you control him, but the minute you let go he just sits staring at the dame with an expression like a hungry wolf."

"Well?"

"I rather thought the next time you take over you'd better give him a more aggressive and uninhibited pattern. The poor jerk will never get anywhere under his own steam."

"I don't know," said Bundy dubiously. "I thought I was giving him an aggressive pattern. I don't want to queer his pitch by —"

"Don't worry about that. His girl just confided to me she wishes he weren't such a stick. Give him the works."

"Okay," said Bundy.

Falck walked out with a knowing grin. When he came in sight of the other three he called:

"Did somebody say something about tennis?"

Ovid Ross immediately switched his control back to Bundy. He had no illusions about his game: a powerful serve and a bullet-like forehand drive, but no control to speak of.

They made it mixed doubles, Ross and Claire against the other two. To his amazement, Ross found his smashes going, not into the net or the wire as usual, but into the corners of the other court where nobody could touch them. Claire was pretty good, Dorothea rather poor, but Gilbert Falck excellent, with a catlike agility that more than made up for his lack of Ross's power. The first set got up to 5-5, then 6-5, then 6-6, then 7-6 ...

Dorothea Dunkelberg wailed: "I can't any more, Gil. I'll pass out in this heat."

"Okay," said Falck smoothly. "No law says we have to. Boy, I rather wish we had those bathing suits. Claire, the Commies wouldn't have some spares, would they?"

"I don't think so; they never keep old clothes. They say in Russia nothing was too good for them and they expect to have it that way here."

They trailed down the little hill from the tennis court and stood looking longingly at the clear, pale-green water in the pool. Ross was aware that Bundy was wiping his forehead for him. Thoughtful of him ... But then Ross was horrified to hear his controller say in that masterful way:

"Who wants bathing suits? Come on, boys and girls, take your clothes off and jump in!"

"What?" squealed Dorothea.

"You heard me. Off with 'em!"

"Well, I have a suit —"began Claire, but Bundy-Ross roared:

"No you don't! Not if the rest of us —"

The next few minutes were, for Ovid Ross's impotent psyche, a time of stark horror. How he got through them without dying of an excess of emotion he never knew. He frantically tried to regain control of his right arm to reach his switch, but Bundy would not let him. Instead Bundy took off Ross's sport-shirt and shorts, wadded them into a ball, and threw them under the springboard, meanwhile exhorting the others to do likewise and threatening to throw them in clad if they refused ...

They were sitting in a row on the edge of the pool, breathing hard with drops streaming off them and splashing the water with their feet. Ross caught a glimpse of Falck looking at him with a curious expression, between displeasure and curiosity, as if something he had carefully planned had gone awry. The controller was showing a tendency to play up to Claire more than Ross liked, so that poor Dorothea was rather ignored. Ross heard Bundy say with his vocal organs:

"We want to be careful not to get that white strip around our middles burned."

"How about finishing that set now?" said Falck.

They got up and walked up the slope to the court. Bundy-Ross, whose serve it was, was just getting his large knobby toes lined up on the backline for a smash when a fresh outburst of barking made all turn. Claire cried:

"Damn! I'll bet they've gotten loose again."

"Isn't that a car?" said Dorothea.

"Oh, gosh!" said Claire as the sun flashed on a windshield down the driveway. "Its the Peshkovs! They weren't supposed to be here till this evening! What'll we do?"

"Make a dash for our clothes," said Falck.

"Too late," said Claire as the purr of the car, hidden behind the mansion, grew louder and then stopped. "Run for the woods!"

She ran into the woods, the others trailing. There were ouches and grunts as bushes scratched their shins and their unhardened soles trod on twigs. Dorothea said:

"Isn't that poison ivy?"

Falck looked. "I rather think it's Virginia creeper, but we'd better not take chances."

"Oh, dear! I hope we don't find a hornets' nest."

Bundy-Ross said: "It would be more to the point to hope a nest of hornets doesn't find us."

They came to a wire fence. Ross heard Bundy say: "That's easy to climb over. Hook your toes over the wire, like this."

"Ouch," said Dorothea. "What's on the other side?"

"The Heliac Health Club," said Claire.

"Rather a bit of luck," said Falck, climbing. "The one place in Westchester County where we're dressed for calling."

Ross thought desperately of the switch that would return control of his body to him. The switch was in the right side pocket of his shorts, and his shorts, along with his other clothes and those of his companions, lay in a heap under the springboard at the edge of the pool.

"Have you ever been here, Claire?" asked Dorothea.

"No, but I have an idea of the layout. This way."

They straggled again through the woods. Presently they found a trail. Dorothea shrieked at the sight of a garter snake.

Claire led them along the trail, until they came out of the woods on to a grassy field. On this field stood, in irregular rows, forty-odd canvas-covered platforms about the size and height of beds. On over half these platforms, the guests of the Heliac Club sat or sprawled in the costume of their avocation, reading, talking, card-playing, or dozing.

One scholarly-looking man, unadorned save for a pipe and pince-nez, sat on the edge of his cot with a portable typewriter in his lap. Beyond, some people played volleyball and other tennis. On the right rose the rear of an old ex-mansion; on the left, a row of dilapidated-looking one-room cabins could be seen.

As his eyes, under Bundy's control, took in the scene, Ovid Ross observed several things about the nudists. There were three or four times as many men as women. Most of the people were middle-aged. They were certainly not there to show off their beauty, for many of the men were paunchy and the women pendulous.

After the initial shock had passed off, Ross became conscious of the white equatorial bands of himself and his companions, compared to the uniform brownness of the sun worshippers. A few of the latter, however, though well-browned elsewhere, displayed an angry red on the areas that gleamed white on his own party: the parts normally covered by shorts and halters.

"Good afternoon," said a voice. Ross saw a severe-looking gray-haired woman, deeply and uniformly browned, confronting them. "Have you people registered and paid your grounds fee?"

"No, but ..." said Falck, then stumbled for words despite his professional suavity.

"Have you references?" said the woman. "We like to know who our guests are."

Ross expected his controller to step into the breach, but even the self-possessed Bundy appeared unable to cope with this situation.

Claire La Motte took the woman aside and explained their predicament. Ross saw the woman's face melt into a smile, then a laugh. Bundy turned Ross's head away to survey the rest of the scene.

Near at hand, on one of the platforms, a well-built middle-aged man with sparse gray hair and the air of an affable Roman emperor smoked a cigar and read a newspaper. Ross was sure that he had seen the man before. The same thought must have occurred to his controller, for Ross's eyes stopped roving with the man right in the center of the field. The man looked up as if conscious of scrutiny. His gaze froze as it rested on Ross as if he, too, thought that he recognized Ross.

Ross heard his voice say: "Why hello, Mr. Ba —"

"Please!" said Marcus Ballin, with so earnest a gesture that Bundy stopped in the middle of the name.

"Everybody goes by first names only here," continued Ballin. "I'm Marcus, you're — uh — what was that first name of yours?"

"Ovid."

"Okay, Ovid. Come a little closer, please." Ballin lowered his voice. "For me it would be particularly bad if this got out. I'd be considered a traitor to my trade. Why, even the garment-trade magazines, yours for instance, run editorials knocking nudism."

"I shouldn't think they'd take it so seriously as that."

"No? Well, you're not old enough to remember when there was a straw-hat industry. Where is it now? Gone, because men don't wear hats in summer any more. And women used to wear stockings in summer too. If everybody ..." Ballin spread his hands.

"What would happen if the word got around?" asked Bundy-Ross. "Would the cutters and operators and pressers line up in a hollow square while the head buyer at Sachs' cut off your buttons?"

"No, but I'd be ostracized at least. It would even affect my business contacts. And my particular branch of the industry, summer sportswear, feels the most keenly about it of any. So you'll keep it quiet, won't you?"

"Sure, sure," said Bundy-Ross, and turned to his companions. The gray-haired woman was going away. Claire explained:

"She's gone to get a play-suit to lend me so I can go back and pick up our clothes."

Bundy-Ross introduced his companions by given names to Ballin, who said: "You've got nice taste in girls, Ovid. Claire should be a model. Did you ever try that, Claire?"

"I thought of it, but I'm not long and skinny enough for a clothes model and not short and fat enough for an artists' model."

"Anyway, Claire's too well-educated," put in Falck.

"To me you look just right," said Ballin. "Say, Ovid, why couldn't she be entered in my contest? The local talent" (he indicated the rest of the club by a motion of an eyebrow) "isn't too promising."

"What contest?" said Claire.

Ballin started to explain, then changed his mind. "Ovid will tell you. I think you'd have an excellent chance, and there's a nice little cash prize. Three prizes, in fact."

"You certainly make me curious," said Claire.

Bundy-Ross said: "If she's a friend of mine, and I'm a judge, wouldn't it look kind of funny?"

"No, no. If Aldi and I thought you were favoring her, we'd outvote you. Anyway, it's my contest, so I can run it as I please. When you can, take her aside and tell her about it."

The gray-haired woman returned with a play-suit. Claire departed at a trot. A few minutes later, she was back with a bundle of clothes.

Ross, as soon as he got his shorts on, strained to get his right hand into his pocket. Bundy let him do so and he pressed the button twice.

Under his own power, Ross walked back along the trail. He lagged behind Falck and Dorothea so that he could begin an elaborate and groveling apology:

"Uh. Claire."

"Yes?"

"I'm — uh — awfully sorry. I don't — uh — know ..."

"Sorry about what?"

"All this. This afternoon. I don't know what got into me."

"For heaven's sake don't apologize! I haven't had so much fun in years."

"You haven't?"

"No. I've had the time of my life. I didn't know you had it in you. By the way, what is this contest?"

A little confused, Ross told her about the contest to select the most beautiful bust. He expected her to spurn the suggestion with righteous wrath and outraged propriety. Instead, she said:

"Why, that was sweet of him! I'm very much flattered." She glanced down at her exhibits. "Tell him ni be glad to enter if I can arrange to get off early enough Thursday."

Women, thought Ovid Ross, have no shame. As he climbed the fence, he revised the intention he had held, to drop in at the offices of the Telagog Company, knock Mr. Jerome Bundy's block off, and demand that the company remove the receiver from his cranium forthwith. Bizarre though the actions of his controller might seem, they seemed to have added up to a favorable impression on Claire.

Moreover, this infernal contest still loomed ahead of him. While he could no doubt beg off from Ballin, such a cowardly act would lower him in Claire's eyes. He'd better plan for telagog control during this crisis at least.

Back on the Peshkovs' grounds, as he neared his automobile, he was intercepted by a stocky man with an expressionless moonface. The man wore an old-fashioned dark suit and even a neck-tie. Claire introduced the man as Commissar Peshkov — Bogdan Ipolitovich Peshkov.

Behind the man hovered another of similar appearance, wearing a derby hat. From what he had heard, Ross took this to be Fadei, the chauffeur-bodyguard. Peshkov extended a limp hand.

"Glad to mit you, Comrade," he said in a mournful voice. "I hup you had a nice time."

Ross shook the hand, collected his party, and drove off.

Early Thursday morning, Gilbert Falck entered the offices of the Telagog Company when nobody else was present. There was not even a single controller carrying a client through an early-morning crisis. Without hesitation, the young man got to work on the mechanism of his control booth and Jerome Bundy's next to it.

With a screwdriver he removed the panel that covered the wiring at the front of the booth. He traced the wiring until he found a place where the return motor leads of his booth and Bundy's ran side by side. With wire cutters he cut both wires and installed a double-pole double-throw knife switch. When the switch was down the controls would operate as usual; when it was up, he would control Bundy's client while Bundy controlled his. However, as the sensory circuits were not affected, each would continue to see, hear, and feel the sensations of his own client.

Falck did not consider himself a heel. But he had fallen heavily in love with Claire La Motte and deemed all fair in love. His effort to have Ross disgrace himself by uninhibited behavior in Westchester had backfired, so that Ross had ended up more solid with Claire than ever.

Ross, while he had not exactly complained to the company about the paces that Bundy had put him through, had asked them to go easy. This request had caused Falck's and Bundy's supervisor to glower suspiciously and to warn the two controllers not to try stunts. Therefore, Falck did not dare to undertake any direct bollixing of his client's actions or to ask Bundy to. He must work by a more subtle method.

He had already tried to date Claire by telephone. She, however, was free only on week-ends and had been dated up solidly for the next two by Ross. After this afternoon's contest, some of those dates might no longer be so solid.

Falck measured the panel. With a hand auger, he drilled two tiny holes in it. Then he looped a length of fishline around the crosspiece of the knife switch and pushed both ends back through the upper hole in the panel from the back. He did likewise with another length of line through the lower hole, screwed the panel back into place, and tautened the lines.

Now he had only to pull hard on the upper double length of fishline to pull the switch from the down to the up position. Then, if he released one end of the line and reeled in the other, he would remove the line entirely from the works and could stuff it into his pocket. Similar operations with the lower line would return the switch to its original position.

Later, when the excitement had died down, he would remove the panel again and take out the switch. There was a chance, of course, that the electricians would come upon the switch in checking for trouble, but Gilbert Falck was no man to boggle at risks.

About ten on Thursday morning, Ross's telephone in the Gazette offices rang.

"Ovid? This is Claire. You won't have to meet my train after all."

"Why not?"

"Because Peshkov's driving me down."

"That guy! Is he planning to attend the contest?"

"So he says. Would Mr. Ballin mind?"

"Hm. I don't think so, but I'll call him and straighten it out. I got — I've got influence with him. Is Peshkov coming alone?"

"Well, he wouldn't let his family be contaminated by this example of bourgeois frivolity, but he wants to bring Fadei."

"The goon? No sir! Tell him he'll be welcome (I think) but no bodyguards."

Ross called the Outstanding Knitwear Company and persuaded a dubious Marcus Ballin to let Peshkov attend the showing.

The contest took place in Marcus Ballin's showroom, directly underneath his lofts. Despite the swank decor of the showroom, the noise and vibration of the knitting machines came faintly through the ceiling. The showroom had been fixed up something like a nightclub, with a stage a foot high on one side and little round tables spread around in a double horseshoe.

There were over three hundred spectators present, including representatives from The Clothing Retailer and other garment-trade magazines. These distributed themselves around the tables, to which a group of hardworking servitors brought trayloads of cocktails and small edible objects on toothpicks.

While Ivory Johnstone's band from Harlem entertained the audience, Ballin and Ross lined up the contestants behind scenes. Each of the lovely ladies wore a lightweight Outstanding sweater.

These sweaters were so sheer that to Ross they seemed practically non-existent, following every contour of their wearers' bodies with implacable fidelity. Under normal conditions, this spectacle would have reduced Ross to a state of stuttering embarrassment. But as Gilbert Falck was now operating his body, he could give no outward sign of his feelings.

With a worried frown, Ballin said: "Say, Ovid, where's that little redhead of yours?"

"I'll look." Ross put his head around the end of the backdrop to look over the audience.

Claire La Motte and Bogdan Peshkov were just coming in, the latter the only man in the room wearing a coat. Peshkov said something that Ross could not catch over the distance and hubbub, patted Claire's arm, waved her towards the stage, seated himself at one of the tables, and haughtily beckoned a waiter. Claire started uncertainly towards the stage, then sighted Ross and walked quickly to where he stood.

Ballin said: "All right, Miss La Motte, here's your sweater.

This is the third judge, Joe Aldi." He indicated a swarthy, muscular young man with a dense glossy-black beard who stood by with his hands on his hips. "Just step behind that curtain to put it on. Nothing under it, you know."

With these sweaters, thought Ross, it made little difference where she put it on. In looking over the talent, Falck-Ross had already eliminated many of the girls. He had also picked several whom he expected to place high. Among these were (according to the badges pinned to their waist) Miss Loretta Day (neé Wieniawski), the noted burlesque queen; and Miss Shirley Archer, a model from the Towers agency. Claire, the unknown amateur, would find stiff competition.

"Line up, girls," said Ballin. "Look at the girls next to you to make sure you're in alphabetical order. The A's are at this end."

A female voice down the line said: "Does M come before or after N?"

Ballin continued: "You introduce them first time around, Ovid. Here's the list. As you call each one I'll send her out. Make it snappy, so one's coming out while the previous one's going."

Ballin strolled out upon the stage, waited for applause to die down, and gave a little speech: "So glad to see you all here this fine summer day ..." (It was drizzling outside.) "... our new line of fall sportswear ... the pre-eminent position of the Outstanding Knitwear Company ... an assortment of fine, healthy upstanding American beauties ... will be introduced by one of the judges, Mr. Ovid Ross of The Garment Gazette."

Ross came out in his turn. During the first few steps, his spirit quailed within him. After that he found that he did not mind. In fact, if Falck had not been controlling him, he thought that he would be able to manage the act as well as Falck.

As the girls came out he called their names: "Miss Wilma Abbott ... Miss Miriam Amter ... Miss Shirley Archer ..."

The spectators applauded each one — all but the ex-commissar. Bogdan Peshkov sat alone, his potbelly bulging out over his thighs, drinking down cocktails with great gulps, staring somberly at the scene and occasionally glancing nervously over his shoulder.

Ballin stood just out of sight of the spectators with a duplicate, list in his hand, checking the girls' names as they filed past him so that there should be no mix-ups.

Then all forty-six girls came out and lined up on the stage in a double rank. Ballin and Aldi came out, too. The three judges paraded back and forth. The plan was that any judge who thought that any girl had a good chance should tap her on the shoulder, the idea being to reduce the contestants to a mere dozen or so. Falck-Ross tapped Claire La Motte, Miss Archer, Miss Day, and a couple of other lovelies.

The contestants filed off again. As soon as they were off the stage, a couple of those who had not been chosen dissolved into tears, causing their eye-makeup to run. Claire La Motte paused near Ross to murmur:

"Ovid, I don't like the look on Peshkov's face. He's drinking himself stiff, and he looks the way he did the night he shot all the panes out of the picture window."

"Oh," said Falck-Ross.

"Can't you hurry this thing through before he gets worse?"

"It'll take half or three-quarters of an hour yet, but I'll do my best."

Ross went back on the stage. The thirteen girls remaining in the contest paraded as before while Falck-Ross introduced them: "Miss Shirley Archer ... Miss Loretta Day ... Miss Mary Ferguson ..."

It did, as he had foreseen, take a lot of time, during which Peshkov's pudding-face stared at him with unnerving blankness between cocktails.

After consultation, the judges eliminated all but three contestants: Shirley Archer, Loretta Day, and Claire La Motte. These paraded one by one as before, then lined up on the stage. Falck-Ross began a whispered consultation with Ballin and Aldi. Left to himself, Ross would have had trouble choosing among the three girls. He thought that, "aside from personal sentiments, Miss Day had perhaps a slight edge.

Marcus Ballin, whose taste ran to cones, preferred Miss Archer. Joseph Aldi, whose bent lay in the direction of hemispheres, argued as stoutly for Miss Day. Falck-Ross spoke up for Miss La Motte on the ground that, presenting an intermediate or spheroconoidal form, she embodied the golden mean.

Ballin and Aldi would not be budged. At last Ballin whispered:

"Put down your second and third choices. We can't stand here arguing all afternoon."

When the choices for the lesser places were written down, it was found that both Ross and Ballin had named Miss Day for second.

"Okay," said Ballin. "Ovid and I will go along with you, won't you, Ovid? Day it is. Now we'll pick second and third prizes. I'd give La Motte second ..."

As Claire was chosen second, Miss Archer took third. Ballin stepped to the edge of the stage with his arms up and cried:

"Ladies and gentlemen: By unanimous opinion of the judges, first prize in this great and unique Outstanding Knitwear Company bust-beauty contest is awarded to Miss Loretta Day —"

"Stop!" said a voice.

"What was that?" said Ballin.

"I said stop!" It was Peshkov, erect and weaving. "De best-looking girl is obvious Miss Claire La Motte. To give de first prize to anodder one is obvious capitalistic injostice. I order you to change your decision. Oddervise, to de penal camps of Siberia!"

"What — what —"sputtered Ballin. Then he pulled himself together and assumed an air as regal as that of the ex-commissar. He gestured to a couple of waiters.

"Remove this man!"

At that moment, in a control booth of the Telagog Company, Gilbert Falck reached down, felt around until he had located his upper fishline, and pulled. When he had drawn the line as far as it would go, he let go one end and pulled on the other until he had the whole thing in his hands. He stuffed the string into his pants pocket. Now he was controlling Bundy's ballet dancer, while Bundy, unknowing in the next booth, was controlling his trade-journal staff writer.

In a dance studio, where the ballet dancer was performing hopefully under the eyes of a troupe manager in the expectation of being hired, he suddenly fell to the floor. Questions and shaking failed to rouse him. He lay where he had fallen, staring blankly and making odd walking motions with his legs and arms as if he were still erect.

At the same instant, while the waiters designated by Ballin as bouncers were staring apprehensively at their quarry, Ovid Ross took off in a tremendous leap from the stage and began bounding around the showroom, leaping high into the air to kick his heels together and flinging his arms about Ross, imprisoned in his skull, was as astonished as anyone. He thought Falck must have gone mad.

Ross's astonishment changed to terror as he saw that he was bearing down on Bogdan Peshkov. The ex-commissar took a pistol from under his coat and waved it, shouting in Russian.

Bang! Glass tinkled. Ross took off in another leap that brought him down right on top of Peshkov. His body slammed into that of the ex-commissar. The two crashed into Peshkov's table. They rolled to the floor in a tangle of limbs and broken glass and table legs.

Ross found that his body was still kicking and flapping its arms. A kick accidentally sank into Peshkov's paunch and reduced the Muscovite to a half-comatose condition.

Then the seizure left Ross's body. He rose to his feet, fully under his own control. Everybody was talking at once. Several men gripped Peshkov while another gingerly held his pistol. Spectators crawled out from under tables.

Ross looked around, took a deep breath, and walked to the stage. Ballin was flapping his hands while Miss Archer had hysterics.

Ross faced the disorganized audience and bellowed: "Attention, everybody! All but those holding Mr. Peshkov take your seats. We will now go on with the contest. Waiters, mop up the spilled liquor. See that everybody has what he wants. Mr. Ballin was announcing the final results when he was interrupted. He will continue from there on."

So successful was Ross in restoring order that hardly a ripple of excitement was caused by the arrival of policemen to take Peshkov away.

After it was over, Ballin said: "You sure handled that, Ovid. How did you have nerve to jump on a man with a gun? That was reckless."

Ross made a deprecating movement. "Shucks, just an impulse, I guess. Too bad your show got kind of beat up, though."

"That's all right We got the publicity."

"The only thing that worries me," said Ross, "is that Mr. Hoolihan's apt to think I got entirely too much publicity and fire me. Maybe you as a big advertiser could bring a little — uh — moral pressure?"

Ballin drew on his cigar and looked sharply at Ross. He said:

"Ovid, I've been thinking. The way things stand, you'll be tempted to try a Utile gentle blackmail on me because of the Heliac Club."

As Ross started to protest, Ballin held up a hand. "The only way to make sure you don't, as I see it, is to make your interests identical with my own."

"Yes?"

"I've got a little venture capital lying loose, and I've been thinking of starting a new trade journal, something like The Garment Gazette but specializing in sportswear."

"You mean a house organ?"

"God forbid! Nothing's duller than house organs. This would be a regular general-circulation journal, run independently of the Outstanding Knitwear Company. The managing editor would have a free hand to call his shots as he saw them. How would you like the job?"

When Ross got his breath back he could only say: "Gosh, Mr. Ballin!"

"However, your first assignment will have nothing to do with the magazine at all."

"Huh? What then?"

"It will be to accompany me to the Heliac Health Club for a week-end of healthful relaxation. After that, we'll be in the same boat!"

The following morning, Ovid Ross turned in his story and pictures on the bust-beauty contest and gave notice. Timothy Hoolihan grumped about Ross's pay's having been wasted, since he had not been on long enough to become useful.

"But Mr. Hoolihan!" said Ross. "Look at the opportunity! If I asked Mr. Ballin to wait a month, he'd find somebody else. And didn't the Taylor article say to try to please your employer in all things? And isn't he my future employer?"

"Huh," snorted Hoolihan. "Suppose so. Damn it, I don't know what's the matter with this firm! We have the highest turnover of any trade journal I know of. No sooner get 'em broken in than off they go!"

Ross could have told Hoolihan that his violent power-complex might have something to do with it. But he forebore. It would only lead to an argument, and he might want a reference from Hoolihan some day.

Then Ross walked across town to the Telagog Company and told the receptionist: "Uh — send in that salesman, that Mr. Nye."

The salesman came in full of apologies: "... and while of course you waived damages in your contract, we are so anxious to please you that we're offering a one-year free extension of your three months' trial telagog subscription. Moreover, Mr. Falck is no longer in our employ."

"What happened?"

"Our Mr. Bundy, whose wires were crossed with Mr. Falck's, suspected something and came in early this morning to find Falck taking out that switch he installed behind his panel. Falck, knowing how complicated hypospatial circuits are, had figured the electricians would get down to tracing the crossover this afternoon. Now about that extension —"

"Never mind. Just take this gadget out of my head, will you?"

"You mean you don't want any more telagog control?"

"That's right. I found I can do well enough by myself."

"But you don't know. Your erythrophobia may take you unawares —"

"I'll worry about that when the time comes. Right now I feel that, with all I've been through in the past week, I can never be embarrassed again."

Nye looked dubious. "That's not psychologically sound."

"I don't care. That's the way it is."

"We're pretty busy today. Couldn't you come in again next week?"

"No. I'm getting married tomorrow and leaving on a two weeks' trip, and starting a new job when I get back."

"Congratulations! Is it that Miss La Motte that Bundy and Falck were talking about?"

"Yes."

"They said she was a pip. How did you manage it with your shyness?"

"When I walked her to the train, I just asked her, and she said yes. Simple as that."

"Fine. But after all, you know, a man's wedding day and the night following it constitute a crisis of the first magnitude. With one of our experts at your personal helm you need not fear —"

"No!" shouted Ovid Ross, smiting the chair arm with his fist. "By gosh, there's some things I'm gonna do for myself! Now get that neurosurgeon out of his office and get to work!"

Internal Combustion

Napoleon raised the limp cadaver by one claw, looked at it with his remaining eye, and said: "Hercules, you forget how heavy your fist is and how fragile the crania of these organisms are. This one is damaged beyond repair."

"Gee, I'm sorry, boss," said Hercules. "I only wanted to stop him from running away, like you told me to."

"Faithful fellow! I doubt if this itinerant mendicant would have proved a satisfactory puppet in any case. His character was too firmly set in patterns of dissipation and irresponsibility. Conceal the remains in the cellar until nightfall; then inter them."

"Okay, boss," said Hercules.

He clanked out of the library with the body under one arm. The MacDonald mansion had few furnishings left: a few broken-down chairs, a few tattered books on the shelves of the library. On the walls appeared rectangles of different colors from the rest where pictures had hung before the MacDonald heirs had finally stripped the house.

"What now?" asked Confucius. The other two liquid-fuel robots, Galahad and Sancho Panza, leaned forward attentively but did not speak. Sancho Panza could not because his vocalizer was broken, and he had never been able to save enough money to have it replaced.

"I do not know yet," said Napoleon, settling his black, drum-shaped body back on its three good legs.

The floor creaked but held under the nuclear robot's two-thousand-pound weight. It held because the cellar did not extend under the library, which rested on a thick concrete slab in turn supported by the sands of Coquina Beach. Fear of falling through the rotting floor and the malfunction of one leg had confined Napoleon to the library for years. Being nuclear-powered, he did not have to forage for fuel as did the other derelict robots dwelling in the ghost mansion. Before he had been discarded, Napoleon had the usual robotic inhibitions against hostile acts towards men. But hard radiations, escaping from the thick shielding around his pile and transpiercing his brain, had broken these down.

The mansion had been built a half-century before by William Bancroft MacDonald, the newspaper magnate. MacDonald had made his fortune by teaching his readers to hate and fear Latin-Americans and Canadians. His descendants occupied the mansion until his grandchildren gave up the struggle against termites, damp-rot, and the high cost of running a big house. So the robums, worn-out emancipated robots, squatted in the ruin without hindrance.

"I must think,", said Napoleon. "Always have a plan; leave nothing to chance."

"Your last plan wasn't so good," said Galahad.

"I could not foresee that this itinerant mendicant would prove both alcoholic and moronic. I offered him everything these organic people want: honor, glory, and riches. Had he evinced a willingness to follow my orders, I should have trained him, entered him in politics, and raised him to the leadership of this nation if not of the world. Yet, so terrified was he that he sought escape."

"Gosh," said Confucius. "Just think: all the kerosene we want and a good gasoline binge whenever we feel like it!"

"What was that idea about a kid, boss?" said Galahad.

"It is a more hazardous plan, but it offers greater possibilities. By rearing the organism from childhood we can more readily train it in the direction we wish it to go. The problem is: what child?"

Galahad said: "Homer knows a kid. The Sanborn kid, four houses north of here."

"Ah?" said Napoleon. "Perchance the hand of destiny offers a second opportunity. Tell me about this 'kid.' "

Homer walked north along Coquina Beach. The bright sun stood high over palms and cypresses. The waves of the Gulf broke heavily on the sand, each wave leaving scores of shiny little coquina clams, no two with the same color scheme: white, ivory, butter-yellow, red, blue, and purple. Before the next wave arrived, each coquina up-ended and burrowed out of sight.

Homer was looking for shells. Not just any shells, like those that crunched under his metallic feet with every step. He wanted rare shells that he could sell for money for kerosene to power him to hunt for more shells.

Most of the shells — conchs, strombs, scallops, oysters, clams, razor clams, murices, and so forth — were worthless. Now and then, however, a beachcomber could find one like the double sunburst, which would keep Homer in kerosene for a fortnight. Once he had found a perfect junonia, which kept all the robums going for a month and provided gasoline for an orgy as well.

The angel-wing clam was rare on the beach, but Homer knew better than to pick up even a perfect one. Anybody who wanted angel-wings could dig hundreds out of the mud of tidal flats, where they lived buried with their tubes sticking up out of holes. They were rare on the beach because they were so fragile that few were cast up undamaged.

Homer had a collecting bag over his left shoulder. He kept it in place with his stiff left arm, of which the disabled elbow joint had long since rusted fast. He picked up the shells with his good right.

He moved slowly so as not to crush valuable shells and so as not to flick sand up into his joints. His bearings were all ground loose anyway, but who would pay for relining them? As with most old pieces of machinery, Homer had passed the stage where organic people took any interest in repairing him. A new robot would be cheaper.

As Homer passed the Sanborn house, young Archibald Sanborn came out in pajamas, robe, and slippers, with hair awry and jowl unshaven.

"Hey, Homer!" said Archie Sanborn.

Homer straightened up, pointed at the sun, and said:

"Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight / The Stars before him from the Field of Night, / Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes / The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light."

"I know it's late," growled Sanborn. "Will you do a job for me?"

"A little work, a little play, / To keep us going — and so, good-day! What kind of job, Mr. Sanborn?"

"I want you to walk up to Jake's service station —"

"Foot — foot — foot — foot — sloggin' over Florida —"

"And get me ten gallons of gasoline —"

"Gasoline, Mr. Sanborn?"

"Yes, gasoline, piston-engined automobile grade. Here's five bucks; keep the change."

"Are you going to take out one of your old cars?"

"I gotta. The wife's gone to Sarasota for lunch with a girlfriend, and I got a date with Doc Brauer in an hour. So I gotta use one of the antiques."

Archie Sanborn waved at his open five-car garage. The southernmost stall, normally filled by the Chrysler Thunder-horse, stood empty. The other places were occupied by Sanborn's old-car collection, from the 1967 Buick Beetle to the genuine Ford Model A of 1930.

The thing that really told the four old automobiles from the missing new one was that the former were piston-engined gasoline-burning machines, while the latter, like all modern cars, was driven by a little kerosene turbine in the rear. Gasoline had gone back to the status of a dangerous fluid used for taking spots out of clothes and powering the antique autos of those who collected them. Sanborn continued: "And I haven't got —"

"Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, / That was built in such a logical way —"

"Shut up and get going! And don't start spouting poetry and forget what you're supposed to do."

Homer was about to go when another voice called: "Homer! Ho-o-omer!"

Homer saw Gordon Sanborn, three, beside his father, and said: "Child of pure unclouded brow / And dreaming eyes of wonder! / Though time be fleet —"

"I wanna go with you to Jake's," said Gordie.

"You can't," said Archie Sanborn.

"I wanna go with Homer!" cried Gordie. "He's my friend. You're not my friend."

Sanborn looked helplessly at Homer, saying: "I'd let him go, but I promised Roberta not to let him out of my sight until she got back."

"You're bad!" said Gordie, punching his father's leg. "Bang-bang, you're dead! I don't like you no more. I'm going with Homer ..."

Gordie's voice rose to a shriek as his father carried him into the house. Homer set off up the beach with a rattle of worn bearings. Out in the Gulf, fishing smacks lazed up and down the coast, and gulls creaked and puled.

Napoleon put away the volume MUS to OZON of the encyclopaedia, in which he had been reading again of the life of his illustrious namesake. The MacDonald heirs had abandoned the encyclopaedia because it was old and battered, and the volume CAST to COLE was missing. The remaining volumes, however, provided Napoleon with reading matter for years. To the robots who had entered, he said: "Has the partition been erected?"

"Yeah," said Hercules. "It didn't fit the first time, but we fixed it."

"That, then, is where we shall conceal the child."

"If we get a child," said Galahad. "You think it's easy to snatch a brat and tuck it away in the attic. But organic people are fussy as hell about their young. They'll turn Coquina Beach upside down looking for it."

"Yeah," said Hercules. "You'll get us scrapped yet, Nappy."

"You are behaving like irrational and timorous organic people," said Napoleon. "You must learn to trust my star. Had it not been for the plans evolved by my superior brain to procure you fuel, you would all have ended your careers on the scrap heap long ago. Now go, my brave soldiers, and fetch me a child, Lure it by promises and blandishments; no force."

A half-hour later, Homer was on his way back towards the Sanborn house from Jake's service station. Four pelicans flapped overhead in column. Homer met Galahad and Confucius. Galahad said:

"Whatcha got in those cans, Homer?"

"Gasoline."

"Gasoline!" said Galahad and Confucius together. "What for?"

"Mr. Sanborn hired me to get it for his old cars."

"Wicked waste," said Confucius, "makes woeful want. Using that precious stuff on brainless old machines, when we could have a real orgy on it."

"Well, that's what he hired me for," said Homer.

"You couldn't give us a little swig?" said Confucius.

"No."

"Lives there a man who hath gasoline, and giveth his neighbor none," said Confucius, "he shan't have any of my gasoline when his gasoline is gone."

Homer said: "If I start doing that, Mr. Sanborn won't give me any more jobs."

Galahad said: "Anyway, there's no hurry. Let's sit down in the shade and cool our bearings."

"Okay," said Homer.

They found a place at the base of a clump of palms, back from the beach. Homer kicked aside a dead horseshoe crab and asked: "What are you guys doing?"

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies; give me some apples and I'll bake you some pies," said Confucius.

"Just a little job for Nap," said Galahad. "We'll tell you about it when it's done. What's Sanborn doing with his old cars?"

"Driving one of them to Doc Brauer's," said Homer.

"That little distance?" said Galahad. "It's less than a mile. That shows you how feeble organic people are."

"I know," said Homer. "It doesn't do to tell them so, though, or they won't hire you."

"This Brauer," said Confucius. "He's a kind of mechanic for organic people's brains, isn't he?"

"Yeah," said Galahad. "He talks about how organic people need love and appreciation to run efficiently. Nobody ever thinks a robot might like a little love and appreciation too."

"They say we're just machines," said Confucius.

"Yeah," said Galahad. "They're just machines too, and the smart ones know it."

Confucius said: "They talk about souls, but that's just a lie to kid themselves they're more than machines."

"Well, they do have brains," said Homer.

"So do we," said Galahad. "They're machines with brains; we're machines with brains; the automobiles are machines without brains. That's the real difference, not whether we're made of metal or meat."

Confucius said: "Brain is brain, whether made of neurons or microtransistors. They found that to make us adaptable enough to serve them, they had to give us brains of the same habit-forming and reflex-conditioned kind as their own. Then they act surprised when we have wants and feelings too."

"Or poetical talents like Homer here," said Galahad.

"That was an accident," said Homer. "I told you how they put in a recording of a poetic anthology with the others when I was being indoctrinated."

"Why don't you sell your poetry?" said Galahad. "Some organic people make money that way."

"I did have a poem published in an advance-guard magazine," said Homer, "but they never paid me the five bucks they promised. And a robot can't sue, even if the amount had been enough to make it worth while."

"Have you tried any other magazines?" asked Galahad.

"Yes, but they said my stuff was too derivative. My brain can remember other people's poems all right, but it's not original enough to compose good verse."

"That shows you how mean they are," said Galahad. "They give a robot enough intelligence to make him appreciate poetry but not quite enough to make his own. And when we get old and our bearings are worn down, they throw us out and tell us we're lucky not to be scrapped. We might as well dis-functionalize ourselves."

Homer said: "Guns aren't lawful; / Nooses give; / Gas smells awful; / You might as well live."

"Oh, I'll live," said Galahad. "There's always a chance of a good jolt of gasoline."

"Speaking of which," said Confucius, "it wouldn't hurt to give us a swig of yours. You can tell Sanborn that Jake cheated him."

"I don't know," said Homer. "You guys may have lost your inhibitions towards organic people, but I've still got most of mine. And that would be stirring up trouble among them."

"Well, tell him the stuff evaporated in the sun," said Galahad. "Who do you owe the most to, a lousy meat-man or one of your own metal and fluid?"

"Just a little swallow," said Confucius. "Didn't we walk miles to fetch fuel to you when you ran out? The laborer is worthy of his hire."

"Well, all right," said Homer, "but only a little. Open up."

Galahad and Confucius each opened the door in his chest and dragged out a funnel attached to the end of a flexible metal tube. Homer unscrewed the cap of one gasoline can and poured a splash into Galahad's funnel. He replaced the cap, opened the other can, and did likewise with Confucius.

"Ah-h, I feel better already," said Galahad, slamming the door in his chest. "That sure gingers you up."

"Be careful," said Homer, "or it'll dissolve your lubrication away."

"Poor Homer," said Confucius, "always worrying. I've been running on dry bearings so long I don't know what a good lube-job feels like. Another shot would feel good, too."

"I told you —"said Homer.

"Look at it this way," said Galahad. "What will Sanborn do with this gasoline? Put it in one of those unsafe old contraptions and go for a drive. And what's the leading cause of death among organic people? Automobile accidents."

"We'd be contributing directly to his death," said Confucius. "It would be healthier for him to walk anyway."

"You'd be doing him a favor not to deliver it for him to put in one of those risky old cars. You don't want to be responsible for disfunctionalizing him, do you?"

"No, but —"said Homer.

In the end Homer gave Galahad and Confucius their additional shots of gasoline. Galahad said: "You've got to have some too, Homer."

"No. That's one thing I won't do."

"Sure you will. You don't want to be the only sober one in the party, do you? It's a pretty dismal feeling."

"But —"

"And it'll hurt our feelings. Make us feel you look down on us as a couple of old robums. You wouldn't do that, would you? To your best friends?"

Homer's loud-speaker gave an electronic sigh as he opened his chest. "You guys will be the disfunction of me yet," he said, pouring. "Say, that's a good grade of stuff."

"High octane rating," said Confucius.

As eleven o'clock neared, Archibald Sanborn stepped out on the beach to see if Homer was coming. The sunlight poured down in a white flood and bounced blindingly from beach and wave. A frigate bird squealed overhead.

As Homer was back under the trees with Galahad and Confucius, the beach appeared empty save for a couple of bathers. Sanborn angrily went back into his house and telephoned Doctor Brauer.

"Doc," he said, "I don't see how I can keep my date with you. I'm awfully sorry and it's not really my fault."

"What's the matter?"

"It's that damned old robum, Homer." Sanborn told of the errand for the gasoline.

"Well, couldn't you walk?" said Brauer.

"Walk?" said Sanborn in a shocked voice. Then another thought occurred to him. "I'd have to bring the kid, and it would take all day."

"Then stay where you are; I'll drive over. It'll only take a couple of minutes."

Homer, unsteadily pouring gasoline into his funnel, said: "Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before / I swore — but was I sober when I swore? / And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand / My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore. I've got to go after this shot, boys, no fooling."

Galahad said: "You know what we ought to do with this gasoline?"

"What?"

"If we really want to do young Sanborn good, we wont give him any. Even a drop is dangerous in the hands of an organic man."

"They don't carry it in their hands; they put it in the fuel tanks of their cars," said Homer.

"Don't be an old pedant," said Galahad. "You know what I mean. If we took these cans home, we could have the finest orgy in years."

"Get behind me, Satan," said Homer. "I .won't hear of it ..."

Archibald Sanborn lay on his own couch and talked to Doctor Brauer.

"... so you see I'm a poor little rich boy; only I'm not really rich. I have enough income so I can always eat, though not enough for yachts and stuff. So I can't argue that I've got to work to keep from starving. At the same time I haven't enough brains to make a real splash in anything — you know — creative, like writing or art. I never finished prep-school, let alone college. So what can I do? My only real talent is tinkering; all my brains are in my fingers. But, if I take a job in a garage, like I did last year, Roberta says it's ridiculous and undignified 'for a man in my position.' Then she comes dowrt here to our winter place and tells me I'd better come along, or else. So I have to quit my job, and you can't get anywhere at that rate. Anyway, I'm too lazy to be a success even at mechanical work, not having to worry about my next meal."

Doctor Brauer said: "Lots of people wish they could live a life like yours. Why not relax and enjoy it?"

Sanborn twisted his face. "It's not so simple. My father was a big man who made a success at several things, and it makes me feel guilty not to be like him. Roberta's father's a pretty important guy too and keeps needling me about 'making something of myself.' Even Roberta does it, when she's not stopping me from doing any real work by dragging me away to resorts. And I agree with 'em; I'm a lazy no-good bum. I don't want to be a bum, only I don't know how to stop. It's driving me nuts. I try to use my poor little ability on this hobby of old cars, but Roberta makes a fuss about even that. If we didn't have 'em, she says, we could afford a 'plane and a robot maid and a trip to Europe. So everybody's pulling me in a different direction. I'm wasting my life ..."

Gordon Sanborn, strewing the floor of the next room with blocks and other toys, paid no attention to this adult talk. Presently, tiring of blocks, he toddled out of the house. His father had ordered him, on pain of dire penalties, to stay where he was, but Gordie never remembered commands longer than thirty seconds.

He trotted south along the beach, until he met Hercules. Hercules had walked two miles south from the MacDonald mansion without seeing any stealable infants and was now returning to his master.

"Hello," said Hercules. "Aren't you the Sanborn kid?"

"Yes, my name is Gordon Boulanger Sanborn," said Gordie. "You're a robot but you're not Homer. Homer's my friend. Who are you?"

"I'm Hercules. Would you like to see Homer?"

"Sure. Where is he? That's a funny name, Hercules. Where is Homer? Has he gone away?"

"He's home sick and he'd like to see you."

"Okay, take me to see Homer. I like Homer. I don't like you. Bang-bang, you're dead. Some day I may like you, but not now."

Hercules led Gordie, chattering cheerfully, to the Mac-Donald grounds. They walked up a path flanked by man-high weeds and young trees that had seeded in any old way. Hercules brought the child in to Napoleon. Napoleon put away MUS to OZON and fixed his eye on Gordie.

"You're not Homer," said Gordie. "I don't like you either. Homer has two legs, but you have four. Why have you got four legs?"

"Because I am heavier than the liquid-fuel robots," said Napoleon.

"What happened to your other eye? It looks funny."

"I am Napoleon. Never mind my other eye."

"Why not?"

"You have been brought here to fulfil my destiny."

"What's a destiny? How do you fill it?"

"I have a splendid fate in store for you. By following my star —"

"Where's Homer?"

"Never mind Homer. He will return when he returns."

"Why?" said Gordie.

"You will attain the hegemony of the world of organic men —"

"Who is Jiminy?" asked Gordie.

"And, through you, we robots shall be freed from bondage and serfdom —"

"Where's Homer?"

"I do not know. As I was saying — — ", "Hercules said he was sick. I want Homer." "Listen, Gordon, I am telling you some very important things —"

"I want Homer!" Gordie began to stamp and shriek. "I don't like you. You're bad."

"Homer is out on the sand. He is not seriously indisposed and will soon return. Now —"

"You're not my friend. Homer is my friend. I want him."

"Look at me, Gordon, and listen." Napoleon began blinking the light of the scanner in his eye on and off in a hypnotic rhythm. "How would you like to live with Homer and the rest of us?"

"Okay. But I want Homer now. Go get him, you bad old robot!"

"I cannot."

"Why not?"

"Because one of my legs fails to function."

"What's function?"

"It does not work."

"Why doesn't it?"

"Understand, Gordon, that from henceforth this shall be your family. I shall take your father's place —"

"Okay, I don't like Daddy anyhow. But I want Homer. Go get him or I'll kick you."

"Keep quiet and pay attention. You shall live with us as your new family."

"Why?"

"You must not leave this house, and when antisocial individuals — I mean bad men — come here, you must let us hide you from them —"

"Where's Homer? I want my lunch."

There was a grating sound from Napoleon's loud-speaker. If he had been human, one would have said he was grinding his teeth. As he had none, the sound must be blamed on a malfunction of his vocalizer. This in turn was caused by the overheating of certain circuits in his brain. The overheating was caused by the strain of trying to carry on a serious conversation with Gordon Sanborn. Robots do not lose their tempers, but when their cerebral circuits get overheated the result is much the same.

"Please listen, Gordon," said Napoleon. "You will be the greatest man in the world —"

"Bang-bang, you're dead," said Gordie. "Bang-bang, bang-bang, bang-bang, bang-bang, bang-bang, bang-bang, bang-bang."

"Grwowkh!" roared Napoleon. "Hercules!"

Hercules came in. "Yes, boss?"

"What ails you?" said Napoleon. "You are walking unsteadily."

"We're having a swell binge. Homer and Galahad and Confucius just came in with two five-gallon cans of gasoline."

"Well, forget the orgy and take this organism to his oubliette before he burns out my cerebral circuits."

"I wanna see Homer!" said Gordie.

Hercules led the boy out. Gordie called: "Hey, Homer! Here I am!"

"What are you doing here, Gordie?" said Homer. "What are you doing with him, Hercules?"

"Shut up, Homer," said Galahad. "This is Nappy's great scheme."

"I don't know about that," said Homer.

"You mind your business and everything will be all right," said Galahad. "Gordie, you go along with Hercules. Homer will visit you later."

"No, I wanna visit now. Bang-bang, bang-bang ..." Hercules bore Gordie, protesting angrily, up the stairs. Homer started uncertainly after them, but then let himself be pulled back into the party.

Hercules had hardly returned from stowing Gordie when Sancho Panza began beating his chest to attract attention and pointing.

"Cops," said Hercules, looking out the window. He strode to the door of the library and jerked it open. "Hey, boss!"

"Why are you breaking into my train of thought?" said Napoleon.

"The gendarmes. Probably looking for the kid."

"Well, show them about, everything but the oubliette. It would be expedient to conceal those cans of gasoline first, though. Organic people think we are incompetent to manipulate the fluid."

"How about that stiff in the cellar?"

"Oh. I had forgotten. Show them upstairs first. While they are up, have the others take the corpse out and cover it. Make it inconspicuous."

The rusty knocker clanked. Hercules hurried out to give orders. Homer and Galahad disappeared into the cellar, while

Hercules opened the warped front door to admit two patrolmen of the Coquina Beach police. The senior of these said:

"Mr. Sanborn says his kid's disappeared. You-all know anything 'bout it?"

"Not a thing, sub," said Hercules. "If you'd like to look our little old house over, I'll be glad to show you round."

"Reckon we better take a look," said the policeman. "What's on this floor?"

Hercules led the policemen into the library. Napoleon raised his scanner beam and said: "Greetings, gentlemen. Can I be of assistance?"

The policemen repeated their statement. Hercules showed them over the ground floor, then the second floor. Then he took them up the narrow stair that led to the main part of the attic. They glanced around but paid no special heed to the partition that blocked off Gordie's section.

When Hercules brought the policemen down to the cellar the corpse of the tramp was no longer there. The policemen asked the robots to keep an eye out for Gordon Sanborn and departed.

"Thank Capek for that!" said Galahad. "They had me worried."

Hercules said: "What did you do with the meat?"

"You know that rotten old canvas tarpaulin the people used as a drop cloth for painting? It's wrapped in that, out against the greenhouse."

"Let's get back to the orgy," said Hercules. "I sure earned a shot of gasoline."

Confucius dragged out the cans and poured a generous slug into everybody's funnel.

"Wheel" said Hercules. "Bring on your nine labors — or was it twelve? Anyway there was a lion in it. I could strangle a lion too, just like he did."

"It was Sampson strangled the lion," said Homer.

"Maybe they both did," said Hercules. "Yeow! Where's some iron bars for me to bend?"

Homer said: "Ay, this is the famous rock, which Hercules / And Goth and Moor bequeathed us. At this door / England stands sentry ..."

"Let's sing," said Galahad. "The elephant is a funny bloke; / He very, very seldom takes –".

"Confucius say," said Confucius, "This loathsome worm will gratefully receive additional portion of gasoline, honorable Hercules."

"Can the fake Chinese dialect and pour your own, iron-head. You were made in Dayton just like I was. I've got to dance. Yippee!" Hercules began hopping up and down the hall, making the mansion's rotting timbers quiver. Sancho Panza drummed with his knuckles on his metal chest to make a rhythm.

The party got noisier until nobody could hear anybody even with loud-speakers at great amplitude. Homer, finding that no attention was paid to his recitations, left off in the middle of "Horatius at the Bridge" and went into the library.

"Shut that door!" said Napoleon. "How is a leader to work out his destiny with that fiendish racket going on?"

"It got too loud for me," said Homer. "Galahad and Confucius are trying to wrestle, with Hercules umpiring. They'll break something sure. Else in a giant's grasp until the end / A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend."

"As if they did not have enough mechanical defects already," said Napoleon. "A fine lot of soldiers I am cursed with. Sit down and read a book or something. I think."

"An excuse for loafing," said Homer. "I feel like reciting, so you'll have to hear me."

"You are intoxicated."

"Not so drunk as they are, but drunk enough to defy your orders."

"Shut up or get out!"

"To the junk pile with you, Nappy. Did you know a man once translated Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' into German? He made some mistakes, but it's still fun. Es brillig war. Die schlichte Toven / Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; / Und aller-mümsige Burggoven / Die mohmen Räth' ausgraben. / Bewahre doch vor Jammerwoch"

Floomp! There was a muffled explosion. The noise of revelry stopped. There were cries in robotic voices and a clatter of robotic limbs.

Homer opened the door. The hall was full of smoke lit by the flickering light of a raging gasoline fire.

"Homer!" said Napoleon. "Help me out, quickly. Put your hands under the hip-joint of my left front leg, this one, and lift. I can move the others enoughs —"

"But the boy? In the attic?" said Homer. "Oh, never mind him! He is only meat."

"But I must save him."

"After you have saved me. I am your leader."

"But he's my friend." Homer strode to the door.

"Come back, dolt!" said Napoleon. "He will do nothing for you, whereas I shall make you one of the hidden masters of the world..."

Homer looked about the blazing hall. All four robots lay in contorted attitudes. Sancho Panza was still trying to crawl, but the heat had melted the insulation of the others' wiring. Galahad's fuel-tank blew up, squirting burning liquid from every joint and seam in the robot's body.

Homer sprinted up the stairs, found the ladder, opened the trap door into Gordie's section of the attic, and stuck his head through. Gordie lay on the floor asleep. Homer reached for him, could not quite get a grip on him, but poked him with his finger tips.

"Wake up, Gordie," he said.

Gordie yawned and sat up. "Who is this? Oh, goody, Homer! I like you. Where have you been?"

"Come here."

"Why?"

"I'm going to take you home."

"But I don't want to go home. I like it here. What's that smell? Is somebody burning leaves?"

"There's a fire. Come quickly or I'll spank you."

"Bang-bang. Now you're dead and can't spank me."

Homer hoisted his body through the trap and lunged at Gordie. Gordie dodged, but Homer's right arm caught him and dragged him to the opening.

When Homer had carried Gordie down the ladder, Gordie said: "Oh, the house is burning up!" and tried to scramble back up the ladder.

Homer pulled him down, whereupon he tried to hide under the bare bedframe that stood against one wall of the room. Homer dragged Gordie out into the second-story hall. The smoke made the interior almost night-dark, and the stair well was full of roaring fire.'

Homer gave up thoughts of getting out that way. Had the house been furnished and had his left elbow not been stiff, he might have knotted bedsheets.

As it was, he knocked out a window with his fist, hoisted a leg over the sill, and hauled Gordie into the crook of his right arm. Gordie shrieked and tried to grip the window frame. Homer could see people running towards the mansion. The siren on the Coquina Beach firehouse wailed.

Flames raced along the second-story hall. Homer held Gordie so that his body shielded the child from the heat. He felt the insulation going on the wiring on his exposed side. Gordie was crying and coughing in spasms.

Homer jumped. He tried to cushion the shock of landing for the boy. A cable snapped in his right leg and he fell, dropping Gordie. Archibald Sanborn ran forward, picked up his child, and ran back. Roberta Sanborn gathered the still-coughing Gordie into her arms with hysterical endearments. Other people closed in around the Sanborns.

Nobody bothered with Homer. Something burning fell on him. With his good arm and leg he crawled away from the house. He heard Roberta Sanborn say:

"Those fiends had Gordie! They ought to all be scrapped!"

"We don't know what happened," said Archie Sanborn. "Homer seems to have saved the kid. What did happen, Homer?"

Homer's vocal circuits had been damaged. In a croaking whisper he said: "Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron ..."

His remaining circuits went out. The dancing lights in his eyes died, and he was just a pile of metal waiting for the junkman.

The firemen took one look at the blazing mansion and began wetting down the neighboring trees and houses without even trying to save MacDonald's palace.

Cornzan the Mighty

Franklin Hahn sat in the cafeteria of Station WCNQ with Cassia MacDermott. She had just turned down his thirty-fifth proposal of marriage. Then Dr. Ilya Sorokin had come over to eat his hamburger with them, putting a stop to the argument.

Hahn was a tall, gangly, eye-glassed man, whose early baldness made him look older than his thirty-three years. He was the script writer for the television-moumpicture serial Cornzan the Mighty. He owed this position to the ability, when shut in a room with a typewriter, to grind out unlimited amounts of pulp-magazine, radio, and television copy like a spider spinning silk.

Shooting was to start that afternoon on the first instalment of the second series of Cornzan's adventures. This instalment would make TV-MP history. Not only was it designed for alethochromatic three-dimensional wide-screen high-fidelity binaural dual-modulation broadcasting, but also it represented the first commercial use of the consiline hypnosis on the actors.

This treatment made them believe, while they were acting their parts, that they actually were the characters whom they portrayed. And the hundred-foot snake that played a role in the action was a real hundred-foot serpent, grown from an ordinary twenty-foot Brazilian anaconda with hormones by Ilya Sorokin, discoverer of consiline and proprietor of the Sorokin Laboratories. The show was being touted as a "bimillennial festival" (that is, a celebration of the year 2000) by the network to which WCNQ belonged.

Cassia, tall and very blond and gorgeous, asked Sorokin: "How's your cute little snake?"

"Sasha is all right, thank you," said Sorokin, a small man with a narrow face under a spreading brush of gray hair. (Hahn thought that "cute" was not the mot juste to describe the gigantic serpent.) "I fed him those three drugged sheep this morning, so he is nice and torpid. It took all the floor men on the lot to drag him into place."

"Hey, Sorokin!" said a loud voice. Mortimer Knight, program manager for moumpictures, strode over from the executives' lunchroom, his thinning gray hair plastered against his scalp. "Know what you done? Swindled us, that's what! Your goddam snake isn't any hundred feet long as called for in the contract!"

"Hello, Ego," said Hahn. "Which ulcer is it this time?"

"No?" said Sorokin.

"No!" Ignoring Hahn, Knight smote the table. "I and Lynd just measured the thing with a steel tape, and it's only ninety-nine feet, four and a half inches!"

"Perhaps you measured Sasha along the inner curve?"

"Hell no! We measured the outside curve, which gives you the benefit of any doubt. Well?"

Sorokin peered about with a cornered-rabbit expression and sighted the assistant manager for moumpictures. "Oh, Mr. Jaffe!"

Jaffe waddled over, sweating. Knight repeated his tale. "Well, Doctor?" said Jaffe.

Sorokin shrugged. "Perhaps the hormones did not balance. I warned Mr. Knight, but he insisted —"

"Damn right!" howled Mortimer Knight. "WCNQ delivers the ultimate in entertainment realism! You said you could deliver. They told me you were a genius! After this I better be the only genius around here ..."

"Mort," said Jaffe, "since shooting starts today, let's not break our schedule for seven inches of snake."

"Seven and a half," said Knight.

"Well, I hate snakes, and I think the less anaconda the better. Send a memo to my desk if you think it's that important, and I'll deal with Dr. Sorokin."

Jaffe walked elephantinely off. Franklin Hahn looked at his back with mixed feelings. Ben Jaffe was nice to everybody, but when it came to protecting anybody in the lower echelons from the tyranny of his turbulent subordinate he was always somewhere else.

Hence, under Mortimer Knight, the directors, assistant directors, actors, script writers, news editors, floor men, prop men, artists, and other employees writhed in well-paid slavery. The Moumpicture Division commanded almost as imposing a plant and numerous a personnel as had one of the motion-picture studios of Hollywood, back in the days when Hollywood made motion-pictures to be shown in theaters which people had to pay to enter.

Knight glanced at his wrist watch. "What's the matter with you people? Indoctrination's in three minutes, and you dawdle over your coffee. Come on!" He glared around and sighted Remington Dallas, who played Cornzan.

"Remington!" he screamed. "Indoctrination!"

Knight strode towards the exit, the others straggling after. Cassia said softly:.

"Frank, I don't see how you get away with being so fresh to Mr. Knight."

"Oh, Mort considers insolence a sign of genius, because that's how he is. The way to get along with him is to insult him before he does you."

In the dispensary, Franklin Hahn found that Eisenhower Lynd, the director of Cornzan the Mighty, had preceded them. The nurse handed Sorokin the yellow folders containing the health records of Cassia MacDermott and Remington Dallas. The great biochemist studied these, frowning through his glasses.

Lynd, a tall, big-nosed, sandy-haired yes-man, asked if the others had heard the new limerick about the bearded old barkeep named Tucker. Receiving a negative, he recited the verse. Everybody laughed except Sorokin, who solemnly took the squirt pistol from the nurse and said:

"Pull up your shorts, please."

Cassia and Dallas hiked up their shorts until each displayed the outer side of a thigh four inches below the hip joint. Sorokin checked the pistol to make sure that the capsule containing the charge of consiline was in place. Then he aimed at Remington Dallas' thigh and pulled the trigger. There was a sharp little sound. Dallas winced and rubbed a tiny red spot on his leg. The slug of liquid consiline had been squirted at high velocity through his skin and would take effect in due course. Sorokin reloaded the squirt pistol and repeated the process with Cassia MacDermott. He said:

"You have one hour to get dressed and made up. I shall see you back here then for indoctrination."

"Okay," said Remington Dallas. He and his leading lady went out, followed by the others.

Dallas was an ex-boxer with some experience as a Shakespearean bit-player: a hugely muscular young, man with a mild amiability that covered an almost complete lack of a mind of his own. The blankness of his docile personality made him an ideal subject for acting under consiline indoctrination. Having no individuality, he could be given hypnotic suggestions to play almost any kind of part and would do so with complete conviction, unmarred by personal idiosyncrasies.

Hahn followed Knight and Lynd through the long corridors of the main WCNQ building to the stages.

"Not too much noise, please," said Sorokin. "Sasha gets nervous. He is conditioned against eating people —"

"How'd you do that?" asked Hahn. "Feed him a few tough ones like the Ego here?"

"No; by electric shocks. But a snake has so little learning-capacity that you have very little leeway. A big shock or fright might cancel his training."

The cavernous north end of the building devoted eight stages to Cornzan. There was the patch of jungle to be used in today's sequence, a piece of desert, the main square of the city of Djelibin, and so on.

The party picked its way over cables and around cameras and lights to the jungle set. This, besides its synthetic rainforest flora, included the small ruined temple or shrine of the Elder God Yak, whence Cornzan was to rescue Lululu. Around the temple, nose almost touching tail, Sasha lay in a circle. Hahn's eye, sweeping along the huge scaly olive-gray barrel with big purplish-brown splotches, rested on the three small but significant bulges that told of the fate of the drugged sheep.

Sorokin stepped near to Sasha's five-foot head to peer at his pet. The snake lay still.

"You need not be afraid," said Sorokin. "Sasha is too big to be efficient. If he chases you, just run away. He can only move at a slow walk."

Back in the dispensary, Franklin Hahn smoked a cigarette as he waited. Eisenhower Lynd clamped a pair of earphones on his head and started the recorder. After listening for a few minutes he said:

"D'you tell 'em not to notice the cameras and crewmen?"

"Yep. Further along," replied Hahn. Indoctrinees had to be given, by suggestion, a selective blindness towards incongruous elements in the scene. Too much strain on the illusion under which they would act might send them into a psychotic collapse.

Knight stormed back into the dispensary, followed by Ilya Sorokin, Cassia MacDermott, and Remington Dallas. Cassia wore a kind of abbreviated Mardi-gras costume, glittering with spangles. Dallas was dressed in sandals and a super-fancy loin-cloth. A harness of straps supported a long heavy sword and a big dagger. Both actors wore the woozy, peering expressions that marked the first stage of the consiline trance.

Under Sorokin's instructions, the actors lay down on the couches. Eisenhower Lynd had run the spool of his record back to the beginning. Sorokin put earphones on the heads of his two subjects and started both recorders. The recorders made a faint, shrill cheeping sound because they were being run at quadruple speed.

The tapes told the actors that they were Cornzan and Lululu respectively and summed up the story to that point. The epic of Cornzan was laid on the imaginary planet Anthon, revolving around the sun at the same distance as the earth but on the opposite side.

Hahn's original name for the planet had been Antichthon, Greek for "counter-earth" and used in this sense in some fiction and scientific speculations. However, Knight had decided that three syllables were too many. "Antic" would not do; "Tichthon" sounded like a trade name for an alarm clock; so "Anthon" was chosen.

Cornzan was the son of an earthly scientist, John Carson, and his wife. Their spaceship had crashed on the first expedition to Anthon, killing everybody but the infant Cornzan, who spent his boyhood among the tree-men of Ea. Swinging from branch to branch with them had developed his colossal thews. Reaching invincible manhood, he became a mercenary soldier under the wicked King Djurk of Djelibin. He had, however, quarreled with King Djurk and fallen in love with Djurk's daughter Lululu.

After escapes and adventures with which the previous series of broadcasts had dealt, Cornzan was about to rescue Princess Lululu from the Temple of Yak, where the heartless Djurk had left her tied up in the hope that Cornzan, in trying to rescue her, would be killed by the giant snake.

Franklin Hahn lounged in his chair and stared at the recumbent Cassia, indulging in fantasies in which she was his mate and the couch was that in his own little apartment. Mortimer Knight leaned across in front of him to say to Eisenhower Lynd:

"Hey, I got a limerick that caps yours:

Lynd dutifully laughed, but Sorokin snarled: "Shut up!"

"Nobody shuts me up in my own studio!" retorted Knight.

"But you will ruin the indoctrination, you conceited fool!"

"Why you —"Knight's words became obscene. Both men glared and snarled at each other in stage-whispers.

"Hey, Ego, save it till later!" said Hahn. Lynd added his whispers to the effort to pacify Knight.

"Okay," muttered Knight. "But as soon as the series is over, this guy goes out of WCNQ on his can. He swindles us on that snake —"

"You think I work with you again?" hissed Sorokin. "Do I look crazy? Wait till my new drug is going and I will put all you bastards out of business."

"Huh? What drag?" said Knight.

"Somnone-beta. With that I indoctrinate, not the actors, but the customers. One of Hahn's tapes takes place of all the apparatus in this building."

"You mean," said Franklin Hahn, "you give the customer a shot, and run off a tape, and then at the time he's told to he goes into a trance and dreams the show?"

"Is right. No actors, no sets, no engineering, no nothing. Customer makes up his own story according to the directions on the tape. He can be participant or onlooker. The entertainment is much more vivid than anything you can get watching a stage or screen."

"You slimy snake —" began Knight.

"Snakes not slimy. And it will be only what you deserve, you paranoid megalomaniac!"

"Now who's shouting?" said Knight. "You shut up!"

Cassia MacDermott's recorder ran out of tape and stopped with a click. Remington Dallas' did likewise. Sorokin touched a finger to his lips and removed the earphones.

Cassia and Dallas — or Princess Lululu and Cornzan the Mighty, as they now believed themselves to be — rose and shambled out. The others followed.

Lululu went directly to the jungle set. Dallas threw himself down on a cot near the stage and closed his eyes. Near the stage stood two other actors in costume: Robert Gelbman as King Djurk in goatee and drooping Fu Manchu mustache, and William Harris as his henchman Bogar.

The stout Jaffe puffed up. He glanced at Sasha, shut his eyes, shuddered, and resolutely turned his back on the ophidian prodigy.

"Quiet, everybody," said Knight. "We're ready to roll. Take it away, Eisenhower."

Over the body of Sasha the floor men had placed an oversized stepladder, like a stile over a fence. Robert Gelbman (King Djurk) and William Harris (Bogar) climbed up one side of the ladder and down the other, so that they were inside the circle of Sasha's body.

Meanwhile another pair of floor men tied up Lululu with a rope, being careful neither to tie her too tightly nor to smudge her makeup. When they had finished, one of them snapped a springhook on the end of a rope to the heroine's harness. Two others, pulling on the free end of the hoisting rope (which went over a pulley in the cavernous overhead) hoisted Lululu into the air. Another guided her over Sasha's body. Gelbman and Harris caught her as she swung across, lowered her to the ground, and unsnapped the hoisting line, which was whisked away. "Roll it," said Eisenhower Lynd.

The cameras went into action as Djurk and Bogar carried the struggling princess up the steps of the temple. Although technical improvements had made television sequences shot from moumpictures fully as convincing as live television broadcasts, so that this method was now used for all fictional presentations, the limitations of the consiline treatment made it necessary to photograph such sequences in one continuous filming, as with live broadcasts, without the retakes of normal moumpic practice. If a scene were flubbed it could be remade, but that meant re-drugging and reindoctrinating the actors the next day.

Djurk and Bogar placed the volubly protesting Lululu in a sitting position in the entrance to the shrine.

"Ha ha!" laughed King Djurk. "Now you shall see whether your hero will come to rescue you — and what will happen to him if he does!" He blew on a small instrument that gave forth a wail.

"What are you doing, Father?" cried Lululu.

"That, my dear, is the mystic call used by the priests of Yak to summon Dingu, the spirit of the forest. Come, Bogar!"

Still laughing fiendishly, King Djurk swaggered down the temple steps. He and Bogar climbed back over the stepladder, which the floor men then removed from Sasha's body. The cameras had not photographed the stepladder, or Sasha either, because Sasha was not yet supposed to have come onstage. A couple of action-shots of Sasha creeping would be spliced in after Djurk's departure. Neither Gelbman nor Harris was under consiline, as the former had reacted badly to the drug and the latter's part was not important enough to justify the step.

Lululu uttered a piercing scream as (in theory) she perceived the snake slithering out of the jungle. Cornzan, aroused, rose from his cot, stretched his thews, and walked to the stage. Arriving within camera range, he recoiled at the sight of Lululu and Sasha. He began stalking forward, slinking from bush to bush, sometimes shading his eyes with his hand.

Cornzan attracted Lululu's attention by whistling and throwing pebbles. Lululu gave a pretty squeak and raised her bound hands.

Cornzan scouted around and found a convenient vine. With his dagger he cut the lower attachment of the vine, took a good grip on the dangling upper section, and swung himself across Sasha's barrel and up again in an arc to the foot of the steps of the shrine. Pausing only to belay the loose end of the vine, he bounded up the steps and clasped Lululu in his brawny arms.

Having cut her bonds, Cornzan made torrid love to her. When the dialogue became coherent again it ran:

Lululu: "But Cornzan, how did you find me?"

Cornzan: "Darling, such is my passion for you that instinct leads me to wherever you are." (Long kiss.) "Let me bear you off to be my mate in the clean free wilds."

Lululu: "But Father's spies and armies will follow us to the ends of Anthon!"

Cornzan: "Let the old guntor try! He shall learn what a chase a wilderness-bred barbarian can lead him!" (Cornzan jumped up and clapped a hand to the hilt of his sword.) "How now, you secret, black, and midnight hag! What is't you do?"

There was a general dropping of jaws among the spectators. Knight turned fiercely to Hahn and whispered: "Hey, that ain't in the script, is it?"

"Hell no!" said Hahn. "That's Shakespeare."

Knight made hair-tearing motions. "But what — why —"

Sorokin beckoned. When Knight and Hahn had followed him back from the stage far enough so that their voices would not affect the sound track, Sorokin said:

"I told you your talking would affect the indoctrination! It is that poem. I am not Shakespearean scholar, but was that interpolated line not from Macbeth?"

"Yeah," said Knight, peering back towards the stage. "Let's hope it's the only one. Remington seems to have gotten back in the groove. We can cut out that one fluff."

The three men trailed back towards the stage,-on which Cornzan was again explaining his plans between kisses to

Lululu, who did not seem to have noticed the unflattering description that he had just applied to her.

Cornzan: "If we can but win south through the jungle to the plains of Syrp, the Green Men will befriend us. I learned the arts of war among them in my youth. What man dare, I dare: approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, the arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!"

Lynd came back from the stage with dismay on his face. Sorokin said: "He is getting worse."

"What'll we do?" said Lynd.

"We had better stop the shooting and give them the antidote before Mr. Dallas mistakes somebody for a Shakespearean character and tries to kill him."

Knight's face became apoplectic. His fists clenched, his eyes rolled wildly, and his face turned red and pale by turns. He shook with the effort of repressing his urge to scream and shout.

"You — you mean we gotta cut the scene in the middle and give 'em the antidote? And ruin the day's shooting?"

"You have what you have shot already," said Sorokin. "Now that Dallas is off his indoctrination, is no telling what he will do."

Knight ground his teeth. "Then what?"

"You cannot simply go up to them and say, No more acting, please. They are in a trance, and if you interrupt them or force a violent incongruity upon their consciousness you will send them into convulsions. That is how Cary Chambers died."

"Not to mention what Remington'll do if he mistakes you for Macduff," added Hahn.

"Oh, God!" Knight raised fists to a heedless heaven. "What'll we do, then?"

"Have you anesthol charges for that squirt pistol in your dispensary?" asked Sorokin.

"How should I know? C'mon, let's find out." Knight seized the little scientist's wrist and dragged him off.

Hahn turned his attention back to the stage, on which

Cornzan was now striding back and forth with his chin in his hand, booming:

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

How apt, thought Hahn, when the pat-pat of men running on tiptoe made him turn to see Knight and Sorokin coming back. Knight held the squirt pistol and Sorokin a hypodermic needle. Knight panted:

"Hey, Eisenhower, where the hell did Bob Gelbman set to?"

Lynd answered: "He just went. He was through for the day."

"Oh, no!" Knight glared wildly. "Look. This is how we're gonna do it. Doc Sorokin's the only one knows how to use the gun and the needle. If he walks up to Remington in his regular clothes, Remington will cut his head off, thinking he's one of Djurk's gang, or will fall down foaming in a fit and prob'ly die on account of having his illusion busted. If Doc dresses up like an Anthonian character, Remington will just cut his head off, period."

"What then?" said Hahn.

Knight stared at Franklin Hahn with a fixity that made Hahn sorry that he had spoken. "I was gonna ask Gelbman to go onstage and engage Remington in swordplay while Doc sneaked up behind him and shot him with this. But since Bob's gone, you're the one who comes closest to his size and looks. So duck into the dressing room and climb into the King Djurk costume, quick!"

"But, Ego!" said Hahn. "I'm no swashbuckler; I just write the drool. You don't want your best scripter's head cut off either!"

"No time to argue. Do like I say or out you go. And don't be scared of Remington. The fencing he learned was designed to put on a good show, not to kill anybody."

"But —"

Knight seized Hahn by the wrist and dragged him, protesting, towards the dressing rooms. Sorokin followed.

When Hahn and Sorokin reached the stage again, the show still had nine minutes to run. They were clad as Djurk and Bogar respectively, though without makeup, and Sorokin's spectacles impaired the effectiveness of his disguise.

Knight whispered instructions to his improvised actors and shoved them towards the stage. The word had spread among the floor men that something was wrong, and people crowded up to the clearance lines to see. Cornzan was ranting:

"Arm, arm, and out! If this which he avouches does appear, there is no flying hence, nor tarrying here. I 'gin to be aweary of the sun, and wish the estate o' the world were now undone. Ring the alarm-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back!" He whirled to face Lululu. "But come, sweetheart. Any minute your villainous father will return. While for myself I'm too proud to run from his whole army, I fear lest you take harm from him."

Lululu: "But Cornzan, how shall we get over that horrible snake?"

Cornzan: "Just as I did: by this vine. They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, but bear-like I must fight the course. What's he that was not born of woman? Such a one am I to fear, or none."

Franklin Hahn, conscious of the long sword banging his knees and the projections of his costume jabbing him in unexpected places, mounted the stepladder, which had been re-erected over Sasha's body. He heard Sorokin behind him as he climbed down on the other side, his scabbard bumping the steps. Then he started up the slope towards the Temple of Yak.

Cornzan: "One good swing and over we go — but hold, what's this? By the gods of Anthon, King Djurk himself! Enter first murderer!"

Lululu: "That's odd. He looks somehow different from how he did a few minutes ago."

Cornzan: "He's shaved off his beard, but I'd know that sneering face anywhere. But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, brandish'd by man that's of a woman born. And Bogar too! Ahhhh!"

Cornzan leaped lightly from the top step of the shrine to the ground in front, whipping out his sword. He bared his incisors and gave forth a sound like tearing a piece of sheet-iron. This was the feral snarl of the untamed barbarian, at the sound of which the beasts of Anthon slunk into their lairs.

Lululu called: "Oh, Cornzan, try not to kill him! After all he is my father!"

Ignoring Lululu's request, Cornzan stalked forward, teeth bared, head sunk forward between his shoulders in a Neanderthaloid posture. He said:

"I will not yield to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, and to be baited with the rabble's curse. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou oppos'd, being of no woman born, yet I will try the last: before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, and damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"

"Get around!" said Hahn to Sorokin, and then the whirlwind struck.

Clang! Zing! Clang! went the swords. Hahn parried desperately. He knew that property swords were dull, so that even if Cornzan got home he would not really cut Hahn's head off — only half off. Although Hahn had fenced a few times with Remington Dallas for the hell of it, he was not really skilled in the sport.

Hahn, backing as he parried, was vaguely aware of Ilya Sorokin hovering in Cornzan's rear, trying to get a shot with his squirt pistol. Then Franklin Hahn turned an ankle over a property jungle root, made an awkward parry as he recovered, and felt the sword knocked out of his hand. It spun through the conditioned air to fall with a clang on the concrete outside the stage.

Before Cornzan could make a tigerish leap to finish his victim, Sorokin hurled the squirt pistol. The missile struck the back of Cornzan's head. Being a light structure of plastic and aluminum, it bounced off, providing merely enough of a blow to distract the attention of the mighty mercenary. Cornzan whirled, whooped, and started for Ilya Sorokin, shouting:

"The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where gott'st thou that goose look?"

Sorokin ran straight away from his pursuer. Franklin Hahn, after a half-second's delay, ran after Cornzan. As a straight line starting within a circle is bound to intersect the circle, Sorokin's course brought him to the body of Sasha, twenty feet from the serpent's head. The stepladder lay in the other direction, so that, to reach it, Sorokin would have had to run two-thirds of the way around Sasha's circumference.

The little scientist therefore placed his hands on the scaly back and half vaulted, half scrambled over. He recovered on the other side and started off again. The touch aroused Sasha, whose head, for the first time since the shooting had started, began to rise from the ground like the business end of some ponderous piece of excavating machinery.

Cornzan, pounding after Sorokin, took off in a soaring leap over the reptile's body. Either he miscalculated or he, too, had trouble with the unevenness of the ground, for he failed to clear Sasha. Instead he came down on the snake. His leading foot slipped off the scales, and Cornzan landed outside the circle with a whirl of arms and legs and a grand slam. In striking the snake he had accidentally driven the point of his sword into Sasha to a depth of several inches. The weapon stuck upright in the snake's back, swaying with the reptile's motion.

Franklin Hahn took off right behind Cornzan but, with more skill or better luck, cleared the snake, missed the sword, and came down on top of Cornzan. When Hahn collected himself, he found himself straddling the prone if noble savage like a masseur about to knead a customer.

Feeling the warrior's thews gathering under him to throw him off, and then presumably to tear him limb from limb, Hahn planted a roundhouse swing on the side of Cornzan's jaw. The blow hurt Hahn's knuckles but dazed Cornzan. Hahn then pulled out the dagger he wore in his sash, gripped it by its dull blade, and whacked Cornzan over the head with the massive jewelled hilt. Three taps sent the adventurer to dreamland.

Hahn's attention was drawn by a sound like a jet of steam under high pressure. He looked up to see Sasha's head, poised on ten feet of neck, swaying towards him.

The anaconda was usually harmless, not from conscious docility but from sheer stupid inertia. Besides, he had been drugged. However, to be scrambled and fallen over by two men had roused him from his torpor, and to have his hide pierced by a property sword was too much. Sasha was angry.

A yard of greeny-yellow forked tongue issued from Sasha's mouth groove, wavered about, and slid back, drawing the ambient air past the olfactory nerve endings on his palate. His four-foot jaws opened to emit another Mesozoic hiss.

Hahn threw himself back from the recumbent Cornzan and half rose. For a fraction of a second he wondered whether to run like hell or to try to grab the unconscious actor and pull him out of danger.

Mortimer Knight shouted: "If he eats our star it'll ruin the show!"

The program manager bounded forward, hands clutching, just as Hahn made up his mind to save Dallas too: a creditable action, since Dallas was his rival for the love of Cassia MacDermott.

Knight got a wrist and Hahn an ankle. Each started to pull, but in opposite directions. Even under favorable conditions, Remington Dallas' 228 pounds would have made their endeavor precarious. As it was, they got nowhere.

For two seconds they heaved at the actor, grunting. Then Sasha struck. As Knight was the nearest and noisiest, the snake snapped at him, turning his head sidewise, and caught the executive from behind around the hips — one jaw on each hip.

Knight let go of Dallas and was dragged backwards, screaming and thrashing. Sasha made a gulping motion, gaining a tooth or two in the process of swallowing Knight arse-first.

If the snake had thrown a coil around Knight, the Ego would have been snuffed out instantly. But, either Sasha deemed this prey too small to be worth crushing, or he was too lazy to heave his monstrous barrel into the necessary loops. At eleven tons he was, as Sorokin had said, too heavy to be very active.

Sasha began working his loosely-hinged lower jaw forward, first one side and then the other. As the teeth of a non-venomous snake are slender pegs pointing back towards the throat, Knight's struggles only drove the teeth more deeply into his tissues.

When Knight released his hold on Dallas, Hahn dragged the actor back a couple of steps before realizing that Knight was in more imminent danger. A din of shouts and cries arose from those witnessing the action. Jaffe shouted orders at Lynd, who shouted orders at his two assistant directors, who shouted at each other to rush in and do something. The floor men contented themselves with shouting advice to the straggling Knight.

Hahn saw Cornzan's sword still sticking up from Sasha's back. He stepped forward, wrenched the sword out, moved to where Knight writhed in Sasha's jaws, and took a wild two-handed swipe.

His target was in an awkward position, as the weight of Knight's body was too great for the snake to raise from the floor. The blow missed Sasha's head and grazed Knight's, half severing his right ear. Knight shrieked more loudly than ever.

Franklin Hahn struck again, more carefully. The blow landed on the top of Sasha's head between the eyes. The dull blade crunched through scales and bone. Sasha hissed through his full jaws and started to back up, bending his neck into a zigzag and dragging Knight along the ground. His instincts and the structure of his teeth prevented him from releasing Knight.

Hahn followed, striking. The snake's bone structure was not very resistant; the trouble was to find, in that monstrous head, the little ganglion that served Sasha for a brain. Crunch! Crunch! Sasha's body writhed and bumped. A lash of his tail knocked over seven lights and two cameras and broke a cameraman's leg; a flip in the other direction sent the Temple of Yak flying. The audience scattered like a flock of sparrows.

Hahn hewed at the scaly head until the writhing subsided and the great jaws went slack. The snake lay still save for an occasional reflex-jerk. Sasha was dead.

The bell announcing the end of the shooting clanged. Franklin Hahn looked up to see Cassia MacDermott, whose manner showed that she had, as told to in the indoctrination, come out of her consiline trance when she heard the bell. She said:

"My goodness, Frank, what haveyou been doing? And what's the matter with Mr. Knight? And — oh, poorRemington!"

Mortimer Knight and the injured cameraman lay in the dispensary. When the physicians had completed their task, Knight's harsh yell arose: "I wanna see that guy Hahn!"

"Here I am, Ego," said Hahn. "When do they say you'll be up and around?"

"Couple weeks. Nothing but a few punctures; no poison." Knight glared up from his pillow, his right ear hidden by a mass of bandage. "And by God, by that time you'll be out of here! You're fired!"

"Me? But I thought I just saved your life!"

"Hell, you bungled everything! You've ruined the Cornzan series! You didn't hold Dallas in play until Sorokin could shoot him. You damn near cut my ear off. You killed Sasha, and we'll have to pay the Sorokin Laboratories for the snake."

"Good lord, Ego, you're raving! If I hadn't killed the snake you'd be playing a rubber of bridge with those three sheep by now —"

"And anyway you're too goddam fresh and insubordinate! Get out! Off the lot! Draw your pay and go!" screamed Knight.

"Here!" said a physician to Hahn. "I don't know who you are, but I can't have you exciting my patient that way."

"Me?" said Hahn with bitter irony. But he went.

Reflecting that, if his job were in danger, he had better not be seen loafing, Hahn returned to his office and worked on scripts. He had Cornzan and Lululu trapped in the lost city of Gwor by the Mukluks (a race of Anthonian ghouls whose heads stayed home and sent their bodies forth to seek prey by remote telepathic control) when Mrs. Mazzatenta, Lynd's secretary, came in with some pieces of paper. Hahn found a check for his next month's pay and a dismissal notice.

Franklin Hahn stared at the notice until belief soaked into his consciousness. Then he went to protest to Jaffe, who smiled sadly and said:

"I wish I could help, Franklin my boy. Your work is okay. But I can't overrule the Ego unless I'm ready to fire him, and you know what would happen if I told him to keep somebody in his department he didn't like."

"Are you his boss or aren't you?" said Hahn with heat.

"Sometimes I wonder. I know the Ego is a bastard of the first water, but he is a genius and he does bring in the money." Ben Jaffe heaved himself out of his chair and came around his desk to pat Hahn's shoulder. "Don't take it too hard, Frank. You'll always have a good job somewhere."

Franklin Hahn was cleaning out his desk just before five when Cassia MacDermott and Remington Dallas came in. Cassia said:

"Oh, Frank, we wanted to say how sorry we are to hear you've been fired and to thank you for what you did this afternoon."

Hahn shrugged. "That was nothing."

"We also wanted to ask if you wouldn't congratulate us on our engagement."

"What?"

"Yes. I guess we really are Cornzan and Lululu spiritually."

"Uh-huh," said Hahn as Dallas stood beaming silently. "Have a good time, kids."

In leaving, they passed Sorokin coming in. Cassia said: "I'm sorry about your snake, Ilya. Were you devoted to him?"

Sorokin shrugged. "Is nothing. Snakes not responsive pets, and Sasha cost too much to feed."

"I always wanted to appear with him in a snake-charming act — 'Cassia and Sasha.' Good-night."

Sorokin said: "I, too, have heard, my dear Hahn. Perhaps you can explain this?"

"What's that?"

"Is the missing capsule of anesthol. When I tried to shoot Dallas, the gun would not discharge, so I threw it. Afterwards, while supervising removal of Sasha's remains, I picked this up from the floor where Knight had stood."

"You think he slipped you the gun empty on purpose, so we'd get our heads cut off by Remington?"

"That is what I think."

"But whv? I know the Ego's an egregious kind of character

"Because I, in a moment of foolish rage, told him about my new somnone-beta. His quick mind seized the implications of my stupid boast. Perhaps, he thought, my process is not yet perfected or recorded, so if he can arrange my death it will go to the grave with me. Thus the ruin of the radio-television business will be averted."

"What are you going to do? Call the gendarmes?"

"We have nothing like proof. Better leave it alone and content ourselves with milking a few million from WCNQ."

"You mean that 'we' editorially, don't you?"

"No. I mean you and me. Would you not like a million dollars?"

"Sure, but why me?" said Hahn. "You saved my life this afternoon."

"No-o, I can't say I did. I chased Remington, but you were getting away from him when I caught him."

"The will was there. Besides, you have now been fired on partly my account. You have talked as if you had good business sense, so you are my partner. I need someone to handle business details, and my last partner I had to put in jail. Gather your stuff, please."

A month later, on a Saturday morning, Franklin Hahn sat at his desk at the Sorokin Laboratories looking at a big beautiful check representing his cut of the first instalment paid by WCNQ to suppress Sorokin's patent on the somnone-beta process. Hahn telephoned Cassia to tell her of his luck.

"That's wonderful!" she said. "I wish I could have seen the Ego's face. How much money did you say? ... Can I call you back in a few minutes? ... G'bye."

Ten minutes later Cassia called Hahn back. "I just wanted to call up Remington to break our engagement."

"Huh?"

"Yes. He's a beautiful hunk of man, but as you said he has no more brains than Sasha had. Now I wondered if you'd like to take me out tonight?"

"Would I!" howled Hahn. "And I don't even have to buy a toupee?"

Five minutes later Franklin Hahn hung up with an expression of imbed lie bliss. This expression flickered out for a second as he caught Sorokin's eye from across the room. It seemed to Hahn that the biochemist was looking at him as if he were one of the smaller experimental animals in the laboratories.

Sorokin did not tell Hahn that he was making an ass of himself; he merely conveyed that opinion in one piercing glance and turned back to his papers.

But then, thought Hahn, Ilya's old and sour and cynical and has probably never been in love.

Throwback

"Thousand-pound men!" said the small-sharp-dapper type.

The tweedy-professor type spoke loudly over the whine of the turbojets: "You've never been to the gigantanth reservation?"

"No," said small-and-sharp. "I seen pictures of 'em in a Sunday paper, but I never been on the ground in these Ozarks. Flown over 'em lots of times, but never had occasion to stop off until now."

"My dear chap! After you've signed up your football players in Springfield, drop over to Mushogee and I'll take you out to the reservation."

"How do I get there?" said small-and-sharp, dubiously.

"There's an airline; but, if I were you, I'd take the train. You can't really see the country whizzing over it ten miles up." The speaker took a card and scribbled on it. "Here you are. I'm Frybush; teach anthropology at Toronto University. I'm down here to look at the gigantanths myself."

"My name's Grogan; Oliver Grogan," said the other. "Manager of the Chicago Wolves." They shook hands. "Wouldn't there be any ... uh ... danger? Those thousand-pound ape-men don't sound like the kind of guys you'd ask in for a friendly game of stud."

Professor Frybush snorted. "Not at all. The government agent watches them, and any that turn mean are shuffled off to where they can't bother people."

"You mean they bump them?"

"No! I told you the courts have held Gigatttanthropus to be legally a human being, with the rights and privileges of such. They just move them to another part of the reservation, where they can't pull arms and legs off normal-sized visitors when they lose their tempers."

Grogan winced visibly. Frybush continued: "What's the matter, don't you want to go? You don't have to; I just thought I'd do you a favor. Speaking of which —"

"Oh, sure, I'll go. Glad to. But say, where did these things come from? I thought things like that got extinct a million years ago."

Frybush clucked. "They did, but they were re-created."

"How can you do that, huh? I don't want nobody re-creating a dinosaur or something in my backyard."

Frybush smiled. "Ever hear of the brothers Heck?"

"Nope."

"They were a pair of Germans who re-created the extinct aurochs a couple of centuries ago."

"Come again? The extinct what?"

Frybush looked down through the port at the fiat brown earth far below, in which the river systems made little sets of lines like the veins in a dead leaf.

"The aurochs was a big wild cow that lived in Europe down to about 1600; something like a Texas longhorn. Although the aurochs was killed off in a wild state, it had interbred with domestic cattle, especially in Spain and Hungary. The Hecks collected modern cattle that showed traces of aurochs blood and bred back to the ancestral form. It proved easier than they expected; in a few generations they had a herd of real aurochs. You can see the brutes in parks in Europe today."

"You scientific guys," said Grogan, "sure think of crazy things. Is that what they did with these gigan ... these ape-men?"

"Roughly speaking, yes. When extra-uterine gestation — test-tube babies to you — was perfected after the World Wars, an American named Huebner saw a chance to re-create fossil men in the same way, so he started collecting volunteers who showed traces of Neanderthal et cetera blood. Here's Goldilocks again."

The hostess was saying in a clear elocutionary voice: "We are about to land at Springfield, Missouri. Passengers for Springfield will kindly secure their belongings. All passengers will fasten their safety belts."

"Go on," said Grogan.

"Well," said Frybush, "it took a lot longer than the aurochs, because that inheritance is harder to find among human beings, and because a generation among men is several times as long as among cattle. However, they succeeded finally; Huebner's great-grandson was in charge of the project when it closed. So that's how we have a reservation in Spain with Neanderthal men, one in Oklahoma with Gigantanthropus, et cetera."

"What do these ape-men do?"

Frybush shrugged. "A little simple farming, which is about all most of them can be taught."

Grogan looked at his watch. "Like to make a little bet as to whether we touch before or after the scheduled time? Say a hundred bucks?"

"Ow! Then I would be sick!"

A week later, Oliver Grogan looked up Professor Frybush in his hotel in Mushogee and said: "Say, Doc, how about taking me out to see those ape-men like you offered?"

"Sure thing. How'd you make out with your football players?"

"Lousy. Didn't sign up a one. The hillbillies ain't what they used to be."

At the entrance to the reservation, the professor signed Grogan in. The little man, his bald head glistening with sweat, had been getting more and more nervous during the ride, and he was not reassured by the sight of a couple of large rifles in the gatekeeper's house.

"How far are these gi ... gigantanths?" he asked.

"There's one village half a mile down the road. Easy walk."

"You mean we gotta walk?"

"Sure. They don't permit cars."

"Don't they send a ranger or somebody along?"

"Not with us. They know me, you see."

Grogan had to puff to keep up with the professor, who had suddenly turned into much more of an athlete than he looked.

After a five-minute walk, he suddenly hung back. "What's that?"

"That" was a strange, faint vocal sound, a rumble like a lion warming up for his evening roar.

"Just one of the boys," said Frybush; and after a while: "Here are some of them now."

The grass had been cut over an area of about an acre in a little hollow, and about this area were five great hairy creatures, four male and a female. Two of the males and a female lay on their backs and snoozed, while the remaining two males played catch.

Grogan did not realize how big they were until he got close and had to look up at their faces. They were about nine feet tall, more massively built than ordinary men, and showed the brutish, protruding faces and stooped posture of the ape-men in books on evolution. Grogan realized with a sick feeling that the ball they were throwing and catching with one hand was a medicine ball.

"Hey, George!" called the professor.

The nearest ape-man looked around, grinned gruesomely, and shambled over.

"George," continued Frybush, "I want you to meet my friend Mr. Grogan. George Ethelbert, assistant chief of the northern tribe."

Grogan mistrustfully put his hand in the monster's. It was like shaking hands with a three-year-old baby in reverse. Grogan, grinning a little foolishly, said:

"Me come from Chicago. Fly in big bird. You got-um nice place."

The ape-man wrinkled his low forehead. "What's the matter, mister?" he rumbled. "You a foreigner or somepin?"

"Why I ... I didn't know you guys spoke good English," said Grogan. "I guess you like this better than all those mammoths and things, huh?"

"Huh?" said George Ethelbert, turning to Frybush. "Prof, what's wrong with this guy? I never seen a mammoth in my life, except a picture in a book once."

"Excuse me, excuse me," said Grogan. "I thought ... well, you know, different, like those things that lived — Oh, skip it. You do the talking, Professor."

Frybush said: "How about showing us around, George?"

"How about letting me off and having Zella do it for once?" said Ethelbert. "I'm having a good little game here."

"Okay."

"Zella!" roared Ethelbert

When the female kept on snoring like a thunderstorm, he wound up and threw his medicine ball, which bounced off her ribs with a sound like hitting a bass drum.

"Why, you —"howled the female, rolling to her feet. "I'll fix you, you —"and she charged like an angry elephant. Ethelbert sidestepped at the last minute and let her blunder past. She almost trod on the two normal men, and both monsters laughed at the sight of Frybush and Grogan dodging. The female, temper apparently soothed, hit Ethelbert a slap on the back that would have felled a rhinoceros.

"Sure, I'll show these shrimps around, and then I'll put a snake in your bunk to show you how to treat a lady," she said. "Where do you twerps want to go?"

"Professor," said Grogan in a low voice, looking cautiously at the hairy back of Zella trudging through the dust in front of him, "she reminds me of my second wife. I know I made a sap of myself, but I got the idea from what you said that these people would be kind of feeble-minded. They don't sound that way."

"That depends on the individual," said Frybush. 'They're not really pure Gigantanthropus, you know; it would take many more generations to breed out all the human genes. What's more, George is unusually bright for a gigantanth; practically a genius, which makes him about as intelligent as an average human being."

"Hm-m-m." Grogan walked in silence, thinking, while Zella pointed out the huge barn and huge log cabins. The latter moved Grogan to say: "Seems pretty crude, Professor. Wouldn't it be simpler to send houses out from the city by truck? A couple of good workmen could run one up in a day."

Frybush shook his head. "That's been tried, and it nearly ruined the throwbacks. Made 'em lazy, or discouraged 'em from doing anything for themselves. Better to live by their own efforts, even if they're not efficient at it."

Further on, Frybush said: "Look, Mr. Grogan, I've got some educational matters to discuss with Zella. Why don't you wait here? You can sit on that bench, or wander around; you're safe."

"Okay," said Grogan resignedly.

When they had gone, he shuffled about in the sleepy sunshine, the dust of the unpaved street frosting the shine of his shoes. He was getting bored; the place was only a backwoods farm with everything twice natural size, and farms did not appeal to Oliver Grogan. He yawned and stretched out on the hand-hewn bench for a minute of shut-eye while the prof did his business.

He had barely closed his eyes, however, when a voice said: "Hey, you!"

Grogan looked up, then sprang to his feet. Before him stood another of the creatures. From its size and comparative hairlessness, he judged it to be a child of the species. Grogan, who knew little even about human children, guessed its age as about twelve. At any rate, it was almost as tall as he was and much heavier than his 130 pounds.

"Yeah?" he said, backing against the bench and wishing the prof would come back.

"You another shrimp, ain't cha?"

"I suppose so, if that's what you call normal people."

"You come with the professor?"

"Yeah."

"Gimme some chewing gum, will ya?"

"Don't have none."

"Aw come on! All shrimps got chewing gum. Why won't cha give it to me?"

"Lemme alone. I tell you I ain't got none!" Grogan began-to sidle around his tormentor to get room to run.

"Aw come on! Why won't cha? I ast ya nice, didn't I?" The boy caught the sleeve of Grogan's coat.

Grogan jerked his arm, trying to wrench his sleeve loose. When that failed he kicked out in panic and hit something hard.

"Yeow!" bellowed the boy, letting go of Grogan's coat to hop on one leg and hug the injured shin of the other.

Grogan ran in the direction he had seen Frybush go. He heard the pound of the boy's big feet behind him, and its voice yelling rude words. Then thick arms caught his legs and spilled him prone in a flying tackle, and huge fists began to pound his back.

"Help!" he screamed, burying his head in his arms.

"Get often there, you!" roared Zella's voice, and Grogan felt the boy plucked from his back. He rolled over in time to see Zella hoist the boy by the neck with one hand, while with the other she gave it a terrific swat on the fundament that tossed it twenty feet. The boy scrambled up and burst into tears.

"I'll fix you, Zella," it said, "and I'll ... I'll fix that shrimp, too! All I do is ask him polite for some gum, and he kicks me in the shin. I'll twist his head off —"

As Zella took a threatening step, the boy, still howling, ran around the corner of the nearest cabin.

Grogan felt his bruises and slapped the dust from his suit as Zella and Frybush burst into apologies.

"Never mind," he said. "It gave me an idea. Professor, can these ... can our friends here leave their reservation if they wanna?"

"Surely, if they're not known to be dangerous. They're not citizens, but wards of the government with certain guaranteed rights. Some have traveled widely, though they always come back."

"Why?"

"For one thing, to be among their own kind."

"Yeah," said Zella, "and you just reckon what it's like for one of us to travel on one of your measly little trains, or sleep in one of those postage-stamp-sized beds. Huh! The airlines won't even carry us."

Grogan said: "Wonder if I could talk to George Ethelbert again?"

"Don't see why not," said Frybush. "We'll pass him on our way back to the gate."

When they saw Ethelbert again, still playing catch, Grogan called him over and asked: "George, how'd you like to be a professional football player?"

"Huh? What? You mean play football for money?"

"Sure. I could make you one."

George Ethelbert thought for a moment, his sloping forehead contorted. Finally: "Thanks a lot Mr. Grogan. I hope you won't get mad if I turn you down."

"Why don't you want to, huh?"

Ethelbert twisted one large bare foot in the dust. "Well, to tell the truth I don't wanna be no football player; I wanna be an artist."

"A what?"

"An artist. You know, a guy what draws pictures."

"Wouldn't that tie you?" exclaimed Grogan, pushing his hat back on his head in puzzlement.

"But say, lemme think a minute — You know, George, maybe we can get together on this business anyway. Lemme see ... I know: you sign up with me to play ball, and I'll throw in a course at the Chicago Art Institute. Maybe you could get to be like Harry Whitehill, that baseball player that teaches that ... what you call it ... higher mathematics when he ain't playing."

"Maybe you got something there," said Ethelbert. "Give me a day to think about it. But say, how would you get me to Chicago? I can't even get into one of them railroad cars."

"Guess I'd have to hire a moving van. That gives me another idea! I'll ship you North in this truck without telling anybody, and train you secretly, and then I'll spring you in our first game of the season as a surprise! Boy, what publicity! Got some clothes, by the way? You can't run around Chi the way you are."

"Yep, I got a suit to wear into town. Had to have it made special, naturally."

"Natch," said Grogan.

The first game was to be with the Dallas Wildcats. Ethelbert, climbing into his oversized football suit, looked forward to it with some fear and some hope. On one hand, he had never faced such a large crowd of "normal" people and was sure he'd be scared to death when he lumbered into the stadium. They would stare at him and photograph him. If he fumbled or tripped, he would face the ridicule of thousands and see his blunder recorded in print. Sometimes he wished he were back on his reservation where as assistant chief he had been important in his own right and where you didn't have to watch yourself every minute.

On the other hand, once people knew" about him, he could stop this hole-in-the-corner existence. He was living in Cicero in a tent in a backyard belonging to Bill Szymczak, the quarterback, and traveling to the practice field in Grogan's closed van. Also, he hoped that Grogan would stop stalling about taking him to the Art Institute; the manager would no longer have the excuse that people would find out about him. Other men of Ethelbert's race had warned him of the heartless way that shrimps tried to rook his kind when they had a chance.

Grogan made a little inspirational speech to the team, ending with: "... and more depends on this game than you guys got any idea of. Now, get out there and win!"

"Oh-oh," muttered Szymczak near Ethelbert. "That means the old man's in money trouble again."

"Again?" said Ethelbert uneasily.

"Sure, he's always betting his shirt and losing it or something foolish like that. Well, let's hope they don't catch up with him until after pay day."

"Okay, boys," said Day, the coach, "out we go."

The team set out through the tunnel in single file, breaking _v into a run as they came out into the open. Ethelbert, being saved as a surprise, was placed at the tail of the line. He did not have to break into a run, since by simply lengthening his stride he kept up with the rest.

As the team appeared on the field, their partisans in the stands set up a roar, though a feeble one compared with that at a big amateur game with its organized rooting. Normally the noise would keep on until some of the boys took their bench while others warmed up with a little snappy passing and running.

However, the minute Ethelbert lurched out of the tunnel, the roar died as if strangled. Ethelbert could see a crawling movement go through the mass of heads around the stadium as people turned to their neighbors to ask questions. He knew something of the elaborate advance publicity by which Grogan had tried to build up interest in his mysterious new halfback, and he hoped these people were not disappointed.

Ethelbert sat down on his own special little bench of four-by-six timbers and waited, feeling thousands of eyes boring into him like needles. Then Day came over and said:

"George, we're putting you in right at the start. We kick off, but we can hold 'em for first-down and then you do your act. Don't try to tackle these guys if they come through; we don't want to kill 'em. You take it easy. What's that?"

The last was to Grogan, who said: "Seems to be some kind of parley with the referee over there. Guess they're trying to figure out a grounds for protest. Here he comes."

The referee walked over and said: "Grogan, I'd like to meet your new mystery halfback. Seems some folks have been asking whether he's eligible."

"Sure," said Grogan. "Mr. Rosso, meet George Ethelbert. See anything wrong with him?"

Rosso shrank back a little as Ethelbert put out a hand the size of a small suitcase, but braced himself and shook hands.

"N-no," he said, "unless you'd call being the size of a house something wrong. There was some talk on the other team about whether you'd run in a tame gorilla on them. Speaking of which" — he shot a keen look at Ethelbert — "can your new player talk?"

"Say something to him, George," said Grogan.

"Sure, I can talk," said Ethelbert. "What do you want me to say?"

"I guess he can talk all right," said Rosso, "but I still don't altogether like it. You guys ready?"

Martin, Grogan's first-string fullback, kicked off for the Wolves. A Wildcat caught it and ran it back to the Wildcat's thirty-yard line before he was downed.

As they lined up for the next play, Ethelbert got his first good look at the Wildcats, and they at him. The sight did not seem to please them. They kept turning to stare at him when they were supposed to be listening to their captain's instructions in the huddle.

The Wildcats' first two plays were line-bucks that got nowhere. On the next the Wildcat ball-carrier got through the Wolves' line, ran towards Ethelbert — who remembering his instructions, did no more than make an ineffectual grab at him — skittered wildly around to the side, and made his ten yards.

At that, the look of blank despair on the Wildcats' faces relaxed a little. However, their next two plays were smothered line plays that got them only three yards. Then they tried a pass. Ethelbert lumbered towards the receiver, stretching out hairy-backed hands, showing his immense teeth, and going "Woo!" This sight kept the receiver so busy backing away from Ethelbert that he did not even try to catch the ball. The same thing happened on the next play. Then the Wildcats kicked, and the Wolves downed the ball on their own twenty-seven-yard line.

Szymczak told Ethelbert: "Okay, big boy, here we go."

On the play, Szymczak took the ball and handed it to Ethelbert, who tried to step over the scrimmage line. The mass of bodies was a little too big, however, and Ethelbert came down with a crunch on something; then continued on his way. A rash Wildcat wrapped his arms around Ethelbert's leg, but Ethelbert shook his leg and sent the player spinning twenty feet away. When another dove at him he caught the man in his free hand and threw him away. Then he trotted on down the field for a touchdown.

The stands roared; men in white carried off in a stretcher the Wildcat Ethelbert had stepped on; and the Wolves made their place-kick good. Seven to nothing, Wolves' favor.

On the Wolves' next kick-off, the Wildcats were so demoralized that they fumbled the ball all over the place until a Wolf ran down and fell on it. On the first play, the Wildcats actually lost ground, which completed their breakdown. They kicked.

By luck the kick came down near Ethelbert, who scooped it out of the air like an elephant catching a peanut, and lumbered down the field again. There seemed plenty of opponents in front of him, but when he braced himself to meet them they all seemed somehow to be not quite able to reach him. Over the racket from the stands he heard the Wildcats' captain yelling: "Grab him! Grab him!"

But that, nobody seemed anxious to do. Another touchdown.

At this point, however, the game failed to go on. Ethelbert saw the Wildcats gathered around their coach, waving arms and shouting. Presently Martin told him:

"They say they won't play any more. You busted that guy's leg you stepped on, George."

"Aw, gee, I'm sorry," said Ethelbert.

Now Grogan was arguing with the Wildcat coach and the Wildcat manager, arms flying.

"They say they won't," yelled the Wildcat manager.

"What is this, a strike?" shouted Grogan. "Thought you had arbitration clauses in your contracts."

"How you gonna arbitrate a thing like this in the middle of a game? Unless you take out this gorilla they just don't play no more, period. And I don't blame 'em. They say they'd have to have a Brahma bull on their side to make it even."

"You mean you concede the game?"

"I don't give a care what you call it —"

Here the referee joined in: "But you can't do that! The customers'll riot if you quit now. We'll have to give 'em back their dough. You'll lose your bond —"

"And I said," yelled Grogan, "that I won't take Ethelbert out! I'm not quitting; I'm just standing on my rights."

The dispute became too general for Ethelbert to hear what was going on. With his teammates he retired to the benches and sat grinning until the knot broke up and Grogan rejoined them. "Okay, boys," he said. "Off to the showers. We get our dough without even having to play for it."

"Can I go to the Art Institute now to sign up?" Ethelbert asked him.

"Sure, sure, I'll make a date for tomorrow afternoon."

"Swell. Look Mr. Grogan, do I have to ride around inside that smelly old moving van any more? If I sort of hang out the side I can sit up with the driver, and since folks know about me now —"

"Sure, only just don't bother me now."

Ethelbert found the dressing room full of newspaper reporters and photographers. "Mr. Ethelbert, how do you get along with human beings?"

"Mr. Ethelbert, will you turn your head so I can get your profile? I want to show that receding forehead — "

"Say, George, how do you manage with telephone booths?"

When they asked him what he was interested in besides football, he was tempted to tell them about his art course. However, he decided that they might have fun with the story and kept his mouth shut. You had to watch yourself every minute in dealing with shrimps.

Ethelbert enjoyed his ride out to Cicero through a light drizzle in the front seat of the van, although he had to sit scrunched up with his knees under his chin. The truck listed to starboard. Once, when they were stuck in a jam and an impatient hack driver began slanging Szymczak for getting in his way, Ethelbert unfolded his length and oozed out around the windshield to where the hackie could see him. The man subsided and sped away.

When they got to Szymczak's little house, Ethelbert insisted upon calling up the hospital whither the injured Wildcat had been taken, to learn that his fracture was not too serious. He even wanted to pay the wounded player a visit. But Szymczak said:

"No, George, just think: if you was to walk in on him and he was to look up and see you, he'd have a galloping relapse."

"Oh, heck," grumbled Ethelbert. "All you shrimps think that because I'm bigger than you, I don't have no human feelings."

He retired to the backyard to wait for them to bring him his ten-pound dinner, wondering how much longer he'd have to put up with this tent. Although he was used to hard living, he had in his few weeks in Chicago acquired a yearning for the niceties of civilization. Maybe some day he could have a house built special for him with furniture to match

Next morning, he made a telephone call to Grogan's office on Szymczak's line. To do this, he stood outside Szymczak's window. Szymczak dialed the number, since Ethelbert's fingers would not fit the holes in the dial. When the office answered, Szymczak handed the instrument out the window.

Grogan's secretary said: "No, George, Mr. Grogan isn't in now. He was, but he rushed out to see his lawyer. I think it's about that meeting this afternoon."

"What meeting?" said Ethelbert, holding the receiver between thumb and forefinger.

"Oh, didn't you know? The executive committee of the National Football League is meeting right after lunch. It's about that game yesterday."

"Huh?" said Ethelbert, and repeated her words to Szymczak.

Szymczak whistled. "Ask her if that ain't kind of fast work."

The secretary said: "Yeah, it sure is. A couple of them flew in from California this morning. That game made headlines all over."

"Didn't he say nothing about his date with me, to go to the Art Institute today?"

"No, nothing. And, just after he went out, a process server came in looking for him."

"What for?"

"How should I know? Maybe one of his wives has got on his trail again."

Szymczak, when told, looked grim. "Looks as though everything sure ganged up on him at once. He had some big debts, and now if the exec committee says no to you, it'll clean him out."

Ethelbert growled: "Why don't people tell me these things before I get tangled up with a guy like that? What'll he do? Run away?"

"Might. Ready to go to practice? I'll get the truck."

George Ethelbert practiced that day with only half his mind, while with the other half he worried about Grogan's course of action. In the middle of the afternoon the coach suddenly called from the sidelines:

"Hey, George!"

"Yeah?" said Ethelbert, checking a pass in the act of throwing.

"Come here, please. Mr. Grogan wants to see you."

Day's tone made Ethelbert's heart sink as he lumbered off the field. When he squeezed into the dressing room he found Grogan, looking as unhappy as he, Ethelbert, felt.

"George," said Grogan, "I hate to tell you this, but the committee has decided nix."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, they passed a new rule. No more gigantanths, pithecanthropes, or other products of the Huebner experiments will be allowed to play in the League. To make sure they've added a top-weight rule: nobody over 350 pounds."

"Gee," was all Ethelbert could say.

Day spoke up: "They can't do that in the middle of the season, Ollie."

"Maybe not, but they did. George, I'll arrange for the truck to take you back to your reservation free, if you want to go. You want to go, don't you?"

Ethelbert frowned. "How about my art course?"

"Oh, that's all off. You can't carry out your end of the contract, so you can't expect me to carry out mine, can you? I'm letting you off easy."

Ethelbert shook his great head: "I remember that contract just exactly, Mr. Grogan, and it said I was to get my course regardless of whether I was able to play or not. You remember, I insisted on that"

Grogan spread his hands. "Be reasonable; George. I'm having money troubles of my own, and with you out of the picture I can't afford your course. Can't get blood out of turnips, you know."

"You mean," rumbled Ethelbert, "you want to get out of your promise and this is a good excuse. Why, you dirty little so-and-so, I could break your back, like this —"

"Yeek!" Grogan dodged behind the coach and fumbled in his pocket. "Don't come a step nearer! Keep back or I'll cool

His hand brought out a small pistol. As Ethelbert hesitated, Grogan sidled toward the door, then dashed out. Ethelbert took two steps after him and got stuck in the door.

He pulled himself back inside the dressing room, shaking the building to its foundations, and turned upon Day. The coach paled and started to slink out the other door.

"Don't be scared of me, Mel!" roared Ethelbert. "I'm not mad at you."

"Well —"

"I know what it is. Just because you think I'm big and ugly, I'm some kind of gorilla that goes into wild rages and bites off a guy's head. All right, if that's how you feel. I thought you was a friend of mine."

"I'm sorry, George; I guess you did give me a turn for a moment. What are you going to do now?"

"Dunno. You know how much I eat compared to you little guys. My money won't last long at that rate. What do you do when somebody runs out on his promise?"

"Well, if it was me, I'd get a lawyer and sue."

"Don't you have to pay lawyers a lot of money ahead of time?"

"Usually yes, but some of 'em take cases on a contingent-fee basis. If they win, they take a percentage; if not, they don't get anything."

"Do you know any lawyers?"

Day closed his eyes for a few seconds. "We-ell, don't ever let Ollie know I tipped you off; after all I work for him. But if you go see Charlie MacAlpine at this address, he'll take care of you. Take your contract along."

Ethelbert went home with Szymczak as usual. Next morning, he persuaded the quarterback to drop him off at the lawyer's address on his way to practice.

When Ethelbert squeezed his way into the lawyer's office, the girl at MacAlpine's switchboard screamed and upset her chair. The sound brought MacAlpine from his sanctum — a stout, sleepy-looking man with a great gray mop of hair. The lawyer calmed the girl:

"Now, now, this is Mr. Ethelbert, who made an appointment by telephone. Nothing to get excited about. Come into the inner office, Mr. Ethelbert, and tell me your troubles. I think you can get through this door if you turn sideways."

When Ethelbert had told his story, MacAlpine said: "Ordinarily I don't take contingent-fee cases, but in this case I'll do it. The case would be worth the cost to me in free publicity if I never made a cent on it." He grinned through his fat and chuckled.

After they had gone over the contract, MacAlpine said: "All right, then, I'll draw up the complaint today; file it first thing tomorrow and have Grogan served."

"What'll I do meanwhile?"

"What do you mean, what'll you do?"

"I haven't got a job or anything, and I can't go on living off Bill Szymczak. And I don't think Mr. Grogan will let me use the truck any more when he learns I'm suing him."

"That's so. Look, I know a man near here I once did a favor for, and he's the manager of a hotel. I think I can get him to take you. And I'll see that you eat until the case is settled."

"Gee, I don't know how to thank you, Mr. MacAlpine."

On the way out, Ethelbert was tempted to ask the switchboard girl for a date, then thought better of it.

As Ethelbert and the lawyer walked along the street, little crowds formed to gape from a respectful distance. Ethelbert did not like it but could not think of anything to do about it.

The manager of the Elysian Hotel did not seem over-pleased to get a thousand-pound guest. He muttered about breaking down his beds.

"That's all right," said Ethelbert; "I wouldn't know how to sleep in a bed anyhow. Just put a couple of mattresses on the floor and I'll be okay."

"But, Mr. Ethelbert," said the manager, "can I count on you not to hang around the lobby? Not that we discriminate against people of your kind, you understand, but if somebody came in after a party to register at our hotel, and looked up and saw you, he might change his mind."

"Oh, I'll stay in my room all the time, except when I'm out to see Mr. MacAlpine," said Ethelbert. "I don't know Chicago well enough to go wandering around by myself; I'd get lost."

Next morning, MacAlpine telephoned Ethelbert: "Trot up to my office, George. Grogan and his lawyer are on their way."

At the office, MacAlpine told him: "They may want to settle out of court. I'll hide you in the inner office here. No matter what happens, keep still. I'll come in and tell you what they offer."

"Mr. MacAlpine," said Ethelbert, "maybe I'm being too tough on poor Mr. Grogan —"

"Bunk! Ollie Grogan's never given a sucker an even break in his life."

Ethelbert waited in the inner room, hearing faint voices, until MacAlpine came in: "George, they've offered to give you two-thirds of the price of your art course if you'll call off the suit. I had quite an argument. First they insisted you weren't human, and I had to cite a dozen cases to prove otherwise. Then they wanted to offer only a quarter or a half."

"What do you think?"

"I think you'd be smart to take it. Considering Ollie's financial condition, I'm afraid that if we try to get our last pound of flesh we'll only drive him into bankruptcy. The story going round is that he lost fifty thousand to some gangster in a poker game, and this individual is beginning to bear down on him."

Ethelbert thought. "Okay, Mr. MacAlpine. What do I do now?"

"We'll see." MacAlpine led his client into the outer office, where he shook hands with Grogan and his lawyer, all bearing glassy smiles upon their faces. Grogan said: "If you'll wait until tomorrow, George, I'll pay you —"

"Why not today, Mr. Grogan?"

Grogan shrugged. "Have to get the dough —"

"Excuse me, but don't you have one of them bank accounts? You could write a check."

"No, I don't like 'em. I keep my stuff in cash."

"Well then, I'll go with you to where you live, and you can pay me there."

MacAlpine said: "That seems reasonable to me, Mr. Grogan. After all —"

"All right," sighed Grogan. "You guys ready to go right now?"

MacAlpine said: "I think George can take care of the receiving end. I've got to be in court in an hour. You go with him, George, and I'll get in touch with you."

At the street level, Grogan's lawyer pleaded that he too had business. After another round of handshakes he left them.

Ethelbert said: "Where do you live, Mr. Grogan?" And when Grogan told him: "Have you got the truck here?"

"No," said Grogan shortly.

"Well, how far is this place? Couple of miles? We can walk it easy."

"But —"

"Come along; you show me the way."

Grogan subsided and led Ethelbert zigzag across downtown Chicago on the edge of the Loop district. They reached a small apartment hotel.

"You wait out here," said Grogan.

"If you don't mind I'll wait inside," said Ethelbert. "People stare so if I stand in the street."

"All right."

Grogan went into the lobby, and Ethelbert followed after, the sight of him causing the switchboard girl to swallow her gum. Grogan disappeared into the elevator. Ethelbert waited.

He waited some more.

Finally he asked the elevator operator: "Say, mister, you got a telephone I can call Mr. Grogan's apartment on?"

"Yeah," said the operator, approaching him in gingerly fashion. "You use this handset and push this button here."

Ethelbert pushed the button and held the receiver to his ear. He pushed it again. Nothing happened.

"You sure this is the right button?" he asked the operator.

"Yeah," said the latter, checking.

Ethelbert tried again without success, then said: "How about taking me up to Mr. Grogan's floor?"

"Uh. I don't think our elevator's made to carry so much weight."

"How many is it made to carry?"

The operator looked at the license posted inside the elevator. "Eight."

"Well, I only weigh as much as six of you shrimps, so let me in."

As Ethelbert, bending almost double, squeezed into the car, the operator protested feebly: "Hey, there ain't room for me!"

"That's all right; you can still work your little buttons. Now take me up to Mr. Grogan's floor."

Ethelbert rang the buzzer on Grogan's door, with no results. He called: "Hey, Mr. Grogan!" and knocked. Silence.

Finally he drew back his fist and dealt a real wallop to the door, which flew open with a rending of wood.

The apartment showed the disorder of a hurried departure. When he had satisfied himself that Grogan was not there, Ethelbert came back to the elevator. "You got a telephone I could call outside with?"

"Sure," said the operator. "On the ground floor."

"You ain't seen Mr. Grogan come down since he went up?"

"Nope."

"Is there any other way out — a back stairs, like?"

"Nope. Just this elevator and that there stairs."

Back to earth, Ethelbert telephoned the training field and got Day. After telling of the day's happenings, he ended: "— so the guy has disappeared. What do you suppose he's doing?"

Day replied: "Sounds to me like he's absconded with all the club's money. I've been suspicious he might try something like that if it got too hot for him. You stay there and watch for him, and I'll be right over with a cop and a warrant."

Left to ponder, Ethelbert wondered whether to search the whole apartment house. No, that wouldn't do; you couldn't go busting into people's apartments unless you were a policeman or something. Besides, while he was searching thus, Grogan might sneak past him and down the stairs.

While Ethelbert lounged uneasily in the entrance to the building, a whirr of rotors above the street noises made him look up to see a helicopter glide out of sight over the top of his own building.

Instantly he knew where Grogan was. He dashed in to the elevator, nearly stepping on one of the tenants who was on his way out to walk his dog. The dog yipped and wound his leash around its master's legs, while Ethelbert squeezed into the elevator again and bellowed: "All the way up, you!"

"Now," he said when they had arrived at the top of the shaft, "how do you get out onto the roof?"

"Through ... uh ... through that little d-door there," said the operator, pointing.

The little door was open but too small for Ethelbert, who burst out on the roof, bringing most of the door frame with him. The helicopter hovered a few feet above the surface of the roof. Oliver Grogan was handing a suitcase up to the pilot.

"Hey!" roared Ethelbert, squinting against the gale of the rotor.

Grogan skinned up the short ladder like a frightened monkey. The door of the craft closed behind him. The helicopter began to rise.

Ethelbert looked around for some means of stopping it. There were no loose objects on the roof. The nearest projection was the upper end of an iron standpipe.

Ethelbert seized the top of the standpipe in both hands and grunted. The pipe broke off with a sharp .sound, and Ethelbert threw the two-foot length at the main rotor.

The missile hit with a clank and a splitting sound. The helicopter, with a shattered rotor blade, teetered and crashed to the roof, crumpling its undercarriage. As it fell, the door flew open and Grogan and his suitcase popped out. The suitcase in turn burst open as it hit the roof, spilling out shirts and socks and a couple of large wads of currency held together with rubber bands. Grogan rolled over, picked himself up, and sprinted for the edge of the roof.

Ethelbert lumbered after him. At the low wall along the edge, Grogan hesitated. He looked at the pavement ten stories below, then at Ethelbert, and jumped.

Ethelbert, coming up, shot out a long arm and caught Grogan's ankle. He hauled Grogan back to the roof, muttering:

"Fool, I wasn't gonna hurt you none."

"Hey," said another voice. It was the pilot of the helicopter, who had just freed himself from the wreckage. "What's the idea? What goes on? I just come to take this guy to the airport, like he 'phoned us to do —"

"Stay where you are, buddy," said Ethelbert. "This passenger of yours is a criminal embezzler or something."

"But that's no cause to bust my machine. You'll hear from the Victory Air Cab Service about this —"

They were still arguing when Day came through the door with a policeman.

Three days later, George Ethelbert arrived in court to testify against Oliver Grogan in his preliminary hearing on the charge of embezzlement. Grogan was led in. While they were waiting for the judge, Grogan called over to Ethelbert:

"Hey, George!"

"Yeah, Mr. Grogan?"

"Thanks for saving my life."

"Oh, shucks, that wasn't nothing."

"Sure it was. After I got to thinking I figured a guy is a sap to bump himself just on account of a little money trouble."

"Sure," said Ethelbert.

"And you won't have to testify against me after all. I'm gonna plead guilty."

"What?"

"Yeah. Been thinking. Between my ex-wives and creditors and those lugs I lost dough to gambling, I figure jail will be the safest place. Gonna go back to Oklahoma?"

"Me? No, I'm a policeman now."

"What?" cried Grogan.

"Yeah. When I told the sergeant all about how I caught you, he said that was shrewd police work, and he called in the lieutenant, and they signed me up as a rookie cop. This morning I found out I passed the civil service examination, and I start in police school tomorrow."

"I'll be —"

"So will I. Ain't it great? Next month when the new term opens at the Art Institute I'll be able to study there in my off hours. The lieutenant said when the news got out about me being on the force, that would prob'ly end crime in Chicago once and for all!"

Judgment Day

It took me a long time to decide whether to let the earth live. Some might think this an easy decision. Well, it was and it wasn't. I wanted one thing, while the mores of my culture said to do the other.

This is a decision that few have to make. Hitler might give orders for the execution of ten million, and Stalin orders that would kill another ten million. But neither could send the world up in a puff of flame by a few marks on a piece of paper.

Only now has physics got to the point where such a decision is possible. Yet, with due modesty, I don't think my discovery was inevitable. Somebody might have come upon it later — say in a few centuries, when such things might be better organized. My equation was far from obvious. All the last three decades' developments in nuclear physics have pointed away from it.

My chain-reaction uses iron, the last thing that would normally be employed in such a series. It's at the bottom of the atomic energy-curve. Anything else can be made into iron with a release of energy, while it takes energy to make iron into anything else.

Really, the energy doesn't come from the iron, but from the — the other elements in the reaction. But the iron is necessary. It is not exactly a catalyst, as it is transmuted and then turned back into iron again, whereas a true catalyst remains unchanged. But the effect is the same. With iron so common in the crust of the earth, it should be possible to blow the entire crust off with one big poof.

I recall how I felt when I first saw these equations, here in my office last month. I sat staring at my name on the glass of the door, "Dr. Wade Ormont," only it appears backwards from the inside. I was sure I had made a mistake. I checked and rechecked and calculated and recalculated. I went through my nuclear equations at least thirty times. Each time my heart, my poor old heart, pounded harder and the knot in my stomach grew tighter. I had enough sense not to tell anybody else in the department about my discovery.

I did not even then give up trying to find something wrong with my equations. I fed them through the computer, in case there was some glaring, obvious error I had been overlooking. Didn't that sort of thing — a minus for a plus or something — once happen to Einstein? I'm no Einstein, even if I am a pretty good physicist, so it could happen to me.

However, the computer said it hadn't. I was right.

The next question was: what to do with these results? They ' would not help us towards the laboratory's objectives: more powerful nuclear weapons and more efficient ways of generating nuclear power. The routine procedure would be to write up a report. This would be typed and photostated and stamped "Top Secret." A few copies would be taken around by messenger to those who needed to know about such things. It would go to the AEC and the others. People in this business have learned to be pretty close-mouthed, but the knowledge of my discovery would still spread, even though it might take years.

I don't think the government of the United States would ever try to blow up the world, but others might. Hitler might have, if he had known how, when he saw he faced inevitable defeat. The present Commies are pretty cold-blooded calculators, but one can't tell who'll be running their show in ten or twenty years. Once this knowledge gets around, anybody with a reasonable store of nuclear facilities could set the thing off. Most would not, even in revenge for defeat. But some might threaten to do so as blackmail, and a few would actually touch it off if thwarted. What's the proportion of paranoids and other crackpots in the world's population? It must be high enough, as a good fraction of the world's rulers and leaders have been of this type. No government yet devised — monarchy, aristocracy, theocracy, timocracy, democracy, dictatorship, soviet, or what have you — will absolutely stop such people from coming to the top. So long as these tribes of hairless apes are organized into sovereign nations, the nuclear Ragnarok is not only possible but probable.

For that matter, am I not a crackpot myself, calmly to contemplate blowing up the world?

No. At least the psychiatrist assured me my troubles were not of that sort. A man is not a nut if he goes about gratifying his desires in a rational manner. As to the kind of desires, that's non-rational anyway. I have adequate reasons for wishing to exterminate my species. It's no high-flown, farfetched theory either; no religious mania about the sinfulness of man, but a simple, wholesome lust for revenge. Christians pretend to disapprove of vengeance, but that's only one way of looking at it. Many other cultures have deemed it right and proper, so it can't be a sign of abnormality.

For instance, when I think back over my fifty-three years, what do I remember? Well, take the day I first entered school ...

I suppose I was a fearful little brute at six: skinny, stubborn, and precociously intellectual. Because my father was a professor, I early picked up a sesquipedalian way of speaking (which has been defined as a tendency to use words like "sesquipedalian"). At six I was sprinkling my conversation with words like "theoretically" and "psychoneurotic." Because of illnesses I was as thin as a famine victim, with just enough muscle to get me from here to there.

While I always seemed to myself a frightfully good little boy whom everyone picked on, my older relatives in their last years assured me I was nothing of the sort, but the most intractable creature they ever saw. Not that I was naughty or destructive. On the contrary, I meticulously obeyed all formal rules and regulations with a zeal that would have gladdened the heart of a Prussian drill sergeant. It was that in those situations that depend, not on formal rules, but on accommodating oneself to the wishes of others, I never considered any wishes but my own. These I pursued with fanatical single-mindedness. As far as I was concerned, other people were simply inanimate things put into the world to minister to my wants. What they thought I neither knew nor cared.

Well, that's my relatives' story. Perhaps they were prejudiced too. Anyway, when I entered the first grade in a public school in New Haven, the fun started the first day. At recess a couple grabbed my cap for a game of "siloochee." That meant that they tossed the cap from one to the other while the owner leaped this way and that like a hooked fish trying to recover his headgear.

After a few minutes I lost my temper and tried to brain one of my tormentors with a rock. Fortunately, six-year-olds are not strong enough to kill each other by such simple means. I raised a lump on the boy's head, and then the others piled on me. Because of my weakness I was no match for any of them. The teacher dug me out from the bottom of the pile.

With the teachers I got on well. I had none of the normal boy's spirit of rebellion against all adults. In my precocious way I reasoned that adults probably knew more than I, and when they told me to do something I assumed they had good reasons and did it. The result was that I became teacher's pet, which made my life that much harder with my peers.

They took to waylaying me on my way home. First they would snatch my cap for a game of siloochee. The game would develop into a full-fledged baiting session, with boys running from me in front, jeering, while others ran up behind to hit or kick me. I must have chased them all over New Haven. When they got tired of being chased they would turn around, beat me (which they could do with absurd ease), and chase me for a while. I screamed, wept, shouted threats and abuse, made growling and hissing noises, and indulged in pseudo-fits like tearing my hair and foaming at the mouth in hope of scaring them off. This was just what they wanted. Hence, during most of my first three years in school, I was let out ten minutes early so as to be well on my way to my home on Chapel Street by the time the other boys got out.

This treatment accentuated my bookishness. I was digging through Millikan's The Electron at the age of nine.

My father worried vaguely about my troubles but did little about them, being a withdrawn, bookish man himself. His line was medieval English literature, which he taught at Yale, but he still sympathized with a fellow intellectual and let me have my head. Sometimes he made fumbling efforts to engage me in ball-throwing and similar outdoor exercises. This had little effect, since he really hated exercise, sport, and the outdoors as much as I did, and was as clumsy and unco-ordinated as I to boot. Several times I resolved to force myself through a regular course of exercises to make myself into a young Tarzan, but when it came to executing my resolution I found the calisthenics such a frightful bore that I always let them lapse before they had done me any good.

I'm no psychologist. Like most followers of the exact sciences, I have an urge to describe psychology as a "science," in quotes, implying that only the exact sciences like physics are entitled to the name. That may be unfair, but it's how many physicists feel.

For instance, how can the psychologists all these years have treated sadism as something abnormal, brought on by some stupid parent's stopping his child from chopping up the furniture with a hatchet, thereby filling him with frustration and insecurity? On the basis of my own experience I will testify that all boys — well, perhaps ninety-nine per cent — are natural-born sadists. Most of them have it beaten out of them. Correct that: most of them have it beaten down into their subconscious, or whatever the head-shrinkers call that part of our minds nowadays. It's still there, waiting a chance to pop up. Hence crime, war, persecution, and all the other ills of society. Probably this cruelty was evolved as a useful characteristic back in the Stone Age. An anthropological friend once told me this idea was fifty years out of date, but he could be wrong also.

I suppose I have my share of it. At least I never wanted anything with such passionate intensity as I wanted to kill those little fiends in New Haven by lingering and horrible tortures. Even now, forty-five years after, that wish is still down there at the bottom of my mind, festering away. I still remember them as individuals, and can still work myself into a frenzy of hatred and resentment just thinking about them. I don't suppose I have ever forgotten or forgiven an injury or insult in my life. I'm not proud of that quality, but neither am I ashamed of it. It is just the way I am.

Of course I had reasons for wishing to kill the little bastards, while they had no legitimate grudge against me. I had done nothing to them except to offer an inviting target, a butt, a punching-bag. I never expected, as I pored over Millikan's book, that this would put me on the track of as complete a revenge as anybody could ask.

So much for boys. Girls I don't know about. I was the middle one of three brothers; my mother was a masterful character lacking the qualities usually thought of as feminine; and I never dated a girl until I was nearly thirty. I married late, for a limited time, and had no children. It would neatly have solved my present problem if I had found how to blow up the male half of the human race while sparing the female. That is not the desire for a super-harem, either. I had enough trouble keeping one woman satisfied when I was married. It is just that the female half has never gone out of its way to make life hell for me, day after day for years, even though one or two women, too, have done me dirt. So, in a mild, detached way, I should be sorry to destroy the women along with the men.

By the time I was eleven and in the sixth grade, things had got worse. My mother thought that sending me to a military academy would "make a man of me." I should be forced to exercise and mix with the boys. Drill would teach me to stand up and hold my shoulders back. And I could no longer slouch into my father's study for a quiet session with the encyclopedia.

My father was disturbed by this proposal, thinking that sending me away from home would worsen my lot by depriving me of my only sanctuary. Also he did not think we could afford a private school on his salary and small private income.

As usual, my mother won. I was glad to go at first. Anything seemed better than the torment I was enduring. Perhaps a new crowd of boys would treat me better. If they didn't, our time would be so fully organized that nobody would have an opportunity to bully me.

So in the fall of 1927, with some fears but more hopes, I entered Rogers Military Academy at Waukeegus, New Jersey ...

The first day, things looked pretty good. I admired the gray uniforms with the little brass strip around the edge of the visors of the caps.

But it took me only a week to learn two things. One was that the school, for all its uniforms and drills, was loosely run. The boys had plenty of time to think up mischief. The other was that, by the mysterious sense boys have, they immediately picked me as fair game.

On the third day somebody pinned a sign to my back, reading call me sally. I went around all day unconscious of the sign and puzzled by being called "Sally."

"Sally" I remained all the time I was at Rogers. The reason for calling me by a girl's name was merely that I was small, skinny, and unsocial, as I have never had any tendencies towards sexual abnormality. Had I had, I could easily have indulged them, Rogers being like other boys' boarding schools in this regard.

To this day I wince at the name "Sally." Some years ago, before I married, matchmaking friends introduced me to an attractive girl and could not understand why I dropped her like a hot brick. Her name was Sally.

There was much hazing of new boys at Rogers; the teachers took a fatalistic attitude and looked the other way. I was the favorite hazee, only with me it did not taper off after the first few weeks. They kept it up all through the first year. One morning in March, 1928, I was awakened around five by several boys' seizing my arms and legs and holding me down while one of them forced a cake of soap into my mouth.

"Look out he don't bite you," said one.

"Castor oil would be better."

"We ain't got none. Hold his nose; that'll make him open up."

"We should have shaved the soap up into little pieces. Then he'd have foamed better."

"Let me tickle him; that'll make him throw a fit."

"There, he's foaming fine, like a old geyser."

"Stop hollering, Sally," one of them addressed me, "or we'll put the suds in your eyes."

"Put the soap in 'em anyway. It'll make a red-eyed monster out of him. You know how he glares and shrieks when he gits mad?"

"Let's cut his hair all off. That'll reely make him look funny."

My yells brought one of the masters, who sharply ordered the tormentors to cease. They stood up while I rose to a sitting position on my bunk, spitting out soapsuds. The master said:

"What's going on here? Don't you know this is not allowed? It will mean ten rounds for each of you!"

"Rounds" were Rogers' form of discipline. Each round consisted of marching once around the track in uniform with your piece on your shoulder. (The piece was a Springfield 1903 army rifle with the firing pin removed, lest some student get .30 cartridges to fit and blow somebody's head off.) I hoped my tormentors would be at least expelled and was outraged by the lightness of their sentence. They on the other hand were indignant that they had been so hardly treated and protested with the air of outraged virtue:

"But Mr. Wilson, sir, we was only playing with him!"

At that age I did not know that private schools do not throw out paying students for any but the most heinous offenses; they can't afford to. The boys walked their ten rounds and hated me for it. They regarded me as a tattle-tale because my howls had drawn Mr. Wilson's attention and devoted themselves to thinking up new and ingenious ways to make me suffer. Now they were more subtle. There was nothing so crude as forcing soap down my throat. Instead it was hiding parts of my uniform, putting horse manure and other undesirable substances in my bed, and tripping me when I was drilling so my nine-pound Springfield and I went sprawling in the dirt.

I fought often, always getting licked and usually being caught and given rounds for violating the school's rules. I was proud when I actually bloodied one boy's nose, but it did me no lasting good. He laid for me in the swimming pool and nearly drowned me. By now I was so terrorized that I did not dare to name my attackers, even when the masters revived me by artificial respiration and asked me. Wilson said:

"Ormont, we know what you're going through, but we can't give you a bodyguard to follow you around. Nor can we encourage you to tattle as a regular thing; that'll only make matters worse."

"But what can I do, sir? I try to obey the rules ..."

"That's not it."

"What, then? I don't do anything to these kids; they just pick on me all the time."

"Well, for one thing, you could deprive them of the pleasure of seeing you yelling and making wild swings that never land ..." He drummed on his desk with his fingers. "We have this sort of trouble with boys like you, and if there's any way to stop it I don't know about it. You — let's face it; you're queer."

"How?"

"Oh, your language is much too adult —"

"But isn't that what you're trying to teach us in English?"

"Sure, but that's not the point. Don't argue about it; I'm trying to help you. Then another thing. You argue about everything, and most of the time you're right. But you don't suppose people like you for putting them in the wrong, do you?"

"But people ought —"

"Precisely, they ought, but they don't. You can't change the world by yourself. If you had muscles like Dempsey you could get away with a good deal, but you haven't. So the best thing is to adopt a protective coloration. Pay no attention to their attacks or insults. Never argue; never complain; never criticize. Rash a glassy smile at everybody, even when you feel like murdering them. Keep your language simple and agree with what's said whether you feel that way or not. I hate to give you a counsel of hypocrisy, but I don't see any alternative. If we could only make some sort of athlete out of you ..."

This was near the end of the school year. In a couple of weeks I was home. I complained about the school and asked to return to public school in New Haven. My parents objected on the ground that I was getting a better education at Rogers than I should get locally, which was true.

One day some of my old pals from public school caught me in a vacant lot and gave me a real beating, so that my face was swollen and marked. I realized that, terrible though the boys at Rogers were, they did not include the most fearful kind of all: the dimwitted muscular lout who has been left behind several grades in public school and avenges his boredom and envy by tormenting his puny classmates. After' that I did not complain about Rogers.

People talk of "School days, school days, dear old golden rule days ..." and all that rubbish. Psychologists tell me that, while children suffer somewhat, they remember only the pleasant parts of childhood and hence idealize it later.

Both are wrong as far as I am concerned. I had a hideous childhood, and the memory of it is as sharp and painful forty years later as it was then. If I want to spoil my appetite, I have only to reminisce about my dear, dead childhood.

For one thing, I have always hated all kinds of roughhouse and horseplay, and childhood is full of them unless the child is a cripple or other shut-in. I have always had an acute sense of my own dignity and integrity, and any japery or ridicule fills me with murderous resentment. I have always hated practical jokes. When I'm asked "Can't you take a joke?" the truthful answer is no, at least not in that sense. I want to kill the joker, then and for years afterwards. Such humor as I have is expressed in arch, pedantic little witticisms which amuse my academic friends but which mean nothing to most people. I might have got on better in the era of duelling. Not that I should have made much of a duellist, but I believe men were more careful then how they insulted others who might challenge them.

I set out in my second year at Rogers to try out Wilson's advice. Nobody will ever know what I went through, learning to curb my hot temper and proud, touchy spirit, and literally to turn the other cheek. All that year I sat on my inner self, a mass of boiling fury and hatred. When I was teased, mocked, ridiculed, poked, pinched, punched, hair-pulled, kicked, tripped, and so on, I pretended that nothing had happened, in the hope that the others would get tired of punching a limp bag.

It didn't always work. Once I came close to killing a teaser by hitting him over the head with one of those long window openers with a bronze head on a wooden pole with which every classroom was equipped in the days before air-conditioned schools. Luckily I hit him with the wooden shaft and broke it, instead of with the bronze part.

As the year passed and the next began, I made myself so colorless that sometimes a whole week went by without my being baited. Of course I heard the hated nickname "Sally" every day, but the boys often used it without malice from habit. I also endured incidents like this: Everybody, my father, the masters, and the one or two older boys who took pity on me had urged me to go in for athletics. Now, at Rogers one didn't have to join a team. One had compulsory drill and calisthenics, but beyond that things were voluntary. (It was, as I said, a loosely run school.)

So I determined to try. One afternoon in the spring of 1929 I wandered out to the athletic field, to find a group of my classmates getting up a game of baseball. I quietly joined them.

The two self-appointed captains squared off to choose their teams. One of them looked at me incredulously and asked: "Hey, Sally, are youin on this?"

"Yeah."

They began choosing. There were fifteen boys there, counting the captains and me. They chose until there was one boy left: me. The boy whose turn it was to choose said to the other captain:

"You can have him."

"Naw, I don't want him. You take him."

They argued while the subject of their mutual generosity squirmed and the boys already chosen grinned unsympathetically. Finally one captain said:

"Suppose we let him bat for both sides. That way, the guys the side of he's on won't be any worse off than the other."

"Okay. That suit you, Sally?"

"No, thanks," I said. "I guess I don't feel good anyway." I turned away before visible tears disgraced a thirteen-year-old.

Just after I started my third year, in the fall of 1929, the stockmarket fell flat. Soon my father found that his small private income had vanished as the companies in which he had invested, such as New York Central, stopped paying dividends. As a result, when I went home for Christmas, I learned that I could not go back to Rogers. Instead I should begin again with the February semester at the local high school.

In New Haven my 'possum-tactics were put to a harder test. Many boys in my class had known me in former days and were delighted to take up where they had left off. For instance ...

For decades, boys who found study hall dull have enlivened the proceedings with rubber bands and bits of paper folded into a V-shape for missiles. The trick is to keep your missile weapon palmed until the teacher is looking elsewhere, and then to bounce your wad off the neck of some fellow student in front of you. Perhaps this was tame compared to nowadays, when, I understand, the students shoot ball bearings and knock the teacher's teeth and eyes out, and carve him with switch-blade knives if he objects. All this happened before the followers of Dewey and Watson, with their lunacies about "permissive" training, had made classrooms into a semblance of the traditional cannibal feast with teacher playing the role of the edible missionary.

Right behind me sat a small boy named Patrick Hanrahan: a wiry, red-haired young hellion with a South Boston accent. He used to hit me with paper wads from time to time. I paid no attention because I knew he could lick me with ease. I was a head taller than he, but though I had begun to shoot up I was as skinny, weak, and clumsy as ever. If anything I was clumsier, so that I could hardly get through a meal without knocking over a glass.

One day I had been peppered With unusual persistence. My self-control slipped, as it would under a determined enough assault. I got out my own rubber band and paper missiles. I knew Hanrahan had shot at me before, but of course one never saw the boy who shot a given wad at you.

When a particularly hard-driven one stung me behind the ear, I whipped around and let Hanrahan have one in the face. It struck just below his left eye, hard enough to make a red spot. He looked astonished, then furious, and whispered:

"What you do that for?"

"You shot me," I whispered back.

"I did not! I'll git you for this! You meet me after class and I'll beat the — out of you!"

"You did too —"I began, when the teacher barked: "Ormont!" I shut up.

Perhaps Hanrahan really had not shot that last missile. One could argue that it was not more than his due for the earlier ones he had shot. But that is not how boys' minds work. They reason like the speaker of Voltaire's lines:

I knew if I met Hanrahan on the way out I should get a fearful beating. When I saw him standing on the marble steps that led up from the floor of study hall to the main exit, I walked quietly out the rear door.

I was on my way to the gym when I got a kick in the behind. There was Paddy Hacraltar, saying: "Come on. you yellow dog, fight!"

"Hello there," I said with a sickly grin.

He slapped my face.

"Having fun?" I said.

He kicked me in the leg.

"Keep right on," I said. "I don't mind."

He slapped and kicked me again, crying: "Yellow dog! Yellow dog!" I walked on toward the gymnasium as if nothing were happening, saying to myself: pay no attention, never criticize or complain, keep quiet, ignore it, pay no attention ... At last Paddy had to stop hitting and kicking me to go to his own next class.

I felt as if I had been dipped in manure. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than the sight of the whole school burning up with all the pupils trapped inside, screaming as they were broiled.

Next day I had a few bruises where Hanrahan had struck me — nothing serious. When he passed me he snarled: "Yellow dog!" but did not renew his assault. I have wasted much time in the forty years since then, imagining revenges on Paddy Hanrahan. Hanrahan coming into my office in rags and pleading for a job, and my having him thrown out ... All that nonsense. I never saw him again after I finished school in New Haven.

There were a few more such incidents during that year and the following one. For instance at the first class meeting in the autumn of 1930, when the student officers of my class were elected for the semester, after several adolescents had been nominated for president, somebody piped up: "I nominate Wade Ormont!"

The whole class burst into a roar of laughter. One of the teachers pounced on the nominator and hustled him out for disturbing an orderly session by making frivolous nominations. Not knowing how to decline a nomination, I could do nothing but stare stonily ahead as if I hadn't heard. I need not have worried; the teachers never even wrote my name on the blackboard with those of the other nominees, nor did they ask for seconds. They just ignored the whole thing, as if the nominator had named Julius Caesar.

Then I graduated. As my marks put me in the top one percentile in scientific subjects and pretty high in the others, I got a scholarship at M.LT. Without it I don't think my father could have afforded to send me.

When I entered M.I.T. I had developed my protective shell to a good degree of effectiveness, though not so perfectly as later: the automatic, insincere, glassy smile turned on as by a switch; the glad hand; the subdued, modest manner that never takes an initiative or advances an opinion unless it agrees with somebody's else. And I never, never showed emotion no matter what. How could I, when the one emotion inside me, overwhelming all others, was a blazing homicidal fury and hatred, stored up from all those years of torment? If I really let myself go I should kill somebody. The incident with the window opener had scared me. Much better never to show what you're thinking. As for feeling, it is better not to feel — to view the world with the detachment of a visitor at the zoo.

M.I.T. was good to me: it gave me a sound scientific education without pulverizing my soul in a mortar every day. For one thing, many other undergraduates were of my own introverted type. For another, we were kept too busy grinding away at heavy schedules to have time or energy for horseplay. For another, athletics did not bulk large in our program, so my own physical inferiority did not show up so glaringly. I reached medium height — about five-eight — but remained thin, weak, and awkward. Except for a slight middle-aged bulge around the middle I am that way yet.

For thousands of years, priests and philosophers have told us to love mankind without giving any sound reason for loving the creatures. The mass of them are a lot of cruel, treacherous, hairless apes. They hate us intellectuals, long-hairs, highbrows, eggheads, or double-domes, despite (or perhaps because) without us they would still be running naked in the wilderness and turning over flat stones for their meals. Love them? Hah!

Oh, I admit I have known a few of my own kind who were friendly. But by the time I had learned to suppress all emotion to avoid baiting, I was no longer the sort of man to whom many feel friendly. A bright enough physicist, well-mannered and seemingly poised, but impersonal and aloof, hardly seeing my fellow men except as creatures whom I had to manipulate in order to live. I have heard my colleagues describe others of my type as a "dry stick" or "cold fish," so no doubt they say the same of me. But who made me that way? I might not have become a fascinating bon vivant even if I had not been bullied, but I should probably not have become such an extreme aberrant. I might even have been able to like individuals and to show normal emotions.

The rest of my story is routine. I graduated from M.I.T. in 1936, took my Ph.D. from Chicago in 1939, got an instructorship at Chicago, and next year was scooped up by the Manhattan Engineer District. I spent the first part of the war at the Argonne Labs and the last part at Los Alamos. More by good luck than good management, I never came in contact with the Communists during the bright pink era of 1933-45. If I had, I might easily, with my underdog complex and my store of resentment, have been swept into their net. After the war I worked under Lawrence at Berkeley ...

I've had a succession of such jobs. They think I'm a sound man, perhaps not a great creative genius like Fermi or Teller, but a bear for spotting errors and judging the likeliest line of research to follow. It's all part of the objective, judicious side of my nature that I have long cultivated. I haven't tried to get into administrative work, which you have to do to rise to the top in bureaucratic setups like this. I hate to deal with people as individuals. I could probably do it — I have forced myself to do many things — but what would be the purpose? I have no desire for power over my fellows. I make enough to live on comfortably, especially since my wife left me ...

Oh, yes, my wife. I had got my Ph.D. before I had my first date. I dated girls occasionally for the next decade, but in my usual reserved, formal manner. I didn't even try to kiss them, let alone lay them. Why? Not religion. To me that's merely the sort of puerile superstition one would expect of a tribe of hairless apes. But I knew I should be awkward in making approaches, and perhaps be rebuffed or laughed at. The strongest drive in my life has been to put myself in a position where, and to mold my own personality so that, I shall not be laughed at.

Why did I leave Berkeley to go to Columbia University, for instance? I had a hobby of noting down people's conversation in shorthand when they weren't noticing. I was collecting this conversation for a statistical analysis of speech: the frequency of sounds, of words, combinations of words, parts of speech, topics of conversation, and so on. It was a purely intellectual hobby with no gainful objective, though I might have written up my results for one of the learned periodicals. One day my secretary noticed what I was doing and asked me about it. In an incautious moment I explained. She looked at me blankly, then burst into laughter and said:

"My goodness, Dr. Ormont, you are a nut!"

She never knew how close she came to having her skull bashed in with the inkwell. For a few seconds I sat there, gripping my pad and pencil and pressing my lips together. Then I put the paper quietly away and returned to my physics. I never resumed the statistical study, and I hated that secretary. I hated her particularly because I had had my own doubts about my mental health and so could not bear to be called a nut even in fun. I closed my shell more tightly than ever.

But I could not go on working next to that secretary. I could have framed her on some manufactured complaint, or just told the big boss I didn't like her and wanted another. But I refused to do this. I was the objective, impersonal man. I would never let an emotion make me unjust, and even asking to have her transferred would put a little black mark on her record. The only thing was for me to go away. So I got in touch with Columbia ...

There I found a superior job with a superior secretary, Georgia Ehrenfels, so superior in fact that in 1958 we were married. I was already in my forties. She was twelve years younger and had been married and divorced once. God knows what she saw in me.

I think it took her about six months to realize that she had made an even bigger mistake than the first time. I never realized it at all. My mind was on my physics, and a wife was a nice convenience but nobody to open up one's shell for. Later, when things began to go bad, I tried to open my shell and found that the hinges were stuck.

My wife tried to make me over, but that is not easy with a middle-aged man even under the most favorable conditions. She pestered me to get a house in the country until I gave in. I had never owned a house and proved an inefficient householder. I hated the tinkering, gardening, and other minutiae of suburban life. Georgia did most of the work. It brought on a miscarriage the only time she ever got pregnant. I was sorry then, but what could I do? A few months later I came home from work to find her gone and a note beginning:

Dear Wade:

It is no use. It is not your fault. You are as you are, as I should have realized at the beginning. Perhaps I am foolish not to appreciate your many virtues and to insist on that human warmth you do not have ...

Well, she got her divorce and married another academic man. I don't know how they have got on, but the last I heard they were still married. Psychologists say people tend to repeat their marital mistakes rather than to learn from them. I resolved not to repeat mine by the simple expedient of having nothing more to do with women. So far I have kept to it.

This breakup did disturb me for a time, more than Iron Man Ormont would care to admit. I drank heavily, which I had never done. I began to make mistakes in my work. Finally I went to a psychiatrist. They might be one-third quackery and one-third unprovable speculation, but to whom else could one turn?

The psychiatrist was a nice little man, stout and square-built, with a subdued manner — a rather negative, colorless personality. I was surprised, for I had expected something with a pointed beard, Viennese gestures, and aggressive garrulity. Instead he quietly drew me out. After a few months he told me:

"You're not the least psychotic, Wade. You do have what we call a schizoidal personality. Such people always have a hard time in personal relations. Now, you have found a solution for your problem in your pose of good-natured indifference. The trouble is that the pose has been practiced so long that it's become the real Dr. Ormont, and it has raised up its own difficulties. You practiced so long and so hard suppressing your emotions that now you can't let them go when you want to ..."

There was more of the same, much of which I had already figured out for myself. That part was fine; no disagreement. But what to do about it? I learned that the chances of improvement by psychoanalytical or similar treatment go down rapidly after the age of thirty, and over forty it is so small as hardly to be worth bothering with. After a year of spending the psychiatrist's time and my money, we gave up.

I had kept my house all this time. I had in fact adapted myself intelligently to living in a house, and I had accumulated such masses of scientific books, magazines, pamphlets, and other printed matter that I could no longer have got into an ordinary apartment I had a maid, old and ugly enough so that sex should not raise its head. Otherwise I spent my time, away from the office, alone in my house. I learned-to plant the lot with ground-cover that required no mowing and to hire a gardener a few times a year so as not to outrage the neighbors too much.

Then I got a better job here. I sold my house on Long Island and bought another here, which I have run in the same style as the last one. I let the neighbors strictly alone. If they had done likewise I might have had an easier time deciding what to do with my discovery. As it is, many suburbanites seem to think that if a man lives alone and doesn't wish to be bothered, he must be some sort of ogre.

If I write up the chain reaction, the news will probably get out. No amount of security regulations will stop people from talking about the impending end of the world. Once having done so, the knowledge will probably cause the blowing-up of the earth — not right away, but in a decade or two. I shall probably not live to see it, but it wouldn't displease me if it did go off in my lifetime. It would not deprive me of much.

I'm fifty-three and look older. My doctor tells me I'm not in good shape. My heart is not good; my blood-pressure is too high; I sleep badly and have headaches. The doctor tells me to cut down on coffee, to stop this and stop that. But even if I do, he can't assure me a full decade more. There is nothing simple wrong with me that an operation would help; just a poor weak body further abused by too intensive mental work over most of my life.

The thought of dying does not much affect me. I have never got much fun out of life, and such pleasures as there are have turned sour in recent years. I find myself getting more and more indifferent to everything but physics, and even that is becoming a bore.

The one genuine emotion I have left is hatred. I hate mankind in general in a mild, moderate way. I hate the male half of mankind more intensely, and the class of boys most bitterly of all. I should love to see the severed heads of all the boys in the world stuck on spikes.

Of course I am objective enough to know why I feel this way. But knowing the reason for the feeling doesn't change the feeling, at least not in a hardened old character like me.

I also know that to wipe out all mankind would not be just. It would kill millions who have never harmed me, or for that matter harmed anybody else.

But why in hell should I be just? When have these glabrous primates been just to me? The head-shrinker tried to tell me to let my emotions go, and then perhaps I could learn to be happy. Well, I have just one real emotion. If I let it go, that's the end of the world.

On the other hand, I should destroy not only all the billions-of bullies and sadists, but the few victims like myself. I have sympathized with Negroes and other downtrodden people because I knew how they felt. If there were some way to save them while destroying the rest ... But my sympathy is probably wasted; most of the downtrodden would persecute others too if they had the power.

I had thought about the matter for several days without a decision. Then came Mischief Night. This is the night before Hallowe'en, when the local kids raise hell. The following night they go out again to beg candy and cookies from the people whose windows they have soaped and whose garbage pails they have upset. If we were allowed to shoot a few of the little bastards, the rest might behave better.

All the boys in my neighborhood hate me. I don't know why-. It's one of those things like a dog's sensing the dislike of another dog. Though I don't scream or snarl at them and chase them, they somehow know I hate them even when I have nothing to do with them.

I was so buried in my problem that I forgot about Mischief Night, and as usual stopped in town for dinner at a restaurant before taking the train out to my suburb. When I got home, I found that in the hour of darkness before my arrival, the local boys had given my place the full treatment. The soaped windows and the scattered garbage and the toilet paper spread around were bad but endurable. However, they had also burgled my garage and gone over my little British two-seater. The tires were punctured, the upholstery slashed, and the wiring ripped out of the engine. There were other damages like uprooted shrubbery ...

To make sure I knew what they thought, they had lettered a lot of shirt-cardboards and left them around, reading: old lady ormont is a nut! beware the mad scientist! psycopath (sic) ormont! ormont is a fairy!

That decided me. There is one way I can be happy during my remaining years, and that is by the knowledge that all these bastards will get theirs some day. I hate them. I hate them. I hate everybody. I want to kill mankind. I'd kill them by slow torture if I could. If I can't, blowing up the earth will do. I shall write my report.