Black Star Rising

I

CASTOR sat in the open shed with the damp World air soaking the part out of his hair. Pieces of erk weaponry were in his hands, and along the long trestle table next to him were Jupiter and Miranda and five gunnery sisters. They were all learning the field-stripping and reassembly of erk hand weapons. The erks didn't specially want them to do that; it was a notion of the Yankees; the Original Landers had mostly been through military training and, as they had had to field-strip weapons, felt that all those who followed should do the same. Castor thought it was silly. "You don't have enough experience to judge," judged Miranda. "If you don't know how the parts go together, how can you know what may go wrong?

Or what allowances to make if the guidance systems can't reach a solution? Or if they're confused by countermea-sures from the enemy?"

"I can't," said Castor, "so I'll just throw the gun away. I'm never going to be in hand-to-hand combat anyway."

"You don't know that," Miranda said. "At most you just hope that. And anyway, pay attention to what you're doing!"

Castor shrugged. This should have been a fun session for him, who had never been allowed weapons before.

The library had spoiled that.

It was really too annoying of that old freak Manyface to have given him that hint. Manyface had been right. Any erk was glad to show him where to find the library. Manyface was right again; what it held was scary.

If only Manyface had kept his mouth shut, thought Castor, he could have been really enjoying this arms lesson. He fumbled with the springs and catches of one of the projectile weapons, aware of Miranda's eyes disapprovingly on him. He offered her a tentative grin. "I think there have been too many wars," he said, and a spring slipped out of his fingers and spanged halfway across the room.

"Oh, Castor," she said furiously, "are you trying to make us late for the War Council?"

"Of course not, Miranda, only—"

"Then please try to keep your mind on what you're doing! Now, what was that about wars?"

"I was just thinking," he said, accepting the spring from a dumb erk who had leaped from under the bench to retrieve it.

"You said there had been so many wars."

He nodded.

"So what does that mean?" she demanded. "Some wars are necessary, you know."

"Oh, of course," he agreed. But were they? Was war ever a good thing, really? He thought back over Earth history; so many centuries, so many bloodbaths of battle. So many millions who had died horribly, in trench or airplane or nuked city or sunk ship. Of course, that was all a long time ago, and every one of those people, of course, would have been dead by now anyway. He tried to take comfort in that thought. There wasn't much comfort to be had. Their terror and pain had been real, and time did not change that. Wars killed people.

And was there anything, really, that made it worthwhile to start all that terror and pain over again? "You know," he said, leaning conversationally across to Miranda at the next bench, "there's a lot of erk history that's really interesting. You ought to take a look in the library sometime."

She said forcefully, "And you, Castor, ought to pay attention to what you're doing! If you ever tried to fire that rifle with the escapement in that way you'd blow your silly head off—and damn well deserve it."

"I was only saying—" he began, but she cut him off.

"I give up. You'll never make a soldier, Castor, and you make a damn poor excuse for a President right now. Come on, put it back together right—then we've got a meeting of the War Council. Try to pay attention there, will you?"

"I always pay attention," he protested.

"Then," she said grimly, "heaven help us all." She raised her own rifle to the sky, aimed, snapped off an imaginary round, and set it down. "Oh, hell," she said, "give me your weapon and I'll fix it for you. I certainly hope you never have to fire it in actual combat!"

Castor handed it over. "So do I," he said.

The War Council was chaired either by Big Polly or by one of the leading erks, A-Belinka or Jutch. There was no particular rotation order; it mostly depended on which one got to the meeting first and took the chair, or perch, at the head of the big oval table. It had never occurred to any of them to let Castor assume the chair, but then it had never occurred to Castor, either.

If you made allowance for the fact that erks were intrinsically comic rather than dignified, then it was in some ways an impressive scene. The table was huge and gleaming. There were carafes of honeyberry wine, none of your cheap everyday stuff, at every place. Over the head of the table was an immense new portrait of Pettyman Castor. The erk artist had put him in robes of office like a Supreme Court judge, but that was all right; that was artistic license, and besides it gave dignity to the twenty-two-year-old face. The erk artist had also made him subtly older, so the face was not twenty-two anymore; it was, actually, the face Castor might have a couple of dozen years in the future, if he led quite a dissolute and troubled life in between.

The erk artist had done one more thing for his art, and that was to subtly elongate the neck and to broaden and shorten the arms. It was Castor's picture, all right, but it was the picture of Castor as he might have been if he had been part Living God.

As a matter of feet, the likeness did not please Castor at all. He stared up at it from his place at the foot of the table (he had decided not to point out that he belonged at the head, since of course the erks couldn't be expected to get everything right). He thought that if he was going to grow into the person he saw there, he'd rather not grow at all.

But he couldn't help growing.

No one can. No one is ever ready to grow up. No one is ever ready for anything, but the time comes when the anythings become real and then they have to be dealt with, ready or not.

Castor's realities were coming up on him now.

Because Jutch had managed to beat out the other two candidates, he was in the chair—or on it, crouched on his rear legs while the frontmost limbs rested on the oval table. Big Polly and A-Belinka flanked him, one on each side, and straggling down through the other places were Jupiter and Miranda and half a dozen technical-specialist smart erks, ready to fill in any needed details. Manyface could have been there, but wasn't; heaven knew where the old man was wandering. None of the other recent arrivals could have been, either because they didn't have permission, like Tsoong Delilah, or because they were safely scattered all over World, in singles and groups too small for critical mass.

The first order of business was readiness reports. Castor watched them absently as they were projected on the index screen. They had not changed much from day to day, except that at each day's briefing there were a few more attack and support vessels that had been hurled into orbit by the launch loops, and a few more standbys still on the ground. All the council watched attentively, erk and human, but this wasn't the fun part. The fun part was the plans. The index machines had been busy, assimilating data and preparing strategies based on Jutch's synoptic version of the council's deliberations. Now they were ready.

Jutch snapped his fingers, and one of the minor erks rose to the index controls. In a moment he projected a picture on the screen beside Castor's portrait. The picture showed the erk scout ship, floating in orbit around the Earth.

"This," said Jutch earnestly, "we must protect at all costs. If we let the Chinks hurt the scout ship we would not be able to deploy another for forty-two years."

Snap of the fingers again. Now the scout ship was hidden in the rings of Saturn, and its violet spaceway was flickering into life. Another vessel was coming through.

"So we will hide the scout ship where the Chinks can't find it," said Jutch, "and send our forces through at a considerable distance from the Earth. There will be a loss of transit time, of course. But the scout ship will be safe.

"Here," he said, picking up a pointer with his teeth and indicating the vessel emerging through the spaceway, "is our first advance party. As you see, it is the President's own spacecraft, just as it arrived here—or so it will seem. It will display the recognition signals. President Pettyman will be aboard it to talk when there are any challenges. It will approach the Earth, soothing any fears the Chinks may have. And then, following it a few hours later"— snap of the fingers; new picture on the screen, this time of one war vessel after another pouring through the space-way—"a whole fleet of transports and warcraft.

"The President's ship"—snap: a schematic of the vessel—"will be fully armed.

"The other ships"—snap—"will contain full continent-blaster weaponry on the attack vessels, and the transports will contain eighteen hundred crack troops, Yank and erk, with portable nukes. Of course, once we have landed we will recruit additional combat personnel from the Real-Americans themselves, and in the third wave there will be cargo vessels to provide them with weapons, materiel, and some of the nicest blue-and-white uniforms you ever saw." He looked irritably at Castor. "What is it?"

Castor said, "Those aren't the right colors. The Americans wore khaki or olive drab. It was the sailors that wore blue and white."

"Oh, Castor," said Jutch impatiently, "what tiny details you worry about! I picked the colors of the uniforms. They are the same ones the Living Gods wore. Now, are there any serious questions?"

There were none. Jutch waved his vibrissae in satisfaction. "Then," he declared, "there are only two things left to do: choose the crew of the President's yacht and set a time for the invasion to begin."

Big Polly had been silent longer than she liked. "I think," she said, "that we can wait to select the crew until the last minute."

"That makes sense," said A-Belinka approvingly from the other side of the chair—meaning, as did Big Polly, that he wanted all the time he could get to think of good reasons why he should be part of the party.

"Then," said Jutch, "what about the date? I suggest it be eight days from now, exactly."

Big Polly frowned. "Why eight days, exactly?" she demanded.

"Why not?" said the erk sweetly. "Let's put it to the vote." And when the votes were in and almost unanimous—Big Polly had abstained out of annoyance, Castor because he was lost in thought—Jutch said in triumph, "Then we liberate America in one hundred and ninety-two hours from—now!"

And another smart erk darted from his place at the table to the index screen controls, and in a moment a digital readout spread itself across the screen:

COUNTDOWN H191 M59 S30

and, flick, flick, the 30 changed to 29, to 28, to 27 as the last hours of America's occupation by the Chinese began to pass.

No one spoke to the President of the United States as he got up from the oval table and wandered out into the sultry, misty outside air. There really were serious questions, he knew. He had a lot of them himself.

But where could he ask them? He couldn't ask them of Jutch, or any of the erks. He could not ask them of Manyface, because Manyface was clearly committed to the Chinese side in the war of the Yanks and the Chinks. He could not ask them of Delilah for the same reason or of Miranda because she was so clearly on the Yank side. There seemed to be no living thing on World not committed to one side or the other of the war that he wished need not be fought, so where could a neutral go to ask questions?

The library was the only neutral source.

It was not really neutral, of course. It was erk-programmed and erk-compiled, and it reflected erk pride in battle plans and weaponry. They were not all erk designs, of course. In fact, the erks themselves had contributed rather little. It was the Living Gods who had first started the military sections of the indices; what the erks had added was less their own contribution than what they had gleaned from the strategies and technologies of the enemies they had joyously elected to fight.

And how many of them there were!

In his first visit to the library Castor had got only an impression of many wars. He did not stop to count them. Horrified, he jumped away from the viewer seeking the clean outside air. (But all there was was the damp and sticky breeze of World.) The room that housed the library was not only damp and sticky. It stank. Dumb erks slept in it when they chose and relieved themselves in it when no one was looking, which was usually. The smart erks had other libraries, better adjusted to their physical needs. In the old library that Castor used the viewers were binocular, but set for two eyes not very much like a human beings (though even less like an erk's). They would have fit just perfectly against the eyes of the Living Gods, set birdlike on the sides of the head rather than in front. For Castor to use those eyepieces for any length of time gave him a most amazing headache.

What he saw was more painful still.

There had been, he counted, no fewer than nine wars! Nine external ones, not counting when the Living Gods had wiped themselves out. Every war all but total! To be an enemy of the erks was clearly suicide. To be an ally was not much better. There were the winged creatures whose worlds had all been incinerated because the erks had not understood in time that to attack the world of one side in the dispute would bring prompt and overwhelming retribution against the other. There was the single planetary system of wormlike beings, two species, one huge and horny-skinned, the other tiny, soft, sharp-fanged. They wriggled and snuggled among each other's coils—and fought—and killed each other and devoured each other. When the erks joyously chose sides and entered the lists against the "enemy" they discovered too late that the races were symbiotic...

For the erks had never found an undivided civilization. There were always differences of opinion or policy or religion or habits of thought... and to the erks a difference meant a struggle.

And a struggle meant a war.

Castor forced himself to stay at the index screen for hours, well into the time when he should have been asleep. When he walked out he almost tripped over a pair of drowsing dumb erks curled up in the doorway while they waited to see what fascinating thing the human would do. He looked at them with horror. They weren't comic, capering little monsters anymore. They, and their smart kin, were deadly.

If there were a war between Yanks and Chinks, would anyone win at all?

Or would the assistance of the erks mean that both sides lost, eternally?

Tsoong Delilah slept fitfully in the hot and stuffy room the erks had given her. There were no guards at night and no need for them. If she ever stirred outside her chamber there would soon be a gaggle of dumb erks following her, making enough noise to alert a few smart ones. And anyway, where did she have to go?

Delilah's days on World passed in a sort of angry fog. The fact that her loins lusted for Castor confused her. The fact that this planet of armed lunatics was planning, as one might elect to shoot a passing duck, to destroy her Han Home terrified her. The fact that she could find no solution to either problem frustrated her...

And when she woke, dreaming that Castor had invited himself to her bed without warning, and discovered it was no dream, she exploded in resentment.

"Now, then, boy!" she snapped, scuttling over to the far side of the bed as he slid in on the near, "what are you doing? Have all the Yank sisters got their periods at once? Are you trying to change your luck? Have you taken pity on an old woman?"

"Delilah," he said persuasively, a hand coming to cup her shoulder and a moment later the other reaching over to cup a breast, "don't you remember how much we like to make love to each other? So what is wrong with our doing it, simply to give each other pleasure?"

"You call it pleasure!" she began, sneering. But in fact she also called it pleasure, and angry though Delilah might be, insane she was not. When Castor tugged her toward him she did not resist. When Castor kissed her lips she returned the kiss; and, all in all, she did in fact remember how much they liked to make love to each other and discovered all over again how true that memory was. It was only when they had finished and Castor was lying on top of her, his slight frame molded into hers, slowly and reminiscently moving in her with no urgency, that the anger began slowly to seep back...

And then he put his mouth down to her neck and nibbled gently and whispered something.

"What?" said Delilah aloud.

"I said sssh," he whispered. "The erks watch us everywhere. Don't say anything."

Delilah felt herself tense up. Her mouth formed a question, but his left hand moved up from her breast to gently cover her lips. "Delilah," he whispered, "pretend you are a real Yank. Convince them. Convince the erks, too. Convince everybody, even Manyface."

She turned her head, looking about the room to see if indeed there was an erk somewhere watching him. The ornate wall paneling could, she realized, conceal any number of panels. A microphone could be anywhere. Why? She could not guess why. She rubbed her cheek against Castor's—how good it felt!—-and whispered, "Why?"

"Because," he breathed, "otherwise they will wreck our world. Go to the library. See for yourself." And then the nibbling at the neck got serious and the hand on her breast more urgent; and when at last he left for his own bed, Delilah lay back spent and content and wondering what he meant.

The wondering continued. The delightful lassitude began to go when she began to wonder if, indeed, he had come to her bed for no other purpose than to whisper in her ear.

II

When Delilah had seen the library records she retired to her room, among the queer-smelling flowers that the erks decorated guests' rooms with, and retired further to her bed and would, if she could, have retired to the womb or out of life forever; because for the first time in Tsoong Delilah's life she was scared. The situation did not involve merely a criminal who might outwit the resources of her Renmin police and do violent, terrible things. It was not anything so trivial and personal as the unfaithfulness of her innately faithless young lover that she feared. It was so large and terrifying an event that she could not contemplate it at all.

If the library was trustworthy, the erks were very likely to annihilate everything Delilah had ever sworn loyalty to. And she could see no way of stopping them.

After a long time of hugging herself in the bed, eyes closed, awake, unseeing, trying to be unfeeling, she began to think. That first terrible paralysis of fear seeped away.

There had to be something she could do. She acknowledged that the odds were immense against her, but that did not excuse Inspector Tsoong Delilah from trying! As she lay there, eyes open, staring at the ceiling that probably was staring back at her, she began to scheme.

Her first step, of course, had to be merely to do what Castor had demanded of her. She had to pretend to be more Yank than the Yankees. She had to acquire trust, and she had very little time to do it in.

It was an unfortunate necessity that the best way to be trusted was to do something personally obnoxious to her.

So, as soon as she could, Tsoong Delilah went to the shed where the warriors were rehearsing their arts, marched up to Feng Miranda, and said, "You are right. We must fight for America's freedom. I am a trained pilot and commander. Use me, Miranda. Let me help."

She saw at once, of course, the way Miranda glanced quickly to Castor; and saw, too, the faintly patronizing look Miranda gave her. She had made up her mind in advance that these would not matter to her, and although that did not turn out to be true, she accepted them. Let Miranda think what she liked. The advantage was all Delilah's. She knew what Miranda was thinking, although the knowledge displeased her. Miranda did not, however, know what Delilah was thinking—would not be allowed to—least of all to know that "We must fight for America^ freedom" was only a specific and particular excerpt from a larger and more important statement: "We must fight for America's, and the rest of the Earth's, freedom, from the erks."

If Castor could come to her bed to whisper secrets, Delilah could employ the same stratagems. What she decided to do next was so grotesque that she smiled all the way to Manyface's room. "Old man," she said roughly and tenderly as soon as she got there, "I am horny. Are you still capable of sex?"

The battered face that dwelt in the middle of the huge head peered at her. "Of course I am!" he said testily.

"Don't you know anything of medicine? I can be physically capable of whatever I wish, only—"

"Only," she finished for him—surprised to discover that now she was more tender than rough—"you are a freak, and so it embarrasses you to have a woman make love to you. Well. It is a different world here, Manyface. There are very few men. Marginal cases are upgraded greatly. You are very attractive to me now, my dear old pumpkin-head, and I would like it if you and I were to retire to some pleasant place in the countryside and enjoy each other as best we can."

And, to her surprise, Manyface was quite a tender and ardent lover; and, when they had explained to the following erks that human beings from Earth really required privacy for their copulation and the indulgent smart erks had herded the dumb ones away, she found that sex in the performance of one's duty could be almost as satisfying as sex for hygienic purposes and a lot more so than sex with an offhanded, reluctant, and untrustworthy lover.

And then, under the great orange vines that parasitized the grove they lay in, she whispered in Manyface's ear, "I've seen the history index material in the library. I know what will happen if the war begins."

Manyface was lying beside her, face-to-face, his eyes closed. They opened slowly, and he looked into hers. He did not speak for a moment, and then there was faint disappointment in his tone. "Ah, I see. I wondered why you were doing this." She started to speak—to lie, out of embarrassment and apology, but he wouldn't let her. "Please, whisper as softly as you can. No, it doesn't matter about why." The eyes, soft under the bulging forehead, were understanding. Then they hardened. "What we must do," he said, "is make these people believe we have taken their side. Cause them to trust us."

"Yes," agreed Delilah, moving slightly. The motion made Manyface remove the hand that had remained resting lightly on her hip, and she wished it were still there. "And then? After we've won their trust, if we can?"

Manyface said soberly, "Then there is still almost no hope that we can prevent the war, but what choice do we have but to try?"

The good thing about their impossible task was that the erk experience of war, though vast, was incomplete. To them "war" meant actual combat. It meant the destruction of cities, the killing of enemies, even the annihilation of planets. It meant nothing else. Espionage and dirty tricks were not in their repertory. If the Living Gods had also known the arts of espionage and betrayal of trust, they had failed to teach them to the erks. And so there was no problem for Tsoong Delilah or Manyface in doing what they wished to do. Jutch accepted Manyface un-questioningly into the planning section, and A-Belinka welcomed Delilah to weapons training. Gladly, in fact, for she became at once his star pupil.

There was much to learn! The erks had weaponry Delilah had not imagined. Not merely missiles, lasers, heavy-particle beams, artillery, hand weapons—it was more than any individual weapon, it was the system in which each weapon played a part. Over the stretch of eight thousand years the erks had acquired the military technology of nine separate civilizations. Of course, much of it was not applicable to the task of liberating the U. S. of A. from its oppressors: the sonic grenades that wrought such havoc among the arachnids who had invented them would only give human beings headaches.

But nearly all the rest of the armorarium was terrible.

Delilah did not let herself feel terror. Weapons were weapons. She had craftsman's pride in her skills. She took great satisfaction from the fact that starting from nowhere, she quickly excelled every erk, every Yank, and every Real-American but Miranda in gunnery. She was a natural. It was not simply a matter of calculating deflections for targets. It was a more primitive and deadly thing. Even on the erks' range—even where the targets were sometimes Han Chinese rockets and sometimes the ruffed needles that the Living Gods had flown and sometimes the spheres or teardrops or polygons of the other races the erks had "helped"—even with ion-beams or EMP grenades or slashing, shrapneling rockets that punctured shells—even there, what made the difference between the talented gunlayer and the champion was the will to destroy.

That Delilah had.

It was an annoyance to Delilah that she could not quite surpass Miranda even at destruction, but she took glum pleasure in noticing that Castor was unable to match either of the women in gunnery. His special skill was something else. To Delilah's surprise, the boy was a natural pilot. He did not have much to pilot, only drones at first, airborne ones in World's soggy atmosphere to begin with, then orbiting minimini spacecraft, no more really than a telemetry system on top of a fuel tank. But he had the gift. His long hours at the teaching screens had supplied what natural talents could not provide, and he was able to read a navigation signal, verify a proposed course-change solution, and execute a maneuver as smoothly and surely as Delilah, with all her long years of experience. And then they gave him an Eye! A real, Earth-system spy drone, launched through the gate and sent down to near-Earth orbit to keep an eye on the Han Chinese and all their works. It was the culmination of all his dreams! He had a spaceship of his own! He could make it go where he liked! It thrilled him so that Delilah found herself thrilling for him, and one afternoon when pilotage training was over she followed him out the door of the shed and across the tarmac. "Come back here, boy," she called good-naturedly. "I won't hurt you."

He turned and saw her, flushing. "Oh, Delilah," he said. "I thought—I was thinking—"

"Yes? You were thinking what? That I planned to tear off your clothes here, in front of our little friends?" For, of course, they were as usual followed by a posse of dumb erks.

"I was thinking I might see you later," he finished.

"Oh, yes, if the old woman wants to make love you will accommodate her," said Delilah and listened to herself and did not like what she heard. It was that cursed Miranda, she thought. Miranda made her jealous. She did not want to be jealous, she only wanted to have a quite reasonable sexual relationship with the young man and prevent him from wasting himself on foolish young women or the hungry harpies of the Yankees... She listened to herself think and did not like what she thought, either. "Castor," she said, humbly, or as close to humbly as Tsoong Delilah knew how to get, "I just wanted to talk to you."

He looked at her appraisingly. What he saw in her face she could not tell, but he said, "Sure, Delilah." Then he grinned. "I was just going to watch the kids play. Do you want to come along?"

"Come along where?" she demanded, looking about. The only place on this side of the tarmac was the Yankee nest, and she had already seen that many times. Too many times; the hostility these Amazon warriors had shown her was not pleasant.

"You'll see," he said; and she did.

It was the nest. It was the school outside the nest. It was the children, the girls from tiny three-year-olds to young teens, the trainee conquerors. They walked into the schoolroom, and the teaching sisters beamed welcome at Castor, gave guarded looks of suspicion to Delilah, raised warning fingers to their mouths for both. The children were rapt before a prismed screen where war games were being played. On the screen, models—Delilah thought at first they were models, then realized with a heart-stopping shock that they were films of reality— ships were in battle, huge ships, planet-busters, crushers. A fleet of them slid across the screen toward a violet-and-brown planet, and although an intervening screen of defensive vessels attacked them and destroyed some and committed suicide by hurling themselves into some, the defenders were outgunned and outmassed. The planet-busters got through.

And the planet was destroyed.

Delilah fled outside, for in that long-ago, now-gone planet what she saw was the Earth.

In a while Castor joined her, followed by the chattering children and, of course, the squeaking, excited dumb erks; but this time some of the dumb erks were there for a purpose. "What now?" Delilah demanded, and Castor looked fond and indulgent.

"They play their game," he said. "Just watch."

The girls knew the game. So did the erks. They needed very little instruction from the teaching sisters as they descended on a rank of toy carts at the side of a mossy lawn. Each cart had a dumb erk driver; and when the erks had hopped into their seats and the carts had drawn themselves up in orderly squadrons, the game began. For each girl in the school a cart and an erk to man it; the erks were trained (as Earthly dogs are trained) to carry out voice commands from their mistresses... And the game began. They attacked each other in fleets and single-cart sallies, bashing into each other with gleeful yips and squeals. The girls shouted orders; the erks carried them out. Smash! Bash! The kids were having fun.

Castor, too, was having fun, Delilah saw. The erks ran the brightly colored toy tanks and self-propelled cannon; the girls controlled the erks; but Castor appointed himself general of them all. Both sides! "Bring up your right wing," he ordered. "Watch that attack in the center! Go on, smash through, smash through!" Pop went one of the cannon, and a dumb erk leaped out of his tank, chittering and squealing as he ran off the battlefield. A trickle of purplish dye from the toy cannon shell stained the ground behind him. Castor turned to grin at Delilah. "Isn't this a good game?" he demanded. "We never had games like this in my school."

"Neither did we," said Delilah, scowling. The game did not please her, any more than the video-game war inside.

The Amazon warriors, six and ten years old, got carried away and began hitting each other with flower stalks until the older sisters, laughing, restored order and the battle went on to its conclusion. The erk team won the war, of course. The erk team always did. And on the way back Castor glanced around casually, stopped, put his arms around Tsoong Delilah, and kissed her. In her ear he whispered, "I do not want to play this game with real guns. Do you understand?"

"I understand," she said, wishing he would kiss her again.

He did. Then he whispered, "We may not be able to prevent it, but we have to try." Delilah shivered, not from the kiss. It was almost what Manyface had said to her. And all too likely true.

III

"I don't trust them," snapped Feng Miranda, peevishly pushing Jupiter's hand off her arm. He sighed. How incredibly obstinate this Earth sister was! It was curious that this strange and unpleasant disinterest in copulation she displayed seemed to make her more attractive, not less.

"What harm can they do?" he asked reasonably.

"Who knows what harm?" She was glowering toward the front of the War Council room, where Castor, Tsoong Delilah, and a couple of the erks were chattering animatedly. "Do you trust them?"

Jupiter looked scandalized. "Trust my President?"

"That's a farce, Jupiter! And it's not him so much, it's that old bitch Tsoong. She's Han Chinese all the way through!"

He put his hand absentmindedly, and very lightly, on the small of her back. She didn't seem to notice. "You're the one who told us she offered her services," he pointed out.

"So I made a mistake!"

"I don't know why you think that. After all, why would she lie?"

"Oh, you fool!" she snapped, and twisted vigorously away from the hand that she had, after all, noticed. Then she scowled blackly at Castor, who had, also absent-mindedly, put his arm around Tsoong Delilah's waist. "Oh, well," she sighed. "You're probably right about one thing, anyway. There's not much harm they can do. Come on," she said, taking his hand and tugging him toward the table. "We might as well sit down and get on with it."

Feeling much more cheerful, Jupiter let her lead him to seats halfway up the table. He didn't take his hand from hers, nor did she. What a strange woman, he thought; but, on the whole, one worth a little indulgence. That peculiar sallow complexion was not really unattractive; in fact, after a while it became quite nice-looking, as did the tiny nose and the jet eyes. And the size of her! Jupiter had almost never experienced copulation with a female shorter than 180 centimeters. Miranda was tiny, 150 at the most; how interesting it would be to have a bed partner whom he could pick up with ease, who would be featherlight on his belly if they should happen to turn in that direction and almost lost beneath him if—He heard Miranda giggle next to him, looked down, and realized that his thoughts were displayed by his body. But the giggle wasn't unfriendly. He grinned at her, then turned to the proceedings of the War Council, feeling indulgent and pleasurably anticipatory.

For this final meeting, Big Polly and the erks had ceded the chair to the rightful President. Castor stood up, tapped gently on the table with the closest thing they had found to a gavel—it was a sort of mixing spoon from one of the kitchens—and said, "As you all know, our invasion is ready to begin. I want to start by expressing my thanks to Governor Polly and her able legislature, to the males, Mother Sisters, and seniors of all varieties from all the nests, and above all to our hosts, the erks, without all of whom this happy day could never have come about." The council happily applauded itself as Castor beamed at them.

"It only remains to make the final decisions as to personnel. Who will be in the first party to go through the spaceway, along with me, in my yacht? I have given this a great deal of thought. I have discussed it privately with the Governor and many of you, one on one. I think the basis for our decision is clear." The council nodded—the human members of it did, at least—while waiting to hear what that clear basis was. Castor did not keep them waiting. "Our first priority must naturally be to avoid arousing the suspicions of the Han Chinese, do you not agree?" The Council agreed. All around the table human nods and smart erk twitches registered that fact.

"The way to do that," he explained, "is to provide my yacht with a crew they will recognize and trust. Myself, of course. Miranda, to be sure—we have no more dedicated patriot than Miranda, and she looks Chinese. Also, she has earned the right to be in the first ship."

"Of course" followed "of course" among the council.

"Then that is settled," said Castor, "but who else? I suppose," he went on meditatively, "that Manyface should be present. I for one accept his declaration of support. In any case, he is too old and feeble to do us any harm." Delilah caught the black look the old man threw at Castor and grinned internally; Castor was putting on a first-rate performance. "I thought of adding Tchai Howard, or perhaps some members of the assault team. But they are trained fighters. That would be dangerous. They might try to take over the ship somehow, and they might succeed. So I think that would be too risky—but, of course, it is not what I think that is important, but the will of the council. Speak up, please? All of you?" And one by one they spoke, all around the great oval wooden table. Each one decisively pointed out the advisability of including Manyface but not Tchai or the assault team in the first wave. The motion passed unanimously.

Castor leaned back. "May I say," he inquired gratefully, "how much I appreciate your solution to this problem? Now I think we have only one decision left to make." He nodded ruefully toward Tsoong Delilah. She stared back, avoiding the looks of the rest of the council. She could feel her face flushing olive. "Inspector Tsoong," he went on, "would obviously be an asset on the ship from the point of view of deception. As a Renmin police inspector, she would certainly be trusted by the Han Chinese. But for that same reason we cannot ourselves trust her. It is a real dilemma." He shrugged humorously to indicate the hopelessness of the situation. "So," he concluded, "I suppose that we should take the more prudent course. Leave her here on World. She can do us no possible harm here. It is true that this might jeopardize the success of our mission. Still, there is no way out—" He paused, struck by a puzzling thought. "Unless"—he hesitated— "unless in some way we could manage to bring her along, but prevent her from doing harm—"

And the council table was a boil. First to get the floor was A-Belinka. "Tie her up!" he cried, and all around the oval human voices and erk chimed in agreement.

Castor smiled admiringly. "What a perfect solution!" he proclaimed. "We will do just that! And now we are ready—let the war begin!"

All of the council clapped and exclaimed. Even Tsoong Delilah—a cynic, yes, but moved by a great performance. Even, she saw, the figure lurking at the doorway and looking annoyed—that young Yank, Jupiter? Yes, that was his name. He was not a member of the council, of course. In fact, Delilah realized, his only reason for being present, ever, was that he was the guard for Feng Miranda. It had been many days since anyone among the Yanks or erks thought Miranda needed a guard, so his continued presence was simply another example of the foolishness and sloppiness with which these creatures pursued their activities—

Their deadly activities. In spite of herself, Delilah shivered. It was so easy, watching buffoons, to forget that these buffoons could be lethal!

She turned to rescue Castor from a prolonged discussion with Big Polly, who had made it clear, these last few days, that even a Second Generation senior sister did not consider herself too old to take an interest in a strange new male, particularly her President. She wondered just what it was that Jupiter was discussing so glumly with Miranda. Sex, no doubt. She thought virtuously that that was about all these weird rebels ever cared about. Well, he was a poor young fool to take an interest in that young hoyden, thought Delilah, but his problems were none of hers. In a matter of a few days at most he would be gone from her life, with all this planet and its capricious, stupid, ludicrous, dangerous inhabitants.

So thought Tsoong Delilah then.

IV

Said Feng Miranda scaldingly to Jupiter, "You're a fool! You don't see that he's planning to betray the mission!"

Jupe groaned. "Ah, you're not going to start that again, are you? Come on, Miranda, let's go watch the last pre-invasion launch. There's a grove of trees just off the field with some very pretty flowers—" Pretty to look at and soft to lie on, he happened to know; but she was too angry to be seduced, it seemed. He said reasonably, "Castor didn't do anything wrong, did he? He put the whole thing to a vote, didn't he? Even Big Polly and the erks voted with him, didn't they?"

"You're a fool!" she blazed.

"You're repeating yourself," he said glumly. "If you're serious about this, why didn't you speak up in the meeting?"

"And let them know I was suspicious?"

He looked puzzled; these refinements of intrigue were beyond him. "Well, at least, uh—at least tell somebody."

"I'm telling you! And you're not listening!"

"I'm missing the launch," he protested, stung—for that was manifestly unfair; certainly he'd been listening, silly though what she said was.

The tiny woman glared up at him, so furious that Jupiter involuntarily backed up a step. Then she said one of those curious words for copulating that the Real-Americans seemed to use in a derogatory way. "Go watch your launch," she snapped and actually pushed him away.

Jupe was getting angry now. "Very well," he said with dignity. "If you're sure—"

"I'm sure."

"All right, only—"

"Oh, go," she cried. "I might as well talk to the erks as you! In fact—" She hesitated, then glanced toward the front of the room, where Big Polly was stuffing papers in her shoulderbag while Jutch and A-Belinka chattered at her. She turned back to Jupiter. "Go watch the launch," she ordered, and although her tone this time was not at all angry, it was also not at all friendly and even less amorous.

So Jupiter whistled for his carry-bird and mounted it, as much confused as annoyed. (But quite annoyed, all the same.) What a strange woman! He caught a glimpse of a couple of working sisters lounging along the mossy bank of one of the drainage streams and almost diverted Flash toward them—why not? One needed copulation now and then, didn't one?—but the mood had left him. He flew the short distance to the edge of the space center, peering out to make sure the launch had not yet gone off.

It had not. That was at least some satisfaction. Jupiter was very nearly as avid a space buff as his President, and besides, he had a special interest in technology. The launch loop, he knew, had an interesting history. It was not a legacy from the Living Gods. The Gods had known no better than to throw their spacecraft into low-World orbit in the same thundering, blunderbuss way as human beings, all fountains of fire and shattering blasts of violent noise.

That was the obvious way to break gravity's grip, so that real space voyages could begin.

It was not, however, the best way. In that case, and a few others, the erks had learned better than their gods ever knew. The war among the hopping crustaceans of the system surrounding an F4 star eighty-five light-years away had not worked out well for the crustaceans. It had, however, left the erks with, among other kinds of booty, a magnetic launch system for spacecraft, one that used every bit of its mechanical energy for the task at hand. The magnetic loop launch was hardly noisy at all. ("Noise" is energy wasted on shaking the air.) The crustaceans had done that task far better than the Living Gods—though the fact that their technology was in other respects not as good was made clear by the fact that none of the crustaceans still survived.

Jupe dismounted, one hand on the carry-bird, to see the launch. The ship to be launched was not truly a dummy, because it carried fuel and supplies to the waiting fleet parked in orbit; but it was matched to size and mass and shape with the Presidential yacht. It was a dry run, to insure that nothing would go wrong in the launch of Castor and his crew. From his post under a peace wood tree, Flash incuriously sampling fresh shoots to pass the time, Jupiter had a good view. The control porch for the launch system was outside the fabrication building, a kilometer and a half away from Jupiter's tree. At that distance the erk and Yank technicians swarming over their instruments seemed tiny and irrelevant. But they were the ones who were making it all happen. All the way across the field the entry end of the launcher loomed gigantic, but what happened there was determined by those tiny figures on the porch. Punch one set of commands, and the grapples picked up the launch vehicle and lifted it to its ready position, just above the smoothly streaming cables of magnetic alloy. Punch out another, and the grapples gently released themselves as they set the vehicle onto the cable itself. The vehicle never quite touched the cable. Magnets held it close to the spinning loop and just above. The cable raced away under the squat, lumpy launch vehicle, but the cable felt the vehicle's presence, and the vehicle felt the cable's tug; strain gauges on the operations platform showed that the cable was pulling three percent more kiloamps because of the new load; accelerometers inside the vehicle reported that it was beginning to move.

Jupiter did not need the telemetry to see that the vehicle was moving. Heartsick as he watched the real launch of a real (if not very important) attack vessel for a real war, he felt like one of the kids with their erk-driven toy bash-'em-up war tanks. True, he had his own command and his own assignment, fifty erks with blasters to come down in the Kweilung area in the third wave. Third wave! By then the action would be over!

So his eyes were fogged with angry tears as he watched the launch vehicle slip away from the hovering grapples, pick up speed, flash down along the long spinning track. From Jupiter's tree it looked like a child's birchbark boat tossed into a stream. It rode the cable to the boost-off incline at the end—

Then it was free.

All instruments on the operations porch reported launch completed. The capsule tore through the sky, its stubby maneuvering fins turning it up and out. In a moment it was gone. Moments later the craaack-boom of its passing the speed of World's sound made all the erks and Yanks giggle and swear and turn to each other in congratulation.

Jupiter had no one to congratulate. He had no special desire to do it, either. How much of his mood was due to the infuriating obstinacy of the Real-American woman Miranda and how much to jealousy of those who would ride the first waves of invasion, he could not have said. He had plenty of both irritations. One hand resting on the wing-root of his carry-bird, he looked on, sick with envy. Flash grunted plaintively, anxious to get back to feeding, if not to the breeding that was her ever-increasing preoccupation. Jupe gave the mount a look of anger. What was the use of a damn carry-bird? These Real-Americans had actual spacecraft! He should have the same, or at least—

He felt Flash's muscles tighten under his hand, just as he heard his name called from above. "Jupe?" The voice was female and elderly; he looked up and saw that it was the Governor, peering out at him from the pouch of her own silver-gray bird. The mount settled down near him, careful to avoid collision with the trees. It rubbed beaks with Flash—only a friendly gesture, since both were female—and the Governor wriggled herself free. "Why did you not report what Miranda Feng told you?" she demanded.

Jupiter automatically extended a hand to help her get out of the pouch. "What was there to report?" he asked, honestly confused.

"Her report that she suspected some of the Real-Americans of treason," said the Governor firmly. "You should have told me before the vote, Jupiter."

"I didn't know before the vote!"

Big Polly said regally, "That is of no importance. Do you realize that our entire mission is now endangered?"

"Is it? Oh, Polly!" he cried, struck to the heart. "Don't let it be!"

She shook her head. "It has passed the point where I can prevent it, Jupiter. Someone else must take action. I have decided that it must be you."

"Me?" What a dazzling thought! Jupiter, the savior of Real America? It was every dream he had ever had— "How do I do that, Polly?" he begged.

"You will go along in the Presidential yacht, and—oh, damn, won't the fool erk ever give up?" She had turned to gaze upward as the squawk of another approaching carry-bird told them they were expecting company. The head that peered out of the pouch was not human this time, it was the old erk Jutch.

"Wait," he cried. "Polly, don't send him! Send me! You owe us that much!" He was still talking as his carry-bird dropped to the ground between Flash and Big Polly's mount. He wriggled out of the pouch and scuttled to them, raising himself on his hind legs to beg. "Without the erks all this would be impossible. An erk must go along!"

"Oh, what a fool you are," said the Governor in disgust. "What will the Chinese think if they see you in the ship?"

"I'll hide! We won't allow vision! I'll pretend I'm a prisoner! Anything! But," cried the erk, "you humans don't have the battle experience we do."

Polly's glare cut him off. She actually stamped her foot. "That's nonsense! Human beings have fought many more wars than you erks ever have! Why, for thousands of years there have been wars almost every year. And, in any case, you may have battle experience, but you don't know anything about deception and guile. In that," she said proudly, "the human race is superb. I have decided. It must be Jupiter."

Jupiter, standing there with his mouth hanging open, cut in. "What must be Jupiter?" he demanded.

"Why," explained Polly, "the most important assignment of the war. You will go along on the Presidential yacht. You will be secretly armed. If it is indeed as Miranda says and the rest of the Real-Americans are actually false, then you will take command of the ship, shoot any who resist, explain our demands to the Chinese—" "Mel" cried Jupiter, intoxicated with joy. "You," said the Governor firmly. "Now come back to the city. I will prepare your orders in a fashion that cannot be denied. We will say nothing until just before the launch. Remember, you can trust no one but Miranda, not even the President—"

"It would be better with an erk in charge," chittered Jutch sadly.

"It will be a human! And the human will be Jupiter. And there will be no more discussion at all," said Big Polly. "You will arm him, Jutch. We will do the rest!"

So as the crew was gathering to board the yacht, Jupiter came to the launch loop in style. What style! He was a marvel to all who saw him. He had a hovercart for his own. He had more than that, because tucked inside his breechclout was a rapid-fire automatic pistol; around his neck was a concussion grenade hastily reshaped to look like an amulet; in his hand a small bag that might have contained clean clothing but in fact held a pair of stun-weapons. They were what he fully expected to use, if needed; the other things were as dangerous to him as to any foe in the closed quarters of the spacecraft. He stood on the hovercart, holding to the safety rail, staring grandly about. Yanks and erks cheered him as he passed. He was not alone on the cart. He had a guard of honor to display his rank, for four paint-uniformed erk troopers crouched at the corners, armed and ceremonially alert. A smart erk colonel of Marines guided the cart across the tarmac. Jupiter stood negligently holding the rail of his perch, with the look of eagles on his face. He stumbled a bit as the cart sped toward the first-wave crew, but held tight against the sudden jolt as the erk colonel threw down the ground brakes. Jupiter gazed sternly down on Castor and the rest as he proclaimed,

"I have new orders. I will join your ship for the first attack, Mr. President."

The faces that stared up at him showed all the expressions he anticipated—surprise, worry, annoyance; most of all surprise. Gratified, he added, "It is no use arguing, because my orders have been countersigned by Jutch, A-Belinka, my Senator, and my Senior Sister, and by the Governor herself. Come. Let us get ready to take off."

The faces did not change expression. The persons who owned them did not move, nor even speak. Delilah did not speak to Castor nor Castor to Manyface; but within the head of Manyface there was speaking enough, oh, yes! "They suspect something!" moaned the scrap that once had been Corelli Anastasio, and "Don't let him come!" begged the fragment formerly Su Wonmu. "Don't be foolish," cried Angorak Aglat, "how can we stop him? But we must be alert!" And Potter Alicia said soothingly to all of them, and mostly to herself, "But he's only a boy like my Castor. He won't do us any harm... I think." It made no difference what any of them said, in the secret voices within Manyface's skull or out loud; the orders were real, and there was no time to try to change them.

"Get on board, then," chittered the erk A-Belinka grumpily. "Start now, please. Before there are any more complications!"

And so the spacefarers entered into the ship, one by one, each attended by technician erks to strap them in and check their fit and make sure no one looked like being spacesick or hysterical.

"What a mess," said Castor out loud, not looking at Jupiter.

"Shut up, Castor," said Tsoong Delilah, not looking at anyone.

"They're lifting us!" cried Jupiter, and his voice at least was filled with certain joy.

He didn't have to say that, of course, because they all knew it—all felt the jarring lift as the grapples caught their ship and then the pause for recheck and window verification—

And the sudden, loosely sprung shove against all their backs, as the launch loop caught them and tugged them away—a terrible, urgent, belly-squeezing, breathstop-ping pressure that mounted swiftly and then held and crushed them—

And then was gone.

They floated free. They were on their way out of World's soupy atmosphere that screamed outside their ship as they split it open on their way.

They were on their way to Earth.

The initial launch carried them well into World's stratosphere and beyond. There was no need for rockets in that first thrust; the speed given them by the racing loop was enough for escape velocity and to spare. They would not burn a rocket until more than ninety-nine percent of World's air was below them, with only enough left for their external guidance surfaces to lever themselves against for positioning for the suborbital thrust.

It was only a matter of minutes, but minutes were long enough for all of them to realize how final the parting was. Even with no additional burn, their ship was now free of World forever; it would enter an orbit by itself now if no hand ever touched a control. They were not wholly weightless. There was a small but definite negative thrust, each of them pressing against the restraining straps, as the slight deceleration caused by friction with the air slowed the exterior of the ship while its contents wished to keep going. "Our neck hurts!" complained Su Wonmu. "I hurt very much," agreed Potter Alicia, "and I wish it would stop." But they did not speak aloud. All of Manyface was hurting, and the committee's decision was that it was best to lie as still as possible, hoping to feel better soon.

Feng Miranda was feeling very badly indeed, for a less urgent (but far more humiliating) reason. She had wet her pants. She muttered angrily to herself (but all the others heard, too), "Baby! Fool! What is the matter with you, Miranda, peeing your panties like a silly child when the cause demands heroism and strength!"

And Tsoong Delilah, forcing herself to hyperventilate to pump oxygen back into her starved blood, heard the American girl's bitter self-reproaches over the harsh rasping of her own breathing passages. Her first thought was contempt for Feng. Her second thought was also contempt, but this time it was directed at herself. "Baby?" "Fool?" Those were apt words also for a Renmin police inspector who wasted time gloating over the humiliation of a rival in love. A rival. In love\ And love, at that, for a foolish, selfish, unripe boy! And all this when duty had never called more urgently! Delilah grimly reached out to the navigation board. Her fingers were shaking, she observed with chagrin, but they also unerringly touched the proper studs. The course solution flashed on the screen before her. It had a validity score in the high nineties; the error bar was tiny; there was no indication of malfunction. "Stand by," Delilah called to the others in the cabin and pressed the Execute stud.

The spacecraft's control fins reached out to the muggy air of World and spun the vessel to its boost attitude. The main boosters fired a twelve-second burst. The navigation board confirmed the correctness of the new delta-V; the maneuver was complete. The spacecraft was ballistic.

Now it was just waiting.

"You can unstrap," Delilah advised her crew. She saw with sardonic pleasure that the first one out of the straps was Feng Miranda, awkward and uncomfortable as she gingerly stretched her legs in the tight suit. "Don't worry, Feng," Delilah called maliciously, "it's only fifty-eight hours until we land on Earth!" And was gratified by the glare she got from the girl.

Swiftly she checked the rest of her charges. Manyface seemed quite relaxed, eyes still closed. The Yankee Jupiter was methodically releasing himself in the next couch, warily watching all the others from the corners of his eyes. Castor—ah, Castor! His face glowed like the sun. There was some of the mother in the rending complexity of feeling Delilah had for Castor, and the mother feeling was warmly rewarded by the joy in his eyes. "Delilah?" he begged. "May I take the controls for a while? Please?"

Indulgently she said, "But there's nothing to do now, Castor. We have two hours of coasting before we make course corrections to rendezvous with the spaceway." But, of course, it was not the actual piloting that Castor wanted. What he wanted was the illusion of power. He wanted to form a picture of himself—captain of a great spacecraft on an urgent and perilous mission—that he could take out and look at, in his mind's eye, for the rest of his life. "Well, why not?" Delilah said. "First call in to Mission Control for a report, though."

"Of course!" cried Castor, complying eagerly. The surface control responded at once; they had been waiting for the call. Big Polly herself spoke to the ship:

"Your course and speed are fine," she said. "Congratulations on a successful launch." The funny thing, thought Castor, was that she didn't particularly look congratulatory. She looked as though she were harboring some secret resentment, her plump jaw set, her words controlled. Sour grapes because she wasn't along, maybe, Castor decided, and said considerately,

"We're the ones who should be congratulating you, Polly. Please extend my thanks to the entire launch-loop crew, and of course to all the others who are taking part in this historic occasion."

"Sure," said the Governor shortly, and leaned down to the erk Jutch, raising himself on his hind legs to chitter in her ear. "Oh, all right," she said, straightening. "I guess you'd like a situation report?"

"Certainly we would," called Delilah from her own position, frowning at the screen.

"Well," said Big Polly, leaning again to listen to the erk, "Jutch says you've got nine hours and about twenty minutes before you get in range of the spaceway} then transition; then you'll come out two days from low-Earth orbit."

"We've already calculated that," called Delilah.

"Well, that's a confirmation," said the Governor. "Then, let's see, then the first assault wave will follow you through the spaceway ten hours later. Those are long-range attack heavies—"

"We know," snapped Delilah. "We've been all over this plan a hundred times." The frown on her face had deepened. She glanced questioningly at Castor, then addressed the screen again. "We can watch the fleet assemble on our own screens, you know. Do you have anything we don't know to tell us?"

"Ah, yes," said the Governor. "There's a transmission from the Earthside scout ship. It seems the Chinese are launching ships again. Wait a minute—" She nodded to the erk, and her image disappeared from the screen, replaced by visuals of space. Some space or other—no, Delilah saw, definitely Earth space, because there was the continent of Africa on the planet in the distance. The Governor's voice said: "We've calculated rendezvous times, and they won't get anywhere near the scout for at least fifty hours. However, just in case they have some new weapons we're redirecting the scout away from the Earth. Also, of course, there are the drones, which may confuse them again—"

"Drones won't fool Han Chinese twice," Delilah sneered, studying the screen. Yes. There were three blips on it, crawling up out of low-Earth orbit. She cast back in her mind: what ships did the Chinese have ready for launch? Not much. Nothing big enough to carry significant armament, at least nothing more dangerous than Tchai Howard had had. She said reluctantly, "I agree they don't represent much of a threat, but keep on displaying them for us."

"All right," said the Governor wearily. "Is, ah, is everything all right on board? How's Jupiter?"

"He's fine," said Castor, surprised. "We're going to quit talking for a while now, all right?"

"All right," said the Governor, and the voice stopped.

Delilah twisted in her cocoon to look at the others. "She sounds funny," she said. "What do you suppose is wrong with her?" But Castor could not tell her, and neither could Manyface; and of course neither Jupe nor Miranda would.

Jupiter would not tell Delilah anything, no, but what he was telling himself was glorious. The fate of America rested on him! He returned Delilah's look boldly, trying to keep expression off his face; but he could not keep his fingers from patting the bag of stun weapons that lay beside him. In the launch they had stabbed into him most cruelly. He could feel the bruises still—welcome bruises, badges of heroism! He turned to smile at Miranda, who winked back conspiratorially. Perhaps, he thought, he should give her one of the weapons? There had been talk about arming her, too, but she was clearly not in the confidence of the others. One wild card was all that could safely be slipped into the deck. She turned to check on Manyface, still silent beside her, and Jupiter gazed placidly at Delilah and Castor, now handing themselves over the tricky stretch between his couch and hers. As they were in coasting mode there was no gravity to hinder, but also no firm support to orient to. Jupiter chuckled to himself as he saw Castor lose his hold on a strap and begin to flail wildly, Delilah grabbing for him—

"Jupiter! All of you!" It was Miranda's voice. "What's the matter with the old man?"

And then they all dragged themselves hastily to Many-face's couch, Delilah grabbing at his wrist to check pulse, Castor pulling down an eyelid set into the great pumpkin-head to peer at the pupil.

The pulse was faint but regular, the breathing shallow but steady. When Castor released the eyelid it closed and stayed closed.

Manyface was certainly alive. From all external signs he was merely, and contentedly, asleep. But they could not wake him up.

V

Within the patchwork brain of Manyface some voices called out in panic; others were ominously silent. Said Potter Alicia nervously, "What happened? Are we all right? Why do we have pain?" Said Angorak Aglat, as always shouting angrily, "The old fool has had a stroke or something. What a useless creature he is! Now we're all in for it!" Said Su Wonmu, "Comrades, comrades, let us be at peace among ourselves! We gain nothing by squabbling. Something has happened to our body, yes, that is clear. But let's not blame anyone—not, at any rate, until we learn what stupid thing Fung Bohsien did to land us in this mess!" And Fung himself said wearily, "Oh, shut up, all of us. Can't you see there is an embolism somewhere, or perhaps an aneurism?"

Silent shrieks and yells of rage: Embolism! Stroke! It was no use telling the voices to shut up. They couldn't be coerced, and they saw no reason to cooperate. A couple did not speak at all. "Corelli?" called Fung, as loudly as he could. "Hsang?" But they did not answer. The committee had lost some of its members, it seemed. The quorum still present yelled even louder, if silence can ever be loud—drowned each other out, in as wild a display of confusion as ever accompanied any implant. It was not merely fear that gripped them, it was actual pain. The skull they held in joint tenancy seemed to throb with explosions of agony, and each time the voices screamed louder. "Please, quiet," Fung begged his colleagues. "It doesn't help anything to go crazy!"

"But what are they doing to us?" wailed Potter, trying to make sense of the skewed sensory impressions that filtered through the disturbed perceptual systems.

Surprisingly, it was Shum Hengdzhou who answered. The whilom ironworker had listened bashfully while everyone else shouted and ranted, but now he ventured, "Alicia? I think they are only trying to help us."

"Help!" several voices sneered, but Shum was steadfast.

"Yes, I think help," he said mildly. "I think they are attempting first aid. Of course, it is true that this vessel has no complete life-support system, and so perhaps they cannot do much, but still... Comrades? Is there a point in shouting at each other, since there is nothing we can do while we are acting this way?"

"What a fool you are, Shum," said Su Wonmu in spiteful disgust. "However we act, what can we do?"

"Well, Comrade Su," said Shum, "I do recall that the first advice to any stroke patient is to relax. We could do that much, anyway, while our shipmates attempt to do what they can."

For a wonder, there was a moment's silence. Then Fung spoke heavily. "That's good advice, Shum. It is not likely to save our lives—not all of us, anyway, since it seems we have already lost one or two. But it is the best we can do, only—"

Pause of a microsecond or two, while the surviving members of the committee waited to hear what came next. "Only?" prompted Potter Alicia worriedly.

"Only what I am thinking is that our lives are not really that important. By all rights we should all have been dead long ago anyway. What is important is to keep the erks from wiping out everybody on Earth... and about that we can do nothing at all."

They had long since set up a patch to the diagnostic machines on World, and it was the pilot, Delilah, who was assigned to watch the readouts. "He's alive all right," she reported. "But there's something wrong with his brain."

"There's a great deal wrong with his brain," Jupiter agreed. He was trying to hold the medical sensors to arm, chest, head, and throat; the sticky pastes were not strong enough to withstand Manyface's erratic movements. "Tell them they mustn't let him die!" he ordered. Delilah gave him a surprised and ironic look. "I mean," he explained, "have you thought about what it means if we're stuck with a corpse for the next couple of days? He'll begin to smell." He looked surprised at the expressions on the faces of his shipmates. "But it is only sensible to think of such things," he protested indignantly.

Miranda said, "Just shut up and hold those electrodes on, will you?" She was cradling the old man's huge, queer head in her arms. It weighed nothing, of course, but when he had a spasm he seemed likely to bash himself or even snap the overstrained old neck. "Can't they tell us anything to do?" she demanded fiercely.

"They've been telling us," sighed Delilah. "Only we don't have any of the things to do it with."

"It's the wrong ship," said Castor sadly. "The other one had life-support systems for Manyface."

"Then we should have taken the other ship!" snapped Feng Miranda. It was only when she, too, noticed the expressions on the faces looking at her that it occurred to her that her concern was odd. Manyface was an enemy, after all! Jupiter might easily have to shoot him if there was any nonsense aboard the ship—she herself had made sure that could happen. And yet, looking down on the face beneath the great domed forehead, Miranda's thoughts were all of saving life, not taking it. "Shouldn't we give him more .anticoagulants?" she asked fretfully.

"Tchai Howard says no," said Delilah.

"Tchai Howard is no doctor!"

"But the Yank medical sisters agree with him, Miranda. Please try to control yourself. We're doing the best we can."

"It's been hours! How long can he survive like this?"

"However long it is," said Delilah steadily, "that is how long he has to do it. Wait. They are complaining about a degraded signal. Are the electrodes in place?"

Guiltily Jupiter looked back at his charge and readjusted his holds. The currents that flowed through them measured resistances and temperatures, mapped the alpha and beta waves of the brain, told all that could be told of the invisible struggle going on inside the huge head. Thousands of kilometers below them, the erks and humans gathered at Mission Control knew more about what was happening within that structure of bone and metal and plastic than they could see. Miranda sobbed, "He really was not a bad old man."

And realized she had spoken in the past tense.

And within the skull of Manyface the committee was beginning to think of itself in the same way. "I wish I could have seen my grandchild," sighed Potter Alicia.

"We all have regrets," said Angorak, for once not shouting.

They were all silent, thinking of regrets, until Shum 282 spoke up. "Our biggest regret, I think, should be that we are doing nothing to keep the Earth from being destroyed," he said mildly.

"We do regret that, you foolish person," said Angorak at once. Then, repenting, "I am sorry, Shum. I spoke out of anger. I am angry because I am helpless. There is nothing we can do."

"Yes," agreed Shum, "if we are helpless we can do nothing. If we cannot speak or act, we are helpless. If we are imprisoned here among ourselves with no contact, then everything is in vain for us; but is that true? Are we completely without contact?"

Silence for a moment. Then Potter Alicia, diffidently, "Shum? I did think I saw just a flicker of light a moment ago. Is that what you mean?"

Quick, hopeful hubbub; then Fung Bohsien himself heavily, "One of my eyes perhaps opened just a bit. Probably someone lifted the lid; it is nothing."

"I do not altogether agree, Comrade Fung," said Shum diffidently. "It is very much, I think. It implies that our perceptual systems are not destroyed. That has implications, I believe."

"Say what those implications are!" barked Angorak.

"Why, that we are paralyzed, yes, but not in coma."

"Of course we are not in coma! We are speaking to each other, are we not? Oh, Shum, what a fool you are! You see hope in what is the worst truth of all—that we are not dead, nor even in terminal coma, but condemned to be awake in this prison forever!"

"Shut up, Angorak," said Fung roughly. "Shum is right. Listen! Everyone! If we can do nothing but think, at least let us think logically." He paused the microsecond that amounted to a meaningful delay in their lightning exchanges to see if there was any dispute. There was none.

"Very well, then. Let us see what we know. First, we have suffered a cerebrovascular incident. Does anyone doubt this?" There was no doubt, only murmurs. Dejected murmurs. "Second, it is not overwhelmingly serious, for as Shum has said, we are at least able to communicate with one another—many of us are, at least," he qualified. Again there was no dispute. "Third, it is true, I believe, that we saw a flicker of light some full seconds, perhaps minutes, ago." Concurrence to that. "The question then," finished Manyface, "is whether we can exercise any motor control over any part of our body. Has anyone felt kinesthesia?" Doubtful denials, except for Potter Alicia's even more doubtful possible yes. "Shall we try to effect some muscular movements?" More confident yes—not confident, exactly, perhaps, but certainly more affirmative. "Then the eye," instructed Fung to his cohort. "Let us see if without bickering among ourselves or wasting energy in panic we can perhaps open one eye. Shall we do that? All right then; let us try!"

"I can't," whimpered Su Wonmu, but was at once drowned out by all the surviving fragments: You can! You really can. No, probably you can't, you pompous fool, but at least be still so the rest of us can try! And try they did—over and over—endlessly, repeatedly, in that faster-than-life time that they shared inside Manyface's great skull.

They did not succeed.

"Try something else," suggested Shum, almost panting with effort—if a fragment of brain tissue could pant. "Try speaking, please. Try to warn the others—"

And try that they did, with no more success. With certainly far less success, in fact, for the warring scraps of tissue could not agree on what it was they should say; and the eons that were hours wore on, until—

"What was that?" gasped Potter Alicia. "Oh, Fung! Have we died?"

It was not Fung who answered but Angorak, roughly. He had felt the same queer thrill in the tired sensors of Fung Bohsien's old body, but recognized it faster. "We haven't died, foolish woman!" he bellowed. "We would not be speaking if we had! We have gone through the spaceway, that is all—and, oh, comrades, are we too late? Is the issue already decided while we are trapped here?"

Was the issue decided? It was not only the clumps of cells in Manyface's brain that wondered. Tsoong Delilah wondered, too, and so did Castor, and even Miranda and Jupiter were nervous and irritable under unidentified strains of feeling. The spaceway had caught them all as unaware as Manyface. Delilah's first impulse was to slide as inconspicuously as she could back to the pilot's place. Miranda had been bending over the old man's unre-sponding head, staring hard as she pillowed the great mass in her lap. "I could have sworn I saw his eyelid move," she offered, "but then there was nothing—"

And then she had frozen, as the strange, slipping feeling came over them all. "We're through!" she gasped. From the controls Delilah confirmed,

"Yes, a successful transit. Look—" And the screen that had flickered to static now lit itself again with a picture of Earth and the Moon peeping bright from behind it.

Jupiter said joyfully, "Then the plan is working! And I don't have to bother with this old man anymore." He let go of the electrodes, flexing his fingers. Surprised again at the looks he got, he said defensively, "Well, after all, we've lost direct contact, haven't we?"

"What a sod you are," said Miranda in disgust, but then she forgot about Jupiter. The eyes opened again. "He's awake!" she cried. "I—I think he's trying to talk."

"That's good," said Jupiter eagerly, generosity sparked by the promise that they wouldn't have to live with spoiling meat for the next days.

"Shut up!" she ordered, bending her head close to Manyface's lips. "What?" she whispered, and the faint breath of voice tried again:

"Don't..." it said—was that what it said?—and stopped.

"Yes, yes?" Miranda encouraged. "Don't what, Fung?"

"Don't... let... the... erks... destroy... the... Earth."

"What?" she asked, incredulous. It was a pointless thing to say; the old man hardly had the strength to go through that again. "He said, 'Don't let the erks destroy the Earth,'" she repeated for the others, then bent back to Manyface. Worriedly she said, "Oh, but they won't, Fung. I mean, I know you're a patriotic Han and all that, and maybe there'll be some damage to China—but all they want to do really is free America."

The eyes stared at her mournfully. The lips moved again, but no sound came out.

She said sorrowfully, "You're wearing yourself out for nothing, Fung. Don't try to talk. I promise it will be all right—"

The tongue reached out to lick the dry lips. Then, faint as breath itself, one more word: "Please."

She shook her head, then looked up, startled, as she felt a sidewise thrust. She called to Delilah: "What are you doing?"

"Course correction," said Delilah briefly, eyes locked to the controls, fingers busy. There was something strange about the way she held herself. It was strange, too, that Castor, who had been intent on listening to Manyface, began idly to move between Jupiter and Delilah, his eyes fixed on the other man as though expecting something— "What is going on?" Miranda demanded; and, belatedly, Jupiter came to, dived for his bag, came up with a stun weapon pointed at Delilah.

"Treason!" he shouted. "Stop there, Tsoong! Don't touch anything else!" Delilah froze. Stun weapons didn't kill, but no one wanted the vicious pins-and-needles agony of recovering from a shot—not to mention that while stunned she could hope to do nothing to save her world. Castor froze, too, for the same reasons, multiplied by the fact that he was closer. Even Miranda froze, mouth open in an uncomprehending gape, and that drove Jupiter to fury. "Why are you sisters so stupid?" he demanded. "Can't you see what they were doing? You were right; they are out to betray us!"

"But, Jupiter," she began reasonably, a beginning for a sentence for which she had no clear ending in mind.

"Don't argue! Let go of that stupid old man! Take Delilah's place at the controls." She could not move. "Now!" he shouted angrily. "She was going to destroy the spaceway ship! Push her away! Save America!"

VI

Save America. Well, there was a clear-cut directive. The words moved Miranda out of the reflexes of all her life. She felt nothing, understood nothing; she was numb, but she heard the call to action. She gently lowered old Manyface's head to its cocoon and moved toward the control couches, always careful not to get between Jupiter's gun and Tsoong Delilah. "Excuse me, please," she said absently to the older woman, and didn't even notice Delilah's look of surprise. Miranda wasn't looking at her. She was looking over the pilot board, where the display screen was showing the blue-white marble with its soiled aspirin-tablet companion. "Jupiter? What did he mean about the erks destroying the Earth?" she asked, gazing at the planet.

"What a stupid question!" he snapped. "Pay attention to what you are doing! Great matters are being decided here and now!"

"Yes," she said reasonably, nodding, "but I would like to know what he was talking about. Can you tell me?"

Delilah paused, holding on to the restraining straps of the copilot's cocoon. "He could, but he won't, Miranda," she said.

"Shut up, you! No talking!" ordered Jupiter, but Miranda warded him off with an upraised hand.

"Why won't he?" she asked.

"Because he does not understand what is happening," said Delilah tautly. "Any more than you do. Ask him about the other erk 'allies.' Ask him how many of them survive."

"What 'allies'?" Miranda asked, frowning as she tried to pursue the subject.

"All of them! And all dead—just as we will all be if this lunatic gets his way!"

"Oh, now, reallyl" howled Jupiter, waving his gun. "How dare you say that? I am no lunatic! You think I am a lunatic simply because I am no traitor to my country!"

"Only to your species," Delilah snarled, but Jupiter was having none of that.

"Now be quiet really," he commanded, "or I will make you so! Go ahead, you! Get over there next to Castor. Miranda! Take the controls. Make sure neither of them gets near them!" His face was tight with rage—what impudence of them! And yet the rage could not long persist in this very best and most exalted moment of his life. He waved the weapons, one now in each hand, to force Castor and Delilah against the far bulkhead of the spacecraft. "Don't try anything!" he warned and, again, "And don't talk!"

It was annoying that they obeyed only the orders they chose. Castor said steadily, "I am the President of the United States. I order you to give me those weapons."

Jupiter frowned. "That's not a proper order," he objected.

"The President is Commander in Chief of all the military forces," Castor said. "Any order I give you must be obeyed."

"Then you're not a proper President!" Jupe decided. "Anyway, I won't. We're going to go through with the plan. We're going to talk to those Chinese ships and tell them to hold their fire, draw them down close to Earth orbit, give the fleet a chance to follow us—and you can't stop it!"

Castor shook his head. "And then what, Jupiter?" he asked.

"Why—then we liberate America, of course!"

"But who is 'we,' Jupiter? Do you mean the erks? Do you know what will happen once the erks get into the fight?"

Jupiter frowned. "Mr. President," he said formally, "I would like to continue treating you as a real President, but I must warn you that to talk treason against the erks is wrong!"

Castor hesitated. Miranda could see that he was sweating. His face was pale and his hands shook, but he said, "You owe no loyalty to the erks, Jupiter. They are not Americans."

"They are our allies!"

"The erks are nobody's allies! Have you ever looked at the histories? Have you seen what the erks have done?"

Jupiter shrugged angrily. "Oh, everyone knows that stuff," he said. "Now be still! Look at the screen—the drones are all around us, and we are nearly within range of the Chinese ships!" As Castor started to open his mouth again, Jupiter shouted, "I said be still. I might not kill you, but I'll surely knock you out!" Delilah touched Castor with a warning hand; the President hesitated irresolutely.

Miranda said suddenly, "Why won't you let him talk, Jupiter? What's he trying to say about history?"

"It is nothing!" snapped Jupiter. "There have been some bad incidents."

"There have been no good ones!" Delilah said, her face almost as strained as Castor's as she stared into Jupiter's guns. "Every time they've intervened in a war, they've destroyed both sides! Is that what you want, Jupiter? The human race wiped out entirely?"

"It won't happen!" he cried, furious at the attack on everything he believed in. "They've had some bad luck."

"Bad luck!" Delilah began, but Miranda stopped her.

"Tell me about this bad luck," she ordered.

Jupiter looked at her sulkily. "It is true that none of the races the erks assisted survived," he said, shrugging. "But we know better. We've had years with them to plan. The whole thing is very clear. First we destroy China from space—what's wrong with that? Perhaps India will want to take over, but they will be even easier to knock out than China. Then we land ground forces for mopping up. True, we can't land more than a few thousand troops, and the erks aren't much good at hand-to-hand combat. But there's always the fleet in space! If the locals don't surrender, we'll just knock out a few cities—"

"Jupiter! What are you saying?" Miranda demanded.

He said mulishly, "They've got it coming." Then he looked surprised as he saw Delilah moving toward the controls. "Don't do that!" he warned.

Tardily Miranda realized that their ship had been slowly swinging around, was now pointed almost directly back at the scout ship, where the pale purple gleam still lingered. Instinctively she reached to stop the swing; and, as she was doing so, Castor leaped toward Jupiter. There was a crackle of high-voltage charge as Jupiter fired. The stun-gun knocked Castor back against the bulkhead, his face a sudden mask of astonishment. Angrily Jupiter swung the gun toward Delilah...

Miranda looked down at what her fingers were doing on the controls and sighed.

"Jupiter," she said absently, "don't shoot anybody else. It doesn't matter anymore."

He turned an amazed face to her. "What?"

"I said it doesn't matter," she repeated, watching her fingers tap out an instruction. As she pressed the Execute key she added, "The erks aren't coming now, you see."

His expression was now as much scared as angry. "What are you talking about, you stupid little sister? Of course they're coming! It's all planned!"

She shook her head and gazed up at the display screen. "Not for a while, Jupe. What is it, forty-two light-years to here? So they can't get here for forty-two years at least without the spaceway." On the screen a tiny white spark of fire was climbing away from them toward the scout ship. "Without the ship there's no spaceway. Without the spaceway, no erks for half a century or so. And," she added simply, watching the spark connect with the blip of the erk scout ship, "I'm a real good shot. So now there's no more ship."

Jupiter gazed pop-eyed at the screen. They all did, even Castor (whose only mobility was in his eyes), even, almost, Manyface, whose bleary old eyes seemed to be straining to focus. What they saw was the same for all.

The erk ship flared bright, actinic white.

When the glare died away, there was no ship there at all. A haze of particulate matter was swelling and dissipating. Nothing else.

"Oh, my God," whispered Jupiter, "you've really done it, haven't you?"

Miranda nodded. It was the simple truth. She had. "I hope I did the right thing," she said meditatively, and Tsoong Delilah, bursting free of the numbed paralysis that had gripped them all, shoved herself toward Miranda and caught her in an unexpected and powerful hug.

"Oh, you did," she said, almost sobbing. "You really did!"

"Traitor!" grated Jupiter. He waved the gun helplessly at the two women, stared at it, then hurled it across the chamber. It barely missed Miranda, who retrieved it and handed it to Tsoong Delilah. "I hope you do better," she said. Then, thoughtfully, to the Chinese woman, but also to the whole of humanity, "I hope you do better than anyone ever did before."

"And if they don't?" demanded Jupiter. "If they just keep on having wars?"

Miranda leaned forward to call the distant Chinese vessels. Over her shoulder she said, "Why, then we deserve what we get, don't we?"