Rogue Moon

1

Hawks was sitting in his office the next morning when Barker knocked on the door and came in. “The guard at the gate told me to see you here,” he said. His eyes measured Hawks’ face. “Decided to fire me, or something?”

Hawks shook his head. He closed the topmost of the bundle of file folders on his desk and pointed toward the other chair. “Sit down, please. You have a great deal to think over before you go to the laboratory.”

“Sure.” Barker’s expression relaxed. He walked over the uncarpeted floor with sharp scuffs of his jodhpur boot heels. “And by the way, good morning, Doctor,” he said, sitting down and crossing his legs. The shim plate bulged starkly under the whipcord fabric stretched across his knee.

“Good morning,” Hawks said shortly. He opened the file and took out a large folded square of paper. He spread it out on his desk facing Barker.

Without looking at it, Barker said, “Claire wants to know what’s going on.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Did the FBI call me a fool?”

“Not in ways that concern them.”

“I hope that’s your answer. I was only reporting a fact you might be interested in.” He smiled mirthlessly. “It cost me my night’s sleep.”

“Can you put in five minutes’ maximum physical effort this afternoon?”

“I’d say so if I couldn’t.”

“All right, then. Five minutes is all you’ll have. Now — this is where you’re going.” He touched the map. “This is the explored part of the far side of the Moon.”

Barker frowned and leaned forward, looking down at the precisely etched hachurelines, the rectangle of territory bounded by lightly sketched areas marked: “No accurate data available.”

“Rough country,” he said. He looked up. “Explored?”

“Topographical survey. The Navy has an outpost located—” he put his finger down on a minute square — “there. Just over the edge of the visible disk at maximum libration. This—” he pointed to a slightly larger ragged circle a quarter inch away — “is where you’re going.”

Barker lifted one eyebrow. “What have the Russians got to say about all this?”

“This entire map,” Hawks said patiently, “encompasses fifty square miles. The naval installation, and the place where you’re going, are contained within an area half a mile square. They’re almost the only unnatural formations at all visible from overhead. The others are the matter receiver beside the naval station and a relay tower near the edge of the visible disk. They’re camouflaged — all but the place you’re going, which can’t be hidden. But the radiophotos from last month’s Russian circumlunar rocket take in an area of at least seven million three hundred thousand square miles of lunar surface alone. Could you see a fly on the side of the Empire State Building’s television tower? Through dirty glasses?”

“If I was up there with it.”

“The Russians are not. We think they have a telemetering robot installation somewhere on the visible Isk, and we expect them to rocket men up to it sometime next year. We haven’t yet found it, but the statistical prediction locates their base about six thousand great circle miles from our installation. I don’t feel we need worry about asking anyone’s permission to go ahead with our program. However that may be, we are there, and this is where you’re going today Now let me tell you how all this happened.”

Barker leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and arched his eyebrows. “I like your classroom manner,” he murmured. “Have you ever considered a teaching career, Doctor?”

Hawks looked up at him. “I cannot let you die in ignorance,” he finally said. “You’re — you’re free to leave this room at any time and terminate your employment here. Connington delivered your signed releases and contract to the company this morning. If you’ve read your contract, you’ll remember the clause that permits you to cancel.”

“Oh, I’ll stick around, Doctor,” Barker answered lightly.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Barker, you’re not being easy on me at all, are you?”

“You’re not doing so well by me, Doctor.”

Hawks’ right hand stirred the pile of folders, and he looked down at them. “You’re right. Mercy is only a recent human cultural invention.” He said in an overprecise tone, “Let’s get to work. Earlier this year, the Air Force obtained one radioed photograph from a rocket which it attempted to put into a lunar orbit. The rocket came much too close, and crashed somewhere beyond the edge of the visible disk. By fortunate accident, that one photograph showed this.” He took an eight-by-ten glossy print enlargement out of its folder and passed it to Barker. “You can see it’s almost hopelessly washed out and striated by errors in transmission from the rocket’s radiophoto sending apparatus. But this area, of which a part is visible in this corner — here-is clearly not a natural formation.”

Barker frowned at it. “This what you showed me that ground photo of?”

“But that came a great deal later. All this showed was that there was something on the Moon whose extent and nature were not determined by the photograph, but which resembled no lunar or terrestrial feature familiar to human knowledge. We have, since then, measured its extent as best we can, and can say it is roughly a hundred meters in diameter and twenty meters high, with irregularities and amorphous features we cannot accurately describe. We still know very little of its nature — but that’s beside the immediate point. When this feature was discovered, it became important to the government that it be studied. It had been pretty much expected that the far side of the Moon would show nothing startlingly different from the visible disk. Considering the unequal state of Russian and U.S. rocketry, it was now clear that if we did not move rapidly, the Russians had every chance of making a first-class discovery, whose nature we could not guess but whose importance might well be major — perhaps even decisive, as far as control of the Moon was concerned.”

Hawks rubbed his eyes. “As it happened,” he went on softly, “the Navy had some years previously signed a development contract with Continental Electronics, underwriting my work with the matter scanner. By the time of the Moon-photo rocket, the experimental system you see down in the laboratory had been built and, despite its glaring crudities, had reached the point where it would consistently transmit a volunteer from the transmitter into the laboratory receiver without apparent damage. So, at a time when we were thinking of beginning experimental wireless transmission to a receiver in the Sierras, the government instituted a crash program to send volunteers to the Moon.

“A great deal of additional money was expended for equipment and personnel and, after a series of failures and near-misses, the Army rocket team was able to drop a relay tower on this side of the Moon’s disk, near the edge. Then a very sketchy receiver was dropped, rather haphazardly, near this—” he tapped the chart frustratedly — “this formation. And a volunteer technician was broadcast through the relay tower into the receiver, which was barely large enough to hold him. Once there, he was supplied through the receiver. He was able to reach the rocket containing the relay tower, set it firmly on a stable base, and erect a plastic camouflage and meteorite impact-absorption hood over it. Using parts which were transmitted to him, he then built the receiver and return transmitter we are using now. He also erected rudimentary living quarters for himself, and then, apparently, began investigating the unknown formation against orders without waiting for the arrival of the Navy specialists who now crew the outpost.

“He wasn’t found until several weeks ago. His was the second photograph I showed you. His body was inside the thing, and looked to the autopsy surgeons as though he had fallen from a height of several thousand meters under Terrestrial gravity.”

Barker’s mouth hooked briefly. “Could that have happened?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“I can’t see, Barker, and neither can anyone else. We don’t even know what to call that place. The eye won’t follow it, and photographs convey only the most fragile impression. There is reason to suspect it exists in more than three spatial dimensions. Nobody knows what it is, why it’s located there, what its true purpose might be, or what created it. We don’t know whether it’s animal, vegetable, or mineral. We don’t know whether it’s somehow natural, or artificial. We know, from the geology of several meteorite craters that have heaped rubble against its sides, that it’s been there for, at the very least, a million years. And we know what it does now: it kills people.”

“Again and again, in unbelievable ways, Doctor?”

“Characteristically and persistently, in unbelievable ways. We need to know every one of them. We need to determine, with no margin for error or omission, exactly what the formation can do to men. We need to have a complete guide to its limits and capabilities. When we have that, we can, at last, risk entering it with trained technicians who will study and disassemble it. It will be the technical teams which will actually learn from it as much as human beings can, and convey this host of information into the -general body of human knowledge. But this is only what technicians always do. First we must have our chartmaker. It’s my direct responsibility that the formation will, I hope, kill you again and again.”

“Well, that’s a fair warning even if it makes no sense. I can’t say you didn’t give it to me.”

“It wasn’t a warning,” Hawks said. “It was a promise.”

Barker shrugged. “Call it whatever you want to.”

“I don’t often choose my words on that basis,” Hawks said.

Barker grinned at him. “You and Sam Latourette ought to do a brother act.”

Hawks looked carefully at Barker for a long time. “Thank you for giving me something else to worry about.” He picked up another folder and thrust it into Barker’s hands.

“Look those over.” He stood up. “There’s only one entrance into the thing. Somehow, our first technician found it, probably by fumbling around the periphery until he stepped through it. It is not an opening in any describable sense; it is a place where the nature of this formation permits entrance by a human being, either by design or accident. It cannot be explained in more precise terms, and it can’t be encompassed by the eye or, we suspect, the human brain. Three men died to make the chart which now permits other men, who follow the chart by dead reckoning like navigators in an impenetrable fog, to enter the formation. Other men have died to tell us the following things about its interior:

“A man inside it can be seen, very dimly, if we know where to look. No one knows, except in the most incoherent terms, what he sees. No one has ever come out; no one has ever been able to find an exit; the entrance cannot be used for that purpose. Non-living matter, such as a photograph or a corpse, can be passed out from inside. But the act of passing it out is invariably fatal to the man doing it. That photo of the first volunteer’s body cost another man’s life. The formation also does not permit electrical signals from its interior. That includes a man’s speaking intelligibly inside his helmet, loudly enough for his RT microphone to pick it up. Coughs, grunts, other non-informative mouth-noises, are permissible. An attempt to encode a message in this manner failed.

“You will not be able to maintain communication, either by broadcast or along a cable. You will be able to ,make very limited hand signals to observers from the outpost, and you will make written notes on a tablet tied to a cord, which the observer team will attempt to draw back after you die. If that fails, the man on the next try will have to go in and pass the tablet out by hand, if he can, and if it is decipherable. Otherwise, he will attempt to repeat whatever actions you took, making notes, until he finds the one that killed you. We have a chart of safe postures and motions which have been established in this manner, as well as of fatal ones. It is, for example, fatal to kneel on one knee while facing lunar north. It is fatal to raise the left hand above shoulder height while in any position whatsoever. It is fatal past a certain point to wear armor whose air hoses loop over the shoulders. It is fatal past another point to wear armor whose air tanks feed directly into the suit without the use of hoses at all. It is crippling to. wear armor whose dimensions vary greatly from the ones we are using now. It is fatal to use the hand motions required to write the English word ‘yes,’ with either the left or right hand.

“We don’t know why. We only know what a man can and cannot do while within that part of the formation which has been explored. Thus far, we have a charted safe path and safe motions to a distance of some twelve meters. The survival time for a man within the formation is now up to three minutes, fifty-two seconds.

“Study your charts, Barker. You’ll have them with you when you go, but we can’t know that having them won’t prove fatal past the point they measure now. You can sit here and memorize them. If you have any other questions, look through these report transcriptions, here, for the answers. I’ll tell you whatever else you need to know when you come down to the laboratory. I’ll expect you there in an hour. Sit at my desk,” Hawks finished, walking quickly toward the door. “There’s an excellent reading light.”

2

Hawks was looking at the astronomical data from Mount Wilson, talking it over with the antenna crew, when Barker finally came through the double doors from the stairwell, holding the formation-chart folder. He was walking quickly and precisely, his face tight.

“All right, Will,” Hawks said, turning away from the engineer in charge of the antenna. “You’d better start tracking the relay tower in twenty minutes. As soon as we’ve got him suited up, we’ll shoot.”

Will Martin nodded and took off his reading glasses to point casually toward Barker. “Think he’ll chicken out?”

Hawks shook his head. “Especially not if it’s put that way. And I’ve done that.”

Martin grinned softly. “Hell of a way for him to make a buck.”

“He can buy and sell the two of us a hundred times over, Will, and never miss an extra piece of pie out of his lunch money.”

Martin looked at Barker again. “Why’s he in this?”

“Because of the way he is.” He began to walk toward Barker. “And, I suppose, because of the way I am. And because of the way that woman is,” he murmured to himself. “I imagine we can mix Connington in, too. All of us are looking for something we must have if we’re to be happy. I wonder what we’ll get?”

“Now, look,” Barker said, slapping the folder. “According to this, if I make a wrong move, they’ll find me with all my blood in a puddle outside my armor, and not a mark on me. If I make another move, I’ll be paralyzed from the waist down, which means I have to crawl on my belly. But crawling on your belly somehow makes things happen so you get squashed up into your helmet. And it goes on in that cheerful vein all the way. If I don’t watch my step as carefully as a tightrope walker, and if I don’t move on time and in position, like a ballet dancer, I’ll never even get as far as this chart reads. I’d say I had no chance whatsoever of-‘ getting out alive.”

“Even if you stood and did nothing,” Hawks agreed, “the formation would kill you at the end of two hundred thirty-two seconds. It will permit no man to live in it longer than some man has forced it to. The limit will go up as you progress. Why its nature is such that it yields to human endeavor, we don’t know. It’s entirely likely that this is only a coincidental side-effect of its true purpose — if it has one.

“Perhaps it’s the alien equivalent of a discarded tomato can. Does a beetle know why it can enter the can only from one end as it lies across the trail to the beetle’s burrow? Does the beetle understand why it is harder to climb to the left or right, inside the can, than it is to follow a straight line? Would the beetle be a fool to assume the human race put the can there to torment it — or an egomaniac to believe the can was manufactured only to mystify it? It would be best for the beetle to study the can in terms of the can’s logic, to the limit of the beetle’s ability. In that way, at least, the beetle can proceed intelligently. It may even grasp some hint of the can’s maker. Any other approach is either folly or madness.”

Barker looked up at Hawks impatiently. “Horse manure. Is the beetle happier? Does it get anything? Does it escape anything? Do other beetles understand what it’s doing, and take up a collection to support it while it wastes time? A smart beetle walks around your tomato can, Doctor, and lives its life contented.”

“Certainly,” Hawks said. “Go ahead. Leave now.”

“I wasn’t talking about me! I was talking about you.” Barker looked around the laboratory. He stared up at the instrument galleries. “Lot of people here. All because of you. I guess that feels pretty satisfying.” He put the folder under one arm and stood with his hands’ in his pockets, his head to one side as he spoke flatly up into Hawks’ face. “Men, money, energy — all devoted to the eminent Dr. Hawks and his preoccupations. Sounds to me like other beetles have taken up a collection.”

“Looking at it that way,” Hawks said dispassionately, “does keep it simple. And it explains why I continue to send men into the formation. It satisfies my ego to see men die at my command. Now it’s your turn. Come on, Lancelot — your armor’s waiting for you. Can’t you hear the trumpet blowing? What’s this—” He touched a lipstick smudge around a purple bruise on the side of Barker’s neck. “A lady’s favor? Whose heart will break if you should be unhorsed today?”

Barker knocked his hand away. “A beetle’s heart, Doctor.” His strained face fell into a ghastly, reminiscent smile. “A beetle’s cold, cold heart.”

Barker lay in his suit, his arms sprawled at his sides. Hawks had asked the Navy crew to step away from the table. Now he said softly, “you’ll die, Barker. I want you to give up all hope. There isn’t any.”

“I know that, Doctor,” Barker said.

“I’ve said you’d die again and again. You will. Today is only the first time. If you retain your sanity, you’ll be all right — except you’ll have the memory of dying, and the knowledge that you must die again tomorrow.”

“In some other unbelievable way. You’ve told me this before.” Barker sighed. “All right, Doctor — how are you going to do it? What little piece of magic are you going to work?” He was noticeably calm; in the same way he had faced Sam Latourette. His expression was almost apathetic. Only the black eyes, their pupils dilated broadly, lived in his face.

“There are going to be two of you,” Hawks said. “When you’re scanned, the signal describing you will be sent not only to the receiver on the Moon but to the one in the laboratory here. The signal to the laboratory receiver will be held in a tape delay deck until the duplicate signal has reached the Moon. Then both receivers’ will simultaneously resolve a Barker. We put this system into operation as soon as we understood there was no hope for the volunteer on the Moon. It means that, so far as Earth is concerned, the volunteer has not died. It has worked perfectly each time.”

Barker looked patiently up at him.

Hawks went on laboriously. “It was conceived of as a lifesaving thing,” he said, his upper lip twitching. “And it will save your life. Barker M, on the Moon, will die. But Barker L, here, will be taken out of his suit, and will be you, and will, if he retains his ability to remember coherently, and to reason, go home tonight as though this had been just another day in his life. And only you,” he said, his stare focusing behind the surface of Barker’s skull, “who stand on the Moon and remember me speaking to you now, will know that you are the luckless one, Barker M, and that a stranger has taken your place in the world.”

His eyes returned to the Barker lying in the suit. “Someone else will hold Claire in his arms tonight. Someone else will drive-your car and drink your whisky. You are not the Barker I met in your house. That man is gone. But no Barker has known death yet — no Barker has had to go into a place from which there is no return. You can get out of that suit at this moment, Barker, and leave here. I would.” He watched the man intently.

After a moment, Barker’s mouth opened into a deadly, silent laugh. “Come on, Doctor,” he said. “Not when I can already hear the music.”

Hawks pulled his hands out of sight behind his back. “All right. Then there is one last thing. When we began using this technique, we discovered that the L volunteer showed signs of momentary confusion. He behaved, even though safe in the laboratory, as if he were the M volunteer on the Moon. This confused period lasted only a moment or two, and swiftly waned into awareness. We put the phenomenon aside as one of the many things we must neglect now and reserve for study when the urgent problems have been solved. Many things have been put aside in that manner. But we received reports from the Navy crew Moonside that the M volunteer was unaccountably losing time — that he was disoriented for several seconds after he resolved in the receiver. Perhaps from brain damage, perhaps from something else — we did not know, at the time, but it was something new, and it was losing effective time for the volunteer.

“That was an urgent problem. We solved it when we considered the fact that for the first time in the universe as we know it, two identical brains existed in it, and at the sante moment of time. It became apparent to us — unwilling though some of us were to accept the conclusion — that the quarter-million-mile distance separating them was no more important an impedance to their thoughts than a line scratched across his path is to a journeying man. You can call it anything you like. Telepathy if you want to, however you may feel about what is to be included in scientific nomenclature, and what is not.” There was a momentary look of faint distaste on his face.

“It had no chance to be true communication, of course. Almost instantly, the two brains ceased being identical. The two volunteers were receiving vastly different sensory impressions and recording them in their individual brain cells. In seconds, the two minds were far apart, and the thread, frayed, came unraveled and broke. M and L were no longer the same man. And never, even at the first instant, could they simply ‘speak’ to each other in the sense of passing messages back and forth like telegrams. Nor, it seems to me, will that sort of objective, uninvolved communication ever be possible. To be able to read a man’s mind is to be able to be that man — to be where he is, to live whatever he is living. Even in this special case of ours, the two men could only, for one decaying moment, seem to be of one mind.”

Hawks looked around the laboratory. Gersten was watching him patiently, but standing idle, his preparations done. Hawks nodded absently, and looked back at Barker.

“We saw,” he finished, “that we had here a potential means of accurately observing a man inside the lunar f ormation. So that is why we set up the physical circumstances of the Moon shots as we do. Barker M will resolve on the Moon, where the sensory-blocking devices in his armor will stop operating because they are out of range of our lowpower controls here. He will come out of anesthesia and be able to move and observe normally. But Barker L, here, will still be under our control. He will be receiving no outside stimuli as he lies cut off inside his armor. His mind will be free of the environment of this laboratory, accepting whatever comes to it. And only what is in Barker M’s mind can come to it.

“Barker L, too, will seem to himself to be on the Moon, inside the formation. He won’t know he is Barker L. He will live as though in the M brain, and his organic structure will record whatever sensory perceptions the M body conveys to its brain. And though, of course, no method could prevent an eventual increep of divergent stimuli — the metabolic conditions of the two bodies gradually become less and less similar, for example-still the contact might last for as long as ten or fifteen minutes. But, of course, it never has.

“You’ll know you’ve reached the limit of our previous probes when you reach Rogan’s body. We don’t know what killed him. It hardly matters what it was, except that you’ll have to evade it, whatever it was. Maybe the condition of the body will be a useful clue. If it is, it’ll be the only useful thing we’ve been able to learn from Rogan. Because when Rogan L, down here, felt Rogan M die, up there, Rogan L could not feel anything except Rogan M’s death. The same thing will happen to you.

“Barker M’s mind will die with his body, in whatever particular way the body is destroyed. Let’s hope this happens at the end of a little more than two hundred and thirty-two seconds elapsed time, rather than less. It’s bound to happen sooner or later. And Barker L’s mind, same down here in the L brain, will nevertheless feel itself die, because it isn’t free to feel anything of what is happening to its own body. All its life, all its memories, will suddenly culminate. It will feel the pain, the shock, the as yet totally indescribable anguish of the end of its world. No man has been able to endure it. We found the finest, most stable minds we could among physically suitable volunteers, and without exception, all the L volunteers were taken out of their suits insane. Whatever information they had to give us was lost beyond all hope, and we gained nothing for our expenditure.”

Barker stared flatly up at him. “That’s too bad.”

“How do you want me to talk about it?” Hawks answered rapidly. A vein bulged down the center of his forehead. “Do you want me to talk about what we’re here to do, or do you want me to say something else? Are you going to argue morality with me? Are you going to say that, duplicate man or no duplicate man, a man dies on the Moon and makes me no less a murderer? Do you want to take me to court and from there to a gas chamber? Do you want to look in the law books and see what penalties apply to the repeated crime of systematically driving men insane? Will that help us here? Will it smooth the way?

“Go to the Moon, Barker. Die. And if you do, in fact, find that you love Death as feverishly as you’ve courted her, then, just perhaps, you’ll be the first man to come back in condition to claim revenge on me!” He clutched the edge of the opened chest plate and slammed it shut. He held himself up with the flats of his palms on it and leaned down until his face was directly over Barker’s faceplate opening. “But before you do, you’ll tell me how I can usefully do it to you again.”

3

The Navy crew pushed Barker into the transmitter. The lateral magnets lifted him off the table, and it was pulled out from beneath him. The door was dogged shut, and the fore-and-aft magnets came on to hold him locked immobile for the scanner. Hawks nodded to Gersten, and Gersten punched the Standby button on his console.

Up on the roof, there was a radar dish focused in parallel with the transmitter antenna. Down in the laboratory, Will Martin pointed a finger at the Signal Corps technician. A radar beep travelled to the Moon and returned. The elapsed time and doppler progression were fed as data into a computer which set the precise holding time in the delay deck. The matter transmitter antenna fired a UHF pulse through the Moon relay tower into the receiver there, tripping its safety lock so that it would accept the M signal.

Gersten looked at his console, turned to Hawks and said, “Green board.”

Hawks said, “Shoot.”

The red light went on over the transmitter portal, and the new file tape began roaring into the takeup pulleys of the delay deck. One and a quarter seconds later, the leader of the tape began to pass through the playback head feeding the L signal to the laboratory receiver. The first hard beat of the M signal simultaneously reached the Moon.

The end of the tape clattered into the takeup reel. The green light lit over the laboratory receiver’s portal. Barker L’s excited breathing came through the P.A. speaker, and he said, “I’m here, Doctor.”

Hawks stood in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets, his head cocked to one side, his eyes vacant.

After a time, Barker L said peevishly in a voice distorted by his numb lips, “All right, all right, you Navy bastards, I’m goin’ in!” He muttered, “Won’t even talk to me, but they’re sure great at moving a man along.”

“Shut up, Barker,” Hawks said urgently under his breath.

“Going in now, Doctor,” Barker said clearly. His breathing cycle changed. Once or twice after that, he grunted, and once he made an unconscious, high, keening noise of strain in his throat.

Gersten touched Hawks’ arm and nodded toward the stopwatch in his hand. It showed two hundred forty seconds’ of elapsed time since Barker had gone into the formation. Hawks nodded a nearly imperceptible reply. Gersten saw he was not moving his eyes away, and continued to hold the watch up.

Barker screamed. Hawks’ body jumped in reflex, and his flailing arm sent the watch cartwheeling out of Gersten’s hand.

Holiday, at the medical console, brought his palm down flat against a switch stud. Adrenalin fired into Barker L’s heart as the anesthesia cut off.

“Get him out!” Weston was shouting. “Get him out!”

“There’s no hurry any longer,” Hawks said softly, as if the psychologist were standing where he could hear him. “Whatever was going to happen to him has happened.”

Gersten looked toward the shattered watch and back M Hawks. “That’s what I was thinking,” he said.

Hawks frowned and began to walk toward the receiver chamber as the dressing crew pushed the armor table through the portal.

Barker sat hunched on the edge of the table, the opened armor lying dismembered beside him, and wiped his gray face. Holiday was listening to his heartbeat with a stethoscope, looking aside periodically to take a new blood-pressure reading as he squeezed the manometer bulb he kept in his hand. Barker sighed. “If there’s any doubt,, just ask me if I’m alive. If you hear an answer, you’ll know.” He looked wearily over Holiday’s shoulder as the physician ignored him, and he said to Hawks, “Well?”

Hawks glanced at Weston, who nodded imperturbably. “He’s made it, Dr. Hawks,” Weston said. “After all, many neurotic personality constellations have often proved useful on a functional level.”

“Barker,” Hawks said, “I’m—”

“Yes, I know. You’re happy everything worked out all right.” He looked around. His eyes were darting in jerks from side to side. “So am I. Has somebody here got a cigarette?”

“Not yet,” Holiday said sharply. “If you don’t mind, chUm, we’ll leave your capillaries at normal dilation for a while, yet.”

“Everyone’s so tough,” Barker mused. “Everyone knows what’s best.” He looked around again at the laboratory people crowding around the table. “Could some of you stare at me a little later, please?” They retreated indecisively, then moved back to work.

“Barker,” Hawks said gently, “do you feel all right?”

Barker looked at him expressionlessly. “I got up there, and out of the receiver, and started looking around the outpost. A bunch of zombies in light Navy suits handled me like you’d handle an ugly ghost. They wouldn’t say two words to me without sounding as if they were paying for them. They showed me that camouflaged walkway they’ve built from the outpost bubble, and half-pushed me onto it. One of them walked along with me until I got to the formation, and never looked me in the face.”

“They have problems of their own,” Hawks said.

“I’m sure they do. Anyway, I got into the thing all right, and I moved along O.K It’s—” His face forgot its annoyance, and his expression now was one of closely remembered bafflement. “It’s — a little like a dream, you know? Not a nightmare, now — it’s not all full of screams and faces, or anything like that — but it’s… well, rules, and the crazy logic: Alice in Wonderland with teeth.” He gestured as though quickly wiping his clumsy words from a blackboard. “I’ll have to find ways of getting it into English, I guess. Shouldn’t be too much trouble. Just give me time to settle down.”

Hawks nodded. “Don’t worry. We have a good deal of time, now.”

Barker grinned up at him with a sudden flash of boyishness. “I got quite a distance beyond Rogan M’s body, you know. What finally got me was— was— was the— was—”

Barker’s face began to flush crimson, and his eyes bulged whitely. His lips fluttered. “The— the—” He stared at Hawks. “I can’t!” he cried out. “I can’t— Hawks—” He struggled against Holiday and Weston, who were trying to hold his shoulders, and curled his hands rigidly on the edge of the table, his arms locked taut, quivering in spasms. “Hawks!” he shouted as though from behind a thick glass wall. “Hawks, it didn’t care! I was nothing to it! I was— I was—” His mouth locked partly open and the tip of his tongue fluttered against the backs of his upper teeth. “N-n-n No — N-nothing!” He searched Hawk’s face, desperate. He breathed as though there could never be enough air for him.

Weston was grunting with the effort to force Barker over backward and make him lie down. Holiday was swearing as he precisely and steadily pushed the needle of a hypedermic through the diaphragm of an ampule he had plucked out of his bag.

Hawks clenched his fists at his sides. “Barker! What color was your first schoolbook?”

Barker’s arms loosened slightly. His head lost its rigid forward thrust. He shook his head and scowled down at the floor, concentrating fiercely.

“I — I don’t remember, Hawks,” he stammered. “Green — no, no, it was orange, with blue printing, and it had a story in it about three goldfish who climbed out of their bowl onto a bookcase and then dived back into it. I — I can see the page with the illustration: three fish in the air, falling in a slanted tier, with the bowl waiting for them. The text was set with three one-word paragraphs: ‘Splash!’, and then a paragraph indentation, and then ‘Splash!’ and then once more. Three Splashes in a tier, just like the fish.”

“Well, now, you see, Barker,” Hawks said softly. “You have been alive for as long as you can remember. You are something. You’ve seen, and remembered.”

Weston looked over his shoulder. “For Heaven’s sake, Hawks! Stay out of this!” Holiday studied Barker with a slight blinking of his eyes, the hypodermic withheld.

Hawks let out his breath slowly and said to Weston, “At least he knows he’s alive.”

Barker was slumped, now. Nearly doubled over, he swayed on the edge of the table, the color of his face gradually returning to normal. He whispered intently, “Thanks. Thanks, Hawks.” Bitterly, he whispered, “Thanks for everything.” He mumbled suddenly, his torso rigid, “Somebody get me a wastebasket, or something.” Gersten and Hawks stood beside the transmitter, watching Barker come unsteadily back from the washroom, dressed in his slacks and shirt.

“What do you think, Ed?” Gersten asked. “What’s he going to do now? Is he going to pull out on us?”

“I don’t know,” Hawks answered absently, watching Barker. “I thought he’d work out,” he said under his breath. “But has he?” He said to Gersten, “We’ll simply have to wait and see. We’ll have to think of a way to handle it.”

“Get another man?”

Hawks shook his head. “We can’t. We don’t even know enough about this one.” He said as though attacked by flies, “I have to have time to think. Why does time run on while a man thinks?”

Barker came up to them.

Barker’s eyes were sunken in their sockets. He looked piercingly at Hawks. His voice was jagged and nasal.

“Holiday says I’m generally all right, now, everything considered. But someone must drive me home.” His mouth curled. “D’you want the job, Hawks?”

“Yes, I do.” Hawks took off his smock and laid it folded atop the cabinet. “You might as well set up for another shot tomorrow, Ted,” he said to Gersten.

“Don’t count on me for it!” Barker sawed.

“We can always cancel, you ,know.” He said to Gersten, “I’ll call early tomorrow and let you know.”

Barker stumbled forward as Hawks fell into step beside him. They slowly crossed the laboratory floor and went out though the stairwell doors, side by side.

Connington was waiting for them in the upstairs hail, lounging in one of the bright orange plastic-upholstered armchairs that lined the foyer wall. His legs were stretched out in front of him, and one hand held a cigar in front of his face as he lit it and blew smoke out of his pursed lips in a translucent cone. His eyes flicked once over Barker, and once over Hawks. “Have some trouble?” he asked as they came abreast of him. “I hear you had some trouble down in the lab,” he repeated, his eyes glinting. “Rough time, Al?”

Hawks said, “If I find the man who’s piping you information from the laboratory, I’ll fire him.”

Connington reached toward the standing ash tray beside him. A ring on one finger clinked softly against the metal of the carrying handle. “You’re losing your edge, Hawks,” he said. “A couple of days ago, you wouldn’t have bothered threatening.” He pushed himself up to his feet, grunting softly as he said, “My doings would’ve been beneath you.” He rocked up on his toes and back down on his heels, his hands in his pockets. “What’s it matter, how many details I learn or don’t? You think I need to? I know you two. That’s enough.”

“God damn you, Connington—” Barker began with the high, tearing note in his voice.

Connington’s glance uppercut him lightly. “So I was right.” He grinned consciously. “Goin’ back to Claire, now?” He blew out smoke. “The two of you?”

“Something like that,” Hawks said.

Connington scratched the lapel of his jacket. “Think I’ll come along and watch.” He smiled fondly at Barker, his head to one side. “Why not, Al? You might as well have the company of all the people who’re trying to kill you.”

Hawks looked at Barker. The man’s hands fumbled as though dealing with something invisible in the air just in front of his stomach. He was staring right through Connington, and the personnel man squinted momentarily.

Then Barker said lamely, “There isn’t room in the car.”

Connington chuckled warmly and mellifluously. “I’ll drive, and you can sit on Hawks’ lap. Just like Charlie McCarthy.”

Hawks pulled his glance away from Barker’s face and said sharply, “I’ll drive.”

Connington chuckled again. “Sam Latourette didn’t get the job with Hughes Aircraft. Waxted’s wanting him didn’t thake any difference. He showed up helpless drunk for his hiring interview this morning. I’ll drive.” He turned toward the double plate-glass doors and began walking out. He looked back over his shoulder. “Come along, friends,” he said.

4

Claire Pack stood watching them from the head of the steps up to the lawn. She was wearing a one-piece skirtless cotton swimsuit cut high at the tops of her thighs, and was resting her hands lightly on her hips. As Connington shut off the engine and the three of them got out of the car, she, raised her eyebrows’. The narrow strings that served as straps for the swimsuit were dangling in loops around her upper arms.

“Well, Doctor!” She said with low-voiced gravity and a pucker of her lips, “I’d been wondering when you’d drop by again.”

Connington, coming around the other side of the car, smiled watchfully at her and said, “He had to bring Al home. Seems there was a little hitch in the proceedings today.”

She glanced aside at Barker, who was raising the garage doors with abrupt, crashing movements of his arms and body, all his attention obviously on what he was doing. She ran her tongue over the edges of her teeth. “What kind?”

“Now, I wouldn’t know as to that. Why don’t you ask Hawks?” Connington took a fresh cigar out of his case. “I like that suit, Claire,” he said. He trotted quickly up the steps, brushing by her. “It’s a hot day. Think I’ll go find a pair of trunks and take a dip myself. You and the boys have a nice chat meanwhile.” He walked quickly up the path to the house, stopped, lit the cigar, glanced sideward over his cupped hands, and stepped out of sight inside.

Barker got into his car, started it, and clashed the gears as he moved it into the garage nose-first. The trapped thunder of the exhaust rumbled loudly and sputtered down into silence.

“I think he’ll be all right,” Hawks said.

Claire looked down at him. She focused her expression into an open-faced innocence. “Oh? You mean, he’ll be back to normal?”

Barker brought the garage doors down and passed Hawks with his head bent, striding intently as he thrust the ignition keys into his pocket. His face jerked up toward Claire as he climbed the steps. “I’m going upstairs. I may sack out. Don’t wake me.” He half-turned and looked at Hawks. “I guess you’re stuck here, unless you want to take another hike. Did you think of that, Doctor?”

“Did you? I’ll stay until you’re up. I’ll want to talk to you.”

“I wish you joy of it, Doctor,” Barker said, and walked away, with Claire watching him. Then she looked back down at Hawks. Through all this, she had not moved her feet or hands.

Hawks said, “Something happened. I don’t know how much it means.”

“You worry about it, Ed,” she said, her lower lip glistening. “In the meantime, you’re the only one left standing down there.”

Hawks sighed. “I’ll come up.”

Claire Pack grinned.

“Come over and sit by the pool with me,” she said when he reached the top of the steps. She turned away before he could answer, and walked slowly in front of him, her right arm hanging at her side. Her hand trailed back, and reached up to touch his own. She slackened her pace so that they were walking side by side, and looked up at him. “You don’t mind, do you?” she said gently.

Hawks looked down at their hands for a moment, and as he did, she put the backs of her fingers inside his palm. He said slowly, “No — no, I don’t think I mind,” and closed his hand around hers.

She smiled and said, “There, now,” in an almost childishly soft voice.

They walked to the edge of the pool and stood looking down into the water.

“Did Connington take a long time getting over his drunk the other day?” Hawks asked.

She laughed brightly. “Come on, now — what you mean is, why do I still let him hang around after his ferocious threats? Answer: why not? What can he do, really?” Her sidelong glance came up from ,a graceful turn of her head and shoulders, so that her hair flashed in the sun and her eyes were half veiled behind the glimmer of her lashes. “Or do you think I’m under his Svengali spell?” she asked with mock-horror that left her wide-eyed and with her lips in a scarlet, open pout.

Hawks kept his eyes steadily on hers. “No, hardly that.”

Her eyebrows blinked up and down pleasurably, and her mouth parted in a low, whispered laugh. She swayed her upper body toward him, and put her other hand on his ann. “Should I take that as a tribute? Al tells me you’re a hard man to get small talk out of.”

Hawks put his right hand around his own left wrist and held it, his arm crossed awkwardly in front of his body. “What else has Al told you about his work?” he asked.

She looked down at his arm. She said gravely and confidentially, “You know, if I get too close to you, you can always dive into — the pool.” Then she grinned to herself again, keeping her face toward him to let him see it, and, taking her hands away, sank down to lie on one hip in the grass, her head bent so she could watch the surface of the water. “I’m sorry,” she said without looking up. “I said that just to see if you’d jump. Connie’s right about me, you know.”

Hawks squatted angularly down next to her, watching the side of her turned-away face. “In what way?”

She put one hand down into the blue water and stirred it back and forth, silver bubbles trailing out between her spread fingers. “I can’t know a man more than a few minutes without trying to get under his skin,” she said in a pondering voice. “I have to do it. Measuring, I suppose you could call it.” Her face flashed toward him. “And you can call that a Freudian pun if you want to.” Then she had turned away again. A trail of splotched droplets on the pool’s satiny concrete coaming began to shrink in the sun. Her voice was reflective and hidden again. “That’s the way I am.”

“Is it really? Or is saying so just another part of the process? You say everything for effect, don’t you?”

Her face turned slowly, this time, and she looked at him with a faintly cynical undertone to her smile. “You’re very quick, aren’t you?” She pouted. “Are you sure I deserve all this concentration? After all, what good is it going to do you?” Her eyebrow arched, and she held that expression, her smile very slowly widening her lips.

“I don’t decide what should interest me,” Hawks said. “First something intrigues me. Then I study it.”

“You must have curious instincts, mustn’t you, then?” She waited for an answer. Hawks gave her none. She added, “In several senses of the word, I suppose.” Hawks continued to look at her gravely, and she slowly lost the vivacity behind her expression. She rolled over suddenly on her back, her ankles crossed stiffly, and put her hands down flat on her thigh muscles. “I’m Al’s woman,” she said up at the sky.

“Which Al?” Hawks asked.

“What’s happening to him?” she said, moving only her lips. “What are you doing to him?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Hawks said. “I’m waiting to find out.”

She sat up and twisted to face him, her breasts moving under the loose top. “Do you have any kind of a conscience?” she asked. “Is there anyone who isn’t defenseless before you?”

He shook his head. “That kind of question doesn’t apply. I do what I have to do. Only that.”

She seemed to be almost hypnotized by him. She leaned closer.

“I want to see if Al’s all right,” Hawks said, getting up.

Claire arched her neck and stared up at him. “Hawks,” she whispered.

“Excuse me, Claire.” He stepped around her drawn-up legs and moved toward the house.

“Hawks,” she said hoarsely. The top of the swimsuit was almost completely off the upper faces of her breasts. “You have to take me tonight.”

He continued to walk away.

“Hawks — I’m warning you!”

Hawks flung open the house door and disappeared behind the sun-washed glass.

5

“How’d it go?” Connington laughed from the shadows of the bar at the other end of the living room. He came forward, dressed in a pair of printed trunks, his stomach cinched by the tight waistband. He was carrying a folded beach shirt over his arm and holding a pewter pitcher and two glasses. “It’s a little like a silent movie, from here,” he said, nodding toward the glass wall facing out onto the lawn and the pool. “Hell for action, but short on dialogue.”

Hawks turned and looked. Claire was still sitting up, staring intently at what must have been a barricade of flashing reflections of herself.

“Gets to a man, doesn’t she?” Connington chuckled. “Forewarned is not forearmed, with her. She’s an elemental — the rise of the tides, the coming of the seasons, an eclipse of the Sun.” He looked down into the pitcher, where the ice at the top of the mixture had suddenly begun to tinkle. “Such creatures are not to be thought of as good or bad,” he said through pinched lips. “Not by mortal men. They have their own laws, and there’s no gainsaying\ them.” His breath puffed into Hawks’ face. “They are born among us — car hops, dice girls, Woolworth’s clerks — but they rise to their heritage. Woe to us, Hawks. Woe to us who would pursue them on their cometary track.”

“Where’s Barker?”

Connington gestured with the pitcher. “Upstairs. Took a shower, threatened to disembowel me if I didn’t get out of his way in the hall, went to bed. Set the alarm for eight o’clock. Put down a tumblerful of gin to help him. Where’s Barker?” Connington repeated. “Dreamland, Hawks — whatever dreamland it was that awaited him.”

Hawks looked at his wrist watch.

“Three hours, Hawks,” Connington said. “Three hours, and there is no Master in this house.” He moved around Hawks to the outside door. “Yoicks!” he yapped twistedly, raising the pitcher in Claire’s direction. He pushed clumsily at the door with his shoulder, leaving a damp smear on the glass. “Tally ho!”

Hawks moved farther into the room, toward the bar. He searched behind it, and found a bottle of Scotch. When he looked up from putting ice and water into a glass, he saw that Connington had reached Claire and was standing over her. She lay on her stomach, facing the pool, her chin resting on her crossed forearms. Connington held the pitcher, pouring awkwardly into the two glasses in his other hand.

Hawks walked slowly to the leather-covered settee facing the windows, and sat down. He put the edge of his glass to his lips, and rested his elbows on his thighs. He put both hands around his glass, holding it lightly, and tilted it until he could sip at it. The lower half of his face was washed by reddish sunlight mottled with faint amber dispersions and glassy points of shifting light. The arch of his nose and the upper part of his face were under a curtain of shadow.

Claire rolled half over and stretched up an arm to take the glass Connington handed down. She perfunctorily saluted Connington’s glass and took a drink, her neck ,arching. Then she rolled back, resting her raised upper body on her elbows, her fingers curled around the glass she set down on the pool coaming. She continued to look out over the water.

Connington sat down on the edge of the pool beside her, dropping his legs into the water. Claire reached over and wiped her arm. Connington raised his glass again, held it up in a toast, and waited for Claire to take another drink. With a twist of her shoulders, she did, pressing the flat of her other hand against the top of her suit.

The sunlight slanted in from behind Connington and Claire Pack; their profiles were shadowed against the brilliant ocean and sky.

Connington refilled their glasses.

Claire sipped at hers. Connington touched her shoulder and bent his head toward her. Her mouth opened in laughter. She reached out and touched his waist. Her fingers pinched the roll of flesh around his stomach. Her shoulder rose and her elbow stiffened. Connington clutched her wrist, then moved up to her arm, pushing back. He twisted away, hurriedly set his glass down, and splashed into the pool. His hands shot out and took her arms, pulling them forward.

Light dashed itself into Hawks’ face and filled his eyesockets as the sun’s disk slid an edge down into sight under the eaves of the roof. He dropped his lids until his eyes were looking out through the narrow mask of his lashes.

Keeping his hold on Claire’s wrists, Connington doubled his bent-kneed legs forward, planted his feet against the side of the pool, and strained himself out flat. Claire came sliding into the water on top of him, and they weltered down out of sight under the surface. A moment later, her head and shoulders broke out a few feet away, and she stroked evenly to the ladder, climbing out and stopping at the poolside to pull the top of her suit back up over her breasts. She picked her towel from the grass with one swoop of her arm, threw it around her shoulders, and walked quickly off out of sight to the left, toward the other wing of the house.

Connington stood in the pool, watching her. Then he jumped forward, and thrashed up to the steps at the shallow end, climbing out with water pouring down from his shoulders and back. He took a few strides in the same direction. Then his face snapped toward the glass wall. He changed direction obliquely, and, at the corner of the pool, did a flat dive back into the water. He swam forward, toward the diving board. For some time afterward, until the sun was entirely in sight and the room where Hawks was sitting was filled with red, the sound of the thrumming board came vibrating into the timbers of the house at sporadic intervals.

At ten minutes of eight, a radio began to play loud jazz upstairs. Ten minutes later, the electric blat of the radio’s alarm roiled the music, and a moment after that there was a brittle crash, and then only the occasional sound of Barker stumbling about and getting dressed.

Hawks went over to the bar, washed out his empty glass, and put it back in its rack. He looked around. There was night outside the windows, and the only illumination came from the balcony at the end of the room, where the stairs led down from the second floor. Hawks reached out and turned on a standing lamp. His shadow flung itself against the wall.

6

Barker came down carying a half-filled squareface bottle. He saw Hawks, grunted, hefted the bottle and said, “I hate the stuff. It tastes lousy, it makes me gag, it stinks, and it burns my mouth. But they keep putting it in your hands, and they keep saying ‘Drink up!’ to each other, and ‘What’s the matter, Charlie, falling a little behind, there? Freshen up that little drinkee for you?’ Until you feel like a queer of some kind, and a bore for the times you say you don’t want another one, positively. And they fill their folklore with it, until you wouldn’t dream you were having a good time unless you’d swilled enough of the stuff to poison yourself all the next day. And they talk gentleman talk about it — ages and flavors and brands and blends as if it wasn’t all ethanol in one concentration or another. Have you ever heard two Martini drinkers in a bar, Hawks? Have you ever heard two shamans swapping magic?” He dropped into an easy chair and laughed. “Neither have I. I synthesize my heritage. I look at two drunks in a saloon, and I extrapolate toward dignity. I suppose that’s sacrilege.”

He put a cigarette into his mouth, lit the end, and said through the smoke, “But it’s the best I can do, Hawks. My father’s dead, and I once thought there was something good in shucking off my other kin. I wish I could remember what that was. I have a place in me that needs the pain.”

Hawks went back to the settee and sat down. He put his hands on his knees and watched Barker.

“And talk,” Barker said. “You’re not fit company for them if you don’t say ‘Eyther’ and ‘nyther’ and ‘tomahto.’ If you’ve got a Dad, you’re out. They only permit gentlemen with fathers into their society. And, yeah, I know they licked me on that. I wanted to belong — oh, God, Hawks, how much I wanted to belong — and I learned all the passwords. What did it get me? Claire’s right, you know — what did it get me? Don’t look at me like that. I know what Claire is. You know I know it. I told you the first minute I met you. But did you ever stop to think it’s all worth it to me? Every time she makes a pass at another man, I know she’s comparing. She’s out on the open market, shopping. And being shopped for. I don’t have any collar around her neck. She’s not tame. I’m not a habit to her. I’m nOt something she’s tied to by any law. And every time she winds up coming back to me, you know what that proves? It proves I’m still the toughest man in the pack. Because she wouldn’t stay if I wasn’t. Don’t kid yourself — I don’t know what you think about you and her, but don’t kid yourself.”

Hawks looked at Barker curiously, but Barker was no longer watching him.

“If she could see me, Hawks — if she could see me in that place!” Barker’s face was aglow. “She wouldn’t be playing footsie with you and Connington tonight — no, not if she could see what I do up there How I dodge, and duck, and twist, and inch, and spring, and wait for the — the—”

“Easy, Barker!”

“Yeah. Easy. Slack off. Back away. It bites.” Barker coughed out bitterly, “What’re you doing here, anyway, Hawks? Why aren’t you marching down that road again with your ass stiff and your nose in the air? You think it’s going to do you any good, you sitting around here? What’re you waiting for? For me to tell you sure, a little sleep and a little gin and I’m fine, just fine, Doctor, and what time do you want me back tomorrow? Or do you want me to crack wide open, so you can really move in on Claire? What’ve you been doing while I was asleep? Playing stickyfingers with her? Or did Connington weasel you out of the chance?” He looked around. “I guess he must have.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Hawks said.

“What about?”

“What you wanted me here for. Why you came straight to me and asked me to come. I was wondering whether you hoped I could make you go back again.”

Barker raised the bottle to his mouth and peered at Hawks over it as he drank. When he lowered it, he said, “What’s it like, being you? Everything that happens has to be twisted around to suit you. Nothing is ever the way it looks, to you.”

“That’s true of everyone. No one sees the world that others see. What do you want me to do: be made of brass? Hollow, and more enduring than flesh? Is that what you want a man to be?” Hawks leaned forward, tight creases slashing down across his hollow cheeks. “Something that will still be the same when all the stars have burned out and the universe has gone cold? That will still be here when everything that ever lived is dead? Is that your idea of a respectable man?”

“A man should fight, Hawks,” Barker said, his eyes distant. “A man should show he is never afraid to die. He should go into the midst of his enemies, singing his death song, and he should kill or be killed; he must never be afraid to die; he must never be afraid to meet the tests of his manhood. A man who turns his back — who lurks at the edge of the battle, and pushes others in to face his enemies—” Barker looked suddenly and obviously at Hawks. “That’s not a man. That’s some kind of crawling, wriggling thing.”

Hawks got up, flexing his hands uncertainly, his arms awkward, his face lost in the shadows above the lamp’s level. His calves pressed back against the leather of the settee, thudding it lightly against the wall. “Is that what you wanted me here for? So no one could say you wouldn’t clasp the snake to your bosom?” He bent his head forward, peering down at Barker. “Is that it, warrior?” he asked inquisitively. “One more initiation rite? You’ve never been afraid to take your enemies in and give them shelter, have you? A truly. brave man wouldn’t hesitate to lodge assassins in his house, and offer them food and drink, would he? Let Connington the back-stabber come into your house. Let Hawks the murderer do his worst. Let Claire egg you on from one suicidal thing to the next, ripping off a leg here, a piece of flesh another time. What do you care? You’re Barker, the Mimbreflo warrior. Is that it? — But now you won’t fight. Suddenly, you don’t want to go back into the formation. Death was too impersonal for you. It didn’t care how brave you were, or what preparatory rites you’d passed though. That was what you said, wasn’t it? You were outraged, Barker. You still are. What is Death, to think nothing of a full-fledged Mimbreno warrior?

“Are you a warrior?” he demanded. “Explain that part of it to me. What have you ever done to any of us? When have you ever lifted a finger to defend yourself? You see what we’re about, but you do nothing. You’re afraid to be thought a man who wouldn’t fight, but what do you fight? The only thing you’ve ever done to me is threatened to pick up your marbles and go home. No — sports cars and skislopes, boats and airplanes: that’s the kind of thing you strive against. Things and places where you control the situation — where you can say, as you die, that you know the quality of the man you have killed. Things and places where the fatal move can always be traced to the carelessness or miscalculation of Barker, the killer, who was finally succeeded in overcoming his peer, Barker the warrior. Even in the war, did you fight hand-to-hand, on open ground? You were only an assassin like the rest of us, striking from the dark, and if you were caught, it was your own fault. What worthy enemy, besides yourseIf, have you ever met?

“I think you are afraid, Barker — afraid that no one else who killed you would understand what a warrior you are. How can you trust strangers to know you for what you are? But a warrior is never afraid. Even within himself. Is that what explains it, do you think, Barker? Is that the trap you’re caught in? In the far reaches of your mind, do you suppose it’s all been reasoned out, and kept safe — that you must live among your enemies, to prove your bravery, but dare not meet them in combat for fear of dying unknown? Do you suppose that’s why a stranger has only to threaten you in order to become drawn into your life? And why you will let him nibble and rasp you to death, slowly, but will never turn and face him, and acknowledge that you are in a fight for your life? Because if you only let yourself be whittled at, the process may take years, and anything might happen to interrupt it, but if you fight, then it will be over immediately, and you might have lost, and died unsung?” Hawks looked quizzically at Barker. “I wonder,” he said in a bemused voice, “I wonder whether that might not explain it.”

Barker came quietly upward out of his chair. “Who are you to tell me these things, Hawks?” he said, calmly studying him. He reached behind his back without moving his eyes and set the bottle down on the small table beside the chair.

Hawks rubbed his palms over the cloth of his jacket. “Think about what happened to you today. You had thought the formation was something like an elaborate ski-slope, hadn’t you, Barker? Just another dangerous, inexorable place, like many places men have been before.

“But there were no rules to explain what had killed you, when you died. You had gone beyond the charts. You couldn’t say to yourself, as you died, that you had misinterpreted the rules, or failed to obey them, or tried to overcome them. There were no rules. No one had found them out yet. You died ignorant of what killed you. And there had been no crowd to applaud your skill or mourn your fate. A giant hand reached down and plucked you from the board — for what reason, no one knows. Suddenly, you knew that where you were was not a ski-slope at all, and all your skills were nothing. You saw, as clearly as anyone could ever see it, the undisguised face of the unknown universe. Men have put masks on it, Barker, and disarmed parts of it, and thought to themselves that they knew all of it. But they only know the parts they know. A man hurtling down a ski-slope has not learned the workings of gravity and friction. He has only learned how to deal with them in that particular situation, for all that he soars above them and lands safely. For all that the crowd sighs to watch a man overcome things that once killed men without mercy. All your jumping skill will not help you if you fall from an airplane without a parachute. All your past soaring and safe landing will not temper gravity then. The universe has resources of death which we have barely begun to pick at. And you found that out.

“Death is in the nature of the universe, Barker. Death is only the operation of a mechanism. All the universe has been running down from the moment of its creation. Did you expect a machine to care what it acted upon? Death is like sunlight or a falling star; they don’t care where they fall. Death cannot see the pennants on a lance, or the wreath of glory in a dying man’s hand. Flags and flowers are the inventions of life. When a man dies, he falls into enemy hands — an ignorant enemy, who doesn’t merely spit on banners but who doesn’t even know what banners are. No ordinary man could stand to find that out. You found it out today. You sat in the laboratory and were speechless at the injustice of it. You’d never thought that justice was only another human invention. And yet a few hours’ sleep and a little gin have helped you. The shock has worn down. All human shocks wear off — except the critical one. You’re not helpless now, like Rogan and the others are. Somehow, the creation inside your brain still lurches on. Why is that? How is it that dying didn’t topple your foundations, if they are what you thought they were?

“Do you know why you’re still sane, Barker? I think I do. I think it’s because you have Claire, and Connington, and myself. I think it was because you had us to run to. It isn’t really Death that tests your worth for you; it’s the menace of dying. Not Death, but murderers. So long as you have us about you, your vital parts are safe.”

Barker was moving toward him, his hands half-raised.

Hawks said, “It’s no use, Barker. You can’t do anything to me. If you were to kill me, you would have proved you were afraid to deal with me.”

“That’s not true,” Barker said, high-voiced. “A warrior kills his enemies.”

Hawks watched Barker’s eyes. “You’re not a warrior, Al,” he said regretfully. “Not the kind of warrior you think you want to be. You’re a man, that’s all. You want to be a worthy man — a man who satisfies his own standards, a man whose stature is his own. That’s all. That’s enough.”

Barker’s arms began to tremble. His head tilted to one side, and he looked at Hawks crookedly, his eyes blinking. “You’re so smart!” he panted. “You know so damned much! You know more about me than I do. How is that, Hawks — who touched your brow with a golden wand?”

“I’m a man, too, Al.”

“Yes?” Barker’s arms sank down to his sides. “Yes? Well, I don’t like you any better for it. Get out of here, man, while you still can.” He whirled and crossed the room with short, quick, jerking steps. He flung open the door. “Leave me to my old, familiar assassins!”

Hawks looked at him and said nothing. His expression was troubled. Then he set himself into motion and walked forward. He stopped in the doorway and stood face to face with Barker.

“I have to have you,” he said. “I need your report in the morning, and I need you to send up there into that thing, again.”

“Get out, Hawks,” Barker answered.

“I told you,” Hawks said, and stepped out into the darkness.

Barker slapped the door shut. He turned away toward the corridor leading into the other wing of the house, his neck taut and his mouth opening in a shout. It came almost inaudibly through the glass between himself and Hawks: “Claire? Claire!”

7

Hawks walked out across the rectangle of light lying upon the lawn, until he came to the ragged edge that was the brink of the cliff above the sea. He stood looking out over the unseen surf, with the loom of sea mist filling the night before him.

“An dark,” he said aloud. “An dark and nowhere starlights.” Then he began walking, head down, along the edge of the cliff, his hands in his pockets.

When he came to the flagstoned patio between the swimming pool and the far wing of the house, he passed by the metal table and chairs in its center, picking his way in the indistinct light.

“Well, Ed,” Claire said sadly from her chair on the other side of the table. “Come to join me?”

He turned his head in surprise, then sat down. “I suppose.”

Claire had changed into a dress, and was drinking a cup of coffee. “Want some of this?” she offered in a soft, uncertain voice. “It’s a chilly evening.”

“Thank you.” He took the cup as she reached it out to him, and drank from the side away from the thick smear of lipstick. “I didn’t know you’d be out here.”

She chuckled ironically. “I get tired of opening doors and finding Connie on the other side. I’ve been waiting for Al to wake up.”

“He’s up.”

“I know.”

He passed the coffee cup back to her. “Did you hear it all?”

“I was in the kitchen. It — it was quite an experience, hearing myself talked about like that.” She put the coffee down with a chatter of the cup against the saucer, and hugged herself, her shoulders bent, while she stared down toward the ground.

Hawks said nothing. It was almost too dark to see facial expressions across the table’s diameter, and he closed his eyes for a moment, holding them tightly shut, before he opened them again and turned sideways in his chair, one hand resting on the table with its fingers arched as he leaned toward her.

“I don’t know why I do it, Hawks,” she said. “I don’t know. But I do treat him as if I hated him. I do it to everybody. I can’t meet anybody without turning into a bitch.”

“Women, too?”

She turned her face toward him. “What woman would stay around me long enough for me to really get started? And what man is going to ignore the female part of me? But I’m a human being, too; I’m not just something that — that’s all physical. But nobody likes me, Hawks — nobody ever shows any interest in the human being part of me!”

“Well, Claire…”

“It doesn’t feel good, Hawks, hearing yourself talked about like that. ‘I know what she is — by God, I know what she is.’ How does he know? When has he ever tried to know me? What’s he ever done to find out what I think, what I feel? And Connington — trying to maneuver me, trying to work things around so I’ll give in to him. Getting Al involved in something he’s sure will foul him up so badly I won’t want him any longer. What gives him the idea it’s got to be Connington for me if I go away from Al? Just because Connie’s around all the time — because he doesn’t have sense enough to go away after he’s been licked? Is it my fault he hangs around? He doesn’t get anything for it. All it does is get Al angry once in a while.”

“Doesn’t that make him useful to you?” Hawks asked.

“And you—” Claire burst out. “So damned sure nothing can touch you without permission! Making smart cracks. ‘Egging’ Al on is what I’m supposed to be doing! Well, listen, could I make a brick fly? Could I turn an ostrich into a swan? If he wasn’t the way he was, what could I do to him? I don’t tell him to go out and do these things. And I tried to keep him away from you — after you left, that first day, I tried to get him to quit! But all he did was get jealous. And that wasn’t what I was trying to do! I’ve never made a pass at you before today — not a real pass — I was just, I don’t know, just doing business as usual, you could say — and you know that!”

She reached across the table with a swift gesture and took his hand. “Do you have any idea of how lonely I get? How much I wish I wasn’t me at all?” She pulled blindly at his hand. “But what can I do about it? How am I going to change anything now?”

“I don’t know, Claire,” Hawks said. “It’s very hard for people to change themselves.”

“But I don’t want to hate myself, Hawks! Not all my life, like this! What do all of you think I am — blind, deaf, stupid? I know how decent people act — I know what bitchiness is, and what not being bitchy is. I was a child, once — I went to school, I was taught ethics, and morals, and understanding. I’m not something from Mars — do you all think I’m this way because I don’t know any better?”

Hawks said haltingly, “All of us know better, I think. And yet each of us forgets, now and then. Some of us sometimes think we have to, for the sake of something we think needs it.” His face was a mixture of expressions. “If that doesn’t seem to make sense, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to tell you, Claire.”

She jumped to her feet, still holding his hand, and came around to stand in front of him, bent forward, clasping his fingers in both hands. “You could tell me you like me, Ed,” she whispered. “You’re the only one of them who could look past my outsides and like me!”

He stood up as she pulled at his hand. “Claire—” he began.

“No, no, no, Ed!” she said, putting her arms around him. “I don’t want to talk. I want to just be. I want someone to just hold me and not think about me being a woman. I just want to feel warm, for once in my life — just have another human being near me!” Her arms went up behind his back, and her hands cupped his neck and the back of his head. “Please, Ed,” she murmured, her face so close that her eyes brimmed and glittered in the faraway light, and so that in another moment her wet cheek touched his. “Give me that if you can.”

“I don’t know, Claire…” he said uncertainly. “I’m not sure you—”

She began kissing his cheeks and eyes, her nails combing the back of his head. “Hawks,” she choked, “Hawks, I’m so lost…”

His head bent, her fingers rigid behind it, the tendons standing out in cords on the backs of her hands. Her lips parted, and her leather sandals made a shuffling noise on the patio stones. “Forget everything,” she whispered as she kissed his mouth. “Think only of me.”

Then she broke away suddenly, and stood a foot away from him, the back of one hand against her upper lip, her shoulders and hips lax. She was sighing rhythmically, her eyes shining. “No — no, I can’t hold out… not with you. You’re too much for me, Ed.” Her shoulders rose, and she moved half a step toward him. “Forget about liking me,” she said from deep in her throat as she reached toward him. “Just take me. I can always get someone else to like me.”

Hawks did not move. She looked at him, arms outstretched, her face hungry. Then she lowered her arms slowly and cried out softly, “I don’t blame you! I couldn’t help it, but I don’t blame you for what you’re thinking. You think I’m some kind of nympho, who’ll go wild for any man. You think because it’s happening to me now, it always happens like this. You think that because you could do anything you wanted with me, then what I said about myself before wasn’t true. You—”

“No,” Hawks said. “But I don’t think you believe it’s true. You think it’s something you can use because it sounds plausible. It does. It’s true. And any time you grow afraid that a man may be about to find it out, you try to divert his attention with the only thing about you that you can imagine he’d be interested in. I think you’re afraid of being in a world full of creatures called men. No matter how hard you say you try not to be that way, you always have to cut men down to your size.” He took the handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped his mouth awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But that’s the way it seems to me. Connington works on the premise that everyone has a weakness he can exploit. I don’t know whether he’s right or not, but yours is that you only give yourself to men you think will find your weakness. I wonder if you knew that?”

Her fingers dug at the dress fabric over her tensed thighs. “You’re scared, Hawks,” she said. “You’re scared of a woman, just like so many of them are.”

“Would you blame me? I’m frightened of many things. People who don’t want to be people are among them.”

“Why don’t you just shut up, Hawks? What do you do, go through life making speeches? You know what you are, Hawks? You’re a creep. A bore and a creep. A first-class bore. I don’t want you around any more. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

“I’m sorry you don’t want to be any different, Claire. Tell me something. You almost succeeded, a moment ago. You came very close. It would be foolish for me to deny it. If you had done what you tried to do with me, would I still be a creep? And what would you be, making up to a man you despise, for safety’s sake?”

“Oh, get out of here, Hawks!”

“Does my being a creep make me incompetent to see things?”

“When are you going to stop trying? I don’t want any of your stinking help!”

“I didn’t think you did. I said so. That’s really all I’ve said.” He turned away toward the house. “I’m going to see if Al will let me use his phone. I need a ride away from here. I’m getting too old to walk.”

“Go to hell, Hawks!” she cried out, following him at his own pace, a yard or two behind him.

Hawks walked away more quickly, his legs scissoring stiffly, his arms swinging through short arcs.

“Did you hear me? Get lost! Go on, get out of here!”

Hawks came to the kitchen door and opened it. Connington was sprawled back against a counter, his beach shirt and his swimming trunks spattered with blood and saliva from his mouth. Barker’s left hand, tangled in his hair, was all that kept him from tipping over the high stool on which he was being held. Barker’s right fist was drawn back, smeared and running from deep tooth-gashes over the bone of his knuckles.

“Just passed out, that’s all,” Connington was mumbling desperately. “Just passed out in her bed, that’s all — she wasn’t anywhere around.”

Barker’s forearm whipped out, and his fist slapped into Connington’s face again. He said in a frantic voice, “This is just for wishing, Connie! I’m not going to stand for finding you in my woman’s bed. That’s all. I just can’t let you get away with that!”

Connington fumbled apathetically behind him for a handhold. He made no effort to defend himself. “Only way you ever would. Find me there.” He was crying without seeming to be aware of it. “I thought I had it figured out, at last. I thought today was the day. Never been able to make the grade with her. I can find the handle with everybody else. Everybody’s got a weak spot. Everybody cracks, sometime, and lets me see it. Everybody. Nobody’s perfect. That’s the great secret. Everybody but her. She’s got to slip sometime, but I’ve never seen it. Me, the hotshot personnel man.”

“Leave him alone!” Claire screamed from behind Hawks. She clawed at Hawks’ shoulder until he was out of the doorway, and then she raked at Barker, who jumped back with his hand clutching the furrows on his arm. “Get away from him!” she shouted into Barker’s face, crouching with her feet apart and her quivering hands raised. She snatched up a towel, wet a corner of it in the sink, and went to Connington, who was slumped back against the stool, staring at her through his watered eyes.

She bent against Connington and began frantically scrubbing his face. “There, now, honey,” she crooned, “There. There. Now.” Connington put one hand up, palm out, his lax fingers spread, and she caught it, clutching it and pressing it to the base of her throat, while she rubbed feverishly at his smashed mouth. “I’ll fix it, honey — don’t worry”

Connington turned his head from side to side, his eyes looking blindly in her direction, whimpering as the cloth ground across the cuts.

“No, no, honey,” she chided him. “No, hold still, honey! Don’t worry. I need you, Connie. Please.” She began wiping his chest, opening the top of the beach shirt and forcing it down over his arms, like a policeman performing a drunk arrest.

Barker said stiffly, “All right, Claire-that’s it. I want your things out of here tomorrow.” His mouth turned down in revulsion. “I never thought you’d turn carrion-eater.”

Hawks turned his back and found a telephone on the wall. He dialed with clumsy haste. “This — this is Ed,” he said, his throat constricted. “I wonder if you could possibly drive out to that corner on the highway, where the store is, and pick me up. Yes, I — I need a ride in, again. Thank you. Yes, I’ll be there, waiting.”

He hung up, and as he turned back, Barker said to him, his expression dazed, “How did you do it, Hawks?” He almost cried, “How did you manage this?”

“Will you be at the laboratory tomorrow?” Hawks said wearily.

Barker looked at him through his glittering black eyes. He flung out an arm toward Claire and Connington. “What would I have left, Hawks, if I lost you now?”