Shadow Of Life

Shadow Of Life by Clifford D. Simak

Illustrated by Kramer

The thing at the control board tittered in sardonic mockery.

“Your creeds are all in error,” it said. “There is nothing but evil.”

Stephen Lathrop said wearily: “I’ve seen enough.”

“I’ve tried to show you the human race is something that never should have been,” declared the thing. “Maybe an experiment that went sour. By some queer quirk it took the wrong step, followed the wrong path. It became benevolent. There is no room for benevolence in the Universe. It’s not the accepted way of life. I think I’ve proven that.”

“Why did you bother?” Lathrop demanded.

The thing regarded him with fishy eyes. “There was another race. A race that found the answer—”

“We’ll find ours, too,” growled the human being. “By the time they reach us we’ll have the answer. We’ll fight them in our own way.”

“You can’t fight them,” said the thing. “There is no way to fight universal evil. The best you can do is hide from it.”

The Earthman shrugged. “None of them will reach us for a long time. Now that we know about them, we’ll be ready.”

The thing at the controls concentrated on the setting of more studs, then said: “You’ll never be ready. You’re like a candle in the wind, waiting for a gust that will puff you out.”

Through the vision plates Lathrop could see the harsh blackness of space, dotted here and there with unfamiliar stars, dusted with faint mists that were distant galaxies.

Somewhere, far back toward the center of the Universe, millions of light-years from where they cruised, lay the Milky Way, home galaxy of the planets that circled Helios.

Lathrop tried to think back the way they’d come, tried to think back to green Earth and red Mars, but time blurred the road of thought and other memories encroached, cold, fear-etched memories that reached for him like taloned, withered claws.

Memories of alien lands acrawl with loathesomeness and venom. Strange planets that were strange not because they were alien, but because of the abysmal terror in the very souls of them. Memories of shambling things that triumphed over pitiful peoples whose only crime was they could not fight back.

He shook his head, as if to shake the memories away, but they wouldn’t go. He knew they would never go. They would always walk with him, would wake him screaming from his sleep.

They stayed now, those memories, and shrieked at him — rolling, clanging phrases that bit into his brain. Thundering the soul-searing saga of the elder evil that squatted on the outer worlds. Evil on the move, gobbling up the galaxies, marching down the star streams. Unnatural hungers driving sickening hordes across the gulfs of space to raven and to plunder.

Everything the human race held close, he knew, were alien traits to these races he had seen — not alien in the sense they were not recognized, but more terribly alien in that they could not be recognized. There was simply no place in the make-up of those hordes for the decency and love and loyalty that lay inherent in the people of the Earth. The creeds of Earth could never be their creeds — they could no more understand the attitude of the Earthman than the Earthman could understand their sense of rightness in total evil.

“I don’t thank you for what you’ve done,” Stephen Lathrop told the thing.

“I don’t expect your thanks,” the creature replied. “I’ve shown you the Universe, a cross section of it, enough so you can see what is in store for the human race.”

“I didn’t ask to see it,” Lathrop said. “I didn’t want to see it.”

“Of course you didn’t,” said the thing.

“Why did you take me then?”

“The Earth must know,” the thing declared. “The Earth must prepare for the day when this tide of evil moves into its planets.”

“And I’m to tell them about it,” Lathrop said bitterly. “I’m to become one of the Preachers. One of the Preachers of Evil. I’m to stand on soap boxes on the street corners of Earth. I’m to tramp the sands of Mars to bring the message. I’ll be damned if I will do it.”

“It would be a service to your race.”

“A service to tell them they have to run and hide?” asked Lathrop. “You don’t understand the human race. It doesn’t hide. It just gets sore and wants to fight. And even if it did want to hide, where would it go?”

“There is a way,” the thing persisted.

“Another one of your riddles,” Lathrop said. “Trying to drive me mad with the things you hint at. I’ve gotten along with you. I’ve even tried to be friendly with you. But I’ve never reached you, never felt that as two living things we had anything in common. And that isn’t right. Just the bare fact we are alive and alone should give us some sense of fellowship.”

“You talk of things for which I have no word,” the thing declared. “You have so many thoughts that are alien to me.”

“Perhaps you understand hatred then?”

“Hatred,” it said, “is a thing I know about.”

Lathrop watched the creature narrowly as it labored over the control board, adjusting dials, thumbing over trips, punching studs. His hands opened and closed — hands that were withered with approaching age, but hands that still had brutal strength left in them.

Finally the thing swung away from the board, chuckled faintly at him.

“We’re going home,” it said.

“Home to Mars?”

“That’s right.”

Lathrop laughed, a laugh that came between his teeth without curling his lips.

“The trip has been too long,” he said. “You’ll never get me back in time to do any preaching for you. We’re millions of light-years from Mars. I’ll die before we get there.”

The thing flipped slithery tentacles. “We’re close to Mars,” it said. “Millions of light-years the long way around, of course, but close by the way I set the co-ordinates.”

“The fourth dimension?” asked Lathrop, guessing at something he had long suspected.

“I cannot tell you that,” the creature said.

Lathrop nodded at the board. “Automatic, I presume. All we have to do is sit and wait. It’ll take us straight to Mars.”

“Quite correct,” the thing agreed.

“That,” said Stephen Lathrop, “is all I want to know.”

He rose casually, took a slow step forward, then moved swiftly. The thing grabbed frantically for the weapon in its belt, but was too slow. A single blow sent the weapon flying out of a squirming tentacle. The thing squealed pitifully, but there was no pity in Lathrop’s hands. They squeezed the life, surely and methodically, out of the writhing, lashing, squealing body.

The Earthman stood on wide-spread legs and stared down at the sprawling mass.

“That,” he said, “is for the years you took away from me. That is for making me grow old seeing things I wished I’d never seen. For never a moment of companionship when the sight of space alone nearly drove me mad.”

He dusted his hands together, slowly, thoughtfully, as if he tried to scrub something from them. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.

Suddenly he put out one hand to touch the wall. His fingers pressed hard against it. It was really there. A solid, substantial, metal thing.

That settled it, he thought. Stephen Lathrop, archaeologist, really was inside this ship, had really seen the things that lay in outer space. Stephen Lathrop finally was going home to Mars.

Would Charlie still be there? His lips twisted a bit at the memory. Charlie must have hunted for him for a long time — and when he didn’t find him, did he go back to the green Earth he always talked about, or did he return to the city site to carry on the work they had done together? Or might Charlie have died? It would be funny — and hard — to go back to Mars and not have Charlie there.

He pressed his hand hard against the metal once again, just to be sure. It still was there, solid and substantial.

He turned back to look at the dead thing on the floor.

“I wish,” he said wistfully, “I’d found out what it was.”

Dr. Charles H. Carter knew he had done a good job. The book was a little dogmatic here and there, perhaps, a little anxious to prove his hypothesis — but after a man had dug and burrowed in the midden heaps of Mars for over twenty years he had a right to be a bit dogmatic.

He picked up the last page of the manuscript and read it over again:

Carter laid the page down on his desk, reached for his pipe.

The metallic thing that squatted in one corner of the study moved slightly.

“I take it, doctor, that your work is done,” it said.

Carter started, then settled back, tamped tobacco in his pipe.

“I’d almost forgotten about you, Buster,” he told the robot. “You sit so still.”

The man stared out of the window-port that framed the wild, red emptiness of Mars. Fine, weatherworn sand that whispered when one walked. Off to the left the fantastic towers of harder rock which had resisted the forces that had leveled down the planet. To the right the faintest hint of spires and turreted battlements — the Martian city where dwelt Elmer, the Martian Ghost. Nearer at hand the excavations where twenty years of digging and sifting and studying had netted a pitiful handful of facts about the Martian race — facts that lay within the pages of the manuscript piled on his desk.

“No, Buster,” he said, “my work isn’t done here. I’m only quitting it. Someone will come along some day and take up where I left off. Perhaps I should stay — but these have been lonely years. I’m running away from loneliness and I am afraid I won’t succeed. I’ve been on the verge of it many times before. But something kept me here — the knowledge it was not only my work I was doing, but someone else’s work as well.”

“Dr. Lathrop’s work,” rasped Buster’s thoughts.

Carter nodded.

Twenty years ago Steve Lathrop had dropped out of sight. Carter could remember perfectly the morning Steve had left for the little outpost of Red Rocks to get supplies. Each detail of that morning seemed etched into his consciousness. During those intervening years he had lived it over and over again, almost minute by minute, trying to unearth even the tiniest incident that might be a clue. But there had never been a clue. Stephen Lathrop, to all intent and purpose, simply had walked off the face of Mars, vanished without a trace. He had left to get supplies; he had never returned. That, in itself, was the beginning and the end. That was all there was.

Soon he would have to start packing, Carter knew. The manuscript was finished. His notes were all in order. All but a few of the specimens were labeled, ready for packing. The laborers had been discharged. As soon as Alf came back, they would have to get to work. Alf had gone to town three days before and hadn’t returned — but that was nothing unusual. Somehow, Carter could feel no irritation toward Alf. After all, an occasion such as this, the end of twenty years of labor, called for a spree of some sort.

The last rays of the setting sun streamed into the window and splashed across the room, lighting up and bringing out the color of the collection of Martian water jugs ranged along the wall. Not a very extensive collection when measured against some of those gathered by professional collectors, but a collection that brought warmth into Carter’s soul. Those jugs, in a way, represented the advance of Martian culture, starting with the little lopsided jug over on the left up to the massive symbolic piece of art that marked the peak of the jug cult’s development. Jugs from every part of Mars, brought to him by the scrawny, bewhiskered old jug hunters who ranged the deserts in their everlasting search, always hopeful, always confident, always dreaming of the day when they would find the jug that would make them rich.

“Elmer has a guest,” said Buster. “Maybe I should be getting back home. Elmer might need me.”

“A guest, eh,” said Carter, mildly surprised. Elmer had few visitors. At one time the city of the Martian Ghost had been on the itinerary of every tourist, but of late the government had been clamping down. Visitors upset Elmer and inasmuch as Elmer held what amounted to diplomatic status, there was little else the government could do. Occasionally scientists dropped in on Elmer or art students were allowed to spend a short time studying the paintings in the city — the only extensive list of Martian canvases in existence.

“A painter,” said Buster. “A painter with pink whiskers. He has a scholarship from one of the academies out on Earth. His name is Harper. He’s especially interested in ‘The Watchers.’”

Carter knew about “The Watchers,” a disturbing, macabre canvas. There was something about its technique that almost turned it alive — as if the artist had mixed his pigments with living fear and horror.

The radiophone on the desk burred softly, almost apologetically. Carter thumbed a tumbler and the ground glass lighted up, revealing a leathery face decorated by a yellow, walruslike mustache, outsize ears and a pair of faded blue eyes.

“Hello, Alf,” said Carter genially. “Where are you? Expected you back several days ago.”

“So help me, doc,” said Alf, “they got me in the clink.”

“What for this time?” asked Carter, figuring that he knew. Tales of the doings of an alcoholic Alf were among Red Rocks’ many legends.

“A bit of jug hunting,” Alf confessed, whuffling his mustache.

Carter could see that Alf was fairly sober. His faded eyes were a bit watery, but that was all.

“The Purple Jug again, I suppose,” said Carter.

“That’s just exactly what it was,” said Alf, trying to sound cheerful. “You wouldn’t want a fellow to pass up a fortune, would you?”

“The Purple Jug’s a myth,” said Carter, with a touch of bitterness. “Something someone thought up to get guys like you in trouble. There never was a Purple Jug.”

“But Elmer’s robot gave me the tip,” wailed Alf. “Told me just where to go.”

“Sure, I know,” said Carter. “Sent you out into the badlands. Worst country on all of Mars. Straight up and down and full of acid bugs. No one’s ever found a jug there. No one ever will. Even when the Martians were here, the badlands probably were a wilderness. No one in his right mind, not even a Martian, would live there and you only find jugs where someone has lived.”

“Look,” yelped Alf, “you don’t mean to tell

me Buster was playing a joke on me? Those badlands ain’t no joke. The acid bugs darn near got my sand buggy and I almost broke my neck three or four times. Then along came the cops and nailed me. Said I was trespassing on Elmer’s reservation.”

“Certainly Buster was playing a joke on you,” said Carter. “He gets bored sitting around and not having much to do. Fellows like you are made to order for him.”

“That little whippersnapper can’t do this to me,” howled Alf. “You wait until I get my hands on him. I’ll break him down into a tinker toy.”

“You won’t be getting your hands on anyone for thirty days or so unless I can talk you out of this,” Carter reminded him. “Is the sheriff around?”

“Right here,” said Alf. “Told him you’d probably want a word with him. Do the best you can for me.”

Alf’s face faded out of the ground glass and the sheriff’s came in, a heavy, florid face, but the face of a harassed man.

“Sorry about Alf, doc,” he said, “but I’m getting sick and tired of running the boys off the reservation. Thought maybe clapping some of them in jail might help. This reservation business is all damn foolishness, of course, but a law’s a law.”

“I don’t blame you,” Carter said. “The Preachers alone are enough to run you ragged.”

The sheriff’s florid face became almost apoplectic. “Them Preachers,” he confided, “are the devil’s own breed. Keeping the people stirred up all the time with their talk of evil from the stars and all such crazy notions. Earth’s getting tough about it, too. All of them seem to come from Mars and they’re riding us to find out how they get that way.”

“Just jug hunters gone wacky,” declared Carter. “Wandering around in the desert they get so they talk to themselves and after that anything can happen.”

The sheriff wagged his head. “Not so sure about that, doc. They talk pretty convincing — almost make me believe them sometimes. If they’re crazy, it’s a queer way to go crazy — all of them alike. All of them tell the same story — all of them got a funny look in their eyes.”

“How about Alf, sheriff?” asked Carter. “He’s my right-hand man and I need him now. Lots of work to do, getting ready to leave.”

“Maybe I can stretch a point,” said the sheriff, “long as you put it that way. I’ll see the district attorney.”

“Thanks, sheriff,” said Carter. The ground glass clouded and went dead as the connection was snapped at the other end.

The archaeologist swung around slowly from his desk.

“Buster,” he challenged, “why did you do that to Alf? You know there is no Purple Jug.”

“You accuse me falsely,” said Buster. “There is a Purple Jug.”

Carter laughed shortly. “It’s no use, Buster. You can’t get me all steamed up to look for it.”

He rose and stretched. “It’s time for me to eat,” he said. “Would you like to come along and talk with me?”

“No,” said the robot. “I’ll just sit here and think. I thought of something that will amuse me for a while. I’ll see you later.”

But when Carter came back, Buster was gone. So was the manuscript that had been lying on the desk. Drawers of filing cases that lined one side of the room had been pried open. The floor was littered with papers, as if someone had pawed through them hurriedly, selecting the ones he wanted, leaving the rest.

Carter stood thunderstruck, hardly believing what he saw. Then he sprang across the room, searched hastily, a sickening realization growing on him.

All the copies of his manuscript, all his notes, all his key research data were gone.

There was no doubt Buster had robbed him. And that meant Elmer had robbed him, for Buster was basically no more than an extension of Elmer, a physical agent for Elmer. Buster was the arms and legs and metallic muscles of a thing that had no arms or legs or muscles.

And Elmer, having robbed him, wanted him to know he had. Buster deliberately had set the stage for suspicion to point him out.

Charles Carter sat down heavily in the chair before his desk, staring at the papers on the floor. And through his brain rang one strident, mocking phrase:

“Twenty years of work. Twenty years of work.”

The mistiness that hung among the ornamental girders swirled uneasily with fear. Not the old, ancestral fear that always moved within its being, but a newer, sharper fear. Fear born of the knowledge it had made mistakes — not one alone, but two. And might make a third.

The Earth people, it knew, were clever, far too clever. They guessed too closely. They followed up their guesses with investigation. And they were skeptical. That was the worst of all, their skepticism.

It had taken them many years to recognize and accept him for what he really was — the residual personality of the ancient Martian race. Even now there were those who did not quite believe.

Fear was another thing. The Earthlings knew no fear. Quick, personal glimpses of it undoubtedly they knew. Perhaps even at times a widespread fear might seize them, although only temporarily. As a race they were incapable of the all-obliterating terror that lay forever on the consciousness of Elmer, the Martian Ghost.

But there were some, apparently, who could not comprehend even personal fear, whose thirst for knowledge superseded the acknowledgment of danger, who saw in danger a scientific enigma to be studied rather than a thing to flee.

Stephen Lathrop, Elmer knew, was one of these.

Elmer floated, a cloudy thing that sometimes looked like smoke and then like wispy fog and then again like something one couldn’t quite be sure was even there.

He had known he was making a mistake with Lathrop, but at the time it had seemed the thing to do. Such a man, reacting favorably, would have been valuable.

But the result had not been favorable. Elmer knew that much now, knew it in a sudden surge of fear, knew he should have known it twenty years before. But one, he told himself, cannot always be sure when dealing with an alien mind. Earthmen, after all, were newcomers to the planet. A few centuries counted for nothing in the chronology of Mars.

It was unfair that a Ghost be left to make decisions. Those others could not expect him to be infallible. He was nothing more than a blob of ancestral memories, the residue of a race, the pooling of millions of personalities. He was nothing one could prove. He was hardly life at all — just the shadow of a life that had been, the echo of voices stilled forever in the silence of millennia.

Elmer floated gently toward the room below, his mind reaching out toward the brain of the man sitting there. Softly, almost furtively, he sought to probe into the mental processes of the pink-whiskered artist. A froth of ideas, irrelevant thoughts, detached imagining, and then — a blank wall.

Elmer recoiled, terror seizing him again, a wild wave of unreasoning apprehension. It was the same as it had been the many previous times he had tried to reach this mind. Something must be hidden behind that unyielding barrier, something he must know. Never before had there been an Earthman’s mind he could not read. Never before had his groping thoughts been blocked. It was baffling — and terrifying.

Mistakes! The idea hammered at him remorselessly. First the mistake with Lathrop. Now this — another mistake. He never should have allowed Peter Harper to come, despite the recommendations of the Earthian embassy, the unquestioned references of the college out on Earth. He would have had right and precedent in such refusal. But he had allowed hundreds of art students and art lovers to view his canvases — to have refused Harper might have aroused suspicion.

The awful idea he was being made the victim of an Earthian plot surged up within him, but he rejected it fiercely. Earthmen never had plotted against him, always made it a meticulous point of honor to accede to all his wishes, to grant him, as the last representative of a great race, considerations over and above those to which his diplomatic status entitled him.

Peter Harper said: “Elmer, your people may have been greater than we know. That painting”—he gestured toward “The Watchers”—“is something no Earthman has the technique to produce.”

Elmer’s thoughts milled muddily, panic edging in on him. Other Earthmen had said the same thing, but there was a difference. He could read their minds and know they meant what they said.

“You could help us, Elmer,” Harper said. “I’ve often wondered why you haven’t.”

“Why should I?” Elmer asked.

“Brother races,” the man explained. “The Martians and the Earthmen. Your race, whatever happened to them, wouldn’t want to keep their knowledge from us.”

“I do not have the knowledge of the Martian race.” Elmer’s thoughts were curt.

“You have some of it. The fourth dimension, for example. Think of what we could do with that. A surgeon could go inside his patient and fix him up without a single knife stroke. We could press a button and go a million miles.”

“Then what?” asked Elmer.

“Progress,” said Harper. “Certainly you must understand that. Man was Earth-bound. Now he has reached the planets. He’s already reaching toward the stars.”

“Maybe when you reach the stars you won’t like what you find,” Elmer declared. “Maybe you’ll find things you’d wish you left alone.”

Harper grinned and pawed at his pink chin whiskers.

“You’re an odd one,” he said.

“To you,” Elmer said, “the word is ‘alien.’”

“Not exactly,” declared Harper. “We had things like you back on Earth, only no one except old women believed in them. They were just something to talk about on stormy nights when the wind whistled down the chimney. We called them ghosts, but we never would admit that they were real. Probably ours, weren’t really real, sort of feeble ghosts, just the beginning of ghosts.”

“They never had a chance,” said Elmer.

“That’s right,” Harper agreed. “As a race, we haven’t lived long enough. We seldom stay in one place long enough to allow it to soak up the necessary personality. There are a few rather shadowy ghosts in some of the old castles and manor houses in Europe, maybe a few in Asia, but that’s about all. The Americans were apartment dwellers, moved every little while or so. A ghost would get started in one pattern and then would have to change over again. I suspect that was at least discouraging, if not fatal.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Elmer.

“With the Martians, of course, it was different,” went on Harper. “Your people lived in their cities for thousands of years, perhaps millions of years. The very stones of the place fairly dripped with personality — the accumulated personality of billions of people — that whatever-you-call-it that stays behind. No wonder the Martian Ghosts got big and tough—”

Metallic feet clicked along the corridor outside. A door opened and Buster rolled in.

“Dr. Carter is here,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” said Elmer, “he wants to see me about a manuscript.”

There was no way to get out. Stephen Lathrop now was convinced of that. Elmer’s city, so far as he was concerned, might just as well have been in the depths of space.

In the three days which had passed since he had stumbled in off the desert, he had searched the place methodically. The central spire had been his last chance. But even before he climbed the stairs he knew it was no chance at all. When Elmer decided to make the place a rattrap, he really made it one.

A web of force surrounded the entire city, extending three feet or so from the outer surfaces. Doors would open, so would windows. But that meant nothing, for one could go no farther.

Buster apparently had given up trying to stalk him. Now, it appeared, the game had settled to a deadlock. Buster didn’t dare to tackle him so long as he had the weapon and he, on the other hand, couldn’t leave the city. Elmer probably had decided on starving him out.

Lathrop knew, deep within him, that he was licked, but that knowledge still was something he would not admit. In the end, logic told him, he would give up, let Elmer wipe out the memory of those twenty years in space, replace them with synthetic memories. Under different circumstances, he might have welcomed such a course, for the things he had seen were not pleasant to remember — certainly Elmer could supply him with a more pleasant past. But the proposition was too highhanded to be accepted without a fight, without at least a struggle to maintain his right to order his own life. Then, too, there was the feeling that if he lost the knowledge of the outer worlds he would be losing something the Earth might need, the opportunity to approach the problem scientifically rather than hysterically, as the Preachers approached it.

He sat down heavily on a step, pulled the weapon from his belt and held it, dangling from a hand that rested on his knee. Although there had been no sign of Buster for a long time, there was no telling when the robot might pop up and once Buster laid a tentacle on him, the game was over.

The weapon was not easy to grip. It was not made for human hands, although its operation was apparent — simply press the button on the side. He shifted it in his hand and studied it. Had it not been for the weapon, he knew, there were times when he would have been tempted to write off that trip through space as the product of an irrational mind.

But there the weapon was, a familiar, tangible thing. For years he had seen it dangling from the belt of the thing that piloted the ship. Even now he remembered how it had flashed in the light from the instrument panel as he knocked it from the grasp of the being, then closed in to make his kill.

He didn’t know what the weapon was, but Buster knew and Buster wasn’t coming near it.

It was increasingly hard, he found, to continue thinking of the creature of the spaceship as merely a “thing,” as something that had no identity, but he knew that despite mounting suspicion, he must continue to think of it as such or give way to illogic.

There was, he knew, good reason to suspect it might have been a member of the old Martian race, although that, he told himself, would be sheer madness. The Martian race was dead.

And yet, Elmer without a doubt had played some part in placing him aboard the ship — and who else but the Martian race would Elmer be in league with? The Elmer had believed, as did the thing, that he would become one of the Preachers of Evil was evident. That his refusal to so become had enraged Elmer was equally apparent.

Elmer, of course, had taken steps which ordinarily would have protected him against being linked with the junket in space. The Preachers probably did not even dream Elmer had anything to do with their experiences.

For the hundredth time, Lathrop forced his thoughts back along the trail to that interval between the moment he had left the excavation site until the moment he had found himself aboard the spaceship. But the blank still existed — a black, tantalizing lack of memory. Whatever had transpired in that interval had been wiped clean from his brain. He knew now Elmer had done that, hadn’t bothered to supply him with fictitious memories to fill in the gap.

Granting, however, that Elmer was engineering the indoctrination of the Preachers, what could be his purpose? Why did he bother about it? What possible interest could he have in whether the human race knew of the evil that existed in the outer worlds — why be so insistent that the race hide from the danger rather than fight it? There was illogic somewhere — perhaps a racial illogic, a wrong way of thinking.

Another funny thing. What had happened to the ship? Of all the incredible happenings, that had been the most insane.

The creature had been right about the ship being automatic. Snicking, whispering controls had driven it back to Mars in a few weeks’ time, had brought it down to a bumpy landing not more than a mile from Elmer’s city. That, Lathrop knew, could be explained by engineering — but there was no explanation, no logic in what had happened when he left the ship and walked away.

The craft had shrunk, dwindling until it was almost lost in the sand, until it was no more than an inch or so in length. Lying there, it glistened like a crystal on the desert floor. Then it had shot upward, like a homing bee. Lathrop remembered ducking as it whizeed past his head, remembered watching it, a tiny speck that streaked straight toward the Martian city until he lost it in the glare of the setting sun.

That shrinking must have been automatic, too. There was no hand inside the ship to activate controls. Perhaps the action had become automatic when he opened the port to leave.

Starlight spattered through the narrow portholes in the spire and Lathrop shivered inside his space gear. It was cold there in the tower, for this part of the city was not conditioned against the Martian atmosphere as were some other portions, a concession for Earthly visitors.

From far below came a distant thud of metal striking metal, a rhythmic, marching sound that seemed to climb toward him. Lathrop sat, gun dangling from his knee, starlight sparkling on his helmet, brain buzzing with mystery. Suddenly, he sat erect, tense — that thudding sound was something climbing up the frosty stairs. He waited, wondering what new move might be afoot, realized with a twinge of terror that he was trapped here on the upper step.

Thought calls reached his brain. “Dr. Lathrop, are you up there? Dr. Lathrop!”

“I’m up here, Buster,” he called back. “What’s eating you?”

“Elmer wants to see you.”

Lathrop laughed, said nothing.

“But he really does,” insisted the robot. “There’s an old friend of yours with him. Dr. Carter.”

“It’s a trap,” said Lathrop. “You ought to think up a better one than that.”

“Aw, doc, forget it,” pleaded Buster. “It isn’t any trap. Carter’s really down there.”

“What’s he there for?” snapped Lathrop. “What’s Elmer got against him?”

“He wrote a book—”

Buster’s thoughts broke off in wild confusion.

“So he wrote a book.”

“Look, doc, I shouldn’t have said that,” whined Buster. “I wasn’t supposed to say it. You caught me unawares.”

“You should have made me believe Charlie was down there, all chummy with Elmer, waiting to talk me out of my foolishness. Elmer will chalk one up on you for this.”

“Elmer doesn’t need to know,” suggested Buster. The footsteps stopped. The tower swam in silence.

“I’ll think about it,” Lathrop finally said. “But I’m not promising anything. If I had a robot that tried to hide things from me, I’d junk him in a hurry.”

“Aren’t you going to come down, doc?”

“Nope,” said Lathrop. “You come up. I’m waiting for you. I have the gun ready. I won’t stand for any monkey business.”

The footsteps started again, slowly, reluctantly. They climbed for a long minute, then stopped again.

“Doc,” said Buster.

“Yes, what is it?”

“You won’t hurt me, doc. I got to bring you in this time. Elmer isn’t fooling.”

“Neither am I,” said Lathrop.

The thudding began again, came closer and closer, the frosty steps ringing to the heavy tread of the climbing robot. Buster’s bulk heaved itself up the last flight, moved out onto the landing. Facing the stairs, Buster stood waiting, his crystal lenses staring at the man.

“So you came to get me,” Lathrop said. He flipped the gun’s muzzle at Buster and chuckled.

“You have to come, doc,” said Buster. “You just have to come.”

“I’ll come,” said Lathrop, “but first you’re going to talk. You’re going to tell me a lot of things I need to know.”

A flood of protest washed out from Buster’s electronic brain. “I can’t,” he wailed. “I can’t!”

Lathrop leveled the gun, his gloved finger covering the button. His eyes grew steellike in the light from the stars.

“Why has Elmer got Charlie?” he demanded. “What did he say in that book?”

Buster hesitated. From where he sat, the Earthman could sense the confusion that tore him.

“O. K.,” said Lathrop calmly, “I’ll have to let you have it.”

“Wait!” shrieked Buster. “I’ll tell you!”

His thought-words were tumbling over one another. “Dr. Carter said the Martians might be still alive. Elmer doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want anyone to even think they’re still alive.”

“Are they?” snapped Lathrop.

“Yes. Yes, they’re still alive. But they aren’t here. They’re some place else. They went into another world. They were afraid of the things from outer space. So they made themselves small. Too small to be of any consequence. They reasoned that when the Evil Beings came they would pass right by them, never even guess that they were there.”

“The thing that took me out in space was a Martian, then?”

“Yes, they come out of their world, get big again, to take Earthmen out in space. To show them the evil out there, convince them they cannot fight it, hoping they, too, will do what the Martians did.”

Lathrop was silent, reflecting, trying to straighten out his mind. At the bottom of the stairs, Buster fidgeted.

“But, Buster, why do they do this? Why don’t they let us find out about these things in our own good time? Why don’t they let us work out our own salvation? Why do they insist on us following in their footsteps?”

“Because,” said Buster, “they know that they are right.”

So that was it. A strait-laced dogmatism that in itself portrayed the character and the nature of the Martian race. His guess concerning Elmer’s motives then were right, Lathrop knew. The wrong way of thought. A racial illogic that denied there might be many paths to truth. Coupled, perhaps, with an overdeveloped sense of rigid duty to fellow races. There were Earthly parallels.

“Busybodies,” Lathrop summed it up.

“What was that?” asked Buster.

“Skip it,” Lathrop told him. “It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand.”

“There are many things,” said Buster, sadly, “that I don’t understand. Maybe Elmer does, but I don’t think he does. It doesn’t bother him. That’s because he’s a Ghost and I’m only a robot. You see, he’s sure he’s right. I can’t be sure. I wish I could be. It would make things easier.”

The Earthman grinned at the robot, flipped the gun.

“You Earthmen think differently,” Buster went on. “Your minds are limber. You never say a thing is right until you’ve proven it. You never say a thing’s impossible until you’ve proven that. And one right, so far as you are concerned, isn’t the only right. To you it doesn’t matter how you do a thing just so you get it done.”

“That, Buster,” said Lathrop gently, “is because we’re a young race. We haven’t gotten hidebound yet. Age may give a race a different viewpoint, an arrogant, unswerving viewpoint that makes it hard to get at truth. The Martians should come to us straightforward, explain the situation. They shouldn’t try to propagandize us. The human race, from bitter experience, hates propaganda, can spot it a mile away. That’s why we’re suspicious of the Preachers, make things so tough for them.”

“The Martians don’t trust you,” Buster said. “You take over things.”

Lathrop nodded. It was, he realized, a legitimate criticism.

“They’re a cautious people,” Buster went on. “Caution played a part in the course they took. They wanted to be sure, you see. When the future of the race was at stake, they couldn’t take a chance. Now they’re afraid of the human race — not because of what it can do now, but what it might do later. And still they know you are the closest to them, in thought and temperament, of any peoples in the Universe. They feel that for that reason they should help you.”

“Look, Buster,” said Lathrop, “you told me they became small. You mean they went into a subatomic universe?”

“Yes,” said Buster. “They found a principle. It was based on the fourth dimension.”

“What has the fourth dimension got to do with being small?”

“I don’t know,” said Buster.

Lathrop got to his feet. “All right,” he said. “We’ll see Elmer now.”

He moved slowly down the stairs, the weapon dangling from a hand that swung by his side. Below Buster waited, meekly.

Suddenly Buster moved, straight up the stairs, charging with tentacles flailing. Lathrop jerked back, retreating before the rush. For a fumbling moment he held his breath as he brought up the clumsy gun and pressed the button.

A tentacle slammed against his shoulder and knocked him sidewise even as he fired. He brought up against the stone wall of the staircase with a jolt, the gun still hissing in his hand.

For an instant Buster halted as the faint blue radiance from the weapon spattered on his armor, then tottered, half fell, regained erectness with an effort. Slowly at first, then with a rush, he began to shrink — as if he were falling in upon himself.

Lathrop lifted his finger from the button, lowered the gun. Buster was trying to scramble up the steps, still trying to get at him, but the stairs now were too high for him to negotiate.

In stricken silence, Lathrop watched him grow smaller and smaller, just as the spaceship had grown smaller out there on the desert.

Thrusting the gun back into his belt, Lathrop knelt on the stairs and watched the frantic running of the tiny robot, running as if be were trying to escape from something, trapped by his very smallness on a single tread.

Buster was no more than two inches tall, seemed to be growing no smaller. Gently, Lathrop reached down and picked him up. He shuddered as he held the robot in his hand.

Buster, he knew, had almost succeeded in his purpose, had almost captured him. Had lulled him to sleep by his almost human attributes, by his seeming friendliness. Perhaps Buster had figured out it was the only way to get him.

He lifted his hand until it was level with his face. Buster waved stubby tentacles at him.

“You almost did it, chum,” said Lathrop.

A feeble thought piped back at him: “You wait until Elmer gets at you!”

Lathrop said grimly: “I have Elmer where I want him now.”

He tucked the squirming Buster carefully in a pocket and started down the stairs.

Outside the door that had been locked to keep him in, Peter Harper carefully checked himself. His beard, he decided, was just a shade too red. He concentrated on it and the beard grew pink.

“The fools!” he hissed in contempt at the still-locked door.

His body, he knew, was all right — just as it had been before. But his mind was in a mess. Standing rigidly, he sought to smooth it into pattern, forcing it into human channels, superimposing upon it the philosophy he hated.

All this, he told himself, would be over soon. The end of his mission finally was in sight — the mission he had worked so hard to carry out.

Footsteps were coming down the corridor and Harper forced himself to relax. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for a cigarette, was calmly lighting it as Stephen Lathrop, still clad in space gear, came around the corner.

“You must be Harper,” Lathrop said. “I heard that you were here.”

“Just for a time,” said Harper. “Studying the canvases.”

“You are lucky. Not many people have that chance.”

“Lucky. Oh, yes. Very lucky.” Harper rolled the phrases on his tongue.

Lathrop crinkled his nose. “Do you smell anything?” he asked.

Harper took the cigarette from between his lips. “It might be this. It’s not a usual brand.”

Lathrop shook his head. “Couldn’t be. Just caught a whiff. Like something dead.”

Lathrop’s eyes swept the man from head to foot, widened a bit at the alarming whiskers.

“The beard is quite natural, I assure you,” Harper declared.

“I do not doubt it,” Lathrop said. “You should wear a purple tie.”

Without another word, he wheeled and tramped away. Harper watched him go.

“Purple tie!” spat Harper. Hate twisted his face.

Buster scurried back and forth across the table top, tiny feet beating out a frenzied minor patter.

“There is no use in arguing,” Elmer said. “This talk of Earthmen co-operating with the Martians is impossible. It would never work. They’d be at one another’s throats before they were acquainted. You, Lathrop, killed the Martian out in space. There was no provocation. You simply murdered him.”

“He got in my hair,” said Lathrop. “He’d been in it for almost twenty years.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Elmer. “If the two races could get along, they’d be unbeatable. But they couldn’t get along. They’d grate on one another’s nerves. You have no idea the gulf that separates them — not so much the gulf of knowledge, for that could be bridged, nor a lack of co-operation, for the Martians know that as well as the race of Earth, but temperamentally they would be poles apart.”

Carter nodded, understandingly: “They’d be old fossils and we’d be young squirts.”

“But we could work at long range,” insisted Lathrop. “They could stay in their subatomic world, we could stay where we are. Elmer could act as the go-between.”

“Impossible,” Carter argued. “There is the time angle to consider. A few days for us must be a generation for them. Everything would be speeded up in their world — even the rate of living. The time factor would be basically different. We could not co-ordinate our effort.”

“I see,” said Lathrop, He tapped his fingers on the table top. Buster scurried to the other side, as far as he could get from the tapping fingers.

Lathrop shot a quick glance at Elmer. “Where does that leave us?”

“Just where we started,” Elmer said. “You’ve made Buster useless to me, but that is of little matter. Another robot can be sent me.”

“Maybe Buster will grow up again,” Lathrop suggested.

Elmer was in no mood for jokes. “You have the weapon,” he went on, “but that is worthless against me. With Buster gone, you have cheated yourself out of a quick death in case you refuse to have your memories replaced. But that is inconsequential, too. I can let you starve.”

“What a happy soul you are!” said Carter, dryly.

“I suppose I should say I regret the situation,” Elmer said. “But I don’t. You must understand I can’t let you go, In order that the Martian plan may go on, the knowledge you hold must never reach your race. For once your race knew the Martians were alive, they would find a way to ferret them out.”

“And,” suggested Lathrop, “the Evil Beings must continue to be something mystic, something not quite real, something for fools to believe in.”

Elmer was frank. “That is right. For if your people knew the truth they would take direct action. And that would be wrong. One cannot fight the Evil Ones, one can only hide.”

“How are you so sure?” snapped Carter.

“The Martians,” said Elmer, solemnly, “exhausted every other possibility. They proved there could be no other way.”

Lathrop chuckled in his corner. “There is one thing you have forgotten, Elmer.”

“What is that?”

“Harper,” said Lathrop. “What are you going to do about Harper?”

“Harper,” declared Elmer, “will leave here in a few days. He will never know what happened. Not even that you were here.”

“Oh, yes, he will,” said Lathrop. “I just talked to him. On my way to see you.”

Elmer writhed uneasily. “That’s impossible. Buster locked him in his room.”

“Locks,” declared Lathrop, “don’t mean a thing to Harper.”

Carter started at the tone of Lathrop’s voice. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Harper,” Lathrop started to say, “is a—” but a scream from the next room cut him short. A scream followed by the snickering of a blaster.

The two men sprang to their feet, stood in breathless silence. Elmer was a streak of fog flashing through the air.

“Come on!” yelled Lathrop. Together the two humans followed Elmer, who had faded through the door.

Starlight from the tall windows lit the other room with spangled light and shade. In it figures moved, unreal figures, like trick photography on a stereo vision screen.

Beside one of the windows stood a man, blaster at his hip. Advancing upon him, crouching like a beast of prey stalking food, was another man. The smell of burned flesh tainted the room as the blaster whispered.

Something had happened to the painting of “The Watchers.” It had swung on a pivot in its center, revealing behind it a cavern of blackness. Starlight was shattered by a glinting object that stood within the darkness.

The man who held the blaster was talking, talking in a baffled, ferocious, savage undertone, talking to the thing that advanced upon him, a rattle of words that had no meaning, half profanity, half pure terror, all bordering on madness.

“Alf!” shrieked Carter. But Alf didn’t seem to hear him, went on talking. The thing that stalked him, however, swung about, huddled for an indecisive instant.

“Lights!” yelled Lathrop. “Turn on those lights!”

He heard Carter fumbling in the darkness, hunting for the switch. Scarcely breathing, he stood and waited, the Martian weapon in his hand.

The man in the center of the room was shambling toward him now, but he knew he didn’t dare to shoot until the lights were on. He had to be sure what happened.

The switch clicked and Lathrop blinked in the sudden flood of light. Before him crouched Peter Harper, clothes ripped to smoldering ribbons, face half eaten away by the blaster, one arm gone — crouching as if to spring.

Lathrop snapped the weapon up, pressed the button. The blue radiance flamed out, bored into Peter Harper.

There was no shrinking this time. The spear of blue seemed to slam the man back on the floor and pin him there. He writhed and blurred and ran together. The clothes were gone, the eaten face, with the scraggly, pink whiskers disappeared. Instead came taloned claws and a face that had terrible eyes and a parrot beak. A thing that mewed and howled and yammered. A thing that struggled in vicious convulsions and melted — melted and stank.

Carter stared in horror, hand covering his nose. Lathrop released the pressure on the trip, held the gun alertly.

“One of the things from space,” he said, his voice tense and hard. “One of the Evil Beings.”

Alf staggered down the room, like a drunken man.

“I just climbed through the window,” he mumbled. “I just climbed through the window—”

“How did you get in here?” Carter yelled at him. “Elmer has the city screened.”

“The screen,” said Elmer’s thoughts, “works only one way. It keeps you in, it doesn’t keep you out.”

Carter turned his attention to the mess upon the floor, trying not to gag. “He wanted something,” he said. “He came for something.”

“He came because he was afraid,” Lathrop declared. “There is something here those races are afraid of. Something they had to get at and destroy.”

Alf grabbed at Carter’s arm. “Charlie,” he whimpered, “tell me if it’s true. Maybe I’m drunk. Maybe I got them D.T.’s again.”

Carter jerked away. “What’s the matter with you, Alf?” he snapped.

“The Purple Jug,” gasped Alf. “So help me, it’s the Purple Jug.” They saw it then.

The Purple Jug was the thing that had stood in the cavern back of “The Watchers.” It was the thing that had shattered the starlight.

It was a thing of beauty, of elegance and grace. A piece of art that snatched one’s breath away, that made a hurt rise in the throat and strangle one.

“It wasn’t like you said,” Alf accused Carter. “It wasn’t just a myth.”

Something flashed above the jug’s narrow lip, a silvery streak that struck fire with the light and soared like a burnished will-o’-the-wisp out into the room. Something that swelled and grew — grew until it was fist size and one could see it was a tiny space craft.

“One of the Martian ships!” yelled Lathrop. “One of them coming out of the subatomic!”

And as the last words fell from his lips, he stiffened, grew rigid with the knowledge that snapped into his brain.

“You’re quite right,” said Elmer. “The Purple Jug is the home of the Martian race. It contains the subatomic universe to which they fled.”

Lathrop glanced up, saw the shimmery blot that was Elmer up against the roof.

“Then the jug was what Harper wanted,” Carter said, his voice just a bit too calm, calm to keep the terror out.

The spaceship had settled on the floor, was rapidly expanding.

“Quick, Elmer,” urged Lathrop, “tell me how the Martians grew small.”

Elmer was silent.

“Buster said it was tied up with the fourth dimension,” Lathrop said. “I can’t figure what the fourth dimension has to do with it.”

Elmer still was silent, silent so long Lathrop thought he wasn’t going to speak. But finally his thoughts came, spaced and measured with care, precise:

“To understand it you must think of all things as having a fourth dimension or fourth-dimensional possibilities, although all things do not have a fourth-dimensional sense. The Martians haven’t. Neither have the Earthmen. We can’t recognize the fourth dimension in actuality, although we can in theory.

“To become small, the Martians simply extended themselves in the direction of the fourth dimension. They lost mass in the fourth-dimensional direction, which reduced their size in the other three dimensions. To put it graphically, they took the greater part of themselves and shoved that greater part away where it wouldn’t bother them. They became subatomically small in the first three dimensions, extended their fourth dimension billions of times its original mass.”

Lathrop nodded slowly, thoughtfully. It was a novel idea — all things had a fourth dimension even if they didn’t know it, couldn’t know it, since they had no sense which would recognize the fourth dimension.

“Like stretching a rubber band,” said Carter. “It becomes longer but thinner. Its mass is increased in length, reduced in breadth and thickness.”

“Exactly,” said Elmer. “They reverse the process to become larger again, drawing mass from the fourth-dimensional direction.”

Silence fell, was broken by the soft whine of whirling metal. The entrance port of the spaceship, now grown to normal size, was opening.

The port fell smoothly back and a Martian waddled out. Lathrop stood rooted to the floor, felt the short hairs on the back of his neck stirring, struggling to arise as hackles.

The Martian waddled forward and stopped in front of them, his tentacles writhing gently. But when he spoke, he did not address the humans. He spoke to Elmer.

“You have shown them the jug?”

“I did not show it to them,” Elmer said. “They saved it for us. They killed an Evil One who masqueraded as a human. He would have stolen it, perhaps destroyed it. Lathrop recognized him.”

“I smelled him,” Lathrop said.

The Martian did not notice Lathrop or the others. It was as if they weren’t there, as if Lathrop hadn’t spoken.

“You have failed your duty,” the Martian said to Elmer.

“I am beyond duty,” Elmer replied. “I owe you nothing. I’m not even one of you. I’m just a shadow of those of you who have been. There are many times I do not think as you do. That’s because your thinking has out-stripped me and because I’m still living in the past and can’t understand some of the philosophy you hold today. A part of me must be always in the past, because the past accounts for all of me. For countless centuries I lived here with never a sign of recognition from you. It wasn’t until you needed me that you came out of your Universe to find me. You asked my help and I agreed. Agreed because the memories that make me up gave me racial pride, because I couldn’t let my own race down. And yet, in face of all that, you talk to me of duty.”

“The Earthmen,” said the Martian deliberately, “must die.”

“The Earthmen,” Lathrop declared, “don’t intend to die.”

Then, for the first time, the Martian faced him, stared at him with fish-bleak eyes. And Lathrop, staring back, felt slow, cold anger creep upon him. Anger at the arrogance, the insolence, the scarcely veiled belief that the Earth race was inferior, that some of its members must die because a Martian said they must. Arrogance that made the Martians believe they could conduct a crusade to bend the human race to the Martian way of thinking, use human beings to sell the race the dogma that had sent the Martians fleeing before a threat from the outer stars.

“I killed one of you before,” snapped Lathrop, “with my bare hands.”

It wasn’t what he would have liked to have said. It was even a childish thing to say.

Through his mind ran bits of history, snatched from the Earthian past — before space travel. Bits that told of the way inferior races had been propagandized and browbeaten into trends of thought by men who wouldn’t wipe their feet on them even while they sought to dictate their ways of life. And here it was again!

He would have liked to have told the Martian that, but it would have taken too long, maybe the Martian wouldn’t even understand.

“Where’s the robot?” asked the Martian.

“Yeah, where’s Buster?” yelped Alf. “I got a score to settle with that rattletrap. That’s why I came here. I swore I’d bust him down into a tinker toy and so help me—”

“Keep quiet, Alf,” said Carter. “Buster is a toy now. One that scoots along the floor.”

“Get going,” Lathrop told the Martian. “Buster isn’t here to help you.”

The Martian backed away. Lathrop sheered at him.

“Run, damn you, run! You’re good at that. You ran away from the things out on the stars. You ran away and hid.”

“It was the only thing to do,” the Martian’s thoughts were blubbery.

Lathrop whooped in sudden laughter. “You only think you hid. You’re like an ostrich sticking its head into the sand. You hid in three dimensions, yes, but you ran up a fourth-dimensional flag for all the Universe to see. Didn’t you realize, you fool, that the Evil Beings might have fourth-dimensional senses, that when you strung your fourth-dimensional selves all to hell and gone you were practically inviting them to come and get you?”

“It’s not true,” said the Martian smugly. “It couldn’t be true. We figured it all out. There is no chance for error. We are right.”

Lathrop spat in disgust. Disgust at something that was old and doddering and didn’t even know it.

The Martian sidled slowly away, then made a sudden dash, scooped up the Purple Jug, hugging it close against him.

“Stop him!” shrieked Elmer, and fear and terror rode up and down the shriek.

The Martian lunged for the open door of the spaceship, still hugging the jug. Lathrop hurled himself forward, flattening in a flying tackle. His hands fell short, scraped a leathery body, clawing fiercely, closed upon an elephantine leg. A tentacle spatted at his face, broke his grip upon the leg, sent him rolling on the floor.

Alf’s blaster crackled and the Martian moaned in high-pitched pain.

“Stop him! Stop him!” Elmer’s thoughts were sobbing now.

But there was no stopping him. The Martian already was in the ship, the port was swinging home.

Lathrop pulled himself to one knee, watched the port whirling, the ship already starting to grow small.

“There’s no use,” he said to Elmer.

“In a way,” said Carter, “that fellow is a hero. He’s throwing away his own life to save his race.”

“To save his race,” Lathrop echoed bitterly. “He can’t save his race. They’re lost already. They were lost the first time they did a thing and said that it was right, irrevocably right — that it couldn’t be wrong.”

“He can take his ship down into the sub-atomic,” argued Carter, “and then the jug will be subatomic, too. We’ll never find it. No one will ever find it. But he, himself, can’t get back into it. He’s barring himself from his own Universe.”

“It can be found,” said Lathrop. “It can be found no matter how small he makes it. Maybe it won’t even survive being pushed down into a state smaller than the subatomic, but if it does that only means the mass pushed into the fourth-dimensional direction will become longer or greater or whatever happens to mass in the fourth dimension. And that will make it all the easier for those chaps out on the stars to spot it.”

The ship was no bigger than the end of one’s finger when it rose into the air. In a moment it was a mote dancing in the light and then was gone entirely.

Carter stared at the space where it had been. “That’s that,” he said. “Now we fight alone.”

“We fight better alone,” growled Lathrop. He patted the weapon at his side. “Harper died when I turned this on him. He didn’t shrink, like Buster. It acted differently on the two of them. There’s something in this gun those babies are afraid of. The Martians should have known it, but they didn’t. They were too sure that they were right. They said the record was closed, but that didn’t make it closed.”

He patted the gun again. “That’s why Harper, or whatever Harper was, wanted to get the jug. He and his race didn’t feel safe so long as there was any race in the Universe holding a working knowledge of the fourth dimension.”

“Harper,” said Elmer, “had a fourth-dimensional sense.”

Lathrop nodded. “The Martians didn’t have such a sense, couldn’t feel in the fourth dimension. So they never knew it when they poured themselves into the fourth dimension. But when Harper started being shoved into the fourth dimension, it hurt. It hurt like hell. It killed him.”

Carter shrugged. “It’s not much to go on.”

“The human race,” Lathrop reminded him, “has gone a long way on less. The gun is the starting point. From it we learn the basic principle. Pretty soon we’ll be able to make Buster his regular size again. And after that we’ll be able to do something else. And then we’ll find another fact. We’ll edge up on it. In the end we’ll know more about the fourth dimension than the Martians did. And we’ll have a weapon none of the Evil Beings dare to face.”

“We’ll do all that,” said Carter, “if Elmer lets us go. He still can insist that we stay right here and starve.”

“You may go,” said Elmer.

They stood, the three of them, staring at the ceiling, where Elmer fluttered wispily.

“You may go,” Elmer said again, and there was a bit of insistence in his voice as if he wished they would. “You will find a switch in the hiding place back of where the jug stood. It controls the screen.”

They waited in silence while Carter snapped the switch.

“Good night,” said Elmer and in his thoughts was a weight of sorrow, a sorrow that seemed to be wrenched out of a millennia of life.

They turned to go, but before they reached he door he called them back.

“Perhaps you would take Buster. Take care of him until you can restore him to normal size again.”

“Certainly,” said Lathrop.

“And, gentlemen,” said Elmer, “just one other thing.”

“Yes, what is it, Elmer?”

“There’ll be times,” said Elmer, “when you won’t understand. Times when you get stuck.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Carter admitted.

“When those times come,” said Elmer, come around and see me. Maybe I can help.”

“Thank you, Elmer,” said Lathrop. Then he went into the other room for Buster.

An A\NN/A Preservation Edition.

Scanned with preliminary proofing by A\NN/A

June 19th, 2008—v1.0—11,072 words.

From the original source: Astounding, March 1943

This story has never been reprinted in a mass-market edition.