The Human Edge

THE HARD WAY

Once again, the story is told from the alien viewpoint, and Dickson excels at building up the alien society, and the viewpoint character’s motivations. Said character is not at all safe to be around, even in the case of members of his own species, yet the reader is liable to have a sneaking urge to root for such a clever alien anti-hero to succeed, even though his success would be very bad news for the Earth and its inhabitants. Of course, the trouble with being clever and having a cunning plan that cannot fail is that someone even more clever just may have incorporated your cunning plan into their cunning plan….

Kator Secondcousin, cruising in the neighborhood of a Cepheid variable down on his charts as 47391L, but otherwise known to the race he was shortly to discover as A Ursae Min.—or Polaris, the pole star—suddenly found himself smiled upon by a Random Factor. Immediately—for although he was merely a Secondcousin, it was of the family of Brutogas—he grasped the opportunity thus offered and locked the controls while he set about planning his Kingdom. Meanwhile, he took no chances. He fastened a tractor beam on the artifact embodying the Random Factor. It was a beautiful artifact, even in its fragmentary condition, fully five times as large as the two-man scout in which he and Aton Maternaluncle—of the family Ochadi—had been making a routine sampling sweep of debris in the galactic drift. Kator locked it exactly in the center of his viewing screen and leaned back in his pilot’s chair. A polished bulkhead to the left of the screen threw back his own image, and he twisted the catlike whiskers of his round face thoughtfully and with satisfaction, as he reviewed the situation with all sensible speed.

The situation could hardly have been more ideal. Aton Maternaluncle was not even a connection by marriage with the family Brutogas. True, he, like the Brutogasi, was of the Hook persuasion politically, rather than Rod. But on the other hand the odds against the appearance of such a Random Factor as this to two men on scientific survey were astronomical. It canceled out Ordinary Duties and Conventions almost automatically. Aton Maternaluncle—had he been merely a disinterested observer rather than the other half of the scout crew—would certainly consider Kator a fool not to take advantage of the situation by integrating the Random Factor positively with Kator’s own life pattern. Besides, thought Kator, watching his own reflection in the bulkhead and stroking his whiskers, I am young and life is before me.

He got up from the chair, loosened a tube on the internal ship’s recorder, and extended the three-inch claws on his stubby fingers. He went back to the sleeping quarters behind the pilot room. Back home the door to it would never have been unlocked—but out here in deep space, who would take precautions against such a farfetched situation as this the Random Factor had introduced?

Skillfully, Kator drove his claws into the spinal cord at the base of Aton’s round skull, killing the sleeping man instantly. He then disposed of the body out the air lock, replaced the tube in working position in the recorder, and wrote up the fact that Aton had attacked him in a fit of sudden insanity, damaging the recorder as he did so. Finding Kator ready to defend himself, the insane Aton had then leaped into the air lock, and committed suicide by discharging himself into space.

After all, reflected Kator, as he finished writing up the account in the logbook, While Others Still Think, We Act had always been the motto of the Brutogasi. He stroked his whiskers in satisfaction.

A period of time roughly corresponding to a half hour later—in the time system of that undiscovered race to whom the artifact had originally belonged—Kator had got a close-line magnetically hooked to the blasted hull of the artifact and was hand-over-hand hauling his spacesuited body along the line toward it. He reached it with little difficulty and set about exploring his find by the headlight of his suit.

It had evidently been a ship operated by people very much like Kator’s own human kind. The doors were the right size, the sitting devices were sittable-in. Unfortunately it had evidently been destroyed by a pressure-warp explosion in a drive system very much like that aboard the scout. Everything not bolted down in it had been expelled into space. No, not everything. A sort of hand carrying-case was wedged between the legs of one of the sitting devices. Kator unwedged it and took it back to the scout with him.

After making the routine safety tests on it, Kator got it open. And a magnificent find it turned out to be. Several items of what appeared to be something like cloth, and could well be garments, and what were clearly ornaments or perhaps badges of rank, and a sort of coloring-stick of soft red wax. But these were nothing to the real find.

Enclosed in a clear wrapping material formed in bagshape, were a pair of what could only be foot-protectors with soil still adhering to them. And among the loose soil in the bottom of the bag, was the tiny dried form of an organic creature.

A dirt-worm, practically indistinguishable from the dirt-worms at home.

Kator lifted it tenderly from the dirt with a pair of specimen tweezers and sealed it into a small cube of clear plastic. This, he thought, slipping it into his belt pouch, was his. There was plenty in the wreckage of the ship and in the carrying-case for the examiners to work on back home in discovering the location of the race that had built them all. This corpse—the first of his future subjects—was his. A harbinger of the future, if he played his knuckle-dice right. An earnest of what the Random Factor had brought.

Kator logged his position and the direction of drift the artifact had been taking when he had first sighted it. He headed himself and the artifact toward Homeworld, and turned in for a well-earned rest.

As he drifted off to sleep, he began remembering some of the sweeps he and Aton had made together before this, and tears ran down inside his nose. They had never been related, it was true, even by the marriage of distant connection. But Kator had grown to have a deep friendship for the older Ruml, and Kator was not the sort that made friends easily.

Only, when a Kingdom beckons, what can a man do?

Back on the Ruml Homeworld—capital planet of the seven star-systems where the Ruml were in power—an organization consisting of some of the best minds of the race fell upon the artifact that Kator had brought back, like robber wasps upon the honey-horde of a wild bees hive, where the hollow tree trunk hiding it has been split open by lightning. Unlike the lesser races and perhaps the unknown ones who had created the artifact, there was no large popular excitement over the find, no particular adulation of its discoverer. The artifact could well fail to pan out for a multitude of reasons. Perhaps it was not even of this portion of the galaxy. Perhaps it had been wandering the lightless immensity of space for a million years or more; and the race that had created it was either dead or gone to some strange elsewhere. As for the man who had found it—he was no more than a second cousin of an acceptable, but not great house. And only a few seasons adult, at that.

Only one individual never doubted the promise of reward embodied in the artifact. And that was Kator.

He accepted the reward in wealth that he was given on his return. He took his name off the scout list, and mortgaged every source of income available to him—even down to his emergency right of demand on the family coffers of the Brutogasi. And that was a pledge he would eventually be forced to redeem, or be cut off from the protection of family relationship—which was equivalent to being deprived of the protection of the law among some other races.

He spent his mornings, all morning, in a salle d’armes, and his afternoons and evenings either buttonholing or entertaining members of influential families. It was impossible that such activity could remain uninterpreted. The day the examination of the artifact was completed, Kator was summoned to an interview with The Brutogas—head of the family, that individual to whom Kator was second cousin.

Kator put on his best kilt and weapons-harness and made his way at the appointed hour down lofty echoing corridors of white marble to that sunlit office which he had entered, being only a second cousin, only on one previous occasion in his life—his naming day. Behind the desk in the office on a low pedestal squatted The Brutogas, a shrewd, heavy-bodied, middle-aged Ruml. Kator bowed, stopping before the desk.

“We understand,” said The Brutogas, “you have ambitions to lead the expedition shortly to be sent to the Home world of the Muffled People.”

“Sir?” said Kator, blandly.

“Quite right,” said The Brutogas, “don’t admit anything. I suppose though you’d like to know what’s been extracted in the way of information about them from that artifact you brought home.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kator, standing straight, “I would.”

“Well,” said the head of the family, flicking open the lock on a report that lay on the desk before him, “the deduction is that they’re about our size, biped, of a comparable level of civilization but probably overloaded with taboos from an earlier and more primitive stage. Classified as violent, intractable, and probably extremely dangerous. You still want to lead that expedition?”

“Sir,” said Kator, “if called upon to serve—”

“All right,” said The Brutogas, “I respect your desire not to admit your goal. Not that you can seriously believe after all your politicking through the last two seasons that anybody can be left in doubt about what you’re after.” He breathed out through his nose thoughtfully, stroked his graying cat-whiskers that were nearly twice the length of Kator’s, and added, “Of course it would do our family reputation no harm to have a member of our house in charge of such an expedition.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t mention it. However, the political climate at the moment is not such that I would ordinarily commit the family to attempting to capture the Keysman post in this expedition—or even the post of Captain. Something perhaps you don’t know, for all your conversations lately, is that the selection board will be a seven-man board and it is a practical certainty that the Rods will have four men on it to three of our Hooks.”

Kator felt an unhappy sinking sensation in the region of his liver, but he kept his whiskers stiff.

“That makes the selection of someone like me seem pretty difficult, doesn’t it, sir?”

“I’d say so, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. sir.”

“But you’re determined to go ahead with it anyhow?”

“I see no reason to change my present views about the situation, sir.”

“I guessed as much.” The Brutogas leaned back in his chair. “Every generation or so, one like you crops up in a family. Ninety-nine per cent of them end up familyless men. And only one in a million is remembered in history.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you might bear in mind then that the family has no concern in this ambition of yours and no intention of officially backing your candidacy for Keysman of the expedition. If by some miracle you should succeed, however, I expect you will give due credit to the wise counsel and guidance of your family elders on an unofficial basis.”

“Yes, sir.”

“On the other hand, if your attempt should somehow end up with you in a scandalous or unfavorable position, you’d better expect that that mortgage you sold one of the—Chelesi, wasn’t it?—on your family rights will probably be immediately called in for payment.”

The sinking sensation returned in the region of Kator’s liver.

“Yes,. sir.”

“Well, that’s all. Carry on, Secondcousin. The family blesses you.”

“I bless the family,” said Kator, automatically, and went out feeling as if his whiskers had been singed.

Five days later, the board to choose officers for the Expedition to the Homeworld of the Muffled People, was convened. The board sent out twelve invitations for Keysman, and the eleventh invitation was sent to Kator.

It could have been worse. He could have been the twelfth invited.

When he was finally summoned in to face the six-man board—from the room in which he had watched the ten previous candidates go for their interviews—he found the men on it exactly as long-whiskered and cold-eyed as he had feared. Only one member looked at him with anything resembling approval—and this was because that member happened to be a Brutogas, himself, Ardof Halfbrother. The other five judges were, in order from Ardof at the extreme right behind the table Kator faced, a Cheles, a Worna (both Hooks, politically, and therefore possible votes at least for Kator), and then four Rods—a Gulbano, a Perth, a Achobka, and The Nelkosan, head of the Nelkosani. The last could hardly be worst. Not only did he outrank everyone else on the board, not only was he a Rod, but it was to the family he headed that Aton Maternaluncle, Kator’s dead scoutpartner, had belonged. A board of inquiry had cleared Kator in the matter of Aton’s death. But the Nelkosani could hardly have accepted that with good grace, even if they had wanted to, without losing face.

Kator took a deep breath as he halted before the table and saluted briefly with his claws over the central body region of his heart. Now it was make or break.

“The candidate,” said The Nelkosan, without preamble, “may just as well start out by trying to tell us whatever reasons he may have to justify awarding such a post as Keysman to one so young.”

“Honorable Board Members,” said Kator, clearly and distinctly, “my record is before you. May I point out, however, that training as a scout, involving work as it does both on a scientific and ship-handling level, as well as associating with one’s scoutpartner…”

He talked on. He had, like all the candidates, carefully prepared and rehearsed the speech beforehand. The board listened with the mild boredom of a body which has heard such speeches ten times over already—with the single exception of The Nelkosan, who sat twisting his whiskers maliciously.

When Kator finally concluded the board members turned and looked at each other.

“Well?” said The Nelkosan. “Shall we vote on the candidate?”

Heads nodded down the line. Hands reached for ballot chips—black for acceptance, white for rejection—the four Rods automatically picking up black, the three Hooks reaching for white. Kator licked his whiskers furtively with a dry tongue and opened his mouth before the chips were gathered—

“I appeal!” he said.

Hands checked in midair. The board suddenly woke up as one man. Seven pairs of gray eyes centered suddenly upon Kator. Any candidate might appeal—but to do so was to call the board wrong upon one of its actions, and that meant somebody’s honor was due to be called in question. For a candidate without family backing to question the honor of elders such as sat on a board of selection was to put his whole future in jeopardy. The board sat back on its collective haunches and considered Kator.

“On what basis, if the candidate pleases?” inquired The Nelkosan, in far too pleasant a tone of voice.

“Sir, on the basis that I have another reason to urge for my selection than that of past experience,” said Kator.

“Interesting,” purred The Nelkosan, glancing down the table at the other board members. “Don’t you think so, sirs?”

“Sir, I do find it interesting,” said Ardof Halfbrother, The Brutogas, in such an even tone that it was impossible to tell whether he was echoing The Nelkosan’s hidden sneer, or taking issue with it.

“In that case, candidate,” The Nelkosan turned back to Kator, “by all means go ahead. What other reason do you have to urge? I must say”—he glanced down the table again—“I hope it justifies your appeal.”

“Sir. I think it will.” Kator thrust a hand into his belt pouch, withdrew something small, and stepping forward, put it down on the table before them all. He took his hand away, revealing a cube of clear plastic in which a small figure floated.

“A dirt worm?” said The Nelkosan, raising his whiskers.

“No, sir,” said Kator. “The body of a being from the planet of the Muffled People.”

“What?” Suddenly the room was in an uproar and there was not a board member there who was not upon his feet. For a moment pandemonium reigned and then all the voices died away at once as all eyes turned back to Kator, who was standing once more at attention before them.

“Where did you get this?”

It was The Nelkosan speaking and his voice was like ice.

“Sirs,” said Kator, without twitching a whisker, “from the artifact I brought back to Homeworld two seasons ago.”

“And you never turned it in to the proper authorities or reported the fact you possessed it?”

“No, sir.”

There was a moment’s dead silence in the room.

“You know what this means?” The words came spaced and distinct from The Nelkosan.

“I realize,” said Kator, “what it would mean ordinarily—”

“Ordinarily!”

“Yes, sir. Ordinarily. My case, however,” said Kator, as self-possessedly as he could, “is not ordinary. I did not take this organism from the artifact for the mere desire of possessing it.”

The Nelkosan sat back and touched his whiskers gently, almost thoughtfully. His eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost hidden.

“You did not?” he murmured softly.

“No, sir,” said Kator.

“Why did you take it, if we may ask?”

“Sir,” said Kator, “I took it after a great deal of thought for the specific purpose of exhibiting it to this board of selection for Keysman of the Expedition to the planet of the Muffled People.”

His words went out and seemed to fall dead in the face of the silence of the watching members of the board. A lengthening pause seemed to ring in his ears as he waited.

“For,” said the voice of The Nelkosan, breaking the silence at last, “what reason did you choose to first steal this dead organism, and then plan to show it to us?”

“Sir,” said Kator, “I will tell you.”

“Please do,” murmured The Nelkosan, almost closing his eyes.

Kator took a deep breath.

“Elders of this board,” he said, “you, whose responsibility it is to select the Keysman—the man of final authority, on ship and off—of this expedition, know better than anyone else how important an expedition like this is to all our race. In ourselves, we feel confident of our own ability to handle any situation we may encounter in space. But confidence alone isn’t enough. The Keysman in charge of this expedition must not merely be confident of his ability to scout these aliens we have named the Muffled People because of their habit of wrapping themselves in cloths. The Keysman you pick must in addition be able to perform his task, not merely well or excellently—but perfectly, as laid down in the precepts of The Morahnpa. he who originally founded a kingdom for our race on the third planet of Star 12A, among the lesser races there.”

“Our candidate,” interrupted The Nelkosan from beneath his half-closed eyes, “dreams of founding himself a kingdom?”

“Sir!” said Kator, standing stiffly. “I think only of our race.”

“You had better convince us of that, candidate?”

“I shall, sir. With my culminating argument and explanation of why I took the dead alien organism. I took it, sirs, to show to you. To convince you beyond doubt of one thing. Confidence is not enough in a Keysman. Skill is not enough. Perfection—fulfillment of his task without a flaw, as defined by The Morahnpa—is what is required here. And for perfection a commitment is required beyond the ordinary duty of a Keysman to his task.”

Kator paused. He could tell from none of them whether he had caught their interest or not.

“I offer you evidence of my own commitment in the shape of this organism. So highly do I regard the need for success on this expedition, that I have gambled with my family, my freedom, and my life to convince you that I will go to any length to carry it through to the point of perfection. Only someone willing to commit himself to the extent I have demonstrated by taking this organism should be your choice for Keysman on this Expedition!”

He stopped talking. Silence hung in the room. Slowly, The Nelkosan uncurled himself and reaching down the table, gathered in the cube with the worm inside and brought it back to his own place and held it.

“You’ve made your gesture, candidate,” he said, with slitted eyes. “But who can tell whether you meant anything more than a gesture, now that you’ve given the organism back to us?” He lifted the cube slightly and turned it so that the light caught it. “Tell us, what does it mean to you now, candidate?”

The matter, Kator thought with a cold liverish sense of fatalism, was doomed to go all the way. There was no other alternative now. He looked at The Nelkosan.

“I’ll kill you to keep it!” he said.

After that, the well-oiled machinery of custom took over. The head of a family, or a member of a selection board, or anyone in authority of course did not have to answer challenges personally. That would be unfair. He could instead name a deputy to answer the challenge for him. The heads of families in particular usually had some rather highly trained fighters to depute for challenges. That this could also bring about an unfair situation was something that occurred only to someone in Kator’s position.

The selection board adjourned to the nearest salle d’armes. The deputy for The Nelkosan—Horaag Adoptedson—turned out to be a man ten seasons older than Kator, half again as large and possessing both scars and an air of confidence.

“I charge you with insult and threat,” he said formally to Kator as soon as they were met in the center of the floor.

“You must either withdraw that or fight me with the weapons of my choice,” said Kator with equal formality.

“I will fight. What weapons?”

Kator licked his whiskers.

“Double-sword,” he said. Horaag Adoptedson started to nod—“And shields,” added Kator.

Horaag Adoptedson stopped nodding and blinked. The board stared at each other and the match umpire was questioned. The match umpire, a man named Bolf Paternalnephew, checked the books.

“Shields,” he announced, “are archaic and generally out of use, but still permissible.”

“In that case,” said Kator, “I have my own weapons and I’d like to send for them.”

The weapons were sent for. While he waited for them, Kator saw his opponent experimenting with the round, target-shaped shield of blank steel that had been found for him. The shield was designed to be held in the left hand while the right hand held the sword. Horaag Adoptedson was trying fencing lunges with his long, twin-bladed sword and trying to decide what to do with the shield which he was required to carry. At arm’s length behind him the shield threw him off balance. Held before him, it restricted his movements.

Kator’s weapons came. The shield was like the one found for his opponent, but the sword was as archaic as the shield. It was practically hiltless, and its parallel twin blades were several times as wide as the blades of Horaag’s sword, and half the length. Kator slid his arm through a wide strap inside the shield and grasped the handle beyond it. He grasped his archaically short sword almost with an underhand grip and took up a stance like a boxer.

The board murmured. Voices commented to the similarity between Kator’s fighting position and that of figures on old carvings depicting ancestral warriors who had used such weapons. Horaag quickly fell into a duplicate of Kator’s position—but with some clumsiness evident.

“Go!” said the match umpire. Kator and Horaag moved together and Kator got his shield up just in time to deflect a thrust from Horaag’s long sword. Kator ducked down behind his shield and moved in, using his short sword with an underhand stabbing motion. Horaag gave ground. For a few moments swords clanged busily together and on the shields.

Horaag circled suddenly. Kator, turning, tripped and almost went down. Horaag was instantly on top of him. Kator thrust the larger man off with his shield. Horaag, catching on, struck high with his shield, using it as a weapon. Kator slipped underneath, took the full force of the shield blow from the stronger man and was driven to one knee. Horaag struck down with his sword. Kator struck upward from his kneeling position and missed. Horaag shortened his sword for a death-thrust downward and Kator, moving his shorter double blade in a more restricted circle, came up inside the shield and sword-guard of the bigger man and thrust Horaag through the shoulder. Horaag threw his arms around his smaller opponent to break his back and Kator, letting go of his sword handle in these close quarters, reached up and clawed the throat out of his opponent.

They fell together.

When a bloody and breathless Kator was pulled from under the body of Horaag and supported to the table which had been set up for the board, he saw the keys to every room and instrument of the ship which would carry the Expedition to the planet of the Muffled People, lying in full sight, waiting for him.

The ship of the Expedition carried fifty-eight men, including Captain and Keysman. Shortly after they lifted from the Ruml Homeworld, just as soon as they were the distance of one shift away from their planetary system, Kator addressed all crew members over the intercommunications system of the ship.

“Expedition members,” he said, “you all know that as Keysman, I have taken my pledge to carry this Expedition through to a successful conclusion, and to remain impartial in my concern for its Members, under all conditions. Let me now reinforce that pledge by taking it again before you all. I promise you the order of impartiality which might be expected by strange but equal members of an unknown family; and I commit myself to returning to Homeworld with the order of scouting report on this alien race of Muffled People that only a perfect operation can provide. I direct all your attentions to that word, perfect, and a precept laid down by an ancestor of ours, The Morahnpa—if all things are accomplished to perfection, how can failure attend that operation in which they are accomplished? I have dedicated myself to the success of this Expedition in discovering how the Muffled People may be understood and conquered. Therefore I have dedicated myself to perfection. I will expect a like dedication from each one of you.”

He turned away from the communications board and saw the ship’s Captain, standing with arms folded and feet spread a little apart. The Captain’s eyes were on him.

“Was that really necessary, Keysman?” said the Captain. He was a middle-aged man, his chest-strap heavy with badges of service. Kator thought that probably now was as good a time as any to establish their relationship.

“Have you any other questions, Captain?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then continue with your normal duties.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Captain inclined his head and turned back to his control board on the other side of the room. His whiskers were noncommittal.

Kator left the control room and went down the narrow corridor to his own quarters. Locking the door behind him—in that allowance of luxury that only the Keysman was permitted—he went across to the small table to which was pinned the ring holding his Keys, his family badge, and the authorization papers of the Expedition.

He rearranged these to make room in the center. Then he took from his belt pouch and put in the place so provided the clear plastic cube containing the alien worm. It glittered in that position under the overhead lights of the room; and the other objects surrounded it, thought Kator, like obsequious servants.

There was only one quarrel on the way requiring the adjudication of the Keysman, and Kator found reason to execute both men involved. The hint was well taken by the rest of the Expedition and there were no more disputes. They backtracked along the direction calculated on their Homeworld to have been the path of the artifact, and found themselves after a couple of nine-day weeks midway between a double star with a faint neighbor, Star Unit 439LC&W—and a single yellow star which was almost the twin of the brighter partner of the double star. Star 440L.

The Ruml investigations of the artifact had indicated the Muffled People’s Homeworld to be under a single star. The ship was therefore turned to the yellow sun.

Traces of artificially produced radio emissions were detected well out from the system of the yellow sun. The ship approached cautiously—but although the Ruml discovered scientific data-collecting devices in orbit as far out as the outer fringes of the planetary system surrounding the yellow sun, they found no warning stations or sentry ships.

Penetrating cautiously further into the system, they discovered stations on the moons of two larger, outer planets, some native ship activity in an asteroid belt, and light settlements of native population on the second and fourth planets. The third planet, on the other hand, was swarming with aliens.

The ship approached under cover of that planet’s moon, ducked around to the face turned toward the planet, at nightfall, and quickly sealed itself in, a ship’s length under the rock of the moon’s airless surface. Tunnels were driven in the rock and extra workrooms hollowed out.

Up until this time the ship’s captain had been in some measure in command of the Expedition. But now that they were down, all authority reverted to the Keysman. Kator spent a ship’s-day studying the plan of investigation recommended by the Ruml Homeworld authorities, and made what changes he considered necessary in them. Then he came out of his quarters and set the whole force of the expedition to building and sending out collectors.

These were of two types. The primary type were simply lumps of nickel-iron with a monomolecular surface layer sensitized to collect up to three days worth of images, and provided with a tiny internal drive unit that would explode on order from the ship or any attempt to block or interfere with the free movement of the device. Several thousand of these were sent down on to the planet and recovered with a rate of necessary self-destruction less than one tenth of one per cent. Not one of the devices was even perceived, let alone handled, by a native. At the end of five weeks, the Expedition had a complete and detailed map of the world below, its cities and its ocean bottoms. And Kator set up a large chart in the gathering room of the ship, listing Five Phases, numbered in order. Opposite Phase One, he wrote Complete to Perfection.

The next stage was the sending down of the secondary type of collectors—almost identical lumps of nickel iron, but with cargo-carrying space inside them. After nine weeks of this and careful study of the small species of alien life returned to the Expedition Headquarters on the moon, he decided that one small flying blood-sucking insect, one crawling, six-legged pseudo-insect—one of the arthropoda, an arachnid or spider, in Muffled People’s classification—and a small, sharp-nosed, long-tailed scavenging animal of the Muffled People’s cities, should be used as live investigators. He marked Phase Two as Complete to Perfection.

Specimens of the live investigators were collected, controlling mechanisms surgically implanted in them, and they were taken back to the planet’s surface. By the use of scanning devices attached to the creatures, Expedition members remote-controlling them from the moon were able to investigate the society of the Muffled People at close hand.

The live investigators were directed by their controller into the libraries, factories, hospitals. The first two phases of the investigation had been cold matters of collecting, collating and filing data. With this third phase, and the on-shift members of the Expedition living vicarious insect and animal lives on the planet below, a spirit of adventure began to permeate the fifty-six men remaining on the moon.

The task before them was almost too great to be imagined. It was necessary that they hunt blindly through the civilization below until chance put them on the trail of the information they were after concerning the character and military strength of the Muffled People. The first six months of this phase produced no evidence at all of military strength on the part of the Muffled People—and in his cabin alone Kator paced the floor, twitching his whiskers. The character of the Muffled People as a race was emerging more clearly every day and it was completely at odds with such a lack of defensive elements. And so was the Muffled People’s past history as the Expedition had extracted it from the libraries of the planet below.

He called the Captain in.

“We’re overlooking something,” he said.

“I’ll agree with that, Keysman,” said the Captain. “But knowing that doesn’t solve our problem. In the limited time we’ve had with the limited number of men available, we’re bound to face blank spots.”

“Perfection,” Kator said, “admits of no blank spots.”

The Captain looked at him with slitted eyes.

“What does the Keysman suggest?” he said.

“…Sir.”

“For one thing,” Kator’s eyes were also slitted, “a little more of an attitude of respect.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And for another thing,” said Kator, “I make the suggestion that what we’re looking for must be underground. Somewhere the Muffled People must have a source of military strength comparable to our own—their civilization and their past history is too close to our own for there not to be such a source. If it had been on the surface of the planet or in one of the oceans, we would’ve discovered it by now. So it must be underground.”

“I’ll have the men check for underground areas.”

“You’ll do better than that, Captain. You’ll take every man and put them in a hookup with the long-tailed scavenging animals, and run their collectors underground. In all large blank areas.”

“Sir.”

The Captain went out. The change in assignment was made and two shifts later—by sheer luck or coincidence—the change paid off. One of the long-tailed animal collectors was trapped aboard a large truck transporting food. The truck went out from one of the large cities in the middle of the western continent of the planet below and at about a hundred and fifty of the Muffled People’s miles from the city turned into a country route that led to an out-of-operation industrial manufacturing complex. It trundled past a sleepy farm or two, across a bridge over a creek and down a service road into the complex. There it drove into a factory building and unloaded its food onto a still and silent conveyor belt.

Then it left.

The collector, left with the food, suddenly felt the conveyor belt start to move. It carried the food deep into the factory building, through a maze of machinery, and delivered it onto a platform, which dropped without warning into the darkness of a deep shaft.

And it was at this point that the Ruml in contact with the collector, called Kator. Kator did not hesitate.

“Destroy it!” he ordered.

The Ruml touched a button and the collector stiffened suddenly and collapsed. Almost immediately a pinpoint of brilliance appeared in the center of its body and in a second it was nothing but fine gray ash, which blew back up the shaft on the draft around the edges of the descending platform.

While the rest of the men of the Expedition there present in the gathering room watched, Kator walked over to the chart he had put up on the wall. Opposite Phase Three, with a clear hand he wrote Complete to Perfection.

Kator allowed the Expedition a shift in which to celebrate. He did not join the celebration himself or swallow one of the short-lived bacterial cultures that temporarily manufactured ethyl alcohol in the Ruml stomachs from carbohydrates the Expedition Members had eaten. Intoxication was an indulgence he could not at the moment permit himself. He called the Captain into conference in the Keysman’s private quarters.

“The next stage,” Kator said, “is, of course, to send a man down to examine this underground area.”

“Of course, sir,” said the Captain. The Captain had swallowed one of the cultures, but because of the necessity of the conference had eaten nothing for the last six hours. He thought of the rest of the Expedition gorging themselves in the gathering room and his own hunger came sharply on him to reinforce the anticipation of intoxication.

“So far,” said Kator, “the Expedition has operated without mistakes. Perfection of operation must continue. The man who goes down on to the planet of the Muffled People must be someone whom I can be absolutely sure will carry the work through to success. There’s only one individual in this Expedition of whom I’m that sure.”

“Sir?” said the Captain, forgetting his hunger suddenly and experiencing an abrupt chilliness in the region of his liver. “You aren’t thinking of me, are you, Keysman? My job with the ship, here—”

“I am not thinking of you.”

“Oh,” said the Captain, breathing freely. “In that case… while I would be glad to serve…”

“I’m thinking of myself.”

“Keysman!”

It was almost an explosion from the Captain’s lips. His whiskers flattened back against his face.

Kator waited. The Captain’s whiskers slowly returned to normal position.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Of course, you can select whom you wish. It’s rather unheard of, but… Do you wish me to act as Keysman while you’re down there?”

Kator smiled at him.

“No,” he said.

The Captain’s whiskers twitched slightly, involuntarily, but his face remained impassive.

“Who, then, sir?”

“No one.”

This time the Captain did not even explode with the word of Kator’s title. He merely stared, almost blindly at Kator.

“No one,” repeated Kator, slowly. “You understand me, Captain? I’ll be taking the keys of the ship with me.”

“But—” the Captain’s voice broke and stopped. He took a deep breath. “I must protest officially, Keysman,” he said. “It would be extremely difficult to get home safely if the keys were lost and the authority of a Keysman was lacking on the trip back.”

“It will be impossible,” said Kator, evenly. “Because I intend to lock ship before leaving.”

The Captain said nothing.

“Perfection, Captain,” remarked Kator in the silence, “can imply no less than utter effort and unanimity—otherwise it isn’t perfection. Since to fail of perfection is to fail of our objective here, and to fail of our objective is to render the Expedition worthless—I consider I am only doing my duty in making all Members of the Expedition involved in a successful effort down on the planet’s surface.”

“Yes, sir,” said the Captain woodenly.

“You’d better inform the Expedition of this decision of mine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go ahead then,” said Kator. The Captain turned toward the door. “And Captain—” The Captain halted with the door half open, and looked back. Kator was standing in the middle of the room, smiling at him. “Tell them I said for them to enjoy themselves—this shift.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Captain went out, closing the door behind him and cutting off his sight of Kator’s smile. Kator turned and walked over to the table holding his keys, his family badge, his papers and the cube containing the worm. He picked up the cube and for a moment held it almost tenderly.

None of them, he thought, would believe him if he told them that it was not himself he was thinking of, but of something greater. Gently, he replaced the cube among the other precious items on the table. Then he turned and walked across the room to squat at his desk. While the sounds of the celebration in the gathering room came faintly through the locked door of his quarters, he settled down to a long shift of work, planning and figuring the role of every Member of the Expedition in his own single assault upon the secret place of the Muffled People.

The shift after the celebration, Kator set most of the Expedition Members to work constructing mechanical burrowing devices which could dig down to, measure and report on the outside of the underground area he wished to enter. Meanwhile, he himself, with the help of the Captain and two specialists in such things, attacked the problem of making Kator himself into a passable resemblance of one of the Muffled People.

The first and most obvious change was the close-clipping of Kator’s catlike whiskers. There was no pain or discomfort involved in this operation, but so deeply involved were the whiskers in the sociological and psychological patterns of the adult male Ruml that having them trimmed down to the point of invisibility was a profound emotional shock. The fact that they would grow again in a matter of months—if not weeks—did not help. Kator suffered more than an adult male of the Muffled People would have suffered if the normal baritone of his voice had suddenly been altered to a musical soprano.

The fact that the whiskers had been clipped at his own order somehow made it worse instead of better.

The depilation that removed the rest of the fur on Kator’s head, bad as it was, was by contrast a minor operation. After the shock of losing the whiskers, Kator had been tempted briefly to simply dye the close gray fur covering the skull between his ears like a beanie. But to do so would have been too weak a solution to the fur problem. Even dyed, his natural head-covering bore no relationship to human hair.

Still, dewhiskered and bald, Kator’s reflection in a mirror presented him with an unlovely sight. Luckily, he did, now, look like one of the Muffled People after a fashion from the neck up. The effect was that of a pink-skinned oriental with puffy eyelids over unnaturally wide and narrow eyes. But it was undeniably native-like.

The rest of his disguise would have to be taken care of by the mufflings he would be wearing, after the native fashion. These complicated body-coverings, therefore, turned out to be a blessing in disguise, with pun intended. Without them it would have been almost impossible to conceal Kator’s body-differences from the natives.

As it was, foot-coverings with built-up undersurfaces helped to disguise the relative shortness of Kator’s legs, as the loose hanging skirt of the sleeved outside upper-garment hid the unnatural—by Muffled People physical standards—narrowness of his hips. Not a great deal could be done about the fact that the Ruml spine was so connected to the Ruml pelvis that Kator appeared to walk with his upper body at an angle leaning forward. But heavy padding widened the narrow Ruml shoulders and wide sleeves hid the fact that the Ruml arms, like the Ruml legs, were normally designed to be kept bent at knee and elbow-joint.

When it was done, Kator was a passable imitation of a Muffled Person—but these changes were only the beginning. It was now necessary for him to learn to move about in these hampering garments with some appearance of native naturalness.

The mufflings were hideously uncomfortable—like the clinging but lifeless skin of some loathsome creature. But Kator was as unyielding with himself as he was with the other Expedition Members. Shift after shift, as the rest of the Expedition made their burrowing scanners, sent them down and collected them back on the moon to digest the information they had discovered, Kator tramped up and down his own quarters, muffled and whiskerless—while the Captain and the two specialists compared his actions with tapes of the natives in comparable action, and criticized.

Intelligent life is inconceivably adaptable. There came a shift finally when the three watchers could offer no more criticisms, and Kator himself no longer felt the touch of the mufflings about his body for the unnatural thing it was.

Kator announced himself satisfied with himself, and went to the gathering room for a final briefing on the information the burrowing mechanisms had gathered about the Muffled People’s secret place. He stood—a weird-looking Ruml figure in his wrappings while he was informed that the mechanisms had charted the underground area and found it to be immense—half a native mile in depth, twenty miles in extent and ten in breadth. Its ceiling was an eighth of a mile below the surface and the whole underground area was walled in by an extremely thick casing of native concrete stiffened by steel rods.

The mechanisms had been unable to scan through the casing and, since Kator had given strict orders that no attempt was to be made to burrow or break through the casing for fear of alarming the natives, nothing was discovered about the interior.

What lay inside, therefore, was still a mystery. If Kator was to invade the secret place, therefore, he would have to do so blind—not knowing what in the way of defenders or defenses he might discover. The only open way in was down the elevator shaft where the food shipments disappeared.

Kator stood in thought, while the other Members of the Expedition waited around him.

“Very well,” he said at last “I consider it most likely that this place has been set up to protect against invasion by others of the natives, themselves—rather than by someone like myself. At any rate, we will proceed on that assumption.”

And he called them together to give them final orders for the actions they would have to take in his absence.

The face of the planet below them was still in night when Kator breached the moon surface just over the site of the Expedition Headquarters and took off planetward in a small, single-man ship. Behind him, the hole in the dust-covered rock filled itself in as if with a smooth magic.

His small ship lifted from the moon and dropped toward the darkness of the planet below.

He came to the planet’s surface, just as the sun was beginning to break over the eastern horizon and the fresh chill of the post-dawn drop of temperature was in the air. He camouflaged his ship, giving it the appearance of some native alder bushes, and stepped from it for the first time onto the alien soil.

The strange, tasteless atmosphere of the planet filled his nostrils. He looked toward the rising sun and saw a line of trees and a ramshackle building blackly outlined against the redness of its half-disk. He turned a quarter-circle and began to walk toward the factory.

Not far from his ship, he hit the dirt road running past the scattered farms to the complex. He continued along it with the sun rising strongly on his left, and after a while he came to the wooden bridge over the creek. On this, as he crossed it, his footcoverings fell with a hollow sound. In the stillness of the dawn these seemed to echo through the whole sleeping world. He hurried to get off the planks back onto dirt road again; and it was with an internal lightening of tension that he stepped finally off the far end of the bridge.

“Up early, aren’t you?” said a voice.

Kator checked like a swordsman, just denying in time the impulse that would have whirled him around like a discovered thief. He turned casually. On the grassy bank of the creek just a few feet below this end of the bridge, an adult male native sat.

A container of burning vegetation was in his mouth, and smoke trickled from his lips. He was muffled in blue leg-coverings and his upper body was encased in a worn, sleeved muffling of native leather. He held a long stick in his hands, projecting out over the waters of the creek, and as Kator faced him, his lips twisted upward in the native fashion.

Kator made an effort to copy the gesture. It did not come easily, for a smile did not mean humor among his people as much as triumph, and laughter was almost unknown except in individuals almost at the physical or mental breaking point. But it seemed to satisfy the native.

“Out for a hike?” said the native.

Kator’s mind flickered over the meaning of the words. He had drilled himself, to the point of unconscious use, in the native language of this area. But this was the first time he had spoken native to a real native. Strangely, what caught at his throat just then was nothing less than embarrassment. Embarrassment at standing whiskerless before this native—who could know nothing of whiskers, and what they meant to a Ruml.

“Thought I’d tramp around a bit,” Kator answered, the alien words sounding awkward in his mouth. “You fishing?”

The native waggled the pole slightly, and a small colored object floating on the water trembled with the vibration sent from the rod down the line attached to it.

“Bass,” said the native.

Kator wet his nonexistent whiskers with a flicker of his tongue, and thought fast.

“Bass?” he said. “In a creek?”

“Never know what you’ll catch,” said the native. “Might as well fish for bass as anything else. You from around here?”

“Not close,” said Kator. He felt on firmer ground now. While he knew something about the fishing habits and jargon of the local natives—the matter of who he was and where from had been rehearsed.

“City?” said the native.

“That’s right,” said Kator. He thought of the planet-wide city of the Ruml Homeworld.

“Headed where?”

“Oh,” said Kator, “just thought I’d cut around the complex up there, see if I can’t hit a main road beyond and catch a bus back to town.”

“You can do that, all right,” said the native. “I’d show you the way, but I’ve got fish to catch. You can’t miss it, anyway. Ahead or back from here both brings you out on the same road.”

“That so?” said Kator. He started to move off. “Well, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, friend.”

“Good luck with your bass.”

“Bass or something—never tell what you’ll catch.”

Kator waved. The native waved and turned back to his contemplation of the creek Kator went on.

Only a little way down the dirt road, around a bend and through some trees, he came on the wide wire gate where the road disappeared into the complex. The gate was closed and locked Kator glanced about him, saw no one and took a small silver cone from his pocket. He touched the point of the cone to the lock. There was a small, upward puff of smoke and the gate sagged open. Kator pushed through, closed the gate behind him and headed for the building which the truck holding the Ruml collector had entered.

The door to the building also was locked. Kator used the cone-shaped object on the lock of a small door set into the big door and slipped inside. He found himself in a small open space, dim-lit by high windows in the building. Beyond the open space was the end of the conveyor belt on which the food boxes had been discharged, and a maze of machinery.

Kator listened, standing in the shadow of the door. He heard nothing. He put away the cone and drew his handgun. Lightly, he leaped up on to the still conveyor belt and began to follow it back into the clutter of machinery.

It was a strange, mechanical jungle through which he found himself traveling. The conveyor belt was not a short one. After he had been on it for some minutes, his listening ears caught sound from up ahead. He stopped and listened.

The sound was that of native voices talking.

He went on, cautiously. Gradually he approached the voices, which did not seem to be on the belt but off it to the right some little distance. Finally, he drew level with them. Kneeling down and peering through the shapes of the machinery he made out a clear area in the building about thirty feet off the belt. Behind the cleared area was a glassed-in cage in which five humans, wearing blue uniforms and weapon harnesses supporting handguns, could be seen—sitting at desks and standing about talking.

Kator lowered his head and crept past like a shadow on the belt. The voices faded a little behind him and in a little distance, he came to the shaft and the elevator platform on to which the conveyor belt discharged its cargo.

Kator examined the platform with an eye already briefed on its probable construction. It was evidently remotely controlled from below, but there should be some kind of controls for operating it from above—if only emergency controls.

Kator searched around the edge of the shaft, and discovered controls set under a plate at the end of the conveyor belt. Using a small magnetic power tool, he removed the plate covering the connections to the switches and spent a moment or two studying the wiring. It was not hard to figure it out from this end—but he had hoped to find some kind of locking device, such as would be standard on a Ruml apparatus of this sort, which would allow him to prevent the elevator being used after he himself had gone down.

But there was no such lock.

He replaced the plate, got on to the platform and looked at the controls. From this point on it was a matter of calculated risk. There was no way of telling what in the way of guards or protective devices waited for him at the bottom of the shaft. He had had his choice of trying to find out with collectors previously and running the risk of alerting the natives—or of taking his chances now. And he had chosen to take his chances now.

He pressed the button. The platform dropped beneath him, and the darkness of the shaft closed over his head.

The platform fell with a rapidity that frightened him. He had a flashing mental picture of it being designed for only nonhuman materials—and then thought of the damageable fruits and vegetables among its food cargo came to mind and reassured him. Sure enough—after what seemed like a much longer drop than the burrowing scanners had reported the shaft to have—the platform slowed quickly but evenly to a gentle halt and emerged into light from an opening in one side of the shaft.

Kator was off the platform the second it emerged, and racing for the nearest cover—behind the door of the small room into which he had been discharged. And no sooner than necessary. A lacework of blue beams lanced across the space where he had been standing a tiny part of a second before.

The beams winked out. The smell of ozone filled the room. For a moment Kator stood frozen and poised, gun in hand. But no living creature showed itself. The beams had evidently been fired automatically from apertures in the wall. And, thought Kator with a cold feeling about his liver, the spot he had chosen to duck into was about the only spot in the room they had not covered.

He came out from behind the door, slipped through the entrance to which it belonged—and checked suddenly, catching his breath.

He stood in an underground area of unbelievable dimensions, suddenly a pygmy. No, less than a pygmy, an ant among giants, dimlit from half a mile overhead.

He was at one end of what was no less than an underground spacefield. Towering away from him, too huge to count, were the brobdingnagian shapes of great spaceships. He had found it—the secret gathering place of the strength of the Muffled People.

From up ahead came the sound of metal on other metal and concrete, sound of feet and voices. Like a hunting animal, Kator slipped from the shadow of one great shape to the next until he came to a spot from which he could see what was going on.

He peered out from behind the roundness of a great, barrel-thick supporting jack and saw that he was at the edge of the field of ships. Beyond stretched immense emptiness, and in a separate corner of this, not fifty feet from where Kator stood, a crew of five natives in green one-piece mufflings were dismounting the governor of a phase-shift drive from one of the ships, which had been taken out of the ship and lowered to the floor here, apparently for servicing. A single native in blue with a weapons harness and handgun stood by them.

As Kator stopped, another native in blue with weapons harness came through the ranked ships from another direction. Kator shrank back behind the supporting jack. The second guard came up to the first.

“Nothing,” he said. “May have been a short up in the powerhouse. Anyway, nothing came down the shaft.”

“A rat, maybe?” said the first guard.

“No. I looked. The room was empty. It would’ve got caught by the beams. They’re checking upstairs, though.”

Kator slipped back among the ships.

The natives were alerted now, even if they did not seriously suspect an intruder like himself. Nonetheless, a great exultation was welling up inside him. He had prepared to break into one of the ships to discover the nature of its internal machinery. Now—thanks to the dismantled unit he had seen being worked on, that was no longer necessary. His high hopes, his long gamble, were about to pay off. His kingdom was before him.

Only two things were still to be done. The first was to make a visual record of the place to take Home, and the other was to get himself safely out of here and back to his small ship.

He took a hand recorder from his weapons belt and adjusted it. This device had been in operation recording his immediate vicinity ever since he had set foot outside his small ship. But adjustments were necessary to allow it to record the vast shapes and spaces about him. Kator made the necessary adjustments and for about half an hour flitted about like an entertainment-maker, taking records not only of the huge ships, and their number, but of everything else about this secret underground field. It was a pity, he thought, that he could not get up to also record the structure of the ceiling lost overhead in the brightness of the half-mile-distant light sources. But it went without saying that the Muffled People would have some means of letting the ships out through the apparently solid ground and buildings overhead.

Finished at last, Kator worked his way back to the room containing the elevator shaft. Almost, in the vast maze of ships and jacks, he had forgotten where it was, but the sense of direction which had been part of his scoutship training paid off. He found it and came at last back to its entrance.

He halted there, peering at the platform sitting innocuously waiting at the shaft bottom. To cross the room to it would undoubtedly fire the automatic mechanism of the blue beams again—which, aside from the danger that posed, would this time fully alert the blue-clad natives with the weapons harnesses.

For a long second Kator stood, thinking with a rapidity he had hardly matched before in his life. Then a farfetched scheme occurred to him. He knew that the area behind the door was safe. From there, two long leaps would carry him to the platform. If he, with his different Ruml muscles, could avoid that single touching of the floor, he might be able to reach the platform without triggering off the defensive mechanism. There was a way but it was a stake-everything sort of proposition. If he missed, there would be no hope of avoiding the beams.

The door opened inward, and it was about six feet in height, three and a half feet in width. From its most inward point of swing it was about twenty-two feet from the platform. Reaching in, Kator swung it at right angles to the entrance, so that it projected into the room. Then he backed up and took off his foot coverings, tucking them into pouches of his mufflings.

He got down on hands and feet and arched his back. His claws extended themselves from fingers and toes, clicking on the concrete floor. For a moment he felt a wave of despair that the clumsy mufflings hampering him would make the feat impossible. But he resolutely shoved that thought from his mind. He backed up further until he was a good thirty feet from the door.

He thought of his kingdom and launched himself forward.

He was a young adult Ruml in top shape. By the time he had covered the thirty feet he was moving at close to twenty miles an hour. He launched himself from a dozen feet out for the entrance and flew to the inmost top edge of the door.

He seemed barely to touch the door in passing. But four sets of claws clamped on the door, making the all-important change in direction and adding additional impetus to his flying body. Then the platform and the shaft seemed to fly to meet him and he slammed down on the flat surface with an impact that struck the breath from his body.

The beams did not fly. Half-dazed, but mindful of the noise he had made in landing, Kator fumbled around the edge of the shaft for the button he had marked from the doorway, punched it, and felt the platform thrust him upward.

On the ride up he recovered his breath. He made no attempt to replace the clumsy foot-coverings and drew his handgun, keeping it ready in his hand. The second the platform stopped at the top of the shaft he was off it and running noiselessly back along the conveyor belt at a speed which no native would have been able to maintain in the crouched position in which Kator was holding himself.

There were sounds of natives moving all about the factory building in which he was—but for all that he was half-persuaded that he still might make his escape unobserved, when a shout erupted only about a dozen feet away within the maze of machinery off to his left.

“Stop there! You!”

Without hesitation, Kator fired in the direction of the voice and dived off the conveyor belt into a tangle of gears at his right. Behind him came a groan and the sound of a falling body and a blue beam lanced from another direction through the spot where he had stood a second before.

A dozen feet back in the mechanical maze, Kator clung to a piece of ductwork and listened. His first impression had been that there were a large number of the natives searching the building. Now he heard only three voices, converging on the spot where the first voice had hailed him.

“What happened?”

“I thought I saw something—” the voice that had hailed Kator groaned. “I tried to get a clear shot and I slipped down in between the drums, here.”

“You jammed in there?”

“I think my leg’s broke.”

“You say you saw something?”

“I thought I saw something. I don’t know. I guess that alarm had me seeing things—there’s nothing on the belt now. Help me out of here, will you!”

“Give me a hand, Corry.”

“Easy—take it easy!”

“All right… All right. We’ll get you in to the doctor.”

Kator clung, listening, as the two who had come up later lifted their hurt companion out of wherever he had fallen, and carried him out of the building. Then there was nothing but silence; and in that silence, Kator drew a deep breath. It was hardly believable; but for this, too, the Morahnpa had had a saying—Perfection attracts the Random Factor—favorably as well as unfavorably.

Quietly, Kator began to climb back toward the conveyor belt. Now that he could move with less urgency, he saw a clearer route to it. He clambered along and spotted a straight climb along a sideways-sloping, three-foot-wide strip of metal filling the gap between what seemed to be the high side of a turbine and a narrow strip of darkness a foot wide alongside more ductwork. The strip led straight as a road to the open area where the conveyor belt began, and there was the door where Kator had originally entered.

Perfection attracts the Random Factor…. Kator slipped out on the strip of metal and began to scuttle along it. His claws scratched and slipped. It was slicker than he had thought. He felt himself sliding. Grimly, in silence, he tried to hold himself back from the edge of darkness. Still blunting his claws ineffectually on the polished surface, he slid over the edge and fell—

To crashing darkness and oblivion.

When he woke, he could not at first remember where he was. It seemed that he had been unconscious for some time but far above him the light still streamed through the high windows of the building at the same angle, almost, as when he had emerged from the platform on his way out. He was lying in a narrow gap between two vertical surfaces of metal. Voices suddenly struck strongly on his ear—the voices of two natives standing in the open space up ahead between Kator and the door.

“Not possible,” one of the voices was saying. “We’ve looked everywhere.”

“But you left the place to carry Rogers to the infirmary?”

“Yes, sir. But I took him in myself. Corry stood guard outside the door there. Then, when I came back we searched the whole place. There’s no one here.”

“Sort of a funny day,” said the second voice. “First, that short or whatever it was, downstairs, and then Rogers thinking he saw someone and breaking his leg.” The voice moved off toward the door. “Well, forget it, then. I’ll write it up in my report and we’ll lock the building behind us until an inspector can look it over.”

There was the sound of the small door in the big truck door opening.

“What’s anybody going to steal, anyway?” said the first voice, following the other through the door. “Put a half million tons of spaceship under one arm and carry it out?”

“Regulations…” the second voice faded away into the outdoors as the door closed.

Kator stirred in his darkness.

For a moment he was afraid he had broken a limb himself. But his leg appeared to be bruised, rather than broken. He wriggled his way forward between the two surfaces until some other object blocked his way. He climbed up and over this—more ductwork yet, it seemed—and emerged a second later into the open area.

The local sun was well up in the center of the sky as he slipped out of the building. No one was in sight. At a half-speed, limping run, Kator dodged along in the shade of an adjoining building; and a couple of minutes later he was safely through the gate of the complex and into the safe shelter of the trees paralleling the dirt road—headed back toward his ship.

The native fisherman was no longer beside the creek. No one at all seemed to be in sight in the warm day. Kator made it back to his ship; and, only when he was safely inside its camouflaged entrance, did he allow himself the luxury of a feeling of safety. For—at that—he was not yet completely safe. He simply had a ship in which to make a run for it, if he was discovered now. He throttled the feeling of safety down. It would be nightfall before he could risk taking off. And that meant that it must be nightfall before he took the final step in securing his kingdom.

He got rid of the loathsome mufflings he had been forced to wear and tended to his wrenched leg. It was painful, but it would be all right in a week at most. And he could use it now for any normal purpose. The recorder he had been carrying was smashed—that must have happened when he had the fall in the building. However, the record of everything he had done up to that moment would be still available within the recording element. No more was needed back Home. Now, if only night would fall!

Kator limped restlessly back and forth in the restricted space of the small ship as the shadows lengthened. At last, the yellow sun touched the horizon and darkness began to flood in long shadows across the land. Kator sat down at the communications board of his small ship and keyed in voice communication alone with the Expedition Headquarters on the moon.

The speaker crackled at him.

“Keysman?”

He said nothing.

“Keysman? This is the Captain. Can you hear us?”

Kator held his silence, a slight smile on his Ruml lips.

“Keysman!”

Kator leaned forward to the voice-collector before him. He whispered into it.

“No use—” he husked brokenly, “natives… surrounding me here. Captain—”

Kator paused. There was a moment’s silence, and then the Captain’s voice broke in.

“Keysman! Hold on. We’ll get ships down to you and—”

“No time—” husked Kator. “Destroying self and ship. Get Home…”

He reached out to his controls and sent the little ship leaping skyward into the dark. As it rose, he fired a cylindrical object back into the ground where it had lain. And, three seconds later, the white, actinic glare of a phase-shift explosion lighted the landscape.

But by that time, Kator was drilling safely upward through the night darkness.

He took upwards of four hours, local time, to return to the Expedition Headquarters. There was no response as he approached the surface above the hidden ship and its connected network of rooms excavated out of the undersurface. He opened the passage that would let his little ship down in, by remote control, and left the small ship for the big one.

There was no one in the corridors or in the outer rooms of the big ship. When Kator got to the gathering room, they were all there, lying silent. As he had expected, they had not followed his orders to return to the Ruml Homeworld. Indeed, with the ship locked and the keys lost with their Keysman, they could not have raised ship except by an extreme butchery of their controls, or navigated her once they had raised her. They had assumed, as Kator had planned, that their Keysman—no doubt wounded and dying on the planet below—had been half-delirious and forgetful of the fact he had locked the ship and taken her keys.

With a choice between a slow death and a fast, they had taken the reasonable choice; and suicided politely, with the lesser ranks first and the Captain last.

Kator smiled, and went to examine the ship’s recorder. The Captain had recited a full account of the conversation with Kator, and the Expedition’s choice of action. Kator turned back to the waiting bodies. The Expedition’s ship had cargo space. He carried the dead bodies into it and set the space at below freezing temperature so that the bodies could be returned to their families—that in itself would be a point in his favor when he returned. Then he unlocked the ship, and checked the controls.

There was no great difference between any of the space-going vessels of the Ruml; and one man could handle the large Expedition ship as well as the smallest scout. Kator set a course for the Ruml Homeworld and broke the ship free of the moon’s surface into space.

As soon as he was free of the solar system, he programmed his phase shift mechanism, and left the ship to take itself across immensity. He went back to his own quarters.

There, things were as they had been before he had gone down to the planet of the Muffled People. He opened a service compartment to take out food, and he lifted out also one of the alcohol-producing cultures. But when he had taken this last back with the food to the table that held his papers, badges, and the cube containing the worm, he felt disinclined to swallow the culture.

The situation was too solemn, too great, for drunkenness.

He laid the culture down and took up the cube containing the worm. He held it to the light above the table. In that light the worm seemed almost alive. It seemed to turn and bow to him. He laid the cube back down on the table and walked across to put his smashed recording device in a resolving machine that would project its story onto a life-size cube of the room’s atmosphere. Then, as the lights about him dimmed, and the morning he had seen as he emerged from his small ship the morning of that same day, he hunkered down on a seat with a sigh of satisfaction.

It is not every man who is privileged to review a few short hours in which he has gained a Kingdom.

The Expedition ship came back to the Ruml Homeworld, and its single surviving occupant was greeted with the sort of excitement that had not occurred in the lifetime of anyone then living. After several days of due formalities, the moment of real business arrived, and Kator Secondcousin Bruto gas was summoned to report to the heads of the fifty great families of the Homeworld. Now those families would number fifty-one, for The Brutogas would after this day—at which he was only an invited observer—be listed among their number. Fifty-one long-whiskered male Rumls, therefore, took their seats in a half-circle facing a small stage, and out onto that stage came Kator Secondcousin to salute them all with claws over the region of his heart.

“Keysman,” said the eldest family head present, “give us your report.”

Kator saluted again. His limp was almost gone now but his whiskers were barely grown a few inches. Also, he seemed to have lost weight and aged on the Expedition.

“My written report is before you, sirs,” he said. “As you know we set up a headquarters on the moon of the planet of the Muffled People. As you know, my Captain and men, thinking me dead, suicided. As you know, I have returned.”

He stopped talking and saluted again. The family heads waited in some surprise. Finally, the eldest broke the silence.

“Is that all you have to say, Keysman?”

“No, sirs,” said Kator. “But I’d like to show you the recording I made of the secret place of the Muffled People before I say anything further.”

“By all means,” said the eldest family head. “Go ahead.”

Kator saluted again, and put the smashed recorder into a resolving machine at one edge of the stage. He stood beside it while the heads of the great families watched the incidents from Kator’s landing to the moment of his fall in the factory building that had smashed the recorder.

“After I fell,” said Kator, as he switched the resolving machine off beside him, “I came to hear two natives discussing the fact they had been unable to find anyone prowling about. They left, and I got away, back to my small ship. From then on, it was simple. I waited until darkness ensured that it was safe for me to take off unnoticed. Then I armed the device I had rigged to simulate a small phase-shift explosion, and called Expedition Headquarters. As I’d planned, my voice-message and my imitation explosion with its indication that the ship’s keys were lost for good, left the rest of the Expedition no choice but polite suicide. I gave them ample time to do so before I re-entered the Expedition ship and headed her Home.”

Kator stopped talking. There was a remarkable silence from the fifty-one faces staring at him for a long moment—and then a rising mutter of question and incredulity. The strong voice of the eldest family head cut across this.

“Are you telling us you planned the suicides of your Captain and men?”

Kator’s face twisted in a sudden, apparently uncontrollable fashion. Almost as if he had been ready to laugh.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I planned it.”

There was another dead silence.

“In the name of… why?” burst out the eldest. At one side of the half-circle of faces, the face of The Brutogas looked stricken with paralysis.

Kator’s face twisted again.

“Our ancestor, The Morahnpa,” he said, “once ensured the conquest of a world and a race by his own individual actions. Because of this, and to encourage others who might do likewise, the principle was laid down that whoever might match The Morahnpa’s action, might have, as The Morahnpa did, complete sovereignty over the natives of such a conquered world, after the conquest was accomplished. That is—other men might be entitled to take their advantages of the world and race itself. But its true conqueror, during his lifetime, would be the final authority on the planet.”

“What’s history got to do with this?” It was noticeable that the use of Kator’s title of Keysman had begun to be forgotten by the eldest of the family heads. “The Morahnpa not only earned his right to a world, he was in such a position that the world could not be taken without his assistance.”

“Or the Muffled People’s world without mine,” said Kator. “I had intended to return with a situation that was quite clear-cut. I left our base on the moon unhidden when I returned. It would be bound to be discovered within a limited time. During that limited time, I would offer my knowledge of where the place of strength of the Muffled People was—in turn for the planet of the Muffled People being granted to me as my kingdom—as his world was to The Morahnpa.”

“In that case,” said the eldest, “you made a mistake in showing us your recording.”

“No,” said Kator. “I’ve renounced my ambition.”

“Renounced?” The fifty-one faces watched Kator without moving as the eldest spoke. “Why?”

Kator’s face twitched again.

“Let me show you the rest of the recording.”

“The rest—” began the eldest. But Kator was already turning to the resolving machine. He turned it on.

For a second there was nothing to be seen—only the bright flicker of a destroyed recording. Then, this cleared magically and the fifty-one found themselves looking at a native of the Muffled People—the same who had spoken to Kator earlier on the recording.

He took the container of burning vegetation out of his mouth, knocked the vegetation out of it on a rock beside him, overhanging the creek, and put the pipe away. Then he addressed them in perfect Ruml.

“Greetings,” he said. “To all, and particularly to those heads of leading families who are viewing this. As you possibly already know, I am a member of that race you Ruml refer to as Muffled People, but which are correctly called humans”—he pronounced the native word carefully for them—“Heh-eu-manz. With a little practice you’ll find it not hard at all to say.”

There was the beginning of a babble from the semicircle of seats.

“Quiet!” barked the eldest head of family.

“…We humans,” the native was saying, smiling at them, “have quite a warlike history, but we really don’t like wars. We prefer to be independent, but on good terms with our neighbors. Accordingly, let me show you some of the means we’ve developed to obtain our preference.”

The scene changed suddenly. The assembled Ruml saw before them one of the small, long-tailed, scavenging animals Kator had used as collectors. This was smaller than Kator’s and white-furred. It was nosing its way up and down the corridors of a topless box—here being baffled by a dead end corridor, there finding an entrance through to an adjoining corridor.

“This,” said the voice of the native, “is a device called a ‘maze’ used to test the intelligence of the experimental animal you see. This device is one of the investigative tools used in our study of a division of knowledge known as ‘psychology’—which corresponds to a certain extent with the division of knowledge you Ruml refer to as Family-study.”

The scene changed back to the native on the creekbank.

“Psychology teaches us humans many useful things about how other organisms must react—this is because it is founded upon basic and universal desires, such as the urge of the individual or the race to survive.”

He lifted the pole he held.

“This,” he said, “though it was used by humans long before we began to study psychology consciously, operates upon psychological principle—”

The view slid out along the rod, down the line attached to its tip, and through the surface of the water. It continued underwater down the line to a dirt worm like the one in Kator’s cube. Then it moved off to the side a few inches and picked up the image of a native underwater creature possessing no limbs, but a fan-shaped tail and minor fans farther up the body. The creature swam to the worm and swallowed it. Immediately it began to struggle and a close-up revealed a barbed metal hook in the worm. The creature, however, for all its struggling was drawn up out of the water by the native, who hit it on the head and put it in a woven box.

“You see,” said the native, cheerfully, “that this device makes use of the subject’s—a ‘fish’ we call it—desire to survive, on a very primitive level. To survive the fish must eat. We offer it something to eat, but in taking it, the fish delivers itself into our hands, by fastening itself to the hook attached to our line.

“All intelligent, space-going races we have encountered so far seem to exhibit the universal desire to survive. To survive, most seem to believe that they must dominate any other race they encounter, or risk domination themselves. Our study of psychology shows that this is a false assumption. To maintain its domination over another intelligent race, a race must eventually bankrupt its resources, both physical and non-physical. However—it is entirely practical for one race to maintain its domination long enough to teach another race that domination is impractical.

“The worm on my hook,” he said, “is known as ‘bait.’ The worm you found in the wreckage of the human spaceship was symbolic of the fact that the wreckage itself was bait. We have many such pieces of bait drifting outwards from our area of space here. And as I told Kator Secondcousin Brutogas, you never can tell what you’ll catch. The object in catching, of course, is to be able to study what takes the bait. Now, when Kator Secondcousin took the spaceship wreckage in tow, there was a monitor only half a light-year away that notified us of that fact. Kator’s path home was charted and we immediately went to work, here.

“When your expeditionary ship came, it was allowed to land on our moon and an extensive study was made not only of it, but of the psychology of the Rumls you sent aboard it. After as much could be learned by that method as possible, we allowed one of your collectors to find our underground launching site and for one of your people to come down and actually enter it.

“We ran a number of maze-level tests on Kator Secondcousin while he was making his entrance to and escaping from the underground launching site. You’ll be glad to hear that your Ruml intelligence tests quite highly, although you aren’t what we’d call maze-sophisticated. We had little difficulty influencing Kator to leave the conveyor belt and follow a route that would lead him onto a surface too slippery to cross. As he fell we rendered him unconscious—”

There was a collective sound, half-grunt, half-gasp, from the listening Ruml audience.

“And, during the hour that followed, we were able to make complete physical tests and studies of an adult male Ruml. Then Kator was put back where he had fallen and allowed to return to consciousness. Then he was let escape.”

The human got up, picked up his rod, picked up his woven basket with the underwater creature inside, and nodded to them.

“We now,” he said, “know all about you. And you, with the exception of Kator, know nothing about us. Because of what we have learned about your psychology, we are confident that Kator’s knowledge will not be allowed to do you any good.” He lifted a finger. “I have one more scene to show you.”

He vanished, and they looked instead into the immensity of open space. The constellations were vaguely familiar and those who had had experience recognized the spatial area as not far removed from their own planetary system. Through this star-dimness stretched inconceivable great shape followed by great shape, like dark giant demons waiting.

“Kator,” said the voice of the native, “should have asked himself why there was so much empty space in the underground launching area. Come see us on Earth whenever you’re ready to talk.”

The scene winked out. In the new glare of the lights, the fifty-one proud heads of families stared at Kator Secondcousin, who stared back. Then, as if at some unconscious signal, they rose as one man and swarmed upon him.

“You fools!” cackled Kator with a Ruml’s mad laugh-ter, as he saw them coming at him. “Didn’t he say you wouldn’t have any use of what I know?” He went down under their claws. “Force won’t work against these people—that’s what he was trying to tell you! Why do you have to take the bait just the way I did—”

But it was no use. He felt himself dying.

“All right!” he choked at them, as a red haze began to blot out the world about him. “Learn the hard way for yourselves. Killing me won’t do any good…”

And of course he was quite right. It didn’t.