WOMAN DRIVER

Fantastic – June 1954

(1954)*

Randall Garrett

"THIS is one of the great landmarks in the story of Man's conquest of Space!" the announcer's voice said over the TV sets of a nation. "It is exactly twenty minutes until midnight, and you have just witnessed the landing of the Aries, the ship which has carried the First Martian Expedition to Mars and back!

"Look! The airlock door is opening! Camera—a little closer—that's it.

"There he is! The man we've all been waiting to see, Dr. Samuel Cartwright, leader of the expedition! And there, behind him, waving his hand, is Channing Gosmith, second in command!"

The screens showed their faces. Cartwright was a hard-muscled man in his thirties with salt-and-pepper grey hair and hazel eyes set in a network of fine wrinkles from squinting at the same Martian sky that had burned his skin brown with poorly filtered ultraviolet.

Channing Gosmith was thinner than Cartwright, with sandy, bushy hair, an easy smile, and an undefinable gleam in his eyes.

The announcer moved toward them, reaching Gosmith first. "Mr. Gosmith! Would you say a few words? What's it like on Mars?"

Gosmith grinned at the camera. "Same as Texas: flat, dry, and no beer."

"Thank you. Dr. Cartwright?"

Cartwright nodded. "Sure. Hello, Merrilyn. I'll be right home."

"Uh—thank you, Doctor. Merrilyn is Dr. Cartwright's daughter. She's at home watching now. Imagine she's the happiest girl on Earth right now—aren't you Merrilyn?"

It is a matter of record that the announcer was wrong on all three counts. Merrilyn was not at home, she was not happy, and she was not on Earth.

She had gone walking in Central Park a few hours before.

Inside a ship three billion miles from Earth, two men were checking spectral readings from the sun.

Koreil had decided from those readings that Sol was a nova in the making. He looked at the figures on the calculator, punched in two more operators, and looked again.

"Hi ho," he said to Bort. "Another firecracker. Blooey in six weeks."

Bort nodded. "I guess we'll have to take a look at her."

Koreil set the ship into a spiral orbit which would take them in toward the sun in the plane of the ecliptic.

When a Galactic Survey ship finds a star that is about to vent off a billion billion horsepower of latent energy in one burst, the humane thing to do is to find out if there is anyone who is going to get killed in the process. If there is, the Galactic Bureau of Stellar Engineering can be called in to stabilize the star. But the Stellar Engineers have neither the time nor the finances to go galloping off to every star that overworks itself; they go only if the star has inhabited planets.

As the ship approached the sun, Koreil dictated to the transcriber.

"This is a normal elevenplanet system for this stellar class. Positions ten and eleven are occupied by small high-density planets. Then come four methane giants. The one in position seven is surrounded by a system of tiny satellites which form an almost solid-looking ring around it. Position five is occupied by a group of several thousand small planetoids instead of a single solid body. Grindel's Phenomenon. Position four is occupied by a reddish—"

"Hey, Korry!" Bort whooped. "Check Three! Get a good look! Inhabited, or I'm a snorgle's brother-in-law!"

Koreil looked at the instrument readings, changed course, and headed for the third planet. The sphere swelled in the plate and became a huge globe as the ship stopped abruptly fifty thousand miles from its surface.

A planet that is naturally suited for habitation can be spotted from space without even bothering to check the instruments. It must have air, water, and copious vegetation. And all of these can be seen from fifty thousand miles.

"Inhabitable," agreed Koreil, "but is it inhabited? And if it is, by whom? Remember the time the Engineers gave us hell for calling them to rescue a planet full of—"

"Don't mention it," Bort said darkly. "This time, we'll make sure. Let's go down and see."

Koreil dropped the spaceship to the night side of the planet, settling gently in a wooded area in the centre of a large city.

"Do you think they could have spotted us?" Bort wondered.

"Not a chance. I had all the screens on. Unless they're a hell of a lot more advanced than we are, this ship is totally invisible. Let's go out and scout around."

They stepped out into the darkness, staying well within the shell of the ship's radiation nullifies. In the distance, they could hear the noise of the city, but there didn't seem to be anyone nearby. They stepped through the invisibility screen into the moonlit clearing.

"Don't get too far from the ship," Koreil warned. "And keep your stunner out; no telling what we might meet."

They walked cautiously toward an artificially lighted path, and suddenly saw someone. It was a heavy-set individual in dark blue clothing who was strolling along, looking this way and that with seeming unconcern. He was definitely human.

"Okay," whispered Koreil, "we'll make contact. You go out and talk to him while I cover you. Holster your own weapon and keep your hands away from it; I notice he's wearing a weapon of some kind. It's probably customary to go armed on a backward planet like this, so take it easy."

Bort holstered his gun and walked determinedly toward the blue-clad stroller.

The first thing that the Galactic learned about Earthmen was that they could move fast. When the native saw Bort, his eyes darted to the gun the Galactic was wearing. Then, quite suddenly, he. had his own gun out, and Bort was staring down a tube that looked as big around as his thumb.

Bort raised his hands slowly as the scowling native said something in a faintly guttural language.

"I don't get you, bub," Bort answered, "but I wish Koreil would beam you down."

At that moment, he felt a faint vibration and heard an almost inaudible foosh! of sound in the air.

Koreil had seen the native draw his weapon. Immediately, he lifted his stunner and took careful aim. Just before he pulled the trigger, he, too, heard the noise and felt the faint vibration. Then his finger made contact, activating the stunner.

Nothing happened.

The native just stood there, gun levelled at Bort. Then he blew on a shrill whistle.

Koreil turned and ran back toward the ship. Something was screwy as hell here! The stunner—

He turned his head a little to look back at Bort, and slammed hard into another of the blue-clad natives. The woods were full of them!

It was not until the native was clamping handcuffs on him that Koreil realized why his stun gun hadn't worked. The noise he had heard! The guns were powered from the ship, and the ship had taken off!

Merrilyn Cartwright was brunette, beautiful, and seventeen. There is hardly any point in describing her further; just think of a girl who has the proper kind of mouth, eyes, breasts, hips, and legs to make her beautiful, and you have as good a description as you need.

She had been acquiring the perfection of these accoutrements over a period of only a little over two years, so she was quite aware and quite proud of them. Mrs. Marmunster of the Long Island School for Girls was equally aware of them, and she also knew New York. She had warned Merrilyn innumerable times not to go walking in Central Park after dark.

Merrilyn, on the other hand, believed she could take care of herself, so she made a definite point of walking in Central Park after dark.

Tonight, however, she was beginning to have doubts about her own good judgment. For the past three minutes, an unshaven man with funny eyes had been following her.

She stepped up her pace a little, but she didn't run. The man with the funny eyes began to walk faster too. When she realized he was catching up, a wave of terror flooded over her, and without realizing what she was doing, she broke and ran.

The man ran after her.

Quickly, she darted off into the bushes. If only she could hide somewhere! Anywhere! She could hear her pursuer's heavy breathing as he stumbled through the brush.

She turned her head for a quick look. The man couldn't see her now; he was behind some shrubbery. Heart racing, Merrilyn threw herself under a low bush and kept very still.

The man stopped, too. For a minute or two, there was no noise in the gloom. Then she could hear footsteps very softly on the grass as the man prowled about, looking for her. From her hiding place, she could see him very faintly in the moonlight.

Finally, he began to walk away from her, still prowling, still looking for her.

Cautiously, Merrilyn crawled out from under the bush, took a deep breath, and started running again. She hadn't gone ten yards when all the lights went out.

She stopped, panic-stricken.

There had been a little light, enough to see by, before. Now there was none. She listened. There was no sound of pursuit. She relaxed a little and took a few more steps.

And bumped into a wall.

There shouldn't have been a wall there. She knew the Park well enough to know that.

She stopped again, trembling. Why had the street lights gone out? What had happened to the moon?

Gathering courage again she took a small pencilbeam from her purse. The little spot of light showed that the wall was made of metal. She walked along it, hoping that the man with the funny eyes wouldn't see her light.

She had no way of knowing that the nullifier screens of a Galactic ship stop all light in both directions.

Something clicked! She jumped back as a door slid open in front of her. Through the door, she saw a bright, friendly-looking room.

Merrilyn was a badly frightened girl. She wanted to get out of the dark and into the light, where she could possibly find help. So when the door opened, she didn't even hesitate. She ran inside.

Within the room, she found, to her astonishment, an instrument board that looked similar to the spaceship control panels she had seen in magazines. The door was open, and Merrilyn for obvious reasons, wanted it closed. She knew where the airlock control of an ordinary ship was supposed to be, so when she found a similar lever in almost the same place on the panel, she pulled it.

The door closed all right, but that was merely a secondary function of the mechanism. If Merrilyn had been able to read the lettering on the plate next to the lever, she would have read:

EMERGENCY

ULTRADRIVE TAKEOFF

EMERGENCY USE ONLY!

She felt a faint buzz sensation and a slight lurch as the trip speared into interstellar space.

The viewpoint in front of her was dark, and she assumed that it was polarized, like the sun-room at home. She reached out one hand and turned the control knob beneath the port.

The guess was a little closer this time. The knob not only turned on the plate, but punched a hole through the nullifier screen so that the occupant of the ship could see' out.

"Golly!" Merrilyn gasped.

She knew where she was, well enough; she had seen plenty of pictures taken from the space stations. She was out in space!

The only trouble was that the stars which floated outside the ship seemed to be moving—and that wasn't possible! You'd have to be travelling faster than the speed of light to make the stars look as though they were moving!

Then, directly ahead of her, a star began to brighten. In less than half a minute, it grew from a point of light to a perceptible disc. It ballooned toward her, increasing in size, reminding her of the first time she'd seen a baseball thrown at the camera in a three-D movie. And then it became a great sea of flame that flared and reached for her soundlessly for a fraction of a second before the ship hit the photosphere of the giant sun.

Patrolman Petrelli was known throughout the Manhattan Squad as Trigger-happy Lou. He never hesitated to draw his pistol when he felt the situation warranted it. He had even been known to finger the butt of his weapon when he cautioned a man against smoking in the subway.

And Petrelli knew the laws of New York, especially that one which bore the name of Sullivan.

So when he saw the oddly dressed man with the shaven head step out of the dimness of Central Park with a gun strapped to his waist, Petrelli had his own gun out before the man could do anything.

"Awright, you!" he bawled, "Keep yer hands away from that rod!"

"Ouala er uno thaoura, gok. Unalis Koreil thenorr," the man said softly as he raised his hands.

"Cut out the double-talk! What's yer name?"

"Iquilti forn?"

Trigger-happy Lou narrowed his eyes. Foreigner, hey? He pulled out his whistle and blew, never taking his eyes off the stranger.

Quickly, the rest of the boys were piling into the walkway. And, wonder of wonders, Sergeant O'Malley had another man dressed exactly like the prisoner.

It didn't take long for the officers to disarm the pair and call the paddy wagon.

Within a very few minutes, there was the whir of copter blades, and the paddy wagon settled to the lawn. The police ushered the prisoners in and took off for the precinct station. -

"I'm always pleased," said Sergeant O'Malley importantly, "when a trap comes off as planned. It was pretty smart of the lieutenant to figure that all those attacks on girls were being committed by the same guy."

"We got two of 'em, though," Petrelli objected.

The sergeant said. "Sure. That's twice as good."

No one could argue with such infallible logic as that.

In the locked section, Bort looked at his handcuffs and then at Koreil. "May I ask just what the hell happened?"

"These barbarians have swiped our ship," Koreil explained. "I don't know what kind of a jam we're in, but I don't like the looks of it."

"How could they steal the ship," Bort wanted to know. "Didn't you lock it?"

"Certainly I did! I used the photonic lock so that we could get in a hurry if we had to."

"It must have been easy to open, all right," said Bort sarcastically.

"Okay, so it was my fault. Meanwhile, let's study the language so we can get ourselves out of this jam."

Bort frowned. "I've been working on it."

Blessed with an almost perfect memory, and a knowledge of language structures, Bort was trying to correlate words with actions and objects when the natives spoke.

The paddy wagon landed on the precinct station roof, and the two men were taken downstairs to the desk.

"What's the charge?" the desk sergeant asked O'Malley.

"Carrying deadly weapons," O'Malley said. "And I think the lieutenant will want to talk to them about the Central Park cases."

"Okay. Fill out the charge sheets. Where's the rods?"

Now, one thing the desk sergeant prided himself on was his knowledge of hand weapons. So when the two gunbelts were placed on the desk, he frowned. They bore a superficial resemblance to the old German P-38—but only superficial. They were smoother, and they weren't the right shade of blue for gunmetal.

He pulled one from its holster, and his frown grew deeper. No gun could possibly be that light.

His finger found a stud on the butt, and he pressed it. There was a click, and the butt unfolded in his hands. He could see that there were no cartridges in it.

Koreil and Bort had been watching, wondering if the native were familiar with a stun gun. They winced as the sergeant pulled out a small translucent cube. If the power had been on, there would have been one less Earthman.

The desk sergeant looked at O'Malley. "Did you say deadly weapons, O'Malley?"

"Well, they—"

"O'Malley, these might—just might—accidentally kill a cockroach if you hit one with the butt end of it. They're kids' toys!"

O'Malley looked and was convinced. He turned and scowled at Petrelli. "Trigger-happy Lou! What's the matter with you? Always pulling a gun when you don't need it!"

Petrelli cringed and said nothing.

O'Malley bit his lip and turned back to the desk sergeant. "But I got to get 'em charged with something! Look at the way they're dressed!" He waved a hand. "They just look like sex fiends!"

The desk sergeant had to admit that the clothing was unusual. The men were dressed in a one-piece coverall made of iridescent material that changed colour as the men moved. The ensemble was completed by boots of a decided pinkish hue.

"Book 'em on suspicion," the desk sergeant decided. He speared Koreil with a finger. "What's your name?"

Koreil looked at Bort. "What does he want?"

"Your identification, I think. Try it."

Koreil rattled off his name and number. The sergeant wrote: Cory L. Pr.—

Then he paused. "What was the last name again?"

Koreil recognized the sergeant's questioning tone and repeated the number. The sergeant wrote: Prodidifasolalanet.

"Jeez," he said wonderingly, "What a name!"

Merrilyn Cartwright opened her eyes. The horrible flare of the star was gone. Outside, space looked normal again.

She took a deep breath and said: "Calm down, silly!"

In answer to her own admonishment, she did calm down. The rear plate showed the star receding rapidly in the distance until it became a point of light once more. She had no idea how the ship had managed to avoid the star while she'd had her eyes shut, but she was thankful just the same.

Now, she thought, just what the heck happened?

Just how fast was she going, anyway? Well, suppose that the star were the same size as the sun. Sol, she knew, showed a barely perceptible disc at roughly two billion miles. The time that had elapsed since the star's first appearance as a disc and her near miss couldn't have been more than ten seconds. That figured out to roughly one thousand times the speed of light.

"Golly!" she said in awe.

She looked at the complex control board in front of her. There was no way of knowing which button did what. The lever she had pulled to start the ship had gone back to its original position, which probably meant that it wasn't capable of stopping the ship once it had been started.

There must be some way to stop! She frowned at the board. Nothing made any sense except the steering wheel. But Merrilyn was afraid to use the steering wheel.

External affairs made up her mind for her. Another star was beginning to grow on the forward plate; a red giant that started to bloom to fantastic size in a few seconds. Terrified, Merrilyn grabbed the wheel; the ship had been able to dodge the last one, but this one looked too big! She twisted the wheel and the star zoomed off to her left, bathing the plate in a bloody red. Another light replaced it; a blue companion that had been concealed by the greater red body. Again she twisted the wheel, and the blue star veered off to one side.

Then the star plate looked clear for awhile.

"Whooie!" Merrilyn let out her breath gustily. She was scared, but she was darned if she'd let it get her.

She realized then that she'd have to up her estimate of the ship's velocity by a factor of a hundred. The stars came too fast for her first estimate.

What next? She didn't like the idea of dodging stars all over the Galaxy. Working the wheel very carefully, she managed to aim the ship at a spot on the plate that seemed to be fairly empty of stars. That should give her time enough to think.

She relaxed in the chair and tried to concentrate, her eyes watching the unreal drift of the stars.

She had no intention of going to sleep, but it was long after her normal bedtime, and she kept dozing off, lulled by the shifting grandeur of interstellar space.

She was jerked to full awareness by the growing light in the plate. Another star! She grabbed the wheel and pulled. The star looped under her, only to be replaced by another one. Again she turned. Two of the great globes sizzled by to her left, and another appeared at the top of the plate. She gritted her teeth and hung on, dodging the flying balls of incandescent gas for dear life.

She realized that she was in the centre of a giant cluster, where stars' distances from each other was measured in light-weeks instead of light-years.

As a space pilot, Merrilyn left a great deal to be desired. She twisted and pulled the wheel too hard; every time she dodged one star, she found herself having to jerk the wheel again to elude another. Veering from the blazing spheres made her feel as though she were riding a roller-coaster, and like a roller-coaster, her path was far from straight—she was practically going in circles.

Her reasoning mind told her that the stars were actually millions of miles away when they seem like they were ten feet away. But emotionally, the darned things scared her; she knew what a star was, and she had no desire to be vaporized.

But eventually, the laws of chance caught up with her. She swooped into a group of tightly-packed stars forming a multiple system. In order to steer clear of the first, she nearly hit the second. She cut the wheel hard, and found herself surrounded. She tried to twist again to get the ship aimed at a clear space, but she was too late. The ship plunged into the surface of a blazing blue giant—

And swung out again!

Nothing had happened. She wasn't dead; she wasn't even warm! Before she had time to recover from her surprise, the ship went directly through another sun and again emerged unharmed.

Mentally, she kicked herself in the seat of her lacy nylons. Looking at those stars on the plate wasn't like looking through a window. If the stars were really there, she'd have been blinded or roasted long ago. Besides, a ship couldn't go this fast in ordinary space; she must be in hyperspace or something.

She hadn't the foggiest notion of what hyperspace was, but it was nice to give the mystery a name.

Knowing that the stars could not hurt her helped, too. She took her sweaty hands off the wheel, dried them on her hanky, and began to inspect the control board. There must be some way of figuring it out. Logically, there would be safety factors incorporated in the controls which would keep the pilot from accidentally wrecking it.

She hoped that was true, because she was going to start pushing buttons.

Koreil leaned back on the hard bunk and looked at the tips of his shiny pink boots. In the next cell, he could hear Bort's voice haltingly enunciating the unfamiliar language of the natives. Bort was talking to a prisoner two cells away from Koreil's own.

"How's it coming?" Koreil called out.

"Pretty good. This guy doesn't talk sense sometimes, though. He smells as though he had been drinking."

Koreil rolled over on the bunk and looked through the bars at Bort and the drunk. Bort had spent most of the night analyzing the speech of the man; asking questions, making motions, and filing the answers away in his memory.

The drunk said: "I shtill don't get this, buddy. You shay you come from another star?"

"Thash right," agreed Bort. "And somebody shtole our shpa-ship."

The drunk blinked owlishly. "Shwiped it, hey? They goin' to Marsh?"

"Marsh?" queried Bort. "Whatsh Marsh?"

The drunk waved his hand. "It's a planet." He held up his fingers and began ticking them off clumsily. "Ten planetsh. Merc'ry, Venush, Earth, Marsh, Zhoopiter, Shaturn, Uranush, Nepchune, Pluto, and Charon." He somehow managed to end up with one finger left over, and he had to go over the whole list again to make sure.

Bort immediately correlated the names with the planets he and Koreil had charted when they came in.

"Shay," said the drunk, after he completed his finger inspection, "what did you guysh come here for? Takin' li'l trip?"

Bort shook his head. "Had-da come here to warn people. Yer shun'sh gonna blow up."

"My shun?" the drunk ejaculated, opening his eyes wide. "Ish he in trouble again?"

"Again?" Bort was puzzled. "You mean the shun hash had thish trouble before? And you shurvived?"

"I shurvived, all right, but he won't. Shilly fool kid. Drinksh too mush."

Bort saw the light. "Jush a minute. I'm talkin' about the shun in the shky. The one that shines in the daytime, shee?"

"Oohhhhhh! That sun. Ish it in trouble, too?"

"Yesh. Ish gonna blow up in about shiksh weeksh of your time."

"Blow up? You mean pffft! no more shun?"

"I mean pffft! no more Earth," corrected Bort.

The drunk's shoulders drooped disconsolately. "No more Earth. Thash too damn bad." He began to cry quietly, and nothing Bort could do would bring him out of it. He finally drifted off to sleep.

"What did he say?" Koreil wanted to know.

"He said it was too damn bad that the sun was going to go nova, and then went to sleep."

"That's what, it sounded like. I'm beginning to pick up a little of the language, myself. As soon as we get it down pat, all we'll have to do is get hold of one of their government officials and explain to them what their sun is going to do. We shouldn't have come out armed; they probably thought we were going to invade the planet, or some such nonsense. That's probably why they impounded our ship."

"Only one trouble," said Bort morosely.

"What's that?"

"I'm hungry."

They were both hungry, as it turned out, and they stayed that way until the turnkey brought them their breakfast at seven. When the tray was pushed through the bars, Bort sniffed at the cup of dark brown liquid and looked up at the turnkey.

"Whatsh thish shtuff?" he queried.

"It's black coffee," answered the guard, "and boy, do you need it!"

Koreil looked at his own cup. "I wonder why we need it? It smells like medicine."

"Maybe it is." Bort tasted the fluid. "It tastes as though it had some sort of alkaloid in it. Better not drink it." He poured his cup down the sanitation plumbing, refilled it with water from the tap, and ate the rest of his breakfast in silence. The only sound in the cell block was the drunk's peaceful snoring.

At eight-thirty the turnkey put in an appearance again.

"Awright, you guys; up and out. Time for court." He unlocked the doors, shook the drunk awake, and herded the three of them down the corridor.

Judge P. Marvin Goldwyn was a man who really enjoyed his work. Police court in the morning was something that made him feel he was doing his best for humanity. The out-and-out criminals, of course, he remanded for trial at a higher court, but the drunks, the vags and the petty assaults and such, were his meat.

Take this first chap, for instance. Charge: Drunk and Disorderly. He remembered the man from two weeks ago. He had been let off with a warning; now he. was back. Judge Goldwyn felt he would have to be stern with the poor fellow this time.

"Jonathon Printer," he said quietly.

The drunk stood up. "Yesh, yer honour?" He tried to look very wide awake and sober, but it didn't come off too well.

Judge Goldwyn read off the charge and asked: "How do you plead?"

"Very guilty, your honour, very guilty. I'm shorry it happened."

"So am I," Goldwyn said sternly. "I am sentencing you to be placed in the Alcoholic Clinic at Bellevue until such time as the Clinic Board sees fit to release you, such time not to exceed one year. Next case."

As the unfortunate Mr. Printer was led away, Koreil whispered: "Very good. On some barbaric planets, they simply imprison criminals for years without treatment."

The judge looked at the charge sheets on the next two offenders. Very interesting indeed.

With much tongue-twisting, he managed to call out the two names as the night sergeant had spelled them.

"You gentlemen are charged with vagrancy. Have you no home?"

"Yesh, shir. We shirtantly do," Bort answered promptly.

Goldwyn looked down his nose sharply. "Are you intoxicated, as well?"

"Intoxicated?" Bort didn't know the word.

"Drunk!" snapped the judge.

"No, shir. We're shober. Shober ash—" He tried to think of a proper simile, but the Bench cut him off.

"If you say you're as sober as a judge, I'll hold you in contempt! You certainly don't sound sober to me!"

Bort had been listening carefully to the judge's speech, and he realized where he had made his mistake. He was pronouncing the sibilant dental sound wrong. That's what he got for learning from a drunk.

"I'm sorry, your honour. I don't know yer language too well, and I ain't so soor of the pronunciason." He didn't realize that he was leaning too far in the other direction; neither of course, was he aware of his colloquialisms.

"I see," said Goldwyn. "Foreigners, eh? I'll have to see your passports later, but for right now, where do you come from?"

"Well, that'd be kinda hard to explain. We come from a planet named Kandoris which goes around a sun that's about—uh—uh—" He looked confused. "Do you know how fast light goes?"

"If you're looking for a term to measure stellar distances, you mean light-year. The distance light travels in a year."

"How long is a year?"

"Three hundred and sixty-five days," Goldwyn answered testily.

Bort didn't know what the figures meant, but he did grasp the idea that a year was the time required for the planet to make one revolution about its parent sun, and he knew what that was. He made a quick mental computation to convert the distance to Kandoris into Earth terms. Then he realized he didn't know the figures in English.

"Anyway," he said at last, "It's a long ways off. You could not see it from here."

"I dare say," said Goldwyn, narrowing his eyes.

"You see," Bort went on, encouraged by the judge's silence. "Our figuring sews that your sun is going to blow up in six weeks. We came to investigate and found that your planet had people on it. If you'll instruct your police to give us our space-sip, we'll call in a bunch of—uh—guys to fix up your sun."

He knew he wasn't getting the idea over properly, but it was the best he could do with the vocabulary at hand.

"I see," the judge nodded. "The end of the world is at hand, eh?"

"That's right," Bort smiled. "But we've got to get our space-ship back so we can call Kandoris."

Judge Goldwyn scribbled something furiously on the sheets before him, then smiled benevolently at the two men. "I am suspending judgment for awhile. If you gentlemen will just wait in the cell block for a few hours, I'll bring your case to the attention of an expert."

As they were being led back, a cop walked up to the turnkey.

"Hey, Joe! Guess what? Just got an alarm on the young Cartwright kid! Missing!"

The turnkey blinked. "You don't mean Doc Cartwright's daughter? How long's she been gone?"

"Since yesterday afternoon. Went to a movie and nobody's seen her since. No clothes, no money, no nothin'. Boy! Wait till the newsies get hold of this!"

The two Galactics weren't paying any attention to the local gossip. Koreil said: "This is easier than I thought. If the magistrate calls in an expert on stellar energies, we can show him our data and get the thing done in jig time."

Bort nodded. "Yeah. But I'm still not quite used to this language. That character seemed to have some funny overtones in his voice."

As the turnkey slid the cell doors shut with a loud click, Koreil grinned. "Relax, Bort. As soon as we talk to that expert, it'll be easy to get ourselves out of this mess."

"I hope so. I don't relish the idea of being burned to death."

Koreil yawned. "Just wait 'til we talk to that expert."

Galactic Survey Ship 862-343 hung dead in space. Inside it sat a very lonely and very frightened seventeen-year-old girl. Merrilyn Cartwright had been lost for three days.

After a little experimenting, she had managed to find the control that shut off the ultra-drive. You pushed it, and the ship popped out of hyperspace and stopped. At least it stopped as far as she could tell. The stars stopped moving, so whatever velocity the ship had was below that of light.

The first time she'd stopped the ship, she had been near a large sun, and within a very few minutes the ship had begun to heat up. Since she was in hyperspace no longer, the stars were as real as stars should be. They gave off heat.

She had turned on the drive again and moved away from the star. Then she'd tried to figure out where Earth was. In the past three days, she'd stopped a dozen times, each time after several hours of drive in what she hoped was the right direction. It never had been; she was lost in a stellar jungle of several hundred thousand suns.

She was weary from lack of sleep and lonely from lack of company. And she was crying from fear and frustration.

At the same time, some thousands of light-years away, on a planet that swung far out from the giant blue-white sun, Kandoris, the Chief Subradio Operator of the Galactic Survey Service looked at his report tabulator. Then he spoke into his intercom.

"Operator 34, what's happened to 862-343?"

"I don't know, sir. Their report is overdue, eh?"

"It is. Give them a call. Find out what's up."

"Right."

Operator 34 tuned in the frequency of GSS 862-343 and sent out a signal which turned on the radio inside the ship. Then he said: "Hello, Koreil. Are you there?"

There was no malice on his part, but it is still not considered cricket for a big, strapping man like Operator 34 to frighten the wits out of a seventeen-year-old girl.

Merrilyn had been crying softly, and she was perfectly sure she was alone in the Ship.

"Four, Koreil. Qual l'oul?" boomed a voice.

Merrilyn did two things at once: she leaped out of the control chair and shattered the air of the space-ship with an ear-splitting scream.

Operator 34 had certainly not been expecting such an answer as that. He looked aghast at the speaker and said: "That isn't you, is it, Koreil?"

The speaker gurgled and sobbed. Then, in English: "Who—who is it?"

It was so much gibberish to Operator 34.

"Koreil? Bort?" he asked hopefully. More gibberish. Quickly, he called the Chief Operator. "Chief! Get this stuff that's coming in over Koreil's subradio!"

The Chief listened. "Are you recording that?"

"Certainly."

"Good! Now get a locator on that ship! I'm calling the Galactic Patrol! There's an alien on board that ship!"

On board the ship, Merrilyn was trying to choke down her sobs of fear. "Whose voice was that? What—what are you saying?" No answer.

"Please! Please! You're frightening me!" Still no answer.

Then the thought came to her that the voice must belong to the owners of the ship, and a wave of horror swept over her.

Aliens!

The picture it conjured up in her mind was complete with green skin, tentacles, bug eyes, and fangs. She huddled in the seat and sobbed in terror.

Meanwhile, Commander Kenson of the Galactic Patrol was barking orders over his subradio to the fleet of battle cruisers under his command.

"When we get to the ship, we will use tractors and pressors to englobe it. Do not fire on it unless I give the word. Remember, we want that alien alive!"

An hour later, as planned, ten giant battle cruisers surrounded the tiny Survey ship and began to close in.

Merrilyn heard the automatic alarm, and looked fearfully at the plates which mirrored the great battleships.

The aliens were coming for her!

The green, tentacular thing in her mind reappeared with horrifying clarity. With a sob of terror, she grabbed the ultra-drive control and pushed. The ship tried to go into hyperspace, but Merrilyn's action was too late; the vast energies of the Patrol's tractor and pressor beams were anchored securely to normal space. The survey ship lurched a little, throwing Merrilyn to the floor, then the safety switches cut in, shutting off the ultradrive field.

Commander Kenson spoke into the intercom. "All right, close it up tight! Number Six, I want a boarding party. Twenty space marines in full armour, armed with stunner beams and driller beams! Watch it when you go through the airlock; don't let the air out. We want that alien alive if possible! "Hop to it!"

Within five minutes, twenty armed and armoured space marines were clamped on to the hull of the Survey ship with magnetic grapples and had surrounded the airlock.

The lieutenant in charge of the group didn't think it would work, but he tried the outer locking mechanism. To his surprise, the door opened easily.

"All right," he said, "let's go in. Watch for trouble." The marines followed him in, their weapons ready.

There was no one in the airlock, so the lieutenant closed the outer door and turned on the air pumps. When the pressure was up to normal, he eased open the inner door and leaped inside, covering the room with his gun. Behind him came twenty tough, space-hardened Galactic Patrol space marines brandishing their deadly driller beams.

They were confronted with one very beautiful and very young girl who had passed out cold on the deck.

MERRILYN CARTWRIGHT

STILL MISSING!

No Trace of Famous Martian

Explorer's Daughter,

Police Admit!

NEW YORK, July 12, 1991 (AP).—Merrilyn Jane Cartwright, 17, only daughter of widower Dr. Samuel Cartwright, is still missing, after four days of intensive search. The missing girl was last seen as she left her home in the penthouse of the New Waldorf at 14.00 hrs. last Monday, presumably to go shopping. Since then, no trace of the beautiful brunette teenager (see picture) has been found.

Captain Ulysses Fogarty, of the Missing Persons Bureau of New York said today that he fears foul play, and has ordered the Hudson and East Rivers probed.

Dr. Samuel Cartwright dropped the newspaper to the floor and rubbed his hand over his eyes.

"I guess I'm' a pretty poor father," he said aloud.

Channing Gosmith mixed brandy with soda. "Don't be silly, Sam. A girl couldn't have a better father. You've given her everything she's ever needed, and I think she appreciates it."

"You don't think I've spoiled her with too much money?"

"Of course not. I think you've handled her beautifully."

Cartwright shook his head. "I shouldn't have gone to Mars. I spent too much time away from her. If her mother had been alive—"

"Sam," Gosmith said, putting a drink in front of him, "that girl worships you because you went to Mars. You remember what she said in that diary the cops found."

"Yeah." Cartwright took a sip of his drink.

"If you want my personal opinion, Sam, I think she fell for some guy. She's—uh—grown up quite a bit in the last four years. I think she ran off to get married and is afraid to tell you."

"God, I hope so! That would be better than having Captain What'shisname Fogarty find her in the East River."

The phone rang, and Gosmith picked up the receiver.

"Hello. I'm sorry, but—Oh. Yes. Just a minute Mr. VanDale, I'll see." He covered the transmitter with one hand, and said to Cartwright: "It's Rupert VanDale."

"What the hell does he want?" Cartwright wondered. "Why should the chief of the Special Security Police want to speak to me?"

Gosmith shrugged. "How should I know?"

Cartwright took the receiver and flicked on the screen. "Hel-lo," he said cautiously, "Cartwright speaking."

The face faded in on the screen—a fussy little man with sharp features and piercing eyes.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Cartwright. I'm sorry to bother you at a time like this, but the Department needs your help."

"How?"

"We have a security problem on our hands which requires a medical man with a knowledge of extraterrestrial life."

"Yes, but, Mr. VanDale, I'm hardly in any emotional condition to do any kind of work. Can't you get someone else?"

VanDale shook his head decisively. "You are the Earth's only expert on extraterrestrial life, and you have already been classified as a Triple Security Risk. No one else will do."

"But—"

"My dear Doctor," VanDale's eyes stabbed out of the screen. "Do you mean to say that you are refusing, as a citizen, to help your country on a problem of security? Eh?"

That cinched the case for VanDale. Cartwright swallowed. "No, of course not. What is the problem?"

"Very peculiar. Very. We have two men down here—men, mind you—who claim they come from another star, forty thousand light years away.

"They have one of the silliest stories we have ever heard. It seems they landed their spaceship in Central Park to tell us that the sun is going to blow up. They stepped into the arms of a squad of the New York police, who booked them on a vagrancy charge.

"We asked them where their spaceship was, and they say that somebody stole it. I think they suspect the SSP."

Cartwright frowned. Was this a joke? No. VanDale seemed quite serious. "Any blast marks in Central Park? Anybody see this ship?"

"No. There is absolutely no evidence that there has ever been a spaceship in Central Park. Nobody saw it, not even the city police who were, according to these men, not more than fifty yards from the spot where they landed."

Cartwright was still puzzled. "What does this have to do with me? I'm not a psychologist. If you need a nut doctor—"

"We've already called in a psych man. Dr. Miller. That's the odd part of this case. He put them on the cerebropolygraph, and neither one of them is lying."

"A lie detector can't spot a man who really believes he's telling the truth. A pathological liar can fool one nine ways from Tuesday."

"True. But why do both these men have the same hallucinations? And why do the tests show them to be sane on every other subject?"

"Those are the questions we'd like to have you answer."

"How?"

"Well, according to their story, the population of Earth is descended from a shipload or so of people who came here between thirty and fifty thousand years ago. Blood tests and so on would show a difference between two separate strains in that time."

"It might," Cartwright agreed, "but we couldn't disprove their story that way."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if they were exactly like human beings in every respect, they could still be telling the truth "

"I see. But at least we would have another negative bit of evidence."

"Okay. I'll come down."

"Fine. You can use our labs at the Department."

"Right. Say, how come the SSP is interested?"

"Frankly," said VanDale, "we think they're up to some kind of dirty work connected with our interplanetary programme. We think they're foreign agents."

"Okay. Be down in an hour."

He lowered the receiver, and VanDale's image collapsed from the screen.

Channing Gosmith glowered in a towering rage. "That rotten little snipe has as much human feeling as a cobra! And this is supposed to be a democracy! Hah!"

"Forget it, Chan." Cartwright said wearily. "It'll give me something to do to take my mind off my troubles."

"Yeah. I suppose so. If you ever got in a jam with the SSP and got yourself classified as a Class X Security Risk, you really would have troubles." Gosmith crushed out his cigarette gloomily.

"Look, Ledrik," said Merrilyn patiently, all I want to do is go home."

The young man ran a hand over the top of his head. "I know you do, Miss. We're doing our best," he said in English.

"What did she say?" queried Commander Kenson in Kandorian. Ledrik told him.

The commander cast his eyes toward the ceiling of the office. "Oh, Great Snell!" he moaned. "She wants to go home! An uneducated barbarian steals a Galactic Survey Ship, maroons two men on an unknown planet, goes gallivanting all over space, gets herself lost—and she wants to go home!"

Merrilyn couldn't understand the words, but the tone of the commander's voice left no doubt in her mind about his. attitude. She glared at him. "I don't know what you said, but I don't like you!"

"Now, now, Miss," Ledrik said in English, "the commander is just trying to help you."

"Help me, hooey\ He sends his men clomping into that ship and scares the life out of me. Then he brings me here under guard as though I'd committed murder or something. Then you and your gang spend two days asking me all sorts of silly questions. I'm not so sure I wouldn't prefer the green monsters!"

"Well—uh—after all, we had to learn your language."

"In two days? You must have known it before."

"No. Our memory is much better than yours. We go through the psychoprobe process, which—"

"If you tell me I'm stupid once more, I'll spit in your eye!"

Ledrik bit his lip. "Ah—let's get back to the problem of getting you home. Do you have any idea at all where your solar system is? If you know where your home is, we can get you there in a very short time."

"Dad says that the solar system is about thirty thousand light-years from the centre of the Galaxy," Merrilyn answered promptly, pleased that she knew the answer. She and Ledrik had already worked out the length of the Earth year by means of her watch, which he had timed carefully with his own instruments.

"Thirty thousand, eh? Hmm."

He touched a switch on the panel, and a scale model of the Galaxy floated magically above the desk.

"Now, in which direction from the centre?"

Merrilyn looked at the floating image, blinked, and looked back at Ledrik. "Gee, I don't know."

Ledrik relayed this information to Commander Kenson.

"Oh, goody!" said the Patrol officer bitterly. "If her planet doesn't have interstellar travel, we can assume that her estimate means between twenty-five and thirty-five thousand light-years. If she doesn't know the direction that gives us roughly two hundred billion cubic lightyears to search. We'll have to hurry to make it by lunch."

"Don't be hard on her, Commander. After all, she's only a girl."

"I am aware of that, Ledrik. That is precisely the reason why I have not yet committed mayhem or throttled her from frustration."

Merrilyn looked at the commander, narrowed her eyes and said: "I think you are a nasty, spiteful, hateful, mean-minded old crab!"

Ledrik widened his eyes. "Did you understand him?"

"No, but he had a mean look when he said it." Merrilyn had a mean look, too.

"What did she say?" Kenson asked suspiciously.

Ledrik translated as best he could.

The commander's blood pressure rose, suffusing his face with a faint blush. He stood up.

"I think I had better leave before this giddy child drives me quite out of my already precariously balanced mind. After two days, I have had enough. If you manage to pry anything out of that little savage's feeble mind—which I doubt—I would like to hear about it. But not until then!"

He strode majestically out. Behind him, Merrilyn's protruding tongue saluted his departure.

"Now look, Miss—" Ledrik began.

Merrilyn smiled dazzlingly. "Just call me Merrilyn."

"But you said that the proper form of address was 'Miss'," Ledrik objected.

"Oh, that!" She dismissed the idea with an airy wave of her hand. "I didn't know you very well then. Call me Merrilyn."

"All right, Merrilyn. Now then—"

"And I'll call you Ledrik."

"Fine. Now—"

"That's a peculiar name, though."

"What?" Ledrik looked startled. His cognomen was a code symbol, not a name in the ordinary Earthly sense. Merrilyn's Statement sounded as odd to him as it would have if someone said to an Earthman: "My, what a funny Social Security number you have!"

After a moment's consideration, he said: "Yes, I suppose it does sound peculiar to you. However, let's get on with—"

"Did your mother give it to you, or your father?"

"Give what to me?"

"Your name, silly!"

"The Government gave it to me. Now will you please stop asking questions and help me figure out where your home is?"

"Sure. What do you want to know?"

"I want—Oh, Great Snell!" Ledrik buried his face in his hands and mumbled to himself.

"Are you sick or something?" Merrilyn asked solicitously.

Ledrik gathered his shattered patience together with conscious effort and lifted his head.

"No," he said, forcing a smile, "I am not sick." Yet! he added mentally. "Uh—shall we proceed?"

Merrilyn nodded brightly.

Ledrik frowned. "Do you have any idea why Koreil and Bort landed on your planet?"

Merrilyn shook her head. "I never saw them. I told you the ship was deserted when I found it."

"Well, we think we know. Their job is to survey the Galaxy and chart it—dust clouds, clusters, and so forth. In doing this, they also check the spectral characteristics of every star they come close to. They can tell by that method just how stable a star is. If it looks as though it might go nova, they are supposed to see if it has any inhabited planets."

"What do they do if it does?"

"They put in a call for the Stellar Engineers. The engineers take a piece out of the centre of the sun by rotating it into hyperspace. That gets rid of the extra energy, and the sun doesn't explode, see?"

Merrilyn, for the first time, realized her predicament. Her home world was in danger of being burned up—friends, relatives, her father. She began to look frightened.

"Do you think Sol really might be going to explode?"

Ledrik looked grim. "There would be no other reason for their landing on your planet."

"Oh, golly!" Merrilyn threw her brain into high gear. "Look here! If those men's job was to survey the Galaxy, won't there be records on the ship to show where they are going?"

"There should be," said Ledrik dryly. "Unfortunately, when you were trying to find out how the ship worked, you pressed the General Erase stud on the recorder. All the records are blank."

"Then what'll we do?" Merrilyn asked anxiously.

Ledrik rubbed a forefinger over his chin. "There is one way."

"What's that?"

Ledrik looked at her. "Listen," he said intensely, "how much astronomical knowledge have you been exposed to? By that, I mean have you heard lectures, read books, seen photographs, or anything else which might be buried in your memory?"

Merrilyn laughed. "Millions of things! My Dad is a physician by profession and an astronomer by inclination. I've heard him lecture, talk, discuss, read, live, eat, and sleep astronomy all my live. But I never paid any attention to it."

Ledrik took a deep breath. "Good. Then we might find it by psychoprobe."

"What's that?"

"Well, it's a process whereby we dig into your subconscious mind and find that information. It's all there; you just can't remember it. We use the psycho-probe in school to keep students' memories near the surface, where they are available at any time. That increases their thinking ability."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not a bit. Every person in the Organized Galaxy is exposed to it as a child."

"If it will improve my mind," said Merrilyn decisively, "I'll take it."

Rupert VanDale looked over Cartwright's shoulder at his notes and said: "Well, Dr. Cartwright, what's the verdict?"

Cartwright frowned at the papers in his hands, then looked up at VanDale. "Funny. Except for the blood tests, I'd say they were simply healthy specimens of ordinary men. But the blood—"

"What about it?"

"Well, excluding the Rh factor and a few things like that, there are two main factors in the blood. We call them A and B. A human being can have either one in his blood, or both, or neither. That gives you four blood types: A, B, AB, and O.

"I won't go into the testing, but these men don't have any type of blood found on Earth. The factor in it is neither A nor B. Call it C, if you want."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. I've taken better than a pint of blood from both of them for lab tests. They don't have Earth blood types."

The SSP chief was silent for a moment. Then he said: "Would you say that these tests confirm their story?"

Cartwright shrugged. "It gives it a lot of weight in my book."

"I see." VanDale scowled. "Let's go talk to those men. You have convinced me, Doctor, that they are not international spies."

In the detention ward of the Government Hospital of New Bellevue, two very unhappy citizens of the Organized Galaxy were brooding over their impossible situation.

Bort was looking out of the window of the hospital, staring angrily through the heavy bars. "Damn!" he said sharply.

Koreil dropped a magazine to the floor. "I'll go along with that!"

Bort turned. "Of all the dim-witted, feeble-minded, stupid, ignorant, fuzz-brained—" He went with his tirade in language which would not only be unfit to translate into print, but some of which could not be properly translated at all.

"Agreed," said Koreil. "The point is, what are we going to do about it? Everything we try to tell that VanDale bastard is greeted with the greatest of sneers. Frankly, I don't care if their damned planet does get vaporized! I don't think it will do the rest of the race any good to have this planetful of mentally myopic morons bred back into it."

"Yeah," said Bort bitterly. "The only trouble with that is that if Earth gets vaporized, we get vaporized with it. I don't particularly care for the idea."

"They've kept us in this room for five days. We've had our blood tested, our heads examined, and our reflexes probed. We have been questioned, insulted, and ignored. We've been X-rayed, relayed, and parlayed. And we aren't any further toward getting off this planet than we were the first night. Fooey!"

"Sh! They're coming! Be diplomatic!" Bort had seen the approach of the two Earthmen through the four-inch square of reinforced glass in the door.

Cartwright and VanDale unlocked the door, locked it behind them, and smiled politely at the two Galactics.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Koreil, Mr. Bort." VanDale nodded to each in turn.

The Galactics returned the greeting and waited.

The SSP man waved them to the chairs. "Sit down, gentlemen. We have some news for you."

As VanDale explained the blood tests, Cartwright sat with his notes in his hand—but he wasn't thinking of them. He was thinking: Merrilyn, Merrilyn, please come home!

No trace! But people don't just vanish without leaving a clue. They have to go somewhere. And when they go, they have to leave some evidence behind. In Merrilyn's case, there was none.

Cartwright was roused from his introspection; one of the prisoners—Bort—was speaking.

"Look, Mr. VanDale, I'm certainly glad that you're convinced of our story. Now if you'll just give us our spaceship back, we can call Kandoris for a Stellar Engineering fleet."

VanDale closed his eyes. "We do not have your spaceship, Mr. Bort. We have never seen your spaceship. Why do you think we took it? An Earthman couldn't possibly control a ship like that."

"I don't see why not," Koreil objected. "You don't have to know a device's internal workings to operate it. That ship is as easy to drive as one of your helicopters."

"How do you know one of your own people didn't take it?" VanDale countered, controlling his temper.

"If there were other Galactics on this planet, we would have known about it," Bort said positively.

"Do your own people know where you are now?" VanDale asked.

"No. We didn't—"

"Then if you can be here without your own home knowing where you are, how could you know there weren't any others here when you landed?" Van-Dale made his point by jabbing a finger offensively at Bort's nose.

"Just a minute," Koreil put in, before Bort could erupt with a scathing reply. "Look at it this way: We are marooned on a planet of a sun that is about to go nova. If you don't have our ship, that leaves only one alternative. You give us the materials to build a subradio, and we'll call Kandoris with that."

"Build a what?"

"A subradio. That's as close a translation as I can give."

"Do you mean you could build a radio with a range of several thousand light years with our materials?"

"I think so," said Koreil. "They aren't very complicated."

VanDale looked shrewd. "Very well, gentlemen; I'll get you the things you need. After all, we don't want our sun to blow up, do we?"

He got up to leave, and Cartwright followed, amazed by the stuffy little man's about-face. In the hall, Cartwright said: "Then you're convinced these men are telling the truth."

"Of course not!" VanDale snapped. "I am convinced that they are extraterrestrials, but I can see through their little game.

"Something happened to their spaceship when they landed, so they need another radio. You heard what that Bort said about calling in a fleet, didn't you? An invasion fleet, naturally?'

"Then you're not going to let them build it?"

"I didn't say that." VanDale's expression was that of the well-known cat-eating canary. "We can learn a great deal by letting them build the radio while an expert is watching."

A sinking feeling manifested itself in Cartwright's stomach. "What expert did you have in mind?"

"Channing Gosmith, naturally. Who else?"

Kandoris, Merrilyn decided, was a fascinating place. As capital of the Galaxy, its sole purpose was government. Ledrik had escorted her on a, tour of the relatively small area of the planet that housed the Galactic Survey Service. It was about half the size of the state of Ohio. The spaceport alone covered an area of better than one thousand square miles.

But in spite of her interest, her main desire was to get home. She and Ledrik were discussing it at breakfast one morning.

"We'll get you home eventually, you know," he said quietly.

She nodded, without looking at him. "I know. But will it still be there?"

"That we don't know."

During the past weeks, the psychoprobing had changed Merrilyn's thinking a great deal. All her memories had been dug out of her subconscious and arranged for easy reference. Her intelligence was being greatly improved by the Kandorian psychologists.

And she knew that Earth's sole chance for survival lay in her. No one else could find it. Not that she thought of herself as a world-saver. She had once turned in a fire alarm when she saw a burning house, but she hardly thought she deserved a medal.

"Ledrik," she said suddenly, "you could find Earth if Koreil and Bort had a subradio, couldn't you?"

"Naturally." Ledrik spread his hands. "But how could they? You took their only subradio with you."

"They could build one."

"On Earth? With what?" His voice was scornful.

Merrilyn's eyes blazed. "You make me mad, Ledrik! Earth isn't as backward as you think. We've got interplanetary rockets, electronic communication, and cybernetic brains. We may not have interstellar vessels or such things as that, but we're not stupid."

Ledrik frowned in thought. "It might be possible, at that. I'll tell you what; we'll keep all channels open, and put in a recorded call for them. That will give them something to tighten their beam on."

Merrilyn smiled to herself and finished her breakfast.

When they had both put away the last bite, Ledrik said: "We'd better get over to Psychology Section, Merrilyn. Ready?"

"I guess so." She didn't particularly like the psychoprobing itself, but for what it was doing to her mind, it was worth it.

Fifteen minutes later, Merrilyn was in Psychology, placing herself in the hands of the women operators.

Merrilyn smiled and spoke to them as they got the records from the files. Like all Kandorian women, their names had a prefix which indicated their sex. Unfortunately, the prefix was identical in sound to a certain English word which had a long, if somewhat dishonorable history in the language, having come down almost unchanged from the Anglo-Saxon. Merrilyn didn't like to say the word, so she had nicknamed the three operators Tup, Yasef, and Zedahg, which were simply abbreviations of their full names.

Yasef was the head of the Psych team assigned to Merrilyn, and the only one who spoke English. Even so, she didn't talk it as well as Ledrik, who was a trained linguist. Yasef's Kandorian accent sounded somewhat like a French accent.

"Are we ready for ze treatment?" she asked smiling.

"Sure," Merrilyn grinned back weakly.

" 'Ow dos ze 'ead feel? Bettair, yes?"

"Oui—I mean, yes." She thought: So help me, if that woman ever calls me cherie, I will probably burst into hysterical laughter.

She lay back on a padded couch and was lowered into a tank of heavy, warm liquid.

Then an electrode helmet was lowered over her head, covering her eyes. A faint subsonic beat throbbed through her muscles, massaging them into relaxation. Then there was an almost inaudible hum from the helmet. Merrilyn felt deliciously sleepy.

"Damn!" wailed Bort. "Germanium? I never heard of making transistors out of germanium!"

"How about quartz-carbon?" Channing Gosmith asked.

"How should I know? Use salt for all I care!"

It had been going on like that for days. Gosmith had accepted the assignment with reluctance, but when he found that the Galactics were going to build a new kind of radio, he perked up his ears. Channing Gosmith was an electronics man to the core.

But he soon found out that whatever in the devil they were building, it was certainly not a radio. Also, it was not a phonograph, a radarscope, a lie detector, a camera, or an egg-beater. It had leads that went nowhere, and leads that went where they shouldn't. Ohm's Law didn't work on it, and neither did Maxwell's Equations.

And he could not quite bring himself to believe that the communicator that was supposed to contact the stars was powered by a three-volt battery.

But when an oscilloscope showed that the gadget was a perfect square-wave generator, he smuggled eight cases of beer into the lab, sat down and watched.

Slowly, the thing shaped up. Koreil said that a subradio was about a foot cube, but it would be bigger than that, using Earth's equipment. It wound around the room like the strands in a floss-candy spinner.

And through it all, Bort cursed. He would try to explain to Gosmith what he wanted, but the words for his needs weren't in the English language. Then Bort would blow his stack. For instance:

"Mr. Gosmith, we need a pair of—uh—groupers."

Gosmith poured himself a glass of beer. "What?"

'"Maybe you call them something else. Here, I'll show you." He leaned over the desk and made marks on a sheet of paper. "You take a circuit series coming in here and group them together with a feedback so the oscillations are damped out by being out of phase by a variable angle."

Gosmith blinked. "So what happens?"

"Well, then, you have interposed a modulated carrier which—"

"Wait a minute! Where did that carrier come from?"

"Oh. Back here, you see. Where the electronic flux is disappearing. You get a frequency modulated wave out the other side on a single circuit instead of the multiple amplitude modulation circuits. See?"

Gosmith took a swallow of beer. "No, I don't. It doesn't make sense."

"Why doesn't it?" Bort fought to keep calm. "You can see that it's reflected through the phase repulsor."

Gosmith looked at his beer, the drawing, and back at Bort. "What, may I ask, is a phase repulsor?"

"Maybe I didn't translate right. Frequency reflector? Wavelength screen?"

Gosmith thought he saw the light. "You mean a choke coil. Stops AC, lets DC through."

"No, no. It lets the current through, but reflects the wave back along the circuit in the opposite direction."

Gosmith drank the rest of his beer in one draft. "You can't do that," he said complacently.

Bort exploded. "I'll be damned if you can't! I'll be—"

"Bort," said Koreil calmly, "we'll have to build them."

Bort choked off. "Very well," he said in a strained voice, "Mr. Gosmith, can you get us some cube-lattice quartz crystals?"

Gosmith poured another beer. "Some what?"

And so it went. The Galactics spent most of their time making tools to make the raw materials to make the components of their subradio. The thing took up most of the lab by the time it was finished, but at last it was finished, balanced, tested, and ready to go.

Bort rubbed his hands together gleefully. "That's it, Mr. Gosmith! All set to go!" He didn't realize that his voice was carrying to hidden microphones.

Thirty seconds later, three SSP men burst into the room with levelled revolvers. "Get away from there," said the leader.

The Galactics raised their hands. "What's the idea?" asked Bort.

"You're not going to use that thing to call in an invasion force, buddy. Now come along with us."

"WHAT?" Bort bellowed. "We can't use it? Don't you realize we've got to get help before the sun goes nova? Pretty soon, it'll be too late!"

"Hooey!" snapped the SSP man. "Now shut up and come along!"

Two of the agents pushed the protesting Galactics out the door, and the leader turned to Gosmith. "It's your baby now, sir. Good work."

He followed the others out the door.

Channing Gosmith surveyed the haywired subradio. "Hello, you queer thing, you," he said gloomily.

Commander Kenson looked at the tri-di image of the Galaxy. "It still leaves a devil of a lot of territory to search."

Ledrik nodded. "But it's the best we could do from the clues in Merrilyn's mind. It's not her fault; it's just that we don't know that much about that area of the Galaxy."

"Well," said the Commander heavily, "at least it can be done in a reasonable length of time."

Merrilyn, sitting in a corner of the room, smiled. "How long a time, Commander?" she asked in perfect Kandorian.

The Commander looked at her, then back at Ledrik. "You didn't tell me she could speak Kandorian."

Ledrik shrugged. "She's been pulling stuff like that all the time lately. If all Earthmen are as inherently intelligent as that, we'll have a planetful of geniuses on our hands."

"Well, how long will it take?" Merrilyn persisted.

"Hmmm." The commander looked intently at the image of the Galaxy. "We'll have to search every star of Sol's spectral class in that area. I should say at least a month."

Merrilyn shook her head.

"Not if I go along. I can tell by the constellations if we're close or not. That will cut it down quite a bit."

"Ahem!" Kenson coughed. "I hardly think that a Galactic Patrol cruiser is the proper place for a young lady."

"Nuts to that!" Merrilyn stormed. "You listen here, you stuffy old goat! If I'm on that ship, I can tell in a minute if we're in the right area or not! I suppose you think it's dangerous to bring a girl on board a ship with a lot of men. What's the matter, Commander? Have you no discipline in the Galactic Patrol?"

A crack like that can sting any officer of an organization that claims to have pride in itself, be he Roman Centurion or a commander in the Galactic Patrol. Kenson stiffened visibly.

Then he stood and said darkly: "Very well, my dear, you may come. We leave in half an hour." He turned and stalked out.

There is a solar phenomenon, well known to astronomers, known as "the Earth effect". Odd as it may seem, the number of sunspots originating on the side of the Sun facing Earth is considerably smaller than the number of spots originating on the side opposite. Why? Nobody knows. But is does happen, and astronomers can depend on it.

Therefore, when, on August 2nd, the Earth effect reversed itself, the astronomers became curious.

And when, in the next thirty-six hours, the sun became blotched with big, nasty-looking sunspots, the astronomers became excited.

And when, on August 5th, huge prominences began to burst from the surface of Old Sol, the astronomers became alarmed.

And it was early on the morning of the fifth that three men sat listening to an amazing maze of wires speak in an unknown tongue.

"Fili ninon sisok, Koreil ol Bort. Goslul orril." Over and over the words repeated themselves.

Rupert VanDale looked shrewd and speculative; Dr. Cartwright looked haggard and worried; Channing Gosmith looked confused.

"You're sure the transmitter isn't on?" VanDale asked Gosmith sharply.

"I am not. I'm not sure of anything about that misformed, malfunctioning mystery mechanism. For all I know, that voice is the first stages of delirium tremens." He lit a cigarette and waggled it toward the subradio. "But I don't think it's transmitting now. That's a recorded voice. It keeps repeating until somebody answers. That implies a device which will detect an incoming signal, shut off the record, and notify whoever wants to talk to our two Galactics. Since it hasn't shut off, they haven't received any signal from us."

"I see," VanDale nodded. "You are convinced, then, that this mechanism is picking up a voice from somewhere forty thousand lightyears away?"

Gosmith considered a moment before he answered. "I'm convinced," he said at last, "that nobody in the known Solar System ever constructed a radio like that; it must come from the stars." He paused, glaring at the subradio. "But I refuse to believe that that mess is picking up ten to the minus fortieth of a single quantum and amplifying it to that voice!"

It was at that moment that an SSP agent popped into the room waving a sheet of paper. "Chief! Look! This just came over the teletype!"

VanDale grabbed the message and read:

HARVARD OBSERVATORY—

APR. 6—DR. S. R. DIXON ANNOUNCED THAT INCREASED SUNS POT ACTIVITY MAY BE DUE TO SOLAR IMBALANCE. "THE SUN," HE SAID, "IS POURING OUT ENERGY AT AN INCREASED RATE, WHICH MAY PRESAGE AN ACTUAL NOVA CONDITION."

OTHER ASTRONOMERS REFUSE TO MAKE ANY POSITIVE STATEMENTS, BUT WILL NOT CONTRADICT DIXON. DR. P. LATHAM, OF PALOMAR, WAS QUOTED AS SAYING: "ALL THE EVIDENCE IS NOT YET IN; NO PREDICTION CAN BE MADE ON THE FUTURE OF THE SUN."

"Yike!" VanDale screeched. "Get those two Galactics up here quick! Move, dammit! Move!"

The agent moved. When he brought in the two prisoners, VanDale showed them the teletype. "I guess I was wrong," he said nervously.

"You're stinking well right, you were wrong!" Bort snarled. "You're the stubbornest ass on this whole goddam planet!"

Koreil said: "I'm afraid your apology is a little late, Mr. Van-Dale. We'll make the call, but it won't be for the Stellar Engineers. It's too late! By the time they get here, any fooling around with that ball of high-flux nuclear energy up there, and the Earth would simply be gone all the quicker."

"Who'll you call?" VanDale asked, his face whitening.

"Migration Service, the Galactic Patrol! We may be able to get ten or fifteen million people off the Earth before it goes blooey! That will leave two billion to burn to death."

"I see," said VanDale. "Naturally, I would not expect to go."

"Naturally," snapped Bort. "Now let's get at that subradio!"

Channing Gosmith waved at it. "There you go, laddies. Have a look at your monster."

Bort took one look. "What in the name of the Almighty Snell did you do to it?"

"Where? Oh, that." Gosmith shrugged. "I just did what Van-Dale told me to do; I disconnected the transmitter from the receiver."

Bort gave VanDale a look that held murder seething beneath it. Then he looked at Gosmith. "Well, don't just stand there! Grab a soldering iron! Koreil, hand me that screwdriver!"

The three men went to work, Gosmith following Bort's orders without question.

As they worked, they paid little attention to what went on around them; they only asked VanDale to stay the hell out of their way. So when an SSP man walked in and whispered something to his chief, they ignored him.

They were a little annoyed when VanDale cleared his throat and said: "Er—gentlemen, didn't you tell me you came here in a spaceship and landed in Central Park?"

Bort looked dangerous. "No," he said softly, "we pedalled our way across the Milky Way on a bicycle and landed on the tip of the Eiffel Tower at high noon."

"Heh heh," VanDale smiled weakly. "Heh heh. Yes. Well, I thought you might like to know that your spaceship has come back. It's in Central Park now."

"This is it," said Merrilyn positively. "See, there's Cassiopeia and Ursa Major and Gemini and-—"

The star toward which they were heading was brightening visibly as the ship moved in slowly.

"I hope you're right," he said apprehensively.

An intercom speaker at his desk said: "Engineering, sir! That's the star, all right! Nova signals increasing steadily!"

Merrilyn clenched her fists and shut her eyes. No, dear God, please, not yet! Let us get there in time!

The mighty fleet of Stellar Engineering ships, following the Patrol flagships, swept in toward Sol. Kenson gave the command and the Engineers took over. There was nothing more a Patrol cruiser could do.

"We made it just in time, Commander," said the Chief

Engineer. "Another hour, and we'd have been too late."

The fleet englobed the sun at a distance of ten million miles. From each ship, tractor and pressor beams leaped out, locking together in a tight network of energy. Then more beams plunged deep into the centre of the raging star.

A small—very small—section of the sun's centre left normal space and was precipitated into hyperspace. Instantly, free from the fantastic pressure of the sun's mass, the ball of ultra-hot, ultra-dense material exploded—violently.

But the explosion was in hyperspace, where it could do no harm. It couldn't even be detected.

Old Sol, freed of her excess energy, relaxed. Her skin was still mottled from the effects of her internal fever, but the rash would go away in a few days.

Merrilyn breathed a huge sigh of relief as the Engineers reported that the sun was safe. "Now what?" she asked the commander.

He grinned. "We'll take you home, young lady. And—ahh—" His grin became sheepish. "—apologize for some of the things I said. If you hadn't come along, we never would have made it in time. You're a pretty smart young woman.

"But"—he frowned—"when we get home, I hope your father warms your fundament—but good."

"Just so we get home," Merrilyn grinned.

The Engineer fleet, their job done, turned about and headed back to Kandoris while the Patrol battle cruiser swung toward Earth.

"Now, just exactly where on your planet did you find the Survey ship?" the commander asked. "I imagine Koreil and Bort will be nearby somewhere."

Merrilyn located Central Park from a height of a hundred miles as the cruiser swept around the Earth. Then Kenson ordered it dropped into the centre of the Park, just as Koreil and Bort had done.

But, whereas the Survey ship had been only thirty feet long, and had landed at night with full screening, the cruiser was as big as the Queen Mary and was landing in broad daylight.

Earthmen are used to seeing spaceships, but not when they try to land in Central Park, and not when they float down like a barrage balloon with a slow leak.

By the time the ship landed, there was a hell of a crowd. And when a crowd gathers in New York, you will find a policeman there before long. The ship had barely settled on its tail end when a large, blue-uniformed gentleman was pounding on the airlock.

"Open up in there! You're under arrest!" He waved a hand at the sign that said KEEP OFF THE GRASS. "Open in the name of the law!"

It was Triggerhappy Lou.

The commander couldn't hear him, of course; not through the airlock. But it so happened that he and Merrilyn were about to step out at that moment.

"Here we are, my dear," he said. "Already a crowd has gathered to thank us. Koreil and Bort have evidently told them what we have done."

The heavy slab of metal slid silently open, and Commander Kenson stepped out smiling. He did not smile long. Patrolman Luigi Petrelli took one look and acted. He saw the iridescent uniform, the pink boots, and the sidearm and his reaction was automatic.

Fleet Commander Kenson of the Galactic Patrol found himself looking into the muzzle of Triggerhappy Lou's Police Positive.

But this time, Triggerhappy Lou was not so fortunate. He was not attempting to arrest an unarmed man, but a man who had behind him the armed might of a heavy Patrol battle cruiser.

In a gun blister high up on the side of the towering spaceship, a Marine gunner aimed carefully with a stun beam and squeezed the activator. There was a faint hum in the air.

Luigi lowered his gun, smiled stupidly at absolutely nothing whatsoever and collapsed on the grass—not ten feet from the KEEP OFF sign.

By this time, the monstrous ship was attracting even more widespread attention. Some were even calling attention to the fact that the ship was not touching the ground, but was poised a good two inches above it.

Commander Kenson had, of course, jumped back into the airlock at the first sign of hostilities and closed the port behind him.

"Great Snell! Is everybody on this planet goofy?" He raced back up to the control room and surveyed the park through the viewplate, where he could see that a cordon of police had surrounded the ship. Below, Sergeant O'Malley was shaking Triggerhappy Lou.

"Petrelli! Wake up!" He noticed the foolish smile that still lingered on the face of the fallen officer and turned to a bystander. "Did they shoot him?"

"Nah, sarge. De copper just keeled over. He ain't hoit. Fainted, I think."

Other eyewitnesses agreed. None of them had seen the Space Marine fire his stunner.

O'Malley was smelling the unfortunate Petrelli's breath when another copter dropped to the green. His eyes widened as he saw it was a Government job. Quickly, he dragged Triggerhappy behind the KEEP OFF sign and walked toward the copter as five men piled out of it.

He recognized the men immediately.

VanDale said: "All right, Sergeant, I'll take over. Keep these people back." He turned to Koreil. "Is this your ship?"

Koreil was gazing up at the, ship that spired loftily into the air above them. "That? Great Snell, no, chum! That happens to be a Galactic Patrol Cruiser!"

"Galactic Pat—" VanDale swallowed.

Koreil and Bort waved vigorously toward the visiplate pickups. The airlock door opened again, and Commander Kenson came out, flanked by a squad of armed Space Marines.

VanDale decided at that point that it was time to show his authority. It was his duty to welcome these men from another star. He smiled, strode rapidly toward the commander, and stuck out his hand in a gesture of welcome.

But the Marine gunners in the blisters were ready for him. They couldn't tell, from there, whether the Earthman was armed or not, but you can't take chances with a barbarian.

A stunner cut VanDale down in mid-stride. His lifted leg went forward, throwing him into a beautiful somersault. He flipped over on the grass, ending up flat on his back, his feet only a few inches from Commander Kenson's shiny pink boots.

Kenson gazed at the supine figure, then called to the two stranded Surveymen. "Is it safe?"

"Reasonably," said Koreil. "I'm sure glad to see you. We're Survey Service; we—"

"I know all about it," Kenson said sourly. "Why do you think we're here? Fine Surveymen you are! Getting stranded!"

"But Commander! They stole our ship!"

"Stole it, hell! It was accidentally borrowed by a seventeen-year-old girl who opened the lock with a flashlight!"

"A seventeen-year-old girl!" Bort looked shocked.

"Here she comes now," Kenson said unnecessarily.

The crowd became quiet as an exceptionally beautiful brunette in a provocatively revealing Kandorian dress stepped out of the airlock.

Dr. Samuel Cartwright, world-famous rocketeer, fearless explorer of alien Mars, recognized the daughter he had not seen for four years, and the shock was too much for him. He keeled over in a dead faint to join Triggerhappy Lou and Rupert VanDale on the grass.

"So that's what happened, ladies and gentlemen," Kenson said. "We're glad we were able to get here in time to prevent the explosion and save Earth from disaster."

The TV camera panned around to take in the men, coming finally to rest on Merrilyn. The audience cheered, and the programme was over. Immediately, reporters were crowding around the commander and the two Surveymen for the promised press conference.

Dr. Cartwright took . his daughter's hand. "Let's get out of the studio, honey. I want something to eat." He turned to Gosmith. "Coming, Channing?"

"Not yet, Sam," he said, with a dreamy look in his eyes. "I'm going to see if I can get into subradio engineering on Kandoris. Maybe they'll send me to school."

Cartwright led his daughter out of the studio and into a waiting copter. "It must have been pretty frightening, wasn't it, darling?" he asked.

She nodded. "I'll say. But after the psychoprobe treatment, I don't think I'll ever be that afraid again."

She proved her statement three days later when she borrowed her father's pistol without his knowing it, and went for a walk in Central Park. At ten-thirty that night, Sergeant O'Malley was surprised to see an unkempt man with odd fish-blue eyes come marching into the precinct station with his hands raised, following by Merrilyn Cartwright holding a levelled pistol.

"I want to prefer charges against this bum," she said.

The End