Gateway to Glory

This story was extensively rewritten to form part of the novel Rogue in Space, which appears earlier in this volume.

CHAPTER I

There was this Crag, and he was a criminal and a killer and just about the toughest guy in the solar system. But it wasn’t doing him much good right then because he was dying.

He was dying on a world no bigger than an orange. It had been an asteroid a little bigger than a house when he’d landed on it—with Jon Olliver and Evadne—less than an hour before.

And when he, Crag, had learned about Olliver’s plans, he’d made a damn fool hero of himself; he’d shoved the spaceship off into space so none of them could get away again, ever. Then he’d managed to kill Olliver before Olliver had killed him and the atoms that had made up Olliver’s body were now one with the collapsed atoms of the asteroid that was now too small a world to live on, but not to die on.

Already the oxygen tank of his spacesuit was almost empty; he was breathing hard and painfully. Too bad, he thought, that he’d had to destroy the disintegrator instead of using it on himself to shorten the final agony—as Evadne, beautiful Evadne—had been able to do when the air in her spacesuit had run out.

And Crag was dying now; he’d be dead in ten minutes or maybe five. And it was funny; he wanted to laugh because he had two hundred thousand credits, a fortune, in his pocket. And ten minutes ago, for the first time, he’d had the most beautiful woman he’d ever known in his arms and she had loved him. But you can’t spend a fortune on an asteroid, especially one that’s been collapsed into neutronium, and you can’t get much satisfaction out of loving a woman in a spacesuit in the void.

Crag laughed. This was a piece with everything that had happened to him since the day, years ago, that he’d lost his rating as a spaceman when he’d lost his left hand cleaning a tube that had accidentally fired. He had been cheated out of his compensation, on a technicality, by the corrupt officialdom of the spaceways. He’d turned criminal then, and had been as ruthless to society as it had been to him. And this wasn’t bad, compared to some of the ways he’d almost died, or worse than died, a dozen times before. Dying from lack of oxygen isn’t exactly painless, but he’d endured worse pain, and stoically, and in situations that lacked the anodyne of humor, however bitter humor, that this one had.

A world in his pocket! When the disintegrated asteroid had collapsed into a solid little ball of neutronium, that unbelievably heavy stuff from which some of the stars are made, he’d put it in his pocket. Of course, actually, because of their relative mass, he’d moved his own body in relation to it rather than the other way around, but that was a detail. He took it out of his pocket now and looked at it in the dim light of the distant sun. There on the surface of it were the collapsed atoms that had been Evadne, Evadne of the lushly beautiful body and the hair like burnished copper, the eyes that were a deeper blue than space seen through an atmosphere. No one could recognize her now.

He thought how wonderful it would have been if Evadne had lived and if he were going to live. Or would it? There would have been no place for them, anywhere in the system. Crag sighed and it was such a strange sound that he realized it was the first time he’d done so for years. He was getting soft. Well, it didn’t matter now. And it had been a rasping sigh because his body was fighting for breath.

He wished that he had enough control over his body to tell it to stop fighting, but no man, not even one as tough as Crag, can force his lung muscles to quit a struggle for breath.

Suddenly a voice inside his mind said, “What is wrong?” Not the words, but the thought.

It startled him because he was alone, more alone than he’d ever been before. It was like the way the telepathic semi-savages of Venus spoke to one, yet clearer, even more sharp than that, more nearly like an actual voice. One you could almost hear.

He looked around him and there was nothing but the void, distant Sol, the stars, and closer but still many miles away, the pinpoint reflections of the asteroids. And out there somewhere, although he couldn’t spot it at the moment, was the spaceship he’d pushed away from the asteroid. But nowhere life. Who or what had spoken inside his mind?

He concentrated on the thought: Who are you?

“I do not know. I thought to discover the answer from you, but I do not find it in your mind. I find many confused things, but not that. I find pain and the thought that you are going to cease to exist. Why? What is wrong?”

“Oxygen,” Crag thought. “I am dying from lack of oxygen.”

“Do not think of the word,” came the thought in his mind. “Think of the thing itself. I perceive now from your mind that it is a gas, that it is an element. Think of its structure.”

Crag was not a physicist, but the atomic structure of oxygen is a comparatively simple one. He thought of it, pictured it.

And suddenly he wasn’t fighting for breath any longer; he was breathing normally.

“That is better,” came the alien thought. “Now will you think thoughts that will tell me who and what you are, why you are here and what has happened? From that, I can possibly determine who and what I am, how I came to be. I think it will be best if you tell it as though you were talking, but try to think, too, of the meanings of the words as you use them.”

Crag said, “All right. I am Crag. A man named Olliver hired me to steal a device from a scientist, one that—I realize now—the scientist had suppressed because it was too dangerous to use; it could have destroyed entire planets. It was a disintegrator; it collapsed atoms into neutronium, setting up a chain reaction in any reasonably homogeneous substance, so that, although tiny, it could have destroyed Earth or Mars or Venus.

“I gave it to Olliver. Three of us—Olliver, his wife Evadne, and I—came here in Olliver’s spaceship to try out the device. We landed on an asteroid and used the disintegrator on it; it collapsed, gradually, into a tiny ball of almost infinitely heavy matter, hundreds of tons to the square inch.

“While it was doing so, Olliver told us his plans and we learned that he had lied about them. He intended taking over rule of the solar system through his threat to destroy any planet that opposed him. He would have had to destroy at least one planet to rule the others.

“I learned then that Evadne was against him. She had hated him but had stayed with him because she suspected what his plans were and hoped to stop them. In the showdown, I sided with Evadne.”

“Why?” came the thought.

Crag grinned. “I guess I’m not as much of a crook as Olliver was. I’ve killed plenty of people, but they all needed killing. It’s a pretty corrupt place, right now, the solar system. I wouldn’t have minded Olliver ruling it; he couldn’t have been any worse than those who run it now. But I found out I didn’t hate it enough to let a planet or two—and several billion people—be destroyed in order to put him into power. And maybe, too, because I found out that I—” he hesitated at the thought “—loved Evadne.

“Anyway, Olliver tried to kill us and I killed him. Evadne’s oxygen ran out first and she used the disintegrator on herself rather than die more slowly. I would have, too, but I had to destroy the disintegrator so it would never be found. That is all until you asked in my mind, ‘What is wrong?’ All right, now what’s this business about you not knowing who you are? How can you not know who you are or even what you are?”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the thought in Crag’s mind. “Will you concentrate on all you know of—matter, energy and thought?”

It wasn’t a lot, and didn’t take long. Crag knew only the general outlines of current theories. He knew more about rocket motors, spacewarp, and picking locks.

The thought in his mind said, “I understand, now. I am a new entity, a new consciousness created in the collapse of the atoms of the asteroid upon which the disintegrator was used. Even as matter can be converted to energy through fission, so matter can be converted to consciousness through disintegration.”

Crag thought. It seemed possible. He’d wondered what had happened to the energy that had kept the atoms and molecules apart, once they had collapsed into that tiny, incredibly heavy ball he held in his hand. Matter into energy; energy into consciousness. Why not? And why not the third step: could consciousness create matter?

He’d been thinking, but he might as well have spoken aloud. The voice in his mind answered him. “I do not know. Perhaps, a strong enough consciousness. Not mine, any more than yours. No, I did not create oxygen in the tank of your suit. I—think of the word, please. Yes, I transmuted matter that was already there into the form of matter on which you concentrated. I can change the form of matter, I can cause it to move; I cannot create it. Now, what shall I do for you?”

Crag laughed. An asteroid—yes, he supposed that the ball of collapsed matter in his hand was still an asteroid regardless of its form—was asking him what it could do for him.

“There is a spaceship nearby,” he said. “Can you bring it back, or take me to it? It’s the ship we came in. I shoved it and the asteroid—you—apart to prevent Olliver from getting away in it.”

“Yes, I perceive it. I can move it from here. I am doing so. It is coming toward us.”

Crag looked around and saw it: a gray spot in Orion, growing slowly larger. He laughed again; he was going to spend that two hundred thousand dollars after all! Incredibly, he was going to live and to return to civilization, such as it was.

The asteroid caught the thought in his mind. It said, “Think about your civilization, Crag. Concentrate on it, that I may learn about it. It seems a strange, corrupt thing. I do not like it.”

Sudden fear hit Crag. He had stopped Olliver’s plans to take over and rule the solar system by destroying one or more planets of it. But had something even more dangerous happened? Would—

“No,” said the asteroid. “Do not fear that, Crag. I would neither destroy nor rule your race or any other. I am not a monster. I am neither good nor evil. I think that I know what I am going to do, to become. But it will not affect the race to which you belong.”

Crag relaxed his mind. Somehow, he knew that that was true.

He thought, “Anyway, do not judge the human race by my opinion of it. I am a criminal, every hand against me and my hand against every man—especially the metal hand that is my best weapon. Men have treated me badly; I have repaid them in kind. But do not judge them by what I think of them. Perhaps I am more warped than they.”

“I do not think so. Please concentrate on how the system is governed.”

Crag let his mind think about the two parties—both equally crooked and corrupt—that ran the planets between them, mostly by cynical horse trading methods that betrayed the common people on both sides. The Guilds and the Syndicates—popularly known as the Guilds and the Gildeds—one purporting to represent capital and the other purporting to represent labor, but actually betraying it at every opportunity. Both parties getting together to rig elections so they might win alternately and preserve an outward appearance of a balance of power and a democratic government. Justice, if any, obtainable only by bribery. Objectors or would-be reformers—and there weren’t many of either—eliminated by the hired thugs and assassins both parties used. Strict censorship of newspapers, radio and television, extending even to novels lest a writer attempt to slip in a phrase that might imply that the government under which he lived was less than perfect.

Crag thought of instance after instance until the voice in his mind said, “Enough. Your spaceship is here.”

He looked around and saw it; the handle of the door was within reach. He opened it and climbed in; the sphere of neutronium that had been an asteroid and was now a sentient being floated gently beside him, obviously managing in some way to neutralize its own mass in relation to that of the spaceship.

Crag turned on the airmaker. The spaceship was too small to have an airlock; on ships of such size it is more economical to let the air escape when leaving and build up an atmosphere again after return and before removing spacesuits. He watched the gauge, and while he was waiting for the air pressure to build up, he asked, “What now? What do you wish me to do?”

“You are very tired; you have not slept for several days. I suggest that you sleep.”

“And you?”

“I intend to visit the planets to see at first hand what you have told me. I shall return by the time you awaken.”

“You mean you can—” Crag started to question, and then stopped. After the powers he had seen the newborn entity exhibit already, he didn’t doubt that it could do anything it said it could, even to an investigation of all of the planets and a return within a few hours.

Then it occurred to him that if the sphere was going to leave the ship, he was wasting time building up air pressure; might as well get the opening and closing of the lock over with first. He turned, but the sphere didn’t seem to be anywhere around. He thought, “Where are you?”

The answering thought inside his brain was very faint. “Three hundred thousand miles toward Mars. Await my return, Crag.”

CHAPTER II

Three hundred thousand miles, Crag thought, and the sphere couldn’t have been gone more than seconds; it must be able to move itself at almost the speed of light! Not by teleportation, either; that would have been instantaneous.

He turned back to the gauge and saw that the air pressure was sufficient; he took off his spacesuit and made sure that the two hundred thousand credits were still safe in his pocket. Then he sighed with weariness and lay down on one of the twin bunks on either side of the ship.

He was too tired to go directly to sleep, too stunned by all that had happened to wonder much at it. He knew that after he’d slept he’d doubt it all and find the existence of the sphere of neutronium as a living entity incredible. Now he accepted it calmly. He even missed it; it had been companionship out here in the void. Although as a criminal Crag always played a lone hand, he didn’t like to be alone at other times, especially out here in the void, probably a million miles from the nearest other human. Not even that near unless the other human or humans were on a spaceship curving around the asteroid belt on a run between one of the inner planets and one of the three habitable moons of Jupiter, the only inhabited bodies outside of the inner planets.

He tried to keep from thinking of Evadne, of how beautiful she was the first time he had seen her, even in the severe costume of a technician, and how impossibly like a flame she had been when he had seen her next, dressed in an evening gown which was little more than a wisp of material above the waist and fitting her hips and thighs like a sheath. He tried not to think of the blue of her eyes or the soft copper of her hair, the creamy smoothness of her skin. And so, of course, he thought of all these things.

He tried not to think of the one time she had kissed him, and his lips burned and then felt cold.

And above all, he tried not to remember that, only hours ago, they had been in one another’s arms—in spacesuits in the void. If only her suit had contained its full supply of oxygen so she could have lived a little longer, as long as he had, until the awakening intelligence of the newborn entity that had been an asteroid had made mental contact and learned enough of thought and of itself to ask that question, “What is wrong?” that had changed everything.

If only— But why think of futile ifs, now that Evadne was dead? So, of course, he thought of them.

When he got back to Earth—no, to Mars; it was nearer—he’d get himself drunk on some of the most expensive and fancy liquors of the solar system. Then maybe he could quit thinking about her. And you can stay drunk a long time on two hundred thousand credits. You could stay drunk a thousand years on that much money, if you could live that long.

But you can’t live at all if you can’t sleep, so after a while Crag got up and hunted through the medical compartment until he found some sleeping powders. He took two of them in spite of the “Danger. Take only one” warning on the box.

And after a while he slept.

He awoke finally with a dull, lost feeling that he’d seldom had before except in jail. The small narrow bunk, the close confines of the ship to which he opened his eyes seemed like a cell to him. He reached into his pocket to be sure the money was still there and it was,

He wanted a drink worse than he’d ever wanted one in his life. What was he doing on a spaceship drifting idly out here in the void? Why hadn’t he taken it into Marsport before he’d slept? Then he could have slept comfortably, luxuriously, in the best suite of the best Marsport hotel with a bottle to help him to sleep and to reach for when he awakened.

He swung his feet off the bunk and sat up. There, floating in the middle of the cabin, was the sentient sphere that had been an asteroid.

“You were right, Crag,” spoke the voice in his mind.

Crag wondered what he’d been right about.

“About the corruptness of the race to which you belong. It is even worse than you thought of it as being. I have been inside many minds. They are weak minds, almost without exception morally weak.”

Crag grinned. He thought, “I’m no lily myself.”

“You are not, but you are strong. You are a criminal because you are a rebel against a society that has no place for strong men. In a society that is good, the weak are criminals; in a society that is bad, there is no place for a strong man except as a criminal. You are better than they, Crag. You have killed men, but you have killed them fairly. Your society kills them corruptly, by inches. Worse, those who are being killed acquiesce, not only because they are weak, but because they, too, hope to get on the exploiting side.”

“You make the human race sound pretty bad.”

“It is bad. This is a period of decadence. It has been better and it will be better again. I have studied your history and find that there were similar periods before and humanity has struggled out of them. It will again, Crag.”

Crag yawned. He said, “You turned carbon dioxide to oxygen in my space-suit. You wouldn’t, by any chance, care to turn the water in that cooler into something stronger, would you? I could use a drink.”

He felt in his mind a sense of amusement that was not his own, as though the entity that spoke there was laughing. The thought in his mind said, “Buy yourself your own drinks, Crag. You can afford them, and you can wait till you get to Marsport. I have something more important to do than to be a bartender for you.”

“Such as?” Crag asked.

“To create a world.”

Crag sat up straight and quit feeling sleepy. He said, “What?” aloud.

“Or possibly re-create one. There seems to be a difference of opinion among your astronomers as to whether the asteroids once formed a planet which broke up into many small pieces—of which I was one—or whether the gasses which, in the case of other planets, solidified into spheres, in the case of the asteroids formed a ring of gasses instead and solidified into many small bodies, planetoids.

“In either case, the matter for another planet is there, revolving around the sun in orbits between the orbit of Mars and the orbit of Jupiter. It is merely necessary to gather and coalesce them and there will be a new planet—or a scattered one will be re-created.”

Crag started to ask why and then, instead, began to wonder why not. Neither question was answered.

Instead, the voice in his mind went on, quite calmly, “It is merely necessary for me to gather the other asteroids about myself as a nucleus. When all have been gathered, the planet will be larger than Mars, perhaps almost as large as Earth.

“It will be a new planet, a raw planet. It will need tough colonists, Crag. I want you to gather a few—criminals like yourself, who do not acquiesce in the social system of the rest of your race. Ones who are tough, not soft and weak like the others. Colonize and people me, Crag, with strong men like yourself.”

Crag stared at the sphere. He asked softly, “Is that an order?”

“Of course not. It is a request. I can see into your mind enough to realize that you would die rather than obey an order—even if it was an order to do something you wanted to do. And that is why I want you, and men like you, to colonize the planet I shall create. Men who will not take orders.” There was a pause and then the voice in Crag’s mind said, “I do not want to be a god, Crag. I would not be colonized by anyone who would obey me. And yet I want people to live upon me.”

Crag said, “You won’t lack for people. If a new planet forms in the solar system—”

“No one will colonize me if I do not wish them to live there. I shall have a poisonous atmosphere, Crag. Poisonous to anyone I do not want. Crag, can you find other men who are, mentally and physically, as hard and as strong as you?”

“Perhaps, but—”

“I see your hesitation. On Earth or Mars you will be rich, with the two hundred thousand credits you have. They would be worthless on a new planet. You are right, but I think and hope you will soon tire of whatever that money will bring you. You are too strong to like a soft life. I think you will come to me. And when you do, bring others if you can—but they must be strong, too.”

Crag said slowly, “I’ll see. I’ll think it over.”

“Good. That is all I ask. Goodbye, Crag.”

“Goodbye,” Crag thought. Belatedly he remembered that the sphere had saved his life ten hours before when he had been dying in the void. The sphere was no longer there, but he thought “—and thanks,” anyway, hoping that, even at the incredible speed at which it could travel, it would still catch the thought.

He stood up and stretched to get the stiffness of his long sleep out of his muscles. Then he picked the lock on the controls and set course for Mars. Not for Marsport, of course, or any other city. The spaceship was registered in Olliver’s name, and if he landed it in any spaceport, he’d have to explain what had happened to Olliver, and that wouldn’t be easy. And even if he himself got through the hands of the spaceport guards and the police, the two hundred thousand credits definitely would not.

He put the ship down in the Martian desert, carefully choosing a spot where red sand dunes screened it from sight and it could be seen only from above. A patrol craft would probably spot it sooner or later, but it might still be there if he ever wanted or needed it. Long experience had taught him that it was good to have a possible ace in the hole, even with a fortune in his pocket.

It was early morning when he landed and he left the ship at once so he could reach civilization before the extreme heat of midday. Aside from the money, he carried nothing with him except a compass and a small paragun in case he should encounter any of the monster lizards of the Martian desert.

He met none, however, and reached the settlement of New Boston before the sun was halfway to the zenith. He chartered a plane there and was in Mars-port before noon.

He spent a hundred credits for a fine wardrobe and luggage to contain it, then took an aircab to the Luxor, finest and most expensive hotel in a city whose major industry was catering to wealthy visitors from Earth.

The desk clerk stared disdainfully at Crag through pince-nez glasses. His gaze went to the four porters who were carrying Crag’s new and expensive luggage. But so little of it!

His voice was cold and distant. “You have a reservation, of course, Mr.—ah.”

“That’s right,” Crag said. “Mr. Ah. George Ah, to be exact. And I have no reservation, but I want the finest suite you have available.”

“I am afraid, Mr.—ah—Ah, that there is nothing available.”

Crag grinned. “If you’ll take in my card to the manager, I’m sure he’ll be able to arrange something.”

He put down a ten-credit bill—at least a week’s pay for the desk clerk, even of as swanky a hotel as the Luxor—on the desk.

The clerk’s eyes warmed somewhat behind the pince-nez; they became no colder than hailstones and somewhat more protuberant. He said, “Pardon me, sir. I’ll check the register.” He didn’t touch the ten-credit bill, but he pulled a crocodile-bound ledger from under the desk and covered the bill with it while he thumbed through pages. After a moment, he said, “The Gubernatorial Suite is open, sir. Twenty credits a day.”

“I’ll take it,” Crag said. He signed “George Ah” on the register.

In the twenty-by-twenty living room of the suite, he tipped the four porters generously and then, as they left, looked about him. Doors indicated that he must have several other rooms at his disposal, but he walked out first onto the balcony and stood looking over the fabulous city of Marsport that lay below him in the bright, hot afternoon sun.

He felt strange here; he wondered for the first time what he, Crag, was doing here. It was the first time in his life that he had ever registered in a luxury hotel. It was plenty expensive—twenty credits a day was a month’s wages on an average skilled job—but he had plenty of money and he should be safer here than in any inexpensive lodging. In Marsport, the more money you spent the less likely you were to be asked questions. If you spent money like water they figured you were a capitalist, a politician or a labor leader.

After a few minutes he went back inside, closing the balcony door on the afternoon heat, and wondered what he should do. He was going to get drunk, of course, but why rush it? Plenty of time for that. The rest of his life, in fact.

He tried opening doors. The first led to a well-stocked liquor cabinet. He poured himself one drink of Martian woji, hoping it would make him feel a bit more cheerful, but it didn’t. He tried the next door and it led to a library that was well stocked with books, records and tapes. He wandered about it briefly, noting that most of the books were pornographic; that meant that the tapes were probably pornographic also.

A double door in front of a pneumatic divan turned out to open on a television screen eight feet wide and six feet high. Crag turned on the switch and sat down on the divan. It was a musical show originating in New York on Earth. Before a three-dimensional chorus undulating in full color a pale tenor was singing:

Jet up! Jet down! On a slow ship to Pluto!

Honey-wunny-bunny, how’d you like my...

Crag got up and turned off the switch. He went back and had himself another drink at the liquor cabinet. It didn’t taste particularly good to him.

He tried another door. It led to a smaller sitting room, well supplied with gambling equipment of all kinds, the walls lined with solitaire gambling machines. Crag knew that all the machines would be rigged with high percentages against him and didn’t bother trying them. Besides, what’s the fun in gambling when you’ve already got more money than you know what to do with?

Another door led to the master bedroom. It was even larger than the living room and more ornately furnished. The ebony bed was at least eight feet wide and was ornately furnished, indeed; a blonde, a brunette and a redhead, all naked, lay upon it. For just a second, Crag thought that the redhead looked like Evadne. But she didn’t.

She was the one, though, that caught his eye. She sat up and raised her arms above her head, stretching like a kitten as she smiled at him. “Hello,” she said.

Crag leaned against the jamb of the door. He asked, “Are you standard equipment? Pardon my ignorance, but I’ve never had a gubernatorial suite before.”

The redhead laughed. “Of course. But you needn’t keep all of us. Unless you wish.” She looked demurely at her gilded toenails. The blonde smiled at him and then rolled over on her back, apparently figuring that she showed off to better advantage that way. She did. The brunette gave him a gamin grin. “We’re more fun three at a time,” she said. “We know tricks.”

Crag said, “Get out. All of you.”

They didn’t argue; they didn’t even seem offended or even annoyed. They got up calmly and went past him through the doorway of the bedroom and on out through the outer door into the hallway, still stark naked but apparently completely unaware of the fact.

Crag went over and made sure that the door was locked behind them. Then he went to the liquor closet and poured himself another drink. He noticed, for the first time, the pornographic murals above the bar of the liquor closet. He took the bottle of woji with him, and the glass. He slammed the door of the closet.

He drank that drink slowly, thinking and trying not to think.

There was a soft knock on the door. Crag put down his glass and went to answer it. A bellboy stood there just outside the door, smiling at him. A very beautiful young man, rosy and handsome, with soft ringlets of curly hair.

He said, “The management sent me, sir. Since you did not want— Is there anything I can do for you?”

Crag grinned and pretended to look him over carefully. He said, “Turn around.”

The young man smiled knowingly and turned gracefully around. He had a pleasingly plump posterior; he wriggled it a trifle, provocatively.

Crag drew back his foot and kicked hard.

He closed the door gently.

CHAPTER III

He wandered about the suite, wondering idly if there wasn’t a cabinet of narcotics anywhere; it was equipped for everything else. But the management would probably send up any kind of dope you wanted if you phoned for it.

He found the dials of a newsradio in the wall and turned it on. Just before the end of a broadcast. “...in the asteroid belt,” said the radio. “Scientists of both Mars and Earth are working on the problem, but have failed thus far to advance an acceptable theory to account for the unprecedented and incredible phenomenon. This concludes the newscast that started at three o’clock; the next newscast will be presented at four, Marsport time.”

Crag glanced at his wristchrono and saw that there would be three-quarters of an hour to wait. He went to the phone and asked for the manager. An obsequious voice told him to wait a moment and a moment later a smooth voice said, “Carleton, manager, speaking.”

“George Ah, suite two hundred,” Crag said. “I just tuned in on the tail end of a newscast—Marsport news station—concerning something happening in the asteroid belt. Could you arrange with the station to have that part of the newscast played back for me immediately from the recording that was made of it at the time?”

“I fear, Mr. Ah, that would involve rewiring of the newscast set in your room. It is automatically tuned to the main carrier wave of—”

“Over the phone,” Crag said. “Just put a call through to the station and have them play back that part of the newscast over the phone for me.”

“I’ll see if that can be arranged, Mr. Ah. If you’ll please cradle your phone, I’ll call you back as soon as...”

Crag cradled the phone and sat down beside it until the buzzer buzzed. He picked it up again.

“It can be arranged,” said the manager’s voice. “There will be a charge of ten credits. Is that satisfactory?”

“Arrange it,” Crag said. “Hurry.”

As he put the phone down again and watched it, he wondered what the hurry was. What went on out in the asteroid belt didn’t concern him. He wasn’t going to be sap enough to give up the soft life he could have here for anything as ridiculous as starting a colony of criminals on a new and raw planet.

But just the same he watched the phone, his impatience mounting until it buzzed again.

“The station is ready, sir. The management of the Luxor is glad to have been able to arrange...”

“Get off the wire, then,” Crag said.

There was a short wait and then came the voice of the announcer of the newscast: “According to many reliable reports, a strange and incredible phenomenon is taking place in the asteroid belt. First report came in eight hours ago from Marsport astronomers who were observing the asteroid Ceres—largest of the asteroids, with a diameter of four hundred and eighty miles—when it vanished from the telescope, which had been set to follow its course automatically. When found again, it had changed speed greatly and direction slightly. The directional change was quickly analyzed by the computing machine and it was found that Ceres had now lost the eccentric and parabolic aspects of its orbit; it was following a perfectly circular orbit about the sun, perfectly in the plane of the ecliptic.

“When Ceres was found to be steady in its new orbit, observation was made of other of the asteroids—those large enough to be observable. Hidalgo, whose eccentricity is point six five, was found with difficulty, considerably out of its former orbit; its new orbit, upon analysis, also proved to be a perfect circle in the plane of the ecliptic, an orbit coinciding with that of Ceres—and Hidalgo is traveling at a far greater speed. Hidalgo will overtake and crash into Ceres within hours.

“The most amazing thing is that the speed of the asteroid Hidalgo in its new orbit and in relation to its mass is impossible according to the laws of angular momentum. Marsport Observatory immediately communicated with the other observatories of Mars and of Earth and for six hours now all telescopes in the system have been trained on the asteroids.

“No single asteroid large enough to be observable in a telescope is in its former orbit! All are now in, or moving toward, the same identical orbit—a perfect circle which lies exactly halfway between the mean distance of Mars and the mean distance of Jupiter from the sun. And as they are moving at different speeds, they will all crash together and form a new planet.

“If it can be assumed that the smaller asteroids—those which cannot be seen telescopically—are joining in this movement, then the new planet being formed will be slightly larger than Mars.

“Spaceships are now converging upon the asteroid belt to watch the incredible development at close hand. An event of cosmic importance is taking place in the asteroid belt. Scientists of both Earth and Mars are working on the problem, but have failed thus far to advance an acceptable theory to account for...”

Crag put the phone back in its cradle; that was where he’d tuned in on the newscast a few minutes before.

He thought, So the little devil is really doing it. He grinned and poured himself a drink from the woji bottle.

The grin faded slowly as he drank.

The shadows lengthened and vanished and it grew dark, and after a while he went out on the balcony and stood staring up at the moon Phobos hurtling across the Martian sky and after a while longer Deimos, too, rose.

He wondered why he couldn’t get drunk and why, with so much money, he wasn’t happy.

He stared upward and located the plane of the ecliptic—the plane in which the planets revolve and which, to an observer on any planet, is an imaginary line. He followed it through the familiar constellations, brighter through the thinner air of Mars than they are from Earth, until he found an unfamiliar dot in the constellation Virgo. He watched it for half an hour until he was sure that it was moving in relation to the stars around it. No other planet was then in Virgo; it must be the new one.

But he wasn’t going there. Nothing would be crazier than to give up his sudden wealth for the rough life of a new planet.

He went back inside the suite and turned on the radio. The announcer was talking about the elections on Earth, pretending that there was a doubt of their outcome, that they hadn’t been decided and bargained for in advance between the two parties that were really one.

Crag listened without hearing until the announcer’s voice changed to real interest. “Now for the latest reports on the new planet which is forming with incredible rapidity. Observations are being made from spaceships only a few thousand miles away. The new planet is now approximately the size of Mercury.

“It is revolving apparently at random so that each new asteroid to strike it and become part of it hits a different spot and a sphere is being formed. The asteroids, large and small, which are not already a part of it are moving toward it—some with retrograde motion—at many times their former speeds. It is estimated that the last of them will reach the new planet, completing it, within twelve hours or even less. As soon thereafter as the surface has stabilized, landings will be made.

“No decision has been made yet on a name for the new planet. Majority opinion favors giving the honor of naming it to Dr. Henry Wilkins of Marsport Observatory. It was Dr. Wilkins who first observed the perturbation of the orbit of the asteroid Ceres. His report focused attention upon the asteroid belt and led to the discovery that the new planet was being formed.”

The newscaster went back to Terrestrial politics and Crag shut off the radio. He thumbed his nose at it and went to the liquor closet for another bottle of woji.

He got drunk. And, as is the way with woji, he sat there, dull physically, but with his mind seeming more clear and brilliant than it had ever seemed before. He remembered everything that had ever happened to him and none of it seemed quite as bad as it had at the time. Not even the time he’d been tortured on Venus; thinking back about it, he had to laugh at the ridiculous seriousness with which the semi-savage Venusians took themselves and everything else. Why be serious? Everything was funny, even the new planet that wanted him, Crag, to colonize it. And bring other criminals, the toughest ones he could find, with him.

Male and female ones both?—or hadn’t that ridiculous little sphere which was gathering a new world about it thought of that? He roared with laughter at how stupid the sphere had been not to have thought of that. How long could an all-male colony last?

Still—he had a serious thought—with a planet completely new and raw, perhaps that would be best at the very start, until they had the planet licked. Once they had living quarters and living arrangements and knew what was deadly and what wasn’t; that would be the time for a return trip somewhere to pick up women for themselves. Or the others could, anyway.

He, Crag, hated all women—except Evadne, and Evadne was dead. All other women were soft and corrupt, like the one he’d been engaged to so many years ago and who’d deserted him when he’d lost his hand and his spaceman’s job. Well, she’d have had some tough times if she’d stuck with him; there wasn’t any denying that. But he wondered if she was still alive and what she’d think if she knew where he was now and that he had a fortune in his pocket. Probably come running to see if she could get him back. Women were like that. Women.

He laughed harder. And drank more, and his mind became even clearer although some of the laughter went away.

He thought of Evadne, of her lush body and her copper hair and her clear blue eyes that were straight and honest in a world that was as crooked as a poker game in a Martian gambling joint and as ugly as Evadne was beautiful.

And he drank more and he didn’t laugh at all; he seemed to see Evadne standing there before him in the dimly lighted room, and he rose to go to her, but when he reached her she wasn’t there.

He drank more and became angry and amused himself for a while walking about the suite smashing things that were smashable and some things that—by an ordinary man—wouldn’t have been smashable at all. But Crag’s missing hand had been replaced by a heavily weighted metal one—although he managed to carry it so lightly that no one suspected what a deadly weapon it was—and he could deal a blow with it that was as quick as the dart of a tsetse fly and had the authority of a sledgehammer. It wasn’t a hand you’d want to be slapped with.

He smashed furniture and gambling equipment and the huge television screen and the equipment behind it. The hotel wouldn’t mind; they’d simply put it on his bill—as the women and the bellboy and the liquor and even every minute he used the radio would be on his bill. The twenty credits—two hundred dollars—a day that one paid for a suite like this was merely the starting point of all they billed you for.

But after a while he tired of smashing things and drank some more and then lay down on the divan and slept—not using or wanting to use the great seven by eight foot bed in the bedroom.

It was almost noon when he awakened. He felt terrible until he’d groped his way to the liquor cabinet and taken a shot of antihang and then a quick pick-up shot of the fiery Martian liquor.

After that he was able to look about at the shambles he’d made of the place; and to laugh. It looked better that way, he thought.

Just the same, he stopped at the desk on his way out. A tall man in archaic full dress was behind it. Crag said, “The manager, please.”

“I am the manager, Mr. Carleton. You are Mr.—ah—Ah?”

“Yes. There was a hurricane in my room last night. You will please have it refurnished immediately. Except, perhaps, for the television set I think I will be happier without a television set. The refurnishing at my expense, of course.”

“Of course, sir. We shall have it done at once. There will, also, be put on your bill a charge for temporary incapacitation of the—ah—bellboy.”

“Well worth it,” Crag said. He went into the restaurant of the hotel and ordered and ate a meal. It was a wonderful meal made up of the choicest viands of three planets and it cost him more than he had earned in a week back in the days when he’d been a spaceman. He wondered why he didn’t enjoy it especially. Even the rare vintage wines served with it didn’t taste right although he knew that they were the best money could buy.

He wandered into the main gambling saloon and managed to divest himself of forty credits in the mara game, but the dealing was so obviously crooked that he played along merely for the privilege of watching so crude an exhibition. Even with only one good hand, he could have done better himself.

Finally, in utter disgust, he slapped his metal left hand down—not too hard—on the hand of the dealer who was passing a card to him. The dealer screamed and dropped two cards, where only one should have been. Then he stepped back, moaning, to nurse his broken hand. Crag left his bet and walked out.

Probably, he thought with grim amusement, he’d be billed for that, too.

He went back up to his suite and found it refurnished and in perfect shape. Even the monster television screen had been replaced; probably they’d billed him for twice its value and hoped he’d break it again.

Again, and more strongly, the sheer magnificence and expensiveness of the suite struck him and he laughed and then wondered, What am I doing here?

He poured himself a drink and then wandered over to the wall-radio and turned it on. Politics again. He went to the pneumatic divan and sat down with the bottle in one hand and a glass in the other and managed not to listen to that part of the newscast. But then he found himself leaning slightly forward to listen as, again, the newscaster’s voice changed from simulated to genuine interest.

“The new planet between Mars and Jupiter is now complete, a sphere larger than Mars, almost identical with Earth in size. Slightly larger, in fact. Apparently estimates of the total volume of mass of the asteroids erred on the short aide, due to the great number of asteroids too small to have been charted.

“Strangely, considering the suddenness of its formation, the surface seems to be quite stable, free from quakes and convulsions. Landing parties will be organized very soon from among the patrol ships which have been observing the planet’s formation. Pardon me a second—

“I have just been handed a bulletin informing me that the new planet has been named. Dr. Wilkins of Marsport Observatory has, with the concurrence of his colleagues, chosen the name Cragon—C-r-a-g-o-n, Cragon.”

Crag put back his head and laughed.

CHAPTER IV

He thought, The little devil names himself after me. For Crag knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that Cragon had been chosen as a name, even though a man he’d never heard of and who had never heard of him had done the choosing. Cragon had named itself; it must have planted that thought in the minds of the astronomers at Marsport Observatory when it had been here on Mars studying conditions and deciding what it was to do.

The announcer was going on. “The name has no special mythological derivation, Dr. Wilkins explains. It was chosen arbitrarily as a euphonious combination of syllables. All other planets, as you know, were named after prominent characters in ancient mythology, but the practice was abandoned after the discovery of so many asteroids that all such names had been used.

“In a few hours we shall be able to give you reports from the first landing parties.”

And back to politics and the elections.

Crag shut off the newsradio. He got himself another drink and sat down with it, still chuckling. Thinks he’s going to get me that way, he thought.

He had a few more drinks and then looked around the suite and decided that he hated it worse than any place he’d ever been in. He wanted to smash things again, but he knew that would be purposeless and that he wouldn’t get any real pleasure out of doing it a second time.

But he had to get away from it for a while. He remembered, though, how much money he had and decided it wouldn’t be safe to carry all of it. No one would take it away from him while he was conscious, but if he ended up—as he probably would—in a spaceman’s dive, he didn’t want to have to watch how much he drank.

He thought of putting it in a bank, but that would be even more dangerous; you could trust banks with small amounts, but with a sum like that they’d finagle him out of it some way. Besides, such a deposit in cash might interest government investigators if they heard about it, and they’d investigate him and want to know where he got it. And they’d try to take it away from him if the bank didn’t. The vault of the hotel would be even more risky.

He took the money out of his pocket and studied what to do with it. There were still nineteen ten-thousand-credit bills; he’d broken only one of them. He decided that hiding the nineteen bills in various places about the suite would be safest.

He did a good job of hiding them, and when he left he did a bit of work on the lock of the door with some tiny tools he carried; no one could open it but himself when he’d finished with it.

When he got to Spaceman’s Row, he thought at first he was on the wrong street. It had changed tremendously, but he remembered now that the change had already started the last time he’d been there, four years before. Some of the dives had been cleaned up and prettied up then; now, they all were. The picturesqueness was gone and if there was any dirt you couldn’t see it for neon.

He walked the length of it, looking for a familiar place and failing to find one, before he chose the least garish of the bars and went in.

A few spacemen, with girls, were at the bar drinking and watching a television screen. The spacemen looked young, callow and almost effeminate compared to the men who used to fly the spaceways.

Crag paid no attention to them after a first glance, taking a stool at the bar and facing away from the television screen.

The bartender, although he was dressed in a fancy monkey suit, looked almost human, although his eyes were a little too shifty for Crag’s taste.

He grinned when Crag ordered a woji. “Guess you haven’t been around Marsport recently. Illegal now.”

“Had some this morning,” Crag said.

“Must’ve been at a fancy hotel. The law doesn’t bother them, but it’s sure clamped down on Spaceman’s Row. It ain’t what it used to be.”

“So I notice.”

“Nothing stronger than kodore. No fights now, no nothing. Plenty of women, though. Dope, if you want it, except the kinds that might make you feel scrappy. Nope, it ain’t what it used to be.”

Crag took the well stuffed wallet from his pocket. He put a five-credit bill on the bar, a dozen times the price of a glass of woji. He looked at the bartender inquiringly.

The bartender looked at the bill and then slid it off the bar and into his pocket. “Just a minute,” he said.

Crag nodded and the bartender went through a door at the back and, a moment later, came back through it and nodded at Crag, beckoning.

Crag followed him through the door and closed it behind him. There was a bottle of woji on the table, and a glass. Crag reached for the bottle and the bartender stuck a heat-gun in his side. “Up,” he said.

Crag raised his hands—apparently quite casually, but as they reached shoulder level the left hand—the metal one—flicked just slightly against the bartender’s chin. The bartender and the heat-gun fell, separately. Crag pocketed the heat-gun.

He sat down at the table and poured himself a drink. After a few minutes the bartender blinked his eyes and then sat up, touching his chin gingerly and wincing. He looked at Crag curiously and Crag grinned at him. “Have a drink,” he said. “Get yourself a glass.”

The bartender got up slowly and then got himself a glass and another chair. Crag poured him a drink.

The bartender sipped it, staring at Crag. He said slowly, “You hit me with your left hand, lightly. So it’s a metal one and weighted. I’ve heard stories about a guy named Crag. They’re almost legends. And he was in Marsport four years ago and so were you. My name’s Gardin and I’m sorry I tried to take you.”

“That’s all right,” Crag said. They shook hands.

Gardin said, “Listen, Crag, don’t flash that much dough. Not because of criminals; there aren’t many of them—of us—left. On account of the law. The bulls pick up anybody they don’t know who flashes money and the judges fine him every cent he’s got on him and split with the bulls. It’s not like the old days when a man had a chance.”

Gardin stared straight ahead for a moment. “I wanted to get out of this place; that’s why I tried to take you. Only, Crag, where is there to go that’s any better?”

“Nowhere,” Crag told him. “Have another drink.”

“I better get back to the bar. Come on, I’ll bring the woji with us, only I’ll pour it in a kodore bottle. Same color and nobody’ll know the difference.”

They went back to the bar and Crag poured them each a drink while Gardin poured refills for the spacemen and their women. He came back to Crag.

He said quietly, “Careful if any coppers come in. Down that stuff quick and I’ll cap the bottle. You can smell woji yards away and them coppers have noses.”

Crag glanced at the spacemen and Gardin said contemptuously, “Don’t worry about them; they never even smelled woji. Just out of school and don’t know which way is up.”

Crag nodded and turned to glance at the big television screen which the other group was watching. On the screen an almost naked woman was singing a more than suggestive song of the delights of perversion. The spacemen and their women watched with rapt attention, but when the song ended, they finished their drinks and left.

Crag said, “Shut the thing off.”

Gardin started for the switch, but before he reached it, the scene changed; on the screen was a planet floating in space, seen from a distance of about ten thousand miles. It wasn’t a planet Crag had ever seen before. The telecaster’s voice said, “We bring you a special broadcast of the first landing on the new planet Cragon, suddenly and miraculously formed of the scattered matter of the asteroid belt between—”

Gardin was reaching for the switch, but Crag said sharply, “Don’t. Leave it on.”

He was studying the new planet with amazement. There were seas on it and he thought he could make out rivers and different colored patches that could only be vegetation—probably huge forests. Water, he thought with sudden curiosity; where could it have got water? And then he remembered that the entity which had been an asteroid had transmuted carbon dioxide in his helmet into oxygen. So why couldn’t it transmute any element into any other one? Even so, how could it have created vegetation upon itself so quickly?

“The view upon the screen,” said the voice of the telecaster, “is from a port of the mother ship. We shall maintain this distance above the surface while a two-man scouter we have sent out makes the first actual landing. It is on its way now and should reach the upper atmosphere within less than a minute. When it does we shall switch you to the voice of Captain Burke who has command of the scouter; Lieutenant Laidlaw is with him. The scouter is too small to hold a telecaster, so the view upon the screen will continue to be from the mother ship. However, if the scouter makes a successful landing and gives us the come-on signal, this ship shall follow it to the surface and you will have a close view of whatever lies on Cragon.

“The landing will be made regardless of the nature of the atmosphere, which has thus far defied complete spectroscopic analysis from a distance. Oxygen is present in about the same proportion as in the atmosphere of Earth, but there are other gasses present, one of which has new and unknown Fraunhofer lines, undoubtedly the lines of a hitherto undiscovered element.

“If you have missed recent newscasts and telecasts, I might tell you that it has been determined that the density of Cragon is about that of Earth, as is its gravity. The proportion of land to water is much greater, about half—as against Earth’s one-fifth. The land surface, therefore, is almost two and a half times that of Earth, truly a magnificent place for colonization—if the air is breathable.

“I have a signal from Captain Burke. He is ready to cut in. Go ahead, Captain.”

A different voice spoke. “Captain Burke talking from the scouter ship. We are entering the upper atmosphere. We are above the largest continent of Cragon. We are fifty miles high and our instruments show a slight increase of atmospheric pressure, although still not much over a laboratory vacuum—about the same reading for an equivalent height above Earth. We are descending at the rate of five miles a minute, although we shall have to slow our descent soon.

“We can see from here—I think with certainty—that the dark areas of the land surface really are forests, incredible as that is. At least they look the same as Earth’s forest areas look from an equivalent height—forty-five miles now.”

Crag grinned at Gardin. “They’ll never make it. Bet you.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“Atmosphere poisonous.”

“So what? They’re in a spaceship. That won’t stop them from landing. And they won’t get out without suits until they’ve checked the air.”

“Bet they don’t land. A thousand credits to the five I just gave you for the woji.”

Gardin laughed. “You’re crazy, Crag, but that’s sure a bet.”

They turned back to the screen.

“Thirty miles now, almost into the stratosphere. Something seems to be wrong with the air conditioner in this scouter. It’s getting hard to breathe. Lieutenant Laidlaw is working with it. Getting it fixed, Lieutenant?

“He says he can’t find anything wrong with it, and our oxygen indicator shows normal quantity. Can’t understand it. We’re twenty-two miles now. But both of us breathing hard. I—can’t figure what’s—”

Crag looked at Gardin. “Double the bet?”

Gardin shook his head.

The voice was labored. “We’re going—back up. Something’s wrong and it’s not—our air conditioner. Going—fast as we can—take it. Thirty miles again. Not—quite so bad. Almost breathe.

“Checking with Laidlaw. Says—our air normal, but an added ingredient. The unknown element. Came right through the hull—osmosis or something. Thirty-five miles.

“We’re all right now. But returning to the mother ship for a conference.”

Crag grinned at Gardin and then walked over and shut off the television set. Gardin took the five credit note out of his pocket and put it on the bar. But he said, “I don’t get it. How’d you know before it happened?”

“Inside information. That’s one planet they’ll never land on. Not alive, anyway. If they ever lick that trick, my pal’s got other ones up his sleeve.”

“Your pal?”

“Cragon. Named himself after me.” Crag took another sip of his drink. “The little—”

“Who?”

“Cragon. I just told you. Listen, Gardin, how’d you like to—no, skip it.” Crag turned morosely back to his drink.

The door behind Crag opened suddenly. Crag turned and saw three uniformed policemen—tough-looking mugs all, with heat-guns in spring holsters ready for action—coming in the door. Crag turned back to the bar casually and downed the last of his drink, and Gardin, equally casually, picked up the bottle and was replacing the cap, turning toward the back bar as he did so.

But the closest copper was sniffing audibly. “Hey, you,” he told Gardin, “let’s see that bottle.”

Crag turned his head and saw that all three of them had heat-guns in their hands, one of them aiming at him and two of them at Gardin. It was going to be a stick-up, a legal stick-up—and to make it legal probably both Gardin and he would get five-year sentences on the technicality of selling and buying, respectively, a forbidden beverage.

CHAPTER V

Crag glanced back over the bar and, before Gardin turned, he caught Gardin’s eyes in the mirror, just for a fleeting instant, but enough. The eyes said, “We’ll make a break if we can.”

Crag turned back on the stool, very casually, raising his hands at the menace of the heat-gun pointing at him and only two feet from him. A quick flick of his eyes downward showed him that it was going to be almost too easy; the safety stud of the heater was still in safe position and it would take the copper almost a second to fire. Obviously he wasn’t anticipating trouble, with three armed men against two unarmed ones. The copper guarding Crag was at the bar beside him; the other two were also at the bar, and beyond, Gardin was turning around with the bottle.

It was almost too easy. Crag practically fell forward off the stool, his right hand, from a raised position, pistoning out for the jaw of the copper and his metal left hand chopping down at the heater. And he kept on going forward, pushing the first copper back against the others. Number one’s heater hit the floor as he went back, unconscious from the blow to his chin. Number two went down, too, and Crag, keeping going right across Number one, put his left hand in Number two’s stomach, just above the belt buckle.

Number three, knocked off balance against the bar, had time to trigger his heater wildly and the backbar mirror shattered under sudden heat as Gardin, who’d taken a reversed grip on the bottle, leaned across the bar and broke it over Number three’s head.

Crag gathered the three heaters and looked quickly toward the window. No one was passing by. Gardin quickly came around the bar and helped Crag drag them into the back room. None of them was dead. Gardin got a stack of bar towels and started tearing them into strips; within minutes all three of the coppers were bound and gagged so efficiently that they wouldn’t get loose, by their own efforts, for hours.

Gardin mopped sweat off his forehead and looked at Crag. Crag grinned. “You ruined that bottle of woji,” he said. “Got another?”

Gardin got another and they went back to the bar. While Gardin filled their glasses, Crag fiddled with the dials of the television set. A blonde tenor with marcelled hair was singing:

“Jet up! Jet down! On a slow ship to Pluto!”

Crag switched it off and went back to the bar.

Gardin said worriedly, “We had to do it; if we hadn’t, it’d’ve been five or ten years for each of us. But now it’s life if they get us. What do we do, Crag?”

Crag suddenly knew, and he knew now that he’d known all along, that it had been only a matter of time until he’d decided.

“We go to Cragon,” he said.

“But—the poisonous atmosphere!”

“I’ve got an in. It won’t be poisonous for me, or for anyone I take with me. Do you know any others that would like to go? I’ve got a ship that will carry half a dozen for that short a trip.”

“You serious, Crag?”

Crag nodded.

“I’ve got a pal that’ll go. And his woman and mine.”

“How long have we got?”

Gardin looked up at the clock in the wall. “Seven hours. I’d just started my shift. If I lock the door when we go, nobody’ll bother the place till the next bartender comes here; everybody’ll just think the place is closed.”

“Want to call your friends from here?”

Gardin mopped his forehead again. “Sooner I get out of here—with those cops tied up back there—the better I’ll feel. Let’s go.”

They left the place and Gardin closed the blinds and locked it.

“My woman lives just around the corner,” Gardin said, “and Pete Hauser and his woman live only a block away. Shall we get them first?”

Crag said, “I’m going to buy an aircar. We’ll need one to get to the spaceship and it’ll be easier to buy one than to take a chance of being checked on if we hire one.”

“You got enough money you’d buy an aircar just for one trip and leave it?”

Crag laughed. “Sure. And what good’s money where we’re going? I’ve got a hundred and ninety thousand credits back at the hotel and no use for it at all. But we’ll go back and get it anyway, just in case.”

Gardin whistled. “Pal, with that much money, we can buy our way out of this rap. We wouldn’t have to lam.”

“Don’t you want to go?”

“Sure, sure. Look, this is the house. Can you pick us up here in an hour?”

Crag caught an aircab and went to the biggest aircar agency in Marsport. He was whistling now and felt happier than he’d felt in years. He wondered why he’d taken so long to make up his mind.

It took him less than an hour to complete the purchase of a five-place aircar and get it serviced and fueled for a five-hundred-mile trip. It was just turning dusk when he returned to the doorway where he’d left Gardin.

Four people were waiting for him there. Gardin’s woman, a big blonde named Stell. Pete Hauser, a little man—but tough-looking—with a rodent face and beady eyes. Gert, small and dark, Gypsy-looking, quick and graceful in her movements. And Gardin, who had switched from his monkey-suit into spaceman’s gear. He’d guessed right, then, about Gardin’s having been a spaceman once—in the days when the spaceways weren’t a tea party.

Crag drove them to the Luxor and suggested a stirrup cup in his suite.

The lock of his door hadn’t been disturbed. He let them in and enjoyed—but not too much—watching the eyes of the two women as they took in the luxury of the gubernatorial suite. He opened the liquor closet and told them to help themselves and pour one for him while he gathered the money and decided what part of his luggage he’d take along.

The first ten thousand credit bill wasn’t where he’d hidden it. Nor the second. Nor any of them.

Crag sat down, frowning, to drink the woji Stell brought him, and to think. It couldn’t have been an outside job. The suite was accessible only through the door he’d fixed so no one but himself could open the lock. There must be a secret entrance somewhere and the hotel itself must have done the job. Besides, it would have taken a more detailed search to have found all of those bills than any casual thief could have made or would have dared to make.

After buying the aircar he still had several thousand credits and money would be useless on Cragon, anyway, but—

He told the others what had happened and sent each to a different room of the suite to look for a secret entrance. Pete Hauser found it, cleverly concealed in the shelving of the pornographic library.

Crag turned down Gardin’s offer of help and told them all to wait. The secret entrance was locked from the outside, but that gave him only a minute’s pause. Then he was in a narrow passageway and going down several narrow flights of padded steps. He passed other secret doors of other suites, all locked from his side, and he could have burgled as many suites as he wished—but there wasn’t any reason to. He’d never stolen for the fun of it, and he didn’t need money now, whether he got his own back or not.

There were peepholes into all the suites, too, an intricate system of them. More than peepholes, really; they were fair sized portions of the walls that were transparent from one side and not from the other. He realized now that he must have been watched while he was hiding the bills; otherwise, in the few hours he’d been out, no search would have found every last one of them.

He decided that he didn’t like the Luxor Hotel nor its management. Glancing casually through the transparent areas into some of the suites he passed, he decided he didn’t like the clientele of the place, either. In fact, he didn’t like Marsport; he didn’t like civilization in general—as civilization was just then.

And he particularly decided that he didn’t like the manager of the Luxor, who undoubtedly had sole access to this system of secret corridors, peepholes and entrances.

When he’d counted enough flights to know that he was on the main floor, he started looking for—and found—a panel that locked from the other side. That would be either the manager’s office or his private quarters. There wasn’t any peephole for him to scout through, so he picked the lock more quietly than he had ever picked one before.

He inched the panel open silently. It opened into the manager’s office. He could see the manager’s back, as the panel opened behind the desk. Mr. Carleton still wore the archaic full dress suit, almost the only one Crag had ever seen.

Crag stepped out of the panel, more quietly than any cat. He reached his right hand around the scrawny neck of the manager and pulled back, squeezing just hard enough to prevent any outcry and pulling back just far enough to keep Carleton’s groping hands from reaching any of the buttons on or under his desk.

“Where is the money?” he asked quietly.

He relaxed pressure enough to permit a whisper, and when none came, he tightened his fingers again. A thin hand came up and pointed to a metal door with a combination knob set in the wall directly across the room from where he stood.

“Come on,” Crag said. “You’re going with me while I open it, and if any help comes—whether you manage to call for it or not—you die when it gets here.”

He pulled the man up out of the chair and walked him across the room until they stood facing the safe, Carleton between Crag and the door of it.

Crag said, “I’m letting go your neck now. Yell as loud as you want, if you want to make it your last yell.”

He put his left arm around the manager’s body and held tight while he reached for the combination knob with his right.

The manager didn’t yell, but he squeaked—and both of his hands grabbed for Crag’s wrist. “Don’t! It’s booby-trapped, and I’ll die too if I’m standing here. Let me open it,”

Crag grinned and let him open it. There was quite a bit of money in the safe, although Crag’s were the only ten thousand credit bills. Crag took it all except the change and the one and five credit bills; there were so many of those that his pockets wouldn’t have held all of them.

He took Carleton back with him through the secret panel and there bound and gagged him with strips torn from the manager’s dress coat.

He felt good again, despite some of the things he’d seen through the passageway peepholes. And he felt a little reckless—or maybe it was the woji. He leaned forward and whispered to Carleton, “If you report this, tell them to look for Crag. On the planet Cragon.” He laughed. “Crag of Cragon.”

He went back up the secret stairs and passageways to his own suite. He found that he must have been gone a little longer than he thought, for both of the women were drunk and Pete was almost so. Even Gardin’s eyes were a little glassy.

Crag made all of them take sober-up powders and, since he was going to pilot the aircar and the spaceship, he himself took a neobenzedrine. He settled for a very few items out of the many things he’d bought before coming to the Luxor—all things that he could carry in his pockets so they wouldn’t attract attention crossing the lobby.

“Get the money?” Gardin had asked him and he’d nodded and said, “With interest. Compound.”

Maybe, he thought, they’d use that money to light fires with when they got to Cragon. but at any rate he hadn’t left it with the manager of the Luxor.

They made the aircar without being questioned and Crag piloted the aircar slowly and carefully, not to attract attention, until they were well out of Marsport before he put on speed.

The spaceship was still where he’d left it, and that was good; he could have bought another—dozens of them—with all the money he had, but the delay would have been a risk.

Twenty hours later they landed on Cragon. Because the others lacked his confidence, Crag put the ship down through the atmosphere very slowly, ready to jerk it up quickly if any of them had any difficulty in breathing, but none of them had.

Just before the ship touched the surface, a voice in Crag’s mind said, “Welcome, Crag.” He answered mentally, not aloud, and looked at the others quickly to see if they had received any equivalent message; obviously none of them had.

He put the ship down gently in a perfect landing and opened the door without bothering to test the atmosphere. He stepped out, the others following him. The air was like the air of Earth on a crisp autumn morning. They were on a plain that stretched down to a river. There was short grass where they stood, bushes between them and the river; behind them was what might easily have been a forest of Earth and beyond the forest rose tall rugged mountains.

Crag liked it. He felt content and at peace.

He wondered what to do first and flashed a mental question, but there wasn’t any answer—and that was answer enough. They were on their own and Cragon wasn’t going to advise them.

He took a deep breath and turned to face the others. “All right,” he said. “We’re here. We start to work.”

“Work?” Pete Hauser’s rodent face looked surprised.

“Work,” said Crag. “We’ll find food—there’ll be game in that forest and fish in that river and we’ll find some edible plants that we can domesticate and grow. But we’ll have to work for all of it. All of us. And since we’ve got food for a few days in the ship, the first job’s to build ourselves quarters. The ship’s too small for five people to live in.”

“Build out of what?” Gardin wanted to know.

Both Gert and Stell looked displeased and petulant. Crag stared at them and wondered what they’d expected to find on a new planet.

He answered Gardin’s question within an hour. There was clay along the river bank that would dry into good adobe bricks. He vetoed Stell’s suggestion that they all have a binge to celebrate—although from her face she didn’t seem to think there was much to celebrate—and put all of them, including himself, to work shaping clay bricks and putting them in the sun to dry.

The others worked listlessly and none of them, even Gardin, who tried to pretend interest, got very many bricks formed. Gert cut a finger on a stone in the clay and rebelled, her dark face sullen. She sat and watched the others, angry because Crag had locked the door of the ship and had kept the key; he curtly refused to give it to her so she could get a bottle and drink.

He kept them, and himself, at work until sundown.

They slept in the ship that night, and Crag slept lightly, but nothing happened.

The next morning he put Hauser and the two women back at the brick-making and he and Gardin went into the forest and found that he’d been right in guessing that there was game, although it was small and wary and was going to take very skilled hunting to get.

That night he again refused to let them get drunk, and he could feel the resentment against him, palpable as a Venusian fog.

He slept even more lightly that night, but the break he’d been expecting didn’t come until morning. It came in the form of a heat-gun being shoved into his back as he was leaving the ship. Pete Hauser’s voice said, “And don’t try to use that metal hand of yours. I know about it. I can pull the trigger first. Keep your hands down.”

Crag kept his hands down and turned around. He looked at Gardin and Gardin couldn’t quite meet his eyes. He didn’t have to ask if they were all in it.

Crag reached out casually and slapped the heater out of Hauser’s hand—not until after Hauser had pulled the trigger, though, and nothing had happened. Crag said, “I unloaded it, unloaded all of them. All right, Gardin, you do the talking. What do you want? To elect your own leader? Or what?”

Gardin cleared his throat uncomfortably. “We want to go back, Crag. None of us have ever lived—wild, like this. We find we don’t like it. We’d rather take our chances on Earth or Mars. We don’t care whether you come with us or not, just so we get back.”

Gert said, “But if you don’t, if you’re staying here, you might as well give us some—or all—of that money you’ve got. It’s no good to you here.”

Stell’s voice was plaintive. “Please let us go, Crag. Or if you want the ship, take us back and then come here yourself.”

Crag said, “I’m going to think it over. I’ll be back.”

He walked toward the forest, thinking. It was going to be lonesome and yet—well, he wasn’t going back, ever. And to have others here wasn’t any good unless they wanted to be here.

He tried thinking messages to Cragon, to get Cragon’s advice, but there wasn’t any answering voice in his mind. He was being left strictly alone in his decision.

He walked back to the spaceship and the four people waiting for him there.

He said, “Okay, take the ship and get out. Unload everything in it I can use and then take it. And here—” He took off the money belt with almost three hundred thousand credits in it and tossed it to them. “Divide this on the way. I’ll give you the key to the controls when you’ve unloaded the ship.”

They worked fast, willingly this time, obviously afraid he might change his mind.

An hour later, standing beside a tarpaulin covered pile of supplies that represented everything movable that had been in the ship, he watched it go.

He felt dull inside, neither happy nor unhappy. This was the way it was going to be. This was his world, and here he was going to stay until he died. He’d be lonesome, sure, but he was used to that. And, even alone, this was better than the cesspools of Earth, Mars or Venus. He’d thought once that having a fortune might make those places worth living in; he’d found out that it had made them worse.

He watched the speck out of sight in the blue and then sighed and started for the river to carry on with his brick-making. That still came first—or he thought then that it did.

But he’d taken only a few steps when the voice that was Cragon spoke in his mind.

“They were too soft, Crag. They weren’t tough, like you are, tough enough to lick a new planet. I knew when I first contacted their minds that they wouldn’t stay.”

“Yeah,” said Crag listlessly.

“That is why I waited,” said the voice in his mind. “I made sure you wanted to stay here, even if it was to be alone. But it won’t be alone, Crag.”

“Yeah,” Crag said. He supposed it wouldn’t be quite so lonely if Cragon talked to him once in a while.

There was something in his mind like laughter, not his own. The voice said, “No, not I, Crag. I have other things to do, and this may be the last time I ever communicate with you. I mean—Evadne.”

Crag stopped walking as though he had run into a stone wall.

“Remember what happened to Evadne, Crag? The disintegrator, yes. But every atom of her body remained, on the surface of the tiny ball of neutronium that I became, before she was disintegrated. It was simple to segregate them and preserve them, Crag, against your return. And I was conscious, Crag, a conscious entity, even before she disintegrated. The structure of her body and her mind was the first thing I studied, before I entered your mind, out there when I first spoke to you.”

Crag’s mind reeled. “But she’s dead. You can’t—”

“What is death. Crag? Can you define it for me? Can you tell me why, if every atom is replaced into its position in every molecule, just as it was—”

“But can you? Are you sure?”

“I have. She’s coming this way now, Crag, from the edge of the woods. If you’ll only turn, you’ll see her coming.”

Crag turned and saw her. He started to run toward her and saw the gladness in her face when she saw him coming.

“You won’t need to explain, Crag; I’ve told her everything that has happened. Goodbye, Crag; I’m leaving your mind now.”

Crag may or may not have answered that thought in his mind. He had his arms around Evadne, her soft body pressed against his. And they had a world of their own, a new world to live in—and to populate.