THE GALAXY PRIMES, by E.E. “Doc” Smith [Part 2]

CHAPTER 6

Since the tests took much time, and were strictly routine in nature, there is no need to go into them in detail. At their conclusion, Garlock said:

“First: either Jim alone, or Lola alone, or Jim and Lola together, can hit any destination within any galaxy, but can’t go from one galaxy to another.

“Second: either Belle or I, or any combination containing either of us without the other, has no control at all.

“Third: Belle and I together, or any combination containing both of us, can go intergalactic under control.

“In spite of confession being supposed to be good for the soul, I don’t like to admit that we’ve put gravel in the gear-box—do you, Belle?” Garlock’s smile was both rueful and forced.

“You can play that in spades.” Belle licked her lips; for the first time since boarding the starship she was acutely embarrassed. “We’ll have to, of course. It was all my fault—it makes me look like a damned stupid juvenile delinquent.”

“Not by nineteen thousand kilocycles, since neither of us had any idea. I’ll be glad to settle for half the blame.”

* * * *

“Will you please stop talking Sanskrit?” James asked. “Or lep it, so we two innocent bystanders can understand it?”

“Will do,” and Garlock went on in thought. “Remember what I said about this drive not being conditioned to anything? I was wrong. Belle and I have conditioned it, but badly. We’ve been fighting so much that something or other in that mess down there has become conditioned to her; something else to me. My part will play along with anyone except Belle; hers with anybody except me. Anti-conditioning, you might call it. Anyway, they lay back their ears and balk.”

“Oh, hell!” James snorted. “Talk about gobbledygook! You are still saying that that conglomeration of copper and silver and steel and insulation that we built ourselves has got intelligence, and I still won’t buy it.”

“By no means. Remember, Jim, that this concept of mechanical teleportation, and that the mind is the only possible controller, are absolutely new. We’ve got to throw out all previous ideas and start new from scratch. I postulate, as a working hypothesis drawn from original data as modified by these tests, that that particular conglomeration of materials generates at least two fields about the properties of which we know nothing at all. That one of those properties is the tendency to become preferentially resonant with one mind and preferentially non-resonant with another. Clear so far?”

“As mud. It’s a mighty tough blueprint to read.” James scowled in thought. “However, it’s no harder to swallow than Sanderson’s Theory of Teleportation. Or, for that matter, the actual basic coupling between mind and ordinary muscular action. Does that mean we’ll have to rebuild half a million credits’ worth of…no, you and Belle can work it, together.”

“I don’t know.” Garlock paced the floor. “I simply can’t see any possible mechanism of coupling.”

“Subconscious, perhaps,” Belle suggested.

“For my money that whole concept is invalid,” Garlock said. “It merely changes ‘I don’t know’ to ‘I can’t know’ and I don’t want any part of that. However, ‘unconscious’ could be the answer…if so, we may have a lever.… Belle, are you willing to bury your hatchet for about five minutes—work with me like a partner ought to?”

“I certainly am, Clee. Honestly. Screens down flat, if you say so.”

“Half-way’s enough, I think—you’ll know when we get down there.” Her mind joined his and he went on, “Ignore the machines themselves completely. Consider only the fields. Feel around with me—keep tuned!—see if there’s anything at all here that we can grab hold of and manipulate, like an Op field except probably very much finer. I’ll be completely damned if I can see how this type of Gunther generator can put out a manipulable field, but it must. That’s the only—O-W-R-C-H-H!”

This last was a yell of pure mental agony. Both hands flew to his head, his face turned white, sweat poured, and he slumped down unconscious.

He came to, however, as the other three were stretching him out on a davenport. Belle was mopping his face with a handkerchief.

“What happened, Clee?” All three were exclaiming at once.

“I found my manipulable field, but a bomb went off in my brain when I straightened it out.” He searched his mind anxiously, then smiled. “But no damage done—just the opposite. It opened up a Gunther cell I didn’t know I had. Didn’t it sock you, too, Belle?”

“Uh-uh,” she said, more than half bitterly. “I must not have one. That makes you a Super-Prime, if I may name a new classification.”

“Nonsense! Of course you’ve got it. Unconscious, of course, like me, but without it you couldn’t have conditioned the field. But why.… Oh, what bit me was the one conditioned to me.”

“Oh, nice!” Belle exclaimed. “Come on, Clee—let’s go get mine!”

“Do you want a bit of knowledge that badly, Belle?” Lola asked. “Besides, wait, he isn’t strong enough yet.”

“Of course he’s strong enough. A little knock like that? Want it! I’d give my right leg and…and almost anything for it. It didn’t kill him, so it won’t kill me.”

“There may be an easier way,” Garlock said. “I wouldn’t wish a jolt like that onto my worst enemy. But that had two hundred kilovolts and four hundred kilogunts behind it. Since I know now where and what the cell is, I think I can open it up for you without being quite so rough.”

“Oh, lovely. Come in, quick! I’m ready now.”

* * * *

Garlock went in; and wrought. It took longer—half an hour, in fact—but it was very much easier to take.

“What did it feel like, Belle?” Lola asked, eagerly. “You winced like he was drilling teeth and struck a couple of nerves.”

“Uh-uh. More like being stretched all out of shape. Like having a child, maybe, in a small way. Let’s go, Clee!”

They joined up and went.

“Ha, there you are, you cantankerous little fabrication of nothings!” Belle said aloud, in a low, throaty, gloating voice. “Take that—and that! And now behave yourself. If you don’t, mama spank—but good!” Then, breaking connection, “Thanks a million, Clee; you’re tall, solid gold. Do you want to run some more tests, to see which of us is the intergalactic transporter?”

“Not unless you do.”

“Who, me? I’ll be tickled to death not to; just like I’d swallowed an ostrich feather. Back to Tellus, then?”

“Tellus, here we come,” Garlock said. “Jim, what are the Tellurian figures for exactly five hundred miles up?”

“I’ll punch ’em—got ’em in my head.” James did so. “Shall Brownie and I set our blocks?”

“No,” Belle said. “Nothing can interfere with us now.”

“Ready.” Garlock sat down in the pilot’s seat. “Cluster ’round, chum.”

* * * *

Belle leaned against the back of the chair and put both arms around Garlock’s neck. “I’m clustered.”

“The spot we’re shooting at is exactly over the exact center of the middle blast-pit at Port Gunther. In sync?”

“To a skillionth of a whillionth of a microphase. I’m exactly on and locked. Shoot.”

“Now, you sheet-iron bucket of nuts and bolts, jump!” and Garlock snapped the red switch.

Earth lay beneath them. So did Port Gunther.

“Hu-u-u-uh!” Garlock’s huge sigh held much more of relief than of triumph.

“They did it! We’re home!” Lola shrieked; and, breaking into unashamed and unrestrained tears, went into her husband’s extended arms.

“Cry ahead, sweet. I’d bawl myself if Garlock wasn’t looking. Maybe I will, anyway,” James said. Then, extending his right arm to Garlock and to Belle, “I was scared to death you couldn’t make it except by back tracking. Good going, you two Primes,” but his thoughts said vastly more than his words.

Belle’s eyes, too, were wet; Garlock’s own were not quite dry.

“You weren’t as sure as you looked, then, that we could do it the hard way,” Belle said. “All inside, I was one quivering mass of jelly.”

“Afterward, you mean. You were solid as Gibraltar when I fired the charge. You’re the kind of woman a man wants with him when the going’s tough. Slide around here a little, so I can get hold of you.”

Garlock released Belle—finally—and turned to the pilot, who was just pulling a data-sheet from Compy the Computer. “How far did we miss target, Jim?”

* * * *

James held up his right hand, thumb and forefinger forming a circle. “You’re one point eight seven inches high, and off center point five three inches to the north northeast by east. I hereby award each of you the bronze medal of Marksman First. Shall I take her down now or do you want to check in from here first?”

“Neither… I think. What do you think, Belle?”

“Right. Not until you-know-what.”

“Check. Until we decide whether or not to let them know just yet that we can handle the ship. If we do, how many of our taped reports we turn in and how many we toss down the chute.”

“I get it!” James exclaimed, with a spreading grin. “That, my dear people, is something I never expected to live long enough to see—our straight-laced Doctor Garlock applying the Bugger Factor to a research problem!”

“I prefer the term ‘Monk’s Coefficient,’ myself,” Garlock said, “from the standpoint of mathematical rigor.”

“At Polytech we called it ‘Finagle’s Formula’,” Belle commented. “The most widely applicable operator known.”

“Have you three lost your minds?” Lola demanded. “That’s nothing to joke about—you wouldn’t destroy official reports! All that astronomy and anthropology that nobody ever even dreamed of before? You couldn’t! Not possibly!”

“Each of us knows just as well as you do how much data we have, exactly how new and startling it is; but we’ve thought ahead farther than you have. None of us likes the idea of destroying it a bit better than you do. We won’t, either, without your full, unreserved, wholehearted consent, nor without your fixed, iron-clad, unshakable determination never to reveal any least bit of it.”

“That language is far too strong for me. I’d like to be able to go along with you, but on those terms, I simply can’t.”

“I think you can, when you’ve thought it through. You’ve met Alonzo P. Ferber, haven’t you? Read him?”

“One glimpse; that was all I could stand. He pawed me mentally and wanted to paw me physically, the first time I ever saw him.”

“Check. So I’m going to ask you two questions, which you may answer as an anthropologist, as Lola Montandon, as Mrs. James James James the Ninth, as a member of our team, or as any other character you choose to assume. Remembering that Ferber’s a Gunther First—and pretends to be an Operator whenever he can get away with it—should he, or anyone like him, ever be allowed to visit Hodell? Second question: if there is any possible way for him to get there, can he be made to stay away?”

“Oh… Grand Lady Neldine and that perfectly stunning Grand Lady Lemphi they picked out for Jim…they’re such nice people…and the Gunther genes.…” As Lola thought on, her expressive face showed a variety of conflicting emotions before it hardened into decision. “The answer to both questions—the only possible answer—is no. I subscribe; on the exact terms you stipulated. And you don’t believe, Clee, that my thesis had anything to do with my holding out at first?”

“Certainly I don’t. Besides.…”

“What thesis?” Belle asked.

* * * *

“For my Ph.D. in anthropology. I thought I had it made, but it just went down the chute. And I don’t know if any of you realize just how nearly impossible it is to make a really worthwhile original contribution to science in that field.”

“As I started to tell you, Brownie,” Garlock said, “I don’t think you’ve lost a thing. There’s a bigger and better one coming up.”

“What?”

“Sh-h-h-h,” Belle stage-whispered. “He’s got a theory—such a weirdie that he won’t talk about it to anybody.”

“It isn’t a theory yet—at least, not ripe enough to pick—but it’s something more than a hunch,” Garlock said.

“But what could possibly make as good a thesis as those extra-galactic tapes?” Lola wailed. “They would have made my thesis a summer breeze.”

“More like a hurricane—the hottest thing since doctorate disputations first started,” Garlock said. “However, as I started to say twice before, it still will be. Intra-galactic tapes will be just as good. In this case, better.”

“W-e-l-l…possibly. But we haven’t any.”

“That is what this conference is about. We can’t destroy the stuff we have unless we can replace it with something better. My idea is that we should visit a few—say fifty—Tellus-type planets in this galaxy; the ones closest to Tellus. I’m pretty sure they’ll be inhabited by Homo Sapiens. There’s a chance, of course, that they’ll be like Hodell and the others we’ve seen; in which case I don’t see how we can keep Gunther genes confined to Earth. However, I’m pretty sure in my own mind that we’ll find them all very much like Tellus, Gunther and all. What would you think of that for a thesis, Lola?”

“Oh, wonderful!”

“Okay. Now to get back to whether we want to check in or not. I don’t like to duck out without letting them know we can handle this heap—after a fashion, that is; they don’t need to know we can really handle it—but we’ve got nothing we can report and Fatso will blow his stack—Oh-oh! Should’ve remembered Tellus isn’t Hodell; the tri-di’s setting up! Belle, you take it. She’d give me Fatso, because he wants to chew me out, but she won’t put him on for you. Cut her throat, but good! Brownie, hide somewhere! Jim, set up for Beta Centauri—not Alpha, but Beta—and fast! Give her hell, Belle!” Garlock sent this last thought from behind a davenport, from which hiding-place he could see the tri-di screen and both Belle and James; but anyone on the screen could not see him.

* * * *

Miss Foster’s likeness appeared upon the screen. Chancellor Ferber’s secretary was a big woman, but not fat; middle-aged, gray-haired, wearing consciously the aura and the domineering, overbearing expression of a woman who has great power and an even greater drive to exert her authority.

“Why haven’t you reported in?” Miss Foster snapped, with a glare that was pure frost. “You arrived thirteen minutes ago. Such delay is inexcusable. Get Garlock.”

“Captain Garlock is off-watch; asleep. I, Commander Bellamy, am in command.” Standing stiffly at attention, Belle paused to exchange glares with the woman across the big desk. If Miss Foster’s was frost, Commander Bellamy’s was helium ice.

“Ready to go, Jim?” Belle flashed the thought.

“Half a minute yet.”

“Any time after I sign off. Pick your own spot.” Then aloud into the screen: “I will report to Chancellor Ferber. I will not report to Chancellor Ferber’s secretary.”

“Doctor James!” Miss Foster’s voice was neither as cold nor as steady as it had been. “Bring that ship down at once!”

James made no sign that he had heard the order. Belle stood changelessly stiff. She had not for an instant taken her coldly competent eyes from those of the woman on the ground. Her emotionless, ultra-refrigerated voice went, as ever, directly into the screen.

“I trust that this conversation is being recorded?”

“It certainly is!”

“Good. I want it on record that we, the personnel of the starship Pleiades, are not subject to the verbal orders of the Chancellor’s secretary. You will now connect me with Chancellor Ferber, please.”

“The Chancellor is in conference and is not to be disturbed. I have authority to act for him. You will report to me, and do it right now.” Foster’s voice rose almost to a scream.

“That ground has been covered. Since you have taken it upon yourself to exceed your authority to such an extent as to refuse to connect the officer in command of the Pleiades with the Chancellor, I cannot report to him either the reasons why we are not landing at this time or when we expect to return to Tellus. You are advised that we may leave at any instant, just like that!” Belle snapped her finger under the imaged nose. “You may inform the Chancellor, or not inform him if you prefer, that our control of the starship Pleiades is something less than perfect. I do not know exactly how many seconds longer we will be here. Commander Bellamy signing off. Over and out.”

“Commander Bellamy, indeed! Commander my left foot!” Miss Foster was screaming now, in thwarted fury. “You’re no more a commander than my lowest office-girl is! Just wait ’till you get down here, you green-haired hussy, you shameless notor.…” The set went instantaneously from full volume to zero sound as James drove the red button home.

“Belle, you honey!” Garlock scrambled out from behind the davenport, seized her around the waist, and swung her, feet high in air, through four full circles before he let her down and kissed her vigorously. “You little sweetheart! You’re the first living human being ever to really pull Foster’s cork!”

“What a goat-getting!” James applauded. “That will go down in history as the star-spangled act of the century.”

* * * *

Belle was, however, unusually diffident. “I stuck my neck out a mile—worse, Clee’s. I’m sorry, Clee. I had to have some weight to throw around, and I had only a second to think, and that was the first thing I thought of, and after half a minute she made me so damn mad that I went entirely too far.”

“Uh-uh. Just far enough. That was a perfect job.”

“But she’ll never forget that, and she’ll crucify you, as well as me, when we land. She knows I’m not a commander.”

“She just thinks you ain’t. The official log will show, though, that after only one day out I discovered that we should all be officers—one captain and three commanders—with pay and perquisites of rank. I’ll think up good and sufficient reasons for it between now and when I make up the log.”

“But you can’t! Or can you, really?”

“Well, nobody told me I couldn’t, so I assumed the right. Besides, you didn’t tell her commander of what, so I’ll make it stick, too—see if I don’t. Or else I’ll tear two or three offices apart finding out why I can’t. You can be sure of that.”

“All that may not be necessary,” Lola said. “That tape will never be heard. I’ll bet she’s erased it already.”

“Perhaps; but ours isn’t going to be erased—it will be heard exactly where it will do the most good.”

“I’m awfully glad you don’t think we’re on the hook. All that’s left, then, is that second-in-command business. Both of you know, of course, that that was just window-dressing.”

“You were telling the truth and didn’t know it,” James said, cheerfully. “You have actually been second-in-command ever since the drive tests.”

“I haven’t, and I won’t. Surely you don’t think I’m enough of a heel, Jim, to step on your toes like that?”

“Nothing like that involved. You tell her, Clee.”

“Gunther ability is what counts. You’re a Prime, Jim’s an Operator; so, now that we can handle the heap, you’ll have to be second-in-command whether you like it or not. Any time you can out-Gunther me we’ll trade places. And you won’t have to take the job away from me—I’ll give it to you.”

“But…no hard feelings, Jim? No reservations? Screens down?”

“None whatever. In fact, I’m relieved. I’m Gunthered for this board here—for that one I’m not. Come in and look; and shake on it.”

* * * *

Belle looked; and while they were shaking hands, she flashed a thought at Lola. “Do you know that we’ve got two of the finest men that ever lived?”

“I’ve known that for a long time,” Lola flashed back, “but you’ve hardly started to realize what they really are.”

“Well, shall we start earning our pay and perquisites by getting to work on this planet, that we haven’t even looked—wait a minute! We’re just about to open up the galaxy, aren’t we?”

They were.

“Then there’ll have to be some kind of a unifying and correlating authority—a Galactic Council or something—and the quicker it’s set up the better; the less confusion and turmoil and jockeying-for-position there will be. Question: should this authority be political?”

“It should not!” James declared. “It takes United Worlds seven solid days of debate to decide whether or not to buy one lead pencil.”

“Military—or naval, I suppose it’d be—that’s what Clee’s driving at,” Belle said. “You’re wonderful, Clee—simply priceless! We’re officers of the brand-new Galactic Navy. Subject to civilian control, of course, but the civilians will be the United Galaxian Societies of the Galaxy, and nobody else. Beautiful, Clee! There are ten Operators, Jim. Right?”

* * * *

“Check. Brownie and I are here; the other eight are running the Galaxian Society under Clee. And the whole Society eats out of his hand.”

“I don’t know about that, but Belle and I together could swing it, I think.”

“I’ll say we could,” Belle breathed. “And I simply can’t wait to see you kick Fatso’s teeth in with this one!”

“I don’t like the word ‘Navy’,” Garlock said. “It’s tied definitely to warfare. How about calling it the ‘Galactic Service’? Applicable to either war or peace. Brass Hats will think of us in terms of war, even though we will actually work for peace. Any objections?”

There were no objections.

“About the uniforms,” Lola said, eagerly. “Space-black and star-white, with chromium comets and things on the shoulders.…”

“To hell with uniforms,” Garlock broke in. “Why do women have to go off the deep end on clothes?”

“She’s right—you’re wrong, Clee,” James said. “Without a uniform you won’t get off the ground, not even with the Society. And you’ll be talking to Top Planetary Brass. Also, they’re Gunthered plenty—you can feel their Op field clear out here.”

“Could be,” Garlock conceded. “Okay, you girls dope it out to suit yourselves. But think you can stand it, Belle, to wear more than twelve square inches of clothes?”

“Wait ’til you see it, chum. I’ve been designing a uniform for myself for positively years.”

“I can’t wait. And you’re a captain, of course.”

“Huh? You can’t have two cap.… Oh, I see. Primes. I appreciate that, Clee. Thanks.”

“Hold on, both of you,” James said. “You haven’t thought this through far enough. Suppose we meet forces already organized? Better start high than low. You’ve got to be top admiral, Clee.”

“Rocket-oil! Suppose we don’t find anything at all?”

“You’re right, Jim,” Belle said. “Clee, you talk like a man with a paper nose. It’s you who’s been yowling for two solid years about being ready for anything. We’ve got to do just that.”

“Correction accepted. Brief me.”

“Ranks should be different from those of United Worlds. They should be descriptive, but impressive. Tops could be Galactic Admiral. That’s you. Vice Galactic Admiral; me.…”

“Galactic Vice Admiral would be better,” Lola said.

“Accepted. Those two we’ll make stick come hell or space-warps. Right?”

Garlock did not reply immediately. “Up to either one of two points,” he agreed, finally.

“What points?”

“War, or being out-Gunthered. Top Gunther takes top place; man, woman, bird, beast, fish, or bug-eyed monster.”

“Oh.” Belle was staggered for a moment. “No war, of course. As to the other… I hadn’t thought of that.”

“There are a lot of things none of us has thought of, but as amended I’ll buy it.”

“Then several Regional Admirals, each with his Regional Vice Admiral. Then System Admirals and Vices, and World or Planetary—naming the planet, you know—Admirals and Vices. Let the various Galaxian Societies take over from there down. How do you like them potatoes, Buster?”

“Nice. And formal address, intra-ship, will be Mister and Miss. Jim and Brownie?”

They liked it. “Where do we fit in?” James asked.

“Pick your own spots,” Garlock said.

“If we stick to the Solar System we aren’t so apt to get bumped by Primes. So make me Solar System Admiral and Brownie my Vice.”

“Okay. How long will it take you, Belle, to materialize those uniforms?”

“Fifteen seconds longer than it takes the converter to scan us. Lola’s color scheme is right, and I’ve got everything else down to the last curlicue of chrome. Let’s go.”

* * * *

They went: and came back into the Main in uniform. Belle had really done a job.

That of the men, while something on the spectacular side, was more or less conventional, with stiff-visored, screened, heavily-chromed caps; but the women’s! Slippers, overseas caps, shorts and jackets—but what jackets!

“Well.…” Garlock said, after examining the two girls speechlessly for a good half minute. “It doesn’t look exactly like a spray-on job; but if you ever take a deep breath it’ll split from here to there. Fly off—leave you naked as a jay-bird.”

“Oh, no. The fabric stretches a little. See? Nothing like a sweater, but a similar effect—perhaps a bit more so.”

“Quite a bit more so, I’d say. However, since Operators and Primes are automatically stacked like Tennick Towers, I don’t suppose your recruits will be unduly perturbed at, or will squawk too much about, overexposure. Are we finally ready to go down and get to work?”

“I am,” James said. “How do you want to handle it?”

“Run a search pattern. Belle and I will center their Op field and check on Ops and Primes. You two probe at will.”

Around and around the planet, in brief bursts of completely incomprehensible speed, the huge ship darted; the biggest, solidest, yet most elusive and fantastic “flying saucer” ever to visit that world. The tremendous oceans and six great continents were traversed; the ice-caps; the frigid, the temperate, and the torrid zones. Wherever she went, powerful and efficient radar scanned and tracked her; wherever she went, excitement seethed.

“Beta Centauri Five,” Garlock reported, after a few minutes. “Margonia, they call it. Biggest continent and nation named Nargoda. Capital city Margon; Margon Base on coast nearby. Lots of Gunther Firsts. All the real Gunther, though, is clear across the continent. They’re building a starship. Fourteen Ops and two Primes—man and woman. Deggi Delcamp’s a big bruiser, with a God-awful lot of stuff. Ugly as hell, though. He’s a bossy type.”

“I’m amazed,” James played it straight. “I thought all male Primes would be just like you. Timorous Timmies.”

“Huh? Oh.…” Garlock was taken slightly aback, but went on quickly, “What do you think of your opposite number, Belle?” He whistled a wolf-call and made hour-glass motions with his hands. “I’d thought of trading you in on a new model, but Fao Talaho is no bargain, either—andnobody’s push-over.”

“Trade! You tomcat!” Belle’s nostrils flared. “You know what that bleached-blonde tried to do? High-hat me!”

“I noticed. When we four get down to business, face to face, there should be some interesting by-products.”

“You chirped it, boss. Primes seem to be such nice people.” James rolled his eyes upward and steepled his hands. “If you’ve got all the dope, no use finishing this search pattern.”

“Go ahead. Window dressing. The Brass hasn’t any idea of what’s going on, any more than ours did.”

The search went on until, “This is it,” James reported. “Where? Over Margon Base?”

“Check. Kick us over there, ten or twelve hundred miles up.”

“On the way, boss. Looks like your theory is about ready to pick.”

“It isn’t much of a theory yet; just that cultural and evolutionary patterns should be more or less homogeneous within galaxies. Until it can explain why so many out-galaxies are just alike it doesn’t amount to much. By the way, I’m glad you people insisted on organization and rank and uniforms. The Brass is going to take a certain amount of convincing. Take over, Brownie—this is your dish.”

“I was afraid of that.”

The others watched Lola drive her probe—a diamond-clear, razor-sharp bolt of thought that no Gunther First could possibly either wield or stop—down into the innermost private office of that immense and far-flung base. Through Lola’s inner eyes they saw a tall, trim, handsome, fiftyish man in a resplendent uniform of purple and gold; they watched her brush aside that officer’s hard-held mental block.

* * * *

“I greet you, Supreme Grand Marshal Entlore, Highest Commander of the Armed Forces of Nargoda. This is the starship Pleiades, of System Sol, Planet Tellus. I am Sol-System Vice-Admiral Lola Montandon. I have with me as guests three of my superior officers of the Galactic Service, including the Galactic Admiral himself. We are making a good-will tour of the Tellus-Type planets of this region of space. I request permission to land and information as to your landing conventions. The landing pad—bottom—of the Pleiades is flat; sixty feet wide by one hundred twenty feet long. Area loading is approximately eight tons per square foot. Solid, dry ground is perfectly satisfactory. While we land vertically, with little or no shock impact, I prefer not to risk damaging your pavement.”

They all felt the Marshal’s thoughts race. “Starship! Tellus—Sol, that insignificant Type G dwarf! Interstellar travel a commonplace! A ship that size and weight—an organized, uniformed, functioning Galaxy-wide Navy and they don’t want to damage my pavement! My God!”

“Good going, Brownie! Kiss her for me, Jim.” Garlock flashed the thought.

Entlore, realizing that his every thought was being read, pulled himself together. “I admit that I was shocked, Admiral Montandon. But landing—really, I have nothing to do with landings. They are handled by.…”

“I realize that, sir; but you realize that no underling could possibly authorize my landing. That is why I always start at the top. Besides, I do not like to waste time on officers of much lower rank than my own, and,” Lola allowed a strong tinge of good humor to creep into her thought, “the bigger they are, the less apt they are to pass the well-known buck.”

“You have had experience, I see,” the Marshal laughed. He did have a sense of humor. “While landing here is forbidden—top secret, you know—would my refusal mean much to you?”

“Having made satisfactory contact, I introduce you to Galactic Admiral Garlock. Take over, sir, please.”

* * * *

Entlore winced, for the probe Garlock used then compared to Lola’s very much as a diamond drill compares to a piece of soft brass pipe.

“It would mean everything to us,” Garlock assured him. “Our mission is a perfectly friendly one. We will have a friendly visit or none. If you do not care for our friendship, another nation will.”

“That wouldn’t do, either, of course.” Entlore paused in thought. “It boils down to this: I must either welcome you or destroy you.”

“You may try.” Garlock grinned in frankly self-satisfied amusement. “However, the best you can do is lithium-hydride fusion missiles in the hundreds-of-megatons range. Firecrackers. Every once in a while a planet has to try a few such things on us before it will believe that we are powerful as well as friendly. Would you like to test our defenses? If so, I will neither take offense nor retaliate.”

Supreme Grand Marshal Entlore was floored. “Why…er…not at all. I read in your mind.…” He broke off, to quell an invasion into his own private office. “Damn it, keep still!” all four “heard” him yell. “I know they ran a search pattern. I know that, too. I know everythingabout it, I tell you! I’m in full rapport with their Supreme Grand Admiral. There’s only the one ship, they’re friendly, and I’m inviting them to land here on Margon Base. Give that to the press. Say also that entrance restrictions to Margon Base will not be relaxed at present. Grand Marshal Holson and ComOff Flurnoy, stay here and tune in. The rest of you get out and stay out! Throw all reports about any alien vessel or flying saucer or what-have-you into the waste-basket!”

“Resume command, please, Miss Montandon,” Garlock directed; and withdrew his probe from Entlore’s mind.

“I thank you, Supreme Grand Marshal Entlore, for your welcome,” Lola sent. “I’m sorry that our visits cause so much disturbance, but I suppose it can’t be helped. Our Gunther blocks are down. Would you and your two assistants like to teleport out here to us, and con us down yourselves?” Lola knew instantly that they could not, and covered deftly for them. “But of course you can’t, without knowing a focus spot here in the Main. Shall I teleport you aboard?”

* * * *

ComOff Flurnoy’s face—she was an attractive, nicely-built red-head wearing throat-mike, earphone, and recorder—turned so pale that a faint line of freckles stood out across the bridge of her nose. She very evidently wanted to scream a protest, but would not. Both men, strangely enough, were eager to go. Instantly all three were standing in line on the deep-piled rug of the Main, facing the four Tellurians. Seven bodies came rigidly to attention, seven right hands snapped into two varieties of formal salute. Standing thus, each party studied the other for a couple of seconds.

There was no doubt at all as to which two of the visitors the two Nargodian men were studying; but neither of them could quite make up his mind as to which of the black-and-white-clad women to study first or most. The red-head’s glance, too, flickered between Belle and Garlock—incredulous envy and equally incredulous admiration lit her eyes.

“At rest, please, fellow-officers,” Garlock said, and Lola performed the necessary introductions, adding, “We do not, however, use titles aboard ship. Mister and Miss are customary and sufficient.”

Behind each row of officers a long davenport appeared; between them a table loaded with sandwiches, olives, pickles, relishes, fruits, nuts, soft drinks, cigars, and cigarettes.

“Help yourselves,” Garlock invited. “We serve neither intoxicants nor drugs, but you should find something there to your taste.”

“Indeed we shall, and thank you,” Entlore said. “Is there any objection, Mr. Garlock, to Miss Flurnoy transmitting information of this meeting and of this ship to our base?”

“None whatever. Send as you please, Miss Flurnoy, or as Mr. Entlore directs.”

“I’m glad I didn’t quite scare myself out of coming up here,” the Communications Officer said. “This is the biggest and nicest thrill I ever had. Such a thrill that I don’t know just where to begin.” She cocked an eyebrow at her commanding officer.

“As usual. Whatever you think should be sent.” Entlore sent her a steadying thought. Then, as the girl settled back with a sandwich in one hand and a tall glass of ginger-ale in the other, he went on, to Garlock, “She is a very fine and very strong telepath—by our standards, at least.”

“By galactic standards also.” Garlock had of course been checking. “Accurate, sharp, wide-range, clear-thinking, and fast. Not one of us four could do it any better.”

“I thank you, Mr. Garlock,” the girl said, with a blush of pleasure—and with scarcely a perceptible pause in her work.

* * * *

A tour of the ship followed; and as it progressed, the more confused and dismayed the two Nargodian commanders became.

“But no crew at all?” Holson demanded incredulously. “How can a thing like this possibly work?”

“It’s fully Gunthered,” Lola explained. “It works itself. That is, almost all the time. Whenever we land on any planet for the first time, one of us has to control it. Or for any other special job not in its memory banks. When you’re ready for us to land I’ll show you—it’s my turn to work.”

“Miss Flurnoy, have they cleared the air over Pylon Six?”

“Yes, sir. Clearance came through five minutes ago. They are holding it clear for us.”

“Thank you. Miss Montandon, you may land at your convenience.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lola took the pilot’s chair. “This is the scanner. I pull it over my face and head, so. Since I am always in tune with the field.…”

“What does that mean?” Entlore asked, dark foreboding in his mind.

“I was afraid of that. You can’t feel an Operator Field. I’m sorry, sir, but that means you can’t handle these forces and never will be able to. Certain Gunther areas of your brain are inoperative. On our scale you are a Gunther First.…”

“On ours, I’m an Esper Ten, the highest rating in the world—except for a few theoretical crackpots who.… Excuse me, please, I shouldn’t have said that, in view of what I see happening here.”

“No offense taken, sir. Those who developed the Gunther Drive were crackpots until they got the first starship out into space. But with this scanner on, I think of where I want to look and I can see it. I then think the ship a few miles sidewise—so—and we are now directly over your Pylon Six. I’m starting down, but I won’t go into free fall.”

Apparent weight grew less and less, until: “This is about enough for you, Miss Flurnoy?”

“Just,” the ComOff agreed, with a gulp. “One pound less and I’m afraid I’ll upchuck that lovely lunch I just ate.”

“We’re going fast enough now. Everyone sitting down? Brace yourselves, please. You’ll be about fifty percent overweight for a while.”

* * * *

As bodies settled deeper into cushions Entlore sent Garlock a thought. “We three weigh about five hundred pounds. You lifted us—instantaneously or nearly so, but I’ll pass the question of acceleration for the moment—eleven hundred miles straight up. How did you repeal the Law of Conservation?”

“We didn’t. We have fusion engines of twenty million horsepower. Our Operator Field, which has a radius of fifteen thousand miles and is charged to an electrogravitic potential of one hundred thousand gunts, stores energy. Its action is not exactly like that of an electrical condenser or of a storage battery, but is more or less analogous to both. Thus, the energy required to lift you three came from the field, but the amount was so small that it did not lower the potential of the field by any measurable amount. Setting this ship down—call it sixty thousand tons for a thousand miles at one gravity—will increase the field’s potential by approximately one-tenth of one gunt. Have you studied paraphysics?”

“No.”

“It wasn’t practical, eh?” Garlock smiled. “Then I can’t make even a stab at explaining instantaneous translation to you. I’ll just say that there is no acceleration involved, no time lapse. There is no violation of the Law of Conservation since departure and arrival points are equi-Guntherial. But what I am really interested in is that small group of high espers you mentioned.”

“Yes, I inferred that from Miss Montandon’s comments.” Entlore fell silent and Garlock watched his somber thoughts picture Margon Base and his nation’s capital being attacked and destroyed by a fleet of invincible and invulnerable starships like this Pleiades.

“You are wrong, sir,” Garlock put in, quietly. “The Galactic Service has not had, does not and will not have, anything to do with intra-planetary affairs. We have no connection with, and no responsibility to, any world or any group of worlds. We are an arm of the United Galaxian Societies of the Galaxy. Our function is to control space. To forbid, to prevent, to rectify any interplanetary or interstellar aggression. Above all, to prevent, by means of procedures up to and including total destruction of planets if necessary, any attempt whatever to form any multi-world empire.”

The three Nargodians gasped as one, as much at the scope of the thing as at the calmly cold certainty of ability carried by the thought.

“You are transmitting this precisely, Miss Flurnoy?” Entlore asked.

“Precisely, sir; including background, fringes, connotations, and implications; just as he is giving it to us.”

“Let us assume that your Nargodian government decides to conquer all the other nations of your planet Margonia. Assume farther that it succeeds. We will not object; in fact, we will, as a usual thing, not even be informed of it. If then, however, your government decides that one world is not enough for it to rule and prepares to conquer, or take aggressive action against, any other world, we will be informed and we will step in. First, warning will be given. Second, any and all vessels dispatched on such a mission will be annihilated. Third, if the offense is continued or repeated, trial will be held before the Galactic Council and any sentence imposed will be carried out.”

In spite of Garlock’s manner and message, both marshals were highly relieved. “You’re in plenty of time, with us, sir,” Entlore said. “We have just sent our first rocket to our nearer moon…that is, unless that group of—of espers gets their ship off the ground.”

“How far along are they?”

“The ship itself is built, but they are having trouble with their drive. The hull is spherical, and much smaller than this one. It has atomic engines, but no blasts or ion-plates…but neither has this one!”

“Exactly; they may be pretty well along. I’d like to get in touch with them as soon as possible. May I borrow a ‘talker’ like Miss Flurnoy for a few days? You have others, I suppose?”

“Yes, but I’ll let you have her; it is of the essence that you have the best one available. Miss Flurnoy?”

“Yes, sir?” Besides reporting, she had been conversing busily with James and Belle.

“Would you like to be assigned to Mr. Garlock for the duration of his stay on Margonia?”

“Oh, yes, sir!” she replied, excitedly.

“You are so assigned. Take orders from him or from any designate as though I myself were issuing them.”

“Thank you, sir…but what limits? And do I transmit to and/or record for you, sir?”

“No limit. These four Galaxians are hereby granted nation-wide top clearance. Transmit as usual whatever is permitted.”

“Full reporting is not only permitted, but urged,” Garlock said. “There is nothing secret about our mission.”

* * * *

As the Pleiades landed: “If you will give us your focus spot, Mr. Entlore, we can all ’port to your office and save calling staff cars.”

“And cause a revolution?” Entlore laughed. “Apparently you haven’t been checking outside.”

“Afraid I haven’t. I’ve been thinking.”

“Take a look. I got orders from the Cabinet to put guards wherever people absolutely must not go, and open everything else to the public. Ihope there are enough guards to keep a lane open for us, but I wouldn’t bet on it.” Garlock was very glad that the military men’s stiff formality had disappeared. “You Galaxians took this whole planet by storm while you were still above the stratosphere.”

* * * *

There is no need to go into detail concerning the reception and celebration. On Earth, one inauguration of a president and one coronation of a monarch were each almost as well covered by broadcasters, if not as turbulently and enthusiastically prolonged. From the Pleiades they went to the Administration Building, where an informal reception was held. Thence to the Capitol, where the reception was very formal indeed. Thence to the Grand Ballroom of the city’s largest hotel, where a tremendous—and long-winded—banquet was served.

At Garlock’s request, all sixteen members of the “crackpot” group—the most active members of the Deep Space Club—had been invited to the banquet. And, even though Garlock was a very busy man, his talker tuned in to each one of the sixteen, tuned them all to the Galactic Admiral, and in odd moments a great deal of business was done.

After being told most of the story—in tight-beamed thoughts that ComOff Flurnoy could not receive—the whole group was wildly enthusiastic. They would change the name of their club forthwith to The Galaxian Society Of Margonia. They laid plans for a world-wide organization which would have tremendous prestige and tremendous income. They already had a field—Garlock knew about their ship—they wanted the Pleiades to move over to it as soon as possible—Yes, Garlock thought he could do it the following day—if not, as soon as he could.…

* * * *

The Pleiades had landed at ten o’clock in the forenoon, local time; the banquet did not come to an end until long after midnight. Throughout all this time the four Galaxians carried on, without a slip, the act that all this was, to them, old stuff.

It was just a little before daylight when they returned, exhausted, to the ship. ComOff Flurnoy went with them. She was still agog at the wonder of it all as Belle and Brownie showed her to her quarters.

CHAPTER 7

Since everyone, including the ebullient ComOff, slept late the following morning, they all had brunch instead of breakfast and lunch. All during the meal Garlock was preoccupied and stern.

“Hold everything for a while, Jim,” he said, when everyone had eaten. “Before we move, Belle and I have got to have a conference.”

“Not a Fatso Ferber nine-o’clock type, I hope.” James frowned in mock reproach and ComOff Flurnoy cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “Monkey-business on company time is only for Big Shots like him; not for small fry such as you.”

“Well, it won’t be exclusively monkey-business, anyway. While we’re gone you might clear with the control tower and take us up into take-off position. Come on, Belle.” He took her by one elbow and led her away.

“Why, Doctor Garlock.” Mincing along beside him, pretending high reluctance, she looked up at him wide-eyed. “I’m surprised, I really am. I’m shocked, too. I’m not that kind of a girl, and if I wasn’tafraid of losing my job I would scream. I never even suspectedthat you would use your position as my boss to force yourunwelcome attentions on a poor and young and innocent andsuffering.…”

Inside his room Garlock, who had been grinning, sobered down and checked every Gunther block—a most unusual proceeding.

* * * *

Belle stopped joking in the middle of the sentence.

“Yeah, how you suffer,” he said. “I was just checking to be sure we’re prime-proof. I’m not ready for Deggi Delcamp yet. That guy, Belle, as you probably noticed, has got one God-awful load of stuff.”

“Not as much as you have, Clee. Nor as much push behind what he has got. And his shield wouldn’t make patches for yours.”

“Huh? How sure are you of that?”

“I’m positive. I’m the one who is going to get bumped, I’m afraid. That Fao Talaho is a hard-hitting, hard-boiled hellcat on wheels.”

“I’ll be damned. You’re wrong. I checked her from stem to gudgeon and you lay over her like a circus tent. What’s the answer?”

“Oh? Do I? I’m mighty glad…funny, both of us being wrong…it must be, Clee, that it’s sex-based differences. We’re used to each other, but neither of us has ever felt a Prime of the same sex before, and there must be more difference between Ops and Primes than we realized. Suppose?”

“Could be—I hope. But that doesn’t change the fact that we aren’t ready. We haven’t got enough data. If we start out with this grandiose Galactic Service thing and find only two or three planets Gunthered, we make jackasses of ourselves. On the other hand, if we start out with a small organization or none, and find a lot of planets, it’ll be one continuous cat-fight. On the third hand.…”

“Three hands, Clee? What are you, an octopussy or an Arpalone?”

“Keep your beautiful trap shut a minute. On the third hand, we’ve got to start somewhere. Any ideas?”

“I never thought of it that way.… Hm-m-m-m… I see.” She thought for a minute, then went on, “We’ll have to start without starting, then…quite a trick.… But how about this? Suppose we take a fast tour, with you and I taking quick peeks, without the peekees ever knowing we’ve been peeking?”

“That’s using the brain, Belle. Let’s go.” Then, out in the Main, “Jim, we want to hit a few high spots, as far out as you can reach without losing orientation. Beta Centauri here is pretty bright, Rigel and Canopus are real lanterns. With those three as a grid, you could reach fifteen hundred or two thousand light-years, couldn’t you?”

“More than that. That many parsecs, at least.”

“Good. Belle and I want to make a fast, random-sampling check of Primes and Ops around here. We’ll need five minutes at each planet—quite a ways out. So set up as big a globe as you can and still be dead sure of your locations; then sample it.”

“Not enough data. How many samples do you want?”

“As many as we can get in the rest of today. Six or seven hours, say—eight hours max.”

“Call it seven.… Brownie on the guns, me on Compy.… Five minutes for you.… I should be able to lock down the next shot in five…one minute extra, say, for safety factor…that’d be ten an hour. Seventy planets enough?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Okay. We’re practically at Number One now,” and James and Lola donned their scanners, ready for the job.

* * * *

“Miss Flurnoy,” Garlock said, “you might tell Mr. Entlore that we’re.…”

“Oh, I already have, sir.”

“You don’t have to come along, of course, if you’d rather stay here.”

“Stay here, sir? Why, he’d kill me! I’m off the air for a minute,” this last thought was a conspiratorial whisper. “Besides, do you think I’d miss a chance to be the first person—and just a girl, too—of a whole world to see other planets of other suns? Unless, of course, you invite Mr. Entlore and Mr. Holson along. They’re both simply dying to go, I know, but of course won’t admit it.”

“You’d be just as well pleased if I didn’t?”

“What do you think, sir?”

“We’ll be working at top speed and they’d be very much in the way, so they’ll get theirs later—after you’ve licked the cream off the top of the.…”

“Ready to roll, Clee,” James announced.

“Roll.”

“Why, I lost contact!” Miss Flurnoy exclaimed.

“Naturally,” Garlock said. “Did you expect to cover a distance it takes light thousands of years to cross? You can record anything you see in the plates. You can talk to Jim or Lola any time they’ll let you. Don’t bother Miss Bellamy or me from now on.”

Garlock and Belle went to work. All four Galaxians worked all day, with half an hour off for lunch. They visited seventy planets and got back to Margonia in time for a very late dinner. ComOff Flurnoy had less than a quarter of one roll of recorder-tape left unused, and the Primes had enough information to start the project they had in mind.

And shortly after dinner, all five retired.

“In one way, Clee, I’m relieved,” Belle pondered, “but I can’t figure out why all the Primes—the grown-up ones, I mean—on all the worlds are just about the same cantankerous, you-be-damned, out-and-out stinkers as you and I are. How does that fit into your theory?”

“It doesn’t. Too fine a detail. My guess is—at least it seems to me to make sense—it’s because we haven’t had any competition strong enough to smack us down and make Christians out of us. I don’t know what a psychologist would say.…”

“And I know exactly what you’d think of whatever he did say, so you don’t need to tell me.” Belle laughed and presented her lips to be kissed. “Good night, Clee.”

“Good night, ace.”

* * * *

And the next morning, early, Garlock and Belle teleported themselves—by arrangement and appointment, of course—across almost the full width of a nation and into the private office in which Deggi Delcamp and Fao Talaho awaited them.

For a time which would not have been considered polite in Tellurian social circles the four Primes stood still, each couple facing the other with blocks set tight, studying each other with their eyes. Delcamp was, as Garlock had said, a big bruiser. He was shorter and heavier than the Tellurian. Heavily muscled, splendidly proportioned, he was a man of tremendous physical as well as mental strength. His hair, clipped close all over his head, was blonde; his eyes were a clear, keen, cold dark blue.

Fao Talaho was a couple of inches shorter than Belle; and a good fifteen pounds heavier. She was in no sense fat, however, or even plump—actually, she was almost lean. She was wider and thicker than was the Earthwoman; with heavier bones forming a wider and deeper frame. She, too, was beautifully—yes, spectacularly—built. Her hair, fully as thick as Belle’s own and worn in a free-falling bob three or four inches longer than Belle’s, was bleached almost white. Her eyes were not really speckled, nor really mottled, but were regularly patterned in lighter and darker shades of hazel. She was, Garlock decided, a really remarkable hunk of woman.

Both Nargodians wore sandals without either socks or stockings. Both were dressed—insofar as they were dressed at all—in yellow. Fao’s single garment was of a thin, closely-knitted fabric, elastic and sleek. Above the waist it was neckless, backless, and almost frontless; below, it was a very short, very tight and clinging skirt. Delcamp wore a sleeveless jersey and a pair of almost legless shorts.

Garlock lowered his shield enough to send and to receive a thin layer of superficial thought; Delcamp did the same.

“So far, I like what I see,” Garlock said then. “We are well ahead of you, hence I can help you a lot if you want me to and if you want to be friendly about it. If you don’t, on either count, we leave now. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough. I, too, like what I have seen so far. We need help, and I appreciate your offer. Thanks, immensely. I can promise full cooperation and friendship for myself and for most of our group; and I assure you that I can and will handle any non-cooperation that may come up.”

“Nicely put, Deggi.” Garlock smiled broadly and let his guard down to a comfortable lepping level. “I was going to bring that up—the faster it’s cleared the better. Belle and I are paired. Some day—unless we kill each other first—we may marry. However, I’m no bargain and she’s one-third wildcat, one-third vixen, and one-third cobra. How do you two stand?”

“You took the thought right out of my own mind. Your custom of pairing is not what you call ‘urbane’ on this world. Nevertheless, Fao and I are paired. We had to. No one else has ever interested either of us; no one else ever will. We should not fight, but we do, furiously. But no matter how vigorously we fly apart, we inevitably fly together again just as fast. No one understands it, but you two are pretty much the same.”

“Check. Just one more condition, then, and we can pull those women of ours apart.” Belle and Fao were still staring at each other, both still sealed tight. “The first time Fao Talaho starts throwing her weight at me, I’m not going to wait for you to take care of her—I’m going to give her the surprise of her life.”

“It’d tickle me silly if it could be done,” Delcamp smiled and was perfectly frank, “But the man doesn’t live that can do it. How would you go about trying it?”

“Set your block solid.”

Delcamp did so, and through that block—the supposedly impenetrable shield of a Prime Operator—Garlock insinuated a probe. He did not crack the screen or break it down by force; he neutralized and counter-phased, painlessly and almost imperceptibly, its every component and layer.

* * * *

“Like this,” Garlock said, in the depths of the Margonian’s mind.

“My God! You can do that?”

“If I tell her, this deep, to play ball or else, do you think she’d need two treatments?”

“She certainly oughtn’t to. This makes you Galactic Admiral, no question. I’d thought, of course, of trying you out for Top Gunther, but this settles that. We will support you, sir, wholeheartedly—and my heartfelt thanks for coming here.”

“I have your permission, then, to give Fao a little discipline when she starts rocking the boat?”

“I wish you would, sir. I’m not too easy to get along with, I admit, but I’ve tried to meet her a lot more than half-way. She’s just too damned cocky for anybody’s good.”

“Check. I wish somebody would come along who could knock hell out of Belle.” Then, aloud, “Belle, Delcamp and I have the thing going. Do you want in on it?”

Delcamp spoke to Fao, and the two women slowly, reluctantly, lowered their shields to match those of the men.

“Your Galaxian shaking of the hands—handshake, I mean—is very good,” Delcamp said, and he and Garlock shook vigorously.

Then the crossed pairs, and lastly the two girls—although neither put much effort into the gesture.

“Snap out of it, Belle!” Garlock sent a tight-beamed thought. “She isn’t going to bite you!”

“She’s been trying to, damn her, and I’m going to bite her right back—see if I don’t.”

* * * *

Garlock called the meeting to order and all four sat down. The Tellurians lighted cigarettes and the others—who, to the Earthlings’ surprise, also smoked—assembled and lit two peculiar-looking things half-way between pipe and cigarette. And both pairs of smokers, after a few tentative tests, agreed in not liking at all the other’s taste in tobacco.

“You know, of course, of the trip we took yesterday?” Garlock asked.

“Yes,” Delcamp admitted. “We read ComOff Flurnoy. We know of the seventy planets, but nothing of what you found.”

“Okay. Of the seventy planets, all have Op fields and all have two or more Operators; one planet has forty-four of them. Only sixty-one of the planets, however, have Primes old enough for us to detect. Each of these worlds has two, and only two, Primes—one male and one female—and on each world the two Primes are of approximately the same age. On fifteen of these worlds the Primes are not yet adult. On the forty-six remaining worlds, the Primes are young adults, from pretty much like us four down to considerably younger. None of these couples is married-for-family. None of the girls has as yet had a child or is now pregnant.

“Now as to the information circulating all over this planet about us. Part of it is false. Part of it is misleading—to impress the military mind. Thus, the fact is that the Pleiades, as far as we know, is the only starship in the whole galaxy. Also, the information is very incomplete, especially as to the all-important fact that we were lost in space for some time before we discovered that the only possible controller of the Gunther Drive is the human mind.…”

“What!!!!” and argument raged until Garlock stopped it by declaring that he would prove it in the Margonians’ own ship.

Then Garlock and Belle together went on to explain and to describe—not even hinting, of course, that they had ever been outside the galaxy or had even thought of trying to do so—their concept of what the Galaxian Societies of the Galaxy would and should do; or what the Galaxian Service could, should, and would become—the Service to which they both intended to devote their lives. It wasn’t even in existence yet, of course. Fao and Deggi were the only other Primes they had ever talked to in their lives. That was why they were so eager to help the Margonians get their ship built. The more starships there were at work, the faster the Service would grow into a really tremendous.…

“Fao’s getting ready to blow her top,” Delcamp flashed Garlock a tight-beamed thought. “If I were doing it I’d have to start right now.”

* * * *

“I’ll let her work up a full head of steam, then smack her bow-legged.”

“Cheers, brother! I hope you can handle her!”

…organization. Then, when enough ships were working and enough Galaxian Societies were rolling, there would be the Regional organizations and the Galactic Council.…

“So, on a one-planet basis and right out of your own little fat head,” Fao sneered, “you have set yourself up as Grand High Chief Mogul, and all the rest of us are to crawl up to you on our bellies and kiss your feet?”

“If that’s the way you want to express it, yes. However, I don’t know how long I personally will be in the pilot’s bucket. As I told you, I will enforce the basic tenet that top Gunther is top boss—man, woman, snake, fish, or monster.”

“Top Gunther be damned!” Fao blazed. “I don’t and won’t take orders from any man—in hell or in heaven or on this Earth or on any planet of any.…”

“Fao!” Delcamp exclaimed, “Please keep still—please!”

“Let her rave,” Garlock said, coldly. “This is just a three-year-old baby’s tantrum. If she keeps it up, I’ll give her the damnedest jolt she ever got in all her spoiled life.”

Belle whistled sharply to call Fao’s attention, then tight-beamed a thought. “If you’ve got any part of a brain, slick chick, you’d better start using it. The boy friend not only plays rough, but he doesn’t bluff.”

“To hell with all that!” Fao rushed on. “We don’t have anything to do with your organization—go on back home or anywhere else you want to. We’ll finish our own ship and build our own organization and run it to suit ourselves. We’ll.…”

“That’s enough of that.” Garlock penetrated her shield as easily as he had the man’s, and held her in lock. “You are not going to wreck this project. You will start behaving yourself right now or I’ll spread your mind wide open for Belle and Deggi to look at and see exactly what kind of a half-baked jerk you are. If that doesn’t work, I’ll put you into a Gunther-blocked cell aboard the Pleiades and keep you there until the ship is finished and we leave Margonia. How do you want it?”

Fao was shocked as she had never been shocked before. At first she tried viciously to fight; but, finding that useless against the appalling power of the mind holding hers, she stopped struggling and began really to think.

“That’s better. You’ve got what it takes to think with. Go ahead and do it.”

And Fao Talaho did have it. Plenty of it. She learned.

“I’ll be good,” she said, finally. “Honestly. I’m ashamed, really, but after I got started I couldn’t stop. But I can now, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure you can, too. I know exactly how it is. All us Primes have to get hell knocked out of us before we amount to a whoop in Hades. Deggi got his one way, I got mine another, you got yours this way. No, neither of the others knows anything about this conversation and they won’t. This is strictly between you and me.”

“I’m awfully glad of that. And I think I…yes, damn you, thanks!”

Garlock released her and, after a few sobs, a couple of gulps, and a dabbing at her eyes with an inadequate handkerchief, she said: “I’m sorry, Deggi, and you, too, Belle. I’ll try not to act like such a fool any more.”

Delcamp and Belle both stared at Garlock; Belle licked her lips.

“No comment,” he thought at the man; and, to Belle, “She just took a beating. Will you sheathe your claws and take a lot of pains to be extra nice to her the rest of the day?”

“Why, surely. I’m always nice to anybody who is nice to me.”

“Says you,” Garlock replied, skeptically, and all four went to work as though nothing had happened.

* * * *

They went through the shops and the almost-finished ship. They studied blueprints. They met all the Operators and discussed generators and fields of force and mathematics and paraphysics and Guntherics. They argued so hotly about mental control that Garlock had James bring thePleiades over to new-christened Galaxian Field so that he could prove his point then and there.

Entlore and Holson came along this time, as well as the ComOff; and all three were nonplussed and surprised to see each member of the “crackpot” group hurl the huge starship from one solar system to any other one desired, apparently merely by thinking about it. And the “crackpots” were extremely surprised to find themselves hopelessly lost in uncharted galactic wildernesses every time they did not think, definitely and positively, of one specific destination. Then Garlock took a chance. He had to take it sometime; he might just as well do it now.

“See if you can hit Andromeda, Deggi,” he suggested.

While Belle, James, and Lola held their breaths, Delcamp tried. The starship went toward the huge nebula, but stopped at the last suitable planet on the galaxy’s rim.

“Can you hit Andromeda?” Delcamp asked, more than half jealously, and Belle tensed her muscles.

“Never tried it,” Garlock said, easily. “I suppose, though, since you couldn’t kick the old girl out of our good old home galaxy, she’ll just sit right here for me, too.”

He went through the motions and the Pleiades did sit right there—which was exactly what he had told her to do. And everybody—even the “crackpots”—breathed more easily.

* * * *

And Belle was “nice” to Fao; she didn’t use her claws, even once, all day. And, just before quitting time—

“Does he… I mean, did he ever…well, sort of knock you around?” Fao asked.

“I’ll say he hasn’t!” Belle’s nostrils flared slightly at the mere thought. “I’d stick a knife into him, the big jerk.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean physically.…”

“Through my blocks? A Prime’s blocks? Don’t be ridiculous, Fao!”

“What do you mean, ‘ridiculous’?” Fao snapped. “You tried my blocks. What did they feel like to you—mosquito netting? What I thought was.… Oh, all he really said was that all Primes had to have hell knocked out of them before they could be any good. That he had had it one way, Deggi another, and me a third. I see—you haven’t had yours yet.”

“I certainly haven’t. And if he ever tries it, I’ll.…”

“Oh, he won’t. He couldn’t, very well, because after you’re married, it would.…”

“Did the big lug tell you I was going to marry him?”

“Of course not. No fringes, even. But who else are you going to marry? If the whole universe was clear full of the finest men imaginable—pure dreamboats, no less—can you even conceive of you marrying any one of them except him?”

“I’m not going to marry anybody. Ever.”

“No? You, with your Prime’s mind and your Prime’s body, not have any children? And you tell me not to be ridiculous?”

That stopped Belle cold, but she wouldn’t admit it. Instead—“I don’t get it. What did he do to you, anyway?”

Fao’s block set itself so tight that it took her a full minute to soften it down enough for even the thinnest thought to get through. “That’s something nobody will ever know. But anyway, unless…unless you find another Prime as strong as Clee is—and I don’t really think there are any, do you?”

“Of course there aren’t. There’s only one of his class, anywhere. He’s it,” Belle said, with profound conviction.

“That makes it tough for you. You’ll have the toughest job imaginable. The very toughest. I know.”

“Huh? What job?”

“Since Clee won’t do it for you, and since nobody else can, you’ll have to just simply knock hell out of yourself.”

And in Garlock’s room that night, getting ready for bed, Belle asked suddenly, “Clee, what in hell did you do to Fao Talaho?”

“Nothing much. She’s a mighty good egg, really.”

“Could you do it, whatever it was, to me?”

“I don’t know; I never tried it.”

“Would you, then, if I asked you to?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Answer that yourself.”

“And it was ‘nothing much,’ it says here in fine print. But I think I know just about what it was. Don’t I?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“You knocked hell out of yourself, didn’t you?”

“I lied to her about that. I’m still trying to.”

“So I’ve got to do it to myself. And I haven’t started yet?”

“Check. But you’re several years younger than I am, you know.”

* * * *

Belle thought it over for a minute, then stubbed out her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders. “No sale. Put it back on the shelf. I like me better the way I am. That is, I think I do.… In a way, though, I’m sorry, Clee darling.”

“Darling? Something new has been added. I wish you really meant that, ace.”

“I’m still ‘ace’ after what I just said? I’m glad, Clee. ‘Ace’ is ever so much nicer than ‘chum.’”

“Ace. The top of the deck. You are, and always will be.”

“As for meaning it, I wish I didn’t.” Ready for bed, Belle was much more completely and much less revealingly dressed than during her working hours. She slid into bed beside him, pulled the covers up to her chin, and turned off the light by glancing at the switch. “If I thought anything could ever come of it, though, I’d do it if I had to pound myself unconscious with a club. But I wouldn’t be here, then, either—I’d scoot into my own room so fast my head would spin.”

“You wouldn’t have to. You wouldn’t be here.”

“I wouldn’t, at that. That’s one of the things I like so much about you. But honestly, Clee—seriously, screens-down honestly—can you see any possible future in it?”

“No. Neither of us would give that much. Neither of us can. And there’s nothing one-sided about it; I’m no more fit to be a husband than you are to be a wife. And God help our children—they’d certainly need it.”

“We’d never have any. I can’t picture us living in marriage for nine months without committing at least mayhem. Why, in just the little time we’ve been paired, how many times have you thrown me out of this very room, with the fervent hope that I’d drown in deep space before you ever saw me again?”

“At a guess, about the same number of times as you have stormed out under your own power, slamming the door so hard it sprung half the seams of the ship and swearing you’d slice me up into sandwich meat if I ever so much as looked at you again.”

“That’s what I mean. But how come we got off on this subject, I wonder? Because when we aren’t fighting, like now, it’s purely wonderful. So I’ll say it again. Good night, Clee, darling.”

“Good night, ace.” In the dark his lips sought hers and found them.

The fervor of her kiss was not only much more intense than any he had ever felt before. It was much, very much more intense than Belle Bellamy had either wanted it or intended it to be.

* * * *

Next morning, at the workman’s hour of eight o’clock, the four Tellurians appeared in the office of Margonia’s Galaxian Field.

“The first thing to do, Deggi, is to go over in detail your blueprints for the generators and the drive,” Garlock said.

“I suppose so. The funny pictures, eh?” Delcamp had learned much, the previous day; his own performance with the Pleiades had humbled him markedly.

“By no means, my friend,” Garlock said, cheerfully. “While your stuff isn’t exactly like ours—it couldn’t be, hardly; the field is so big and so new—that alone is no reason for it not to work. James can tell you. He’s the Solar System’s top engineer. What do you think, Jim?”

“What I saw in the ship yesterday will work. What few of the prints I saw yesterday will fabricate, and the fabrications will work. The main trouble with this project, it seems to me, is that nobody’s building the ship.”

“What do you mean by that crack?” Fao blazed.

“Just that. You’re a bunch of prima donnas; each doing exactly as he pleases. So some of the stuff is getting done three or four times, in three or four different ways, while a lot of it isn’t getting done at all.”

“Such as?” Delcamp demanded, and—

“Well, if you don’t like the way we are doing things you can.…” Fao began.

“Just a minute, everybody.” Lola came in, with a disarming grin. “How much of that is hindsight, Jim? You’ve built one, you know—and from all accounts, progress wasn’t nearly as smooth as your story can be taken to indicate.”

“You’ve got a point there, Lola,” Garlock agreed. “We slid back two steps for every three we took forward.”

“Well…maybe,” James admitted.

“So why don’t you, Fao and Deggi, put Jim in charge of construction?”

Fao threw back her silvery head and glared, but Delcamp jumped at the chance. “Would you, Jim?”

“Sure—unless Miss Talaho objects.”

“She won’t.” Delcamp’s eyes locked with Fao’s, and Fao kept still. “Thanks immensely, Jim. And I know what you mean.” He went over to a cabinet of wide, flat drawers and brought back a sheaf of drawings. Not blueprints, but original drawings in pencil. “Such as this. I haven’t even got it designed yet, to say nothing of building it.”

* * * *

James began to leaf through the stack of drawings. They were full of erasures, re-drawings, and such notations as “See sheets 17-B, 21-A, and 27-F.” Halfway through the pile he paused, turned backward three sheets, and studied for minutes. Then, holding that one sheet by a corner, he went rapidly through the rest of the stack.

“This is it,” he said then, pulling the one sheet out and spreading it flat. “What we call Unit Eight—the heart of the drive.” Then, tight-beamed to Garlock:

“This is the thing that you designed in toto and that I never could understand any part of. All I did was build it. It must generate those Prime fields.”

“Probably,” Garlock flashed back. “I didn’t understand it any too well myself. How does it look?”

“He isn’t even close. He’s got only half of the constants down, and half of the ones he has got down are wrong. Look at this mess here.…”

“I’ll take your word for it. I haven’t your affinity for blueprints, you know, or your eidetic memory for them.”

“Do you want me to give him the whole works?”

“We’ll have to, I think. Or the ship might not work at all.”

“Could be—but how about intergalactic hops?”

“He couldn’t do it with the Pleiades, so he won’t be able to with this. Besides, if we change it in any particular he might. You see, I don’t know very much more about Unit Eight than you do.”

“That could be, too.” Then, as though just emerging from his concentration on the drawings, James thought at Delcamp and Fao, but on the open, general band.

“A good many errors and a lot of blanks, but in general you’re on the right track. I can finish up this drawing in a couple of hours, and we can build the unit in a couple of days. With that in place, the rest of the ship will go fast.

“If Miss Talaho wants me to,” he concluded, pointedly.

“Oh, I do, Jim—really I do!” At long last, stiff-backed Fao softened and bent. She seized both his hands. “If you can, it’d be too wonderful for words!”

“Okay. One question. Why are you building your ship so small?”

“Why, it’s plenty big enough for two,” Delcamp said. “For four, in a pinch. Why did you make yours so big? Your Main is big enough almost for a convention hall.”

“That’s what we figured it might have to be, at times,” Garlock said. “But that’s a very minor point. With yours so nearly ready to flit, no change in size is indicated now. But Belle and I have got to have another conference with the legal eagle. So if you and Brownie, Jim, will ’port whatever you need out of the Pleiades, we’ll be on our way.

“So long—see you in a few days,” he added, and the Pleiades vanished; to appear instantaneously high above the stratosphere over what was to become the Galaxian Field of Earth.

* * * *

“Got a minute, Gene?” he sent a thought.

“For you two Primes, as many as you like. We haven’t started building or fencing yet, as you suggested, but we have bought all the real estate. So land the ship anywhere out there and I’ll send a jeep out after you.”

“Thanks, but no jeep. Nobody but you knows that we’ve really got control of the Pleiades, and I want everybody else to keep on thinking it’s strictly for the birds. We’ll ’port in to your office whenever you say.”

“I say now.”

In no time at all the two Primes were seated in the private office of Eugene Evans, Head of the Legal Department of the newly re-incorporated Galaxian Society of Sol, Inc. Evans was a tall man, slightly thin, slightly stooped, whose thick tri-focals did nothing whatever to hide the keenness of his steel-gray eyes.

“The first thing, Gene,” Garlock said, “is this employment contract thing. Have you figured out a way to break it?”

“It can’t be broken.” The lawyer shook his head.

“Huh? I thought you top-bracket legal eagles could break anything, if you really tried.”

“A good many things, yes, especially if they’re long and complicated. The Standard Employment Contract, however, is short, explicit, and iron-clad. The employer can discharge the employee for any one of a number of offenses, including insubordination; which, as a matter of fact, the employer himself is allowed to define. On the other hand, the employee cannot quit except for some such fantastic reason as the non-tendering—not non-payment, mind you, but non-tendering—of salary.”

“I didn’t expect that—it kicks us in the teeth before we get started.” Garlock got up, lighted a cigarette, and prowled about the big room. “Okay. Jim and I will have to get ourselves fired, then.”

“Fired!” Belle snorted. “Clee, you talk like a man with a paper nose! Who else could run the Project? That is,” her whole manner changed; “he doesn’t know I can run it as well as you can—or better—but I could tell him—and maybe you think I wouldn’t!”

“You won’t have to. Gene, you can start spreading the news that Belle Bellamy is a real, honest-to-God Prime Operator in every respect. That she knows more about Project Gunther than I do and could run it better. Ferber undoubtedly knows that Belle and I have been at loggerheads ever since we first met—spread it thick that we’re fighting worse than ever. Which, by the way, is the truth.”

“Fighting? Why, you seemed friendly enough.…”

“Yeah, we can be friendly for about fifteen minutes if we try real hard, as now. The cold fact is, though, that she’s just as much three-quarters hellcat and one-quarter potassium cyanide as she.…”

“I like that!” Belle stormed. She leaped to her feet, her eyes shooting sparks. “All my fault! Why, you self-centered, egotistical, domineering jerk, I could write a book.…”

“That’s enough—let it go—please!” Evans pleaded. He jumped up, took each of the combatants by a shoulder, sat them down into the chairs they had vacated, and resumed his own seat. “The demonstration was eminently successful. I will spread the word, through several channels. Chancellor Ferber will get it all, rest assured.”

“And I’ll get the job!” Belle snapped. “And maybe you think I won’t take it!”

“Yeah?” came Garlock’s searing thought. “You’d do anything to get it and to keep it. Yeah. I do think.”

“Oh?” Belle’s body stiffened, her face hardened. “I’ve heard stories, of course, but I couldn’t quite…but surely, he can’t be thatstupid—to think he can buy me like so many pounds of calf-liver?”

“He surely is. He does. And it works. That is, if he’s ever missed, nobody ever heard of it.”

“But how could a man in such a big job possibly get away with such foul stuff as that?”

“Because all the SSE is interested in is money, and Alonzo P. Ferber is a tremendously able top executive. In the big black-and-red money books he’s always ’way, ’way up in the black, and nobody cares about his conduct.”

* * * *

Belle, even though she was already convinced, glanced questioningly at Evans.

“That’s it, Miss Bellamy. That’s it, in a precise, if somewhat crude, nutshell.”

“That’s that, then. But just how, Clee—if he’s as smart as you say he is—do you think you can make him fire you?”

“I don’t know—haven’t thought about it yet. But I could be pretty insubordinate if I really tried.”

“That’s the understatement of the century.”

“I’ll devote the imponderable force of the intellect to the problem and check with you later. Now, Gene, about the proposed Galactic Service, the Council, and so on. What is the reaction? Yours, personally, and others?”

“My personal reaction is immensely favorable; I think it the greatest advance that humanity has ever made. I have been very cautious, of course, in discussing, or even mentioning the matter, but the reaction of everyone I have sounded—good men; big men in their respective fields—has been as enthusiastic as my own.”

“Good. It won’t surprise you, probably, to be told that you are to be this system’s councillor and—if we can swing it and I think we can—the first President of the Galactic Council?”

Evans was so surprised that it was almost a minute before he could reply coherently. Then: “I am surprised—very much so. I thought, of course, that you yourself would.…”

“Far from it!” Garlock said, positively. “I’m not the type. You are. You’re better than anyone else of the Galaxians—which means than anyone else period. With the possible exception of Lola, and she fits better on our exploration team. Check, Belle?”

“Check. For once, I agree with you without reservation. That’s a job we can work at all the rest of our lives, and scarcely start it.”

“True—indubitably true. I appreciate your confidence in me, and if the vote so falls I will do whatever I can.”

“We know you will, and thank you. How long will it take to organize? A couple of weeks? And is there anything else we have to cover now?”

“A couple of weeks!” Evans was shocked. “You are naive indeed, young man, to think anything of this magnitude can even be started in such a short time as that. And yes, there are dozens of matters—hundreds—that should be discussed before I can even start to work intelligently.”

Hence discussions went on and on and on. It was three days before Garlock and Belle ’ported themselves up into the Pleiades and the starship displaced itself instantaneously to Margonia.

* * * *

Meanwhile, on Margonia, James James James the Ninth went directly to the heart of his job by leading Lola and Fao into Delcamp’s office and setting up its Gunther blocks.

“You said you want me to build your starship. Okay, but I want you both—Fao especially—to realize exactly what that means. I know what to do and how to do it. I can handle your Operators and get the job done. However, I can’t handle either of you, since you both out-Gunther me, and I’m not going to try to. But there can’t be two bosses on any one job, to say nothing of three or seventeen. So either I run the job or I don’t. If either of you steps in, I step out and don’t come back in. And remember that you’re not doing us any favors—it’s strictly vice versa.”

“Jim!” Lola protested. Fao’s hackles were very evidently on the rise; Delcamp’s face was hardening. “Don’t be so rough, Jim, please. That’s no way to.…”

“If you can pretty this up, pet, I’ll be glad to have you say it for me. Here’s what you have to work on. If I do the job they’ll have their starship in a few weeks. The way they’ve been going, they won’t have it in twenty-five years. And the only way to get that bunch out there to really work is to tell each one of them to cooperate or else—and enforce the ‘or else.’”

“But they’d quit!” Delcamp protested. “They’ll all quit!”

“With suspension or expulsion from the Society the consequences? Hardly.” James said.

“But you wouldn’t do that—you couldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t?”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Lola put in, soothingly, “except as a very last resort. And, even at worst, Jim could build it almost as easily with common labor. You Primes don’t really have to have any Operators at all, you know; but all your Operators together would be perfectly helpless without at least one Prime.”

“How come?” and “In what way?” Delcamp and Fao demanded together.

“Oh, didn’t you know? After the ship is built and the fields are charged and so on, everything has to be activated—the hundred and one things that make it so nearly alive—and that is strictly a Prime’s job. Even Jim can’t do it.”

“I see…or, rather, I don’t see at all,” Fao said, thoughtfully. She was no longer either excited or angry. “A few weeks against twenty-five years…what do you think of his time estimate, Deg my dear?”

“I hadn’t thought it would take nearly that long; but this ‘activation’ thing scares me. Nothing in my theory even hints at any such thing. So—if there’s so much I don’t know yet, even in theory, it would take a long time. Maybe I’d never get it.”

“Well, anyway, I want our Celestial Queen done in weeks, not years,” Fao said, extending her hand to James and shaking his vigorously. “So I promise not to interfere a bit. If I feel any such urge coming on, I’ll dash home and lock myself up in a closet until it dies. Fair enough?”

Since Fao really meant it, that was fair enough.

* * * *

For a whole day James did nothing except study blueprints; going over in detail and practically memorizing every drawing that had been made. He then went over the ship, studying minutely every part, plate, member, machine and instrument that had been installed. He noted what each man and woman was doing and what they intended to do. He went over material on hand and material on order, paying particular attention to times of delivery. He then sent a few—surprisingly few—telegrams.

Finally he called all fourteen Operators together. He told them exactly what the revised situation was and exactly what he was going to do about it. He invited comments.

There was of course a riot of protest; but—in view of what James had said anent suspensions and expulsions from the Galaxian Society—not one of them actually did quit. Four of them, however, did appeal to Delcamp, considerably to his surprise, to oust the interloper and to put things back where they had been; but they did not get much satisfaction.

“James says that he can finish building this starship in a few weeks,” Delcamp told them, flatly. “Specifically, three weeks, if we can get the special stuff made fast enough. Fao and I believe him. Therefore, we have put him in full charge. He will remain in charge unless and until he fails in performance. You are all good friends of Fao’s and mine, and we hope that all of you will stay with the project. If, however, we must choose now between you—any one of you or all of you—and James, there is no need to tell you what the choice will be.”

Wherefore all fourteen went back to work; grudgingly at first and dragging their feet. In a very few hours, however, it became evident to all that James did in fact know what he was doing and that the work was going faster and smoother than ever before; whereupon all opposition and all malingering disappeared. They were Operators, and they were all intensely interested in their ship. Morale was at a high.

Thus, when the Pleiades landed beside the now seething Celestial Queen, Garlock found James with feet on desk, hands in pockets, and scanner on head; doing—apparently—nothing at all. Nevertheless, he was a very busy man.

“Hey, Jim!” A soprano shriek of thought emanated from a gorgeous seventeen-year-old blonde. “I can’t read this funny-picture, it’s been folded too many times. Where does this lead go to?”

“Data insufficient. Careful, Vingie; I’d hate to have to send you back to school.”

“’Scuse, please, Junior. Unit Six, Sub-Assembly Tee Dash Ni-yun. Terminal Fo-wer. From said terminal, there’s a lead—Bee Sub something-or-other—goes somewhere. Where?”

“B sub Four. It goes to Unit Seven, Sub-Assembly Q dash Three, Terminal Two. And watch your insulation—that’s a mighty hot lead.”

“Uh-huh, I got that. Double Sink Mill Mill; Class Albert Dog Kittens. Thanks, boss!”

* * * *

“Hi, Jim,” Garlock said. Then, to Delcamp. “I see you’re rolling.”

“He’s rolling, you mean.” Delcamp had not yet recovered fully from a state of near-shock. “So that’s what an eidetic memory is? He knows every nut, bolt, lead, and coil in the ship!”

“More than that. He’s checking every move everybody makes. When they’re done, you won’t have to just hope everything was put together right—you’ll know it was.”

Jim was their man.

* * * *

And Fao sidled over toward Belle. There was something new about the silver-haired girl, Belle decided instantly. The difference was slight—Belle couldn’t put her finger on it at first. She seemed—quieter? Softer? More subdued? No, definitely. More feminine? No; that would be impossible. More…more adult? Belle hated to admit it, even to herself, but that was what it was.

“Deg and I got married day before yesterday,” Fao confided, via tight beam.

“Oh—so you’re pregnant!”

“Of course. I saw to that the first thing. I knew you’d want to be the first one to know. Oh, isn’t it wonderful?” She seized Belle’s arm and hugged it ecstatically against her side. “Just too perfectly marvelous for anything?”

“Oh, I’m sure it is; and I’m so happy for you, Fao!” And it would have taken the mind of a Garlock to perceive anything either false or forced in thought or bearing.

Nevertheless, when Belle went into Garlock’s room that night, storm signals were flying high in her almost-topaz eyes.

“Fao Talaho-Delcamp is pregnant!” she stormed, “and it’s all yourfault!”

“Uh-huh,” he demurred, trying to snap her out of her obviously savage mood. “Not me, ace. Not a chance in the world. It was Deggi.”

“You…you weasel! You know very well, Clee Garlock, what I meant. If you hadn’t given her that treatment she’d have kept on fighting with him and they wouldn’t have been married and had any children for positively years. So now she’ll have the first double-Prime baby and it ought to be mine. I’m older than she is—our group is ’way ahead of theirs—we have the first and only starship—and then you do that. And you wouldn’t give me that treatment. Oh, no—just to her, that bleached-blonde! I’d like to strangle you to death with my own bare hands!”

“What a hell of a logic!” Garlock had been trying to keep his own temper in leash, but the leash was slipping. “Assume I tried to work on you—assume I succeeded—what would you be? What would I have? What age do you think this is—that of the Vikings? When SOP in getting a wife was to beat her unconscious with a club and drag her into the longboat by her hair? Hardly! I do not want and will not have a conquered woman. Nor a spoiled-rotten, mentally-retarded brat.…”

“You unbearable, conceited, overbearing jerk! Why, I’d rather.…”

“Get out! And this time, stay out!”

Belle got out—and if door and frame had not been built of super-steel, both would have been wrecked by the blast of energy she loosed in closing the door behind her.

In her own room, with Gunther blocks full on, she threw herself face down on the bed and cried as she had not cried since she was a child.

And finally, without even taking off her clothes, she cried herself to sleep.

CHAPTER 8

Next morning, early, Belle tapped lightly on Garlock’s door.

“Come in.”

She did so. “Have you had your coffee?”

“Yes.”

“So have I.”

Neither Belle nor Garlock had recovered; both faces showed strain and drain.

“I think we’d better break this up,” Belle said, quietly.

“Check. We’ll have to, if we expect to get any work done.”

Belle could not conceal her surprise.

“Oh, not for the reason you think,” Garlock went on, quickly. “Your record as a man-killer is still one hundred point zero zero zero percent. I’ve been in love with you ever since we paired. Before that, even.”

“Flapdoodle!” she snorted, inelegantly. “Why, I.…”

“Keep still a minute. And I’m not going to fight with you again. Ever. I’m not going to touch you again until I can control myself a lot better than I could last night.”

“Oh? That was mostly my fault, of course. But in love? Uh-uh, I’ve seen men in love. You aren’t. I couldn’t make you be, not with the best I could do. Not even in bed. You aren’t, Clee—if you are, I’m an Australian bushman.”

“Perhaps I’m an atypical case. I’m not raving about your perfect body—you know what that is like already. Nor about your mind, which is the only one I know of as good as my own. Maybe I’m in love with what I think you ought to be…or what I hope you will be. Anyway, I’m in love with something connected with you—and with no other woman alive. Shall we go eat?”

“Uh-huh—let’s.”

They joined Lola and James at the table; and if Lola noticed anything out of the ordinary, she made no sign.

And after breakfast, in the Main—

“About three weeks, Jim, you think?” Garlock asked.

“Give or take a couple of days, yes.”

“And Belle and I would just be in the way—at least until time to show Deggi about the activation…and all those Primes to organize…we’d better leave you here, don’t you think, and get going?”

“I’ll buy that. We’ll finish as soon as possible.”

Lola and James moved a few personal belongings planetside; Garlock and Belle shot the Pleiades across a vast gulf of space to one of the planets they had scanned so fleetingly on their preliminary survey. Its name was, both remembered, Lizoria; its two Primes were named Rezdo Semolo and Mirea Mitala—male and female, respectively.

After sending down a very brief and perfunctory request for audience—which was in effect a declaration of intent and nothing else—Garlock and Belle teleported themselves down into Semolo’s office, where both Lizorian Primes were.

Both got up out of peculiar-looking chairs to face their visitors. Both were tall; both were peculiarly thin. Not the thinness of emaciation, but that of bodily structure.

“On them it looks good,” Belle tight-beamed a thought to Garlock.

Both moved fast and with exquisite control; both were extraordinarily graceful. “Snaky” was Belle’s thought of the woman; “sinuous” was Garlock’s of the man. Both were completely hairless, of body and of head—not by nature, but via electric-shaver clipping. Both wore sandals. The man wore shorts and a shirt-like garment of nylon or its like; the woman wore just enough ribbons and bands to hold a hundred thousand credits’ worth of jewels in place. She appeared to be about twenty years—Tellurian equivalent—old; he was probably twenty-three or twenty-four.

“We did not invite you in and we do not want you here,” Semolo said, coldly. “So get out, both of you. If you don’t, when I count three I’ll throw you out, and I won’t be too careful about how many of your bones I break. One.… Two.…”

“Pipe down, Rezdo!” the girl exclaimed. “They have something we haven’t, or they wouldn’t be here. Whatever it is, we want it.”

“Oh, let him try, Miss Mitala,” Garlock said, through her hard-held block, in the depth of her mind. “He won’t hurt us a bit and it may do him some good. While he’s wasting effort I’ll compare notes with my partner here, Galactic Vice-Admiral Belle Bellamy. I’m glad to see that one of you has at least a part of a brain.”

“…Three!” Semolo did his best, with everything he had, without even attracting Garlock’s attention. He then tried to leap at the intruder physically, despite the latter’s tremendous advantage in weight and muscle, but found that he could not move.

Then, through Belle’s solidly-set blocks, “How are you doing, ace? Getting anywhere?”

“My God!” came Belle’s mental shriek. “What—how can—but no, youdidn’t give that to Fao, surely!”

“I’ll say I didn’t—nor to Delcamp. But you’re going to need it, I’m thinking.”

“But can you? Even if you would—and I’m just beginning to realize how big a man you really are—can that kind of stuff be taught? I probably haven’t got the brain-cells it takes to handle it.”

“I’m not sure, but I’ve reworked our Prime Fields into one and made a couple of other changes. Theoretically, it ought to work. Shall I come in and try it?”

“Don’t be an idiot, darling. Of course!”

* * * *

As impersonally as a surgeon exploring an organ, Garlock went into Belle’s mind. “Tune to the field…that’s it—fine! Then—I’ll do it real slow, and watch me close—you do like so…get it?”

“Uh-huh!” Belle breathed, excitedly. “Got it!”

“Then this…and this…and there you are. You can try it on me, if you like.”

“Uh-uh. No sale. I don’t need practice and I’d like to preserve the beautiful illusion that maybe I could crack your shield if I wanted to. I’ll work on Miss Snake-Hips here, the serpentine charmer—but say, I’ll bet there’s a bone in it. You can block it, can’t you?”

“Yes. It goes like this.” He showed her. “It takes full mastery of the Prime Field, but you’ve got that.”

“Oh, wonderful! Thanks, Clee darling. But do you mean to actually say I can now completely block you or any other Prime out?”

“You’re going too far, ace. Me, yes—but don’t forget that there very well may be people—or things—as far ahead of us as we are ahead of pointer pups.”

“Huh! Balloon-juice and prop-wash! I just know, Clee, that you’re the absolute tops of the whole, entire, macrocosmic universe.”

“Well, we can dream, of course.” Garlock withdrew his mind from Belle’s and turned his attention to the now quiet Semolo. “Well, my over-confident and contumacious young squirt; are you done horsing around or do you want to keep it up until you addle completely what few brains you have?”

The Lizorian made no reply; but merely glared.

“The trouble with you half-baked, juvenile—I almost added ‘delinquent’ to that, and perhaps I should have—Primes is that you know too damned much that isn’t true. As an old Tellurian saying hath it, ‘you’re altogether too big for your britches.’

“Thus, simply because you have lived a few years on one single planet and haven’t encountered anyone able to stand up to you, you’ve sold yourself on the idea that there’s nobody, anywhere, who can. You’re wrong—you couldn’t be more so if you had an army to help you.

“What, actually, have you done? What, actually, have you got? Practically nothing. You haven’t even started a starship; you’ve scarcely started making plans. You realize dimly that the theory is not in any of the books, that you’ll have to slug it out for yourself, but that is work. So you’re still just posing and throwing your weight around.

“As a matter of fact, you’re merely a drop in a lake. There are thousands of millions of planets, and thousands of millions of Prime Operators. Most of them are probably a lot stronger than you are; many of them may be stronger than my partner and I are. I am not at all certain that you will pass even the first screening; but since you are without question a Prime Operator, I will deliver the message we came to deliver. Miss Mitala, do you want to listen or shall we drive it into you, too?”

“I want to listen to anyone or anything who has a working starship and who can do what you have just done.”

“Very well,” and Garlock told the general-distribution version of the story of the Galactic Service.

“Quite interesting,” Semolo said loftily, at its end. “Whether or not I would be interested depends, of course, on whether there’s a position high enough for.…”

“I doubt very much if there’s one low enough,” Garlock cut in sharply. “However, since it’s part of my job, I’ll get in touch with you later. Okay, Belle.”

And in the Main—“What a jerk!” Belle exclaimed. “What a half-cooked, half-digested pill! I simply marvel at your forbearance, Clee. You should have turned him inside out and hung him up to dry—especially behind the ears!” Then, suddenly, she giggled. “But do you know what I did?”

“I can guess. A couple of shots in the arm?”

“Uh-huh. Next time he pitches into her she’ll slap his ears right off. Oh, brother!”

“Check and double-check. But let’s hop to Number Two.… Here it is.”

* * * *

“Oh, yes,” came a smooth, clear, diamond-sharp thought in reply to Garlock’s introductory call. “This world, as you have perceived, is Falne. I am indeed Baver 14WD27, my companion Prime is indeed Glarre 12WD91. You are, we perceive, Bearers of the Truth; of great skill and of high advancement. Your visit here will, I am sure, be of immense benefit to us and possibly, I hope, of some small benefit to you. We will both be delighted to have you both ’port yourselves to us at once.”

The Tellurians did so—and in the very instant of appearance Garlock was met by a blast of force the like of which he had never even imagined. The two Falnian Primes, capable operators both, had built up their highest possible potentials and had launched both terrific bolts without any hint of warning.

Belle’s mind, however, was already fused with Garlock’s. Their combined blocks were instantaneous in action; their counter-thrust was nearly so. Both Falnians staggered backward until they were stopped by the room’s wall.

“Ah, yes,” Garlock said, then. “You are indeed, in a small and feeble way, Seekers after the Truth; of which we are indeed Bearers. Lesser Bearers, perhaps, but still Bearers. You will indeed profit greatly from our visit. You err, however, in thinking that we may in any respect profit from you. You have nothing whatever that we have not had for long. Now let us, if you please, take a few seconds of time to get acquainted, each with the other.”

“That, indeed, is the logical and seemly thing to do.” Both Falnians straightened up and stepped forward; neither arrogantly nor apologetically, but simply as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had taken place.

Each pair studied the other. Physically, the two pairs were surprisingly alike. Baver was almost as big as Garlock; almost as heavily muscled. Glarre could have been cast in Belle’s own mold.

* * * *

With that, however, all resemblance ceased.

Both Falnians were naked. The man wore only a belt and pouch in lieu of pockets; the woman only a leather carryall slung from one shoulder—big enough, Garlock thought, to hold a week’s supplies for an Explorer Scout.

His hair was thick, bushy, unkempt; sun-bleached to a nondescript blend of pale colors. Hers—long, heavy, meticulously middle-parted and dressed—was a startling two-tone job. To the right of the part it was a searingly brilliant red; to the left, an equally brilliant royal blue.

His skin was deeply tanned. The color of hers was completely masked by a bizarrely spectacular overlay of designs done in semi-indelible, multi-colored dyes.

“Ah, you are worthy indeed of receiving an increment of Truth. Hear, then, the message we bring,” and again Garlock told the story.

“We thank you, sir and madam, from our hearts. We will accept with joy your help in finishing our ship; we will do all that in us lies to further the cause of the Galactic Service. Until a day, then?”

“Until a day.” Then, to Belle, “Okay, ace. Ready? Go!”

And up in the Main—“Sweet Sin!” Belle exclaimed. “What a pair they turned out to be! Clee, that simply scared me witless.”

“You can play that in spades.” Garlock jammed his hands into his pockets and prowled about the room, his face a black scowl of concentration.

Until, finally, he pulled himself out of the brown study and said: “I’ve been trying to think if there’s any other thing, however slight, that I have and you haven’t. There isn’t. You’ve got it all. You’re just as fast as I am, just as sharp and as accurate—and, since we now draw on the same field, just as strong.”

“Why Clee! You’re worrying about me? You’ve done altogether too much for me, already.”

“Anything I can do, I’ve got to do…well, shall we go?”

“We shall.”

* * * *

They visited four more planets that day. And after supper that night, standing in the corridor between their doors, Belle began to soften her shield, as though to send a thought. Almost instantly, however, she changed her mind and snapped it back to full on.

“Good night, Clee,” she said.

“Good night, Belle,” and each went into his own room.

The next day they worked nine planets, and the day after that they worked ten. They ate supper in friendly fashion; then strolled together across the Main, to a davenport.

“It’s funny,” Belle said thoughtfully, “having this tremendous ship all to ourselves. To have a private conference right out here in the Main…or is it?”

He triggered the shields, she watched him do it. “It is now,” he assured her.

“Prime-proof? Not ordinary Gunther blocks?”

“Uh-huh. Two hundred kilovolts and four hundred kilogunts. Backed by all the force of the Prime and Op fields and the full power of the engines. I told you I’d made some changes in the set-up.”

“Private enough, I guess…what a mess those Primes are! And we’ll have to make the rounds twice more—when we alert ’em and when we pick ’em up.”

“Not necessarily. This new set-up ought to give us a galaxy-wide reach. Let’s try Semolo, on Lizoria, shall we?”

“Uh-huh—Let’s.”

“Tune in, then ace.”

“Ace, darling?”

“Ace, Darling?”

“Darling. You said you weren’t going to fight with me any more. Okay—I’m not going to try any more to lick you until after I’ve licked myself. I’m tuned—you may fire when ready, Gridley.”

They fired—and hit the mark dead center. Top-lofty and arrogant and belligerent as ever, the Lizorian Prime took the call. “I thought all the time you wanted something. Well, I neither want nor need.…”

“Cut it, you unlicked cub, until you can begin to use that half-liter of golop you call a brain,” Garlock said, harshly. “We’re just trying out a new ultra-communicator. Thanks for your help.”

On the fourth day they worked eleven planets; the fifth day saw the forty-sixth planet done and the immediate job finished. All during supper, it was very evident that Belle had something on her mind.

After eating, she went out into the Main and slumped down on a davenport. Garlock followed her. A cigarette leaped out of a closed box and into place between her lips. It came alight. She smoked it slowly, without relish; almost as though she did not know that she was smoking.

“Might as well get it out of your system, Belle,” Garlock said aloud. “What are you thinking about at the moment?”

Belle exhaled; the half-smoked butt vanished. “At the moment I was thinking about Gunther blocks. Specifically, their total inability to cope with that new Prime probe of yours.” She stared at him, narrow-eyed. “It goes through them just like nothing at all.” She paused; eyed him questioningly.

“No comment.”

“And yet you gave it to me. Freely, of your own accord. Even before I needed it. Why?”

“Still no comment.”

“You’d better comment, Buster, before I blow my top.”

“There is such a thing as urbanity.”

“I’ve heard of it, yes; even though you never did believe I ever had any. You talk a good game of urbanity, but your brand of it would never carry you that far.…”

She paused. He remained silent. She went on.

“Of course, it does put a lot of pressure on me to develop myself.”

“I’m glad you used the word ‘develop’ instead of ‘treat.’”

“Oh, sometimes—at rare intervals—I’m not exactly dumb. But you knew—you must have known—what a horrible risk you took in making me as tremendously powerful as you are.”

* * * *

“Some, perhaps, but very definitely less risky than not doing it.”

“Getting information out of you is harder than pulling teeth. Clee Garlock, I want you to tell me why!”

“Very well.” Garlock’s jaw set. “You’ve had it in mind all along that this is some kind of a lark; that you and I are Gunther Tops of the universe. Or did that belief weaken a bit when we met Baver 14WD27?”

“Well, perhaps—a little. However, the probability is becoming greater with every planet we visit. After all, some race has to be tops. Why shouldn’t it be us?”

“What a logic—excuse me, skip it.…”

“Oh, you really meant it when you said you weren’t going to fight with me any more?”

“I’m going to try not to. Now, remembering that I don’t consider your premise valid, just suppose that when we visit some planet some day, you get your mind burned out and I don’t—solely because I had something I could have given you and wouldn’t. What then?”

“Oh. I thought that was what you…but suppose I can’t.…”

“We won’t suppose anything of the kind. But that wasn’t all that was on your mind. Nor most.”

“How true. Those Primes. The women. Honestly, Clee, I never saw—never imagined—such a bunch of exhibitionistic, obstreperous, obnoxious, swell-headed, hussies in my whole life. And every day it was borne in on me more and more that I was—am—exactly like the rest of them.”

Garlock was wise enough to say nothing, and Belle went on: “I’ve been talking a good game of licking myself, but this time I’m going to doit.”

She jumped up and doubled her fists. “If you can do it, I can,” she declared. “Like the ancient ballad—‘Anything you can do I can do better.’” She tried to be jaunty, but the jauntiness did not ring quite true.

“That’s an unfortunate quotation, I’m afraid. The trouble is, I haven’t.”

“Huh? Don’t be an idiot, Clee. You certainly have—what else do you suppose put me so far down into the dumps?”

“In that case, you certainly will. So come on up out of the dumps.”

“Wilco—and I certainly will. But for a woman who has been talking so big, I feel low in my mind. A good-night kiss, Clee, darling? Just one—and just a little one, at that?”

“Sweetheart!”

There were more than one, and none of them was little. Eventually, however, the two stood, arms still around each other, in the corridor between their doors.

“But kissing’s as far as it goes, isn’t it,” Belle said. The remark was not a question; nor was it quite a statement.

“That’s right.”

“So good night, darling.”

“Good night, ace.”

* * * *

And when they next saw each other, at the breakfast table, Belle was apparently her usual dauntless self.

“Hi, darling—sit down,” she said, gaily. “Your breakfast is on the table. Bacon, eggs, toast, strawberry jam, and a liter of coffee.”

“Nice! Thanks, ace.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes; then her hand crept tentatively across the table. He pressed it warmly. “You look a million, Belle. Out of the dumps?”

“Pretty much—in most ways. One way, though, I’m in deeper than ever. You see, I know exactly what you did to Fao Talaho; and why neither you or anybody else could do it to me. Or if they could, what would happen if they did.”

“I was hoping you would. I couldn’t very well tell you, before, but.…”

“Of course not. I see that.”

“…the fact is that Fao, and all the others we’ve met, are young enough, unformed enough—plastic enough—yes, damn it, weak enough—to bend. But you are tremendously strong, and twelve Rockwell numbers harder than a diamond. You wouldn’t bend. If enough stress could be applied—and that’s decidedly questionable—you wouldn’t bend. You’d break, and I can’t figure it. You’re a little older, of course, but not enough to.…”

“How about the fact that I’ve been banging myself for eight years against Cleander Garlock, the top Prime of the universe and the hardest? That might have something to do with it, don’t you think?”

Garlock said, “Indefensible conclusions drawn from insufficient data. That’s just what I’ve been talking about. No matter how we got the way we are, though, the fact is that you and I have got to fight our own battles and bury our own dead.”

“Check. Like having a baby, but worse. There’s nothing anybody else can do—even you—except maybe hold my hand, like now.”

“That’s about it. But speaking of holding hands, would it help if we paired again?”

Belle studied the question for two full minutes; her fine eyes clouded. “No,” she said, finally. “I would enjoy it too much, and you’d…well, you wouldn’t.…”

“Huh?” he demanded.

“Oh, physically, of course; but that isn’t enough, or good enough, now. You see, I know what your personal code is. It’s unbelievable, almost—I never heard of one like it, except maybe a priest or two—but I admire you tremendously for it. You would never, willingly, pair with a woman you really loved. That was why you were so glad to break ours off. You can’t deny it.”

“I won’t try to deny it. But you can’t bluff me, Belle, so please quit trying. Basically, your code is the same as mine. Why else did you initiate our break?”

Belle’s block went solid, and Garlock said hastily, aloud, “Excuse it, please. Cancel. I’ve just said, and know as an empirical fact, that you’ve got to do the job alone—but I can’t seem to help putting my big, flat foot in it by blundering in anyway. Let’s get to work, shall we?”

“What at? Interview the Primes, I’d say—tell them to hold themselves in readiness to attend.…”

“On very short notice.…”

“Yes. To attend the big meeting on Tellus. We’ll have to make a schedule. It shouldn’t be held until after Fao and Deggi get their ship built—it can’t be held, of course, until after you and Jim are out of SSE. Have you got that figured out yet?”

“Pretty much.” He told her his plan.

Belle giggled, then burst into laughter. “So I’m in it, too? Wonderful!”

“You have to be. If we make him mad enough, he’ll fire you, too.”

“Without hiring me first? He couldn’t.”

“He could, very easily. He doesn’t know one-tenth of one percent of his people. If we work it right he’ll assume that you’re one of us wage-slaves, too. Lola, too, for that matter.”

“Careful, Clee. You and I think this is funny, but Lola wouldn’t. She’d be shocked to her sweet little core, and she’d louse up the whole deal. So be very sure she doesn’t get in on it.”

“I guess you’re right…well, shall we go out and insult our touchy young friend Semolo? Ready.… Go!”

* * * *

“Oh, it’s you again. I tell you.…” the Lizorian began.

“You will tell me nothing. You will listen. Link your mind to Mitala’s,” and the linked Tellurian minds enforced the order. “In about two weeks the Primes of many worlds will meet in person on Tellus. Arrange your affairs so that on ten minutes’ notice you both can leave Lizoria for Tellus aboard our starship, the Pleiades. That is all.”

“He’ll come, too,” Belle chortled. “He’ll writhe and scream, but he’ll come.”

“You couldn’t keep him away,” Garlock agreed.

On the next planet, Falne, the procedure was a little different. The information was the same, but—“One word of warning,” Garlock added. “It is to be a meeting of minds; not a contest to set up a pecking-order. If you try any such business you will be disciplined; sharply and in public.”

“Suppose that, under such conditions, we refuse to attend the meeting?”

“That is your right. There is no coercion whatever. Whether or not you come will depend upon whether or not you two are in reality Seekers after Truth. Until a day.”

And so it went. Planet after planet. On not one of those worlds had any Prime changed his thinking. Not one was really interested in the Galactic Service as an instrument for the good of all mankind. There were almost as many attitudes as there were Primes; but all were essentially self-centered and selfish.

“That tears it, Belle—busts it wide open. I can—I mean we together can do either job. That is, either be top boss and run the thing or put in full time beating some sense into those hard skulls. We can’t do both.”

“On paper, we should,” Belle said, thoughtfully. “You’re Galactic Admiral; I’m your Vice. One job apiece. But we’re not going to be separated. Besides.…”

“Two (minds) (brains) are much better than one,” both said, except for one word, in unison.

Belle laughed. “That settles that. The Garlock-Bellamy fusion is Galactic Admiral—so we need a good Vice. Who? Deggi and Fao? They’re cooperative and idealistic enough, but.… Oh, I don’t know exactly what it is they lack. Do you?”

“No; I can’t put it into words or thoughts. Probably the concept is too new for pigeon-holing. It isn’t exactly strength or hardness or toughness or resilience or brisance—maybe a combination of all five. What we need is a pair like us but better.”

“There aren’t any.”

“Don’t be too sure.” Belle glanced at him in surprise and he went on: “Not that we’ve seen, no. But each of those worlds centers a volume of space containing thousands of planets. Including the Tellurian and the Margonian, we now have forty-eight regions defined. Let’s run a very fast search-pattern of Region Forty-nine and see what we come up with.”

“All right…but suppose we do find somebody who out-Gunthers us?”

“I’d a lot rather have it that way than the way it is now. I’ll do the hopping, you the checking. Here’s the first one—what do you read?”

“N. G.”

“And this one?”

“The same.”

“And this?”

“Ditto.”

Until, finally: “Clee, just how long are you going to keep this up?”

“Until we find something or run out of time for the meeting. Belle, I really want to find somebody who amounts to something.”

“So do I, really, so go ahead.”

* * * *

But they did not run out of time. At planet number four-hundred-something, Belle suddenly emitted a shriek—vocally as well as mentally. “Clee! Hold it! Here’s something, I think!”

“I’m sure there is, and I’m gladder to see you two people than can possibly be expressed.”

Belle whirled; so did Garlock. A man stood in the middle of the Main; a man shaped very much like Garlock, but with long, badly-tousled hair and a bushy wilderness of fiery-red whiskers.

“Please excuse this intrusion, Admiral—or should it be plural? Improper address, I’m sure, but your joint tenure is a concept so new and so vast that I am not yet able to grasp it fully—but you are working at such high speed that I had to do something drastic. You will, I trust, remain here long enough to discuss certain matters with my wife and me?”

“We’ll be very glad to.”

“Thank you. I will return, then, more decorously, and bring her. One moment.” He disappeared.

“Wife!” Belle exclaimed, more than half in dismay. “They must be, then.…”

“Yeah.” The thought of a wife did not bother Garlock at all. “Talk about power! And speed! To get all that stuff and ’port up here in the millisecond or so we had the screens open? Baby Doll, there’s a guy who is what a Prime Operator ought to be!”

In less than a minute the man reappeared, accompanied by a woman who was very obviously pregnant—eight months or so. Like the man, she was dressed in tight-fitting coveralls. Her hair, however—it was a natural red, too—was cut to a uniform length of eight inches, and each hair individually stood out, perfectly straight and perfectly perpendicular to the element of the scalp from which it sprang.

“Friends Belle and Clee of Tellus, I present Therea, my wife; and Alsyne, myself; of this planet Thaker. We have numbers, too, but they are never used among friends.”

Acknowledgments were made and a few minutes of conversation ensued, during which the two couples studied each other.

“This looks mighty good to me,” Garlock said then. “Shall we go screens half-down, Alsyne, and cry in each other’s beer?”

* * * *

In thirty seconds of flashing communication each became thoroughly informed. Those minds could send, and could receive, an incredibly vast amount of information in an incredibly brief space of time.

“Your ship should work and doesn’t,” Garlock said. “Show me; in detail.”

Alsyne showed him.

“Oh, I see. You didn’t work out quite all the theory. It has to be activated. Like this.…” Garlock showed Alsyne.

“I see. Thanks.” Alsyne disappeared and was gone for some ten minutes. He reappeared, grinning hugely behind his flaming wilderness of beard. “It works perfectly; for which our heartfelt thanks. And now that my mind is at complete peace with the universe, we will consider the utterly fascinating subject of your proposed Galactic Service. You two Tellurians, immature although you are, have made two tremendous contributions to the advancement of the Scheme of Things—three, if you count the starship, which is comparatively unimportant—each of such import that no human mind can foresee any fraction of its consequences. First, your Prime Field, the probe and its screen.…”

“Clee!” Belle drove the thought. “You didn’t give him that, surely!”

“Tut-tut, my child,” Therea soothed her. “You are alarming yourself about nothing.”

“The only trouble with you two youngsters is that you aren’t quite—very nearly, of course, but very definitely not quite—grown up.” Alsyne smiled again; not only with mouth and eyes, but with his whole hairy face. “To the mature mind there is no such thing as status. Each knows what he can do best and does it as a matter of course. Rank is not necessary.

“Second, the unimaginably important contribution of the ability to combine two dissimilar but intimately compatible minds into one tremendously effective fusion. While Therea and I have had only a few moments to play with it, we realize some of its possibilities. Thus, since she is a Doctor of Humanities.…”

“Oh,” Belle interrupted. “That’s why you knew what I was thinking about, even though I tight-beamed the thought and my screens were tight?”

“Exactly so. But to continue. With her sympathy and empathy, and my driving force and so on, the job of licking these young Primes into shape is, as your idiom has it, ‘strictly our dish.’ It is a truly delicious thought.

“You two, on the other hand, have much that we lack. Breadth and depth and scope of imagination and of vision; yet almost incredible will-power and stamina and resolve.…”

“That’s the word I was trying to think of—will-power,” Belle flashed a thought at Garlock.

“…qualities virtually always mutually exclusive; but the combination of which makes your fusion uniquely qualified to lead and direct this new and magnificent movement. But Therea and I have been idle and frustrated far too long. We can be of most use, at the moment, on Margonia; working with the Fao-Deggi unit. Therefore, with renewed deep thanks, we go.”

* * * *

Man and wife disappeared; and, ten seconds later, the Thakern starship vanished from its world.

“Well, what do you think of that?” Belle gasped. “I was actually afraid to think, even behind a Prime screen. I don’t know yet whether I want to kiss ’em or kill ’em.”

“I do. That guy is really a Prime, Belle. He’s older, bigger, and a lot better than I am.”

“Uh-uh,” she demurred, positively. “Older, yes. More mature—you baby, you!” She snickered gleefully. “If he hadn’t included you in that crack I’d’ve stabbed him, so help me, even though it wasn’t true. He said himself it’s you who has got what it takes to lead and direct, not him.”

“Us. We, I mean,” he corrected, absently.

“Uh-huh; us-we. One, now and forever. Hot Dog! Anyway, he wants us to and we want to so everything’s lovely and so let’s get to work on Fatso and his Foster. I think we ought to have some fun for a change and that’ll be a lot. When do we want to hit him?”

“Any day Monday through Friday. Nine-fifteen A.M. Eastern Daylight time. Plus or minus one minute.”

“Nice! Catch him in flagrante delicto. Lovely—shovel on the coal, my intrepid engineer!”

On a Wednesday morning, then, at twelve minutes past nine EDT, the Pleiades hung poised, high over the Chancellery of Solar System Enterprises, Incorporated.

“Remember, Belle!” Garlock was pacing the Main. “To keep ’em staggering we’ll have to land slugging and beat ’em to every punch. You did a wonderful job on her last time, and it’s been eating on her ever since. She’s probably been rehearsing in front of a mirror just how she’s going to tear you apart next time and just how she’s going to spit out the pieces. Last time, you were cold, stiff, rigidly formal, and polite. So this time it’ll be me, and I’ll be hot and bothered, dirty, low, coarse, lewd, and very, very rough.”

Belle threw back her head and laughed. “Rough? Yes. Vicious, contemptuous, or ugly; yes. A master of fluent, biting, and pyrotechnic profanity; yes. But low or dirty or coarse or lewd, Clee? Or any one of the four, to say nothing of them all? Uh-uh. Ferber’s a filthy beast, of course; but even he knows you’re one of the cleanest men that ever lived. They’d know it was an act.”

“Not unless I give ’em time to think—or unless you do, before he fires Jim—in which case we’ll lose the game anyway. But how about you? If I can knock ’em too groggy to think, will you carry on and keep ’em that way?”

“Watch my blasts!” Belle giggled gleefully. “I never tried anything like that—any more than you have—but I’ll guarantee to be just as low, dirty, coarse, lewd, and crude as you are. Probably more so, because in this particular case it’ll be fun. You see, you’re a man—you can’t possibly despise and detest that slimy stinker either in the same way or as much as I do.”

“This ought to be good. Cut the rope, Jim.”

Even before the starship came to rest, Garlock drove a probe into the sanctum sanctorum of the Chancellery—an utterly unheard-of act of insolence.

“Foster! This is the Pleiades coming in. Garlock calling. Hot up the tri-di and the recorder, Toots. Put Fatso on, and snap into it.… I said shake a leg!”

“Why, I.… You.…”

“Stop stuttering and come to life, you half-witted bag! Gimme Ferber and hurry it up—this ship’s tricky.”

“Why, you… I never.…” Ferber’s outraged First Secretary could scarcely talk. “He…he is.…”

“I know, Babe, I know—I could set that to music and sing it, with gestures. ‘Chancellor Ferber is in conference and cannot be disturbed,’” he mimicked, savagely. “Put him on now—but quick!”

* * * *

The tri-di tank brightened up; Chancellor Ferber’s image appeared. He was disheveled, surprised and angry, but Garlock gave him no chance to speak.

“Well, Fatso—at last! Where the hell have you been all morning? I want some stuff, just as fast as God will let you get it together,” and he began to read off, as fast as he could talk, a long list of highly technical items.

Ferber tried for many seconds to break in, and Garlock finally allowed him to do so.

“Are you crazy, Garlock?” he shouted. “What in hell’s name are you bothering me with that stuff for? You know better than that—make out your requisitions and send them through channels!”

“Channels, hell!” Garlock shouted back. “Hasn’t it got through your four-inch-thick skull into your idiot’s brain yet that I’m in a hurry? I don’t want this stuff today; I want it day before yesterday—this damned junk-heap is apt to fall apart any minute. So quit goggling and slobbering at me, you wall-eyed, slimy, fat toad. Get that three hundred weight of suet into action. Hump yourself!”

“You…you… Why, I was never so insulted.…”

“Insulted? You?” Garlock out-roared him. “Listen, Fatso. If I ever set out to really insult you, you’ll know it—it’ll blister all the paint off the walls. All I’m trying to do now is get you off that fat butt of yours and get some action.”

Ferber became purple and pounded his desk in consuming anger.

Garlock yelled louder and pounded harder. “Start rounding up this stuff—but fast—or I’ll come down there and take your job away from you and do it myself—and for your own greasy hide’s sake you’d better believe I’m not just chomping my choppers, either.”

“You’ll What?” Ferber screamed. “You’re fired!”

“You fire me?” Garlock mimicked the scream. “And make it stick? You’d better write that one up for the funnies. Why, you lard-brain, you couldn’t fire a cap-pistol.”

“Foster!” Ferber yelled. “Terminate Garlock as of now. Insubordination, and misconduct, abuse of position, incompetence, malfeasance—everything else you can think of. Blacklist him all over the System!”

At the word “fired” Belle, had leaped to her feet and had stopped laughing.

“Miss Bellamy!” Ferber snapped.

“Yes, sir?” she answered, sweetly.

“You are hereby promoted to be Head of the.…”

“Oh, yeah?” Belle sneered, her voice cutting like a knife. “You unprincipled, lascivious, lecherous Hitler! Have you got the unmitigated gall to take me for a floozie? To think you can add meto your collection of bootlicking, round-heeled tramps?”

“You’re fired and blacklisted too!”

“How nice! You know, I don’t know of anything I’d rather have happen to me?”

* * * *

“Get James on there—you, James.…”

“You don’t need to fire me, you fat-headed old goat,” James said, contemptuously. “I’ve already quit—the exact second you fired Clee.”

“No you didn’t!” Ferber screamed. “Resignation not accepted. You’re Fired! Dishonorably discharged—blacklisted everywhere—you’ll never get another job—anywhere! And here’s your slip, too!” Miss Foster was very fast on the machines.

James ’ported his slip up into the Pleiades, just as Garlock and Belle had done with theirs, and disappeared with it as they had; reappearing almost instantly.

“Montandon!”

“Chancellor Ferber, are you completely out of your mind? You can’t discharge either Miss Bellamy or me.”

“I can’t?” he gloated. “Why not?”

“Because neither of us is employed. By anybody.”

“That’s right, Fatso,” Belle said. “We just came along. Just to keep the boys company. It’s lonesome, you know, ’way out in deep space.”

Miss Foster ripped a half-filled-out termination form out of her machine and hurled it into a waste-basket. Ferber’s jaw dropped and his eyes stared glassily, but he rallied quickly.

“I can blacklist her, though, and maybe you think I won’t. Belle Bellamy will never get another job in this whole solar system as long as she lives, except through me! Maybe I’ll hire her some day, for something, and maybe I won’t. Are you listening, Bellamy?”

“Not only listening, I’m reveling in every word.” Belle laughed derisively. “I hate to shatter such wonderful dreams—or do I? You see, the Pleiades really works, and the Galaxians own her; lock, stock, and barrel. You wouldn’t have any part of her, remember? Insisted on payment for every nut, wire, and service? Now, they want to hire us four for a big operation with this starship. Since you only loaned Garlock and James to them, you might have made some legal trouble on that score, but now that you’ve fired them both—and in such conclusivelanguage!—we’re all set. So when you blacklist us with the Society, please let me know—I want to take a tri-di in technicolor of you doing it. How do you like them parsnips, Your Royal Fatness?”

“I’ll see about that!” Ferber stormed. “We’ll have an injunction out in an hour!”

“Go ahead,” Garlock said, with a wide grin. “Have fun—the Galaxians have legal eagles too, you know. One thing Belle forgot. Just in case you recover consciousness some time and want to steal our termination papers back—especially Belle’s; what a howler that was!—don’t try it. They’re in a Gunther-blocked safe.”

Then, as comprehension began to dawn on Ferber’s face:

“S-u-c-k-e-r,” Garlock drawled.

The Pleiades disappeared.

CHAPTER 9

The Pleiades landed on Margonia’s Galaxian Field, where the Tellurians found the project running smoothly, a little ahead of schedule. Delcamp and Fao were working at their fast and efficient pace, but the hairy pair from Thaker seemed to be, literally, everywhere at once.

“Hi, Belle.” Fao ’ported up and shook hands warmly. “I thought I was going to have the first double-Prime baby, until she appeared on the scene.”

“Didn’t it make you mad? I’d’ve been furious.”

“Maybe a little at first, but not after I’d talked with her for half a minute. She’d never even thought of that angle. Besides, she thinks the whole galaxy is fairly crawling with double-Primes.”

“That’s funny—so does Clee. But there are other things—strictly not angles—that she hasn’t thought of, too. If those coveralls were half an inch tighter they’d choke her to death. You’d think she’d.…”

“Huh?” Fao interrupted. “You should scream—oh, that ridiculous Tellurian prud.…”

“It isn’t ridiculous!” Belle snapped. “And it isn’t prudishness, either—not with me, anyway. It’s just that,” she ran an indicative glance over Fao’s lean, trim flanks and hard, flat abdomen, “it spoils your figure. It’s only temporary, of course, but.…”

“Spoils it! Why, how utterly idiotic! Why, it’s magnificent! Just as soon as it starts to show on me, Belle, I’m going to start wearing only half as many clothes as I’ve got on now.”

“You couldn’t.” Belle eyed the other girl’s bathing-suit-like garment. Except for being blue instead of yellow, it was the same as the one she had worn before. “Not without the League for Public Decency sending the wagon out after you.”

“Oh, Miss Experience? Well, three-quarters, maybe.…”

“Hey, you two!” came Delcamp’s hail. “How about cutting the gab and getting some work done?”

“Coming, boss! ’Scuse it, please!” and two fast and skillful women went efficiently to work.

* * * *

With six Prime Operators on the job the work went on very rapidly, yet without error. The Celestial Queen was finished, tested, and found perfect, one full day ahead of James’ most optimistic estimate for construction alone. The six Primes conferred.

“Do you want us to help you pick up the other Primes?” Delcamp asked. “Your Main, big as it is, will be crowded, and we have three ships here now instead of one.”

“I don’t think so…no,” Garlock decided. “We told ’em we’d do it, and in the Pleiades, so we’d better. Unless, Alsyne, you don’t agree?”

“I agree. The point, while of course minor, is very well taken. We and our Operators—we brought six along; experts in their various fields—can serve best by working on Tellus with its Galaxian Society in getting ready for the meeting.”

“Oh, of course,” Fao said. “Probably Deg and I should do the same thing?”

“That would be our thought.” The two Thakerns were thinking—and lepping—in fusion. “However,” they went on carefully, “it must not be and is not our intent to sway you in any action or decision. While not all of you four, perhaps, are as yet fully mature, not one of you should be subjected to any additional exterior stresses.”

“I hope you don’t think that way about all Primes,” Garlock said, grimly. “I’m going to smack some of those kids down so hard that their shirt-tails will roll up their backs like window shades.”

“If you find such action either necessary or desirable, we will join you quite happily in it. We go.”

The four remaining Primes looked at each other in puzzled surprise.

“What do you think about that?” Garlock asked finally, of no one in particular.

“I don’t understand them,” Fao said, “but they’re mighty nice people.”

“Do you suppose, Clee,” Belle nibbled at her lower lip, “that we’re getting off on the wrong foot with uniforms and admirals and things? That with really adult Primes running things the Galactic Service would run itself? No bosses or anything?”

“Umnngk.” Garlock grunted as though Belle had slugged him. “I hope not. Or do I? Anyway, not enough data yet to make speculation profitable. But I wonder, Miss Bellamy, if it would be considered an unjustifiable attempt to sway you in any action or decision if I were to suggest—Oh, ever so diffidently!—that if we’re going to saddle up our bronks and ride out on roundup tomorrow morning we ought to be logging some sack-time right now?”

“Considering the source, as well as and/or in connection with the admittedly extreme provocation,” Belle straightened up into a regal pose, “You may say, Mister Garlock, without fear of successful contradiction, that in this instance no umbrage will be taken, at least for the moment.” She broke the pose and giggled infectiously. “’Night, you two lovely people!”

* * * *

Belle was still sunny and gay when the Pleiades reached Lizoria; Garlock was inwardly happy and outwardly content. Semolo, however, was his usual intransigent self. In fact, if it had not been for Mirea Mitala, and the fact that she—metaphorically—did pin Semolo’s ears back, Garlock would not have taken him aboard at all.

Thus, after loading on only one pair of Primes, that auspiciously-beginning day had lost some of its luster; and as the day wore on it got no better fast. Baver of Falne had not learned anything, either—only Garlock’s intervention saved the cocky and obstreperous Semolo from a mental blast that would have knocked him out cold.

Then there were Onthave and Lerthe of Crenna; Korl and Kirl of Gleer; Parleof and Ginseona of Pasquerone; Atnim and Sotara of Flandoon, and eighty others. Very few of them were as bad as Semolo; some of them, particularly the Pasqueronians and the Gleerans, were almost as good as Delcamp and Fao.

This was the first time that any pair of them had ever come physically close to any other Prime. Many of them had not really believed that any Primes abler than themselves existed. The Pleiades was crowded, and Garlock and Belle were not giving to any of them the deference and consideration and submissive respect which each considered his unique due.

Wherefore the undertaking was neither easy nor pleasant; and both Tellurians were tremendously relieved when, the last pair picked up, they flashed the starship back to Tellus and Delcamp, Fao, and the Thakerns ’ported themselves aboard.

“Give me your attention, please,” Garlock said, crisply. Then, after a moment, “Any and all who are not tuned to me in five seconds will be returned immediately to their home planets and will lose all contact with this group.…

“That’s better. For some of you this has been a very long day. For all of you it has been a very trying day. You were all informed previously as to what we had in mind. However, since you are young and callow, and were thoroughly convinced of your own omniscience and omnipotence, it is natural enough that you derived little or no benefit from that information. You are now facing reality, not your own fantasies.

“Each pair of you has been assigned a suite of rooms in Galaxian Hall. Each suite is furnished appropriately; each is fully Gunthered for self-service.

“This meeting has not been announced to the public and, at least for the present, will not be. Therefore none of you will attempt to communicate with anyone outside Galaxian Hall. Anyone making any such attempt will be surprised.

“The meeting will open at eight o’clock tomorrow morning in the auditorium. The Thakerns and the Margonians will now inform you as to your quarters.” There was a moment of flashing thought. “Dismissed.”

* * * *

At one second before eight o’clock the auditorium was empty. At eight o’clock, ninety-eight human beings appeared in it; six on the stage, the rest occupying the first few rows of seats.

“Good morning, everybody,” Garlock said, pleasantly. “Everyone being rested, fed, and having had some time in which to consider the changed reality faced by us all, I hope and am inclined to believe that we can attain friendship and accord. We will spend the next hour in becoming acquainted with each other. We will walk around, not teleport. We will meet each other physically, as well as mentally. We will learn each other’s forms of greeting and we will use them. This meeting is adjourned until nine o’clock—or, rather, the meeting will begin then.”

For several minutes no one moved. All blocks were locked at maximum. Each Prime used only his eyes.

Physically, it was a scene of almost overpowering perfection. The men were, without exception, handsome, strong, and magnificently male. The women, from heroically-framed Fao Talaho up—or down?—to surprisingly slender Mirea Mitala, all were arrestingly beautiful; breathtakingly proportioned; spectacularly female.

Clothing varied from complete absence to almost complete coverage, with a bewildering variety of intermediate conditions. Color was rampant.

* * * *

Hair—or lack of it—was also an individual and highly variant matter. Some of the women, like Belle and Fao, were content with one solid but unnatural shade. One shaven head—Mirea Mitala’s—was deeply tanned, but unadorned, even though the rest of her body was almost covered by precious stones. Another was decorated with geometrical and esoteric designs in eye-searing colors. A third supported a structure—it could not possibly be called a hat—of spun metal and gems.

Among the medium-and long-hairs there were two-, three-, and multi-toned jobs galore. Some of the color-combinations were harmonious; some were sharply contrasting, such as black and white; some looked as though their wearers had used the most violently-clashing colors they could find.

The prize-winner, however, was Therea of Thaker’s enormous, inexplicable mop; and it was that phenomenon that first broke the ice.

The girl with the decorated scalp had been glancing questioningly at neighbor after neighbor, only to be met by uncompromising stares. Finally, however, her gaze met another, as interested as her own. This second girl, whose coiffure was a high-piled confection of black, white, yellow, red, blue, and green, half-masted her screen and said:

“Oh, thanks, Jethay of Lodie-Yann. I’m glad everybody isn’t going to stay locked up all day. I’m Ginseona of Pasquerone. They call me ‘Jin’ whenever they want to call me anything printable. And this,” she dug a knuckle into her companion’s short ribs, whereupon he jumped, whirled around, lowered his screen, and grinned, “is my…the boy friend, Parleof. Also of Pasquerone, of course. Par, both Jethay and I.…”

“Call me ‘Jet’—everybody does,” Jethay said: almost shyly, for a Prime.

“Both Jet and I have been wondering about that woman’s hair—over there. How could you possibly give a head of hair a static charge of fifty or a hundred kilovolts and not have it leak off?”

“You couldn’t, unless it was a perfectly-insulated wig…but it looks as though she did, at that.…” and Parleof paused in thought.

“Maybe Byuk would have an idea or two,” and Jet uttered aloud a dozen or so crackling syllables that sounded as though they could have been ladylike profanity. Whatever they were, Byuk jumped, too, and tuned in with the other three.

“Oh, it’s quite easy, really,” Therea said then. “Look.” Her mass of hair cascaded gracefully down around her neck and shoulders. “Look again.” Each hair stood fiercely out all by itself, exactly as before. “All you young people will learn much more difficult and much more important things before this meeting is over. I cannot tell you how glad I am that so many of you are here.”

* * * *

And so it went, all over the auditorium. Once cracked, the ice broke up fast.

Fao and Delcamp worked hard; so did Belle and Garlock. Alsyne was a potent force indeed—his abounding vitality and his tremendous smile broke down barriers that logic could not affect. And Therea worked near-miracles; did more than the other five combined. Her sympathy, her empathy, her understanding and feeling, were as great as Lola’s own; her operative ability was as much greater than Lola’s as Lola’s was greater than that of a bobby-soxed babysitter.

Thus, when half of the hour was gone, Garlock heaved a profound sigh of relief. He wouldn’t have half the trouble he had expected—it was not going to be a riot. And when he called the meeting to order he was pleasanter and friendlier than Belle had ever before seen him.

“While I am calling this meeting to order, it is only in the widest possible sense that I am its presiding officer, for we have as yet no organization by the delegated authority of which any man or any woman has any right to preside. Yesterday I ruled by force; simply because I am stronger than any one of you or any pair of you. Today, in the light of the developments of the last hour, that rule is done; except, perhaps, for one or two isolated and non-representative cases which may develop today. By this time tomorrow, I hope that we will be forever done with the law of claw and fang. For, as a much abler man has said—‘To the really mature mind, the concept of status is completely invalid.’”

“He’s putting that as a direct quote, Alsyne, and it isn’t.” Belle lanced the thought.

“He thinks it is,” Alsyne flashed back. “That is the way his mathematician’s mind recorded it.”

“This meeting is informal, preliminary and exploratory. A meeting of minds from which, we hope, a useful and workable organization can be developed. Since you all know what we think it basically should be, there is no need to repeat it.

“I must now say something that a few of you will construe as a threat. You are all Prime Operators. Each pair of you is the highest development of a planet, perhaps of a solar system. You can learn if you will. You can cooperate if you will. Any couple here who refuses to learn, and hence to cooperate, will be returned to its native planet and will have no further contact with this group.

“I now turn this meeting over to our first moderators, Alsyne and Therea of Thaker; the oldest and ablest Prime Operators of us all.”

“Thank you, Garlock of Tellus. One correction, however, if you please. I who speak am neither this man nor this woman standing here, but both. I am the Prime Unit of Thaker. For brevity, and for the purposes of this meeting only, I could be called simply ‘Thaker.’ Before calling for general discussion I wish to call particular attention to two points, neither of which has been sufficiently emphasized.

“First, the purpose of a Prime Operator is to serve, not to rule. Thus, no Prime should be or will be ‘boss’ of anything, except possibly of his own starship.

“Second, since we have no data we do not know what form the proposed Galactic Service will assume. One thing, however, is sure. Whatever power of enforcement or of punishment it may have will derive, not from its Primes, but from the fact that it will be an arm of the Galactic Council, which will be composed of Operators only. No Prime will be eligible for membership.”

* * * *

Thaker went on to explain how each pair could obtain instruction and assistance in many projects, including starships. How each pair would, when they were mature enough, be coached in the use of certain abilities they did not as yet have. He suggested procedures and techniques to be employed in the opening up of each pair’s volume of space. He then asked for questions and comments.

Semolo was the first. “If I’m a good little boy,” he sneered, “and do exactly as I’m told, and take over the region you tell me to and not the one I want to, what assurance have I that some other Prime, just because he’s a year older than I am, won’t come along and take it away from me?”

“Your question is meaningless,” Thaker replied. “Since you will not ‘take over,’ or ‘have,’ or ‘own,’ any region, it cannot be ‘taken away from you.’”

“Then I will.…” Semolo began.

“You will keep still!” came a clear, incisive thought, just as Garlock was getting ready to intervene. Miss Mitala then switched from thought, which everyone there could understand, and launched a ten-second blast of furious speech. Semolo wilted and the girl went on in thought: “He’ll be good—or else.”

A girl demanded recognition and got it. “Semolo’s right. What’s the use of being Primes if we can’t get any good out of it? We’re the strongest people of our respective worlds. I say we’re bosses and should keep on being bosses.”

Garlock got ready to shut her up, then paused; holding his fire.

“Ah, yes, friend Garlock, you are maturing fast,” came Thaker’s thought and, in answer to Garlock’s surprise, it went on, “This situation will, I think, be self-adjusting; just as will be those in the as yet unexplored regions of space.”

The girl kept on. “I, at least, am going to keep on bossing my own planet, milking it just as I.…”

Her companion had been trying to crack her shield. Failing in that, he stepped in close and tapped her—solidly, but with carefully-measured force—behind the ear. Before she could fall, he ’ported her back up into their quarters. “This happens all the time,” he explained to the group at large. “Carry on.”

Discussion went on, with less and less acrimony, all the rest of the day. And the next day, and the next. Then, argument having reached the point of diminishing returns, the three starships took the forty-six couples home.

* * * *

The six Primes went into Evans’ office, where the lawyer was deeply engaged with Gerald Banks, the Galaxians’ Public Relations Chief. Banks was holding his head in both hands.

“Garlock, maybe you can tell me,” Banks demanded. “How much of this stuff, if any, can I publish? And if so, how?”

“Nothing,” Garlock said, flatly.

“What do you think, Thaker?” Belle asked. “You’re smarter than we are.”

“What Thaker thinks has no bearing,” Garlock said.

Belle, Fao, and Delcamp all began to protest at once, but they were silenced by Thaker himself.

“Garlock is right. My people are not your people; I know not at all how your people think or what they will or will not believe. I go.”

“That lets Deg and me out too; then, double-plus,” Fao said with a grin, “so we’ll leave that baby on your laps. We go, too.”

“Well, little Miss Weisenheimer,” Garlock smiled quizzically at Belle, “You grabbed the ball—what are you going to do with it?”

“Nothing, I guess.…” Belle thought for a minute. “We couldn’t stuff any part of that down the throat of a simple-minded six-year-old. We haven’t really got anything, anyway. Time enough, I think, when we have six or seven hundred planets in each region, instead of only one planet. Maybe we’ll know something by then. Does that make sense?”

“It does to me,” Garlock said, and the others agreed.

“That Thakern ‘we go’ business sounds rough at first, but it’s contagious. Fao and Deggi caught it, and I feel like I’m coming down with it myself. How about you, Clee?”

“We go,” Belle and Garlock said in unison, and vanished.

* * * *

Aboard the Pleiades, the next few days passed quietly enough. James set up, in the starship’s memory banks, a sequence to mass-produce instruction tapes and blueprints. Garlock and Belle began systematically to explore the Tellurian Region. Now, however, their technique was different. If either Prime of any world was not enthusiastic about the project—

“Very well. Think it over,” they would say. “We will get in touch with you again in about a year,” and the starship would go on to the next planet.

On Earth, however, things became less and less tranquil with every day that passed. For, in deciding not to publish anything, Garlock had not considered at all the basic function and the tremendous ability, power, and scope of The Press. And Galaxian Hall had never before been closed to the public; not for any hour of any day of any year of its existence. A non-profit organization, dependent upon the public for its tremendous income, the Galaxian Society had always courted that public in every possible ethical way.

Thus, in the first hour of closure, a bored reporter came out, read the smoothly-phrased notice, and lepped it in to the desk. It might be worth, he thought, half an inch.

Later in the day, however, the world’s most sensitive news-nose began to itch. Did, or did not, this quiet, unannounced closing smell ever-so-slightly of cheese? Wherefore, Benjamin Bundy, the newscaster who had covered the starship’s maiden flight, went out himself to look the thing over. He found the whole field closed. Not only closed, but Gunther-blocked impenetrably tight. He studied the announcement, his sixth sense—the born newsman’s sense for news—probing every word.

“Regret…research…of such extreme delicacy…vibration…temperature control…one one-hundredth of one degree Centigrade.…”

He sought out his long-time acquaintance Banks; finding him in a temporary office half a block away from the Hall. “What’s the story, Jerry?” he asked. “The real story, I mean?”

“You know, as much about it as I do, Ben. Garlock and James don’t waste time trying to detail me on that kind of business, you know.”

This should have satisfied any newshawk, but Bundy’s nose still itched. He mulled things over for a minute, then probed, finding that he could read nothing except Banks’ outermost, most superficial thoughts.

“Well…maybe…but.…” Then Bundy plunged. “All you have to do, Jerry, is tell me screens-half-down that your damn story is true.”

“And that’s the one thing I can’t do,” Banks admitted; and Bundy could not detect that any part of his sheepishness was feigned. “You’re just too damned smart, Ben.”

“Oh—one of those things? So that’s it?”

“Yup. I told Evans it might not work.”

That should have satisfied the reporter, but it didn’t. “Now it doesn’t smell just a trifle cheesy; it stinks like rotten fish. You won’t go screens down on that one, either.”

“No comment.”

“Oh, joy!” Bundy exulted. “So big that Gerald Banks, the top press-agent of all time, actually doesn’t want publicity! The starship works—this lack-of-control stuff is the bunk—from here to another star in nothing flat—Garlock’s back, and he’s brought—what have you got in there, Jerry?”

“The only way I can tell you is in confidence, for Evans’ release. I’d like to, Ben, believe me, but I can’t.”

“Confidence, hell! Do you think we won’t get it?”

“In that case, no comment.” The interview ended and the siege began.

* * * *

Newshounds and detectives questioned and peered and probed. They dug into morgues, tabulating and classifying. They recalled and taped and sifted all the gossip they had heard. They got a picture of sorts, but it was maddeningly confusing and incomplete. And, since it was certain that inter-systemic matters were involved, they could not extrapolate—any guess was far too apt to be wrong. Thus nothing went on the air or appeared in print; and, although the surface remained calm, all newsdom seethed to its depths.

Wherefore haggard Banks and harried Evans greeted Garlock with shouts of joy when the four wanderers came back to spend the week end on Earth.

“I’ll talk to ’em,” Garlock decided, after the long story had been told. “Have somebody get hold of Bundy and ask him to come out.”

“Get hold of him!” Banks snorted. “He’s here. Twenty-four hours a day. Eating sandwiches and cat-napping on chairs in the lobby. All you have to do is unseal that door.”

Garlock flung the door wide. Bundy rushed in, followed by a more-or-less steady stream of some fifty other top-bracket newspeople, both men and women.

“Well, Garlock, perhaps you will give us some screens-down facts?” Bundy asked, angrily.

“I’ll give you all the screens-down.…”

“Clee!” “You’re crazy!” “You can’t!” “Don’t!” Belle and all the Operators protested at once.

* * * *

Ignoring the objections, Garlock cut his shield to half and gave the whole group a true account of everything that had happened in the galaxy. Then, while they were all too stunned to speak, a grin of saturnine amusement spread over his dark, five-o’clock-shadowed face.

“You pestiferous gnats insisted on grabbing the ball,” he sneered. “Now let’s see you run with it.”

Bundy came out of his trance. “What a story!” he yelled. “We’ll plaster it.…”

“Yeah,” Garlock said, dryly. “What a story. Exactly.”

“Oh.” Bundy deflated suddenly. “You’ll have to prove it—demonstrate it—of course.”

“Of course? You tickle me. Not only do I not have to prove it, I won’t. I won’t even confirm it.”

Bundy glared at Garlock, then whirled on Banks. “If you don’t give me this in shape to use, you’ll never get another line or mention anywhere!”

“Oh, no?” For the first time in his professional life Banks gloated, openly and avidly. “From now on, my friend, who is in the saddle? Who is going to come to whom? Oh, brother!”

When the fuming newsmen had gone, Garlock said, “It’ll leak, of course.”

“Of course,” Banks agreed. “‘It is rumored…’ ‘from a usually reliable source…’ and so on. Nothing definite, but each one of them will want to put out the first and biggest.”

“That’s what I figured. It’ll have to break sometime and I thought easing it out would be best…but wait a minute.…” he thought for two solid minutes. “But we’re going to need a lot of money, and we’re just about broke, aren’t we?” This thought was addressed to Frank Macey, the Galaxians’ treasurer.

“Worse than broke—much worse.”

“I could loan you a couple of credits, Frank,” Belle said, brightly. “But go ahead, Clee.”

“People like to be sidewalk superintendents. Suppose they could watch the construction of an outpost so far away that nobody ever dreamed of ever getting there. Could you do anything with that, Jerry?”

“Could I! Just!” and Banks, went into a rhapsody.

“That’s the first good idea any one of you crackpots has had for five years,” Macey said, suddenly. “But wouldn’t transportation of material and so on present problems?”

“No; just buying it,” Garlock said, soberly. “Oh, rather, paying for it.”

“No trouble there.…”

“What?” Belle exclaimed. “‘No trouble,’ it says here in fine print? How the old skinflint has changed—instead of screaming his head off about spending money he’s actually offering to. Frank, I’ll loan you threecredits!”

“Hush, honey-chile, the men-folks are talking man-business. Look, Clee. We’ll use the Pleiades at first, while we’re building a regular transport. A hundred passengers per trip, one thousand credits one way.…”

“Wow!” Belle put in. “Our ex-skinflint is now a bare-faced, legally-protected robber.”

“By no means, Belle,” Evans said. “How much would that be per mile?”

“Say ten round trips per day. That would be twenty million a day gross for a small ship not intended for passenger service. When we get ships built…and the extras.…” The money-man went into a financial revel of his own.

“Lots of extras,” Banks agreed. “And oh, brother, what a public-relations dream of heaven!”

“Maybe I’m dumb,” Garlock broke in, “but just what are you going to use for money to get started?”

“The minute we confirm any part of the story, the credit of the Galaxian Society will jump from X-O to AA-A1.”

“Oh. So Belle and I will have to lose our Pleiades for a while. I don’t like that, but we do need the money…but we can have her for this coming week?”

“Of course.”

“So maybe we’d better break the story now, instead of letting it leak.”

“Can you, after what you just told them?”

“Sure I can.” He set his mind and searched. “Bundy, this is Garlock.…”

“So what am I supposed to do—burst into tears of joy?”

“Save it. I changed my mind. You can break it as fast and as hard as you like. I’ll play along.”

* * * *

“Yeah? Why the switch? What’s the angle?”

“Strictly commercial. Get it from Banks.”

“And you’ll—personally—go on my hour with it?”

“Yes. Also, we’ll demonstrate—take you to any star-system in the galaxy. You and all the rest of the newshawks who were here and any fifty VIP’s you want to invite. Tomorrow morning all right with you?”

“You, personally, in the Pleiades?” Bundy insisted.

“Better than that. The other two starships, too. You’ve got them—particularly those four Primes—clearly in mind?”

“Not exactly, there was so much of it. Spread it on me now, huh?” Garlock did so. “Thanks, pal, for the scoop. I’ll crash it right now, and follow up with Banks. ’Bye!”

“Think you can deliver on that, Clee?” Banks asked.

“Sure. Both Deggi and Alsyne will need a lot of extra money, fast. They’ll play along.”

They did; and that three-starship tour—which visited twenty solar systems instead of one—was the most sensational thing old Earth had ever spawned.

Belle and Garlock did not spend that week end on Earth. “We go,” they said, as soon as the Pleiades was empty of pressmen, and they took James and Lola along. “If we never see another such brawl as this is going to be,” Belle told Banks, who was basking in glory and entreating them to stay on for the show, “it will be exactly twenty minutes too soon.”

Thus it came about that Earth’s first four deep-spacemen were completely out of reach when unexpected developments began.

* * * *

Alonzo P. Ferber was one of the VIP’s on Bundy’s personally-conducted tour of the stars. As has been said, he was a very able executive. He had an extremely keen profit-sense. This new thing smelled—simply reeked—of money. SSE would have to get in on it.

Ferber was not thin-skinned; where money was concerned it would never even occur to him to cherish grudges or to retain animosities. Wherefore SSE’s purchasing department suggested to the Galaxian Society that negotiations be opened concerning licenses, franchises, royalties, and so on. These suggestions were politely but firmly brushed off. Then emissaries were sent, of ever-increasing caliber and weight. Next, Ferber himself tried the tri-di; and finally, he came in person.

Rebuffed, he made such legally-sound threats that Evans and Macey agreed to a meeting; stating flatly, however, that no commitments could possibly be made without the knowledge and approval of the Society’s president, Cleander Garlock. Thus, at the meeting, the Galaxians made only two statements that were even approximately definite. One was that Garlock would probably return to Earth during the afternoon or evening of the following Friday; the other that they would take the matter up with Garlock as soon as they could.

After that meeting Macey was unperturbed, but Evans was a deeply worried man.

“You see,” he explained, “the real crux was not even mentioned.”

“No? What is it, then?”

“Operators, Primes, and the practically non-existent laws pertaining to their…what? Labor? Skill? Genius? For instance, could Garlock be forced to do whatever it is that he does? On the other hand, if Ferber offered Belle Bellamy five million credits a year to ‘work’ for SSE, is there anything we could do about it?”

“Oh. I thought all there was to it was that you’d delay ’em for a year or so and that’d be it.”

“Far from it. To date I have listed fifty-eight points for which, as far as we can learn, there are no precedents,” and the lawyer called a meeting of his staff.

For Belle and Garlock, the week went fast. On Friday afternoon, high above Earth’s Galaxian Field, Garlock said, more than half regretfully, “No more fun. Back to the desk. Back to the salt-mines.”

“I weep for you,” Belle snickered. “Sob, sob. Shed him a tear, Lola.”

“One tear coming up. Oh, woe; oh, woe.…”

“Oh, whoa!” James snorted. “Why the sob-and-moan routine, Clee, from a guy who’s going to be monarch of all he surveys?”

“His conscience aches him,” Belle explained. “This monarching business is tough if you haven’t thought about how to monarch, and he hasn’t. Have you, Clee?”

“Not a lick.” Garlock smiled slightly. “I been busy.”

“You better start to,” she advised, darkly. “You aren’t busy now and we have an hour. We better confer—I’ll make like a slave-driver.”

They ’ported into his room and he set the blocks. His attitude changed instantly. “Nice act, Belle. What was it all about?”

“That theory of yours. Your predictions are too uncannily accurate to be guesswork, and the more times you dead-center the bullseye the worse scared I get. I really want to know, Clee.”

“Okay. It isn’t complete—I need a lot more data—but I’ll show you what I have. It’s fairly strong medicine and it comes in big chunks.”

“It would have to—it covers the whole macrocosmic universe, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. I’ll start with the striking fact that, on every out-galaxy planet we visited, the human beings were Homo sapiens to N decimal places. Fertile with each other and, according to expert testimony, with us. All planets had humanoid ‘guardians,’ the Arpalones and Arpales. Some, but not all, had one or more non-human, more-or-less-intelligent races, such as the Fumapties, the Lemarts, the Sencors, and so on. These other races never seemed to fight each other, but both races of Guardians fought any and all of them, on sight and to the death. What do those facts mean to you?”

* * * *

“Nothing beyond face value. I’ve thought about them but I haven’t been able to come up with anything.”

“I have.” He unrolled a sheet of drafting paper covered with diagrams, symbols, and equations. “But before I go into this stuff, consider the human body. How many red cells are there in your blood stream?”

“Billions, I suppose.”

“And there are billions of human beings on billions of planets; each having red blood cells identical, as far as we know, with yours and mine. Also white cells. Also, sometimes, various kinds of pathogenic micro-organisms, such as staphs, streps, viruses, spiros, and so on.

“Okay. My thought is that the Lemarts, Ozobes, and the like are analogous to disease-producing organisms. We saw the full range of effects—from none at all up to death itself.”

“But they—the Ozobes and so on—died, too.”

* * * *

“How long do disease germs live in a human body after they’ve killed it?”

“But that horrible Dilipic—the golop. They don’t seem to fit.”

“Try that on for size as cancer. Also, the Arpalones typed us before they’d let us land on any planet. Why didn’t we blast them out of the way and land anyway?”

“Why, we didn’t want to. It wasn’t worth while.”

“We couldn’t. Psychic block. And if we had, we would have died. Different blood-types don’t mix.”

“So you and I are merely two red cells in the bloodstream of a super-dooper-galactic super-monster? Phooie!” she jeered. “That chestnut was propounded a thousand years ago. Are you trying to take me for a ride on that old sawhorse?”

“That’s the attitude I had at first. So now we’re ready for the chart.” He pointed to a group of symbols. “We start with symbolic logic; manipulating like so to get this.” There was a long mathematical dissertation; a mind-to-mind, rigorous, point-by-point proof.

“Q. E. D.” Garlock concluded.

“I see your math, and if I believed half of it I’d be scared witless. Those few pieces fit, but they’re scattered around in vast areas of blankness and you’re jumping around like the Swiss miss leaping from Alp to Alp. And how about our own galaxy, the most important piece of all? It’s different, and we’re different, mentally. That wrecks your whole theory.”

“No. I told you I need a lot more data. Also, beyond a certain point the analogy appears to get looser.”

“Appears to! It’s as loose as a goose!”

“Think a minute. Is it actually loose, or are we getting up into concepts that no human mind can grasp? That might be the case, you know.”

“Oh.… You’re quite a salesman, Clee, but I’m still not buying.”

“Our galaxy is a bit of specialized tissue—part of a ganglion, maybe. Over here, see? I’ll have to leave it dangling until we find some more like it.”

“I see. But anyway, you haven’t a tenth’s worth of real material on that whole sheet. Feed everything you have there into a computer and it’d just laugh at you.”

“Sure it would. The great advantage of the human brain is its ability to arrive at valid conclusions from incomplete data. For instance, what would your computer do with the figures you shot at me the day we started out? ‘Thirty-nine, twenty-two, thirty-nine. Five seven. One thirty-five.’ Yet they’re completely informative.”

“To anyone interested in that kind of figures, yes.”

“Which includes practically all adults. Then take the figure three point one four one five nine. Compy would still be baffled; but, unlike the first set, most people would be, too.”

“Yes. Perhaps two out of ten would get your message.”

“Now take something really new, like the original work on gravitation or relativity. No possible computer would be of any use. That takes a brain!”

“The brain of a Newton or an Einstein, yes.” Belle thought for a minute, then grinned at him impishly. “Now watch the brain of a Bellamy perform. Get into high gear, brain.… I wish I knew something about biochemical embryology; but I read somewhere that ova are sterile, so our galaxy is an ovum. Therefore our super-galooper is a gal—which incontrovertible fact accounts for and explains rigorously the long-known truth that women always have been, are now, and always will be vastly superior to men in every quality, aspect, and.…”

“Hold it!” Garlock snapped. His face hardened into intense concentration. Then: “Do you think you’re kidding, Belle?”

“Why, of course I’m kidding, you big.…”

“Look here, then.” He picked up a pencil and filled in blank after blank after blank. “I’m making one unjustifiable assumption—that thePleiades is the first intergalactic starship. The super-being is a female, and she is just becoming pregnant.…”

“Flapdoodle! There are no blood cells in a sperm, and I don’t think there are any in an ovum.”

“I didn’t mention either sperm or ovum. The analogy is so loose here that it holds only in the broadest, most general terms. The actual process of reproduction is unknowable. But wherever we went, we changed things. Not only by what we actually did, but also as a catalyst—no.…”

“No, not a catalyst. A hormone.”

“Exactly. Each of these changes would cause others, and so on. An infinite series. Calling the first three terms alpha, beta, and gamma, we operate like this.…” Garlock’s pencil was flying now. “Following me?”

“On your tail.” Belle was breathing hard; as the blank spaces became fewer and fewer her face began to turn white.

“From this we get that…and that makes the whole bracket tie into the same conclusion I had before. So, except for that one assumption, it’s solid.”

* * * *

“My Lord, Clee!” Belle studied the chart. “I mentioned Newton and Einstein…add to that ‘the brain of a Garlock, better than either.’” Then, seeing his reaction, “You’re blushing. I didn’t think.…”

“Cut the comedy. You know I couldn’t carry either of their hats to a dog-fight.”

“And I would never have believed that you are basically modest.”

“I said cut out the kidding, Belle.”

“I’m deadly serious. A brain that could do that,” she waved at the chart, “…well, even I am not enough of a heel to belittle one of the most tremendous intuitions ever achieved by man. Not that I like it. It’s horrible. It denies mankind everything that made him come up from the slime—everything that made him man.”

* * * *

“Not at all. Nothing is changed, in man’s own frame of reference. It merely takes our thinking one step farther. That step, of course, isn’t easy.”

“That is the understatement of all time. What it will do, though, is set up an inferiority complex that would wipe out the whole human race.”

“There might be some slight tendency. Also, since my basic assumption can’t be justified, the whole thing may be fallacious. So I’m not going to publish it.” He glanced at the chart and it vanished.

“Clee!” Belle stared, almost goggle-eyed. “With your name? The tremendous splash… I see. You’re really grown up.”

“Not all the way, probably; but pretty nearly—I hope.”

“But some of the…not exactly corollaries, but.…” Belle’s face, which had regained some of its color, began again to pale.

“Which one of the many?”

“The most shattering one, to me, concerns intelligence. If it is true that our vaunted mentality is only that of one blood cell compared to that of a whole brain…and that intelligence is banked, level upon level…well, it’s simply mind-wrecking. I’ve been trying madly not to think of that concept, at all, but I can’t put it off much longer.”

“Now’s as good a time as any. I’ll hold your hand.”

“You’d better hold more of me than that, I think.”

“I’ll do even that, in a good cause.” He put his arms around her; held her close. “Go ahead. Face it. All the way down and all the way up. You’ve got what it takes. You’ll come back sane and it’ll never bother you again.”

She closed her eyes, put her head on his shoulder. Her every muscle went tense.

Neither of them ever knew how long they stood there, close-clasped and motionless in silence; but finally her muscles loosened. She lifted her head; raised her brimming eyes.

“All the way down?” he asked.

“To almost a geometrical point.”

“And all the way up?”

“I touched the fringe of infinity.”

“Intelligence all the way?”

“All the way. I couldn’t understand any of them, of course, but I looked each one squarely in the eye.”

“Good girl. And you’re still sane.”

“As much so as ever…more so, maybe.” She disengaged herself, sat down on the bed, lighted a cigarette, and smoked half of it. Then she stood up. “Clee, if anything in the whole universe ever knocked hell out of anything, that did out of me. I’m going to do something that will take about ten minutes. Will you wait right here?”

“Of course. Take all the time you want.”

* * * *

When she came back Garlock leaped to his feet and stared speechlessly. He could not even whistle. Belle’s hair was now its natural deep, rich chestnut, her lipstick was red, her nails were bare, and she wore a white shirt and an almost-knee-length crimson skirt.

“Here’s what I’m going to do,” she said, quietly. “I’m going to be a plain, ordinary brownette. I’m going to marry you as soon as we land; registered permanent family. I’m going to have six kids and spoil them rotten. In short, I have grown up—partly up, at least—too.”

“Plain?” he managed, finally. “Ordinary? You? Yes—like a super-nova going off under a man’s feet!” With a visible effort, Garlock pulled himself together. “I don’t need to tell you what a surprise this is, and can’t tell you what it means to me. But you never have said you love me. Hadn’t you better?”

“I’m afraid to. Our next kiss will be different. I’d spoil all this nice new make-up.” She tried to grin in her old-time fashion, but failed. She sobered, then, and went on with a completely new intensity. “Listen, Clee. I’m all done—forever—lying and pretending to you. I love you so much that…well, there simply aren’t any thoughts. And when I think of how I acted, it hurts—Lord, how it hurts! I don’t see how you can love me at all. It’d take a miracle.”

“Miracles happen, then.” He put both arms around her, very gently. “For the first time in my life I’m cutting my screens to zero. Come in.”

“What?” For a moment she was unable to believe the thought. Then, cutting her own shield, she went fully into his mind. “Oh, I didn’t dare hope you could possibly feel.… Oh, this is wonderful, Clee—simply wonderful!”

As the two fully-opened minds met and joined she threw both arms around him and their embrace tightened as though their bodies were trying to become as nearly one as were their minds. Finally she pulled herself away and put up a solid block.

“What a mess!” she said, shakily. “Lipstick all over you.”

“Why words, sweetheart? That was perfect.”

“Oh, it was…but wide open, with such a mind as yours.…” she paused, then came back to normal almost with a snap. “…but say; I’ll bet that’s what Therea and Alsyne were doing. That ‘fusion’ thing. We’ll practise it tonight.”

He pondered briefly. “Sure it was.”

“But he said they learned it from us. How could he have, when we.… Oh, we did, of course, in moments of high stress…but we didn’t actuallyknow it.…” She paused.

“We wouldn’t admit it, you mean, even to ourselves.”

“Maybe; and of course it never occurred to us—callow youngsters we were then, weren’t we?—that it could be done for more than a microsecond at a time. Or that two people could ever, possibly, live that way.”

“Or what a life it would be. So let’s chop this and get back to you and me.”

“Uh-huh, let’s,” she agreed, but in a severely practical tone. “You’ve got lipstick even on your shirt. So change it and I’ll go put on a new face and bring over some stuff and clean you up.”

While she cleaned, she talked. “I told you our next kiss would be different, but I had no idea…wow! That will be as much different, too, I’m sure.… Hm-h-h-nh?” Again she pressed herself against him; this time in a somewhat different fashion.

“Stop that, you little devil, or I’ll.…” His arms came up of themselves, but he forced them back down. “…No, I won’t. We’ll save that for tonight, too.”

“I’ll behave myself!” She laughed, pure joy in voice, eyes, and smile. “I bet myself you wouldn’t and I won! You’re tall, solid gold, Clee darling—the absolute top.”

“Thanks, sweetheart. I wish that were true,” he said, soberly. “But I can’t help wondering if two such hellions as you and I are can make a go of marriage—no, cancel that. We’ll do it—all we have to figure out is how.”

“I know what you mean. Not at first—it’ll be purely wonderful then. After five years, say, when the glamor has worn off and I’ve had three of our six children and two of them are in bed with the epizootic and I’m all frazzled out and you’re strung up tight as a bowstring with overwork and.…”

“Hold it! Uh-uh. No. If we can live together six months—or even six weeks—without killing each other, we’ll have it made. It’s at first that it’ll be rugged. No matter how rugged it gets, though, we’ll know one thing for certain sure. We couldn’t live apart. That’ll give us enough leverage. Check?”

“And double check.” She giggled sunnily. “I’ll take care of any and all situations, whatever they are, that arise in the first six months. You’ll be responsible for the next sixty years. That’s a perfectly fair and equitable division of responsibility. Now kiss me and we’ll go.”

* * * *

When Garlock cut the Gunther blocks, however, James’ thought came instantly in. “Been trying to get you for twenty minutes,” and in a couple of seconds he brought Garlock and Belle up to date. “So Fatso’s been waiting in Evans’ office. He’s throwing fits all over the place and Evans and Macey are going quietly mad.”

“He’ll have to wait,” Garlock decided instantly. “No matter how many fits he has, no such decision is going to be made until there’s enough of a Galactic Council to make it.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell him that yourself. In person.”

“I’ll do just that, and tell him so he’ll stay told.”

“Okay, but shake a.…”

Belle and Garlock ’ported out into the Main, arms around each other like a couple of college freshmen.

“…leg-g—ug—gug.…” James gurgled.

“Belle!” Lola shrieked. “Why—Belle—Bellamy!”

“What goes on here?” James demanded.

“Nothing much,” Garlock replied, although he blushed almost as deeply as Belle did. “We just decided to quit fighting, is all. Cut the rope, Junior, and let the old bucket drop.”