"Male and female, of course," Afra said. "But Neptune is unmistakable."

            Groton did not push the matter, but Ivo was sure he had been driving at something else.

            "Even Earth?" Beatryx inquired, catching up to an earlier comment.

            "That's an upside-down Venus symbol. I don't remember them all, but I am sure of Neptune."

            Groton was still entertained. "I agree. It is Neptune. But I repeat: is this to be taken as an indication of location, or is it something more subtle?"

            "Isn't Neptune very far away?" Beatryx asked.

            "Ridiculous!" Afra said hotly, ignoring the other woman. "No ship has gone there yet."

            "Not to mention the problem of delivering the letter here," Groton added.

            "Something is wrong. We have misread the signal."

            "I wonder," Groton said. "What was that earlier contact you mentioned that you had with Schön? Was it like this?"

            "No. It -- " She turned abruptly to Ivo. "What poem? Which poet?"

            Thus, in delayed fashion, she had come at it. He had foolishly told her that the earlier message represented a line of poetry with which he was familiar, and she had not forgotten. Could he stave off her assault?

            "American. It was just Schön's way of telling me that he knew what was up. Of telling you actually, since I couldn't read it."

            "That much was obvious. Name the poet and piece."

            "I don't see that that is relevant to -- "

            "An American poet, you said. Prominent?"

            "Yes, but -- "

            "Born what century? Seventeenth?"

            "No. Why do you -- "

            "Eighteenth?"

            "No." She would not be denied.

            "Nineteenth?"

            "Yes, but -- "

            "Whitman?"

            "No."

            "Frost? Sandburg?"

            "No."

            "But male?"

            "Yes."

            "Eliot? Pound? Archibald MacLeish?"

            "No." He remained helpless before her intensity.

            "Ransom? Wallace Stevens? Cummings? Hart Crane?"

            "I hate to break in," Groton said, "but we do have more pressing -- "

            She pointed her manicured finger at Ivo. "Vachel Lindsay!"

            "The UN may be on our tail," Groton said. "If we don't make our decision soon, we could lose it by default."

            "All right!" she snapped, returning to him. "First, reconnaissance. We have to know whether there is pursuit yet, and of what type, so we can take evasive action. Once we're safe, we can start running down Schön. I'm convinced our sprout-winner here is hiding something important. Once we get that, we'll have a better notion what Schön is doing, and where."

            "I appreciate your ruthlessness," Groton said dryly. "Where do we go from here?"

            Ivo was immensely relieved to have the subject change. Afra was correct: he was hiding something important. "How will we know where the UN is? Don't we have to keep radio silence, or something?"

            She only glanced disparagingly at him. How else, he realized then, but with the macroscope itself?

            "Trying to run down a single ship with this equipment is like aiming the atomic cannon at no-see-em gnats," Groton observed.

            "The torus will know," Afra said. "We'll have to watch it -- the teletype, maybe, to monitor incoming messages. Or we can simply blast off now in any direction and outrun whatever pursuit forms."

            "Not," Groton said succinctly, "a robot."

            She straightened, startled. "All right. I'll get on the scope. We'd better know the worst."

            "Can you stay off the haunted frequency?"

            "Calculated risk. With practice -- "

            "With practice like that, we'll have two casualties aboard to clean up."

            Ivo recalled the loss of intestinal control of the victims and realized how hard such a notion would strike a finicky girl like Afra. "I seem to be immune," he said. "At least, I can avoid it successfully. And I did win the privilege. If you will show me how to operate the controls -- "

            This time Afra seemed relieved. "I'll instruct you. I'll have to operate blind, but it should work. Here, I'll turn off the main screen; you use the helmet."

            And she set him up in the control chair and fastened the equipment upon him, placing the heavy goggles over his eyes. Ivo wished there were more than sheer practicality in the operation, but knew there was not; it was more efficient for her to do these things for him than to direct him through it, this first time.

            "Your left hand controls the computer directives. Here, I'll put you on the ten-key complex." Her hand took his and carried it to a buttoned surface like that of an adding machine. This was not the same control he had seen Brad employ, he was sure. Alternate inputs? A junior set for the novice? The goggles cut off all outside vision, so he, not she, was "blind."

            "We have a number of important locations precoded," she continued. "You should memorize them, if you're going to do this regularly, but right now I'll give them to you. These will place you on Earth, the Luna bases, any of the artificial satellites or the macroscope station -- the torus." She spieled off numbers, and he obediently pressed the buttons. Twice he miskeyed and had to start over; the third time she placed her hand over his and depressed his fingers for him in the proper order and places. Her digits were soft and cool and firm -- as he imagined the rest of her body to be.

            Light flared into his eyes. He was a hundred yards from the torus, looking down at it from sunside, blinded by the reflection from its metal plates.

            "The next coding is for semimanual control," she said. "You can't possibly keep the celestial motions aligned, but you can override portions of the computer's automatic correction and drift a little." She directed him through the necessary numeric instruction. "Now you can apply your right hand. Drive it as you would a car -- but remember it is three-dimensional." He felt the mounted ball, its surface actually sandpaper-rough for perfect traction. "Tilt for direction of motion, twist for orientation. Be careful -- this is where the destroyer sometimes intrudes. You have to stick to fringe reception -- which is more than adequate, at this range. Now set your drift toward the torus; don't worry, you'll pass right through the walls. You'll have to practice a bit to get it down..."

            Ivo tilted and twisted -- and was rewarded by a dizzying tailspin in which the intolerable blaze of Sol scorched across his eyeballs every three seconds.

            "Not so much!" she cautioned after the fact. It was a lesson that would not have to be repeated.

            He reduced his efforts and began to slide toward the station, twitching the direction of his gaze to cover it properly. The computer, he thought, must perform a tremendous task, for surely a completely different flow of macrons would be required for each change in direction -- yet the transition was smooth. Probably at distances of many light-years such versatility diminished, until a view from the far side of the galaxy would be one direction only, take it or leave it.

            It was beginning to work for him, and it gave him a feeling of power.

            There was an odor.

            "No, that's my job," Afra said, calling out to someone else. "You keep practicing, Ivo; I think you have the general idea. Try to work your way inside. I'll be back in a moment."

            The smell and the sound told him: nature had summoned Brad, and Afra had a job of cleaning up and changing to do. He had to admit she had grit.

            He thought of the right-hand control as a flute, and though there was no particular resemblance, control was suddenly easier. Now he could draw on his other talent, that peculiar digital dexterity and sense of tone musicians possessed. He shot through the wall of the torus, schooling himself not to wince, and stopped within the first hall. He reoriented, and was sure he was maintaining spatial stability, but the hall was tilting over steadily. He corrected -- and lost it again.

            Then he realized: the station was spinning, of course! He had to compensate not only for its motions in space, but for its internal rotation. He had to perform, in effect, a continuing spiral, matching velocities with whatever portion of the station he chose to view. An intricate adjustment, indeed!

            He mastered it, driving his viewpoint around as though it were a racing car upon a treacherous track. Then he oriented for a "walk" along the hall. A twist superimposed upon the other adjustments, and he was facing the way he wanted; a tilt, and he was trotting down the hall toward Kovonov's office.

            The Russian was playing solitary sprouts. "If only I could talk to you, Kov!" Ivo exclaimed. "Just to ask you where that UN ship is, if there is one..."

            "In Russian?" He jumped, but of course Kovonov had not spoken. Afra was back, her tone deceptively sweet.

            Ivo felt the slow flush move up his face to the goggles and knew she was seeing it also, but he kept a steady image of the office. There had to be some way to make contact, and he was sure Kovonov was the key. The man had been too knowledgeable, too familiar with the necessary problems -- perhaps because he had rehearsed this voyage himself. If anyone could communicate, across this barrier so much greater than that of language --

            He concentrated on the board before the Russian. A vital message had been communicated through this board not so long ago, and perhaps another waited. Meanwhile, this was practice of another sort, since he had discovered in the course of his adjustments that size, too, could be directly controlled. Such adaptations would necessarily become more and more precise as the range increased, in future forays, and he felt he ought to have it down pat. This fine-tuning became an art; it was hardly accident that his musical ability was telling.

            "What are you doing?" Afra demanded.

            Ivo stifled an irritable reply. Surely she realized how delicate --

            "Reexamining the portents, you might say," Groton said, and Ivo realized with relief that Afra's question had been directed at the older man.

            "Your damned astrology tomes!" she exclaimed. "Your wife brought texts on art and music, but you had to bring -- "

            "Better than the pretty clothing you packed," Groton replied, his tone showing his unperturbed smile. But the argument was on. Tension had to seek its sublimations.

            And control came. Smoothly Ivo brought the focus down upon the sprouts-board, keeping it clear, magnifying the picture, until the dotted lines and loops loomed enormously across his field of vision. He centered on a single dot, making it swell up as though it were a planet. The illusion captured him, as illusions did; he was coming in for a landing, spaceship balanced. Time for the braking rockets...

            "Doesn't it seem just the merest trifle ridiculous to twiddle with squiggles on paper while there is so much of importance going on?" Afra inquired, and again Ivo had to confine a guilty start.

            "I would prefer to call it the interpretation of the nuances of a horoscope," Groton said calmly. He was better equipped, temperamentally, to fence with her than Ivo was. Beatryx must have gone back to the supply compartment, since she was not present to break this up. "I hardly consider it ridiculous to explore our situation and resources with the best instruments available. There is, as you point out, much of importance going on."

            "Are you seriously trying to equate the use of the macroscope with your occult hobby?"

            "I do not consider astrology to be in any sense 'occult,' if by that term you mean to imply anything fantastic or magical or unscientific. In the sense that both are tools of immense complexity and potency, yes, I would equate astrology with the macroscope."

            "Let me get this quite straight. You make a representation of the constellations -- only those within the narrow belt of the zodiac, ignoring the rest of the sky -- and planets -- those of Sol's system exclusively -- as they appear in Earth's sky at the moment of a person's birth...and from that mishmash you claim to be able to predict his entire life including accidents and acts of God, so that you can tell him -- for a suitable fee -- to watch out for trouble on a given day or to invest in a certain stock -- and yet you claim there is nothing supernatural or at least unethical about this procedure?"

            "What you describe is undoubtedly supernatural and possibly of dubious ethics, but it isn't astrology. You are attributing erroneous claims to this science, then blaming it because it does not and can not make good on them."

            "Exactly what is your definition of astrology, then?"

            "I can hardly define it in a sentence, Afra."

            "Try." Did she think she had him?

            "The doctrine of Microcosm and Macrocosm -- that is, the concept of the individual as the cosmos in miniature, while the greater universe is total man in his real being."

            The dot-planet broke up into swirls and blobs. He was too close; the resolution of the chalk was not that fine. Soon he would have to center on one section of it, then on a subsection, and so on into the microcosm...

            Doctrine of microcosm...

            "A microscope!" he said, finding it excruciatingly funny. For the macroscope was, in this case, a microscope. An astonishingly versatile instrument. Could it be that each dot in a game of sprouts had its own gravitic aura that set up macronic ripples for him to pick up? Talk of sensitivity!

            "What?" Afra sounded angry.

            Oops. "Nothing." Carefully, he reversed the action, and the scattered chalk coalesced. Now he was taking off from the planet, watching it reform into a distant dot that became a mere point of light against the black background of space. The other lines appeared, marking constellations of the night sky. Could Groton analyze them astrologically?

            "All right," Afra said. "Score one for you. You put me off again. But this time I'm not going to let you slip out of an honest discussion. I want to have your specific rationale for this foolishness."

            Nothing like handing him loaded dice, Ivo thought wryly -- but he, too, was curious.

            "Well, it is evident that there are certain objects in the universe," Groton said gamely, "and that they are in constant motion, relative to Earth and to each other. That's one reason we require the assistance of a computer to orient the macroscope. These masses, and their respective movements, interrelate considerably. That is, the sun carries its family of planets along with it and forces them into particular orbits, while the planets affect their satellites and even distort the orbits of other planets."

            "That is not precisely the way modern theory describes the situation, but for the sake of argument we'll accept it. So granted. The Solar system interacts." She sounded impatient, eager for the kill.

            "Similarly, there are a number of human beings and other creatures on the Earth, and they relate to each other and interact in an almost impenetrably complex pattern. We merely draw a parallel to the apparent motions of the -- "

            "Now we come to it. Mars makes men warlike?"

            "No! There is no causal connection. In astrology the Earth is considered to be the center of the universe, and the individual's place of birth is the center of his chart. This is not at all contrary to astronomy, incidentally; it is just a modification of viewpoint, for our convenience."

            Just as, Ivo thought, he was now performing all kinds of clever manipulations to make his macroscopic viewpoint stable. It would be impossible to accomplish anything if he tried to orient on galactic or even Solar "rest." The center of the universe had to be where the observer was.

            He was now paying more attention to the dialogue than to the semiautomatic refinements of macroscopic control, but was jolted back to business. His image was gone! Had he lost touch?

            No -- Kovonov had merely removed the board. How easy to forget reality, to become involved, to begin to believe in one's fancies, and to see the monster hand of the image as the hand of God, drawing away the firmament. He had to guard against personification; it could unhinge him.

            He adjusted the image so as to watch Kovonov, life-sized. The man looked about almost furtively, then drew from his desk drawer a card. He set this on the table.

            There was print on it. Skillfully now, Ivo centered on that print, clarified it, read it. It was not Russian!

            S D P S

            A message for him! Kovonov was trying to communicate!

            After a minute the Russian put the card away and replaced the board. He resumed his sprouts doodling.

            Could that be all? Where was the rest of it?

            "So you claim the positions of the planets in the sky at the moment of my birth determine my fate, despite anything I might have to say about it."

            "By no means. I merely want you to concede the possibility of a relation between the configuration of the heavens at any particular moment and that of human affairs. It doesn't have to be a causal relation, or even a consistent one. Just a relation."

            "You bastard," she said without rancor, "you've got me halfway into your camp already."

            Bastard? Ivo thought. Was this the innocent girl who had blushed so delicately at the very mention of S D P S? He certainly was seeing another side of her now.

            "Of course there's a relation!" she continued irately. "There's a relation between a grain of sand at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and my grandfather's gold tooth. But it is hardly significant -- and if it were, what proof do you have that your astrology can clarify it, when science can not?"

            "Astrology is a science. It is built upon the scientific method and endures by it. The discipline is as rigorous as any you can name."

            "Geometry."

            "All right. How do you 'prove' the basic theorems of geometry?"

            "Such as A = 1/2 BH, for a triangle? You're the engineer. There must be a dozen ways to -- "

            "One will suffice. You're thinking of making constructs and demonstrating that your One-half-Base-times-Height figure is the sum of congruent pairs of right-angle triangles, or something like that, correct? But how do you prove congruence? Don't tell me angle-side-angle or side-side-side; I want to know how, in the ultimate definition, you prove your proofs. What is your true basis?"

            "Well, you can't have a strictly geometrical proof for the initial theorem, of course. You have to start with one assumption, then build logically from that. So we assume that if one angle between two measured sides is fixed, the entire triangle is fixed. It works perfectly consistently."

            "But what if it's wrong?"

            "It isn't wrong. You can measure triangles full-time for a lifetime, and you'll never find an exception."

            "Suppose I transfer side-angle-side from a flat surface to a torus?"

            She almost spluttered. "You have to match surfaces. You know that."

            It seemed to Ivo that Groton had just scored another point, but for some reason the man didn't follow it up. "So experience is your guideline, then," Groton said.

            "Yes."

            "That's the basis for astrology, too."

            "Experience? That the position of Mars determines man's fate?"

            "That the zodiacal configuration at a person's birth indicates certain things about his circumstance and personality. Astrologers have been making observations and refining their techniques for many centuries -- it is one of the most ancient of disciplines -- until today the science is as close to accuracy as it has ever been. There is still much to learn, just as there is about geometry, but it is experience and not guesswork that modifies our application. I do not claim that the stars or planets determine your fate; I do suggest that your life is circumscribed by complex factors and influences, in much the same way as the motions of the planets and stars are circumscribed, and that the complex of your life and the complex of the universe may run in a parallel course. Astrology attempts to draw useful parallels between these two admittedly diverse areas, since what is obscure in one realm may be apparent in the other. In this way it may be possible to clarify aspects of your life that may not otherwise be properly understood. The one correspondence we can fix with any degree of certainty is the moment of birth, so we must use that as the starting point for the individual -- but that is all it is. A starting point, just as your side-angle-side measurement is a possible starting point for the entire science of geometry. The difference is that astrology does not attempt to determine facts, since these are things you may ascertain for yourself. It reveals nothing that is hidden. Instead it facilitates the measure and judgment of what is actually encountered in experience."

            Ivo remembered the Senator's distinction between truth and meaning in philosophy.

            "That sounds closer to psychology than astronomy," Afra said.

            "It should. The relation between astronomy and astrology is entirely superficial. We depend upon the astronomers for measurements of planetary motions and such, but after that we part company. The metaphysical opinions of astronomers have no bearing on astrology; these gentlemen are simply not competent in that area, however competent they may be in their own field, that I admit they have mastered with a skill they have not even thought of applying to astrology. A good astrologer doesn't need a telescope; he does need a sound grasp of practical psychology."

            Ivo had been watching Kovonov all this time, but there had been no other sign. It was time to get advice. "I hate to interrupt," he said, "but I seem to be stalled."

            Afra came over. "I'm sorry. I let fantasy distract me and forgot all about you. What is it?"

            Ivo described what had taken place in the torus.

            "Obviously he is referring to the statuette," she said.

            It was amazing how stupid she could make him feel, how quickly. He dollied the image through the wall and down the hall to the common room.

            The S D P S was gone, of course, but the pedestal remained. Upon it was a sheet of paper. An anonymous message, he realized, that could implicate no one. It was printed in teletype caps:

            CRAFT ALERTED. PROCEEDING FROM MOONBASE THIS DATE 1300 TORUS TIME. ARMED. ACCELERATE WHEN ADVISED. URGENT.

            "Oh, God, they are on our tail!" Afra snapped. "And here I've been wasting precious time on -- "

            "Armed?"

            "That means a ship-mounted laser. Supposed to be top secret, but we all knew about it."

            "So there has been some poop-scooping."

            "In self-defense. Space is supposed to be free of weapons, and the UN enforces that -- but Brad was suspicious of a UN-sponsored industrial complex on the moon. Ruinously inefficient location, with all supplies ferried up from Earth. So we peeked. Presumably it's for good use -- to keep the peace -- but the UN is building a fleet that is very like an incipient armada. That space-borne laser is dangerous at indefinite range -- as we may discover first-hand if we don't behave."

            "Why don't they burn us now, then? They must have us spotted."

            "Because they want to preserve the macroscope. You can be sure that if they officially dismantle it, there will be an unofficial remantling. An insidious group has obtained control of the UN space arm, or will obtain it; again, we only know because we...scooped. A fleet of ships and the macroscope -- that's about as real as power gets. That could have been what Borland was really investigating. He had the nose for that sort of thing."

            "And they would want to keep their laser secret," Groton put in. "If they use it, everyone will know, and that will be sticky."

            "And because the only equipment precise enough to aim a beam that narrow accurately for that range is right here with us," Afra said. "They'll have to get pretty close before they can be sure of us with one burst, particularly if we're maneuvering."

            Ivo was fazed by such political reality. "Why don't they just broadcast an ultimatum to us?"

            "And admit to the world that somebody has snitched the macroscope from under their nose? They can certainly keep that secret if we can. Can you maintain contact with the station under acceleration?"

            "You mean, if we take off and...if there's a computer setting for it," Ivo said. "Doesn't it keep track of any changes in our location, and compensate?"

            "Naturally. It's been doing it right along while you practiced. Otherwise every one of the coded locations would be off by the distance we are from the torus. But under actual acceleration there would be drift because of the change in our orientation. Is your hand steady enough to compensate?"

            "I can try," Ivo said.

            She strapped him down while he held the focus. "We'll have to employ intermittent bursts, and change our own orientation erratically," she said. "That way they won't ever be quite sure where we're going."

            "Where are we going?" Groton inquired.

            "Neptune," Ivo said, but it wasn't funny.

            "What's two billion, eight hundred million miles among friends?" Afra said, and that wasn't funny either. Ivo was sure it would be years before they could get to such a planet on an economy orbit. The 1977 probe of the four gas giants, after all, was still less than halfway out.

            "We may be able to fool them for a little while -- a few hours, say -- but will it change the end?" Ivo asked her.

            "No. Unless we undertake sustained acceleration, the advantage is with them. They have to catch up eventually."

            Ivo still had the focus on the printed warning in the station common room. "Oh-oh," he said. "Somebody is changing the sign."

            A technician, seeming to move carelessly, picked up the first sheet with a gloved hand and deposited another. Ivo read it off:

            ROBOT BEING FITTED. ACCELERATE IMMEDIATELY. URGENT.

            "I'll get on it," Groton said. "One G until we think of something better." Ivo heard him scrambling through the lock.

            "Why can't we set course for -- well, Neptune, since it's vacant and far out -- and keep clear of them that way? It might take a little time, but at least we'd be safe until we could figure out something better."

            "You're right," Afra said sourly. "At a million miles per hour, direct route, we could make it within four months. At a steady one-gravity acceleration we could achieve that velocity in, oh, half a day. We have supplies for the five of us for a good year."

            Weight hit them as Groton cut in the drive. They were on their way -- somewhere.

            Ivo, still on the scope, lost the focus, but was able to bring it back by diligent corrective twists. The computer was on the job, holding to the coded location, but it didn't care what way up the picture was, and it was evident that the loaded weight of the ship threw the calculations off a trifle. The computer was not using the macroscope; it was judging by thrust and vector to estimate the changes and corroborating by telescopic observations. Trace corrections were necessary.

            "What's wrong with that idea, then?" he asked, trying not to sound plaintive.

            "First, that robot can take more acceleration than we can, since it has no fallible human flesh to hinder it. It would catch us enroute if the regular ship didn't. Second, we might get a little hungry, if we did get away, after that year."

            "Oh." That stupid feeling was threatening to become chronic. "Couldn't we, er, grow some more food? Refine natural resources or sprout whole grain -- I saw bags of -- "

            "On Neptune?"

            He didn't press the point. "We could come back within the year. The situation could change in that time. Politically."

            "I suppose it could, and we could. That leaves only the problem of outrunning the robot ship."

            "Oh." He kept forgetting that. "Wait a minute! I thought Joseph was a special vehicle. An atomic heat-shield, or something. Brad told me -- "

            "We are traveling in verbal circles," she said. "Joseph can probably deliver enough thrust to fire us off, even burdened with the weight of the macroscope housing, at a sustained ten gravities. No problem there. The robot would run out of chemical fuel in a hurry trying to match that."

            "How long would it take to reach Neptune at ten G's?"

            She was silent a moment, and he knew she was working it out with a slide rule. This, at least, was one problem she couldn't do quickly in her head or answer from memory, and he refrained from reminding her that he could.

            "Assuming turnover at mid-point for deceleration, with constant impetus, top velocity of thirteen thousand, two hundred miles per second -- ouch! That's one fourteenth light-speed! -- we could make the trip in just five days."

            "Why not?" he asked, satisfied.

            "No reason worthy of mention. Of course, we'd all be dead long before we arrived, if that's any disadvantage."

            "Dead?"

            "Did you fancy surviving at a sustained ten G's?"

            Ivo thought about weighing over three quarters of a ton for five days without letup. Power, he decided, was not everything. And of course he should have known that; she had already stated that problem, though it hadn't sunk in before. He'd been thinking minutes, not days, for that acceleration.

            "You have too many nays for my yeas," he told her. "Suppose we take off at a steady one G in the general direction of Neptune. How long will it take that UN cruiser to catch us?"

            "That depends. The manned one is our immediate problem. If it orients immediately and projects for interception, it could rendezvous within two days. If it takes a more conservative approach, to economize on fuel and allow for our possible maneuvering, it would take longer. Since they'll know fuel is not a problem for us, the latter course is more likely. They wouldn't want to damage the macroscope. They would try to keep us occupied until the robot was functional, which might be several more days."

            "How would they know about our drive? I thought that was Brad's private project."

            "Nothing is that private -- not from the organization footing the bill. But spectroscopic analysis of our drive emission would remove any doubts they might harbor. That would make them more cautious about closing with us, but it wouldn't stall them very long. They'd be even more determined to capture us intact, for the sake of that heat-shield." She paused. "We might bluff them a while, though. We'll be heading into the sun, and if we threatened to lock suicidally on that -- "

            "But Neptune is farther out than we are. We'd be headed away from the sun."

            "Not when Neptune's in conjunction."

            "Conjunction?"

            "The opposite side of the sun from Earth."

            "I thought that was opposition."

            "Brother!" she said in exasperation. Then: "Exactly what, if anything, were you thinking of using those two or more days of freedom for?"

            He refrained from making a cute answer. "The macroscope."

            "I had the distinct impression you were already occupied in some such capacity. One does live and learn."

            "I meant the programmed aspect."

            "Oh." It was her turn to feel stupid. It set her back only momentarily. "It seems to me that our problem is fairly well defined. We can't expect to outmaneuver or outrun the UN pair of ships, nor are we in a position to build any fancy equipment to discommode them. Surely you don't expect to adapt the mind-destroyer impulse as a personal weapon?"

            "No. But I'm convinced there is galactic information on that channel, if only we could get past the barrier. No one has ever looked beyond that opening sequence." Was there anything beyond, he wondered abruptly, or did it merely repeat endlessly?

            "No," she said, her voice subdued. He knew she was thinking of Brad again. "Ivo -- do you really think you should -- touch that?"

            It was the first genuinely personal concern she had shown for him, and he valued it immensely. "It doesn't hurt me. We already know that."

            "It hasn't hurt you -- yet. What possible thing could you learn worth the risk?"

            "I don't know." That was the irony of it. He had no evidence there was anything to find. "But if there is any help for us, that's where it has to be. They -- the galactics, whatever they are -- must be hiding something. Otherwise why have such a program at all? They can't really be trying to destroy us, because this is a self-damping thing. I mean, a little of it warns you off, just as it did for the probs. But the discouragement would really be more effective if there were no signal at all. The signal itself is proof there is something to look for. It is tantalizing. It's as though -- well, interference." He hoped.

            "Interference!" she said, seeing it. "To prevent someone else's program from getting through!"

            "That's the way I figure it. Must be something pretty valuable, to warrant all that trouble."

            "Yes. But it could be something philosophic or long-range. We need an immediate remedy. Something impossible, like an inertial nullifier or instantaneous transport -- and that simply isn't going to happen."

            "I thought I'd give it a try."

            Thus they oriented on Neptune, economy route. It was as good a long-range destination as any. As the vessel turned and began its steady drive toward the sun -- actually a cometlike ellipse that would carry it within the orbit of Mercury and out again into space -- Ivo gave it his try. He did not need to be concerned about the irregular shifts and pauses in acceleration (designed to confuse the pursuit) because the destroyer was everywhere, always in focus.

            No, the alien signal was not difficult to locate. He knew its frequency -- or, more aptly, its quality -- and it was easier to drift into it than to avoid it. But he felt the perspiration on his body as he aligned the great receptor and allowed the pattern to develop. It was death he was toying with: the potential death of his mind, and perhaps with it, his body.

            It came: the same devastating series whose terminus abolished intellect. The pictures built rapidly into symbolic concepts, the concepts into meaning...

            Why did it always hit in sequence? Even if it were a recorded, endlessly repeating program, one would expect to pick it up randomly, beginning in the middle or at the end as often as at the introduction. How could it act on the recipient in the ordered manner it did, no matter when he peeked?

            He broke the contact with a convulsion of the fingers that threw him far into the static of fringe reception and waited a few seconds. Then he approached again.

            The sequence picked up at the beginning, but not as it had been before. This was even faster, spinning through constructions at the maximum rate he could assimilate them. It was as though it were a review of familiar material -- as indeed it was.

            Startled, he broke again, glad that at least his prior experience had given him the strength to cut it off in mid-showing. Could it be adjusted to him, personally? A signal fifteen thousand years in the transition? The notion was ridiculous!

            He reconnected -- and the review was so swift as to be perfunctory. Then, as he reached the point at which he had cut it off the first time, it slowed, and a more sedate series resumed. This was, however, still faster than the version he had seen at the station.

            Once more he broke, alarmed by the implication as much as by the deadly series. This was not, could not be a recording in any normal sense. It was more like a -- a programmed text. A series of lessons embodying their own feedback so that the pupil could constantly check himself and rethink his errors. Inanimate, yet governed by the capability of the student. Such a text was the closest approach of the printed word to an animate teacher, just as a programmed machine-instructor approached sentience without consciousness. It was the student's burgeoning comprehension of the material that animated the machine or text and gave the illusion of awareness.

            Strange that this had not occurred to him before! Yet it was implicit in the groundwork for the program. One had to comprehend the distinction between --

            What a mind-expanding thing this was! Already the concepts of the program were spilling over into his human framework. The concepts were real, they were relevant, to himself and to the universe. Philosophy, psychology -- even astrology were assuming new significance for him, as he fitted their postulates into his increasing comprehension.

            "Afra," he said, closing his eyes to the fascinating sequence.

            She was there. "Yes, Ivo."

            "Is it possible to -- to say something in such a way that it -- that all possible -- "

            "That it applies to many situations?" she suggested, trying to help him.

            "No. To all situations. I mean, so it is true no matter how you use it. True for a person, true for a rock, true for a smell, true for an idea -- "

            "Figuratively, perhaps. 'Good' might apply to all of these, or 'unusual.' But those are subjective values -- "

            "Yes! Involving the student. But objective too, so that everyone agrees. Everyone who understands."

            "I'm not sure I follow you, Ivo. It is impossible to have complete agreement while retaining individuality. The two are contradictory."

            "Not -- personality. In learning framework. In comprehension. So anyone who understands -- this -- can understand anything. By applying the guidelines. A -- a programmed mind, I think."

            "That almost sounds like the Unified Field Theory extended to cover psychology."

            "I don't know. What does -- "

            "Albert Einstein's lifework. He spent his last twenty-five years trying to reduce the physical laws of the universe to a unified formulation. In this way gravity, magnetism and atomic interactions could all be derived as special cases of the basic statement. The practical applications of such a system would be immense."

            "So that the theorems of one could be adapted to any other?"

            "I believe so, if you thought of it that way."

            "Like adapting astronomy to human psychology? And to music and art and love?"

            "I really don't -- " Once more the pause that portended trouble. "Are you taking up Harold's line?"

            "I don't know. Whatever it is, the macroscope has it."

            "The Unified Field? Are you sure?"

            "The whole thing. The set of concepts that apply to our entire experience, whoever or whatever we are."

            She pondered before answering. "That might be the key to the universe, Ivo."

            "No. It's the mind-destroyer concept. I don't quite follow it all yet, but a few more runthroughs -- "

            "Stop!" she cried. "Stay away from that!"

            Was the anguish in her voice for him, or for the fate of the macroscope if he should fail? "I don't mean that I'll ride it to the...end. Just far enough to -- "

            "Just far enough to get hooked. Find some other way. Circle around it. Leapfrog it."

            "I can't. I have to comprehend before I can go on. Otherwise I won't be able to apply those advanced concepts."

            "Advanced con -- Mindlessness!"

            "I see it now. Things our species has never dreamed of. Concepts that supersede our realities. But I have to nullify this -- this destructive aspect first, or I can never move on."

            "Ivo, you can't control a fire by cooking yourself in it. You have to handle it remotely, never actually touching. The -- the others tried to bathe in it -- "

            "I don't think the information has to destroy. It's many-faceted. If I can come at the right angle -- "

            "Ivo," she said persuasively, and her voice gave him adolescent shivers. "Ivo, did you have to comprehend the mathematical theory of the sprouts game before you could win the tournament?"

            "No. That's -- I just see the right course a step at a time, like a road through a forest, and I win. I don't know anything about the math, really."

            "Then why do you feel you have to comprehend the destroyer? Isn't it enough to know what to avoid and to pass it by, a step at a time? Think of it as a bad move, Ivo. A tantalizing but losing strategy. Skip it and go on to the next."

            He thought about it. "I suppose I could do that."

            "Just hold off the comprehension. Blind yourself to the fire. Shield your mind so that you can get beyond it."

            "Yes, I think I can. But everything I pick up on that basis -- it will be like wiring a radio together from a diagram, without knowing anything about its principle of operation. Connect Lead A to Terminal B. It isn't true knowledge."

            "Not many of us have true knowledge, Ivo. One of the things about civilization is that it is far too complex for every person to master every trade. We must skim the surface of things, we must turn dials, we must memorize procedures without thinking -- we exist upon derivatives, yet it is enough. We have to accept the fact that none of us will ever or can ever grasp more than a tiny fraction of the knowledge and nature of our culture. It isn't necessary to comprehend -- just to accept."

            Again he marveled. Was this the sharp-tongued woman who had so recently bickered sarcastically with Groton? Which facet reflected the essence of her?

            But all he said was: "Schön could comprehend."

            "You resent him, I know -- just as I sometimes resented Brad. But such feelings are pointless. Each of us has to accept his place in the scheme of life, or the entire structure will collapse. Each of us has to be like Sandburg's nail."

            "Whose nail?"

            "The great nail that holds the skyscraper together. It seems a lowly task, but it is just as important as that of the pinnacle."

            "So I'm as important as Schön?"

            "Of course, Ivo."

            "Even though Schön might bring Brad back, while I certainly can't?"

            There was no sound from her, and he was immediately sorry he had said it.

            After what seemed like a very long time she spoke. "I'm sorry. I was mouthing platitudes. I'm not as objective as my preachments."

            He had liked the platitude better than the fact. "I'll -- I think I can get some of the information. Whatever it is. Without understanding it. I'll try, anyway."

            "Thank you, Ivo."

            But she made him take a break then, while she saw about changing Brad's soiled clothing again and feeding him: with a spoon, as with a baby. "I can do that," Beatryx offered, but Afra would not give up the task.

            Then the four of them ate: cold concentrates from the supplies. It was a somber occasion, since no one expected any real breakthrough via the macroscope and Brad's presence morbidly illustrated the danger in trying. The flight from the torus had been a spectacular gesture, but unrealistic. How could they physically escape from physical pursuit, however much theory they might attain? Their equipment could do it, but not their frail bodies.

            Ivo, rested, took up the goggles and controls once more. He knew he had some exceedingly intricate maneuvering to do, because the mind-destroyer was a monstrous sun drawing him into its inferno. He had to approach it, and skirt it, and travel beyond -- without getting burned.

            In much the same fashion, the group of them had to approach and skirt the sun, on the way to Neptune, while avoiding the opposite menace of the UN pursuit. Another common denominator.

            The symbolic patterns formed, leaping through the deadly sequence. Now if only he could follow their import without committing himself to the full denouement --

            If he could only, somehow, find a way to survive a sustained ten gravities acceleration, so that they could outrun the robot --

            To obtain the answer without absorbing the meaning. To use the voltage without being electrocuted. To remain selectively ignorant. To draw the honey without getting stung.

            Again and again he broke the contact, feeling too great a comprehension. The progression was so logical! Every step widened his horizons, prepared him for the one ahead, and induced a savage taste for completion. It was a siren call, luring him in though he knew it was disaster...Yet he was gaining on it, developing, if not an immunity, a resistive callus in his brain. Each approach brought him farther without plumbing the uncontrolled depths. The trick was to keep control of his own reception, to keep it braked, not let the alien program take over entirely. He was becoming automatically blind to key portions, building a barrier --

            And it had him. The immense gravity of that conceptual body caught him before he could break again and drew him into itself irresistibly. He knew too much! He had skirted too close, become too familiar, so that his slower intelligence had overcome the cognitive inhibition. He could not draw back from the pyre of that denouement.

            Down, unable anymore to resist...

            And the universe exploded.

            ***

            That act of friendship had been enough: he survived, when he would have died. It was as though he had passed through purgatory and been exonerated after almost succumbing; his vision of Hell was behind him.

            Though not at all well, he left the ship and set off for home on foot. It was a long walk from the Virginia coast to Macon, Georgia. He arrived March 15, 1865, to spend three months convalescing from St. Anthony's Fire.

            And in that time of personal recovery from the physical misery of headaches, vomiting, chills and fever, his emotions suffered blows as well. Macon fell to the Union army under General Wilson on April 20, and too soon thereafter President Jefferson Davis himself was taken in the same vicinity. Hope dwindled and expired; the war was lost.

            Gussie Lamar, the girl he loved, married a wealthy older man. True, Ginna Hankins remained, but somehow his passion for her had abated. The seemingly carefree days of youth were gone; the war had done for youth.

            He wrote poetry through the pain in his joints, and knew even as he applied it tediously to paper that it was not good to express his distress in such fashion. Poetry, like music, reflected beauty, and with his hot reddened skin and swollen and blistered flesh he could feel little affinity for beauty. Unable to work constructively, he boarded for a time at Wesleyan College.

            He recovered -- but not completely. The consumption had taken hold upon his lung and ravaged it, never to let go entirely. It tightened its cruel grip when he attempted to tutor again, forcing him to give that up also, though he was desperately in need of the money. At last he joined his brother as bookkeeper at the Exchange Hotel, and gained a satisfactory if mundane livelihood.

            Reconstruction was upon the land. Unjust laws and corrupt government fomented civic stagnation. Law had largely broken down. The phenomenal expectations of a nation had degenerated into apathy and despair.

            Yet gradually his personal fortune improved. The New York literary weekly, Round Table, printed some of his poetry and encouraged him, giving him literary success of a sort. And in the spring of 1867 the Rev. R. J. Scott, editor of Scott's Monthly, checked into the hotel. This was an opportunity not to be allowed to pass unchallenged.

            Scott liked the manuscript.

            Yet it was his brother Clifford who actually succeeded as a novelist. The publisher that rejected his own novel brought out Clifford's Thorn Fruit in 1867. That was a wonderful thing, and he was glad for his brother -- but how he longed for some similar success!

            He refused, as ever, to give up. Despite his health, he journeyed to New York, where a wealthy cousin provided help. He searched the city for a publisher.

            His novel reflected his burning desire to say it all, to convey the whole of his mind and ideal to the reader. It was a kind of spiritual autobiography...and no one was interested.

            Finally he subsidized its publication himself, though he could ill afford the expense. It was the only way.

            He met another long-time friend, Mary Day, and that which had not bloomed before did so now.

            On December 19, 1867, they were married.

 

 

CHAPTER 5

 

            Gentle hands steadied his head and wiped his face with a wonderfully cool sponge. A woman's touch, and it was good; he could imagine nothing so sure, so comforting.

            For a moment he savored the attention, dreaming of recovery from devastation, of marriage. Then he opened his eyes.

            It was Beatryx. "He's awake," she murmured.

            The others seemed to materialize as she spoke. He saw Harold Groton's anxious, homely face, and Afra's careful glance of assessment.

            "No, I'm not brain-burned," he said.

            "Thank God!" Afra said.

            "What happened?" Groton asked at the same time.

            "Now don't go jumping on him like that," Beatryx chided them. "He needs a chance to rest. His forehead is hot." And she brushed his face expertly with the sponge again.

            Her analysis might be simplistic, he thought, but his forehead was hot, and he was tired with a fatigue that extended deep into the psyche. Gratefully, he fell asleep.

            Hours later he was ready to talk to them. "How close is the UN ship?"

            "The optic spots the manned one about a day behind us," Groton said. "We don't have more than twenty-five hours before it comes within effective laser range."

            Ivo remembered. The laser itself could reach them anywhere in near-space, but could not be properly aimed unless coordinated by an instrument as precise as the macroscope. So it became essentially a short-range weapon against a maneuvering target, good only for a few thousand miles. "Good. I mean, I think that gives us enough time."

            "You -- you have the solution?" The dawning of hope on Afra's face was a blessed thing to watch.

            "Solution?" he repeated, finding it unreasonably funny. "Yes. Something very like it. But first I'll have to explain what happened."

            "Ivo, I don't want to rush you," Groton said, "but if we don't get away from that UN ship soon -- "

            "I'm sorry, but I do have to explain first. There is some danger, and if I -- well, one of you would have to take over the scope."

            "Suddenly I get your message," Groton said. "What did happen? Afra came screaming to us about the mind-destroyer, and we were afraid -- anyway, I'm certainly glad it wasn't so. But you certainly were out of it for a while."

            "No -- I was in it. I was fighting to protect myself against the destroyer by -- well, no need to go into that just now. I almost had it, but I -- slipped, mentally, and got drawn in too close. I thought that was the end, and I couldn't even resist, but I was lucky. I still had orbital velocity, and it spun me through the corona and out the other side."

            "I don't see -- "

            "I do, Harold," Afra said. "Think of it as an analogy. A planetoid plunging into the sun. The important thing is that he skirted the destroyer and only got stunned for a while."

            "Yes, physically. Not mentally, if that makes sense. And beyond it -- I guess you'd call it the galactic society."

            "You saw who sent the killer signal?" Groton.

            "No. That's a separate channel, if that's the word. It's all done in concept, but one is superimposed upon another, and you have to learn to separate them. Once you isolate the destroyer, the rest is all there for the taking."

            "Other concepts?" Afra.

            "Other programs. They're like radio stations, only all on the same band, and all using similar symbolic languages. You have to fasten on a particular trademark, otherwise only the strongest comes through, and that's the destroyer."

            "I follow." Groton. "It's like five people all talking at once, and it's all a jumble except for the loudest voice, unless you pay attention to just one. Then the others seem to tune out, though you can still hear them."

            "That's it. Only there are more than five, and you really have to concentrate. But you can pick up any one you want, once you get the feel for it."

            "How many are there?" Afra.

            "I don't know. I think it's several thousand. It's hard to judge."

            They looked at him.

            "One for each civilized species, you see."

            "Several thousand stations?" Afra, still hardly crediting it. "Whatever do they broadcast?"

            "Information. Science, philosophy, economics, art -- anything they can put into the universal symbology. Everything anybody knows -- it's all there for the taking. An educational library."

            "But why?" Afra. "What do they get out of it, when nobody can pick it up?"

            "I'm not clear yet on the dating system, but my impression is that most of these predate the destroyer. At least, they don't mention it, and they're from very far away. The other side of the galaxy. So if it took fifteen thousand years for the destroyer to reach us, these others are taking twenty thousand, or fifty thousand. Maybe the local ones shut down when the destroyer started up, but we won't know for thousands of years."

            "That bothers me too." Afra. "Thousands of years before any other species receives their broadcasts, even if the destroyer is not considered. Far too long for any meaningful exchange between cultures."

            "Even millions of years." Ivo. He was still organizing the enormous amount of information he had acquired. "They're all carefully identified. As I said, I don't follow the time/place coordinates exactly, though I think I'll nail that down next time; but the framework is such that some have to be that far. One, anyway; I discovered it because it was different from the others. Smoother -- I don't know how to put it, but there was something impressive about it. Like caviar in the middle of fish eggs -- "

            "Millions of years!" Afra, still balking at the notion. "That would have to be an extragalactic source, and the macroscope doesn't reach -- "

            Ivo shrugged. "Maybe the rules are different, for broadcasts. As I make it, that's one of the most important stations, for our purposes anyway, and it is about three million light-years away. That's the main one I listened to. It -- but I guess I said that."

            "I removed the helmet and goggles the moment you passed out," Afra said as though debating with him. "How much did you have time for?"

            "Time isn't a factor. Not in reception, anyway. Not for survey. It's -- relative. Like light, only -- "

            "Ah," Groton said, not appalled at the concepts as Afra seemed to be. "The analogy I used earlier. Light approaches the observer at the same velocity by his observation, no matter how fast or in what direction he is moving relative to the light source. Michelson-Morely -- "

            "Something like that. I absorbed a lot in one jolt, then had to sort it out afterwards. I'll have to go in again to get the details, but at least I know what I'm looking for."

            "What are you looking for?" Afra asked. "Is there something that will help us right now?"

            "Yes. Apparently it's a common problem. Surviving strong acceleration, I mean. This extragalactic station has it all spelled out, but it's pretty complicated."

            "I still don't see why," Afra said petulantly. She was less impressive when frustrated, becoming almost childlike. "It doesn't make sense to send out a program when you know you'll be dead long before it can be answered. Three million years! The entire culture, even the memory of the species must be gone by now!"

            "That's why," Ivo said. "The memory isn't gone, because everyone who picks up the program will know immediately how great that species was. It's like publishing a book -- even paying for it yourself, vanity publishing. If it's a good book, if the author really has something to say, people will read it and like it and remember him for years after he is dead."

            "Or making a popular record," Groton agreed. "When it is recorded is much less important than how much it moves the listener."

            "But there'll never be any feedback!" Afra protested.

            "It isn't for feedback. Not that kind. These civilizations are publishing for posterity. They don't need to worry about greatness in their own time or stellar system; they know what they have. But greatness for the ages, measured against the competition of the universe -- that's something that only the broadcasting can achieve for them. It's their way of proving that they have not evolved in vain. They have left the universe richer than they found it."

            "I suppose that's possible," she said dubiously.

            "Maybe you have to be an artist at heart to feel it," Ivo said. "I'd like nothing better than to leave a monument like that after me. Knowledge -- what better way can you imagine than that?"

            "I'm no artist," Groton said, "but I feel it. Sometimes I am sick at heart, to think that when I pass from this existence no one besides my immediate acquaintances will miss me. That I will die without having made my mark."

            Ivo nodded agreement.

            "Whatever for?" Beatryx asked, sounding a little like Afra. "There is nothing wrong with your life, and you don't need friends after you're gone."

            "Must be a sexual difference, too," Groton remarked, not put out. "Every so often my wife pops up with something I never suspected she'd say. I wonder, in this case, whether it is because men are generally the active ones, while women are passive? A woman doesn't feel the need to do anything."

            Both women glared at him.

            "Whatever it is, it extends to culture too," Ivo said. The joint distaff gaze turned on him. "The space-cultures," he explained quickly. "At least, the ones that advertise. It's as impressive a display as I have ever dreamed of."

            "But can it get us away from that UN laser?" Afra's mind never seemed to stray far from practicalities.

            "Yes. Several stations carry high-acceleration adaptors. But the intergalactic program has the only one we can use now. We don't have facilities for the others."

            "One is enough," Afra said.

            "But it's rough. It's biological."

            "Suspended animation? I suppose if we were frozen or immersed in protective fluid -- "

            "We don't have a proper freezer, or refrigerated storage tanks," Groton said. "We can't just hand bodies out the airlock for presto stasis. And who would bring us all out of it, when the time came? Though I suppose I could adapt a timer, or set the computer to tap the first shoulder."

            "No freezing, no tanks," Ivo said. "No fancy equipment. All it takes is a little time and a clean basin."

            Afra looked at him suspiciously, but did not comment.

            "What are you going to do -- melt us down?" Groton.

            "Yes."

            "That was intended to be humorous, son."

            "It's still the truth. We'll all have to melt down into protoplasm. In that state we can survive about as much acceleration as Joseph can deliver, for as long as we need. You see, the trouble with our present bodies is that we have a skeletal structure, and functioning organs, and all kinds of processes that can be fouled up by a simple gravitic overload. In a stable situation there is no substitute for our present form, of course: I'm not denigrating it. But as protoplasm we are almost invulnerable, because there isn't any substantial structure beyond the molecular, or at least beyond the cellular. Liquid can take almost anything."

            "Except pouring or splashing or boiling or polluting," Afra said distastefully.

            "Methinks the cure is worse than the UN," Groton mumbled. "I don't frankly fancy myself as a bowl of cream or soft pudding."

            "I said it was rough. But the technique is guaranteed."

            "By a culture three million years defunct?" Afra asked.

            "I'm not sure it's dead, or that far away. It might be one million -- or six."

            "That makes me feel ever so much better!"

            "Well, I guess it's take it or leave it," Ivo said. "I'll have to show it to you in the macroscope, then you can decide. That's the only way you can be keyed in to the technique. I can't explain it."

            "Now we have to brave the destroyer too," Afra said. "All in a day's work, I suppose."

            "Hold on here," Groton said. "Are you serious? About us dissolving into jelly? I just can't quite buy that, fogyish as I may be."

            "I'm serious. Its advantage over the other processes is that it eliminates complicated equipment. Any creature can do it, once shown how, and guided by the program. All you need is a secure container for the fluid, so it doesn't leak away or get contaminated, as Afra pointed out. Otherwise, it's completely biologic."

            "Very neat, I admit," Afra said tightly. "How about a demonstration?"

            "I'll be happy to run through it for you. But I think you should learn the tuning-in technique first, just in case. I mean, how to find the station and avoid the destroyer."

            "If it doesn't work, we hardly need the information!" Afra pointed out.

            "Exactly how are we going to get around the destroyer impulse," Groton asked. "Individually or en masse?"

            "I -- know the route, now. I can lead you to the station one at a time, and bypass the destroyer, if you let me -- do the driving. I can't explain how, but I know I can do it."

            Groton and Afra both shook their heads, not trusting it. They might differ on astrology, but they had lived with the knowledge of the destroyer longer than he had, and shared a deep distrust of it.

            "I will go with you," Beatryx said suddenly. "I know you can do it, Ivo."

            "No!" Groton exclaimed immediately.

            Beatryx looked at him, unfazed. "But I'm not in danger from it, am I? If I get caught it won't touch me; and if I don't, it will prove Ivo knows the way."

            Groton and Afra exchanged helpless glances. She was right, and showed a common sense that shamed them both -- but a surprising courage underlay it.

            Brad had said something about a normal IQ being no dishonor. Brad had known.

           Groton looked tense and uncomfortable as Beatryx donned a duplicate helmet and set of goggles, but he didn't interfere. It was evident to Ivo that mild as Beatryx was, when she put her foot down, it was down to stay.

            He took her in, sliding delicately around the destroyer with less of the prior horror and finishing at the surface of the galactic stream of communications.

            "Oh, Ivo," she exclaimed, her voice passing back into the physical world and making a V-turn to reach him down his azimuth. "I see it, I see it! Like a giant rainbow stretching across all the stars. What a wonderful thing!"

            And he guided her down, seeking the particular perfume, the essential music, on through the splendor of meaning/color, to the series of concepts that spoke of the very substance of life.

            The patterns of import opened up, similar at first to those of the destroyer, but subtly divergent and far more sophisticated. Instead of reaching into a hammer-force totality, these delved into a specific refinement of knowledge -- a subsection of the tremendous display of information available through this single broadcast. Ivo knew the way, and he took her in as though walking hand in hand down the hall of a mighty university, selecting that lone aspect of education that offered immediate physical salvation.

            "But the other doors!" she cried, near/distant. "So many marvelous -- "

            He too regretted that they could not spend an eternity within this macronic citadel of information. This might be merely one of a hundred thousand broadcasts available -- the number began to suggest itself as he grasped more nearly the scope of the broadcast range -- yet it might have in itself another hundred thousand subchambers of learning. University? It was an intergalactic educational complex of almost incomprehensible vastness. Yet they, in their grossly material imperatives, had to restrict themselves to the tiniest fragment, ignoring all the rest. They were hardly worthy.

            The microcosm of biophysical chemistry: and it was as though they stood within a vat of protoplasm, able to experience its qualities while remaining apart from its reality. Vaguely spherical, it pulsed with its multiple internal processes, held together by a sandwichlike plasma membrane. It seemed at first to be a simple bag of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and metal ions, the whole with a neutral pH. But it was more than that, and more than physical.

            "What is it?" she asked, bewildered.

            "Model of a single cell," he said. "We have to become acquainted with this basic unit of life, because -- "

            But she retreated in confusion, unable to follow the technical explanation. He was hardly able to provide it, anyway, ignorant as he knew himself to be in the face of the immense store assembled. "See, there's the nucleus," he said instead.

            That seemed to satisfy her. She contemplated the semi-solid mass of it, this major organelle floating and pulsing in the center of the cell. It was as though it were the brain of the organism, containing as it did the vital chromosomes embedded in a cushiony protective matrix. From the nuclear wall depended the endoplasmic reticulum -- a vast complex of membranes extending throughout the cell. This could be likened to the skeleton and nervous system of an animal, providing some support and compartmentation of the whole and transmitting nervous impulses from the nucleus. Tiny ribosomes studding its walls labored to synthesize the proteins essential to the organism's well-being.

            "It's -- alive," she said, coming at it in simpler terms.

            It was alive. It had an apparatus called the Golgi complex that produced specialized secretions needed by the cell and synthesized large carbohydrates. It breathed by means of the mitochondrion organelle. It fought disease by using circulating lysosomes -- balls of digestive enzymes that attacked and broke down invaders. Every function necessary for survival was manifested within this living entity.

            "This is what we have to preserve," Ivo explained. "The body as we think of it can disappear, but the functioning cells -- of which this is typical -- must remain. They must not die; their chromosomes must not be damaged."

            "Yes," she agreed, understanding the essence if not the detail. "I will remember."

            Carefully, then, they withdrew from the model. Back they went, up out of the broadcast, the university, holding these concepts like a double handful of champagne, inhaling them, recalling them, back to mundane existence.

            They removed the receptors and looked about. Afra and Groton were standing there anxiously.

            "There's so much to know!" Beatryx informed them happily.

            ***

            The rest was comparatively routine. He took Groton, then Afra, and finally even Brad. Mind was not actually necessary for this familiarization, and could even be a liability because of the lurking menace of the destroyer. Brad, at least, had no more to fear from that.

            "It is a kind of mutual contract," Ivo explained at some point. "It isn't just a matter of you seeing it; it has to see you. Not the cell-model; that's only a visual aid. The program. So it is able to key in on your cells, your body and your mind for the -- transformation, once you understand and agree. You have to agree; you have to want it, or at least be acquiescent. So it can set up an individual program. This is like a delicate surgical operation, and it is the surgeon." It occurred to him that he was using a lot of simile in his discussion of the macroscosm -- but there were no direct terms for it. As the universe was greater than the solar system, so the universal knowledge was greater than man's terminology.

            "Three million years old," Afra said. "I can imagine a human doctor, or an alien one, or even a robot. But a beam of pseudo-light...!"

            "Do any of you think you can maneuver around the destroyer now? This familiarization has to be done within a few hours of the process, each time."

            "No," Afra returned bluntly. "I am afraid of that thing. It -- had me when it -- got Brad. I can't fight it because it appeals to my intelligence. With you, just now, I closed my eyes, figuratively, until we reached the -- cell. I refused to comprehend, and I don't know the route."

            Which was, evidently, the way it had to be, for her. She could comprehend the destroyer, so was vulnerable to it.

            "I felt the danger," Groton said, "but I didn't grasp it fully. It was like standing at the brink of a waterfall a thousand feet high, feeling the spume and hearing the thunder and smelling the smashing water, but not touching the falls itself. I suppose I am safely below the limit. I believe I could find the way around it, now that you have shown me -- if I had to. I would much rather not have to, though."

            So Groton too had to resort to simile.

            "It was beautiful," Beatryx said. "Like poetry and music -- but I could never go there by myself. All those rainbow threads -- "

            And Beatryx.

            "One is enough." Afra asserted herself again. "Next problem: do we trust the procedure? How can we be sure it won't dissolve us and leave us puddled forever? I appreciate the experience and the review of cellular structure, but I'd like to see a complete cycle before I entrust my tender flesh to it."

            "It could be a more subtle version of the destroyer," Groton said. "Second-line defense."

            "I don't believe it. This predates the destroyer. All those programs do, but this is so far ahead that -- well, three million years. And everything I've seen has been positive, not negative." Ivo had a sudden thought. "I wonder whether the destroyer-species is trying to make its mark by undoing the work of all the others? It can't compete positively, so it -- "

            "Dog in the manger?" Afra said. "Maybe. Maybe not. Evil I could easily believe, but that would simply be nasty."

            Groton was using the optical system again. "I have a metallic reflection. That UN ship is right on course. We'd better act soon or resign ourselves to capture. How long does a melting cycle take?"

            "Not long for the breakdown, as I understand it," Ivo said. "But the reconstitution -- several hours, at least, and it can't start for at least a day, for some reason. So it could be a couple of days for the complete cycle."

            "There goes our margin," Afra said. "If we test it and it works, it will be too late for anyone else to use it. If we don't test, we may be committing a particularly grisly form of suicide."

            "We could start someone on the cycle," Groton said. "If it means death, that should be apparent very soon. The smell -- "

            "All right!" Afra.

            "But if everything appears to be in order -- "

            "All right. A test-cycle, halfway. Who?"

            "I said I was willing to -- " Ivo began.

            "Better you go last," she said. "It's your show. If it bombs out, you should take the consequences."

            "Afra, that isn't very kind," Beatryx objected. The negative comment was obviously an effort for her.

            "We're not in a kind situation, dearie."

            Groton left the telescope assembly and faced Afra. "I'm glad you see it that way. We do have the obvious choice for the testing cycle."

            She understood him immediately. "No! Not Brad!"

            "If the process works, he must undertake it sooner or later unless we leave him behind. If it doesn't, what kind of a life does he have to lose? It is not, as you pointed out, a kind situation."

            Afra looked at Brad. He was sitting up with his hair boyishly tousled, a day's shadow on his face, and saliva dribbling down his chin. His trousers were dark where he had wet them again. He was watching something, half-smiling, but his eyes did not move about.

            "Let me handle it," Afra said soberly. "No one else. I'll -- tell you how it comes out."

            Ivo explained in detail what would be necessary. Groton retired to the underbody of Joseph for some work with the power saw, and brought forth the required basin. They set everything up and left her with Brad. The three of them retreated again into Joseph. No one spoke.

            There was a short silence. Then Afra screamed -- but as Groton went to look, she cried out to be left alone, and he yielded. Faintly they could hear her sobbing, but nothing else.

            No one dared conjecture. Ivo pictured Brad slumping down into an amorphous puddle, first the feet, then the legs, then the torso and finally the handsome head. Had she screamed when the face submerged? Tense and silent, they waited.

            Half an hour later she summoned them. She was pale and her eyes were open too wide, but her voice was desperately calm. "It works," she said.

            Brad's clothing was folded neatly on his former chair. Near it was a covered coffinlike container. There was no other sign of what had passed.

            ***

            But Afra was very uneasy. "Let's assume it works -- the complete cycle. That we come through it and emerge exactly as we are now, to all appearances. I still can't accept it intellectually -- no, I mean emotionally. How do we know we have survived it? That the same person comes out of it that goes in?"

            "I'll know if I'm the same," Ivo said defensively.

            "But will you, Ivo? You may look the same, sound the same -- but how do we know you are the same? Not another person of identical configuration?"

            Ivo shrugged. "I'd know it. I'd know if anything were different."

            She concentrated on him with that disarming intensity. She was loveliest when expressing emotion. "Would you? Or would you only think you hadn't changed? How could you be sure you weren't an impostor, using Ivo's body and mind and experience?"

            "What else is there? If I have Ivo's physique and personality, I'm Ivo, aren't I?"

            "No! You could be an identical twin -- a congruent copy -- a different individual. A different self."

            "What's different about it?"

            "What's different about any two people, or any two apples or pencils or planets? If they coexist, they're discrete individuals."

            "But I'm not coexisting with anybody else. Any other me, I mean. How can I be different?"

            "Your soul could be different!"

            "Oh-oh," Groton said.

            "How else can you term it?" Afra flared at him. "I'm not trying to bring religion into it -- though that might not be a bad idea -- I'm just asking how we can verify the price we pay for this wonder from a foreign galaxy. How can we measure self, when physique and mind are suspect? I don't want to be replaced by a twin that looks and thinks like me; I don't care how good the facsimile is, if it isn't me."

            Ivo wondered more urgently just what she had seen happen to Brad. She had been profoundly shaken, and now was clutching at theoretical, philosophical objections.

            "It happens I've thought along similar lines," Groton said. "I used to question whether the person who woke up in the morning was the same as the one who had gone to bed at night. Whether the identity changed a little with each change in composition -- each new bite of food, each act of elimination. I finally concluded that people do change, all the time -- and that it doesn't matter."

            "Doesn't matter!"

            "The important thing is that we perform our functions while we exist," he said. "That we live each day as it comes, and don't regret it. If a new person lives the next day, he is responsible. He is guided by his configurations, and his successors after him, and it is not right or wrong so much as predestined."

            "Astrology again?" she inquired disdainfully.

            "One day you may come to have a better opinion of it, Afra," he said mildly.

            She sniffed, astonishing Ivo -- he had not thought the mannerism could be executed naturally.

            He also wondered whether the fervor of her reactions against Groton's ideas indicated a lurking suspicion that there might be something to them after all.

            "At any rate," Groton continued, "it seems we must either undertake this process, or submit to the approaching UN party. Perhaps the question is whether we prefer to escape in alternate guise, or to surrender in our own."

            "You," Afra said, "are a fourteen-carat casuist."

            "What are we going to do?" Ivo asked.

            "All right. Since I object the most, I'll go first. But I want some subjective reassurance. I've seen it; you haven't. Once you witness it, you'll know what I'm talking about. I don't care what's foreordained; I want to believe I'm me."

            Groton kept a straight face. "No one else can do it for you."

            "Yes they can. I want someone else to believe I'm me, too."

            "Does it matter what we think?"

            "It does."

            "Feedback," Ivo said.

            Unexpectedly, she flashed him a smile. Then she unbuttoned her blouse.

            The three watched, hesitating to comment. Afra stripped methodically, completely, and without affectation. She stood before them, a splendid figure of a woman in her prime. "I want -- to be handled."

            "Confirmation by tactile perception -- very important," Groton said, not mocking her; but he did not move.

            "I don't understand," Beatryx said, seemingly more put out by this display than the men were.

            "I want you -- all of you -- to handle me," Afra explained as though she were giving instructions in storing groceries. Her voice was normal but a flush was developing upon cheek and neck and spreading attractively downward. "So that afterwards you will know me as well as you can, not just by sight or sound." She smiled fleetingly. "Or temper. So that you can tell whether it is the same girl, outside. When you watch me melt down, you'll never believe I'm whole again, unless you prove it with all your senses. And if you don't believe, how can I?"

            "I couldn't tell one girl from another, by touch," Ivo objected, feeling his own face heating.

            "Do it," Groton muttered.

            "Me?"

            Groton nodded.

            Ivo stood up, far more embarrassed than Afra appeared to be. He walked jerkily toward her. He raised one hand and stopped, overcome by uncertainty. Almost, he wished the drive would fail; anything to break this up.

            "Pretend you're a doctor," Beatryx suggested sympathetically -- but there was an overtone that hinted at hysteria. This must go, he thought, entirely against her grain.

            And what of his own grain? Brad had called him prudish. Brad, again, had known.

            "No!" Afra said in reply to Beatryx. "No impersonal examination. That's pointless. Do whatever you have to do to know who I am."

            "I already have some idea." Ivo was aware that he was now blushing visibly -- a phenomenon that very seldom appeared in him, since his complexion was dark. Before he met Afra, he corrected himself. The suffusion of his features fed upon itself, summoning more blood; this, too, was feedback. He was embarrassed because he was embarrassed. Could Afra have any inkling how he felt about her?

            "This is as hard for me as for you," she said. "I don't like acting like a whore. I just don't see any other practical way. Here." She caught his hand and jammed it against her midriff.

            Ivo remained frozen, shocked as much by her words as her action. It had been, by his dubious reckoning, less than forty-eight hours since their first meeting, and hardly more than that since this entire adventure had dropped on him. His hand, half-closed, rested against her warm, smooth, gently-heaving abdomen.

            "She is trying to preserve her identity," Groton said helpfully. "But it isn't an entirely physical thing. She requires an experience -- emotional, sexual, spiritual -- the words are hardly important."

            "Sexual?" The inane query was out before he could halt it.

            "Not stimulation in the erotic sense," Groton replied carefully. "It is possible to copulate without any genuine involvement, after all. Rather, a shared sensation. Your actions and reactions are an important part of it, for they deepen its relevance. When you interact with intimacy, you accomplish something meaningful. She does not exist alone; she needs an audience. Otherwise, like the unread book or the unheard symphony, she is unrealized. Move her, be moved by her; make an experience whose significance will not easily fade. React!"

            Afra nodded quickly, and the motion sent a tremor through her flesh and his. "Yes, yes -- I think you understand it better than I do," she said, speaking to Groton.

            "Merely your way of publishing for posterity," he said. "I knew male and female weren't that different."

            Surprised, she nodded again, and Ivo felt her diaphragm tighten. Still he stood there, unable to initiate this high-minded inspection, averting his eyes uncomfortably. His hand, so dark in contrast to her pale flesh, felt dead, encysted in plastic, immovable and incredibly clumsy.

            "Ivo," she said, "It's my life, my self. I am afraid -- I admit it, I announce it, I brag of it. I need this reassurance, and I think you will need it too, once we get into this, this cycle. So humor me, but do it. You don't have to like it."

            "I'm afraid I would like it," he blurted.

            There was something more fundamental than vanity involved. Ivo grasped that now, but it did not help him. He did not imagine security in handling, and he doubted Groton did, for all his explanations. Women, more than men, were made for such caresses. Publishing a book made sense; this --

            "Where are you afraid to touch me?" Afra demanded, nervous and impatient. "The UN won't hold off forever." She grabbed at his hand again and lifted it in both of hers forcing his fingers to uncurl. "Here?" She plastered his right palm against her left breast.

            He had been wrong about the insensitivity of that extremity. Hot/cold shocks ran up his arm and exploded in his consciousness, making him dizzy. React? How could he help it!

            "Here?" she demanded again, and rubbed his fingers against the firm lower crease of her left buttock...Ivo snatched his hand away. His entire body was shaking. He felt ridiculous, yet excited.

            "Praise God for naïveté," Afra remarked, not unkindly. "I'm not making passes at you, Ivo. I just have to prove to you that I mean it. There can't be any prudery for this. Now go ahead, please. There isn't much time."

            She had accomplished her purpose. After the intimacy of the contacts she had forced upon him, hesitancy was ridiculous. He started at her head, running his fingers over her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, her closed eyelids, stroking her delicate lips, cupping her chin. There were two faint freckles on her neck near the right ear. He combed through her loose hair with splayed fingers, getting the texture of it, finding it more substantial than he had anticipated, more resilient. He circled her sleek white neck and pinched her earlobes gently between thumb and forefinger.

            "Bite it, taste it," she said quietly.

            He brushed his lips to her ear. He knew her and loved her -- guiltily.

            He closed his eyes and ran his hands down one arm and then the other, feeling the smooth outlines of bone and flesh and sinew and skin, while she stood submissively. It was like a dream -- more than a dream, for she was fair in every part and in every physical respect. The tonus of her moderate musculature was good; the curves and planes were without tactile blemish. Her fingers were slender and finely molded; the hollows around her collarbones perfectly sculptured. Only in her armpits was there roughness: the stubble of hair shaved clean a few days before, growing back already. This reminder that she was not an animated statue shook him again; he was handling her.

            Her breasts were heavy but not as large as they had seemed by eye, nor did the nipples project so much -- until he touched them. Internal texture of the breast was not consistent; pressure showed up the clumped masses of the mammary glands beneath. Men, he thought, had been so fascinated with this distinguishing mark of the female that they had identified the species through it: mammalian. Yet the feature typical of it -- not the species, he remembered now, the class -- the most typical feature was hair. The mammals were hairy-bodied. Even whales had some pubic hair...

            Eyes still closed, he brought his errant mind back to business. To the sides the breasts faded into lightly covered ribs, that in turn dropped off into a much wider space above the hips than he had suspected. Her back was almost flat, mounded by the shoulder blades on either side, ridged by the backbone down the center. The ribs angled up in front to disappear somewhere near the solar plexus.

            Her buttocks as his hands experienced them were astonishingly generous, the soft flesh overlapping onto hip and thigh. In front, the stomach and abdomen were rounded, projecting more than he expected, and the hips were so wide he had to open his eyes to verify his location.

           Afra's eyes were closed; she was not watching him or reacting to his increasingly personal explorations in any overt way. He did not know whether that pleased him or disturbed him.

            Her hips and buttocks were normal, considering the sex and general health of the subject. He had been judging by his own anatomy, and his slowly traveling hands had magnified her dimensions unrealistically. He closed his eyes again, kneeled and continued.

            He touched her pubic hair and passed over it lightly, finding no more reason to probe within it than he had to feel the insides of her ears, nose or mouth. Her legs were braced somewhat apart; he ran his hands down the insides of her thighs, up again and around to the projections of the glutei maximi behind. Then down over the large muscles of the legs, under greater tension than those of the arms or rear, and to the knees, far more esthetic than his own.

            The calves were tighter yet, and as he squeezed them he could feel their shifting as trace corrections of balance were made. The ankles were narrow, the tendons flexing through them and over the tops of the feet. Her arches were good, the toes small but strong. As he traversed this final portion of her, one great toe flexed upward, a parting salute -- and abruptly his diminishing embarrassment resurged.

            He had indeed been handling a live woman.

            "Do you know me now?" she inquired, eyes open.

            Do I know a goddess? "Yes," he said, uncertain whether it was truth or untruth.

            Dazed, Ivo returned to his place and watched Groton go over her in much the same fashion. He felt like a voyeur and suppressed it; he felt a crude jealousy and suppressed that. Afra belonged to neither man, and this experience meant nothing, except in whatever intangible way she chose to take it.

            Then Beatryx reviewed her, and this embarrassed him once more. For a man to handle a woman -- that was provocative but in the natural course. For a woman to handle a woman --

            He was still reacting foolishly. He would have to learn to divorce his instincts from current necessities, as the others had. Perhaps the time would come when he could clap his hand upon Afra's cleft without...

            He was glad no one was watching him, for he was sure he was reddening brilliantly.

            Afra's inspection was over. She, still naked, glanced inquiringly at Beatryx. Was the other woman going to undertake a similar ordeal?

            Beatryx looked calmly at her husband.

            Groton smiled. "With all due respect for these proceedings," he said, "I believe I will know my wife in whatever guise she may manifest herself. Trust her to me."

            Beatryx returned the smile. "I should hope so, dear."

            Ivo was glad Beatryx had not undertaken similar handling. He imagined himself passing his hands over her body as he had for Afra, and recoiled. She was older, and she was married, and this did seem to make a difference. A married woman should not be touched by other men.

            He tried to turn it off, but his mind proceeded against his will, fascinated by the morbid. He saw his fingers touch the flesh of the older woman, finding it flabby and rough in comparison, unattractive. How was a woman of that age to compete with such as Afra? Age, intelligence, appearance -- as washerwoman to a princess. The exploration of Afra was the guilt of forbidden fruit; of Beatryx, merely aversion.

            Yet this was a dire wrong to Beatryx, even in fancy, for he knew already that she had qualities of compassion and courage that Afra lacked. He was judging by sex appeal -- his own possibly juvenile standards, too -- and that negated the evidence of experience and intellect.

            How much better to feel guilt for lusting after a woman than to feel it for failing to lust!

            He came alert with a start. The preliminaries were over and they were ready for the supreme commitment.

            Afra lay within her basin, and the others stood by while Ivo positioned the projector directly overhead. This was nothing more than the large macroscope screen; once a person had been primed -- that is, introduced to the broadcast -- the existence of a certain situation and frame of mind triggered a beam of light originating within the alien channel. This bypassed the computer; it was direct contact with intergalactic science.

            Groton had somehow produced five man-sized containers. Ivo suspected that they were pirated chemical tanks sliced lengthwise. Afra, in hers, was lying in several inches of clear sterile water, spread out so that the beam could catch an entire side at once. That was all they had to do.

            Was it a horrible demolition he aimed at her? How could he be sure that this was not after all another destroyer, as Groton had suggested; more subtle than the first, set to catch the few who circumvented the first?

            Afra looked up at him. "You believed in it before."

            So he had. Why was it suddenly so chancy when she was the one? Because he loved her and would survive to witness his mistake?

            "It takes a couple of minutes to warm up," Afra said. "Stand back."

            Numbly, Ivo obeyed. He wished he could think of some appropriate remark to make, but he had never felt so stupid. He was afraid, too, as he had not been before.

            Inevitably the seconds passed. He could not stop them. "Joseph!" he exclaimed. "Who will pilot it, while -- ?"

            "Eight hours from now the macroscope computer will jump the engine to a full ten G's acceleration and modify our course accordingly," Groton said. "We have taken care of the programming. What did you think we were doing while you slept?"

            So the others had committed themselves to Neptune even before he --

            A flash; the projector came on. A thin yellow light bathed Afra's body, making it oddly sharp; the flesh tones stood out deeper than in life, the hair brighter, the irises, as the eyes dropped closed, a clearer blue. It was as though some famous painter had enhanced the predominant hues.

            He knew that this was only the surface manifestation. It was the cell that counted, that the beam was seeking out and rendering individualistic. The bulk of the radiation was invisible, acting within her substance, setting up unusual relations, breaking down lifelong bonds. A change was beginning -- one unlike any experienced by the human form before.

            Except for Brad...

            The epidermis -- the outermost layer of the skin -- dissolved. The reddish tones of the dermis intensified as subcutaneous fat departed, and out of the flowing protoplasm rose the intricate venous network, all over her body. Arms, legs, torso -- it was a though she had donned a loosely knit blue leotard that was now falling apart.

            Ivo looked at Afra's face, but saw it relaxed. She was unconscious, and had probably been knocked out by the first impact of the radiation. He was glad of that.

            The skin was melting from her head, too. Body hair had gone immediately, leaving her nude and bald. Now there was a great blue branching tube descending from her forehead. It hooked into the streaming eye, crossed the cheek, and finally disappeared under the jaw muscle on its way to the throat. Whitish nerves splayed across the side of her face from the region of the ear, weaving between and through brownish muscles, and almost under the ear-hole was a tapioca mass of something he couldn't identify. Into his mind came the word "parotid," but it meant nothing to him. Upon the dome of the skull bright arteries interwove with veins and nerves, making a tripartite river gathering toward the ear.

            Already these superficial networks were eroding under the beam from space, merging with the runoff from the liquefying muscular structures. The cartilage of the nose was coming into sight and, gruesomely, the naked eyeballs. Ivo turned his gaze aside, afraid of being sick, and concentrated on the legs and feet.

            These were hardly more comforting. Skin, surface nerves and veins had gone together with much of the avoirdupois, but tendons and arteries remained, and the bulk of the great limb muscles. Slowly these diminished, and in the front of the lower leg the bone appeared, a lighter-colored island rising from the runoff. Above it the patella -- the kneecap -- already floated free, and it fell with a slow splash into the burgeoning fluid in the trough. Below, the incredibly long, thin foot-bones showed, loosening as the connecting ligaments yielded.

            Individually, the phalanges folded and toppled, toe-bones no more, and lay scattered in the rising sea of protoplasm. The original water Afra had lain in was no longer visible at all; the meltoff covered it. The little bones were slow to dissolve completely, and he wondered whether the process would ever finish. Perhaps the action would continue after the beam desisted, the liquid eating away at the pockets of resistance for hours and even days. That would be one compelling reason for the minimum time limit; the reconstitution could not safely proceed until all components had been processed and made available to the organism.

            At last the skeletal outline lay bare, half-submerged in brown liquor.

            Now Ivo half-understood Afra's need for tactile confirmation. She had watched this process, had seen the complete demolition of physique. He had to agree: after such an experience, nothing less than extreme evidence would convince him that Afra had survived such demolition. It had become an emotional, rather than intellectual, matter.

            Even if he manipulated every portion of her anatomy, he would retain the mind's-eye image of -- this.

            Yet he would have to survive it himself, before he could verify it in anyone else. Would a pseudo-Ivo pass approval on a pseudo-Afra, both agreeing that all five red eyes were exactly as they had been before, and then the entire party settling down to a wholesome meal of astrology-on-rye?

            He looked about, feeling as though an enormous period had elapsed but knowing it to have been a few minutes only. Groton and Beatryx were watching too, neither seeming particularly robust. They, like him, had become morbidly impressed with the significance of this process, and neither reacted to his movement.

            This was like the destroyer, he thought. It was repulsive, yet the eye riveted to it.

            Ivo followed the direction of Groton's absorption and discovered that it was the head, or perhaps the throat or thorax. The progression here had continued alarmingly. The skull was bare of flesh and vein, the ears and nose were gone; eye-sockets were empty; teeth bulged loosely from bare jawbones, gaunt in the absence of cheek or gums. If the brain itself had been affected yet, this was not apparent behind the enclosure of the fissured skull.

            But it was the neck that appalled. Here the dissolution had been more selective. It was the first evidence he had that this was not merely a melting of flesh as the conveniences of surface and hardness dictated. Fat and muscle and tendon were largely absent, but the internal jugular vein remained beside the large red carotid, servicing the brain. The small offshoots of both had been sealed over, so that they were now direct tubes. What modification of the alien program had dictated this astonishing precaution?

            Either the distant civilization had anticipated human physique and function to an impossible extent, or the program was of such versatility and sophistication that it automatically adapted to any living system. Already it had reduced the solid portion of Afra's bodily mass by half, without killing her. This was surgery beyond man's capacity, performed without physical contact -- yet it was only an incidental portion of galactic or intergalactic knowledge.

            Ivo had not allowed himself to realize how complex an organism the human body was in detail. He had thought of it melting as an ingot of steel might melt in a blast-furnace; as ice cream might dissolve in sunlight; as a bar of soap might liquefy in a basin of warm water. Ridiculous! He understood now that long before the bones of the legs surrendered their calcium, the brain would die -- unless precisely protected. The velocity and order of the process were critical, if life as it had been were to be preserved.

            The great spiral-banded trachea also remained intact, and air continued to pass through it. The pipe terminated at what had been the larynx, now a funnel opening upward. His gaze followed it back down to the thoracic cavity, still enclosed by the circling ribs. Though Afra's breasts were long since gone along with all other superficial processes, the important muscles of her chest were present and functioning, maintaining the circulation of air within. He could tell by the pulsing of the adjacent arteries that the heart continued its operations, too.

            The melting seemed to have halted at this stage, in this region, and he did not see how it could resume safely. The hands, arms and shoulders were deteriorating bones, all flesh taken; the head and neck had been stripped of expendable appurtenances. If the chest muscle went, the lungs would stop and the brain would drown, deprived of its oxygen; if the brain went, the remainder of the body would cease to function and would suffer damage before the slow melting could complete the job. The system had to function as a unit until there was no unit to function -- a paradox.

            Beatryx was staring at the abdomen, her hand unconsciously clutching at her own. Ivo looked there -- and regretted it.

            The reproductive system, like the sensory organs, had been among the earliest to go. The abdominal cavity was open, pelvic musculature absent, the guts exposed. Ivo could not have told from what he saw to which sex the carcass belonged. Above the bleakly jutting hip-bones the action was well advanced: bladder and uterus melted, large and small intestine puddled along with the digestive refuse within them. Only the two large kidneys remained, and their arterial and venous connectors, their wastes evidently dissolving as they formed. Stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas, duodenum -- all of it flowed away into the common sewer, leaving the vertebrae bare.

            Had these remains ever been a person? This mass of eroding bones immersed in a deepening pond of sludge?

            It was not over. Unsupported, the skull canted, causing all three observers to jump, and from its hollow earhole and empty lower eye-socket the gray-white fluid trickled heavily. Ivo realized that the optic nerves had left their tunnels through the solid bone, and now the brain itself was dissolving. First the frontal lobes? Or one hemisphere only?

            Simultaneously there was a breakthrough in the chest cavity. The membranes lining the ribcage on the right had let go and run off; the lung collapsed, so that there was air under the bones. The muscles on that side melted, showing those ribs, and underneath them the hollow section remaining. Within this beat the heart, centered rather than situated to the left as he had thought, still pumping the red blood up the huge aortic artery toward brain and kidneys, and the blue blood up the pulmonary artery to the lungs for oxygenation. Similarly massive veins brought it back from its travels, now considerably circumscribed. Lymph nodes dotted the area, and tiny vessels enclosed the heart itself, and the nerve trunk remained leading into the skull. That, apart from the bones and minimal tissue, was all.

            Had this been the splendid body he had explored with his two quivering hands, so long ago? Was this the physical object whose makeup compelled his fascination?

            The kidneys went; the second lung collapsed; the heart beat momentarily longer, then ceased. If death were the destined conclusion of this chain, it had come at last.

            Yet the process continued. The last muscles fell, the heart sagged and opened, the blood ran out as protoplasm. The skeleton lay amidst its liquid flesh, defunct.

            The beam from the projector shut off.

            Ivo looked at the other two. They looked at him. No one spoke.

            Again the common thought: had they conspired unwittingly to commit a gruesome murder, and had they now accomplished it?

            Fifteen minutes passed, and the slow action did not halt. The ridged vertebrae hung loose within their settings; the ribs sagged. Wherever the dull fluid touched, it dissolved, though it would be long before the skull and hip-bones finally disappeared.

            As the fluid became still, light from the chamber struck the surface and refracted through the forming layers, some of it reflecting back eerily. It was as though a ghost flickered where the girl had been.

            Groton stood up unsteadily. He walked to the long basin, bent over, and placed its cover upon it, cutting off the reflection-spirit. Carefully he pulled it over to the side, set it beside the prior melt, and anchored it securely to the deck. He had removed it only a few feet, since the compartment was small, but it seemed to Ivo like a tremendous distance. It was amazing how far one could adapt to the space available, so that cubic yards became as great, subjectively, as cubic rods.

            Groton drew the second -- actually, third -- basin into position. Silently he undressed, casting his clothing absently on the pile left by Afra. He lay down.

            Beatryx turned away.

            This time Ivo timed it by his watch: twenty-four minutes until the beam desisted. Another skeleton lay within its vat. Beatryx had not looked at all.

            Again they waited. Two murders?

            Ivo moved the remains, discovering that the container slid readily. He was irrationally fearful of slopping some of the juice over the side. He sighed in silent relief as he set the cover, though it was light and did not actually seal the basin. Air had to enter, or it would quickly become a coffin. He found the snaps Groton had fashioned to connect to the floor-plugs. This was the kind of detail an engineer would think of; Ivo certainly had not. Of course, free-fall or jerky acceleration would throw the protoplasm out to splatter over the equipment -- but Afra and Groton would have anticipated this also, and accounted for it in the programming. Probably the engines would never cut off at all; Joseph would perform a turnabout under 10-G acceleration and commence 10-G deceleration without affecting its contents enough for any slopping.

            Ivo positioned the next basin.

            "No!" Beatryx cried, near hysteria. She had seemed calm, but obviously this type of experience had brought her to her breaking point. He could not blame her.

            He waited, and after a few minutes she spoke again, still facing away. "I'm afraid."

            "So am I." It was the total truth.

            That seemed to encourage her. "I have to go next. I didn't know it would be like this. I wouldn't be able to do it myself. And I have to."

            "Yes." What else could he say?

            "He has his charts," she said, meaning her husband. "When he gets bothered, he just settles down for a few hours with his diagrams and figures and houses and planets, and he works it all out and finally he's satisfied. But I never understood all that. I don't have anything."

            Now he did not dare even to agree with her.

            "He told me," she said quickly, "I don't know what it means but I remember it -- he told me that when I was thirty-seven my progressed midheaven would square with Neptune."

            "Neptune!"

            "And he said my progressed ascendant would be opposite Neptune, and my progressed Mercury opposite Neptune. And he said Neptune was the planet of obligation -- I think that's what it was. And -- "

            "And we're going to Neptune," Ivo finished for her. "I don't know what all those terms mean either, but it sounds as though you have to -- progress to Neptune." Could it mean anything, or was it sheer coincidence?

            "I'm thirty-seven now," she said.

            Ivo had an inspiration. "It must mean you'll get there safely!"

            Still she didn't move.

            Finally Ivo, sensing what was needed, went and led her to the basin and carefully removed the clothing she had so carefully preserved until this moment, while she stood listlessly. He could never, prior to the past few hours, have conceived of himself performing such an action. Undressing an older woman! What secrets remained for her to hide?

            He steadied her as she got down, then he stood up to move away.

            "Hold my hand, Ivo."

            He knelt just beyond the field of the beam and took her hand, trusting that its melting could catch up later.

            The beam came on. She relaxed, unconscious, but he stayed where he was. The skin melted away from her arm up to just beyond the elbow; forearm, wrist and the hand he held remained whole.

            Suddenly it came to him that the hand could die, stripped of its supplying mechanisms. He had to return it to the field before he disrupted everything.

            His own hand lost sensation as it entered the field, and hers slipped down. He withdrew hastily, alarmed. A film of slick moisture already covered the exposed portion, and feeling did not return. Stupid! Did he think he was playing a game of tag with the alien signal?

            He went to sit upon the edge of the last basin, holding the hand above it so that any moisture that dropped would fall inside. The nerves were out for the duration, that was evident; but there did not appear to be any further erosion. He had lost hair follicles and a scraping of skin: not serious.

            What would happen if a person were only partially exposed? Could a limb be painlessly amputated and preserved in such fashion, in case of injury? He was sure it could. This, perhaps, had been the original purpose of the technique. There might even be instructions somewhere concerning the regeneration of such a limb. How little he knew about the process he had invoked!

            Morbidly he watched Beatryx's intestines come exposed. The light seemed to eat through the packed convolutions while it worried at the muscular bladder below them. What, indeed -- what possible secrets could a woman have to hide, after the literal depth of her had been thus probed and vanquished? What physical act could approach the devastating intimacy of this association? There was her uterus, there the open channel of her vagina, there her anus and colon, seen from the inside in surgical cutaway. How was she different from Afra now?

            How was anyone different from anyone else, in this ultimate reckoning?

            And he had been embarrassed to touch Afra's body! He was glad now that at least one woman had insisted on it. The memory of the feel of that firm whole flesh was about the only comfort he had now, knowing that that flesh was whole no more.

            God! (both prayer and expletive) -- was the salvation offered by the macroscope worth it?

            The beam ceased, startling him. Beatryx was done.

            He realized that he was alone. He had only to wait a few more hours, and the UN ship would fetch him in, and the adventure would be over. He would not have to take the terrible risk the others had taken; he could be sure, at least, of life.

            He was not honestly tempted. The others had not yielded to their fears; indeed, they had trusted him so far as to undertake this bizarre transformation before him, risking horrible extinction for the sake of the mission. His mission. That was the stuff of heroes. That was the stuff he meant to prove to himself. He, Ivo -- not the grandiose Schön he had been summoned to summon.

            And it was, he realized now, the only way he could follow Afra. If the UN caught them now, the macroscope would be taken away, and the vats of protoplasm would, in the course of months, gradually deteriorate. A year was about the limit, for shelf-life, as he understood it. After that, reconstitution could become ugly.

            He stripped awkwardly, because of his unconscious hand. He moved Beatryx beside her husband and covered her and tied her down. He positioned his own bath and climbed in.

            Then he climbed out quickly, remembering something. The clothing of four people lay scattered recklessly. It could be dangerous when the rocket maneuvered. He bundled it all together, separating out coins and pens and wallets and keys and pins and women's purses and placing them in separate storage bins.

            He looked at the worn old penny he had saved so long, memento of a foolishly missed bus. He also still had the unused bus token. Suppose one of those were to drift loose during maneuvers, and drop into someone's vat of jelly? Ouch!

            He climbed in a second time. He would remain beneath the beam, of course, and it would come on again at any time after the minimum period had elapsed, provided that conditions were appropriate. That meant, in this case, normal gravity.

            How could it tell what 1-G was, Earth definition? Too late to worry about that now!

            Ready or not, he thought, not even frightened any more. Ready or not, here I --

            ***

            Could experience be inherited? Lysenko, the Russian scientist of yore, had argued that it could. His theory of environment above heredity had seemingly been discredited by his own malfeasance and the winds of political change -- but later researches had thrown the issue open again.

            The alien beam melted down functional flesh and reduced it to quiescent cells that required little nourishment, surviving during their estivation largely upon their internal nutrient resources. The reconstitution would re-create the original individual -- along with all his memories. All of it had to be in the cell -- the lifetime of experience as well as the physical form. Only if that experience, right down to the most evanescent flicker of thought, were recorded in the chromosomes, the genes, or somewhere in the nucleus, of every tiny cell of the body -- only thus could the complete physique and personality be restored.

            The alien presentation said it could be done. The alien intellect was in a position to know.

            Unless the flesh of Earthly creatures were not quite typical of that of the rest of the planetary species in the universe...

            "Put up or shut up!" Ivo thought somewhere -- before, after, during? -- and waited for his answer.

            What a joke if the alien were mistaken!

            ***

            Here I --

            Swimming through a thick warm sea, an ocean of blood, smooth, delicious, eternal.

            Here --

            Climbing on the cruel heavy land, a continent of bone, hot, chill, transient.

            How to speak without a lung? To think, without a brain?

            A jumble of sensation: curiosity, terror, hunger, passion, satiation, lethargy.

            An eon passing.

            "...come." Ivo opened his eyes.

            He was lying in the container, uncovered, bathed in lukewarm water. He felt fine. Even his hand was whole again.

            He sat up, shook himself dry, and donned his clothing. Then he brought over the next coffin, able to tell by its weight and his own that gravity was 1-G, and removed the cover.

            Inside was an attractive, vaguely layered semifluid. No bones showed. He withdrew.

            The beam came on, illuminating the jellylike substance. The protoplasm quivered, but nothing obvious happened at first.

            Patience, he told himself. It worked before.

            Gradually a speck developed within its translucent upper layer; a mote, a tiny eye, a nucleus. It drifted about; it expanded into a marble, a golf-ball. It opened into a flexing cup that sucked in liquid and spewed it out through the same opening, propelling it cautiously through the medium. The walls of it became muscular, until it resembled an animate womb perpetually searching for an occupant. Then the spout folded over, sealed across the center, and became two: an intake and an outgo. The fluid funneled through more efficiently, and the creature grew.

            It lengthened, and ridges along its side developed into fins, and one hole gravitated to the nether area. Patches manifested near the front and became true eyes, and it was a fish.

            The fins thickened; the body became stout, less streamlined. The fish gulped air through an ugly, horrendously-toothed mouth and heaved its snout momentarily out of the fluid, taking in a bubble of air. It continued to grow, and its head came into the air to stay. Its near eye fixed on Ivo disconcertingly. Now it was almost reptilian, with a substantial fleshy tail in place of the flukes, and claws on well-articulated feet. The mouth opened to show the teeth again, fewer than before, but still too many. It was large; its mass took up half the fluid at this stage.

            Then it shrank to the size of a rodent, casting off flesh in a quick reliquefication. Hair sprouted where scales had been, and the teeth became differentiated. Ratlike, it peered at him, switching its thin tail.

            It grew again, as though a suppressant had been eliminated. It developed powerful limbs, heavy fur, a large head. The snout receded, the eyes came forward, the ears flattened onto the sides of the head. The limbs lengthened and began to shed their hair; the tail shriveled; the forehead swelled.

            It was beginning to resemble a man.

            Rather, a woman: multiple teats assembled into two, traveling up along the belly to the chest. The hairy face became clear, the muscular limbs slim. The pelvis broadened, the midsection shrank. The hair of the head reached down; the breasts swelled invitingly.

            Goddess of fertility, she lay upon her back and contemplated him through half-lidded eyes.

            Age set in. Her middle plumpened; her fine mammaries lost their resiliency; her face became round.

            The beam cut off.

            "Is it over, Ivo?"

            He started, ashamed to be caught staring. "Yes."

            He turned his back upon Beatryx so that she could dress in privacy. The reconstitution had not been as alarming as the dissolution, but it had had its moments. Worst was his impression of awareness throughout. The entire evolution of the species recapitulated in --

            He checked the time.

            -- four hours. It had seemed like four minutes.

            "I will fix lunch," she said. That was how he knew that she did not want to watch any other reconstitutions.

            Groton revived next, and this time Ivo knew it was four hours. Finally Afra, and it seemed like eight.

            "Check me," she said immediately. She had not forgotten.

            The two men handled her in turn, hardly embarrassed this time around, and pronounced her real. "Yes," she said. "I was sure I was." The transformation was a subjective success.

            Nothing was said about Brad. By mutual unspoken consent they let him remain as he was, in suspended animation or storage. What point reviving him now?

 

 

CHAPTER 6