Mattan was clever; there could be no questioning that. Suppose he had had firm suspicions that Ivo was a spy who refused to talk, spinning any fantasy to avoid the truth? Would torture be effective? Perhaps -- but there was also the risk of reprisals, especially in the event the visitor turned out to be innocent after all, or of powerful connection. Perhaps, even, he had been infiltrated to provoke an embarrassing incident. Why not, then, prompt the spy to bolt for home, and follow him there? What surer method to fathom the truth?

            A skilled spy would know many dialects, naturally. A spy would comprehend the dialogue of the mercenaries, and react accordingly. Ivo remembered how handy that sword had been -- virtually proffered to his hand, as the guard turned to him at the foot of the temple steps. How slow those men had been to react, though they were obviously long-time professionals, so that even his clumsy efforts had availed.

            Of course, the priest had tried to trick him -- but perhaps the man hadn't had the word yet, or was merely cowardly. Then the chase through the city -- with all avenues of escape closed off but one, and attractive Aia waiting at the end of that one.

            She had been so eager to ingratiate herself with him -- but not personally involved enough to stay awake for the romantic denouement. Well, this released him of any obligation he might have felt for her assistance.

            What would have happened, had he meekly accompanied the two guards into the temple? Probably nothing. He would have demonstrated thereby his ignorance of the mercenary dialect, his innocence of spylike suspicions, his general naïveté about temple politics. He might then have been treated with the courtesy due a genuine traveler from a distant land. His gift of tongues had betrayed him.

            Gift of tongues?

            He stopped rowing, and the coracle jerked about as Aia's stroke met no counteraction. "Careful, lover," she said.

            "It occurs to me that I have nowhere to go," he told her, watching her as carefully as he could in the dark.

            "Nowhere? But -- "

            "America is much too far away, and I would be no better off at any other local city than I am at Tyre. We might as well go back."

            "But Mattan -- "

            "What of Mattan? I'm sure I can explain about the mistake to him, and everything will be all right."

            "All right! After he sent you as sacrifice to Melqart?"

            "I was only going to the temple to talk with the priests there. Mattan told me so. I suppose the one that met me assumed I was to be sacrificed, but they should have all that straightened out by now. These little errors happen. I should have realized then that it was a common misunderstanding."

            "A misunderstanding! How blind can you -- " She paused. "Well, what about me? Aren't you going to help me escape?"

            "From what?"

            "From the temple. I told you how they meant to make me serve as -- "

            "You told me that there was no harm a man could do you. You could have a good life at the temple, and a nice comfortable sleep every night with a new ship in your port, just the way you like it."

            For a moment he thought she was going to hit him with the paddle; but her words, when they came, were low. "Do you know what Mattan does with an unsuccessful spy?"

            "One he catches, you mean? I do have some inkling."

            "One he assigns."

            Now he caught her meaning. "The sacrifice?"

            "Bride of Melqart -- and our Baal has a fiery member."

            "Suppose we land you on the mainland, then, and I can paddle back by myself. I want to see Mattan and clear this thing up as soon as possible."

            "You couldn't handle this craft by yourself."

            "Maybe I can find a canoe or something. I'll make do. You can travel back to Urartu."

            "I didn't really come from Urartu."

            "Strange. I do really come from America."

            "Stay with me," she pleaded, setting down the paddle and reaching for him. "I can guide you past the soldiers that are watching us now, and when we are free I promise you I will stay awake until you are exhausted. Until the very hull of your ship is blistered. I will steal valuables for you. I will -- "

            "Steady," he said, worried about the equilibrium of the craft as Aia sought to approach and embrace him. She did have a fine body, but her mind appealed to him less and less. "Unfortunately your promises lack conviction. Or are they threats?"

            She let go. "What do you want?"

            "I want, believe it or not, to go home. It is not a journey you can share. I travel to the stars."

            "I can take you to the finest astrologer!" she said eagerly.

            He began to laugh, harshly. Then, as he had done a night ago, he reconsidered. He just might be able to use a good astrologer. Hadn't Groton told him that they had traditionally been the most educated of men? "Where?"

            "It is said that the very best reside in Babylonia, particularly the city of Harran. We can join a trading caravan -- "

            "How long would such a trip take?"

            "It is across the great deserts where the nomads raid."

            "How long?"

            "Not long. Thirty days, maybe only twenty-five."

            "Scratch Babylon. Who is there in Tyre?"

            She considered disconsolately. "There is Gorolot -- but he is very old. However, in other cities -- "

            "Should be very wise, then. Is he an honest scholar or a faker?"

            "Honest. That is why he is so poor. But elsewhere there are -- "

            "Gorolot will do. We'll see him tonight."

            "Tonight! He is already asleep."

            "We'll have to wake him."

            "We have no money for his fee."

            "Do you want to help or don't you?"

            "Will you leave Tyre after you see him?"

            "Sleeping Beauty, I may leave this world after I see him!"

            She twisted the paddle until the craft was in position for the return voyage.

            "What I have in mind for payment," Ivo said, "is service. If Gorolot is old and poor and honest, he has no servants, right? A strong young woman could do marvels for his household, and perhaps encourage business too. And -- "

            "I am no household slave!" she exclaimed.

            "And Mattan would never suspect that the household slave of an aged astrologer could be an unsuccessful counterspy or potential bride of Melqart."

            She paddled silently.

            Gorolot, once roused by strenuous clamor, had the aspect of a sleepy old fraud. His eyes were sunken, his beard straggly and white, his clothing unkempt. He agreed to consider Ivo's case once the terms had been clarified.

            "I wish I had a better offer to make," Ivo said regretfully. "But I may not be in these parts long. Aia -- you'll have to change her name -- isn't too reliable and will need a lot of supervision -- "

            "I will not!" she exclaimed angrily. "I can do the job as well as any girl in the city."

            "And you dare not entrust the daily marketing for staples to her, because she can't bargain well -- "

            "I bargain very well! I'll show you!"

            "And she'll probably run away within a week or two, but at least -- "

            "I will not!"

            "But she may be all right, if she doesn't fall asleep on the job."

            "I -- " She shot him a dirty look and twitched her hip, conscious at last of the needling.

            The two men sat down at Gorolot's official table. Ivo saw that there were no flashy pictures of stars, planets or other symbols in evidence, and the man had donned no special robe. Probably the soiled tunic on his back was all he owned. The effect was unimpressive, even though such things had no inherent validity.

            "What is your date of birth?" Gorolot inquired.

            Ivo hesitated, but found after reflection that he was able to express it in local chronology, except for the year. That he solved by taking his age and figuring back to the year he would have been born, had he been born into this world and age. It came to the fifteenth year of the reign of Hiram the Great.

            Gorolot brought out a scroll of stripped camel hide together with several clay tablets. "Do not expect too much," he warned. "The meanings of the motions of the planets are not yet well known to us, and many times have I made mistakes. Often the Babylonian interpretations differ from the Egyptian, and I do not know the truth of it. I offer only the portents; I do not vouch for their authenticity."

            Ivo nodded. An honest man, yes, and a humble one. How many potentially well-paying customers did he alienate by his candor?

            For almost an hour the astrologer pored over his records and assessed the imperatives of the seven planets -- Uranus, Neptune and Pluto being unknown to Phoenician astronomy -- questioning Ivo occasionally, while Aia showed her mounting impatience. "Others give instant readings," she whispered.

            "Others are charlatans," Ivo replied. Gorolot labored on, unheeding.

            At last he looked up. "Is there some event in your life that -- "

            Ivo gave him the same event he had given Groton, modified slightly in detail.

            Still the astrologer was not satisfied. He mumbled and shook his head and rechecked his texts and runes fretfully. "I cannot help you," he said abruptly.

            Aia started to object, but Ivo gestured her to silence. "You have already helped me considerably," he said. "I know you see something. What is it?"

            "Nothing."

            "You have spent all this time contemplating nothing?" Aia demanded.

            "The signs are contradictory, as I warned you they might be," Gorolot said to Ivo. "But more than that, and it disturbs me deeply, some aspects are sure, yet they are the least credible of all. Either you have never been born, or you come from so far away that you are not truly under any of the signs I know." He shrugged. "You must have been born, for I see you here, and I do not credit genii. Yet the signs are all-inclusive. So there is error -- but not one it is in me to fathom. I am old and tired, and perhaps my brain is weakening. Take your servant-girl and go."

            "You admit you are a charlatan!" Aia exclaimed.

            "No," Ivo said firmly. "He is right. I have never been born -- but I will be born thousands of years hence. And in my time the constellations have moved, and there are newly discovered planets; some of their meanings have -- er, developed with the march of time."

            Gorolot peered at him over the flickering pewter lamp. "My charts suggest that this is so, but still it is a thing beyond my experience. I deem myself a sensible man, and all my life I have denied the supposed impact of the supernatural on the affairs of men. Yet here you are, real but inexplicable. Surely you mock me?"

            Aia was silent now, looking at Ivo intently. The red in her hair was stronger, her features almost familiar in a non-Phoenician sense. She was extremely lovely.

           "Do you speak other languages?" Ivo asked the astrologer. The man nodded. "I will show you that I am not of this world. I have the gift of tongues."

            "Are you familiar with this one?" Gorolot said in a foreign language, smiling.

            "Egyptian, southern dialect," Ivo said in the same language.

            "And this?"

            "Phrygian -- as a Lydian tribesman would speak it."

            "No one in Tyre knows this one but me, and I know it only from my texts," Gorolot said carefully.

            "No wonder. It is parent-stock Etruscan. If I may -- here is a correction on your phrasing." He gave it.

            Gorolot stared at him. "You are right. I remember now. You speak it far better than I." He had lapsed into Phoenician. "You do have the gift of tongues, and you are far too young to have mastered it here. You are -- "

            "I don't believe it," Aia said, half believing it.

            "So you come from Ugarit -- peasant stock," Ivo told her. She looked dismayed, and he turned back to Gorolot.

            The man's features changed. The white beard faded, leaving him clean-shaven. His face filled out. Behind him the mud-plaster wall metamorphosed into metal.

            Groton was opposite him, a look of incredulous hope on his face. To the side stood Afra, weeping silently.

            "I'm back," Ivo said.

            ***

            "It was Schön's doing," Ivo explained. Afra obviously had caught on to his secret, so no further pretense was in order. "It took me a long time to catch on to that, possibly because he tried to hide the evidence from me, more likely because I didn't really want to believe it. But even a genius can't convince an ordinary person that white is purple. Not always. Not when the purple stinks." But he hadn't told them about the dye yet. "And that gift of tongues was the unmistakable key. Schön has it, and he had to make it available to me in order to have me participate properly in that world; otherwise I would have popped out again quickly. When I realized that, I was on the way to victory, because I knew he was behind it all."

            "Why?" Groton wanted to know.

            "Why did he do it? Easy. Because he wants to take over, and he can't do it unless I abdicate. He tried to drive me into a situation that only he could save me from, hoping that I would capitulate. Maybe he forgot how stubborn I was."

            "But the destroyer -- "

            "Either he doesn't know about that, or he isn't afraid of it."

            "Why didn't he give you just one language -- Phoenician?"

            "It doesn't work that way. He can't give me part of a talent. Only so many speech centers in the brain, as I make it."

            "But that would mean that English takes up one," Afra said, "and all the other languages of the world, the other. That isn't reasonable."

            "Schön isn't reasonable, by our definition. Maybe he has some other setup. Anyway, it's everything, or it's nothing."

            "Do you have it now?" Afra asked, mopping her face. She looked so much like Aia that it set him back. Obviously one girl had been modeled from the other, just as one astrologer had emulated the other.

            "No."

            "He took it away when you broke out?" Groton asked.

            "No. I left it there. I didn't want it."

            The two looked at him.

            "It's hard to explain. This arrangement between us -- it isn't absolutely set. He can give me things, like the intuitive computations, and I can accept them. But I can't take anything he doesn't make available and he can't force anything on me that I refuse to accept. This episode was a special case; I was off-balance and tired, and I accepted more than I should have. Then I had to fight my way out by his rules, the hard way. But I stopped it there; I didn't take the gift with me."

            "But why?" Afra cried. "The gift of tongues! Every language anyone ever spoke!"

            "Because each trait I accept from him brings me that much closer to him. I started with two, and that's the way I like it. I don't need tongues."

            "But if you can have all that and remain yourself -- "

            This was like arguing with Aia. "I can't. As I stand, I have two parts out of, say, twenty that make up Schön. Tongues would be a third part, and then I might be tempted to gamble on artistic ability or eidetic recollection. And after that I might get a craving for physical dexterity -- you know, be a champion at sports, be able to do sleight-of-hand, control the roll of dice -- and at some point Schön would achieve controlling interest. It's more subtle than the destroyer, but the effect is the same, for me." And suddenly another reason he had been able to avoid the destroyer popped up: he had had a lifetime of practice protecting his individuality from oblivion.

            "That's how you -- turn into Schön?"

            "That's one way. There are others." He decided to change the subject. "Of course, I'll never know whether I really had tongues. It could all have been American English, with the suggestion of translation. Just enough for verisimilitude in the dream."

            "Dream?" Afra said.

            "The Phoenician episode I summarized for you. It seemed like several days, and it was real for me, but -- "

            "Maybe we'd better play off one of the tapes," Groton said.

            "Tapes?" It was Ivo's turn to be perplexed.

            Afra was already busy. "Listen." She switched on the playback.

            A stream of gibberish poured out of the speaker. "This was yesterday," Afra said. "That is, about twenty-seven hours ago. Your voice."

            "I was speaking?"

            "Ancient Phoenician. Fluently. I was able to pick out words only here and there, so we set up a program and ran the tape through the computer and patched up a translation. Do you want to hear it?"

            "I'd better."

            She lifted the printout. "Are you trusting yourself to a stranger? A brigand, perhaps a rapist or murderer? No. Ivarch of Merica. I was captured by a ship and brought to Mattan for questioning. What I don't comprehend is the reason he sent me for sacrifice. How could -- "

            "That's enough," Ivo said, embarrassed. "Did you translate -- everything I said?"

            "Yes. We had to."

            "We rigged up a real-time continuous translation," Groton said, "and monitored it. In case there was any way we could help. Just now you messed it by switching to non-programmed languages."

            Ivo tried to remember all the things he had said, particularly to Aia. He felt his cheeks growing hot.

            "How did you finally fight your way out of it?" Groton asked him. "We knew something special was happening, but we couldn't tell what. You were telling someone there about your presence here, but -- "

            "I was telling you, Harold." And with that statement he had another realization: that this man had become Harold instead of Groton in thought as well as speech. That was significant. "Or at least your ancestor-in-spirit. An astrologer, and an honest and knowledgeable man. I remembered that they were the best-educated men in those days, because they were the true astronomers and scientists before those fields were recognized as such, always questing for the secrets of things. It seemed to me that if I could convince one intelligent person in that world that I didn't belong there -- literally -- then the framework would be rent, or at least punctured. And I guess I convinced him, because it happened." He thought about the implications. "I hope Gorolot wasn't too upset when I disappeared."

            "Aia will console him," Afra said with gentle irony. It had not taken her long to revert to her normal cynicism. Had she been crying for him, that moment he first returned?

            "Similar to punching through by gravitational collapse," Harold said. "This would have been credibility collapse, though. You do believe that world was real?" He was asking for an opinion rather than a defense.

            "I would hate to believe that it wasn't. If I was really speaking Phoenician -- "

            "I think I understand." Harold looked about. "We'd better take a break, now that it's over. This has been rough on all of us, and my wife doesn't even -- "

            Beatryx appeared, carrying a tray. Incongruously, that reminded Ivo that now they were in a gravity defocuser, rather than the intensifier of Triton days, since they were buried in massive Neptune. How much stranger this situation was than the one he had visited!

            Beatryx saw him. "Ivo!" she cried immediately. "You're back!"

            That seemed to make it complete.

            ***

            Though less than three days had passed, it was a novelty to sleep in a modern bed again, and to be free of the pain of a flesh wound on the arm and a cut on the hand. He had been too much a part of the world of Tyre, had experienced too much there. He had sought only to leave it -- yet now he was sorry, perversely, that it was gone. Was it that he craved the adventure it had offered?

            There he had been a man -- a man in constant danger and discomfort, but a man. Here he was no more than a surrogate, a mild-mannered reporter waiting for Superman to take over. He wondered whether, if the offer of such adventure were made again, he would accept it. Give Schön what he wanted, in exchange for that satisfaction. For Schön could do that, if he chose; and the covenant would bind him. He could relegate Ivo to a fantasy fragment, his personality turned inward instead of outward, and let him live out his life there untrammeled by the inadequacies of the present. Perhaps it would be a short life, but --

            There was a motion nearby that made him jump. "Hello, Ivo."

            Afra.

            She sat down beside him: fresh, white, perfumed, elegantly packaged. "I think I know what you're thinking, Ivo. You're nostalgic for that world."

            "I guess I am, now that it's over."

            "And you're afraid you might go back to it the next time you use the macroscope, or something like it."

            He nodded. She was so beautiful in the half-light that he felt her presence as heat radiating against the side of his body toward her. The effect might be subjective, but it was powerful.

            "This Aia -- was she me?"

            "No. She was a spy, a courtesan."

            "She still could have been me, Ivo. That name is close. And I was used to -- to keep you at the station, so that Schön would be available. I'm not very proud of that."

            "You didn't know."

            "I should have known. I don't like being stupid, particularly about a thing like that. Brad told me to be nice to you. I -- I'm trying to say I'm sorry. About that and a lot of things. But that isn't why I came here."

            He felt it safest not to comment. Why did a lovely woman come to the bed of an admirer? To reminisce?

            "I suppose it's like the -- the handling. I'll just have to say it. And do it. I heard what you said to her. About me."

            Oh-oh. "I was afraid of that. I didn't mean to -- "

            "Don't you apologize to me! I'm the one at fault. All I can say is that I was dense, or blind, or both. I didn't know, I really didn't know -- until I read it on the printout. I didn't know you loved me."

            "I didn't want you to know. I'd rather you forgot it."

            She did not move, but it was as though she leaned over him where he lay. "That isn't the past tense, is it, Ivo. You love me now -- and I won't forget it. I -- well, you know my situation. I can't say I love you or ever will."

            "I understand."

            "That Aia -- she offered herself to you, and you wanted her. But you told her -- "

            Ivo felt his face burning again. "Can't we just let that pass?"

            "No we can't, Ivo. You held her in your arms and she made you recite poetry -- but then you didn't make love to her. And you could have."

            "How do you know? It was my vision."

            "Not entirely, Ivo. I do know. Did you think you were having an innocent wet dream? I was with you."

            He had thought he was already embarrassed, but once again she had made him realize that he had been naïvely skirting the edge of the chasm. Again he had fallen in.

            "I know this hurts you, but I have to say it. The girl you held was me. Naked, ready -- "

            What possible comment? "But if I'd -- "

            "I said you could have. I won't say I'm sorry you didn't."

            "But why?"

            "I had this crazy idea that if I could somehow bridge the gap between us -- between your world and mine -- it would bring you back. I felt responsible...maybe guilty is the word. It wasn't premeditated. There was something nagging at my mind -- something Brad once told me about Schön -- but it wouldn't come clear. I did realize where Schön was, of course, though it took me entirely too long to put two and two together. And I think if Schön had won, I could have -- I don't know. I just had to do something. I was monitoring the tape, the others were asleep, and...the time seemed right. And -- we do need you, Ivo. Objectively. We can't locate ourselves in the galaxy without you. Not close enough."

            She had been talking rapidly, throwing justifications at him as quickly as she thought of them. As though she had to apologize for ever having offered her body to him in any guise. And, he thought bitterly, if she felt ashamed of the impulse, then her apology was in order. She had said once that she did not like acting like a whore.

            She took his silence as an objection. "We had to have you back. It was that simple. It isn't as though there are any physical secrets between us, after the handling and the melting. If you were falling and I could offer a hand to pull you back -- the principle is the same. You did it for me, on Triton, with your trial. So this time it was my turn to -- to contribute."

            The irony was that it might have worked. Could he possibly have made physical love to Afra and not been drawn back to her world? He doubted it.

            "I thank you for the gesture," he said, feeling quixotic.

            "Now that we understand each other," she said, relieved, "the rest is easy. I want you to know that this world needs you more than that one does. So -- this world offers you more. It is, as I said, that simple."

            "It's still too complicated for me. What are you getting at now?"

            "You love me. I need you. That's not the same thing, I know, but it's honest. If my embrace will hold you here, I give it to you. Anything Aia had for you -- I will match. Anything any woman has for you. You don't have to travel to any other world -- you mustn't travel -- "

            "I suppose you are pretty much like Aia."

            There was no flickering lamplight, but the classic lines of her forehead, nose and chin wavered in his gaze. "That's no compliment, but it's the truth," she said. "We sell what we have for what we need. Men their brains, women their bodies. Better that than hypocrisy."

            There was a silence of several minutes. Ivo thought of all the things he might say, but knew she knew them already. She had said one thing and meant another, earlier; now the truth was coming into view as the base warred with the sublime. She was offering paid love -- the last thing he wanted from her, but all she had, realistically, to give.

            Again the question he had asked himself in Tyre: why not settle for the best he could get? He had been willing to embrace Aia's body in lieu of Afra; why not accept Afra's body -- in lieu of Afra? Both women had come to terms with their necessities, knowing they could not bring their lovers back to life; why not he?

            Yet if he had learned any lesson in Tyre, it was this: there was no salvation in a surrogate.

            "Maybe next time," he said.

            She did not move or look at him. "Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands..."

            She was still sitting there when he fell asleep.

            ***

            It was night in the marshes of Glynn. He had either to wait a few hours and try again, or travel to the daylight side of the globe.

            He felt Afra's hand take his left. "If you go, I will don the goggles and follow you," she said. It was a threat, for she would encounter not Tyre but the destroyer.

            "I'm on guard now, and rested," he replied. "It's safe." But he felt better for the touch of her fingers, their almost-affectionate pressure. Last night he had turned her down; today, oddly, she was warmer toward him.

            Tyre appeared unchanged, superficially. Warships still docked at the ports of the island city and the buildings remained tall and crowded. He recognized the temple complex and the area where he had met Aia, that night.

            "We don't seem to have moved," he said, perplexed. He wondered how he could have seen the city so accurately before, since they had probably removed him from the macroscope as soon as he fell into the Mediterranean. He must have been there!

            "More likely it's a fifty-year jump," Afra said. "Backward or forward or sidewise. Can you find a landmark?" She still had not relinquished his hand, except for the brief periods he needed it for coordinated adjustments.

            He centered on Gorolot's house, quite curious and a little nervous. Strangers occupied it, and the configurations of the structure had changed, as though the house had been rebuilt. Ivo lingered, disappointed, though he remained apprehensive about the effect the sight of Gorolot -- or Aia -- might have on him.

            "You can go back," a masculine voice said in his ear, in Phoenician.

            Ivo clenched Afra's hand. "Pull me out!" he said urgently. "It's Schön!"

            He felt her fingers returning his pressure, as from a distance, and the tug of the goggles coming off -- but the scene did not shift.

            "Why do you fight me?" Schön asked in Ivo's voice.

            "Because you may be destroyed the moment you take over, for one thing. Don't you know that?"

            "When I take over," Schön said as though never doubting the eventuality, "I will have the whole of your experience to draw on, should I require it. At present I have almost none of it. It is exceedingly difficult for me even to contact you, since you don't let go until your mind is distracted. So I don't know what your problem is -- but I do know there is something intriguing afoot."

            Someone was still tugging at a distant extremity. "Hold up a minute, Afra," Ivo called. "He only wants to talk."

            "I don't trust him," she said from the far reaches.

            "Give us two minutes."

            "Little puritan Ivo has a girlfriend now?" Schön inquired. Obviously he knew -- but how much?

            "No. Now look, I have to explain why I can't let you have the body. We're in touch with a nonhuman signal that -- "

            "I can give you romantic prowess. No woman can withstand that. A warty toad could seduce a princess."

            "I know, but no. Now this galactic civilization has broadcast what we call the destroyer signal that -- "

            "How about turning me loose for a specified interval? Just long enough to lick this problem of yours."

            "No! You don't understand what I'm -- "

            "Junior, are you trying to lecture me on -- "

            A cold shock hit him, reminding him of the original plunge into the Mediterranean. Ivo looked up to find Afra standing before him, the bucket in her hands. "Yeah, that did it," he said, shaking himself. She had doused him with icewater: three gallons over his head.

            "Are you going to be trapped every time you use the scope?" she demanded. "You were talking in Phoenician again, but I got the bit about two minutes, not that I waited that long. What did he want?"

            "He wants out," Ivo said, shivering. He began to strip off his clothing. "But he can't get out until I let him."

            "What about the destroyer?"

            "He doesn't seem to know about that, or want to hear it. I couldn't make him listen."

            "He must know about it. What about that message -- 'My pawn is pinned'? He knew then."

            Ivo, bouncing up and down to warm up, halted. The wet floor was slippery under his bare toes. "I didn't think of that. He must be lying."

            "That doesn't make sense either. If he knew the destroyer would get him, why should he expose himself to it? And if he knows it won't, why not say so? This isn't a game of twenty questions."

            "Now that I think of it," Ivo admitted, "he didn't sound much like a genius to me. I've never actually talked directly with him before, but -- it was more like a kid bargaining."

            "A child." She brought a towel and started patting him dry, and he realized that for the first time he had undressed unselfconsciously before her. They had all seen each others' bodies during the meltings, but this was not such an occasion. Barriers were still coming down unobtrusively. "How old was he when -- ?"

            "I'm not sure. It took some time to -- to set me up. I remember some events back to age five, but there are blank spots up until eight or nine. That doesn't necessarily mean he took over then -- "

            "So Schön never lived as an adult."

            "I guess not, physically."

            "Or emotionally. You matured, not he. Is it surprising, then, that he appears childish to us? His intelligence and talent don't change the fact that he is immature. He likes to play games, to send out mysterious messages, create worlds of imagination. For him, right and wrong are merely concepts; he has no devotion to adult truth. No developed conscience. And if the notion of the destroyer frightens him -- why, he puts it out of his mind. He no longer admits its danger. He thinks that he can conquer anything just by tackling it with gusto."

            Ivo nodded thoughtfully, looking about for some dry shorts. "But he's still got more knowledge and ability than any adult."

            She brought the shorts. "A sixteen-year-old boy has better reflexes than most mature men, and more knowledge about automotive engineering -- turbo or electric or hydraulic -- but he's still the world's worst driver. It takes more than knowledge and ability; it takes control and restraint. Obviously Schön doesn't have that."

            "If he began driving -- what a crash he could make!"

            "Let's just defuse the destroyer first," she said, smiling grimly. "You were right all along: we're better off without Schön."

 

 

CHAPTER 9

 

            "We have made," Afra announced as though it were news, "five jumps -- and we are now farther removed from the destroyer source than we were when we started."

            "Schön says he can get us there within another six," Ivo said. "He has been figuring the configurations."

            "How does he know them? I thought he didn't have access to -- no, I see he does. He's there when we pinpoint our distance by Earth history, and he probably picks up everything you hear when you're on the scope. Though how he can figure anything meaningful from the pitiful information we have -- "

            "Let's review," Harold said. "Obviously there is something we have missed -- unless Schön is lying."

            "He could be lying," Ivo said. "But he probably wouldn't bother. He wouldn't be interested in coming out unless he were sure he could accomplish something -- and he wouldn't have the patience to go through many more jumps."

            "Our first jump was about fifty years, to 1930," Harold said. "Our second was almost three thousand years, to 930 BC as we make it. A 2,860 year difference, but actually a larger jump because it landed us on the opposite side of Earth, spacially. Then another fifty-year jump to 890 BC, slantwise. This could get confusing if it were not so serious! Finally, jumps to 975 and 975 BC -- just sliding around the arc, getting nowhere. But apparently Schön can make something of it."

            Afra turned to Ivo. "You have his computational ability. Can't you map the pattern he sees?"

            "No. He's using more than mathematics, or at least is making use of more factors than I know how to apply. He can be a lot more creative than I can; his reasoning is an art, while mine is conventional."

            "Maybe he's using astrology," Afra said sourly.

            Harold shook his head. "Astrology doesn't -- "

            "Chances are he knows it, though," Ivo said. "So it's no joke. If it is possible to make a space-curvature map of the galaxy by astrological means, Schön can do it. He -- "

            "Forget it," Afra snapped.

            But Harold was thoughtful. He believes, Ivo thought, having this come home to him personally for the first time, though of course he had known it intellectually before. He really believes.

            And suppose Schön believed too?

            How was any one person to know what was valid and what was not? Even if astrology were a false doctrine, Harold had already applied it to better effect than Afra had her doctrines.

            "I wonder whether we haven't taken too naïve a view of jumpspace," Afra said after a pause. "We've been thinking of a simple string-in-circle analogy -- but a four-dimensional convolution would be a system of a different order. We can't plot it on a two-dimensional map."

            "I could build a spatial-coordinates box," Harold said. "Intersecting lines and planes of force to hold the items in place, the whole thing transparent so we can study any section from any angle. If we plotted our five known points of tangency and looked for an applicable framework, we might be able to begin deriving equations -- "

            Afra grabbed his arm, abruptly excited. "How soon?"

            ***

            The sixth jump was a large one, but that was the least of it.

            They contemplated the figures and could not deny them.

            "It is a different destroyer," Afra said.

            They were another five thousand light-years slantwise from Sol, and Earth history stood at approximately 4,000 BC. The destroyer signal that bathed Earth in 1980-81 was gone -- but sixteen thousand light-years down a divergent azimuth was the point source of a second emission virtually identical to the first.

            "I suspect," Harold said, "that we are up against a genuine galactic conspiracy. A paranoiac's delight."

            "I'm ecstatic," Afra said.

            He cocked a finger at her warningly, as though she were a child of five. "It cannot be coincidence that similar broadcasters of this nature are set up thirty-thousand light-years from each other, the range of each about eighteen thousand miles, presumably expanding in all directions at light velocity. Note how both skirt the middle edge of the galaxy. Six so placed, with a seventh in the center, would cover the vast majority of the stars available."

            "Which seems to prove that their target is all civilization, Earth's being incidental," Afra agreed.

            "Which may also mean that those sources are armed," Ivo said. "Physically, I mean. They couldn't have stood up for all these millennia, against all the species we know exist, otherwise." He paused. "Do we go on?"

            "Yes we go on!" Afra said so fiercely it alarmed him. Every so often she still furnished such a reminder of her personal involvement in this mission. Her memory of Brad -- the god-prince who had died and not returned to life.

            ***

            They were becoming blasé about galactic travel, or at least inured; but the tenth jump amazed them all. It was about thirty-five thousand light-years -- and it placed them entirely outside the Milky Way Galaxy by approximately thirty thousand. They had jumped almost vertically out of the great disk.

            There were no destroyer sources in evidence.

            The party gathered to look at their galaxy on the "direct vision" screen. This was actually an image relayed from sensors set into orbit around Neptune. Harold had not been idle during the intervals of recuperation between hops, and he had sophisticated machinery to play with. The mini-satellites even survived the jumps without disturbance, once the anchor-field had been modified to account for such motion.

            Below them it lay, filling well over a ninety-degree arc: the entire galaxy of man's domicile, viewed broadside by man for the first time. The pallid white of the stars and nebulae deflowered by Earth's atmosphere existed no more; the colossal fog of interstellar gas and dust had been banished from the vicinity of the observer. The result was a view of the Milky Way Galaxy as it really existed -- ten thousand times as rich as that perceivable from Earth.

            Color, yes -- but not as any painter could represent, or any atmosphere-blinded eye could fathom. Red in the center where the old lights faded; blue at the fringe where the fierce new lights formed. A spectrum between -- but also so much more! Here the visible splay extended beyond the range for which nomenclature existed, and rounded out the hues for which human names did exist. A mighty swirl, a multiple spiral of radiance, wave on wave of tiny bright particles, merged yet discrete. The Milky Way was translucent, yet mind-staggeringly intricate in three, in four dimensions.

            At the fringe it was wafer-thin, sustained largely by the masses of cosmic dust that smeared out thousands of stars with every hideously compelling wisp and whorl. Within this sparse galactic atmosphere, nestled in tentacles of gas, floated Sol and its solar debris: hardly worthy of notice, compared to the main body; indeed, invisible without magnification.

            And, clear from this exquisite vantage, the pattern of the stellar conglomeration that was the galaxy emerged: the great spiral arms, coiling outward from the center, doubled bands of matter beginning as the light of massed stars and terminating as the black of thinning dust. Not flat, not even; the ribbons were twisted, showing now broadside, now edgewise, resembling open mobius strips or the helix of galactic DNA.

            And yes, he thought, yes -- the galaxy was a cell, bearing its cosmic organelles and glowing in its animation; motile, warm-bodied, evolving, its life span enduring for tens of billions of years.

            Ivo felt a physical hunger, and realized that he had been looking at the galaxy for many hours. He had been stupefied by it, as a worshiper was said to be blessedly stupefied by confrontation with his god.

            He broke the trance and looked about him. Afra stood nearest, lovely in her mortal fashion, her eyes encompassing a hundred billion stars, her lungs inhaling cubic parsecs of space.

            Harold turned to face him, and he noticed with a shock that the man, like the women, had lost weight sometime in the past few months. Everyone was changing! "Did you observe the globular clusters? Hundreds of them orbiting the galaxy, a million stars in each. Look!" He pointed. "That one must be within ten thousand light-years of us."

            Ivo saw what he had somehow missed before: a glob of light near at hand and about as far out from the galactic disk as they were. It resembled a small galaxy except that it was shapeless, a Rorschach blob of brilliance. It was as though some of the cotton had drifted free when the fabric of the main tapestry was woven. At its fringe, as with the main galaxy, the stars were sparse, but they thickened at the center, converting from blue to mid-range. This cluster was younger than the main body.

            There were many others in sight, most closer in toward the galactic nucleus. Each, perhaps, was a cosmos in itself, possessing lifebearing planets and stellar civilizations. The overall pattern of the entire group of clusters was spherical -- or at least hemispherical, since he could not see what lay on the far side of the main disk. Though he could not perceive individual motion, it struck him that the clusters were in fact orbiting the center of the galaxy -- elliptical orbits, brushing very near to its rim and riding higher over its broad face. Some even seemed to be colliding with the galactic fringe, though that was so diffuse that it was a matter of interpretation.

            Almost, he could picture the original ball of gas and dust, turning grandly in space and throwing out gauze and sparks. The majority of the material remained in the plane of rotation, to become the spiral arms and the overall disk-shape; but a few mavericks took separate courses, and were the clusters.

            How did the universe appear to a creature looking out from a planet aboard one of these island systems? Did any cultures aspire to descend to the mighty mother complex? Was their god a whirlpool thirty thousand parsecs in diameter?

            Beatryx emerged from the kitchen area, and Ivo realized that it had been the smell of cooking that had first brought his attention to his stomach. She was typically the bringer of nourishment. It was good that someone was practical!

            At last Afra came out of it. "We are within the traveler field, but beyond the destroyer," she said musingly. "We are thirty thousand light-years toward the traveler -- so it will be passing Earth and the galaxy for at least that period in the future. Obviously it preceded the destroyers, too, or they would have started earlier and reached out this far. And that suggests -- "

            "That the point of the destroyer may be merely to suppress the alien beam," Harold finished for her. "Since myriad local stations come through nicely, they cannot have incited the destroyer."

            "Talk of xenophobia!" she exclaimed. "Just because it proved that there was superior technology elsewhere -- !"

            Harold cocked his head at her. "Is that the way you see it? I might have reasoned along another line."

            "I am aware of your -- "

            "Soup's on!" Beatryx called, once more abridging the discussion appropriately.

            ***

            Because there was no destroyer here, they turned on the main screen to watch Ivo work. Afra could have used the macroscope herself, but there was now a certain group recognition that this was Ivo's prerogative, and that practice had brought him to a level of proficiency no other person could match without a similar apprenticeship. It was his show.

            He had stage fright.

            He avoided the routine programs, now offered in such splendor and multiplicity that it would require years to index them by hand. Their several language coding families were of course unfamiliar to the others; Ivo had mastered the basics only after intense concentration, though all were to some extent similar to the technique of the destroyer itself. He also avoided the traveler signal (when had that term come into use?); that would come in its own time. Instead he concentrated on the nonbroadcast band and searched for Earth: the world of Man as it was thirty thousand years ago.

            And couldn't pick it up.

            He rechecked the coordinates derived from their telescopic sightings of the Andromeda Galaxy and selected Population II Cepheids of the Milky Way, and made due allowance for galactic rotation and the separate motions of the stars in the course of 30,000 years. Everything checked; he knew where to find Earth.

            Except that it wasn't there.

            "Either I've lost my touch, or Earth didn't exist thirty thousand years ago," he said ruefully.

            "Nonsense," Afra said. "Let me try it." She seemed eager.

            Ivo gave his place to her, feeling as though he had been sent to the showers.

            Afra played with the controls for twenty minutes, focusing first on the Earth-locale, then elsewhere. The screen remained a mélange of color; no clear image appeared. At last she swung around to focus on one of the globular clusters outside the galaxy -- and got an image.

            She had set the computer to fix on any planetary surface encountered in a routine sweep of the views available, and it had done that. The picture was of a dark barren moon far from its primary. In the night sky above the horizon individual stars could be made out, and even the light band of massed distant stars.

            "That's no cluster!" Groton exclaimed. "You wouldn't find a band like that in a spherical mass of stars."

            Afra fussed with the controls, adjusting the scene clumsily and finally losing it. She returned to the computer sweep, while Ivo chafed internally at the loss of the only picture they had landed, and such a mysterious one. The picture would not come in again. She began to show her temper.

            "Something strange here," Harold said. "The alignment of that image doesn't check with the direct view of the cluster. And the scene was typical of a planet within the galaxy. That light band was the Milky Way!"

            Afra set the computer for Earth-type planet selection, leaving the azimuth where it was, and waited while it filtered and sorted the crowded macrons. Ivo was anxious to take over again, but held himself back. The situation certainly was strange, and Afra obviously lacked the expertise necessary to solve the contradictions. But it would not be diplomatic to point this out.

            A green landscape appeared, Earthlike but not Earth. Afra jumped to manual -- and lost it. She swore in unladylike manner.

            Abruptly she disengaged. "I'm not doing any good here. Take it back, Ivo."

            And he was in it, oblivious to the others, using the goggles though the main screen remained on. He felt his way into the situation, reacting as though the computer were part of his own brain. There was no image directly from Earth -- or from any other point in the galaxy. Except for the programs; they came through splendidly. What was the distinction between the tame macrons and the wild ones, that only the tame should pass?

            The programs were artificial, generated by sophisticated Type II technology macronic equipment set up within a powerful gravitic field. He knew that much from the local stations, who discussed their techniques freely. Their signals, in effect, were polarized, stripped of wasteful harmonics and superficial imprints, and radiated out evenly. Natural impulses were weak and unruly, by contrast, and tangled with superimpositions. A wild macron could produce several hundred distinct pictures and a great deal of additional scramble; a cultured macron produced only one, or one integrated complex.

            It was like the difference between a random splash and a controlled jet of water. The splash interacted with its environment more copiously, but the jet went farther and accomplished more in a particular manner.

            What was the galactic environment?

            Light. Gas. Energy.

            "Gravity."

            It was Schön whispering in his ear. Communication between them was growing more facile, to Ivo's distress. He preferred Schön thoroughly buried.

            Gravity: cumulative in its gross effect, but divided within its originating body. Outside the massive galaxy --

            Macrons: essences born of gravitic ripples, and subject to them. And what happened to those emerging from the galaxy itself, meeting the larger interactions of the universe?

            He knew, now. The programs struck through, even as far as other galaxies, if properly focused, for they were beamed and streamlined and syncopated and unencumbered. But the wild impulses could not make it; they were too woolly, prickly, horny, disorganized. They felt the great galactic field, were bent by it (for they were creatures of gravity), hauled around as were the clusters, strained...

            But not the light. Galactic gravity was not enough to prevent the light from escaping. And finally the light struck out into deep space, leaving its macrons behind, divorced. Like a cloak shed of its master, the mantle of macrons collapsed, compacted, lost form -- but remained as lightspeed impulses, clumping to each other, billions where one had been before. Unable to escape the master field, they remained in orbit about the mighty primary, the galactic nucleus.

            Thus, shotgun images at right angles to the disk of the galaxy.

            Thus, no direct contemporary -- within 30,000 years -- news.

            Thus -- history.

            Ivo narrowed the coded specifications to a classification of one: Earth. Earth, any time since life conquered its land masses. He swept the captive stream, searching for animation. He scored.

            They were watching the screen, and he heard their joint outcry. Earth, yes --

            The creature resembled in a certain fashion a crocodile, but its snout was short and blunt. Its body, with its stout round legs and powerful tail, was about seven feet long. A grotesque bridgework of bone and leather stood upon its back, like a stiff sail.

            It was morning, and the animal rested torpidly at right angles to the rays of the sun, its eyes partially closed. Behind it was an edge of water clustered with banded stems, a number of them broken. Tall brush or alienistic trees stood in the background, and the ground seemed bleak because there was no grass.

            "That," said Afra, "is Dimetrodon. The sail-backed lizard of the Permian period of Earth, two hundred and fifty million years ago. The sail was used as a primitive temperature control mechanism before better means were found. Though Dimetrodon looks clumsy, that heat-control was an immense advantage, since reptiles tend to be dull when cold -- "

            "I don't see how a sail could make it warm," Beatryx said.

            "Oh, it does, it does, and cool too. Broadside to the sun it soaks up heat; endwise it dissipates it. Reptiles don't dare get too hot, either, you see. Quite clever, really -- and it does make identification easy."

            "Paleontology is not my strong point," Harold said, "but some such conjecture came to my mind, minus the nomenclature. Wasn't the sail-back the ancestor to the dinosaurs?"

            Ivo, wearing the goggles, could not see the expression on her face, but he could hear it. "What dinosaur practiced temperature control? Dimetrodon was a carnivorous pelycosaur, probably ancestral to the therapsids. Mammal-like reptiles, to you."

            "Oops, wrong family tree," he said without rancor. "Still, a surprising manifestation, considering that we are only thirty thousand light-years out. I don't see how it could actually be Earth."

            "It is Earth," Ivo said, remembering that the others had not been privy to his deliberations. "The macrons are in orbit around the galaxy. They've clumped together until they have something like mass in themselves, but we can still read them when we catch them. These must have circled a thousand times. I don't dare mess with the orientation; reception is largely a matter of chance, since there's so much to choose from. All space and all time, as it were."

            And as he spoke, the picture faded. The vagaries of macronics had washed out the reception. He reset the sweep and angled back and forth, searching for a steadier pulse.

            "Two hundred and fifty million years!" Afra said. "The galaxy should have completed a full revolution in that period."

            "Galactic revolution shouldn't be relevant," Harold said. "We're out from the flat face of it, not the edge. The macron orbiting here must be at right angles to the galactic rotation, and not circular at all. I wonder whether it isn't more like a magnetic field?"

            Ivo had another picture on the screen: an animal resembling a deer, but with doglike paws. It stood about a yard high, and poked its nose through the low brush as though searching for vegetable tidbits.

            "Mammalian," Afra said. "Oligocene, probably. I don't quite place the -- "

            Then it happened: one of those breaks that mock probability. There was a concerted gasp.

            A monstrous beak stabbed down into the picture, followed by a tiny malignant eye and white headfeathers. It was the head of a bird -- almost, in itself, the size of the full torso of the deerlike animal. The cruel beak gaped, stabbed, and closed on the deer's quivering neck.

            Now the rest of the predator came into view. It was indeed a bird: nine feet tall and constructed like a wingless and huge-legged hawk. Three mighty claws pierced turf with every step, each scaly and muscular.

            "Phororhacos!" Afra exclaimed, awed. "Miocene, in South America. Twenty million years ago -- "

            "How horrible!" That was Beatryx.

            "Horrible? Phororhacos was a magnificent specimen, one of the pinnacles of avian evolution. Flightless, to be sure -- but this bird was supreme on land, in its territory. If diversity of species is considered, aves is more successful than mammalia -- "

            They watched the bird lift its prey by the neck and shake it into unconsciousness or death. Ivo felt the pangs of the onslaught, and had to refrain from putting his hand against his neck. Then beak and talon disemboweled the carcass, and the gory feeding began. Now Ivo felt the taste of warm blood in his toothless mouth.

            The picture faded again.

            "We skipped two hundred million years between images," Afra said. "How about one in between -- like a dinosaur?"

            "In time, we should be able to fill in Earth's entire history, from this debris," Ivo said. "But the selection is largely random, for any one scene. The macrons aren't uniformly distributed, though they seem to be reasonably well ordered within the clumps. I can keep trying, though." He, too, was fascinated by this widening of their horizon. No longer did they have to jump enormous distances in order to see the preman past.

            All space and all time...

            "I hate to break this up," Harold said, "but we do have more serious concerns. We are drifting far outside our galaxy, and a wrong jump could lose us entirely."

            That brought them to attention, and he continued more specifically: "I gather that the pictures would be less random if their scope were not so limited, no pun intended. Suppose we look at the Solar System as a whole, and try to get some clue to the finer alignment of our macronic streams? If we can learn to manipulate our reception properly, the significant history of our entire galaxy will be open to us. That means -- "

            "That means we can trace the onset of the destroyer!" Afra broke in. "Discover what species did it, and why." She paused. "Except that it hasn't reached this far out yet."

            "That's why we are free to experiment. Once we know what we're doing, we can slide in closer and pick it up again. We won't have to approach that generator blind."

            "Is that right, Ivo?" she asked. "Would a Solar System fix -- the entire system -- promote uniform reception?"

            There had been a time when she did not ask his opinion on anything technical. "Yes. I could put the screen on schematic, and there would be a much broader band to work with. It would be excellent practice, though I can't guarantee the results at first."

            She did not answer, so he set it up. The image in his goggles and on the screen became a cartoon diagram coordinated by the computer and his own general guidance. The sun was represented by a white disk of light, and the planets by colored specks traveling dotted orbits, with their moons in similarly marked paths. The scale was not true, but the identities and positions were clear enough.

            "I'll try for a system history," Ivo said. "But it will take some time to map the macron streams, assuming they are reasonably consistent. Then I'll have to patch together recordings, since I won't have chronological order at first. No point in your watching."

            "We are with you, Ivo," Afra said with sudden warmth. "We'll watch. Maybe we can help."

            He knew she was being impersonally practical, but the gesture still warmed him considerably. This was the way he preferred her: working with him, not trying to buy him. He bent to the task, searching for comprehensible traces. He had a macroscopic patchwork ahead of him.

            "Let me do it, clubfingers," Schön said in his ear. "I can post it all in an hour. You'll take two weeks, and you'll miss a lot."

            Ivo had already discovered the magnitude of the task. He did not want to be embarrassed by the inevitable tiring of his audience as the unproductive hours went by. "Do it, then," he replied irritably, and gave Schön rein. More and more was becoming possible, between them.

            Yet -- if Schön could do this, using the macroscope -- what had happened to the destroyer? The entire basis of Ivo's refusal to free Schön was being thrown into question.

            Perhaps -- was it a hope? -- he would fail.

            Schön had not been bluffing. He expanded into Ivo's brain and body and applied his juvenile but overwhelming intellect to the problem. Ivo watched his left fingers dance over the computer keys while his right ones flexed on the knob, and wondered whether he had not made a serious mistake. He had not freed Schön -- but Schön might free himself, given this leeway. He was clever enough...

            The screen cleared. The indicated scale expanded to two light-years diameter and a representation of cosmic dust appeared.

            "What are you doing?" Afra demanded. "That's no stellar system."

            "Primeval hydrogen cloud, stupid," Schön replied with Ivo's lips and tongue, while Ivo winced.

            Afra shut up and the show went on. Had he not been observing from so intimate a spot, Ivo would have suspected it of being entirely fanciful. As it was, he knew that Schön had actually manipulated the macroscope to pick up impulses dating back five or ten billion years; the representation, though indirect, bridged and abridged, was an honest one.

            The cloud of primitive gas swirled and contracted, the time scale showing the passage of roughly a million years every 25 seconds. In the course of ten million years the gas cloud compressed itself into a diameter of a hundred million miles, then to a scant one million, and then it flared into life and became a star. The compression had raised its temperature until the hydrogen/helium "ignition" point was achieved; now it was drawing enormous energy from the conversion of hydrogen atoms to a quarter the number of helium atoms.

            "It's like trying to cram four glasses of liquor into a fifth," Afra explained to Beatryx. "A quart won't fit into a fifth, so -- "

            "Doesn't it depend on the size of the fifth glass?"

            Oh no, Ivo thought. Once more the two women had crossed signals. Harold would have to untangle them, as he always did. Eventually Beatryx would be made to understand that four hydrogen atoms had a combined atomic weight of 4.04, while a single helium atom's weight was 4.00. The combination of four hydrogens to make one helium thus released the extra .04 as energy: the life of stars.

            Only one percent of the new atom released -- but so great was the aggregate that it halted the collapse of the huge cloud/star pictured on the screen and stabilized it for a period. Most of the light of the universe derived from this same process; the myriad stars of the Milky Way Galaxy were merely foci for hydrogen/helium conversion.

            Several billion years passed in a few intense minutes.

            At last the fuel ran low, and the sun swelled into a vast red giant a hundred times its prior diameter.

            "That can't be Sol!" Harold objected. "Our sun is only halfway through its life cycle."

            Schön did not dignify this with a reply. Ivo did not comprehend the situation either, but still knew the image was accurate.

            The star, having exhausted its available hydrogen, collapsed again. But within it now was a core of almost pure helium, the product of its lifelong consumption of hydrogen. As it contracted to a much tighter ball than before, the internal temperature increased to ten times that of the earlier conversion. Something had to give. It did: the helium began to break down into carbon. A new fuel had been discovered.

            The star was in business again, as a fast-living white dwarf.

            But soon the helium ran out, and the tiny star faded into a blackened ball of matter no larger than a planet. It had come to a dismal end. It was dense with collapsed matter and peripheral heavy elements captured during its glory from galactic debris, but it was dead, a drifting ash.

            After more millions of years this minuscule corpse was swept into the sphere of influence of a nascent star, a body forming from the more plentiful gas nearer the rim of the galaxy. As the new star, heedless of its degrading destiny, took on the characteristic brilliance of the long atomic conversion, this cinder became a satellite, sweeping up some of the gas for itself. It enhanced its mass and developed an atmosphere, but remained inert. Its day was done; it was never to regain its erstwhile grandeur.

            "That's Earth!" Afra said. Then, immediately: "No, it can't be. Wrong composition, and the core is much too dense." She was absorbing the symbols for material and density automatically, seeing the planet as it was.

            A second ember was acquired by the young system, also representing the death of an ancient star. Then a third and a fourth, each accruing what pitiful lagniappe it could from the scant debris of space. The last two were much larger cores than the first, and acquired more atmosphere for their dotage, but had no hope of rejuvenation. Four planets orbited the star, each far older as entities than it was.

            A neighbor had problems. The picture shifted to cover it for a geologic moment. This star was much larger than the original one and had consumed its hydrogen -- and helium -- lavishly. In a scant few million years it had run its course. But its mass, and therefore its internal heat, was such that the conversions did not stop at carbon. Oxygen, sodium, silicon, calcium -- all the way down to iron, 26 on the atomic scale, the elements formed in this stellar furnace. A series of thermal intensifications -- cataclysmic storms -- broke through the shell of helium even before its breakdown was complete, producing trace amounts of heavy metals up to lead; but the basic, energy-releasing conversions predominated. The demise of a large star was not a quiet matter.

            When nothing remained at the core lighter than iron, the gravitic collapse resumed. The heat ascended to a hundred billion degrees. Strength was drawn from this collapse, and energy poured back into the core to form new matter. The heavier elements all the way up to uranium now were manufactured in quantity.

            But at this final collapse the star rebounded in an explosion that splattered its mass across the galaxy: a supernova. A splendid spectrum of heavy elements shot past the more conservative viewpoint star and through its satellite system, and some of this was captured while some fell into the star itself. The system was richer than it had been, feeding greedily upon the gobbets of its neighbor's destruction.

            The original planet intercepted a fair share of this largesse, and gained perceptibly thereby, as did the others. But the largest fragments, mostly iron, fell into orbit and coalesced into planets in their own right. Now three small satellites circled within the four large ones.

            "Mars, Earth, Venus!" Afra said, caught up in this adventure. "And the first planet we saw is Neptune -- our planet!"

            Schön still did not bother to comment. Ivo felt Schön's concentration as he identified and captured the diverse threads of the macronic tapestry and organized them into a coherent and chronological visual history. This was a task that required all of Schön's powers, the artistic with the computational and linguistic. They were nevertheless exceptional powers for an exceptional undertaking; Ivo had tended to lose sight of just how potent a mind his mentor-personality possessed. If a mouse born into Leo remained a mouse, a lion confined to the harness of a mouse remained a lion. Or, in this case, a Ram.

            More time passed, and the slow accretions continued. A billion years after the first, a second nova developed in the immediate neighborhood. More rich debris angled by, and the sun's family levied another tax on it, acquiring material for two more inner planets and a number of major moons.

            "Mercury and -- Vulcan?" Afra inquired. "Or is that Pluto, misplaced?" For there were now five inner planets -- one more than could be accounted for.

            Schön kept on working.

            From distant space, travelers came. Most passed, merely deflected by Sol's gravity, not captured. One, however, lurched into a wobbly elliptical orbit that passed close to that of planet Jupiter.

            "Six inner planets?" Afra demanded in a tone of outrage.

            It was not to be. Jupiter wrestled the newcomer around in a harsh initiation, twisting it inward toward the sun...and toward the orbit of the next inward planet. Too close. They drifted, interacted -- and came together.

            And sundered each other before they touched.

            "Roche's Limit squared," Afra murmured.

            One fragment shot out to intercept planet Saturn, and was captured there -- too close. Roche's Limit exerted itself again: the apprentice moon shattered, and the tiny fragments gradually coalesced into a discernible ring.

            A major fragment of the original demolition traveled farther. It intercepted Neptune, where it too broke up, forming two tremendous moons and some fragments. One moon escaped the planet but not the system, and became the erratic outer minion Pluto; the other hooked in close to Neptune and remained as Triton.

            Another major fragment angled across an inner orbit and interacted there, too large for capture, too small to escape. The two bodies formed the binary planet known as Earth and Luna.

            Then a close shot at almost normal time. The landscape of Earth, seven hundred million years ago: strange continents, strange life on both land and sea. The moon came then, sweeping terribly close, a tenth of the distance it was to have at the time of Man. No romantic approach, this, but the awful threat of another application of the Limit. The tides of Earth swelled into calamity, gaping chasms split the surface of Luna. Mounds of water passed entirely over the continents, obliterating every feature upon them and leaving nothing but bare and level land. No land-based life survived, even in fossil, and much of the higher sea-life also perished in that violence. The progression of animate existence on Earth had been set back by a billion years: the greatest calamity it was ever to know.

            "And now we make love by the light of Luna," Afra said, "and plot it into our horoscopes as 'feeling.' "

            It was Harold's turn not to comment.

            All this, stemming from the single trans-Mars wreckage -- yet the bulk of the refuse dispersed as powder or spiraled into the sun, to have no tangible impact. Debris remained to form a crude ring around the sun in the form of the asteroid belt, and a number of chunks eventually became retrograde moonlets. It would be long before the disorder wrought by this accident was smoothed over.

            A third nova, more distant, provided another cloud of dust and particles, adding several tiny moons. Some of the swirls become comets, but the complexion of the system did not alter in any important way. Sol had its family, collected from all over the galaxy, portions of which were older and portions newer than itself. Life recovered from its setback on Earth and individual species crawled back upon the reemerging land and drifting continents in the wake of a receding moon.

            One thing more: a solitary traveler came from the more thickly-settled center-section of the galaxy. It was a planetary body moving rather slowly, as though its kinetic energies had been spent by encounters with other systems. It looped about Sol in an extraordinarily wide pass, hesitated, and settled down to stay, averaging seven billion miles out.

            "What is that?" Afra inquired.

            "That thing must be twice the size of Jupiter!" Harold said. "How could it be there, in our system, and we not know it?" But no one answered.

            Ivo half-suspected Schön of joking.

            The motion stopped. The picture remained: the contemporary situation, updated to within a million years. They had witnessed in summary the astonishing formation and history of the Solar System.

            "Beautiful, Ivo!" Harold exclaimed. "If you can do that, you can do anything. Congratulations."

            Ivo removed the macroscope paraphernalia. They all were smiling at him, and Afra was getting ready to speak. "I didn't do it," he said.

            "How can you say that!" Beatryx protested. "Everything was so clear."

            But Afra and Harold had sobered immediately. "Schön?" Harold asked with sympathy.

            Ivo nodded. "He said it would take me two weeks, and he was right. He said he could do it in an hour. So I dared him to, I guess."

            "Wasn't that -- dangerous?" Afra asked.

            "Yes. But I retained possession."

            Harold was not satisfied. "My chart indicates that a person like Schön would be unlikely to put that amount of effort into a project unless he expected to gain personally. What was his motive?"

            "So it was Schön who called me 'stupid,' " Afra murmured.

            "I think he has found a way to get around the destroyer," Ivo said carefully. "The memory trace in my mind, I mean, and maybe the rest too. I think he can take over, now -- and I guess he wants to."

            "Are you willing to let him?" Harold asked, not looking at him.

           "Well, that is in the contract, you might say. If the rest of you feel I should." He said it as though it were a routine decision, but it was only with considerable effort that he kept his voice from shaking. It was extinction he contemplated, and it terrified him.

            When Afra had feared loss of identity she had fallen back on physical resources and demanded the handling. Irrational, perhaps, but at least it had satisfied her. What did he have to bolster his courage?

            "So Schön was merely making a demonstration for us," Harold said. "An impressive one, I admit. Proving that he can make good on his claims. That he can get us to the destroyer, and with the advance information we need. All we have to do is ask him."

            Afra's eyes were on Harold now, but she remained silent. Ivo wondered in what spheres her thoughts were coursing, and was afraid to guess. She was intent and exquisite.

            "Is it necessary to take a vote?" Harold asked, casually. Thus readily did they accept the prospect of a companion's departure.

            "Yes," Afra said.

            "Secret ballot?"

            She nodded agreement.

            How badly did she want that destroyer?

            Harold leaned over and filched the note-pad from Afra's purse. Ivo wondered idly why he didn't use his own pad for the dirty work. Harold tore out a sheet, folded it, creased it between his fingernails, tore and retore it. He handed out the ballots.

            "I -- don't think I'd better vote," Ivo said, refusing his ballot. "Three can't tie." Did they realize -- ?

            Harold shrugged and marked his paper. "The question is, do we ask for Schön, yes or no," he said.

            The two women marked theirs and folded them deliberately. Harold picked up the ballots, shuffled them without looking and handed the three to Ivo. "Read the verdict."

            "But I'll recognize the script. It won't be secret."

            The truth was that he was afraid to look. This was another nightmare, where everybody took things casually except himself, he being the only one to properly appreciate the nature of the chasm over which he leaned.

            "Have the computer read them, then," Harold said. How could he be so indifferent?

            Ivo dumped the slips into the analyzer hopper and punched SUMMARIZE. There was a scramble inside the machine as it assimilated the evidence.

            The printout emerged. Ivo tore it off, forcing himself to read:

 

                        NO

                        NO

                        NO

                        IVO

                        LOVE

 

            The relief was so great he felt ill. It took him a moment to realize that somebody had voted more than once, and another to discern the other oddities about the listing. Someone had written "NO" carelessly so that the first stroke of the "N" was unconnected, and the machine had picked it up as "I" and "V" and added the "O." Thus the word became his name.

            He was unable to explain how the last word had come about.

            Harold stood up. "Was there any doubt?" he asked. "I don't think we'll need to do this again. Let's get back on the job. We have a lot to do and none of us are geniuses."

            Only after they were gone did he realize that he still held the printout -- that he had not read aloud or shown to any of them.

            ***

            Reentry into the galaxy -- was anticlimactic. Group confidence was on the ascendant. They had been unable to pinpoint the destroyer's moment of origin; there had been nothing, then everything, and there was no emanation from the area except those terrible "tame" macrons. Apparently the destroyer broadcaster had been set up rapidly by a task force that jumped into location and away again in a few hours, and whose technicians could somehow interfere with wild macronic emission. Unless the observer happened to land at the very fringe of the broadcast, its inception could not be caught. But still they had confidence, sure somehow that the worst was over.

            They centered on the destroyer source nearest Earth, jumping toward it and away again, but gaining from experience. The jumpspace map was sketchy, but it helped, and overall their approach was steady. Five thousand light-years from it; eight thousand, one thousand, seven thousand, four hundred, two thousand, seventy, twenty.

            There they paused. "We can't get any closer," Afra said. "Our minimum jump is fifty years, and that would put us thirty years on the other side, or worse."

            "Nothing to do but back off and make another pass," Harold said. "Shuffle the alignment and hope."

            "Schön says he can -- "

            "If he wants to give us the info, fine," Harold said. "If he's using it to buy his way into this enterprise, tell him to get lost. We idiots can muddle through on our own."

            They retreated and made another pass, coming within ten light-years. The third try was worse, but the fourth was very close: less than a parsec, or just over three light-years.

           "This is probably about the best our luck has to offer," Afra said. "We could renovate Joseph and row across, as it were. A few years in melt -- "

            "We'd have to reconstitute every year, for safety," Ivo reminded her. "The melt's shelf-life isn't guaranteed indefinitely."

            "I am not a gambling man," Harold said, "but I'd rather gamble. That is, try some more passes. I don't want to approach the destroyer in the melted state. I want my wits about me, not my protoplasm."

            They gambled -- and lost. Six more passes failed to bring them within five light-years of the target. That parsec had been their best, and they couldn't even find that track again. Jumpspace was too complex a puzzle.

            "Schön says -- "

            "Shut up!" This time it was Afra, and her vehemence gave him another warm feeling. He remembered the word LOVE in the balloting, and dared to wonder. His love for her had changed its nature but never its certainty; he knew her well, now, and understood her liabilities as well as her assets, and loved them all. It was a love without illusion; he expected nothing of her, and drew his pleasure solely from being near her. Or so he told himself.

            But -- had she written the word? Harold would not have done it, and Beatryx should not have thought of it. Still --

            "I think," said Harold, "we had better give up on this one. There are several others in the galaxy, and for our purpose any one of them should do for a beginning. Perhaps our channel runs closer to another destroyer."

            That much they had verified, coming down into the Milky Way: there were a number of destroyers. Their devastating signals had intercepted the human party at about eighteen thousand light-years, wherever they moved within or near the galaxy. Once they had had two destroyers in "sight" simultaneously, and had verified the similarity of the signals by superimposing one on the other.

            They gambled again, going for a new target. Once more their luck changed. Their second pass at the second destroyer brought them to just within one light-day.

            ***

            At last they learned why it had been so difficult to obtain normal macroscopic information about any destroyer. Here virtually all macronic impulses were overridden by the artificial signal; or perhaps they were preempted for its purpose. Only one flux emanated from this area of space, and hardly anything coherent entered it. Apart from the destroyer signal itself, it was blackout. The macroscope, for the first time, was out of commission.

            Except for the traveler signal. That, oddly, came through as strongly as ever. This was one more evidence of the superiority of the extragalactic technology: the traveler could not be jammed or blocked or diverted.

            "Damn lucky, too," Harold said. "Think of the trouble we'd have getting out of here, otherwise."

            Afra busied herself with the telescopes while the others set about demothballing Joseph. The ship had been buried within Triton, which in turn was buried in Neptune, and extricating it and themselves whole was no offhand matter. Fortunately -- though Harold denied that chance had been involved in such an engineering decision -- they had also mothballed the heavy equipment. Harold had constructed it on macroscopic plans, and what could be done could be undone enough for storage. Anything not deposited well within the Triton drillhole had been melted down during the Neptune approach, of course.

            "I have photographed the destroyer complex," Afra reported at lunch. "Can't actually see anything with these inefficient optical instruments, but as I make it the center unit is almost two miles in diameter and spherical. Definitely artificial. Metallic surface. Since we can't use the macroscope on it, we'll have to go inside ourselves."

            "We seem to be getting blasé about galactic technology," Harold said. "Now we complain about imperfect detail vision at a distance of one light-day! Still, why not go inside, then?"

            "Because they might tweak our tailfeathers with a contraterrene missile, that's why not," she said. "So I suggest we make a dry run first." She appeared uncommonly cheerful, as though, perversely, a weight had lifted from her mind.

            "How?" Harold asked her. "Joseph is all we have."

            "Catapult, stupid," she said, smiling. "We have a spot gravity nullifier, remember? And plenty of material."

            Harold knocked his forehead with the heel of his hand. He, too, seemed uncharacteristically lighthearted. "Of course! We can shape a mock ship and launch it toward the destroyer -- "

            "Let's begin with the satellites," she said. "I think they're the battleships."

            "Satellites?"

            "I told you. The destroyer is ringed with hundred-foot spheres -- six of them, about five light-minutes out, north-south-east-west-up-down."

            "You did not, girl, tell me. You implied that you could not obtain such detail with optics. This complicates the problem."

            "I did tell you. Where were you when I said 'destroyer complex'?"

            "Who was it who said 'There is no faith stronger than that of a bad-tempered woman in her own infallibility'?"

            "Cabell said it. But he also implied that a bad-tempered woman needs an even-tempered man." Both smiled.

            Ivo went on eating, but Beatryx's excellent cooking had become tasteless. Afra and Groton!

            No -- he was jumping to an unfounded suspicion. A ludicrous one! Their open banter merely reflected the increasing intimacy of the little group. It was almost the way the project had been, when he and Brad and all the others had batted inanities back and forth while pursuing deeper studies. Afra and Groton had had to work closely together ever since Triton -- particularly when Ivo himself had skipped off to Tyre and left them stranded in deep space. And there had developed a kind of father-daughter relation between them since the trial. Afra had lost her own father somehow, so --

            ***

            Groton and his waldoes and machines performed their miracles of construction again, and in due course Neptune had a planetary cannon. The bore was thirty-five feet across and two miles long, bottomed by the field-distortion mechanism. Slender tubes opened to the atmospheric surface of the planet in a circle many miles across, and fed into the nether sections of the bore. Great baffles stood ready to redirect the force of the gases that would converge the moment the generators opened the tunnel to space.

            They gathered in the control room to watch the launching. Neptune was rotating, relative to the destroyer complex, and the action had to be properly timed. Afra had done the calculations, querying Ivo only for verification. She had made it plain, in similarly subtle ways, that the relation between them had changed. She was not dependent on him for such work.

            Groton manipulated his controls, that seemed to be almost as intricate as those of the macroscope maintenance, and on the screen the monster dummy-ship was lifted into place. This was a breech-loading cannon with a clip of four; further expenditures on dummies had been deemed a waste of time.

            Groton fired. The gravity-diffusion field came on, taking a moment to develop full intensity. It was generated by a different unit than theirs of the residential area, since it was essential that they continue to be shielded from the full gravity and pressure of the planet. Then gas hurtled through the pipes and smashed into the base of the projectile, itself abruptly weightless. The control chamber shuddered.

            Above, atmosphere imploded into the column of null, meeting the baffles there and forming into an instant hurricane with an eye that was a geyser of methane snow. All the pressure of Neptune's atmosphere drove that bullet forward: one million pounds per square inch, initial.

            Out from ammonia and water, both vaporized by the friction; through hydrogen and beyond the mighty atmosphere: a thousand miles beyond the apparent surface of the planet the motor cut in. The rocket accelerated at a rate that would have terminated any fleshly occupants and shattered unprotected equipment. It was a temporary motor, designed for power and not duration, and it consumed itself as it functioned; and it got the ship up to a velocity that would bring it to the destroyer in days instead of months.

            "Certainly looks like a ship from here," Afra said with admiration. "Are you sure you didn't put Joseph in that lock by mistake?"

            "Drone ship, on my honor. It only weighs a tenth as much as Joseph, and that galactic formula would asphyxiate our type of life as soon as it ignited, not to mention the fact that it burns its own guts. You can do a lot with chemical drive if you don't have to sit on top of it."

            The watch began. Each person tracked the drone for four hours, ready to sound the alarm when anything happened. A light-day was a very small distance compared to those they had become accustomed to, but even galactically sponsored chemical drive was very weak. The rocket achieved its top velocity and coasted, an empty shell. Their vigil lasted a fortnight.

            The drone passed the nearest satellite and angled toward the destroyer itself. Nothing happened. It came within a light-minute of the main sphere and curved around it as though bent by a tremendous gravitational force, but did not stop. It passed another satellite on the way out.

            "Either they're dead or playing possum," Groton said. "Do we try another?"

            Another two weeks of eventless waiting, Ivo thought, but certainly the wisest course.

            "I'm satisfied," Afra said. "Obviously there are no functioning automatic defenses. I'm sorry we wasted this much time. Let's move in ourselves."

            Ivo thought of objecting, then decided not to. She had spoken and it was so, impetuous or not. This project was hers, now.

            ***

            They were space-borne again, and it was a strange sensation. Not since they put down on Schön, erstwhile moon of a moon, had they taken Joseph out of planetary control for any extended period. In the passing months the old reflexes had faded, if they had ever been really implanted, making free-fall unfamiliar, making them have to stop and think out their actions.

            "I like it," Afra said. "Neptune is home, of course, but this is vacation."

            Why was she so buoyant? Ivo wondered. They were near the termination of their grisly mission, in whatever guise that mission existed now, and he would have expected it to remind her forcefully of the fate of her supposed fiancé. Instead she acted as though she had found new love. She hardly seemed to care about the destroyer itself, though it was the instigator of all of this.

            Groton clapped his hand on Afra's shoulder, sending her skidding in the weightlessness. "Girl, if you don't get on those computations before I reorganize our gear, I'll have the cap'n hurl you into the brig!"

            They had tied down their equipment and pushed out from Neptune slowly, without the benefit of full gravity nullification. This had been expensive in working fluid, but far safer for man and machine. Now the ship was scooping in more hydrogen and compressing it, at the fringe of the Neptune atmosphere, so that they would have full tanks for the main haul. They were ready to retool for straight space flight.

            They had to melt, despite Groton's earlier objection; there was no other way to cover such a distance. The cycle was routine, however, once their course had been set. They revived in good condition light-seconds from one of the satellites. It had seemed wiser to investigate the minion before the master.

            Ivo had been lulled by the somewhat cavalier attitude affected by the others, but the sight of the alien sphere looming so close -- telescopically -- reminded him with a shock that this was to be their first physical contact with an artifact of extraterrestrial civilization. A malignant one.

            It was monstrous as they approached, not so much in its hundred-foot diameter (Afra had done expert photographic work and analyzing, to pinpoint that size at a distance of a light-day, even allowing for the superior equipment sponsored by galactic technology) as in its suggestion of implacable power. The surface was pocked, as though it had been subject to spatial debris for many millions of years. Portions of it projected, reminiscent of cannon.

            Afra took over the telescope to make detail photographs. Now, while her attention was wholly taken up, he could watch her. She was radiant; her hair was bound in a single braid that drifted over one shoulder and down her front, red against the white of her blouse. She had recovered the weight she had lost and was now in vibrant health. Her lips were parted, half-smiling in her concentration. Light from the equipment played over her high cheekbone and across her perfect chin, caressing her face with shadow.

            Was it the single rose he smelled again?

            "Moonstruck," Brad had termed him, setting that emotional snare, and Afra was that moon. Ivo knew he would have loved her anyway, whatever her color, whatever her intelligence. It was perhaps her appearance more than her personality; he had disillusioned himself long ago about his romantic values and hers. Still, the love he felt encompassed all of her, the violent along with the beautiful. All, no matter what.

            She jerked her head up, eyes widening in shock, showing that blue again. Ivo jumped guiltily, thinking she had caught him staring, but her exclamation banished such inconsequential alarm immediately.

            "It's tracking us!"

            Groton and Beatryx seemed to materialize beside her.

            "It's live!" Afra said with the same shock. "It has a range-finder on us."

            "Since we're a sitting duck, all we can do is quack," Groton said, but he did not look as complacent as he sounded.

            Beatryx ventured one of her rare technical comments: "Wouldn't it have done something, if it meant to?"

            Afra smiled, as she did so readily and prettily now. "You're right, Tryx. I'm getting hysterical after the fact. We'd be smithereened by now if we were going to be. We're within fifty thousand miles, and you can bet that's well within its sphere of control. So eradication just isn't in our horoscope for today."

            The strange antenna continued to track as they came close. It was a bowl-shaped spiral of wire about two feet in diameter, with beads strung on the outermost spire. There was no other sign of life. Ivo felt the cold sweat on his palms and wiped it off, embarrassed by it and what it signified. Was he the only one to feel old-fashioned fear?

            The journey via melting and ten-G acceleration had reduced the problems of deceleration and docking to elementary ones; maneuvering was nothing after distance had been conquered. Afra piloted them into a companion orbit -- the destroyer-sphere five light-minutes distant, small as it was, was the primary for both -- and let Joseph drift. None of them had conjectured how an object two miles in diameter could have a gravitational field about it equivalent to that of a small star. Galactic technology had done it, utilizing gravity as a tool, and that was explanation enough.

            "Someone should stay on the ship," Groton said. "We can't be sure what is waiting -- there."

            "Ivo should stay," Afra said. "If anything happens, he's the only one who can get the ship out. Neptune, rather." She said it as though he were a fixture, a commodity; she hadn't asked his opinion. "Give me one companion, though; I'm afraid of the dark."

            "I'll stay," Beatryx said. "You go, Harold."

            Ivo could find no legitimate objection to make.

            The two got into their suits and departed via the airlock at the appropriate time. Ivo was alone with Beatryx for the first time since their last conversation on satellite Schön, seemingly so long ago. In the interim he had traveled into Earth's historic past, and into its geologic past, and beyond the fringe of the galaxy. His body had run through the astonishing liquefication and reconstitution so many times that the process had become routine, even tedious. He had lived many lifetimes, and many of his basic certainties had been annulled.

            Why, then, did it bother him so much that Afra and Groton should be together?

            He tried to say something to Beatryx, but realized that he could not ask her advice without undermining her own framework. She had proper faith in her husband.

            He looked at her, realizing in this isolated moment of association and reflection how much she had changed. She had been plump and fortyish when he met her at age thirty-seven; in the period of the Triton trouble she had become emaciated and fortyish. Now she was thirty-eight -- and had regained her health without her former avoirdupois. She looked thirtyish. Her hair had brightened into full blonde, her limbs were sleek, her torso reminiscent of the goddess she had been momentarily during the first reconstitution. It had happened gradually, this change in her; the surprise was that it had taken him so long to recognize it.

            "You have changed, Ivo," she said.

            "I've changed?"

            "Since your visit to Tyre. You were so young at first, so unsure. Now you're more mature."

            "I don't feel mature," he said, flattered but disbelieving. "I'm still full of doubts and frustrations. And Tyre was nothing but violence and intrigue -- not my type of life at all. I don't see how it could have changed me."

            She only shrugged.

            He glanced at the screen again, reminded that half their party was in the alien structure. Groton and Afra --

            "She has let go of Bradley Carpenter," Beatryx said. "Have you seen the difference? She's changed so much. Isn't it wonderful?"

            Was there such a thing as being too generous? True, the two were risking their lives by attempting personal contact with aliens likely to be powerful and hostile; but the human interaction could not be entirely ignored. "I've noticed the difference, yes."

            "And she gets along so much better with Harold. I'm sure he has been good for her. He's very steady."

            Ivo nodded.

            "She's such a lovely girl," Beatryx said. There was no malice in her tone; nothing but concerned pleasure.

            "Lovely."

            "You look tired, Ivo. Why don't I keep watch while you rest?"

            "That's very kind of you." He went to his hammock and strapped himself in. It was an anchor rather than a support, in this weightlessness.

            It was this about Beatryx, he thought: she was happy. There was no place in her philosophy for jealousy or petty conjecture. She did not worry about her husband because she had no internal doubts.

            How much could the group have accomplished, without her? The ingredients of strife had been abundantly present, particularly with the strong personalities of Groton and Afra clashing at the outset, and the background specter of Schön, but somehow every flareup had been diverted or pacified. Beatryx had done it...and profited in the doing. Intelligence, determination, skill -- these would have come to nothing without that basic stability.

            He must have slept, for he was Sidney Lanier again: poor, ill, his aspirations unrecognized. He did some more teaching, but the pupils were unruly, the employers exacting. It was the Reconstruction, and it was bad; the carpetbaggers corrupted everything. "Dumb in the dark, not even God invoking," he wrote, "we lie in chains, too weak to be afraid."

            But the love of Mary Day, now Mary Day Lanier, sustained him. She was as ill as he, and as hard put upon, but their marriage was an unqualified blessing. His son Charles delighted him, for he loved children though he did not really understand them.

            In 1869 James Wood Davidson published a survey of two hundred and forty-one Southern writers. Lanier was listed, though largely for completeness; much more space was devoted to others considered more notable.

            But you were the greatest of them all! Ivo cried. If only your contemporaries had opened their minds --

            But nothing changed. The mind of Ivo was prisoner to the situation of another person; he could watch, he could know, but he could not influence.

            As Schön was watching him even now...

            At Macon they spoke of Sidney Lanier as "A young fool trying to write poetry." They paid no attention to his dialect poems -- a form whose origin was later to be credited to another man -- or his cautions against the shiftless, shortsighted Georgia Cracker ways. Cotton was destroying the land; wheat and corn were far better crops, but the farmers refused to change.

            He put his sentiment at least into a major poem, "Corn," and sent it off to the leading literary magazine of the day, Howells' Atlantic Monthly.

            Howells rejected it.

            Lanier was crushed by this response. He believed in his work, yet the unambitious efforts of others achieved readier acceptance. "In looking around at the publications of the younger poets," he was later to remark, "I am struck with the circumstance that none of them even attempt anything great. The morbid fear of doing something wrong or unpolished appears to have influenced their choice of subjects."

            Not only in poetry! Ivo thought. The entire society is governed by mediocrity. We never learn.

            Several other prominent magazines rejected "Corn."

            Were they absolutely blind?

            At last Lippincott's Magazine accepted it. Publication made Lanier's poetic fame; henceforth he was known, though still poor and ill.

            The year was 1875, and he was thirty-three years old. He would not live to forty.

            Ivo must have slept, for the exploratory party was back already.

            "What a bomb!" Afra exclaimed. "There's enough armament there to blast a fleet. Chemical, laser, and things we won't invent for centuries! All of it on standby."

            "I don't understand," Beatryx said.

            "It's a battlewagon, dear," Groton explained. "But somebody turned it off. All but the sensory equipment."

            "It could have blasted Neptune to bits!" Afra said. The potential violence seemed to fascinate her. "It has -- I think they're gravity-bombs. Devices that would throw the fields associated with matter into complete chaos. Whoever built that wagon really knew how to fight a war!"

            Ivo decided to get into the conversation. "It must be there to protect the destroyer. But why would they deactivate it? If enemies had boarded it and turned it off, they would have gone on to squelch the destroyer too."

            "And why build such an arsenal, if not to be used?" Groton said. "I can't make sense of it either."

            Afra was not fazed. "We know where the answer is."

            "Did it occur to you that we may not much like the answer, when and if we find it?" Groton, at least, seemed to be taking the matter seriously.

            "It's in the stars. Who am I to object?"

            ***

            The two-mile bulk of the destroyer itself seemed more like a small planet, compared to the satellite. Though the gravitic field about it was monstrous, intensity had not increased proportionately as they approached its surface, and the weight of the ship was only a quarter what it would have been on Earth. This still made for tricky maneuvering, since the macroscope housing was vulnerable in gravity. But indentations in the sides of the sphere resembled docking facilities, so they piloted Joseph in instead of establishing a tight orbit. The builders had evidently expected visitors, and had made the approach convenient.

            Ivo gave up counting the incongruities of the situation. Better simply to accept what offered, as the others were doing.

            The dock was a tubelike affair open at each end, as though a missile had passed cleanly through the rim. The gravity was minimal inside -- just enough to hold Joseph in place at the center of the tube. The macroscope housing thus never had to rest in an awkward position; the ship was able to "land" with it attached.

            Groton and Afra donned their suits again and went out first. Ivo watched him boost her into the lock with a familiar hand on the rear.

           Three minutes later their cheerful reports began coming in. "Very well organized," Groton remarked. "Very businesslike. There seem to be magnetic moorings we can attach to the hull. Why not?"

            "And pressure-locks," Afra said, her voice girlishly thrilled. "Harold, you anchor Joseph while I figure out the settings."

            "Right." The sounds of his exertions came through, and the clank of tools, audible without benefit of earphone. Ivo wondered how this was possible, in the exterior vacuum, then realized that the sonic vibrations were being transmitted through the hardware and into the ship. Groton was holding on to something, and standing somewhere, so contacts were plentiful.

            Then came the knock of another contact with Joseph's hull. The ship had been secured.

            "I'm setting it for Earth-normal pressure and composition," Afra said. "I don't even have to remember the oxygen-nitrogen ratio or the fine points; it has a gas-analyzer. One sample puff from my suit -- "

            "Let's not trust it too far," Groton cautioned. "Don't forget this is the destroyer."

            "Don't get worked up, daddy. If it let us get this far, it isn't going to trick us with a mickey now. I'm going in."

            Ivo wondered. Wasn't it possible that the destroyer cared less about infringing individuals than about dangerous species or cultures? This had the aspect of flypaper -- or, if occupied, of the spider's lair.

            But if it had them, it had them. No incidental caution could protect them within its bowels, if personal malignance waited. They could be snuffed out in a thousand casual ways. Had they wanted security, they should have stayed well clear of the destroyer. Thousands of light-years clear.

            "Removing suit," Afra said. A pause. "Air's good. Shall I go on into the interior?"

            "Not without checking it!" Groton said. "That's only the airlock, you know. What's inside could ruin your delicate complexion. It might be hundred percent ammonia at five degrees Kelvin."

            "No it mightn't. The system has been keyed to the lock. The entire wing has been pressurized to match my sample. I tell you, these galactics are experienced."

            "What do you think, folks?" Groton asked dubiously.

            Ivo remembered that he was on this circuit too. "She'll have to get out of the lock before anybody else uses it. Might as well go in."

            "You, dear?" Groton inquired.

            "Whatever you think, dear," Beatryx said. She had faith in her husband's judgment, and Ivo envied her that.

            "Come on out, then, both of you. We should take on this particular adventure as a group. I'll wait here for you while Miss Impetuous shows the way."

            "Goats are naturally inquisitive," Afra said.

            Goat = Capricorn, her astrological sign, Ivo thought. Groton must have showed her her chart, during one of their...private discussions. And did Beatryx know that she was Pisces -- a poor fish?

            They dressed and climbed out. Ivo assisted Beatryx, but not with any palm on the bottom.

            Groton stood on a platform resembling that of a train station. Massive cables reached from the rounded ceiling to Joseph on either side.

            "Just swing over on the spare," Groton recommended. "The gravity increases near the lock. You could jump, but why take chances?"

            Ivo wondered again whether the humor were conscious. How much difference could one more chance make, now?

            They swung over. This was his first physical contact with an alien artifact, since he had not visited the satellite, and he was vaguely disappointed both at its ordinary substance and at the continuing casualness with which the others adjusted to the situation. This was supposed to be the moment of climax -- Alien Contact! -- and nobody noticed.

            Or was he merely put out because he had become a minor figure in a major adventure? After this, if they survived, Afra would be able to handle the travel signal (at least until they reencountered the existent destroyer field, which would take thousands of years to dissipate even at light speed;) and so she would have no further need of Ivo.

            "Okay, I'll go through and you follow in turn," Groton said. "No problem with these controls -- " He went on to demonstrate.

            "Hurry up!" Afra said from the inside. "I'm itching to look about in here."

            Had this degenerated into a child's game of "Spaceman"? Girl astronaut wanted them to hurry because she was impatient to explore!

            He thought he heard Schön laughing. Little Ivo had thought to manage this adventure himself, and only succeeded in making himself unimportant. Ivo was no Lanier, he was not likely to achieve fame on his own. Schön, on the other hand --

            They don't need you, either, he thought furiously at the lurking personality. Schön did not reply.

            The interior was, as Afra had claimed, pressurized. He and Beatryx joined the other two in summer clothing, depositing their suits in binnacles provided for them adjacent to the lock. Regular tourist facilities!

            The changes in the two women were quite noticeable now, as they stood side by side during that inevitable hesitation before proceeding further into the station. Both were well proportioned, Afra a little taller and more dynamic. Afra was modern -- and it looked less well on her, in contrast to the more conservative motions of the other. Where Afra jumped, Beatryx stepped. The difference in their ages showed less in appearance than in attitude and posture and facial expression.

            Finally he pinned down the elusive but essential distinction: what Afra had was sex appeal; what Beatryx had was femininity.

            Ivo wondered whether he and Groton had changed similarly.

            They were in a long quiet hall lighted from the ceiling, a hall that slanted gently downward. "Down" was toward the center of the sphere, not the rim; nothing so simple as centripetal pseudo-gravity here. The materials of the hall's construction were conventional, as these things went; no scintillating shields, no compacted matter. If this were typical, the two-mile sphere could not possibly have the mass of a star, or even a planet. Somehow it generated gravity without mass.

            The situation was not, on second thought, surprising. A potent gravitic field was no doubt necessary to power the destroyer impulse, and it should be a simple matter to allow some of it to overlap around the unit, providing for visitors. It was handy for holding down satellites too, even at distances similar to those prevailing in the Solar System itself. Earth was only eight light-minutes from Sol...

            A hundred yards or so along, the hall widened into a level chamber. Here there were alcoves set in the walls, and objects resting within them.

            Afra trotted to the nearest on the left side. "Do you think the exhibit is safe to touch?" she inquired, now hesitant.

            "Do you see any DO NOT HANDLE signs, stupid?"

            "Harold, one of these minutes I'm going to whisper nasty things about you into your wife's docile ear."

            "She's known them for fifteen years." Groton put his arm around Beatryx, who smiled complacently.

            Afra reached into the alcove and lifted out its artifact. It was a sphere about four inches in diameter, rigid and light, made of some plastic material. It was transparent; as she held it up to the light they all could see its emptiness.

            "A container?" Groton conjectured.

            "A toy?" Beatryx said.

            Groton looked at her. "I wonder. An educational toy. A model of the destroyer?"

            "Not without docking vents," Afra said. She put it back and went on to the next. This was a cone six inches high with a flat base four inches across. It was made of the same transparent material, and was similarly empty.

            "Dunce cap," Ivo suggested.

            She ignored him and went on. The third figure was a cylindrical segment on the same scale as the cone, closed off by a flat disk at each end. It was solid but light, the silver-white surface opaque but reflective. Afra turned it about. "Metallic, but very light," she said. "Probably -- "

            Suddenly she dropped it back in the alcove and brushed her hands against her shorts as though they were burning.

            The others watched her. "What happened?" Groton asked.

            "That's lithium!"

            Groton looked. "I believe you are right. But there's a polish on it -- a coating of wax, perhaps. It shouldn't be dangerous to handle."

            What was so touchy about lithium? Ivo wondered, but he decided not to inquire. Probably it burned skin, like an acid, or was poisonous.

           Afra looked foolish. "I must be more nervous than I let on. I just never expected -- " She paused, glancing down the wall. "Something occurs to me. Is the next one a silvery-gray pyramid?"

            Groton checked. "Close. Actually it's a tetrahedron, similar to the one we built originally on Triton. Your true pyramid has five sides, counting the bottom."

            "Beryllium."

            "How do you know?"

            "This is an elemental arrangement. Look at -- "

            "Elementary arrangement," Groton corrected her.

            "Elemental. You do know what an element is? Look at these objects. The first is a sphere, which means it has only one side: outside. The second is a closed cone: two sides, one curved, one flat. The third, the cylinder, has three. Yours has four, and so on. The first two aren't empty -- they're gases! Hydrogen and helium, first and second elements on the periodic table -- "

            "Could be," Groton said, impressed.

            "And likely to be so for any technologically advanced species. Lithium, the metal that's half the weight of water, third. Beryllium, fourth. Boron -- "

            She broke off again and lurched for the sixth alcove -- and froze before it.

            The others followed. There lay a four-inch cube -- six sides -- of a bright clear substance.

            Groton picked it up. "What's number six on the table? Six protons, six electrons...isn't that supposed to be carbon?" Then he too froze, eyes fixed on the cube. The light refracted through it strongly.

            Then Ivo made the connection. "Carbon in crystalline form -- that's diamond!"

            They gazed upon it: sixty-four cubic inches of diamond, that had to have been cut from a much larger crystal.

            A single exhibit -- of scores in the hall.

            Then Afra was moving down the length of the room, calling off the samples. "Nitrogen -- oxygen -- fluorine -- neon..."

            Groton shook his head. "What a fortune! And they're only samples, shape-coded for ready reference. They -- "

            Words failed him. Reverently, he replaced the diamond block.

            "Scandium -- titanium -- vanadium -- chromium -- " Afra chanted as she rushed on. "They're all here! All of them!"

            Beatryx was perplexed. "Why shouldn't they put them on display, if they want to?"

            Groton came out of his daze. "No reason, dear. No reason at all. It's just a very expensive exhibit, to leave open to strangers. Perhaps it is their way of informing us that wealth means nothing to them."

            She nodded, reassured.

            "The rare earths, too!" Afra called. She was now on the opposite side of the room, working her way back. "Here's promethium -- pounds of it! And it doesn't even occur in nature!"

            "Does she know all the elements by heart?" Ivo muttered.

            "Osmium! That little cube must weigh twenty pounds! And solid iridium -- on Earth that would sell for a thousand dollars an ounce!"

            "Better stay clear of the radioactives, Afra!" Groton cautioned her.

            "They're glassed in. Lead glass, or something; no radiation. I hope. At least they don't have them by the pound! Uranium -- neptunium -- plutonium -- "

            "Saturnium -- jupiterium -- marsium," Ivo muttered, facetiously carrying the planetary identifiers farther. It seemed to him that too much was being made of this exhibit. "Earthium -- venusium -- mercurochrome -- "

            "Mercury," Groton said, overhearing him. "There is such an element."

            Oh.