Front matter (continued 2)

She pointed to the intersection. "He won't ... last long. Go out and say good-bye."

He stared back at the intersection. It was quiet now, powdered concrete dust settling slowly out of the air. Police were circling among the quiet forms lying on the pavement while curious onlookers began to form a ring around the corner.

He walked quietly back to the street.

"Over here, Stan." The voice was faint. "You better ... hurry!"

A figure was slumped by one of the cars, its whole left side a singed and blackened mass of ash.

Stan walked over to him. The man coughed and spewed a gout of red over the front of him. "We always wondered what had happened, Stan ... Mom and me. And then Avis found me and told me you had sold out." The low hacking cough again and a spasmodic heaving of the chest. "N ... never believed it. You weren't the type." His eyes closed in brief pain. "Told her that a hundred ... a thousand times, I guess." He paused for a moment and Stan thought he was gone. Then the eyes flickered open.

"I was g-gonna break the whole story in tomorrow's editions. Guess ... your man got wind of it."

Stan couldn't bring himself to look down at the left side where the clothing was burned and where half of the waist was carbonized. He knew Tanner's work with the heater and he knew how well the man liked to see his victims squirm.

The cough started in again and suddenly the man was sitting up, his face twisted with pain and tears. "Y-you don't even remember me! Y-you d-don't even remember your own damned brother!"

And just before he died he said: "I'm s-sorry, Stan. God bless...."

And then he was gone and Stan knew that the man he was holding was nothing more than dead clay. He crouched there, his face wet, and the bits and tiny pieces of personality that had once been Stanley Martin coalesced and recombined into the individual they had been eight years before.

He stood up, the tears streaming down his face, and looked down at his brother Larry. A flood of memories were surging back. The games they had played, the arguments they had had, the way they had stuck up for each other....

And he could remember that morning when he had been slugged and the Thuscans had picked him up. Mr. Malcolm and Mr. Ainsworth and Tanner and the knives and the machines that had broken his spirit.

Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. A policeman had his notebook out and was looking at him curiously.

"You knew this man?"

"Once," Stan said slowly. "A long, long time ago."

He turned and walked up the street.

"Hey, you can't go! We need your help for questioning!"

He had more important business, Stan thought. With Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Malcolm.

And his fellow renegade, Tanner.

Avis was waiting for him in the alley, standing in the shadows by the circle of whirling black. Her face wasn't the collection of hard planes and angles it usually was and he realized dimly there was a beauty about her he had never appreciated before. A beauty and a certain sympathy....

He stood helplessly and looked at her. There was nothing he could say.

There was nothing to say. He had betrayed his world and she knew it.

"It's not too late," she said quietly.

He shook his head. "It's all over but the gloating." He felt himself start to shake. "My God, I've condemned a world to death!"

"You can stop it."

"There's no time!"

"There's four days."

Four days, he thought wildly. Four days in which to recover fifty fusion packages hidden in cities that circled the globe. Four days in which he had to baffle his own agents ... and Tanner.

"I'm only one man, Avis. I could try—but I wouldn't make it!"

"If you want help," she said, "all you have to do is ask."

She still had her own organization, Stan thought. It wasn't as large as his own but its members were willing to die for a cause and they were brave and courageous. They didn't have the advantage of the transport-hoops, but then they were already spread out around the globe. It would be easy for Avis to communicate with them.

All he had to do was to give her the locations. And then, between himself and her agents....

It might be possible at that.

"All right," he said grimly. "Let's try it." He checked his heat gun and the two of them stepped through the shimmering haze....

... into the apartment in Bristol. He cautioned Avis to be quiet, and then opened the door silently into the living room. Tanner wasn't there but his lieutenant, Langerman, was. A small, wiry man with a rodent's face and sliding eyes who preferred looking at the small of a man's back rather than looking him straight in the eyes.

It had been necessary for Tanner and he to include one man in their confidence, one man who would hold down the fort in Bristol and watch the panels that marked the location of the fifty fusion packages and the agents.

Langerman was sitting by the fusion package panel, reading a newspaper.

He looked up when Stan stepped into the room. "How's it going, boss?"

"It's going all right," Stan said casually. He reached into his pocket for some money. "How about going down to the corner and having some lunch sent up? Anything that looks good."

Langerman grabbed the coin, shrugged, and sauntered towards the door. "Sure thing. Sandwiches and tea."

As soon as he was gone, Stan motioned Avis into the room and started writing down the exact locations of the fusion packages. Suddenly there was a voice behind him.

"Hey, what's going on? How'd the chick get in?"

Langerman had come back, his shirt faintly spattered with rain drops. He had gotten as far as the front door, Stan thought, discovered the state of the weather, and come back for a rain coat.

Nothing was going right....

It was too late for explanations. Langerman's hand had snaked beneath his suit coat and come out with a small pistol.

"Tanner would like to hear about this," he said, his eyes narrow.

He should have thought of that long ago, Stan thought coldly. Tanner hadn't trusted him, never had. Tanner had watched him. And when Tanner wasn't around to do the watching, he had made sure that somebody else was.

He didn't argue. He straightened out and dove for Langerman's legs. There was a sharp report and a splintering sound behind him and then Langerman was down, frantically trying to hit Stan in the face with the pistol butt.

Stan rolled him violently against the wall and grabbed for the hand that held the pistol. He caught it and tried to force it back. The two arms wavered, then Langerman began to give a little, his arm moving slowly back.

A world was in the balance, Stan thought grimly, and with a surge of strength he had the pistol. He slashed at Langerman's head and the little man went limp.

He stood up and thrust the list into Avis' hand. "There it is—all fifty. I've marked the ones I'll try to work myself."

She took the list and started back to the whirling circle.

"We'll meet again?" he pleaded.

"Right here," she said calmly. "On November 4th."

He watched her disappear, then worked the dials for another destination and stepped through to the unknown.

He had four days, he thought, in which to save a world.

Four short days.

CHAPTER XI

The night clouds rolled across the steeples of Bristol and the muffled voice of a church clock somberly rolled across the city, striking the hour of ten. The hush of a chill autumn night lay across the city, mantling the fog that started to deepen in the city streets.

In a small apartment on Regent street, a box-like machine sat quietly in a corner, staring at the growing gloom with fifty red, unwinking eyes.

At five minutes after the hour, there was a flickering and then there were only forty-nine. By eleven o'clock, the eyes had been cut down to forty-six.

The evening of the first, there were only thirty-nine.

By the third, there was only a dozen. And every hour that went by saw another light wink out....

He stood in a Moscow subway station, watching the trains thunder past and keeping an eye on a trash can in a little niche near an elaborate mosaic of Malenkov. None of the comrades, he thought, would think of depositing litter near the mosaic of the leader and so the can had never been used.

And since the cleaners knew it was never used, there was no earthly reason why it should have to be disturbed and emptied. So the can sat there and had never been touched.

Except once.

For a moment the platform was deserted and Stan walked rapidly back to the can. A moment later he held the fusion package in his hand....

Somebody barked something at him and he looked up, startled.

A few yards away, there was a man in the uniform of the people's police. He could have been hiding for any one of a number of reasons, Stan thought. He could have been watching for petty thievery or perhaps there had been a drive against littering the platforms.

But it didn't matter why he was there. The point was he was asking questions in Russian and Stan couldn't answer him.

Another train roared in and people poured out of it, crowding together on the platform. Stan turned and darted for a washroom, breaking the wrappings on the fusion package as he ran. A moment later he had snapped the detonating wires and broken the delicate, clockwork mechanism and the almost infinitesimally small transceiver.

He threw the remains of the package under the wheels of the train at the same time a pistol shot roared above his head, chipping off some of the tile of the ceiling.

Then he had made it to the washroom door, passed his hand over a brass plaque, and darted through the circle of black that appeared into....

... a dark corner of a bazaar in Damascus.

The bazaar stretched down both sides of the street, terminating against a mosque at one end. There were small, open shops that sold copperware and incense burners and large metal dishes, ornately tooled. There were tables and boxes of elaborate mosaic work—tables with veneers of rare wood and inlaid with mother of pearl. There were small restaurants and notion stores and shops that displayed bolt after bolt of silk and brocade.

Stan watched the people wandering past, then brushed past a small native boy begging for coins, and walked into one of the silk shops.

"Yes, M'sieur?"

"You're holding a bolt of brocade for a Mr. Liebman. May I see it please?" Stan flashed a card.

The little clerk waddled to the back of the store and returned with a small bolt of silk. Stan reached for it but the small man held it back.

"You are Mr. Liebman?"

Stan was sweating. "I'm a friend of his."

"I'm sorry, M'sieur. I was told not to release this to anybody but Mr. Liebman."

The little man wanted to stand and argue while the world went up in flames, Stan thought. He pulled out his wallet and slid a five dollar bill across the counter.

"I don't think Mr. Liebman would want this quite as much as I would."

The little man was not convinced. "Perhaps not but...."

Stan thrust out the flat of his left hand and pushed the clerk back against the shelves. Bolts of cloth rippled down from them and Stan had to dig beneath them to get the one he wanted.

A moment to open the bolt and cut the wires of the package and then he was out in the street once more, the clerk's shrill, indignant screams echoing after him.

He raced to the end of the street, near the mosque, for the dark corner that looked a little too dark and a little too glossy and then....

... out again in a small street a block from the Vatican in Rome. It was early evening. Twelve more hours to go, he thought, for the last one. That wouldn't take long and he could double-check any that Avis' agents might have missed.

He hailed a taxi and sped out to the ruins of the old Forum. He waited until the taxi had left and then walked over to the column of Trajan—the tall, marble column that had been erected in order to commemorate the victories and the accomplishments of the old Roman emperor. He vaulted the low iron fence that surrounded the column and broke the lock on the door that led to an interior stairway.

The package was still in its niche at the top of the stairs. Stan tore at the wrappings and pulled, its teeth, then crushed the package in his hands. That was the end of....

There was the sound of racing footsteps up the winding stairwell.

He flattened himself against the wall until they came into view, then launched himself down the stairs, landing squarely on the chest of a burly man so they both rolled down the steep flight of stairs.

Tanner had finally gotten wind of what was going on, Stan thought sharply. But it was too late to do anything about it now. The invasion had been set, you couldn't stop a fleet once it rolled into motion. The overconfident Thuscans would land—to discover to their shocked surprise that there was organized resistance.

Mr. Ainsworth's "apes" wouldn't be a pushover....

"Bastarde...."

The burly man wasn't alone. There was another at the bottom of the stairs. Stan twisted his body, holding the first Italian in front of him. There was a pistol shot and the sound of a bullet smacking into solid flesh. The man whom Stan held screamed shrilly, his eyes flaring wide.

Then all three of them were down. Stan leaped for the door and slammed it after him. A moment later he was sprinting through the low midway of tumbled arches and forlorn columns of the glory that had once been Rome.

He caught another taxicab by the Colliseum, slipped the driver the contents of his wallet, and sagged against the cushions exhausted.

A shot shattered the rear window of the cab and he felt vainly in his coat pocket for his heater. It must have fallen out during the long fall down the flight of stairs, he thought. Which meant that he was defenseless.

He left the cab a few doors down from the alley and sprinted into the darkness, another shot whistling past his ear. He was almost up to the circle of shining black when the bullet plowed into the fleshy part of his back and he half stumbled, half fell into the pool of whirling blackness....

CHAPTER XII

"You didn't succeed, Martin. Come on—wake up so I can tell it to your face. You and the rest of the apes have lost forever!"

He stirred and gagged and then rolled on his side, feeling the pain from his shoulder lance through his body. There had been the shot and he had felt himself falling and then there had been a voice....

Tanner's voice.

His eyes jerked wide open and he sat up, wincing at another flash of pain.

"Finally awake, are you?"

He turned. Tanner was on the small pedestal that held the hoop, standing nonchalantly in front of the circle of whirling black.

"You'll be sorry you woke up, Martin. Frankly, I should think you would be wishing you were dead." He half smiled to himself. "There's knives in the kitchen, incidentally, in case you should want to do something about it. I imagine you have quite a guilt complex."

Stan whipped his head around to look at the small box-like machine that kept score of the fusion packages. Only one light was still lit.

The light for Chicago.

Tanner smiled lightly. "Don't think you've won just because there's only one light left. Fifty fusion packages was our safety factor. We actually only needed one."

Stan's face mirrored what he thought and Tanner read the look.

"That's right," he nodded. "Only one. We wanted to create panic and one will do that. When it goes off, that's all we need. The rest of the world will hear about it seconds later. And then the flight will be on." He paused. "You don't think that people—anywhere—are going to remain in their cities, do you? All the police, all the commissars in existence, couldn't make them do that. And then the air fleets will spring into action. One fleet because it demands vengeance, and the other because the only defense is a good offense, as the ape politicians are so fond of saying."

He shrugged. "You see? It really only takes one for disaster."

Stan gathered his muscles for one last lunge....

Tanner caught the movement and raised his eyebrows.

"You wouldn't want to do that, Martin. For one reason, I've got Avis. And for another, it would be too late. The blast went off ten seconds ago."

He waved and stepped into the blackness.

Stan reeled over to the set and dialed Chicago. The sheet of blackness formed, wavered, and then faded back to the edges of the hoop.

He had lost, Stan thought, dazed. The city he had been born and raised in was one with the drifting atoms of the air.

Tanner had won, completely. And Tanner had Avis.

Stan huddled in the center of the room, his mind a melee of flickering thoughts. Then a noise at the window caught his ear. The noise of doors slamming and the starting of a thousand automobiles and people running through the streets. He didn't bother to look—he knew what it was.

The exodus of a billion people from ten thousand towns and cities was on the way.

There was six hours to go before the start of the brief, abortive war. Six hours before the air fleets would arrive at their destination.

A day later the Thuscan fleet would settle from the skies to begin the mopping up operation, the operation that would change the face of a green, water world to a world that would be another colony planet for Thusca.

A world in which the human race would play no part.

And there was the matter of the girl....

The noise outside the street was a steady roar, now. The street was gorged with people on foot and on bicycles and in automobiles, fighting to get out of the city. He could hear screams and curses and over all, the faint crackle of flames.

In a few hours, the city would be a roaring inferno, he thought. There would be nobody left behind to put out the fires. And the scene would be duplicated a thousand times over before the sun went down.

And the next day there would be the final, terrible tempest when the Thuscans arrived. When humanity would go out in a short, confused struggle.

There was nothing left to do but prepare to die....

Then he thought again of Avis and knew there was one last, forlorn chance.

He raced back to the communications room and pressed the switches on the small television set with which he and Tanner used to communicate with Mr. Ainsworth on the Thuscan flag ship.

Avis had mentioned that her own fleet was standing by. A small fleet perhaps, but certainly not one without possibilities.

He waited a moment for the tubes to warm up, then dialed the frequency Avis had once mentioned. There was a pause and the screen grew bright. A face wavered on it for a moment and then grew steady. It was the face of a middle-aged man dressed in a dull blue uniform. His eyes looked like they had seen all there was to see of both heaven and hell.

Stan explained the situation urgently. The face nodded acceptance of what had happened.

"Can you get out of the city?"

The sounds outside were a steady roar now. Stan hesitated a moment, then said yes.

"We'll try to pick you up. Take the main artery out of the city to the small wooded park."

"What are you going to do?"

The lines in the man's face deepened. "Outside of pick you up, there's nothing we can do."

Stan flicked off the switch and started for the door. So there was nothing they could do. Nothing they could do to save a world or to save Avis.

Well, that remained to be seen.

He opened the street door and was almost swept into the tightly packed, fast moving throng. He stepped back into the doorway for a moment, letting the fighting, struggling mob sweep by. A father held a squawling baby high above his head. A woman was crying, hugging a small bundle of clothes to her as she struggled on. Suddenly she slipped and fainted and slid beneath the thousand feet of the mob. Stan didn't see her reappear.

He closed the door and ran to the back. The alley was crowded but not nearly so packed as the street.

Perhaps half an hour had passed since Tanner had appeared in the hoop, he thought. He had five and a half hours to go before the bombs started dropping.

His back pained him and he could feel the blood start to well where he had been shot. He grimaced and struggled on. A man next to him was lugging a small, portable radio and Stan could hear the frightened announcer reading off the government's mobilization orders and exhortations to remain calm.

They were useless, Stan thought bitterly. They could have no more effect on the tidal waves of humanity leaving its cities than Xerxes had on the ocean, when he had ordered it to be whipped. Humanity was leaving its huddling places and there was nothing that could stop them.

An hour later and he made two miles through the packed outskirts of the city. The crowd was thinning now and he thought he could make out the wooded sections of the park, not more than three or four blocks ahead. It couldn't be too much longer, he thought. He wasn't sure of how much more he could take....

His shirt was torn and the wound in his back was bleeding freely. Worse than that had been the sights he had seen on the way—women and children trampled underfoot, and the few neurotic souls who had given up and taken the short way out by leaping from windows.

It was slaughter, even without the war, he thought. Humanity was destroying itself in senseless panic. And then he was in the wooded area that had grown close to the city. He pushed through the brush and trees until he found a small clearing. The mass of people streamed past it, anxious to put miles between themselves and the buildings that so obviously spelled destruction.

He had waited for perhaps an hour when a small life boat rocket put down in the clearing. He looked at his watch before stepping aboard.

Time had narrowed to three hours.

CHAPTER XIII

The war rockets from Avis' home system of Aurelia stretched through space like a thin, red string. There were more than a hundred there, Stan thought, but he knew without asking that they were hopelessly outnumbered by the Thuscan ships.

The small rocket maneuvered over the lead ship—a hatch slid back—and the rocket settled slowly through the opening.

A moment later and Stan was in the main cabin, facing half a dozen tired looking men wearing the same dull blue uniform as the man on the screen. They were supposed to be fighting men, Stan thought, but they didn't look the part.

They looked more like frightened civilians who had been drafted.

The man Stan had seen on the screen introduced himself as Elal and smiled wryly.

"We're not the professionals you've associated with until lately, Martin. Fighting is something new for us. It will be a while before we achieve the hardened look of the warrior race."

His voice was soft and tired. The voice of a man who had lost his spirit, who had ceased to hope.

"What's the situation?" Stan asked.

Elal shrugged. "You should have been able to size it up quickly. We are outnumbered—about ten to one, I would say. We had been hoping until the last minute that perhaps Avis would succeed, that she would be able to prevent the subversion of the planet."

"Just what would that have accomplished?"

"You Terrans are not without the means of defense," Elal pointed out. "In many ways you may be backward and primitive but you have deadly weapons. And a planet, strongly organized for resistance, would be very difficult for the Thuscans to take over. They have never succeeded in storming one outright. They have always had to rely on infiltration."

"Your weapons aren't puny either," Stan said. "You have the time fields."

"They have limited application—they are good for only small fields and only for short times. And the Thuscans have neutralizers."

Another man, who looked oddly familiar, spoke up.

"What's happened to Avis?"

Her father, Stan guessed shrewdly.

"She was captured by Tanner."

There was a short silence and the men looked oddly helpless.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Stan burst out. "You're the only hope that's left!"

Elal shrugged. "What is there to do? We have you. Perhaps you will be of help, if you can remember much of Thusca. So far as we know, you are the only man who has been there and returned. Outside of...." And then he broke it off.

"You're going to leave the world go by default?" Stan asked coldly. "And Avis, too?"

The group of Aurelians looked annoyed. "What would you have us do?" Elal asked. "We gambled and we lost. We are outnumbered ten to one. And this is not the only world we have to worry about, Martin. There are a thousand others."

"And you'll be outnumbered at each one, won't you?" Stan asked grimly. "You'll be continually retreating but the odds will never get any better. As your ring of defenses collapses and allows you to concentrate more and more, the area the Thuscans have to concentrate on will be steadily getting smaller. You have to make a stand for it—why not here?"

"It wouldn't work. We would lose. And we're far too large a part of our total fleet to take the risk."

They wanted to give up because it looked bad on paper, Stan thought. They didn't want to see blood spilled, they didn't want to get their fingers dirty.

"Where's the Thuscan fleet?"

The young man at the controls worked the dials of a screen which lit up to a luminous black. There was the Earth at one end of the screen—a green globe the size of a basketball—and then the star-flecked, velvet sky.

Stan watched a small collection of brilliant lights move slowly across the screen. The operator pressed another button and that segment of the heavens suddenly leaped forward into the viewscreen. The collection of lights swiftly evolved into the glowing, rod-like ships of the Thuscans. They were arranged into a triangle, a large, reddish colored ship at the apex.

Mr. Ainsworth would be on that ship, Stan thought. Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Malcolm and maybe even Tanner.

It was ... logical that Tanner would be there. His work on Earth was done. And it was probable that Avis was on the ship with him. She would be valuable as a hostage.

He stared thoughtfully at the screen. It wasn't a neat triangle, it wasn't a really militaristic formation. The files of ships were a little straggly, as if their commanders weren't really expecting any opposition. From any quarter.

"We could go down," Stan said thoughtfully. "We could force the lead ship to land in Europe. It would be Exhibit A, it would stop the war. You would have time to make explanations and if I know the ... apes ... they wouldn't be such pushovers after that."

"You think it would succeed?" one of the men asked sarcastically.

"There's always the element of surprise," Stan said bitingly. "It's probably the last thing they would be expecting you to do." He paused. "You say that you are outnumbered and your weapons are not the best. Have you ever tried the oldest one of all—courage?"

There was a dead silence.

"You're being very inspirational," Elal said after a moment. "But I don't think you're being very practical."

Stan glanced around the compartment. The pilot was young. He looked expectant, and somewhat hopeful. He would be willing to dare, Stan thought. The others had never fought a war, they didn't know how.

Stan turned to the pilot. "Take it down—towards the lead ship in the Thuscan Fleet!"

"How do we know he's changed?" a voice bleated. "Maybe he's still in league with Thusca!"

Stan turned, the blue of a heat gun shining in his fist. "I have no time to argue—but it's not true." To the pilot: "Take it down!"

"You forget that I'm the leader here," Elal said quietly.

"You've abdicated your position," Stan said softly. "A leader is a man who can lead. You can't. I can." His eyes blazed.

"We're going down!"

CHAPTER XIV

They plummeted through space, towards the lead ship in the Thuscan fleet that was circling ever closer to the planet below. Stan glanced at his watch. Barely an hour remained before the planet below would be fighting a hideous, futile battle.

Barely an hour left in which he had to accomplish the impossible.

"Look!" somebody shouted. "Look at the screen!"

Stan glanced at it briefly. There was the Thuscan fleet laid out below—much nearer now—and the small, flashing dot that represented his own craft.

Behind him, strung out like a lazy figure C, was the rest of the Aurelian fleet. They were following the leader down, even though they recognized the enormous odds at which they were going to be fighting.

Courage, Stan thought, feeling something catch in his throat. The unknown weapon.

But just how much could it accomplish?

"Contact in half a chrono," the pilot said.

Stan walked over to him.

"Show me how this works."

It was simple enough, Stan discovered. The firing studs for the different, directional rockets could be played like the keys of a piano. And the radar that indicated distance from another object was accurate to the yard.

Stan studied the pilot for a minute, trying to guess at his reflexes. "When we make contact, do exactly as I tell you."

He shifted his gaze to the viewscreen. The Thuscan fleet was much nearer now, but the formation was changing slightly. The triangle was more ragged, more uncertain looking. They weren't sure of what was going to happen, Stan thought, and they were worried.

Which was just what he wanted.

"You'll kill us all!" a voice behind him screamed.

"Maybe I will," Stan mused softly. "I don't promise you a thing!" They were brief miles away now.

"Fire left!"

The port rockets lifted the ship slightly and they flashed directly over the Thuscan lead rocket, a bare half mile beneath them. The wash from Stan's rockets flared lightly over the Thuscan ship and then they were pulling away.

"Try again."

The pilot turned the rocket in a circle and headed back. Beneath them, the lead Thuscan ship was belching flame and breaking out of formation, trying desperately to get away from the insane men who were bent on committing suicide.

Stan flashed them again, even closer. There was no place for the Thuscan ship to go but down.

Stan laughed outright and drove it like a dog herding sheep, hounding them too close for them to bring their weapons into play, and daring death every time he drove at them.

He was courting death and he knew it. And didn't care. The minutes were ticking slowly by and he knew that time was running out for half a billion people on the green globe below.

He glanced again at the viewscreen. Space was a tangle of flaring lights and rocket trails. But confused as the picture was, he knew one thing. Surprise and courage had been the elements they needed.

They were winning.

He turned to Elal. "Get the Thuscans on the viewscreen."

A moment later, the picture on the screen faded and another control cabin faded in. The creature in the picture recognized Stan and a moment later the sober face of Mr. Ainsworth was staring out at him.

"You shouldn't be doing this, Stan," Mr. Ainsworth said, his voice sounding bewildered and hurt. "Is this the way you pay back friendship? Is this how you repay hospitality?"

He could listen to the words and know they were lies. He could look at Mr. Ainsworth and know what lay beneath that saint's face. But he still wanted to believe. He wanted desperately to believe. To be told by Mr. Ainsworth that all was forgiven.

His throat was dry and he was dripping sweat. His conditioning wasn't going to disappear over-night, he knew. It would be a battle all the time. And this was just the first round.

"I'm going to force down your ship and kill you," he said quietly. "But first, we're going to play tag over every civilized capital on the globe. We're going to let them know just what the story is. And then, if the Thuscan fleet still wants to come in, they can go ahead and try it. But I wouldn't advise it, Ainsworth! The apes won't be easy pickings!"

He flicked off the set. They were in the atmosphere now and the air was screaming past the hull. He could feel the temperature inside the cabin rise and then the refrigeration went into action.

They rocketed over the ocean and then they were over London, a bare five miles up. The ships and their exhaust were clearly visible to the frightened millions camping outside the city.

Stan drove the Thuscans over Paris and Moscow and Tokyo and Washington, timing his rocket blasts and forcing them whichever way he wanted them to go. He threatened to crash them from above if they tried to leave, and threatened to ram them from below if they tried to land.

Governments watched, frightened at the scene and realized what must be waiting out in space. Huge planes that had been winging over arctic wastes and across vast stretches of sea suddenly got crackling messages that forced them to turn abruptly in their courses and head for the nearest air field—whether it was friend or late enemy.

Far out in space, the void was filled with hulled ships and flaring rockets that suddenly mushroomed into gigantic explosions. Down below, Stan drove the Thuscan ship around the world and then towards Europe again.

He finally forced it to crashland in the Tiergarten in evacuated Berlin.

His own ship landed a block away.

The dazed officers in the compartment looked at him for guidance and he realized that he was still the leader, that they still didn't quite know what to do.

"You'll go out that airlock and you'll fight them," he said crisply. "Hand to hand, if you have to. But you'll have to fight them—and to kill them." He strode to the airlock. "Good luck!"

There was no motion about the other rocket and he thought for a frightening moment that everybody on board had been killed. Then he realized that they were waiting for him to make a move, to show himself for an easy target.

He found a hiding place behind a bit of rubble and adjusted the stud on his heat gun.

They weren't going to stay in their ship long, he thought. He would make them come out.

He turned the stud to high and aimed the gun at a port near the control room. The crystal in the port colored, glowed, and suddenly fused. Stan could dimly make out the control console and flashed his heater at that. The violet beam touched the controls and they turned red and fused. Then the beam caught a thin fuel line in the console and there was a sudden spurt of white heat.

Seconds later, the fuel tanks erupted with a roar that showered bits of red hot metal over the whole area.

A moment more, he thought....

The air about him was suddenly thick with lancing, violet beams and he felt one touch him lightly on the shoulder, crisping the flesh and setting his shirt on fire. He winced and beat out the flames, keeping an eye on the hatch.

Then the hatch flew open and figures boiled out.

The slaughter was brief, and very thorough. But of all the creatures that boiled out of the hatch, Stan didn't see the two he was looking for.

When it was all over, he walked out to the field and glanced at the bodies. There were none that looked like Tanner or—thank God—Avis.

He was touching one body gingerly with his foot when the young pilot ran up to him.

"There was no action on the other side of the ship, was there, sir?"

"No. Why?"

"One of the ports, sir—fused. And there were no flames near it!"

Stan started running for the other side of the ship. There was the blasted port and then footsteps in the carbonized grass that had been flamed when the ship had landed. He ran quickly over the grass, following the footsteps, then glanced ahead into the city.

He caught one brief glimpse of them. Two figures disappearing behind some rubble, running toward one of the side streets....

And the hoop that Stan knew was in an alley behind the Russian owned and operated department store in the Eastern sector.

Stan dashed through the streets. They were two blocks ahead of him—Tanner and a girl, whom he was half pushing, half pulling.

A beam flared above Stan's head and he ducked and zig-zagged from one side of the street to the other.

The figures turned a corner and Stan fired one last, futile shot at them.

When he finally turned into the street, there was nobody in sight—only the whirling black velvet of the hoop.

He hesitated and then dove through it....

... to a street he had seen once before. The Street of Lepers in Casablanca.

The street was deserted—there were no signs of either Tanner or Avis. He walked slowly down the street, and then there was a rustling noise behind them. He whirled, just in time to see Tanner and Avis disappear into the hoop again.

He ran and plunged in after them. It was going to be difficult, he thought. He would have to leave the vicinity of the hoop to look for them. And once his back was turned, they would be going through the hoop once more.

He caught a quick glimpse of Tanner in the deserted streets of Barcelona, Spain. He almost ran into the two in the empty streets of Shanghai. Madrid, Paris, Stuttgart, Leningrad, Los Angeles, Dallas—the cities flashed by like a deck of cards that was flicked past his eyes. The unending succession of black velvet hoops through which he moved like a man traveling through an infinity of dimensions....

And then the apartment in Bristol and Tanner was there, waiting for him. Simply standing against a table, waiting. Avis was in the far corner, her face frightened and drawn.

Stan paused, eyeing the situation.

"It's been quite a chase, hasn't it?" Tanner asked.

Still the urbane Mr. Tanner, Stan thought.

"I caught you, though, didn't I?"

"It all depends on how you look at it. Perhaps I've caught you."

Tanner held an unfamiliar weapon in his hand. Stan looked at it curiously and then knew exactly what it was. Tanner had gotten hold of Avis' time pistol. He was going to kill him like William Clark had been killed.

Tanner was going to age him a hundred years in a second.

"Think you'll get away with it, Tanner?"

"Why not? There's nobody to stop me!"

How many times had he died in the last eight years? Stan wondered. How many times had his life been hanging by a thread, waiting for somebody to cut it?

"Stan! Duck!"

Tanner had been distracted just long enough by the shout. Stan dropped to the carpet and rolled against Tanner's legs. Then they were both on the floor. Stan grabbed for the arm which still clung to the time pistol. Tanner grunted and twisted and then....

Stan paled and almost gagged.

Tanner was flickering.

In the background, Avis screamed. And then Mr. Ainsworth was looking at him.

"I'm your friend," the creature said weakly.

Stan weakened and almost let go.

"I'm your friend," the creature repeated softly, triumphantly. "I saved your life, didn't I?"

He was lying in the alley again, back in Chicago, lying there hurt and bleeding. And Mr. Ainsworth had come up to help him. Out of all the millions of people in the city, it was only Mr. Ainsworth who had helped.

"I'm your friend," the creature purred again.

That still, quiet morning when the chill air had hung heavy over the city....

And then the conditioning was totally gone and Stan felt exultant. He hadn't realized....

He gripped the arm harder and twisted and the time pistol went skittering across the carpet.

Mr. Ainsworth looked surprised and faded back into Tanner. A powerful, cold-eyed Tanner who suddenly wrenched free and bent Stan under him. He reached for a water carafe from the table to bring it down to smash Stan's skull.

Stan jerked his head to one side and doubled his legs under him and lashed out with them, catching Tanner in the chest. Tanner staggered backwards towards the hoop, his foot unintentionally pressing the on switch. The circle of black started to build up.

The time pistol was only a few feet away. Stan snatched at it and turned it on the still reeling Tanner. It caught the creature flush at the same time as he toppled back through the black velvet circle.

Stan's last glimpse of The Enemy was of a suddenly very old and aging man—hair whitened and thinning, lines etched deeply in the face, clothes sagging limply from a suddenly shriveled frame—toppling backwards into the hoop.

And then the solid circle of black suddenly broke and faded into the frame again.

Stan turned on his side and got sick. The Bristol hoop had been tuned to Chicago. Only there was no more Chicago and no more hoop there. But Tanner had toppled through—to where?

The creature that had been Mr. Ainsworth and Tanner was lost in a space that had no beginning and no end.

And no exit.

CHAPTER XV

They stood on a parapet of the first building to be erected in New Chicago and watched the tiny flares of the workmen who had come from all over the world to rebuild the city. It was night—a cool, almost clear night with only a few faint clouds scudding across the face of the full moon. The stars blazed down, a million tiny candles flickering against a background of black.

Avis moved her head a fraction and said: "Do you love me?"

"What do you think?"

After a moment, she said: "I have to go back tomorrow."

"I know."

"I ... don't want to leave."

"Why not?"

She smiled in the darkness. "You know why not. I don't want to leave you."

He hunkered down on the parapet and she sat down beside him.

"They never told you my last name, did they?" she asked suddenly.

"It's Tanner, isn't it?"

"He was my brother."

He waited a moment, then asked: "What happened to him?"

"He wanted power," she said quietly. "Our society wouldn't give it to him. So he sold out. Of his own free will—he hadn't been conditioned like you were." She paused. "I suppose as long as there's a human race, there will be people who want power and who will be willing to sell their fellow man to get it."

Stan frowned. "That's why they sent you down to try and stop him, wasn't it?"

She nodded. "I was the most qualified." Pause. "A Thuscan eventually took his place, I know. But I wonder how he actually died. Did you ever hear about him on Thusca?"

"He died a hero," Stan lied.

She smiled in the dark. "Thanks anyways. But I knew him, too."

"They used him as a model," Stan said. "Like Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Malcolm. There actually were human beings like that. Somewhere along the line, the Thuscans captured them and studied them so they could imitate them. Ainsworth and Malcolm and your brother served as models." He shuddered. "Perhaps on some world there's an imitation Stanley Martin walking around."

They watched the stars for a while and then Avis said: "You're a strong man, Stan. How did they ever ... break you?"

"A simple technique—brain-washing you could call it. The Thuscans set up Mr. Malcolm and Mr. Ainsworth and I was the man between. Mr. Malcolm was the enemy, Mr. Ainsworth was the friend. Mr. Ainsworth would 'rescue' me from Mr. Malcolm. There's no quicker way to build up a friendship. I felt obligated, in a sense. And then there was torture ... and machines. When my memory came back, I thought I had it all figured. I only made one mistake. I never thought Tanner was a Thuscan."

"He fooled a lot of people, including myself. You shouldn't feel bad."

"But I do! If Tanner had been a real human being, then they would never have needed me.... Clever psychologists though they were, they had to work through a human agency as a safety factor. If Tanner had been real, they could have done it through him."

"You broke the conditioning," she pointed out. "How?"

He smiled. "That morning when they jumped me. They beat me up for half an hour and nobody came to my rescue. Nobody but Ainsworth. Even in Chicago, people don't stand by and let a 17 year old kid get killed by three men. Tanner had used the time pistol. What had seemed to take a half hour for me actually occurred in seconds. Nobody could have helped me if they had wanted to!"

He stared moodily at the sky. "You know, there isn't much here for me, Avis. I lost my whole family when Chicago was wiped off the map. Larry had died before then, of course." He lowered his voice to a brooding sadness. "And the indoctrination I had, it hasn't entirely worn off. Sometimes I think of people as ... apes again."

"What do you want to do, Stan?" Her voice was cautious.

He stood up and waved at the sky.

"I'm going back with you! There's a thousand worlds up there I've never seen, a thousand adventures I've never had! And there's still Thusca!"

She laughed softly. "Anything else?"

He ran his fingers through her hair and brushed her lips. "You know better than that...."

"We leave tomorrow," she repeated after a moment.

He kissed her softly and then lay back on the parapet and stared at the flickering stars overhead. A breeze came in off the lake and tugged at his hair and he imagined it sweeping on, blowing to a thousand worlds he had never seen.

And a thousand adventures he had never had....