*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64314 ***

                         BEYOND THE X ECLIPTIC

                           By FOX B. HOLDEN

            _Earthman was dying of boredom; Hope had become
           folly. Work merely a means to avoid insanity. And
         death was the great reward ... until Cragin, step-son
          of darkest space, dared the Barrier; dared to soar
          beyond the X Ecliptic--to the machine-planet--where
         The Owners grimly governed all the fading galaxies._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                     Planet Stories November 1953.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Earth's eyes still blinked in the bright sunlight in which they
suddenly gloried again; Earth's throats, no longer fevered and parched,
still wondered at the cool feel of fresh water, which had not trickled
down them for more than five centuries. Earth's minds were still
ignorant of the answer; they knew only that this was Life, although
they had failed by themselves in cheating Death, and had already
calculated the dimensions for their graves.

The small calendar on the podium said Sunday, June 9, 3024. Cragin
placed a small black notebook beside it. Neither his carriage nor mien
were those of the gaunt-faced, tall-browed men of science who sat,
ill-at-ease, mute, in the broadly-aisled tiers of the echo-whispering
auditorium. For Cragin was not one of them. He was young-old, something
of slate and steel; gray, something almost of legend and of the mystery
of Deep Space itself. He had the quiet voice of all men who had lived
their lives within arm's length of the Barrier.

"Gentlemen," he began, "I doubt if I have many of the scientific
answers you want. In calculated, scientific terms, I am not able to
tell you why there is water once more in the river beds, clean air to
breathe again, snow once more in winter and rain again in springtime.
I know little more than the simple facts that the grass is once more
green; that the hell-deserts have vanished. I have come here with
few heretofore unknown scientific phenomena which I know you seek to
explain the rekindling of the Sun and the replacement of Earth in its
old path around it.

"The President told me that all I say is to be recorded so that you can
pick it apart with the proverbial fine-tooth comb when I'm finished
to see if I've dropped some new hint on which you can go to work. He
told me personally that I'm your last hope for a solution to the riddle
of the Change, because I'm the only living man who ever took a ship
further than a light-year beyond the Barrier; because I've flown more
parsecs of Deep Space than anybody else; because I know more about
what's out there, and what is not, than you do.

"Add what I have to tell you to the many theories you've already
amassed but for which you can find no scientific proof in knowledge as
you know it, and you still may not have the kind of answer for which
you're looking. Not unless, gentlemen, the Change has taken place in
men as well as in the solar system in which their graves were once
already dug.

"If, somehow, the little I know is sufficient to give you your answer;
an answer which satisfies you completely, then the Change has been to
yourselves as well as the ground upon which you walk. If it is not,
then perhaps you may never have one.

"A little more than ten years ago, this is how it was...."

He opened the notebook.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I don't think it's a runner, sir. Not unless they've found a new place
in Deep Space to bootleg their water. But we're hearing English all
right."

The communications lieutenant tried for a new track on the com-beam
and gambled that there were a few minutes of overload time left in the
amptubes. The staccato whisper faded altogether for a moment, then came
back a trifle stronger.

"Blow 'em out if you have to! Mister Grimes, stand by with auxiliary
communications." The Stellar Patrol captain readjusted his own headset
and waited. It was all there was to do. The drive had been cut; the
ship was vibrationless, soundless, and the crew's breath was shallow.
Grimes hunched over the auxiliary unit as though waiting for the main
amplifier to blow up in the lieutenant's face.

Then it came; weak, but distinct.

_Griffin calling ... this is Griffin calling--SFBB-3. Lost ... Fowler
Griffin dead. This is SFBB-3 can you hear me...._

"Good Lord, sir--"

"Mister Cragin! Can you estimate her position? Grimes, contact the
nearest base in this sector. Get a relay from Earth on the flight plan
of Special Flight Beyond Barrier Three. Mister Kramer, I want a running
plot of the track every three minutes. Cragin!"

The Captain punched the red FSA drive-room button and the Patrol ship
slid from her drift into a white-hot mushroom of speed. The tower deck
vibrated beneath Cragin's feet.

"She's further out than I've ever been, sir. I can give you an
approximate trajectory, but where she is it's suicide--"

"For how far out beyond the Barrier do you have exact knowledge of
critical warp speeds, Cragin?"

"A light-year maybe, sir. No more. Beyond that nothing makes sense;
beyond that the variables will shoot any comptometer on this type ship
to hell. Beyond the Barrier it's like tight-rope walking between the
dimensions and after you get just so far--"

"I know all that. How far out is she?"

"Fifty light-years anyway. Maybe two hundred. I can't tell. I think
she's holding for dear life to a critical. If she loses it, we lose her
for good."

"You think she'll make it to this side?"

"If she's lost, no, sir. She'll just keep on out there until--"

"Until?"

"Until her comptometers break down, until her drive is exhausted, until
she makes a mistake. Until eternity."

"Sir," Kramer broke in. "Three minutes since pick-up. Her trajectory's
whacky. She's sort of side-slipping in, but at the speed she's making,
she's going to miss Barrier just by the width of her skin. She'll
tangent off sure." Kramer thrust a hastily prepared three dimensional
plot-check forward.

"To bring her in we've got to go out and pick her up, sir," Cragin said.

"Grimes!"

"Here, sir." Grimes came up with a similar plot-check, described on a
regulation ship's form. The senior Patrol officer compared the two, the
flight plan and the running trajectory laid out by Kramer, and Cragin's
teeth glinted through his lips as they went slack in amazement.

"God, sir, that's impossible. It _ends_ at the square of light-speed!"

"Fowler Griffin is--was--one of Earth's topmost scientists. His work
is beyond question, Mister Cragin. More so, perhaps, than that of any
other. Your irreverence is out of order."

"Unintentional of course, sir."

"Plot the difference between Griffin's planned return and the
trajectory Kramer just tracked. Drive-room!"

The sleek Patrol ship quivered with the added thrust of her
auxiliaries; her needle-tip nose swung a half-minute to her own
three-quarter starboard axis.

"Can we pick her up, Cragin?"

"We'll have to go the limit."

"Then take over the panel, Mister Cragin. Kramer! Attempt return
communication!"

"As she sails, sir."

Cragin's thin, sensitive fingers flicked over the flight control panel
with a dexterity and familiarity that is born only of a million light
years of intimate, sometimes desperate familiarity, and the Patrol
ship's complex, high-strung nervous system responded as though it were
a part of the man who held its throbbing life in harness.

       *       *       *       *       *

To Randolph Cragin, born under a dying sun and of a mother dead from
desert-parch even as her labor ceased, there had never been life worth
the living anywhere but in the cold, clean loneliness of Deep Space.

He had bought odd second-hand parts from a junk dealer to build the
first craft he had ever flown; he had made the moon with it before
its jets blew and left him with the gray scar that ran from his left
temple to the point of his square chin. He had been sixteen then, and
too old to scare, too young to deter. From then on, there had been
work in a lunar mine to pay for his next ship; then prospecting the
asteroids to pay for a better, faster one. There were five years of
hauling black muck from Venus and water crystal from the low ridges
of Mars before he had the money he needed to build the ship that
would take him into Deep Space for the first time, and a couple of
years after that doing routine commission jobs of surveying outlying
planetoid belts for the government to earn enough to keep his drive
alive, and when he thought of it, his body.

In between jobs, when he flew until he was broken again, Cragin found
out more about Deep Space and about the Barrier, beyond which only one
other beside himself had ventured, than any other man who lived. His
predecessor had not. To Cragin it was sort of a challenge--sometimes
more than a daring wanderlust, sometimes a little less, when he picked
new directions from sheer boredom. But beneath it all, there was
something that rebelled; that bordered on resentment, and at the same
time on awe. He had never known which was the cause of which, only that
the men of Earth (and they were the only men in this lonely system of
planets) were dying, and had long since ceased to be awed by anything,
or to be stirred beyond the narrow limits of their own complacency.
They had achieved all there was to achieve; death was to be their
reward. Hope had become folly; work a means to avoid insanity; science
the only comfort and pleasure, because it had been thoroughly mastered.

Except, perhaps, for the Barrier itself. Beyond it, Earth science had
little hold, its concepts little validity. It was therefore a worthless
waste, for it did not adhere to the facts that men said were true. And
Cragin had found it difficult to decide why it was that he had chosen
to let himself get swallowed up in it. Maybe for the sheer pleasure
of laughing because it was so easy (the comptometers did all the work
of plotting the warp paths and keeping the ship at the right critical
speeds so it wouldn't leave them and go plunging off into dimensions
from which there would be no return) maybe because he hadn't been as
positive as he was supposed to be that what was beyond the Barrier was
such a waste after all.

To keep himself occupied he remembered what there had been to learn; to
recam the comptometers in anticipation of the ever increasing speed of
warp shifts; how to change direction and yet keep a bearing on home;
how to fly some of it by himself, juggling equations in his head while
the comptometers cooled off.

Then two years ago he had joined the Patrol. Chasing water bootleggers
who stole from government reserves and sold at fantastic prices was
something he hadn't as yet had a hand in. That he had become an officer
in a year and a half instead of the usual six hadn't surprised him
much; if he weren't a captain in another year and a half he'd resign.
And dig the asteroids again maybe. It didn't matter.

"At Barrier in four minutes, sir. Grimes, stand by comptometer One with
her coordinates...."

Comptometer One rose from a deep hum below the range of hearing into
audibility. "Now, Mister Grimes!" Comptometer Two checked in and the
hum rose steadily to a high pitched whine. Three came in.

"I've got her on the radar track, sir! There she is--good Lord!"

"Signal her to cut her drive before we lose her altogether. Grimes--"
But Grimes was too slow at resetting comptometer cams. Cragin plotted
a trajectory in his head and kept alert for the least change in
volume of the comps. Deliberately he brought the nose of the hurtling
Patrol craft swinging about under the grazing touch of his fingertips
and sought to keep the big ship on her warp while he estimated an
intersection point.

"Sir," Kramer was howling, "I can't raise--yes, there! She's cut her
drive. But she's not bow jetting a squirt!"

"Just get the M-fields ready. I'll tell you when," Cragin said. If
there had been any excitement in his voice before, it had disappeared.
He knew they'd catch her now. He was on the Patrol ship's back and he
knew he could ride it down.

"You've got maybe a dozen seconds, Cragin," the captain told him. "At a
drift her critical will be shot to blazes--"

"M-fields!"

The Patrol ship jolted, and Comptometer Five checked in and rose to a
scream as the struggle to maintain critical speed with the suddenly
increased load was fought. And won.

Cragin manually checked in Six just to make sure, and kicked both ships
into the trajectory that would fall them through the Barrier.

Then it was all over, and a tiny, bullet-shaped, explorer-type craft of
less than a fifth the Patrol ship's length was secured alongside, her
aft tubes still smoking.

Cragin relinquished his command and waited, while two space suited crew
members picked their way along the M-field on their portable mag units.
It took them less than ten minutes to get back. They carried another
form between them; a form smaller than a man's, and limp.

"It's his daughter all right," Cragin said as the Patrol captain waited
at his side while the two crewmen undogged the girl's fully-transparent
helmet. "Name is Lin, I think. Lin Griffin, student of her father's,
and up with the best of 'em, they say. What in hell they were doing out
there only she'll be able to tell us. If she'll tell us."

"If she lives to," the captain said.

The oval shaped, sharp featured face was pasty with space fatigue,
and the large, wide set eyes were closed in unconsciousness. The
short-bobbed, copper-hued hair that clung close to her slender neck
and set off the wide forehead was still well groomed, but the high
cheekbones on either side of her small nose showed sharply through
the taut, smooth skin that covered them, and bespoke perhaps days of
near exhaustion. Cragin fastened his eyes on the girl's wide, generous
mouth, waiting for some sign of returning consciousness. But there was
none.

"Hardly out of her teens," the captain muttered. "Too damn young to
die. Get her to my quarters; notify the ship's space surgeon and have
him put a corpsman on full duty. Want to know soon as she comes around."

"Aye, sir."

Cragin turned to his superior. "Special orders?"

"Have Kramer make a signal for a hospital ship and sign it with a
priority one. That's all."

"Yes, sir. You know she isn't beautiful but she's not bad."

"Too damn young to die. Tell the crew were back on SOP."

"As she sails, sir," Cragin said, and wondered if the girl would die,
at that.


                                  II

In old-fashioned black letters, the legend on the thick metalo glass
door said OFFICE OF THE ADMIRALTY, SPACE ARM. Cragin swung past it as
though it had said Control Room and an officer of the day clad in an
Earth Headquarters uniform told him that an Admiral Kirkholland would
see him immediately.

Kirkholland's name was on the next door, and under it in smaller
letters the single word, "Intelligence." What the hell, Cragin mused,
why argue.

"At ease lieutenant. Sit down, cigarette?" Big, thought Cragin. Tough
old bird, red faced, cropped white hair, chief pilot's rockets pinned
to the plain front of his tunic. Cragin wondered how long he'd been
flying the eight-foot plastaloy desk.

He accepted the cigarette and sat.

"More time we save the better, Cragin. Here it is. You were recalled
because your records show you know your way around in Deep Space better
than anybody in the whole Arm. HQ figured it'd be a better bet for this
job to rely on what Intelligence training a regular Patrol officer gets
than to try teaching a specialized Intelligence officer how to handle
himself out where only yourself and Lin Griffin have ever flown and
gotten back to tell about it. Except that so far, you're the only one
who's told anything."

"Not sure I follow that all, sir. I take it Miss Griffin--"

"She's getting along all right. Ready to leave the station hospital
in a day or two. Only she won't talk. Just mumbled something about an
Ecliptic X when she finally started coming around, cried a little, and
then shut up tight. Doctor says it's extreme shock. I don't think so.
You can't do reams of mathematics that nobody else can make head or
tail of when you're suffering shock. She not only won't talk, but after
she finishes each sheet of calculations, she tosses it in the bedside
incinerator tube. So I'm making guesses."

Cragin let a little smoke dribble from his nostrils and tried reading
Kirkholland's penetrating look.

"The market, sir? There wasn't a gram of water crystal in her ship
when--"

"The report's been read phonic by phonic, Cragin. We've had the market
pretty well under our thumbs up to now, and we can't go taking any
chances. Setting up clay pigeons to lull us into a false sense of
security is as old as the Martian ridges but it's worth thinking about
if they've found a way to operate outside the Barrier."

"What about the flight plan she and her father had to file, sir?"

"In order, of course. Maybe just a clever part of the scheme. And who
would suspect a man of Griffin's caliber and position?"

"I see. She's a definite suspect, then, and--"

"Can't say that. Officially. But because of the circumstances
surrounding her return, she's certainly subject to observation."

"My job."

"You've been cleared by HQ, and put on carte blanche answerable to
myself only and to the President. As soon as you go out that door,
you're on the job. And remember we're not interested in her any further
than to whom she leads us. This," Kirkholland handed him a small,
smooth, slate-colored rectangle of enamelite with the insigne of Space
Intelligence atomically engraved through its molecular structure, "will
take care of anything you need at any time from any department of the
government and of course from any private citizen."

Cragin recognized and accepted it. He knew that it had been activated
to his own unique neurophysical vibration specie, taken of course from
his personal record. Within moments it would turn glittering white,
and only as long as it was white would it be valid. Taken from him or
lost, it would revert to the gray color and belie its bearer as either
a chance finder or an imposter.

"Good luck. And I repeat, if we're right, it's to whom she leads us
that I want brought in. Now blast off, lieutenant."

"A-blast she sails, sir."

Something new, anyway. Not exactly new, but it could mean tight-roping
beyond the Barrier again. Cragin's pulse picked up a beat. Routine
as hell of course. Take a week, maybe ten days. But it was something
he hadn't tried before. Until he had it all under wraps, it could be
interesting.

       *       *       *       *       *

He had almost lost her in the sudden sand flurry, but it wouldn't have
mattered because he knew now where she was headed. He hoisted the
aircar a thousand feet and slacked throttle.

"Security channel 12 open. Central Port please ack."

"CP go ahead 12."

"This is Cragin on CB-42-SMBB. Check please and know me by this."

"Clear CB we know you."

"Is that custom job registered under Griffin still in your park?"

"Registered all right and primed to the forejets for a big ride if you
ask me. Orders?"

"Whack up her radar, but not with an axe. And warm me up an SP-15 if
you've got one, with a ten comp bank. Soup the drive and gun circuits.
Want a duplicate of her flight plan. That's all and beam me when she
blasts."

"When she blasts."

Then it was just a matter of sweating her out. Once Lin Griffin took
her trim craft into Space it would be routine, if her bosses, if she
were actually heading for any, didn't risk a track beam on her. If they
did and picked him up at the same time, they'd need faster guns than he
had.

The SP-15 looked brand new, and Cragin had little more than buttoned
her up when flight control beamed him. He kept the Griffin ship tracked
for a full minute, let it cut the edge of the Mars ecliptic before
he cut in his own drive. She was giving Pluto her starboard when he
decided on a comfortable watch dog position, and she was headed for the
nearest Barrier co-ordinate within an hour afterward. Just as though,
Cragin thought, somebody had written the whole script out for both of
them, and all they had to do was say their lines and pretty soon the
whole thing would be over.

He checked the gun circuits, tried the detectors for a track, jacked
in the comptometer bank. One began to hum a little and it took him off
guard; he hadn't expected it this soon. She had picked up speed and was
going like hell even for a Barrier-bust. But he was certain she hadn't
spotted him, and he was flying in her blind spot to keep out of her
electroscopes. Sooner or later she'd check in her radar proximity beams
and when they didn't work--If she were as smart as she looked she'd be
swinging her electroscope lenses all over the sky.

Her Starwasp took the Barrier-bust as though it were just so much
Space between Earth and Moon, and Cragin straightened a little in his
cushioned acceleration seat. He threw a track of his own on her, got
an echo measure on it and entered it as a constant into the comp bank,
knocking out the variable that had represented his own control-error
margin. It was the only way he'd be sure to keep her. But if she made
a mistake or her own comps broke down, they'd both fall off the tight
rope.

Three cut in and began whining. Cragin tried a speed check; they'd
passed light-speed, and there was no more danger of her catching him
in her electroscopes. The velocity needle began wider oscillations,
and the hum from Four verified it ... the critical speed changes were
getting trickier. Twenty minutes ticked off, and Cragin knew they were
further out than when he'd picked her up two weeks ago. Light-speed
trebled.

Back to double. Now times twelve.

Six was screaming. Seven started humming, and Cragin felt his clothes
beginning to stick to his back. By himself, he'd never had more than
seven comps to fly on, and had never taken the risk of flying past
breakdown. That was suicide. The SP-15 had been fitted with ten as he
had ordered. According to the books, if you tried to use more than
that, the circuits in One would burn up. Nobody, except Fowler Griffin
and his daughter, had ever tried past seven except himself. The risk
wasn't worth what you got out of it, and listening to a bunch of comps
getting ready to blow themselves to hell didn't net you anything but a
bad heart.

Eight came on. One began to glow. Cragin knew he either had to break
communications silence or kick himself clear into eternity.

His thumb slipped on the mike switch.

His fingers felt like wet sticks, and the mike was cold and greasy to
his touch.

"Calling you Starwasp calling you. This is Cragin, Space Intelligence
on a CB. On your track at 900,000 your six o'clock level. Let me hear
you, Miss Griffin."

There wasn't any answer and he tried again. Nine was humming. "I've
orders to burn you up if you refuse to acknowledge. Ack please." He
tried to keep his voice flat and machine-like so he wouldn't give
himself away, but he sounded like an hysterical schoolgirl compared to
the voice that answered him. It was that of a woman; a woman who might
have died and shriveled in the deserts a hundred years ago.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Follow me, Patrolman, if you have the courage. Turn back if you'd
rather be safe to choke your life away on the sterile place you call
home. There's a lot of room beyond the Barrier, but little for men who
worship merely their own perfection and stay blind to problems which
they cannot solve. Or go ahead and burn me up if you think it will be
of some help to you."

"Starwasp!" He felt like a rank recruit. But Nine was beginning to
shrill. She was goading him, challenging his courage, daring him to
burn her when she knew that by so doing he'd defeat his own purpose.
"You contraband? I'll give you ten seconds to answer." He was being
ridiculous; had mishandled the whole thing. What the hell was the
matter with him? She was stalling him, making a fool of him, until his
comptometers couldn't take it any more.

"There is more that is contraband where I'm going than you dream of."

"Where you bound?"

"The X ecliptic. Before he died, Fowler Griffin found it. He found the
single machine-planet that circles within it. I expect to join him
there."

"Miss Griffin...."

"I've told you enough. Among the people of Earth there's too much
apathy already; my story would only make it worse. Follow me if you
want to, burn me up or turn back otherwise. But make up your mind."

"It's made up!" Cragin barked back. "I--" He wondered what she meant
by the machine-planet and by the X ecliptic. That was what Kirkholland
had said something about. And he wondered about the other things she
said. Earth was a sterile place....

"Since I only have ten comptometers, I--"

"That's all I have," came back.

And, in the last analysis, he would be safe just to choke his life
away....

"My ten is beginning to hum already--"

"So is mine."

And maybe the people of Earth were stuck on themselves just a little....

"OK, I'll follow."

"You'll have to now."

And they were apathetic, just sitting back, waiting, telling themselves
that all had been done that was possible to do. Because they had done
it.

"Velocity needle's going crazy--"

She didn't answer again, and Ten was screaming so he couldn't have
heard her if she had. Maybe two minutes until it broke up in his face.

The needle went wild. It hit--_just where the original Griffin
flight plan had ended--light-speed squared_! And then it fell off. And
Ten cut out, and so did Nine, Eight, Seven ... Six--Five. Four hummed
evenly. And Cragin knew that he'd never forget that impossible series
of critical speeds for what remained of his life. Wherever they were,
it was within seconds of the absolute ... a second Barrier, Cragin
thought, which existed simply because men didn't know how to devise a
way to go any further. But--

"You're in X ecliptic now," Lin Griffin's voice told him. But it was
a different voice than it had been before. There was something new
in it. Something Cragin couldn't find a word for. "Within it, you'll
find flight conditions very similar to those of ordinary Deep Space.
In a few minutes, you'll be able to pick up the machine-planet in your
electroscopes. That's where we're going. Unless you want to turn back.
You can, now that you know how the warp pattern works."

"Trying to shake me?" His hands weren't slippery any more. "I won't
shake. You're taking me straight to the boss or I'm placing you under
arrest. I remind you that the Patrol's jurisdiction extends to wherever
in Space one of its ships may fly. Acknowledge please."

He felt a sudden, uncomfortable warmth in his cheeks when she laughed.
It was a light, almost merry thing. She was doing it again!

"Wherever I am, I rule, is that it?"

"In effect, yes. And--"

"There is no head man, no leader of a giant smuggling ring where I'm
going, Patrolman. Just--" Her voice tapered off; the laugh was gone. "I
will be easy to follow," she said.

The planet toward which they flew--Cragin could see it easily now in
the electroscopes, although he could see no other and the 'scope seemed
to draw what stars there were no nearer--was hardly half the size of
the moon of earth. It glowed, somehow, radiating a pale phosphorescence
of its own, and its surface seemed entirely without configuration.
Completely smooth, unmarked even by stray chunks of hurtling cosmic
waste. It was in a definite orbit, yet around--nothing. It circled in
an ecliptic described in three dimensions; they were no longer flying
a tight-rope, and the comps were quiet. Yet it was an ecliptic that
men had never found. Except for Fowler Griffin. As though reading his
thoughts, his daughter spoke.

"You wonder where its center is. It has a center. What did you say your
name was? Cragin. It has a center, Cragin. Around which it has revolved
for untold millenia. Only by accident, while he was searching for an
almost negligible mass error in one of his computations, did my father
discover that this ecliptic must exist, and must contain at least one
revolving body. He found it. He determined its orbit. He found that the
solar system itself is the center of the machine-planet's orbit. It has
neither aphelion nor perihelion, nor does its ecliptic ever shift. It
is always perfect."

"I could almost believe you lady if you told me somebody had made it.
But you'll never--"

"Somebody did."

"You mean your father--"

"My father discovered its presence, Cragin. I helped him with the
latter stages of his calculations; accompanied him out here. He
discovered its presence and he discovered its function. And they--"

"Function? You mean it's a mine of some sort? Water crystal?"

"No, Cragin. It wasn't built to serve men. It rules them. For want of
a better term, call it a control point. Because the machine-planet
has absolute control over the axial rotation and orbital revolution
of every planet in the solar system; over the heat emitted from its
sun; over the physical laws which are peculiar to each of its planets.
Father was trying to learn how to use it. He thought if he could
discover how it worked he could readjust Earth, replenish the sun,
remake--"

"I don't believe you, Lin Griffin. It's a ruse--"

"I will show you the mark where he died. They killed him, and let
me go, half-crazed as I was, to keep men forever in fear of passing
through the Barrier. I think they underestimate us psychologically, and
that is why--"

"They? Who?" Cragin cut in, disbelief still welling in his brain,
edging the tone of his voice.

"The--Owners, I call them, Cragin. They told us they own the universe."


                                  III

It was as gray as the sand-blown skies of Earth in every direction;
once past its artificial veil of luminescence, the machine-planet was
a colder, more sterile thing than the widest valley on the dark side
of the moon. His mind refused to believe what it knew to be true--that
the surface of the sphere was hard, unyielding metal, worked in some
gigantic factory on some impossible world to an almost frictionless
smoothness. After he touched down, Cragin had to keep his forward jets
checked in at almost ten times their normal landing thrust to bring the
SP-15 to a skittering halt.

Quickly he donned magnetic boots, space-helmet and suit, and buckled
two short-barrelled Krell guns around his waist. They were loose in his
holsters as he clattered toward the opening airlock of the Starwasp. He
opened up the suit's intercom.

"Just keep your hands at your sides."

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm here to do a job, not play Junior SP-man. If
you want to help me, I can use you. If not, just keep out of my way."

"Miss Griffin, I--" But Cragin let the words trail off because he knew
that for the first time in his life, he was out of his element. True,
he was in an unknown Space on an unknown sphere, as he'd been too many
times before to count--but this was somehow different. And Lin Griffin
knew more answers than he did. He thought about showing her the small
white rectangle of enamelite that Kirkholland had given him, but it
would make him more the fool. She knew what he was; she had not defied
his authority. She had not actually tried to evade him. She had simply
talked him into something and he didn't know what it was. Believing her
was his fault.

He followed her about a quarter mile over the smooth metal plain until
she stopped before a ragged mar that had been forcefully seared into
its surface by a dis-torch. Cragin saw what it was; it was a cross. The
girl paused a moment.

He had never seen anyone bow their head to pray before. He stood silent.

Finally all she said was, "Someday I'll make them tell me what they did
with him."

"All right. Let's get on with it. Where to now?"

"Not far."

It was only a hundred yards further that they stopped; this time the
sear in the hard metal was shapeless, not as deep as the one before and
obviously more hastily made. She fumbled in the pocket of her suit, and
by instinct, Cragin's hands fell lightly over the butts of his guns.
She produced a small, circular thing, pushed a catch on its side, and
placed it near the ragged burn.

"A vibrokey," she said matter of factly. "Something father devised.
You can find anything with it, once you know the object's vibration
pattern. And you can open anything with it. It experiments with all
possible combinations of magnitudes and speeds of vibrations, until it
simply hits the particular pattern needed. Without it I would never
have found the burns I left, and without it we wouldn't get in. Father
said it could shake a whole building down...."

Within seconds a panel less than a meter square slid back, and he and
the girl were beneath it. Then it was closing. There was a passageway
of some sort with a totally invisible source of illumination. Almost
like what he'd run across beneath the abandoned gold mines on Venus,
except....

"Now we have to move quickly," Lin interrupted his thoughts. "We have
very little time. They know we're here."

"I didn't hear--"

       *       *       *       *       *

"They know. Down this way." There was another burn, this time on the
wall of the long, gently twisting tube. It hurt his eyes; it was like
walking down a huge, brightly-polished gun barrel, except that it was
not quite straight, and it was hard to tell just when it turned.

"Can you do what your father failed to do?" Cragin said. He asked only
to hear his own voice; it gave him at least a finger-hold on reality.

"Perhaps, if there is time. I did not waste those weeks in the
hospital."

A panel telescoped silently into itself. It opened on a cylindrical
chamber that had seemingly been made of a single sheet of metal, so
flawlessly had the banks of control boards which it contained been
built into it. The soft green-blue glow with which the chamber was
suffused was generated by an ingredient of the metal itself.

Circling the room at about shoulder height was a continuous row of
what were obviously telescreens; below and above them were the banks
of machines which were constructed according to an electro-mechanical
concept with which Cragin was totally unfamiliar. According to Earth
standards, it was so much junk, a distorted caricature of scientific
equipment.

And in the center of the chamber, just at eye level, was what Cragin
knew must be the "brain" of the entire assembly. A cylinder within a
cylinder, its inner workings thoroughly screened by a shifting yet
motionless opalescence through which he could not see. What lied in the
heart of the thing would be as completely beyond his knowledge as were
the visible machines over which it was master.

The girl watched him as his eyes remained fixed on it. "It's the power
source, as far as we could determine. For everything."

"For the entire planet."

"For the entire solar system."

"Sure, but not today."

"Not only for today, but for all time. Gravity, warp, everything. If
you don't believe me, try explaining the difference between Space as it
exists inside and outside the Barrier sometime. Those--" she gestured
toward the upper rows of machines, "control the power. When you know
how to manipulate them, you can move any body within the system at
will--in any direction, at any speed. The sun itself, if you want to."

"All right, I'll admit it's smooth," Cragin said. His hands went to his
hips, resting just an inch or so above the butts of his Krells.

"You're a fantastic man, Cragin."

"_I_--" and he laughed a little. "The trouble is, Miss Griffin, you
people just never know when to quit. The average Patrol officer may not
have much imagination; police never were supposed to have. It's true if
you spin a good enough yarn to begin with, you might get away with it.
But if you take it too far--well, it's sort of like overacting a part.
The audience just doesn't believe it any more. You might almost have
convinced me, I'll admit. But as it is--"

His words were falling uselessly about him. Lin Griffin had begun her
work near the largest of the telescreens. In a moment she had made
it come alive, and in a moment more Cragin was watching the entire
system. She made another adjustment, and he was watching Earth alone. A
second later, he was watching Earth, Venus and Mercury in their stolid
journeys around the sun.

Something that sounded very much like a comptometer was whining
somewhere, and he watched as the girl began working a three dimensional
orbit plot.

Cragin didn't interrupt. He knew that had he been sure that she was
trying desperately to bluff out a well-staged fake, he would have
stopped the whole performance but there was something in the way she
had turned from him, had simply started at her work.

"I could take a chance now," she said suddenly. "Do you think I should
take a chance, Cragin?" She looked full at him. Whatever she was
talking about, he knew she was not kidding.

"Chance? I'm just a dumb cop, remember?"

"I think I could move it. I think I've uncovered the secret of at least
Earth's orbit and axis control. It's the balance resultants that worry
me ... and if I were wrong--"

"According to you, Earth is a dead duck anyway, princess. So go ahead
and make a mistake. You fast-talked me into tailing you here. Or I
fast-talked myself. But according to your story, you can move the whole
damn system and make it grow little men with big ears right from this
cozy little spot. O.K. I'm watching."

The look in her eyes said she thought of him as something only a little
more than a Venusian crag lizard, and then as her hand moved toward
a console of circuit stabilizers, the look changed. Her hand stopped
where it was.

"You haven't been any help so far. I brought you because there was no
getting rid of you. But Patrolman, right now we've got trouble. Do your
duty or something--"

The voice simply said,

"You did not obey."

Cragin spun around, the Krell barrels coming level. But he found
himself completely helpless to press their switches. The mind that had
spoken within his own had taken control.

       *       *       *       *       *

What Cragin saw was like a man. The similarity continued beyond the
shape and size of body; it went further to his dress, and there it
stepped backward in time. The wide shoulders supported a cloak of so
dark a hue that its outlines seemed to become a part of the space
around it; the large, perfectly proportioned body beneath them bore
with the same arrogance a uniform of deep scarlet mail which seemed to
shimmer although its wearer stood immobile. He wore no space-helmet,
nor any weapon that Cragin could see.

"You have tampered with a work of the Owners," the voice said, "and
have thereby broken their law." His cloak alone moved, as though
sheltering a statue in a pre-storm breeze.

"That takes a death penalty in your book I suppose," Cragin said.

"There is another kind?"

"It's a cinch you never heard of civilized society. If there's anything
we've got, it's lots of different penalties. But we've got our share of
death, too. Ask goldilocks here."

"Death is nothing new to the people of Earth," the girl said evenly.
"Nor are penalties."

"Yet you defied the warning."

"Because it might have meant life to us."

"Life and death are not yours to direct," the voice said. "That lies
solely with the Owners. That is universal."

"By what universal right?" The girl's voice rose to the pitch of half
anger, half contempt.

"How?" Cragin's voice was touched with the mixed overtones of curiosity
and incredulity.

"By their own right. Through methods of their own."

"That's a hell of a scientific answer," Cragin said.

"It is no answer at all!" the girl said. She took a step forward toward
the intruder, and there was high color in her cheeks. Only his cloak
moved. "Perhaps you control your own destinies, if that is what you
care to think. But not ours! For the use of your machinery, we will
gladly repay you, in any medium that you desire that we are capable of
supplying. But our role isn't that of intruder or wrong doer; it is
simply one of desperation. With your machines, our planet, its life,
might be saved. If you know of life, you know of the high value men put
upon it. If you believe in--"

"Save your breath, honey. I think the bull of the woods here is trying
to work up an angle. He's a phony. All he's got here are a bunch of
damn good telescreens, and they've never moved anything yet.... Right,
Buster?"

The figure in scarlet mail moved then. There was no sound, and hardly
a show of motion as his fingers played over a switch-studded panel.
The telescreens came to life. In each were pictured solar systems,
some binary; one with three suns. All were circled about with planets
turning in a precise geometry of motion. With barely a nod, the figure
singled out the screen in which the binary and its brood of planets
shown like so many pin-points of light rolling in eerie slow motion
through Infinity. A finger flick that Cragin could not follow and--

Three planets suddenly plunged headlong; in seconds there was a
blinding flash. Even as he shielded his eyes, Cragin knew that he
had been witness to the destruction of an entire system. Although
it had been light-years distant, and the telescreen had relayed the
coruscations of its destruction instantaneously, Cragin knew that there
was no way to deny what he had seen.

"Ours is the power," the voice said, "of life and of death."

He wanted desperately to convince himself that it was all part of
the same colossal fake--that it was simply one of the most fabulous
illusions ever devised behind which to direct a system or galaxy-wide
bootlegging net. It had to be that.

It had to be, he realized with uncomfortable suddenness, because if it
were not, it represented a science which had no regard for the laws
that impeded men; one that had risen to far greater heights than that
of which men boasted so proudly. And that of course could not be. It
was that knowledge alone which had made life worth the living for
centuries. Perhaps, when she had refused to speak of what she had seen,
Lin Griffin had been wiser than he thought. But she had said--

Cragin felt himself becoming sickeningly mixed up.

And whether he wanted to believe his own senses or not, he knew that
here was no phony, no fake, no illusion. Realizing it hurt like hell.

       *       *       *       *       *

The cockiness was gone from his voice; he tried, but he couldn't keep
it as he spoke.

"You are one of the Owners?" The girl said nothing. Her face was white,
yet Cragin did not think her confidence was gone, just shaken for the
moment. She had seen the hand of what seemed to be a man hurl a solar
system to instantaneous destruction at will.

"I am not," the voice said. "I serve. I am of the second rank, as are
all of my race, in the service of the Owners."

"You are here alone?"

The hand touched another stud, and a smaller screen wavered into
luminescence. Cragin saw a fleet of spaceships, hovering in a
geometrically perfect formation, any one ship of which would have been,
by itself, capable of searing to dust the entire Stellar Patrol in a
single, brief engagement. The formation of sleek juggernauts extended
as far as the eye could see. It was like looking into two opposed
mirrors.

"My guard," the voice said. "Manned by a race of the third rank."

"I think I get it. The Owners sit home and quietly rule the universe
while somebody else does the--" Cragin cut himself off. It was the
wrong track entirely. It must be done differently. "The woman and I,"
he said evenly, "would be willing servants."

For the briefest moment there was silence, save for the muffled gasp
that Cragin heard at his shoulder. But the girl said nothing.

Cragin watched as the hand of the red-mailed figure grazed other banks
of relays. In quick succession all telescreens went dark.

"On each screen," the voice said, "you have seen a complete system
of planets. In this control point there are exactly three hundred
screens. Throughout the Owners' domain there are perhaps slightly less
than a full billion of such control points as these. And there have
seldom been any which have not been so well concealed, in suitable
relationship to the intelligence level of that system-group controlled,
as to have yielded to discovery."

"You have not answered my proposal," Cragin retorted. "You're as aware
as I am of what's going on in my mind or you wouldn't bother with all
the gory details. You know we could serve, even on the--the 97th rank
or so...."

"Proceed."

"Don't try to cover up your own slip. You talk slow, but you get a
little ahead of yourself. This outfit is supposed to be cached away
with such cleverness that an Earth-mind wouldn't be up to locating
it. Only we did. We're not as dumb as we look, even to you. Your
record would get a little smeared up if you did away with a couple of
potential servants. The wheels might not like that. Tell me I'm wrong."

"You think quickly. You dare to offer a proposition to an emissary of
the Owners."

"It's no proposition, it's a statement of fact."

Cragin could feel the sweat behind his ears start to roll down his
neck, and his clothes were beginning to stick to his back again. But
he had been in jams before. When you couldn't shoot, you had to talk.
About anything that came into your head, but you had to talk.

"Servants of the second rank do not err, Earthman. Upon reexamining
my logic, I find it sound. Yet in the process of carrying it to its
ultimate, I conclude that inasmuch as the mathematical possibility
exists that you are capable of being tested successfully for a servant
of the menial ranks, a final decision warrants the deferment of your
destruction pending administration of such examination."

"You mean we live."

"Failure to qualify as a servant will mean your destruction."

There was near hysteria in Lin Griffin's voice as it broke the spell
Cragin's argument had created.

"Cragin, you can't realize what you're doing! You're selling us into
sl--"

"Service, Lin Griffin," he cut her off. He knew he was bruising her arm
with the quick pressure of his fingers. "Service to the Owners."

"Then follow me," the voice said.


                                  IV

Cragin had little idea of how long they had flown, and none of the
number of continua through which they had warped. They had been allowed
to sleep, and upon awakening, had received food. That they were under
guard was only to be sensed.

"They can afford to take us for granted," he muttered. He felt for the
butts of his guns; they were still at his hips.

"Don't--" the girl said.

"Don't give it a second thought. I know when I've had it, and they know
I do."

"You're convinced, then."

Cragin looked about the confines of the small metal cubicle in which
they had been quartered as though trying to see through its walls
for another glimpse of one of the flagship's crew. The servants of
grade three were as unlike men as their cloaked captor had been
similar. But not less incredible than other creatures he had seen.
Only--intelligent. That, if nothing more. Cragin mused with a grimace.

"I could use a different word, kid, but it would come to the same
thing. If IQ meant the social register around here, even the snottiest
ancestors either of us ever had would look like only moderately
successful bums. They got us where the gray matter's short. Of that I
am convinced."

"They didn't have to fight very hard. Or should I be thanking you for
my life?"

"Up to you. I'm just stalling for what we can get out of it. Who wants
to die? Oh, I forgot--"

She turned away from him, and he fiddled with the controls of a small
built-in telescreen. It was simple enough and he got it working easily,
but it showed nothing. Just blackness. He left it on.

"You're thoroughly convinced of everything he told us, aren't you?" she
asked at last.

"From a purely logical standpoint, what else--"

"Purely logical! For a little while I thought there was a chance
that--that you weren't like all the rest."

"All what rest? I don't get your range, kid," Cragin answered.

"First you thought they were fakes--"

"At first that was logical, too. But old cloak-and-ray-gun there proved
pretty damn conclusively that the crowd he works for are the bosses,
the big bosses. That's what gets me."

"And it's the real reason, isn't it, that you wanted to call them
fakes? Couldn't bear the idea of the precious culture of Earth taking a
back seat to anything."

"That sounds good, coming from one of our top-notch scientists. The
daughter and pupil of Fowler Griffin. One of our most respected...."

"Did you think we weren't human? Are scientists something to be
worshipped?"

Cragin looked at her for a long, steady moment. He was mixed up again,
and she was doing it.

"Without our science, Miss Griffin, we'd've all died five hundred years
ago. Maybe that's why it takes top rating back home. What our men
of science say we can do, we do--what they say we can't, we know we
can't. It's that simple, only I don't see why I'm telling you this. For
five centuries men have known from the day they could talk what their
lives would be from that day to their deaths, and from one end of the
universe their forbears had mastered to the other. It's all mapped out.
It has to be, because the scientists tell us--they draw the maps. We
follow them."

The girl was silent then for a long time, and Cragin fell to wondering
exactly what she was getting at. Or maybe--maybe it was just the
strain, or the shock of realizing that there were scientists who were
of greater stature than Earth's, and it was they who truly ruled.

But the girl still had him mixed up.

There was a sudden gasp from her and he turned his head. The blackness
in the telescreen had suddenly become punctured with white-hot, burning
dots of light. Dots of light, perfectly aligned, in long, straight
rows--a gateway! A gateway of stars, forged by the hands of those who
owned all Space and Time, put into position to notify the entire cosmos
that here for all who might seek it was the entrance to the home of the
Owners!

For a moment Cragin could say nothing. He had seen their cloaked captor
give a demonstration of raw power. And here was its counterpart at the
other end of the ultimate in mastery--unvarnished, positive control.

They owned a universe, and were its architects as well.

"Ten million miles wide!" the girl breathed.

"A light-year long if it's a foot," Cragin said in a low voice. "And at
the end--"

       *       *       *       *       *

They watched as the pattern shifted; the dots grew larger until they
were coruscating balls of white flame. And then, with a majestic
slowness, the entrance to the gateway became a static, unchanging
picture of unprecedented geometric symmetry.

"It's--we've stopped," the girl said.

"Cut our gun, that's all. Probably waiting for clearance to enter. The
whole damn fleet of us."

"It's--it's pompous ridiculousness!" Her voice was edged with
frustrated anger and it mounted as she spoke. "A gateway, a
show-piece--a stupid affectation of the ultimate in egocentricity! With
or without their little pathway, there's all of Space from which to
make an approach--"

"I doubt it, princess. Outside this little welcome-mat I'll bet my
pilot's papers there's a destructive field of some kind that'd blast
the dye out of your hair at ten light-years. One gets you a thousand
that this is the only way you get to see the top brass. And you don't
do that without an O.K. from a big somebody."

The minute hand on Cragin's wristchron made seven complete circuits
before the gateway again began expanding to receive them on the
telescreen.

And then they were past its opening, and hurtling headlong down its
great length at what Cragin knew must be a speed which, although no
longer requiring flight by comptometer, would have taxed his skill to
the utmost.

He and the girl watched the telescreen in silence for minutes, watching
the pin-points of light on either side grow from minute flecks in the
blackness to great spheres of flame within so many seconds, and then
pass....

"Look!"

"Yeah, it's a great show. But--hell! It couldn't be a--"

The scintillating point of light which lie dead ahead, in the exact
center of the gateway and at its extreme end, could not, Cragin
realized, be a planet. Unless it were a perfectly polished reflector,
it could not show so much like the miniature stars at either side.

It was a star, itself.

"It must be just illusion," he said evenly. "It's got to be."

"Oh no," Lin Griffin said. "Of course they live in the center of a
star! They rule all, don't they? They're the great masters of all
creation, aren't they? Certainly you don't think your great masters
would live on anything so simple as a mere planet! But of course they
live where the temperature is only several billion degrees--"

She began laughing and Cragin slapped her across the face.

"Cut it, kid, CUT IT!"

There were tears coming from her eyes and her face remained in the
twisted contortions of hysteria even after her voice had become
soundless.

She pulled away, and Cragin left her to herself. In a little while she
began to cry and he could hear her sobbing above the even hum of the
telescreen, but he left her alone.

And he knew one thing. It _had_ to be illusion. Damn it, Owners or not,
no matter what the hell they were, it had to be illusion!

Cragin had never felt shaken through to the inside of him before. Fear
and awe had been banished from the minds of men for five centuries.
Yet he felt as though he were staggering blindly, and he knew he was
helpless.

The pin-point had become a searing, blinding thing, and even as he
shielded his eyes, it filled the screen. They were going into it.

Into it.

Into a live star.

No, was the only word he could think. No.

NO!

He spun away, wrenching the telescreen off as he did so.

But nothing changed, and he did not die. Somehow, there was no change
at all.

He sat upright, rigid, as though self-hypnotized for what could have
been hours or minutes. And there was no change, no awful, searing wave
of white heat, no last instant of torture before death.

Simply, suddenly, a light jar.

And Cragin wondered sardonically if his small rectangular bit of
enamelite would be at all impressive on the planet the Owners called
home.

       *       *       *       *       *

Neither Cragin nor the girl ever saw the planet as such. And it was a
planet, Cragin learned, a planet little larger than Earth, honeycombed
with subterranean tubes and chambers as had been the control point; a
labyrinth which contained a civilization of little more than twenty
million members; a headquarters for those who ran and owned the
universe.

They were escorted to the testing place by two creatures of the fourth
grade; bipeds, shorter than men, with hunched backs and splayed
tentacles for arms and hands. Cragin noted that they carried armament
of a sort; simple tube-like objects which were aimed at him while he
was relieved of his Krells.

Then he and Lin Griffin were placed in a bullet-shaped vehicle, one
of the guards operating its controls and the other stationing himself
behind them.

Cragin was not prepared for the girl's sudden outburst and jerked his
hands vainly at the empty holsters at his hips.

"Of course we can escape from these simpletons!" she cried. "We can
easily overpower these dimwitted brutes--"

There was no reaction from their guards; Cragin's hands relaxed slowly.

"What--"

"Don't you understand? They're fourth grade--two less than our
cloaked friend. They are our guards, so of course our superiors in
intelligence, but still not on a high enough plane to interpret the
emanations of pure thought as he was."

"You'll do, I guess. But I've still got a feeling that if either of us
twitches an eyebrow--"

She continued as though he had not spoken. "He took your guns; we're
now held prisoner under weapons. They have to rely on material means of
power. Look, Cragin!"

Highly-polished curved metal walls of an alloy comprised of ores that
he could not begin to identify flashed past at such speed that all
sensation of motion was negated. There was no sound.

"I'm looking."

"It's a safe bet the tests will be something devised by the
Owners themselves. Something that will measure our total thought
potential--something based on an extremely advanced function of
psychometrics."

"You're over my head again."

"If we're acceptable, Cragin, we're established in one grade or
another--and will be constantly under the supervision of creatures of
the next highest grade--that's the way it's been working so far, with
the exception of the little excursion we're taking now."

"In other words--"

"In other words, we've got to think in the simplest patterns possible.
Childish things. Anything that will belie our true intelligence level.
What's your I.Q.?"

"I didn't ask you how old you were, duchess, but I test out at an
embarrassed 158 or so."

"We match within ten points. It'll have to do. Because we've got to
fake--test out at about 115."

"Like I say, you'll do. Testing out at 115, our bosses on the next
level shouldn't be a shred above 130 or so. So--"

"So we've got them by almost a 30-point margin. We'll be in a position
to out-think our immediate guards, and perhaps even those over them.
It's our only hope."

"Mental imposters.... You just forgot one little item, honey."

"Oh of course. They're the masters of all, so there's no possibility
that a mere human--"

"Take it easy. I didn't say it's no go. Just wondering if 115's are
acceptable. If not, you know what happens. We go to the bottom of the
class never to rise again. Maybe even 160's aren't eligible. Remember,
the control points are hidden relative to the mental ability of the
civilizations whose planets they control. Only people who exceed the
Owners' estimate--"

"If they control our system, they control billions of others--we were
told that. Some higher, some certainly lower. And we did discover the
point."

"You and your father. I never would have."

"Look, Cragin. It's the only chance there is. But if I fake and you
don't--"

"Yeah. You think it'll work?"

"I don't know."

"But you'd rather die, that it, than be a knowing slave to another
civilization, even though it is undisputed master of--"

"That's why I'd rather die, Cragin! Because they're false masters!"

He didn't reply. She was confusing him again, and perhaps the basic
reason for the confusion was that he didn't understand why she mixed
him up. If there was anything Earth's culture stood for, it was the
integrity of the fact--maturation and development of the individual
through strict adherence to the known. Only the proven fact was worthy
of belief and acceptable as a basis for thought. Nothing else.

But the girl wasn't behaving that way.

"All right. We gamble that an IQ of 115 is acceptable. Then we gamble
that we can effect a break. In other words we just take a chance on a
chance; make a really long shot out of it."

"Will you, Cragin?"

He laughed a little. Hell, sooner or later, anyway--

"Hand me my rattle," he said. "I better practice. The asteroids are
falling down, falling down; the asteroids are falling down, my fair
lady...."


                                   V

The panels to two adjacent chambers were open.

"Guess they don't trust us together," Cragin said. The dark blue
plastiglass of his Patrol tunic dully reflected the subdued half-light
that emanated into the tube-like corridor from beyond the panels. Like
a nightmare, he kept telling himself, like a nightmare. Impossible
impossible impossible....

Her face was the color of white sand, and it was the only indication
that she understood.

"Please try, Cragin."

"Sure."

"You want to try...."

"It's a cinch I can't arrest 'em, princess. And I know you want out.
You want to sink 'em all and so do I. If there's any way, believe me--"

Cragin knew he would not forget the look etched in the thin white lines
of her face as she was led into the testing place; there was something
in it that he had never seen before in the face of an Earthman. Not
an expression caused purely by reflex in time of danger or pain; not
one carefully controlled after finding an unpleasant solution to an
inescapable problem. Neither of those. But what others....

Cragin looked then to what he might be more successful in
understanding. The testing place which had been readied for him was
a small, independent laboratory, much like the control room of the
machine-planet, save for the complete absence of telescreens. And
awaiting him were two cloaked figures in red mail--technicians, second
grade. The Owners were taking no chances.

He lay at full length on a sheet of metal that was as comfortably
resilient and warm as an old-fashioned bed of feathers, and waited
expectantly.

"Are you prepared, Earthman?"

"Fire away, braintrust." He wondered at the absence of equipment.
Nothing was attached to him--no electrodes, none of the usual
electroencephalographic devices. There was only a low hum, and the pale
glow from the indistinct walls about him.

"The test begins, Earthman. Display your mind as you see fit."

The hum deepened. The walls became more indistinct, and the glow
somehow became a part of the sound that filled the tiny chamber.

Cragin flashed his mind to his first years of schooling. He had been 10
years old, had learned the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum
of the squares of the two opposite sides ... "i" represents the square
root of the quantity minus one, and is termed an imaginary number ...
for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction....

He lost all sense of time, and guarded against thinking of it, lest
he betray even a basic knowledge of continuum dynamics. Had to keep
it simple, child-like, simple.... The intensity of light diminishes
inversely as the distance from its source is squared.

The voice inside his head was at length the signal that the test was
completed.

"From this examination, Earthman, it is evident that you stumbled where
you did purely by accident, and that the craft in which you traveled
was out of control, operating entirely beyond your understanding."

Cragin kept his thoughts diffuse and made no effort to reply.

"Do I serve or die?" he asked at length.

"On a probationary basis, you serve. Grade, twelfth."

The test was done, and Cragin had won the first cast of the dice.

The ruse had worked, Cragin knew, not because the Owners and their
test had been outwitted but because the test itself had been logically
constructed to measure the level of a mind which was functioning at
its maximum. The trick was based on folly--folly in which higher
level intelligences would not indulge, and which lower ones would not
recognize as a gamble for higher stakes than slavery. Cragin knew he
would not have indulged in it had the chance been up to him alone.

What surprised him of course was that so far it had worked. And it made
Lin Griffin all the more mystifying, almost inscrutable. Theoretically,
she should have dismissed such a plan as ridiculous. But logic and the
theory upon which it was based, and what Lin Griffin did, were two
different things. Cragin tried to put the puzzle from his mind. And
the girl. The probabilities were against his seeing her again. And
that, for reasons as puzzling as the girl herself, made him peculiarly
miserable.

       *       *       *       *       *

Other slaves from a hundred other civilizations, ranging from the
shape of a man to shapes that Cragin could not identify with his three
dimensional senses had been packed into the hull of the spacecraft
with him; they were all of his assigned grade, and therefore would
constitute little problem. He could tell by their reactions to outside
stimuli that he was their mental superior.

The pilot might be a different matter. He carried arms much resembling
his own Krell guns, judging from their outward appearance of
construction and functional design. But there was one thing--they had a
fixed grip, like the ancient pistols of Earth. It meant they could be
used from only one hold, and indicated that they were copied from the
product of a civilization perhaps a hundred years behind his own. But
perhaps his slim margin of advantage would be enough.

A cloaked and red-mailed servant of the second grade had briefly
addressed the group prior to take-off, and for moments Cragin had
feared that he would accompany the consignment. But he had not.

The voice had simply said, "New servants of the Owners, you are
about to be transported to your place of work. As servants of the
twelfth, and lowest, rank, your duty will be the mining of unconsumed
zronon, employed by the Owners to maintain their home and their
glorious gateway on an equal level of brilliance to that of the stars
themselves. Death awaits that servant who lags in his output. Your
destination will be the eighth mining planet, nearest the edge of the
Trespass Limit. It was once, like all other mining planets, a live
star, extinguished and cooled by the Owners that its highly precious
and combustible substance be turned to their own desired ends.

"Are there any for whom this directive has not been reduced to
sufficiently simple terms?"

There was silence.

"Very well. Be it remembered among each of you that the Owners, those
who near the goal of the creation of life, and who are long since the
masters of death, command you."

Then it was over, and Cragin waited in the hot, dank hull, sweating
inside his helmet, in which there was an endless supply of his own
unique atmosphere. His own helmet, because it was far from being so
perfect, had been taken from him upon completion of the test. Such was
the case with each of the others, and the textures and colorations of
the stuff they breathed or absorbed was as varied as the planets on
which they were spawned. And there was hardly any helmet of the same
shape or design as another.

The waiting did not last long, but Cragin's plan was in his head as
completely as he could fashion it when he felt the landing jar. If
it were to work, it would be executed with split-second speed and
precision, or again, the alternative would be destruction. It was
evident that to use his advantage to the utmost, it must be coupled
with the dual advantages of immediacy and surprise.

The airlock opened; with the rest, Cragin filed through it. He took
glancing note of the positions of the few guards; kept their pattern of
surveillance stenciled in his memory.

The file was split--a quick maneuver placed him at the end of his own
section as it was led to the opening of a shaft even darker than the
leaden twilight which hung low like a weighted shroud over the entire
sphere.

It would be in a moment, or a month, or a year....

The slave ship had not prepared yet for take-off; its tubes smoked
lazily, cooling.

A month, even a day, would be too long. If it was to be attempted at
all, it was to be NOW.

       *       *       *       *       *

And Cragin had the squat guard on a grip which broke his spine before
his heart had time to beat again. The gloom helped; the din that
issued dully from the mine's lower levels covered the near silence of
the death which Cragin had meted out. The weapon was the guard's only
insigne of identity, and Cragin had it cradled in his own arms before
the thick, broken body hit the ground.

Then he ran, laboring against a slightly stiffer gravity than his
Earth-muscles had been born to, waving the weapon above him with all
the strength he had!

Toward the ship and its smoking tubes--gesturing, pointing toward
the cave-mouth, and yelling his head off, wondering how closely the
time-lapse would match between the time he reached the ship and the
other guards, even now running their first steps toward the cave mouth
toward which he pointed, would realize that although he was giving
alarm, he was running away from, not toward, the indicated trouble
point.

He was within the airlock by the time the first guard to answer his cry
of distress had taken twenty running steps, and had, upon taking the
twenty-first, realized that Cragin was going in the wrong direction.
But the margin had been enough--

The lock slammed shut.

The pilot, returning to his control panels from the brief recess he had
taken elsewhere in the ship, only saw Cragin for as long as it took
the Earthman to unleash the weapon he had captured. There was a flat
explosion, the weapon bucked uncomfortably, and the pilot died with a
large, blue hole through what Cragin took to be his head.

There was only one more thing left to logic, and the rest--

For the second time in his life since he had met Lin Griffin, he
wondered what, if something there was, might lie beyond logic.

The simplified control panel resembled something that might have been
manufactured in Earth factories half a century before. It had been
obviously designed for the capabilities of the servant-pilot to whom
it was assigned. If only she had the guts--

Cragin blasted off, and twisted the speed-control full on.

The Trespass Limit would shatter him, of course. Or within moments at
least, the death which the Owners themselves controlled would seek him
out. Unless....

He could not understand the symbols, but he knew the acceleration and
velocity needles were going crazy--they were deep in a red-hued band
and nearing its limit.

Even through the inverse inertia field, Cragin could feel the thrust of
the terrible acceleration and then--

There was a click.

A hum which rose within seconds to a high shrill followed it and then
another click came, another hum, then going up the scale.

Such sounds could be only from--COMPTOMETERS!

Cragin spun a telescreen control, a mad laughter welling from
within him, bursting through his blood-flecked lips, shaking him
uncontrollably. There was blackness! The gateway, gone--the great,
star-like home of the Owners, vanished! Somehow, he was out!

A critical speed, and the comps going like crazy!

Cragin laughed and laughed until he fell unconscious.


                                  VI

It had been, as closely as he could tell, nine years.

Nine years of aimless--no, helpless, wandering from planet to planet,
from sun to sun, flying tight-rope between countless dimensions,
following his fantastic escape from the realm of the Owners. He
should feel excitement now; should want to laugh until he deafened
himself because even now, swimming palely in the field of his forward
electronoscope was the solar system, his system; HOME.

Luck, chance, whatever you wanted to call it, he was home. Stumbled on
it, of course, as he had stumbled his entire way the length, depth and
time of all creation. He should laugh, but there was no strength for
laughter. There was just a tranquil kind of acceptance, a mould of
thought into which Cragin had long since forced his mind, in order to
retain his sanity as he ran the never ending gamut of change which was
the very fabric of the infinity in which he had plodded.

Home.

A place of torture and of slow death, but at least a place where he
might die among his own kind.

Had he not been barely minutes through the Barrier with the
comptometers still warm, the insistent radar signal wouldn't have been
worth its interruption of his thoughts.

But anything so close to the Barrier demanded at least cursory
investigation. He flicked a radar panel relay to TRACK.

The object's speed was building up. It was without a doubt a
controlled acceleration. No school kid could fail to recognize a
comptometer-regulated trajectory. Within seconds his fingers were
flicking across a three dimensional plot-check.

_Headed for a Barrier-bust!_

Cragin checked the comps back in, mentally replotting a new trajectory
of his own for them to pick up as he did so. As his hurtling craft
entered a sliding, almost too-closely cut parabolic reversement, he cut
in his com-beam.

"This is Cragin, Stellar Patrol, please ack, whoever you are. You are
heading for the Barrier. You must alter course. You have not more than
three minutes. Acknowledge please if you read me."

He waited, wondering. There was no answer, just the emptiness of the
void echoing hollowly to the eternal half-whisper of Infinity.

But--the track altered! The ship was slowing, curving off! Forty
seconds went by, and it had gone into an oblique drift.

For the first time in nine years there was a sweaty feeling in the
palms of his hands, in the stubble of his upper lip. He cut his comps
out, hauled his ship into a paralleling trajectory, then angled a
gradual interception path.

"This is Cragin," he repeated. His voice felt husky as though he
had not used it for a century. "I am friendly. I intend no trouble.
It is for your safety that I request permission to board you. Have
information essential to your flight...."

There was no ack. He had his space-helmet dogged tight as he slid
alongside the slender, dark-hued craft whose jets had been choked to
the lazy, red-hued combustion of idling speed, and reached for his
Krells. He hesitated, let them remain hanging on the bulkhead. He had
said he was coming as a friend.

He flicked a single A-intensity magnetic tractor to the craft that
seemed to float motionlessly beside his own, scrambled along it on his
spacesuit's mag-unit, and was still perhaps five feet from the smooth
side of the silent ship when an airlock growled open to receive him.

Once shut behind him, he tried to trace a million half-finished
thoughts as the lock chamber cycled up to pressure.

Who was in here? Scientists who had long since learned the secret of
the Barrier? Hardly, or his warning would have gone unheeded save for
a polite acknowledgement. Who then--another explorer as Fowler Griffin
had been? Or someone else who had stumbled onto the presence of the X
Ecliptic and the machine-planet?

Or some alien flightmaster of some foreign universe who was either
exploring or lost, as he had been lost....

A blue light flashed the intergalactic symbol for PRESSURE and the
inner lock slid back.

       *       *       *       *       *

The small control room was illuminated only with the soft wash of light
emanating from the compact but complete instrument panel--an instrument
panel at once strikingly similar to that of his own ship. A figure
turned to meet him--

There were 40 years etched into a countenance that should have borne
barely the hint of nine. The sag of the narrow shoulders told of the
soul-breaking exhaustion that reflected dully from the sunken eyes more
eloquently than the straight, bloodless mouth could ever have told. The
gray lips were almost motionless as they parted.

"Hello, Cragin," Lin Griffin said.

"Greetings. My name is Randolph Cragin, Stellar Patrol. Your
cooperation is appreciated, and was requested inasmuch as it is my duty
to--to...."

The light was so uncertain, yet--there was something about the face.
The forehead--deep within the eyes--

"Yes. Patrolman?"

"No," was all he could find to say. "No." He watched in an agonized
disbelief as the suggestion of a smile mingled with the shadowed
wrinkles of her ashen face.

"Even as yourself, Cragin, I--eluded them. It took this long, for a
woman lacks the ready brute strength which so often turns impending
defeat into quick victory. I am glad that you were successful, that
you're alive. It was worth heeding your call to see you again."

"But I--I thought they. That is after I escaped they--their anger could
have taken only one direction."

"It was not anger, precisely. Just--shall we say, a rather intensive
increase in police efficiency? No, it was not anger. Mine was the
anger. But now--" She hesitated, turned her eyes toward the instrument
banks, then back to his. "Now I've got the high cards, Patrolman."
There was a subtle change deep within the sunken eyes, as though a
smoldering candle flame had suddenly become a tiny bit of polished
steel glinting in the rays of a new sun at noon. "But this time, don't
follow."

"I don't get it. Somehow you're still alive. But somehow--well, you--"

"Aged? Gotten old? Don't be afraid to say it. The vibrokey did most of
it. Residuary effect. It has potentialities that I'm sure even father
never dreamed of."

"Vibrokey? I don't--"

"Think back. Remember how I located the entrance to the machine
planet, how I opened it? How I told you that father had said that it
could shake whole buildings down? How I explained that it experiments
with all possible combinations and magnitudes of vibration speeds and
patterns until any assigned pattern is matched--"

Cragin scowled a little. Something stirred stealthily in his memory,
and then the whole thing crept slowly back, piece by piece.

"You mean you slammed your way out with that gadget?"

"In a way. The one my father made was of course taken from me and
destroyed. But I had helped him build it; I knew I could build another.
But I had to steal what bits and pieces of materials I needed whenever
it was possible. Sometimes I waited months for an opportunity, only
to lose it at the last moment. Yet the waiting helped in its own way.
Even as I slaved for them, Cragin, I thought. I figured, refigured.
And when, after seven years, I had accumulated the few simple parts I
needed, I knew I could build a better instrument than Fowler Griffin
himself had."

"And you built it--"

"While the others slept and the guards ate. That took almost two years."

"Then?"

"I vibrated a guard into senility. He died of old age within seconds.
In what simple uniform he wore and with his weapon, I bluffed my way
aboard this ship in which we stand now. I had to kill a pilot and
three crewmen before I was successful in tuning the key to a dimension
existing in a completely different pattern of atomic vibrations. The
transferal itself was instantaneous. Then on critical speeds I found my
way back."

Cragin took a deep breath. "And you once told me I was impossible. But
just the same I don't want to be kidded, even if you have got more
circuits upstairs than I can ever be wired for. Remember I didn't pick
you up going _toward_ home. The nose of this barrel was about to do a
little Barrier-busting."

The faded smile returned to Lin Griffin's age-contorted face. She had
not been completely immune to the device of her own making; even her
brilliance had been unable to devise a vibration scheme which would
resolve to zero the reaction effects of dimension transferal through
alteration of atomic vibration patterns.

"I wanted to see Earth again, Cragin. I don't know if you understand
that or not. Love is a common word, but few understand it.

"Our people, advanced in scientific knowledge and wisdom as they are,
had long since forgotten it when we first met. It was seldom in their
past that their faith was placed wholeheartedly in it. But they're my
people just as they're yours, Cragin, and I love them because they
are. And that's why I'm on my way to take over the machine-planet; to
destroy it. To destroy it so that it can never be replaced."

"You aren't making sense, gal."

"I am, Cragin. Because Owners or no Owners, the Earth--the entire
system and the universe in which it lives--have true physical and
chemical values of their own--values determined in the very beginning
by an entity far higher than they!"

"You mean you actually believe--"

"I do and I'm proud of it!"

Cragin felt his face grow warm, knew he reddened, was not sure why. He
felt a strange compulsion to turn his eyes from hers. Mad? Easily said,
of course, but--No.

No. Not mad at all.

"I may understand more than you think, Lin Griffin. I am human."

There was a moment's silence. Then, as though she had not heard him,
she spoke rapidly.

"Once returned to the X Ecliptic, Cragin, I shall set the vibrokey
adrift within its circumference, to set up a vibration field which will
negate any form of other energy, including counter-vibrations, and
which will mean complete destruction to any form of matter. I intend
to activate the key from the machine-planet itself with nothing more
complex than a simple radar beam, after I have restored the solar
system to its original values."

"That'll mean everything within the Ecliptic will be destroyed; the
machine-planet; you too. You're telling me you don't mean to come back.
I can't let--"

It was as though she was totally deaf to each word he said.

"I don't believe in the Owners as masters of all, Patrolman, despite
their extreme advances in the realm of both pure and applied science.
You do. You do, because they symbolize the scientific ultimate.... But
science was only ever meant to be a useful tool for men. Not their God."

Cragin felt funny inside.

"You'll die," he said like a child.

"But you shall not. You shall live. Such a thing," she said, "has been
done before for the peoples of Earth.

"Now go, Cragin."

There was nothing else to do.

He paused. His wide shoulders sagged a little; he was not given to
long talk, and he had discerned the signs of restlessness among a
few of the impassive assemblage. Others were more kind. Little else,
perhaps, could have been expected.

"As I confessed when I began," his quiet voice resumed, "I do not have
many of the scientific answers you want. Hints that Lin Griffin gave me
before her last trip beyond the Barrier--they are all I have to explain
why the solar system is as you see it now; altered, changed, alive.

"Unless, gentlemen, you would accept a better answer; one that Lin
Griffin herself might have given you. She would tell you that there is
more to the Universe--the macrocosmo and the microcosmo as well--than
Man has yet measured. To speak of Universe means, gentlemen, to speak
not only of its known contents, but of its unknown as well, for it is
eternally the container of both.

"Logically, I should have met death in my attempt at escape. Logically,
no human woman could have endured what Lin Griffin endured, nor
conceived the strategy with which the machine-planet was erased
from existence. According to the logic of the last five centuries
of human culture, what Lin Griffin did, how she thought, were both
impossibilities.

"Yet Earth is green again.

"So when next you seek to plumb the Universe, gentlemen, and to
equate yet one more of its myriad unknown quantities, think again of
the half-gods, such as the Owners--such as we ourselves strove so
mightily to be--who would equate them all. For it is always inevitable,
gentlemen that soon or late, though the Universe remains, the half-gods
go.

"There are some, I believe, who would seek too high an office. You--you
may thank God, gentlemen, for the few who will not let them."

Then Cragin's voice at last fell silent, and silently, he stepped from
the podium.

The time was five o'clock, Sunday, June 9, 3024, and from somewhere far
off there was the gentle sound of a tolling bell.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64314 ***