Title: The Man From Siykul
Author: Wilson, Richard
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Man From Siykul" ***


                          The Man From Siykul

                           By RICHARD WILSON

            The Siykulans demanded pay for Myra and Steve's
            freedom. The price was small--merely the losing
               of their sanity in the spider's ray-trap.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Winter 1942.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Myra Horn awoke from her nap on the couch in the control room and
looked at her husband. He was hunched over the Simplimatic 50-Button
control board of their sleek Skypiercer space-launch, peering through
the vision shield with a grim intensity.

Myra turned her involuntary smile into a wifely frown at his muscular
back.

"Steve!" she said sharply. "Will you stop chasing that meteor? Aren't
you ever going to grow up?"

Steve Horn glanced at her over his shoulder.

"Hush, dear," he grinned. "Papa's in the money."

Myra sat up and smoothed her satin-leather jumper. She looked again at
the meteor they were pursuing. "What a funny color!" she exclaimed.

"The Primary Color," said Steve. "It's a flying goldmine. I think we're
gaining on it."

"What are you going to do when you catch up with it?"

"Lasso it," replied her husband. "In half an hour," he paused
impressively, "--we'll be Horns of plenty."

Myra made a face at his back. "Bless your heart, darling," she said.
"If there were another man closer than Jupiter I'd divorce you."

"I'm captain here," said Steve Horn, "with power of life, death and
divorce. You'll do no such thing. Grab the keyboard while I trip up our
quarry."

Myra slipped into his seat while Steve jumped to a boxlike affair that
jutted from the floor on a pedestal. It was one of the "accessories
optional at slight additional cost" which Myra had insisted they could
do without--a Netaction wireless-grapple capable of exerting a magnetic
pull on objects up to half a mile distant.

Myra fell into the spirit of the chase. She accelerated their little
craft until they were within snaring distance of the meteor.

"Take it easy," advised Steve. "Don't get too close. You might dent it."

He flicked over a switch on the wireless grapple.

"Got it!" he cried triumphantly a moment later.

"How do you know?" demanded Myra. "You can't see any more than I
can--and I don't notice any difference."

"Try decelerating," Steve suggested.

Myra cut the motor. There was a silence they hadn't experienced since
the start of their trip to Jupiter, more than two weeks before. It was
broken almost immediately by a series of less-deep, sonorous staccato
bursts from the Retarderockets in the nose of the ship.

"You're right, Steve. There is a definite forward drag not caused by
momentum."

"'Course, I'm right."

"But, Steve," said Myra abruptly, "that can't be gold. Since when has
gold been attracted by a magnet?"

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again and looked disgusted.

"Oh, well," Myra said after a moment, "don't let go. Maybe we can sell
it to a Jovian museum as a rare curio. Probably worth millions!"

"Probably iron pyrite. Probably worth less than twenty bucks. Pfah!"
Steve snorted impatiently. "We'll throw it back. We haven't got time to
lug museum pieces around the solar system, however scholarly we may be."

"Okay!" Myra pouted prettily.

       *       *       *       *       *

Steve flicked the grappler indicator to "off." Nothing happened. The
retarding rockets continued to blast vainly away. The gold colored
meteor sped before them; their ship followed it inexorably.

"What's the matter?" asked Myra. "Change your mind?"

Steve stared at the fleeting meteor in amazement.

"I let go," he said. He indicated the silent grapple. "Look. It's dead."

"Don't tell me," purred Myra sarcastically, "that you're going to let a
little hunk of rock kidnap us."

"Hell of a thing," muttered Steve. "Maybe I used too much power. Maybe
the thing's charged with magnetism."

"And exerting an attraction strong enough to affect us--half a mile
away?" Suddenly the ship lurched sideways. Myra drew herself erect,
rubbing a painful nose. "Now I ask you--is that any way for a full
grown meteor to act?"

Steve picked himself off the floor, where the sudden swerve of the
ship had thrown him. He joined his wife at the shield. The meteor was
twisting and turning like a thing demented. The Skypiercer, in its
magnetic grasp, followed the crazy course helplessly.

Steve looked very wise. "Something's wrong. I have a hunch it isn't a
meteor."

"Hear! Hear!" applauded Myra. "First it isn't a goldmine. Now it isn't
a meteor. What won't it be next, my profound husband?"

Steve ignored her. He cut off the Retarderockets. "Save fuel, anyway,"
he said.

There was another cessation of sound.

The Horns looked at each other in astonishment. They were slowing down!
The meteor drifted slowly through space--then stopped.

"Everything," said Myra softly, "is all wacked up. Where is the physics
of yesteryear?"

Steve was staring open mouthed at the gold colored piece of rock.
"Little demons!" he breathed. "It's turning around. It wants to say
hello. Isn't that nice! Pad a cell for me, old fruitcake, I feel a
spasm coming on."

The "meteor" described a wide arc that brought it to the side of the
Horns' ship, now halted in space. It circled them a few times; then
stopped and bobbed up and down in a friendly manner.

"It wants to play," said Steve wearily. "Go shake hands with it."

"If it's a ship," said Myra practically, "it's done a very good job of
disguising itself. There aren't any rocket tubes, or ports, or landing
gear, as far as I can see."

Their golden companion began to whirl rapidly, like a miniature planet.
Above it, English characters appeared against the black curtain of
space in lines of fire. They were badly made, and misspelled, but
readable.

"GUD MORNIG," they said. "HELO CQ UGH."

"Ugh," said Steve. He put his hands over his eyes and sat down. He
moaned, "This," he said, "is too much."

       *       *       *       *       *

When, in 2021, the government created a Department of Education, it
consolidated hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the
country and introduced robot lecturers. Hundreds of instructors were
left without jobs. One of them was Stephen Horn, Professor of American
Literature.

He faced no immediate worry, however. His salary had permitted him to
save enough to provide for him and his wife for a few years. Myra Horn,
more popularly known as Myra Classon, was a novelist whose books had
received considerable attention--especially in Steve's American Lit
classes, where he shamelessly proclaimed her to be one of the greatest
living authors.

After a period of futile searching for another professorial position
in America or abroad, Steve came bouncing home one day waving a
pink Space-Cable form. It had been addressed to him care of his old
University, and read:

    "IMPERATIVE NEED FOR LIT PROF HERE SALARY PHENOMENAL STOP WHAT
    ARE YOU WAITING FOR LOVE TO MYRA

    (Signed) ART WILDER
    UNIVERSITY OF JUPITER"

Art, Myra and Steve were old friends, and had attended the same
college. But when Steve and Myra married, Art disappeared. They heard
nothing of him for three years, until one day there arrived in the
trans-spatial mail a copy of Art's home-town paper, marked at an
article lauding Wurtsboro's native son for his successful founding of a
university at the booming Earth colony of New City, Jupiter.

The upshot of his message was that, after several more cables, Steve
went out and bought a space-launch, fully equipped for travel to high
and far off places like the Sun's fifth planet.

The Horns hadn't expected an uneventful trip, having once taken a
weekend excursion to the Moon. Myra had a vivid recollection of the
things that had happened to them at that time: events including coping
with a pyromaniac, an undecided suicide who leaped overboard in a
space-suit, and a crackpot mutineer who had tried to enlist their aid
in overcoming the captain and setting up an anarchist Utopia on Mars
with the thirty-two passengers aboard.

But she had never expected to encounter a talking meteor.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Shall we ignore it?" she asked her husband. "Or shall we be civil and
chat a while?"

"I wash my hands of the matter," said Steve. "If you want to strike up
an acquaintance with every impossibility that comes along, it's up to
you."

The meteor was getting impatient. It began to bob up and down again,
like a balloon caught in an air current. More letters appeared above it
in space.

"HELLO?" it said. "EXTRA ENGLISH WHAT?"

"Okay, okay," soothed Myra. "Just a minute."

She tore a page out of a notebook and printed something on it. She held
it up to a porthole.

The meteor bounded closer, so that it was almost touching their ship.
Now they could see tiny mounds on its surface, about the size of
walnuts.

"Good grief!" said Steve. "It's got eyes. Like...."

"Like a potato," finished Myra.

The meteor bounced off again and stood stationary for a moment.

"What'd you say?" Steve asked.

"I said, 'I'm a married woman. But stick around.'"

"Fine," said Steve. "Nothing like a little comedy to buck one up in
moments fraught with suspense. What's it doing now?"

The meteor was whirling again in a state of industrious agitation.
Suddenly it stopped. A white, sticky substance began to pour out of it.
As it grew it congealed into something resembling frosted glass, which
formed a gigantic bubble, big enough to enclose several ships the size
of the Horns.

There was a large opening at one point. The transparent bubble drifted
toward them. Before they could move they had entered it through the
opening. The meteor-ship followed them, then spurted some more of the
gelatine substance, sealing the opening.

A nozzle poked its way through the hull of the golden ship. Through
the hull of their ship they could hear a hissing noise. Presently it
stopped. The nozzle was withdrawn.

Their neighbor hopped over to them again. One of its "eyes" expanded
until it was the size of a basketball, and transparent. More letters of
fire, much smaller now, appeared within.

"AIR," they said. "EARTH AIR SAFE OPEN DOOR."

A section of the golden ship dropped. On it stood a creature less than
two feet tall, colored a deep bronze. Vaguely terrestrial in shape, it
stood on one thick limb which became its body without widening at what
might be called its hips. It terminated below in a ball-shaped foot
and above in a shapeless bumpy head, featureless, except that each of
the bumps seemed to be an eye. Three arms, of various sizes, each with
different joints, extended from its body--one just below the head, in
front, one halfway down on its left side and one at what should have
been the top of its right thigh.

It was a thoroughly unnerving spectacle.

"My two-headed aunt!" cried Steve. "The side show's in town."

"No remarks," said Myra. "You should see yourself in the morning. But
what are we going to do about it?"

"Ask it to tea." He twisted a little wheel on the control board. "I'll
have the data in a minute. Maybe the little fella isn't lying. Maybe
there is air in the bubble."

"Temperature 72°, humidity 84 percent," announced Steve. "Tomorrow
fair, with slowly rising food prices."

"Laugh and you laugh alone," said Myra. "I don't understand it, but do
we let him in?"

"Sure. Maybe he can play rummy."

Steve stepped on the treadle that started the motor in the airlock. The
lock rumbled slowly outward.

"Steve--" Myra's voice was a little uncertain. "Maybe the instruments
aren't working?"

Steve sighed. "I like the way you think of these things just _after_
the nick of time. If that were so, we'd be frozen corpses by now. The
door's open. It's a little muggy, but that's all."

Now they could see the bronze midget more clearly. He looked no
more inviting at close range, being wider and heavier than they had
imagined, but what he lacked in looks he made up for in affability. He
waved all three arms at them once, like a happy windmill.

Steve waved back. "Nice day," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

The creature left off waving at them and signalled his ship. It drifted
closer soundlessly, until the two ships were touching.

"Look," whispered Myra. "He's all over fuzz. Like a peach."

[Illustration: _"Look," whispered Myra, "he's all over fuzz, like a
peach!"_]

Steve craned his neck to look down at their visitor, who had stepped
onto the platform of their ship and seemed to be inspecting their knees
with great interest.

Steve squatted down until he was almost on a level with their guest. He
held out his hand. The fuzzy one let it overflow in one of his curious
three-fingered hands and looked at it critically.

He couldn't tell whether he was being looked at and listened to, or
not. The creature's eyes were scattered all over its gold-hair-covered
head. Their pupils were hairlike, resembling those of a horse.

A low-pitched hum, rising and falling, ceasing occasionally, came
from the three-armed one. It emanated from no particular spot, but
surrounded him like an aura.

"No savvy," said Steve. "C'mon. I want to see how you walk."

       *       *       *       *       *

He got up and stepped backward. The creature followed, in an
effortless, gliding motion. He appeared to have a ball set into a
socket of his foot, which, combined with a delicate sense of balance,
gave him a wonderful mobility.

Abruptly he turned, gave a little hop to his own craft and disappeared.

"What do you make of that?" Myra asked.

"He just remembered a previous engagement," soothed Steve. "What's the
matter, darling--jealous?"

In a moment the creature reappeared, carrying a plain black box, about
six inches square.

"I told you he played rummy," said Steve. "Look--he brought chips."

He set the box on the floor and threw back a lid. Inside the lid were
three fine wires that ended in buttons. He handed one each to Myra and
Steve and took one himself.

"Now," said a metallic voice, "we'll be able to understand each other."

The Horns looked at each other, then at the animate piece of bronze
fuzz. At the same time the voice had spoken, there had been the hum
they assumed to be his method of communication. Steve's eyebrows shot
up in inquiry.

"Does that thing act as a translator?"

As he spoke, a hum came from the box.

"Exactly," said the box, while the bronze one hummed.

"Amazing," murmured Myra. "This should take the place of the
self-lighting cigarette. Speaking of which, how about one? We'll be
burning up Peach's air, not ours."

"I think we both need one," said Steve. He handed her one, popped one
in his own mouth. After looking in vain for a mouth on Peachy, he put
the pack back in his pocket. They puffed, and smoke curled from the
glow that was suddenly at the end.

Peachy looked at them curiously.

"First," he said, "my name isn't Peachy. It's WalmearFgon. Secondly,
what are those?"

"Wal...." Steve made a face. "We'll let it go at Peachy. Secondly,
these are cigarettes. Also known as smokes, fags, the White Menace and
coffin-nails. They stain your fingers, befoul the atmosphere, use up
oxygen, give you bad breath and shorten your life-span."

"Then why do you use them?"

Steve shrugged. "I save coupons."

Peachy looked blank. But then Peachy had no way of looking otherwise,
so Myra said:

"Where do you come from?"

"Siykul." He waved his two free arms vaguely. "Over there."

"He means he's a Martian," explained Steve. "Aren't you, Peachy?"

"No," he said.

"Venerian?"

"No."

"Mercurian, Jovian, Saturnine, Platonic?"

"No."

"Oh." Steve looked incredulous. "Solar System?"

"Not this one." He pointed, more specifically this time. "That is my
home. In your words it is called Bungula, in Centauri. I lived on the
second planet, Siykul."

"Pleased to meet you," said Myra. "Now that the formalities are over
with, let's get to the point. To what do we owe the pleasure, as we
say, of your visit?"

"I have been on a quest," said Peachy. "I have traveled through
several solar systems looking for two subjects for experimentation. All
that I visited, however, I found far too intelligent for my purposes.
Now, at last, I am successful."

"_Wh-at?_" said Steve.

"Imagine," said Myra softly. "This little one-legged, three-armed,
potato-headed, noseless squirt of fuzz came um-teen trillion miles just
to insult us. Imagine!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Peachy's home, the second of five planets that circled the sun,
Bungula, in the constellation of Centauri, was a world about the size
of Mars, but more nearly resembling Earth in every other respect.
Seven-eighths of its surface was covered with water. The atmosphere
they breathed was essentially Earth air. There were two continents
on Siykul, on opposite sides of the globe, as well as minor islands
scattered here and there in the seas. The poles were covered with ice
the year round.

There were two dominant races on Siykul, one on each continent.
According to Peachy, each was covetous of the other's land. His race
was young, brilliant, industrious and ingenious. Their technicians,
inventors and mechanics were unequaled anywhere in the cosmos, so far
as he knew.

Theirs were great cities, factories, ships of the sea, land and air.
Buildings stretched scores of tiers into the sky and down into the
ground as far again. Rich in minerals and raw materials, their race was
one with a brief past, but a promising future.

The other continent, however, was shockingly primitive. Vast forests
and jungles stretched from one sea to the other. Aircraft passing
overhead could make out only scattered and far apart settlements that
might, possibly, house life. There were hundred-mile stretches in which
no trace of a living thing could be found. The inhabitants, glimpsed
occasionally, were immense, red, spidery things, evidently very savage.

Steve and Myra interrupted Peachy's story long enough to make
themselves comfortable on chairs and choose fresh cigarettes.

"About how tremendous are these creatures, compared, say--to me?"
asked Steve.

"They're about your size."

"Enormous," admitted Steve to the compact two-footer. "Go on."

Peachy didn't seem to be made for any position other than an upright
one. He shifted his communication wire to another hand and continued:

"A few years ago my people began to realize that our continent would
not be big enough to hold us very much longer. We are already utilizing
every available inch of space in our country and we must have more
room, otherwise many of our people will starve.

"Spurred on thus, we quickly built a small fleet of extraplanetary
ships to seek habitation on other worlds. The fleet became useless
when it left our atmosphere, and the eight ships crashed. But we had
profited by our mistakes, and the next fleet successfully navigated the
upper air."

Steve looked incredulous. "Do you mean to say those were the first
space ships you ever made?"

"Yes," said the Siykulan simply. "We had never needed them before."

Steve whistled.

"Look," said Myra. "What was the idea of dashing all over the Solar
System for this elbow room, when you have all you needed on the other
continent?"

"We had no way of getting there," said Peachy.

"Nonsense," said Steve, "you just finished telling us about your
airships, and boats and marvelous inventions--"

"You don't understand," said their tiny guest patiently. "There was
no _physical_ hardship involved. We had no trouble flying over the
continent, or approaching it from the ocean. But the moment we tried to
land, from the sea or air, disaster overtook us."

"What sort of disaster?" asked Myra.

"Insanity."

       *       *       *       *       *

Every so often, it seemed, the Siykulans sent an expedition to their
neighboring continent. And once in a while--not so often--a member or
two of the expedition would return, to babble crazily of monsters and
blackness and throbbings in their heads.

They had lost some of their best minds that way before they gave up.
Except for one further experiment. They outfitted a remote control
ship with an assortment of animals and sent this to the neighboring
continent, accompanied by a ship manned by a higher-order Siykulan who
directed the animal craft without himself going close enough to the
other continent to be affected.

The animal ship was landed while the controlling vessel hovered high
above to note reactions. After a time, the first ship took off and the
two sped back to Siykul.

Tests previously conducted had proven that animals could be made insane
by inaudible notes of music and by scientifically-induced frustration.
But these animals had not been affected by their exposure to whatever
it was that had driven their more intelligent neighbors into idiocy.

It was therefore assumed that the malignant aura which hung over the
green continent could affect only the brainy, possibly because the aura
was electrical in nature and in some way short-circuited the brain
through thought, which is another form of electricity.

Hence the pilgrimage of the little Siykulan. Provided with what might
best be described as a brainmeter, or intelligence-tester, he had
roamed the spaceways in his golden ship searching for a race with a
modicum of intelligence, but not too much.

Steve put out his cigarette.

"It's been a very interesting story, Peachy," he said, "if not very
complimentary, but I'm sorry we can't oblige you. We have a date on
Jupiter."

"Yes," said Myra. "We're sorry to have to chase you out like this, but
we must be getting on. Drop in to see us again any time you're in the
neighborhood."

Although there was no change in the demeanor of the Siykulan, or in the
inflection of the voice that came from him through the black box, he
seemed to them suddenly stern and, ridiculous though it seemed in one
his size, awesome.

"You must do what I say. You don't seem to understand that upon you
rests the fate of five hundred million people...."

"... like you," said Myra scornfully.

"Like me," said Peachy proudly. "They are depending on me, and I shall
not fail them. You need have no fear of not being compensated--"

"It's not compensation," said Steve. "I don't know what your life span
is, but ours is roughly a hundred years, and we aren't anxious to waste
any of it on a trip to Centauri."

"So!" said Peachy triumphantly, "since that is your only objection, you
will--"

"It's _not_ our only objection," said Myra, but Peachy went on
inexorably.

"--you will be glad to know that we are already in the atmosphere of my
planet."

"Don't be silly," said Steve. Then, uncertainly, "We couldn't be."

"You shall see," said Peachy. He dropped his wire and glided to his own
ship. He returned in a moment and with a grandiloquent motion of his
hand, indicated the opaque, glass-like bubble.

As they watched, it wavered and grew transparent, then disappeared.

The Horn's space-launch and the meteor ship of the Siykulan were
drifting a scant ten miles above an alien planet from which immense
buildings, for as far as they could see, reached up to them like greedy
fingers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Steve Horn flicked cigarette ashes onto the floor of what seemed to be
the room of a Siykulan hotel.

"I don't like it one little bit," he said. "It isn't the delay so much
as the affront to our intelligence."

"Yes, darling," soothed Myra. "We should have shown them our diplomas
and degrees. Or challenged them to a spelling bee!"

"You're not funny," said her husband. "Do you realize that we've been
in this hole for a week? Do you realize that Art Wilder and everyone on
Jupiter and Earth will think we're dead?" He paused. "Not that we won't
be."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean if they stick us in one of those ships of theirs to go explore
that mad-aura continent and find out what's behind all the mystery,
we'd be better off dead than crazy."

Myra laughed. "What an ego you must have, my husband. It won't permit
you to think that it's possible these peach-people have bigger and
better brainwaves than we."

A bell sounded and a blue light went on and off above the door.

"Open it yourself," shouted Steve irritably. "I don't know how."

The door opened. Peachy entered.

Accompanying him was a strictly utilitarian piece of robot machinery.
Headless, it consisted of a long steel body terminating in a balled
foot at one end and two triple-jointed arms at the other. At the end of
each arm was a murderous looking spiked ball, both of which swung idly
and menacingly at the thing's sides.

Peachy beckoned to them. When they hesitated, the robot clanged its
spiked fists together with an unpleasant ringing sound, then raised
them menacingly in the air.

Steve and Myra blanched, and meekly followed Peachy through the door.
They walked outside, followed Peachy to a space-ship and entered.

Myra looked at Steve a trifle uncertainly.

"Resistance would have been futile, I suppose?"

Steve tried to make himself comfortable on a tiny seat of the cabin.

"I think so, considering that our only hope of ever getting back to
our own System lies in playing ball with these fuzzy Fascists. There
may not be much chance of our succeeding in this screwball expedition,
but the important thing is that there is _some_. Putting up a fight
might have been gratifying to the ego, but I doubt that it would have
convinced these gangsters that they ought to send us back home."

"I suppose you're right, Steve. But just what exactly do you think our
chances are, this way?"

"Looking at it from the scientific angle, we're pretty well off. Here
we are scootling along at Lord knows what speed, in what may well be
the most up to date ship in the universe, with nothing to do but push
Button X when we get to Point Q on--what the hell'd I do with that
chart?"

"It's all right," said Myra. "I've got it."

"--And we land without fuss or bother. Providing...." A worried look
crept into Steve's face.

"Providing we don't go nuts," supplemented Myra.

"We do have to put an awful lot of faith in Peachy's theory that we're
subnormal enough, mentally, to escape the spider-people's batty beam.
Then all they ask is that we put the beam out of business, or show them
how they can."

"Steve!" Myra's eyes reflected inspiration. "Why don't we escape? I
mean really escape. Get out of this whole business!"

"You mean off the planet?"

Myra nodded.

"Peachy paid a touching tribute to our allegedly minus intelligence by
warning me against any such ideas--for our own good. Our fuel would
last, and our food might, and even we might, since it'd take years
without Peachy's space-annihilator. The only thing that stands in
our way is the fact that this ship isn't space-proof. It leaks air.
Compared to our Skypiercer," Steve clutched at a simile, "it is as a
hotfoot compared to a holocaust."

"Well," Myra shrugged philosophically, "no one can say Lady Horn ever
leaves a stone unturned."

"If you've stopped blowing your own, Horn," said Steve recklessly,
"come look at the view. It makes me homesick."


                                  IV

The tiny ship sped along, a thousand feet above the great ocean that
separated Siykul from its neighboring continent. Only a slight mental
effort was needed to imagine themselves back on Earth. Long swells
swept across the deep, green surface. No sea-craft were in sight, but
occasionally a huge fish would break through the surface and quiver in
the air as sunlight glinted on the drops of water it shook from its
back.

Miles ahead, land appeared, like low-lying clouds on the horizon.
Ten minutes of flying brought them over the shore--a wide beach that
stretched back half a mile and ended abruptly in a forest.

The forest seemed endless.

"We must have gone a hundred miles inland," said Myra. "When are we
supposed to push that fateful button?"

"Point Q is described as a large prairie. We should reach it any minute
now."

"What's that up ahead?"

"That appears to be it," said Steve.

He pushed the button with crossed fingers. The ship immediately went
into a long glide. The ground came up rapidly. Just when they thought
they would surely crash, the nose came up automatically and the ship
skidded to a bumpy halt.

Steve shut off the motor. "Last stop," he said.

Myra looked at him closely.

"Steve," she said. "How do you feel?"

"Fine," he replied. "Why? Scared?"

"No. I mean--aren't we supposed to be ... well, affected, somehow?"

"Oh." Steve looked at her and scratched his head in thought. "Well-l, I
do feel a trifle crazy."

"How?" Myra looked concerned.

Steve grinned impishly. "I feel like kissing you."

Myra puffed out her cheeks in mock anger, then smiled.

"You know," she said, "I feel the same way."

They didn't see the two creatures that stood outside the ship, watching
them through the transparent door.

Myra's eyes opened. She looked over her husband's shoulder.

"Steve," she whispered.

"Mmmm?" he said dreamily.

"Remember your American history? Apaches, Utes and Algonquins?"

"You mean the good old days, before spaceships and the machine age?"

"Yes. And we're back in it. Look."

Steve turned around.

"Good grief!" he said. "Indians!"

For a long time the two parties stared at each other without moving.
Gradually their faces broke into smiles, the natives' of polite
interest and the Horns of relief at having found the "spider people" of
Peachy's description to be simply human beings like themselves.

Finally the two outside came a little closer. The older one raised his
hand, palm outward.

Steve, hoping it meant friendship, did the same. He opened the door of
the ship.

The men outside were about six feet tall and burned a deep copper color
by the planet's bright sun. They wore breech clouts of soft leather and
moccasins of the same material. Their faces were fine and intelligent,
with high brows and prominent noses. The elder had a shock of stiff,
gray-white hair, while the hair of the younger was black. Their bodies,
even in the older man, were muscular and powerful-looking.

Steve and Myra hopped to the ground. Now that the possibility of being
captured and enwebbed by giant red spiders had been discarded, Steve's
spirits soared. He addressed the younger native jocularly:

"You don't happen to know of a good hotel around here, do you?"

The young man evidently understood the tenor of the question, for his
face broke into a smile and he rattled off a string of gutturals in a
speech that was reminiscent of something Steve had heard, but no more
understandable than the voice of the wind soughing through the trees
above them.

The elder of the two had more sense than any of them. Evidently he
realized that these one-sided conversations might go on all day. He
motioned to the rest to follow him.

Steve, with a look at the ship, hesitated a moment. Then he remembered
Peachy and his mechanical mace. He made a grimace of distaste, took
Myra's arm and followed.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were no walls around the village. It began abruptly in a
semi-cleared space half a mile from where their ship had landed.
Dwarfed by the huge trees that surrounded it, it looked like something
a gifted child might have built with a mechanical construction set.

The houses were mostly two and three room affairs, one-storied and
square, all made of green steel. From a distance, the village blended
perfectly with the surrounding forest, making it invisible from the air.

The houses had been set up in no preconceived pattern and gave a
pleasant, haphazard effect to the scene. Nowhere had a tree been felled
to make way for a house. Here nature and man shared a sylvan paradise,
nature always given preference.

Steve and Myra had been led to one of the larger buildings which
consisted of one huge dining room with tables and chairs of the same
green steel and here they were given food and drink not unlike what
they had known on Earth. Myra's very faint misgivings about the quality
of the food were allayed when their two hosts sat down to eat with them.

At the conclusion of the meal, Steve was somewhat astonished when the
two accepted the cigarettes he offered and smoked them with apparent
enjoyment.

A tour of the village impressed the visitors with the ease and
contentment in which these simple people lived. Men and women worked in
their gardens, or sat in the doorways of their houses fashioning the
soft, leather garments that seemed to be their sole articles of dress.
Children played between the trees, and in them, shrieking with young
laughter. Many of the people showed curiosity about the visitors, but
respectfully kept at a distance.

Their hosts led Steve and Myra to a tiny building that looked like
an old subway kiosk. With no thought of being on their guard, they
entered, and were taken by surprise when the floor dropped away beneath
them.

"My astral aunt!" exclaimed Myra. "An elevator!"

"Why not?" asked Steve. "Any race that can make steel ought to be able
to build an elevator."

The car stopped after a long descent, and the party stepped out into
a high-ceilinged underground room, filled with hurrying people and,
what was more apparent, noise. Sounds of machinery in feverish action
crashed upon their eardrums in rhythmic, deafening beats. The giant
machines themselves could be seen through great casings of glass-like
material. Men sat at lever-studded desks here and there, evidently in
control of the metal prometheans.

Their guides led them quickly through the large room and out through a
corridor at the far end. They passed many such rooms that branched off
from the hall, but none so large as the first.

At length they came to a platform. Beside it there was a strip of
slowly moving steel. Next to this was another, moving faster. There
were several more, each moving a bit faster than its predecessor, and
the last one, on which there were seats, moving at thirty miles per
hour.

Carefully they made their way across these strips and sat down in the
leather seats. Presently they were whizzing through a dimly illuminated
tunnel.

Steve and Myra took part in all these proceedings with interest, while
questions mounted in their minds. They made many suppositions to
each other, some of them fantastic. On the whole, they were enjoying
themselves.

Steve estimated they had gone about five miles when the moving strips
rounded a curve and their hosts signed that they were to get off. They
made their way over the more slowly moving strips onto another platform
and through a door.

Beyond the door was a wide corridor with an arched ceiling. The whole
was a faint green, the effect achieved by painting the green steel of
which the tunnel was constructed with white paint, which Steve reasoned
had a luminous quality, since the light evidently came from the walls
themselves.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the faint rumble of the transportation strips died away behind them,
they walked through a silence that was almost reverent. Their guides,
who had heretofore carried on a pleasant guttural conversation between
themselves, became silent, almost grave. A feeling of inexplicable awe
crept over the visitors.

The corridor stretched ahead in a straight line, without a bend to mar
its symmetry. Just when they thought it would go on interminably, a
great double door appeared at the far end. It took up the whole width
and height of the tunnel, and, contrastingly, was of wood, carved over
all in intricate designs.

When they came to it, the older man knocked on it with the ball of
his palm. The echoes of the sound reverberated throughout the tunnel.
Slowly the door swung inward and revealed a dimly-lit room twenty feet
high and about fifty square. A dark red carpet covered the floor.
Heavy, comfortable-looking armchairs had been placed against the walls,
and an immense wooden table occupied the center of the room. What light
there was came from an ornate glass chandelier which hung halfway
between the floor and ceiling.

Steve and Myra took two involuntary steps into the room and stopped,
to stare about them for several minutes without moving. The thing that
struck them so forcibly was the extraordinary resemblance between the
manner in which the room was furnished and one on Earth.

Finally the spell broke and almost simultaneously they turned around.
Their guides were gone. They could see them just within sight at the
other end of the long corridor. They were about to go after them, when
a voice said, in _English_:

"Won't you come in?"


                                   V

Steve and Myra turned around at the sound of the voice and
automatically stepped back into the room. It wasn't until a few seconds
later that they realized what had happened. Someone here, light years
away from Earth, had spoken to them in their own language! They looked
at each other with amazement, then looked around for the speaker.

"I'm over here," the voice said, "to your right."

In that dimly-lit part of the room they made out the figure of an old
man sitting in a high-backed chair, his hands stretched out on its arms.

"Please come in," he said.

Slowly they went over to him. He was a very old man, his face and
hands deeply wrinkled, with white hair brushed neatly away from his
intelligent forehead. There was a curious immobility about him that
half-frightened them, but his eyes were kindly.

Steve and Myra sat down. There was silence for a minute. Then:

"I am very wise," the old man said abruptly.

Unable to help himself, Steve chuckled. Myra looked at him reprovingly.

"You mustn't laugh at me," said the old man. "I know much. What I say
is true. You must remember that. And if you will be patient and humor
me, I will tell you where you are, and how you came to be."

"You mean how we came to be _here_," corrected Steve.

"You mustn't interrupt me, either," said the old man irritably. "I mean
what I say. I will tell you how you began and how you are related to
me and many other trivial things like how you will leave here when you
have decided to go."

"We were on our way to Jupiter," said Myra, "when we got kidnaped.
Steve was going to teach at college there."

"It is a good thing to teach," the old man said. "Of course, you know
very little, but it is admirable to teach those who know less. I have
always been a teacher...." He trailed off into silence.

"Just what do you mean by 'always,'" asked Steve, "as long as we're
being rude to each other. Just how old are you?"

"Who knows?" the old man answered slowly. "Hundreds of thousands of
years."

Myra gave a little yip.

"Steve," she gasped. "His lips aren't moving!"

The oldster took this with equanimity.

"True," he said. "Because they aren't mine. At least not any more. You
see, the real me is up here, in this vat. I'm just a brain. That thing
you've been talking to is just a corpse. I hope you don't mind."

Myra shuddered.

"It's all right," the voice continued. "It's sanitary. They used the
best embalming fluid."

"How come you speak English?" asked Steve.

"I don't," said the voice. "You might as well ask why people understand
music written by people who speak different languages. I'm not
speaking; I'm thinking out loud, if you will pardon the idiom. Music
and thought are universal.

"Now I will tell you a story. Many millions of years ago there was
a great planet, the greatest in the universe. On it was bred a race
of geniuses. Mentally, the planet was ideal; physically, it was less
fortunate. Our sun was about to become a nova. As a result, the day
came when our scientists were forced to warn their people that they
would have to leave the planet before it was burned to a cinder.

"There was one scientist who was more renowned than the others, and
with good reason. It was he was had isolated the _gion_ beam, as it was
called, which had the property of breaking down a substance to its
component atoms and sending it wherever directed.

"To make the story easier to tell, I will admit that I was that
scientist, and that my name is Gion, which you may call me, if you can
do so without interrupting me."

He paused for a moment, as if marshalling his memories.

"Our scientists searched the universe with their instruments, seeking
another planet. Finally this one was located. But it was too distant to
be reached within a life-span by means of the antiquated space ships we
had then. Only one method was possible--the _gion_ beam.

"Even this method was not completely satisfactory, because it would
require terrific power to transport anything here and we hadn't fuel
for more than one shipment. Therefore, it was necessary to make a
careful selection of those who were to go and what they were to take
with them.

"About three hundred were chosen--two hundred women and a hundred men,
all unmarried and all about twenty. The emphasis was put on human
beings, and not on equipment, so only certain surgical supplies were
taken.

"It was decided that one master-scientist was to go, regardless of his
age, to act as guide and counselor to the new race. I was chosen, and
it was a very bad choice. You see, I was dying of cancer of the stomach
at the time. Naturally, I protested, but they paid no attention.
Instead they killed me."

       *       *       *       *       *

"_What?_" gasped Myra.

"Exactly," said Gion. "They killed my body and locked my wise old brain
in this glass case. Would you believe it--sometimes I get bored."

Steve laughed. "You know, Mr. Gion, you're amazing. Tell me, did your
party ever get here?"

"No I'll tell you about the hairy people," said Gion reprovingly.
"After we had set up our village and things were going along nicely, we
met the people who lived on the planet long before we arrived. Those
peach-colored scoundrels you've already met. Pack of thieves. They
used to come around at night and steal anything they could lay their
hands on. They would also watch up for hours while we worked and later
imitate what we did. It didn't take them long to develop from dumb
animals to malignantly intelligent creatures. Naturally we had to get
rid of them.

"We drove them down to the sea. As we might have expected, they played
a foul trick on us. They stole one of our ships and escaped across
the ocean. Ever since they've been getting brighter and brighter and
breeding like rabbits, until now they've overrun their continent and
want ours. Naturally, we had to take steps."

"So you surrounded your continent with a field of insanity, producing
vibrations to send them back gibbering?" asked Steve.

The voice laughed. "Is that what they told you? Crazy beasts--we did
no such thing. It would be too much bother, too expensive and--well,
impossible. Our defense is much simpler. We merely let them land and
get out of their ships--then biff them with our insanity beam. And
since we don't want any idiotic foreigners running around our forests,
we pile them back into their ships and shoot them back home. Nothing to
it."

Gion paused. Myra, who had been waiting for a propitious moment, said:

"I thought you were going to tell us how _we_ began?"

"I am. I am," he said. "Our new civilization was about a century old,
when we began to receive messages from far out in space. They were
from a ship that had taken off from our old planet just before the
explosion, manned by an intrepid group of people who knew that they
would never live to reach another land, but who hoped that their
children might.

"The messages were pathetic. They were from the sole survivor of the
original travelers, who said that their children had revolted against
the rigid discipline he had tried to maintain, and that the ship was
in a state of bedlam. Only the fact that he had sealed the engine
room against them had prevented them from reaching the controls and
destroying themselves. Inertia kept the ship on its course.

"Further messages from this old man reached us, saying that the rebels
had reverted practically to wild beasts and were living in a state
of indescribable filth. Our records show that the ship didn't reach
your Earth until sixty years later, so you can imagine the condition
its passengers were in when it finally landed. And those were your
ancestors."

"A pretty picture," grimaced Steve. There was a moment's silence. Then
said: "Why do you live underground, or at least work down here? Isn't
it impractical?"

"On the contrary," explained Gion, "it's very practical. You see, we're
a peace-loving people. We don't like trouble, and we don't believe in
waging war to keep out of trouble at some future date. Consequently,
we build all our factories underground, so that the hairy people can't
blow them up whenever they feel like it by flying over and dropping
bombs. Another reason is that we like the forest and believe it's
healthy for our children to grow up there. We don't build cities to
make targets for the potential enemy--human or bacterial, whichever
it might be--but try to live in as close cooperation with nature as
possible. Does that make sense?"

"It makes perfect sense," agreed Myra. Steve nodded.

"And now," said Gion, "if I read your minds correctly, you'd like to
get away from this garrulous old man and see some more of our country
before you continue your interrupted journey to Jupiter."


                                  VI

What had seemed to be a long flat meadow was in reality, just beneath
the surface, an emergency airport that was used in place of the moving
chairs or the underground freight-railway when speed was imperative.
Seldom used, but always in a state of preparedness, the port now buzzed
with activity as the roof of simulated grass rolled back, disclosing a
resplendent green space-ship waiting on the take-off ways.

So simple was the ship in construction that less than an hour of
intensive instruction from Gion, on a model control board set up in the
underground room, was sufficient to acquaint him perfectly with the
management of the craft.

It almost frightened him to think that he and Myra were about to
undertake a journey in a ship so swift that they would arrive on
Jupiter, in an inestimably distant solar system, almost as soon as they
would have in their Skypiercer, had they not been interrupted by Peachy.

At last, all was ready. Steve and Myra waved good-bye to the people
they had come to know as friends in such a short time, and sealed
themselves inside the ship.

Steve consulted the charts for a second, then sent the ship into a
noiseless take-off that soon left the field far below, already being
retransformed into a green meadow. He followed his instructions
carefully and kept the ship at a moderate speed, to wait until the
gravitational pull of the planet had been left behind before beginning
the almost unbelievable acceleration of which the ship was capable.

Myra sat in thought for a moment, then: "Steve," she said, "I don't
want to seem skeptical, but doesn't Gion's theory about the beginning
of man on Earth sort of conflict with our time-honored theory of
evolution? Apes and men from the same source, and all that?"

"Not exactly," Steve said. "The evidence seems to point to the fact
that those third-generation refugees landed on North America a few ages
ago, and founded the Indian nations. It's the only tenable explanation
of the origin of the American Indian that I've ever heard."

The planet was rapidly growing smaller behind them.

"If only they hadn't mutinied against discipline, it's probable that
with their advanced knowledge, the Indians would have discovered Europe
long before Columbus--or Lief Erickson--crossed the Atlantic. Their
culture, if they had kept it, might have been a better incentive to
European development than theirs was--"

"Brrr!" Myra shivered suddenly. "I get the creeps when I think of
talking to a corpse."

Steve Horn chuckled. "Don't ever accuse me of being dead, again," he
said mockingly. "At least, I can get up and walk around."

He flipped the drive control, sent the green space-ship whipping past
a darting meteor. He spun the ship again, in a tight circle, thrilling
to the surge of power released by the light touch of his hand on the
controls, then laughed aloud at Myra's instant cry of ecstatic alarm.

"Hush, Infant," he said, "I'm just practicing up for the time when I
sell the rights to the constructing of ships identical to this. Boy,
will the shekels ever roll in!"

Myra tucked in a loose strand of hair, bent over and kissed Steve on
the lobe of his right ear. He squirmed, wriggled, jerked the ship
off-course by an inadvertent twitch of his hand, growled playfully,
then let the ship travel uncontrolled while he kissed the ear of his
wife in return.

"Steve, pulleeze!" Myra said faintly.

"What were you saying about the Indians, dear?" she asked finally.

"'Lo, the poor Indian,'" Steve misquoted, "he has gone the way of
all--_Damn!_" His words were bitten off by the sudden jerking of the
ship.

Myra frowned. "Maybe those Indians didn't build this thing so well,"
she said worriedly. "Remember Peachy said the first few ships built by
his people wouldn't fly. It would be just our luck to try and ride an
experimental job back to Jupiter."

Steve jiggled the controls.

"Something grabbed us," he said. "Something just reached out and jerked
us off-course--tried to hold us back."

"I don't believe it," Myra said. "You're just--"

The ship whipped to one side, then bucked playfully like a trout riding
a fisherman's line.

"Ugh!" said Steve faintly, struggled to pull his body back into his
seat.

"Steve, I'm frightened!" Myra wailed.

"Nonsense!" Steve said stoutly. "There isn't a blamed thing to be
afra--"

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly the ship began to toss crazily, like a rat shaken in a
terrier's teeth. Steve and Myra were thrown to the floor. Unsteadily
making their way to a window, they saw a little golden meteor-ship,
such as had been the beginning of all their trouble. Evidently they
were caught in its magnetic field. Steve tried accelerating, but they
were powerless to escape.

Myra burst into helpless tears. "Oh, Steve, this is too much. We
_can't_ go back there again."

"Damn those peach-creatures!" said Steve. "Just when I thought we'd
never see them again."

Again letters of fire appeared above the little golden ship. "RETURN,"
they said, simply.

"You're not going to do it?" asked Myra.

"There's no use getting killed." Steve shrugged disgustedly.

He was about to reverse the ship's course when a long snake-like flame
streaked up from the planet below with a menacing rumble that could be
felt through the hull of the ship.

The golden craft saw it coming and tried to escape, but the lash of
flame followed its frantic dodgings inexorably. Suddenly, like a
striking snake, it straightened. Its tip touched the meteor-ship. There
was an eye-blinding flash.

When they could see again, nothing was visible but the planet below,
looking serene and peaceful on the wooded half of its surface turned to
them. Of the attacking ship or the instrument of its doom there was no
sign.

Steve Horn looked for the last time at the planet before climbing back
into the control seat. He wiped his eyes with a self-conscious gesture.

"Thanks," he said.

And flicked the drive-beam that was to send them home.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Transcriber's Note: Section headings for section I to III missing.]





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