1

IN THE DAYS when spaceships had been squirted along by vaporized boron sludge or by cesium-ion jets their size had been restricted by the limits of power available. The relation of payload to exhaust velocity was something no designer dared ignore. Blieder put an end to all that.

Ships rapidly gained a tremendous boost in size and carrying capacity. Planners and builders made it a point of honor that each new vessel must be larger than any of its predecessors. The result was the construction of a succession of monsters graduated nearer and nearer to the popular idea of the super-colossal.

The ship now taking a load aboard for its maiden flight from Terra was the very latest and therefore the largest. Its enormous shell of chrome-titanium alloy was eight hundred feet in diameter, one and a half miles in length. Mass like that takes up room and makes a dent. The great under-belly rested in a rut twelve feet deep.

News-channel commentators, lost for suitable superlatives, had repeatedly described the vessel as “one to make the senses boggle.” Always willing to do some fervent boggling, the public had turned up in its thousands. A solid mass of people stood behind the barriers and studied the ship with the bovine stares of good, obedient, uncomplaining taxpayers. It did not occur to any of them that somebody had paid for this gigantic vision or that they had been stung good and hard in their individual and collective wallets.

People were momentarily incapable of deep thoughts about cost. The flag had been raised, the bands were playing and this was a patriotic occasion. It is conventional that one does not think vulgar thoughts of money on a patriotic occasion; the individual who

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chooses such a time to count his cash is by definition a traitor or a no-good bum.

So the ship lay there while the tribal totem fluttered in the breeze and the bands produced tribal noises and a careful selection of tribal braves filed aboard. Those mounting the gangways numbered more than two thousands. They were divisible into three distinct types. The tall, lean, crinkly-eyed ones were the crew. The crop-haired, heavy-jowled ones were the troops. The expressionless, balding and myopic ones were the bureaucrats.

The first of these types bore themselves with the professional casualness of people to whom a journey is just another trip in a lifetime of meanderings. Lugging loads of kit up the gangways, the troops showed the tough resignation of those who have delivered themselves into the hands of loud-mouthed idiots one of whom stood at the base of the steps and bellowed abuse at every fifth man. The bureaucrats wore the pained expressions of those suffering something that shouldn’t be done to a dog. They had been dragged from their desks and that is the Last Straw.

An hour after the last man, box, case and package had been loaded the V.I.P. arrived. This was the Imperial Ambassador, a florid-faced character with small eyes and a huge belly. Mounting the rostrum he gazed importantly at the audience, bestowed a condescending nod upon the video cameras, cleared his throat and gave forth.

“With this wonderful ship, the forerunner of many more to come, we are about to establish authority over our faraway kith and kin in their interest as well as in ours. While the opportunity exists and before it is too late we are going to create a cosmic empire of enormous strength and vast magnitude.” Cheers. “There is no knowing what formidable antagonists our own lifeform may be called upon to meet at any time in the future and before that happens Earth must reclaim its own so that we can present a common front to the foe. The galaxy contains a multitude of hidden secrets some of which may prove perilous in the extreme when revealed. Together we shall face them and defeat them as Terrans always have done.” Cheers. “United we stand, divided we fall. Now is the time to bring our distant parts into unity with the mother world.”

He continued in this strain for half an hour, yakitty-yak, yakitty-

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yak, punctuated by applause. Typically he overdid it to the point of trying to convince himself of the righteousness of his cause. He was full of sherry and in a garrulous mood. The members of the audience grew restless, their cheers became strangled by boredom. They had come solely to witness the ship’s departure and this gabby fat man was delaying the event.

Eventually he finished with a gracious word of praise for God, waved to the audience, bowed to the cameras, tramped up the last open gangway and entered the ship. The airlock closed. A minute later a siren sounded. Without a sound or any visible output of power the ship went up, slowly at first, then faster, faster. It vanished through the clouds.

On board Tenth Engineer Harrison said to Sixth Engineer Fuller, “You heard that speech. What if these kinfolk among the stars don’t want to be loved by the mother world?”

“Any reason why they shouldn’t?” Fuller countered.

“Not that I can think of right now.”

“Then why dig up imaginary worries? Haven’t you got enough of your own?”

“Yes, I’ve got one,” Harrison admitted. He was a small monkeyish man with protruding ears. “My bike—I’d better tend to it.”

“Your what?” exclaimed Fuller, gaping at him.

“My bike,” said Harrison, evenly. “I brought it with me. I always bring my bike with me.”

The first planet showed up like a pink ball on the visiscreens but the effect was a fluorescent distortion; as seen with the naked eye its real color was gray-green. Fourth of a family of nine planets, it circled a Sol-type sun and the whole system lay in a sort of cosmic gap with no near neighbors.

In the chartroom Captain Grayder said to the Ambassador, “According to ancient records this world is the only inhabitable one in the bunch. About a million people were dumped upon it before communication ceased.”

“They’ll get an awful shock when they find that Terra has caught up with them again,” opined the Ambassador. “Which crowd of crackpots picked this place?”

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“This,” informed Grayder, “is the only world not chosen by its original settlers.”

“Not chosen? What d’you mean?”

“They were sent here whether they liked it or not. They were criminals. If any fellow’s room was preferred to his company Terra got rid of him by deporting him to where he could share his way of life with his own kind. Let dog eat dog, they said.”

“Now that you come to mention it I recall reading something about it when at college,” said the Ambassador. “I remember that the history books treated it as an interesting experiment that should solve once and for all the question of whether criminal traits are hereditary or environmental.”

“That is why I’ve been ordered to come here first. Some of our theorists want to know the answer.” Grayder looked thoughtful. “Maybe Terra has another army of no-good bums ready for shipment.”

“If so, it’s taken long enough to collect them. Four hundred years.”

“After a complete clean-up,” Grayder pointed out, “it might require several generations for the criminal strain to reappear.”

“If it is hereditary,” agreed the Ambassador. “But if it is environmental the clean-up should have had little or no effect.”

“I’m no expert myself but I think it’s neither,” Grayder offered.

“That so? What’s your idea about it?”

“When you’re born you take pot luck. You are born physically perfect or physically imperfect and in the latter case you’re a weakling or a cripple. You’re born mentally perfect or mentally deformed and in the latter case you’re an idiot or a criminal. I suspect that the majority of criminals could be cured once and for all by brain-surgery if only we knew the proper technique. But we don’t.”

“You may be right,” the Ambassador conceded.

“The great question is that of whether mental deformity gets passed down,” Grayder went on. “Whether the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation.”

“They’ll be somewhere around their twentieth generation by now.”

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“I was merely quoting,” said Grayder. He eyed the screen which the glowing ball now half-filled. “We’ll know soon.”

The Ambassador was silent and vaguely uneasy.

“From our viewpoint,” Grayder continued, “the Great Explosion rid our world of a horde of nonconformist nuisances. But, as you can now appreciate, things look mighty different from a ship plunging deep into space. The home world is far away, lost in the mist of stars. On any new world a Terran is a Terran even though long out of touch and a raving lunatic. He’s of the same shape and form as ourselves and that’s what counts. He’s not of some other and completely outlandish shape.”

“All the same, he must be considerably different from us,” ruled the Ambassador judicially, “else he wouldn’t be squatting in the middle of the starfield. A misfit remains a misfit no matter what his shape.” He patted his big belly in unconscious parody of his words. “While I have no resentment against those who deserted the world of their birth neither am I prejudiced in their favor. Let us take them as we find them and judge them solely on their merits—if any.”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” said Grayder, disinclined to argue. There were, he thought, going to be quite a lot of opinions about what does or does not constitute merit.

Close inspection of the surface provided a surprise as the ship raced around the planet with two thousand pairs of eyes gazing from its ports. Everyone had expected clearly visible signs of human spread and development. Instead, the planet showed evidence of being very sparsely settled.

There were no cities, towns or villages. They caught an occasional glimpse of a ramshackle mass of buildings resembling an old and dilapidated monastery. Almost invariably these were sited upon a hilltop or within the neck of land where a river formed a loop.

No arterial roads could be seen and they were bulleting at too great an altitude to identify footpaths. Several times they swept over great areas of forest and prairie devoid of any sign of habitation Once they crossed a huge gray desert broken by circular formations of rocky outcrop inside one of which appeared to be an encampment of twenty tents.

The Ambassador sniffed in disgust. “Hardly worth claiming. By the looks of it they couldn’t raise six regiments of space-troops much

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less an effective army. Either they’ve been decimated by disease or they’ve found a way to go someplace else.”

“I can make a guess why they’re fewer than expected,” ventured Grayder after some thought.

“Why?”

“History says we shipped a million criminals. I don’t recall ever reading how many of them were female.”

“Neither do I.”

“Seems to me highly likely that women didn’t number ten percent of the whole,” Grayder added. “Probably the men were in a majority of at least nine to one.”

“Not for long,” guessed the Ambassador, using his imagination. “In a situation like that a bunch of thugs would slaughter each other wholesale.”

“You may be right.” Grayder shrugged indifferently. “Let dog eat dog.” He peered through the fore observation-port. “We can’t go round and round until we’re dizzy. Neither can we land just anywhere. A vessel this size needs a long, flat surface and solid bedrock.”

“Choose your own place,” advised the Ambassador, “but try to pick it within easy reach of an inhabitation, if possible. We’ve got to make contact somewhere.”

Grayder nodded. “I’ll do my best.” He picked up the intercom phone and held it in one hand while he continued to watch through the port. After quite a time he said, “This is as good as anywhere,” and started barking orders into the phone.

Majestically the monster vessel swung into a long, shallow curve to starboard, losing velocity as it went. Two thousand men bowed, leaned or rolled the opposite way. In the troopers’ quarters kit fell out of starboard bunks and dived to port to the accompaniment of general invective. Sergeant Major Bidworthy roared for silence and followed it up with a string of threats. Nobody took any notice.

Completing its curve, the ship drifted to a stop, hung momentarily in mid-air, then began to sink. Its enormous tonnage went down gently and under perfect control in a way that the long-dead Blieder would have considered miraculous. Indeed, even those thoroughly accustomed to such ships never quite got over their sense of wonder at floating down to land, never completely rid

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themselves of the uneasy feeling that for once something might go wrong and result in one hell of a crash. No Blieder-drive ship had done a dead fall to date—but there always has to be a first time.

So the crew went down with grossly exaggerated sang-froid while the troops and bureaucrats descended with queasy stomachs. At fifty feet from the ground Grayder boosted the ship a little forward to position it exactly as he wanted. This caught all but the crew napping. Bureaucrats slid on their official backsides across metal floors, troopers rolled rearward over each other in a mad tangle of bodies, arms and equipment and amid a torrent of oaths. Clinging to a bulkhead, Bidworthy recited the names of those to be shot at dawn. Apparently he was contemplating a massacre.

The ship touched, settled, sank twelve feet deep into hard soil. Crunching, cracking sounds came through the keel as buried boulders split and powdered under great pressure. Power cut off. The bureaucrats picked themselves up with injured dignity, dusted themselves and polished their glasses. The troops sorted themselves out and started surlily restacking their kit while Bidworthy raved at them.

A bell rang in the power-room, the signal to open the port midway airlock. Chief Engineer McKechnie switched on the motor operating the release-gear while Tenth Engineer Harrison went to check that the lock was working properly. He was joined there by Sergeant Gleed, a leather-faced trooper eager to set eyes upon solid earth.

The airlock’s outer plug wound inward, swung aside to reveal a pastoral scene that Gleed drank in like a thirsty camel. Lush grassland led from the ship to a broad, sharply curving river on the Opposite side of which a large building—or a tightly packed conglomeration of small ones—stood on the neck of land. Something that looked remarkably like a sailing ship’s mainmast complete with crow’s-nest arose high from the middle of this assembly. In the center of the river one man in a canoe was paddling fast toward the other side.

The lock’s phone shrilled, Gleed answered it and Grayder’s voice asked, “Who’s that?”

“Sergeant Gleed, sir.”

“Good! Get down to the river-bank as quickly as you can, Sar-

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geant. There’s a fellow in mid-stream making for the other side. See if you can persuade him to come back. We’d like to have a talk with him.”

“Shall I take my gun, sir?”

There was a short silence at the other end before Grayder answered, “I don’t think you need bother. It would create a bad impression. And in any case you will be well covered by the ship’s armament.”

“Very well, sir.” Gleed hung up the phone, pulled a face, said to Harrison, “Drop the ladder. I’m going out.”

“And who gave you permission to do so?” asked a cold voice.

Gleed turned, found himself facing Colonel Shelton, who had just entered the airlock. He stiffened, heels together, hands held rigidly at his sides.

“Captain Grayder told me to go after that fellow in the canoe, sir,” explained Gleed.

“Is that so?” said Shelton as though he had every reason to doubt it.

“Yes, sir,” assured Gleed.

“Troops are my responsibility,” informed Shelton acidly. “I command them. Captain Grayder commands this vessel.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are subject to my orders and nobody else’s. A man of your rank should be well aware of this fact without the necessity of me telling him.”

“I thought—”

“You are not required to think. That task may safely be left to your superiors.” Taking the phone off the wall, Shelton added in sinister manner, “We shall see whether Captain Grayder confirms your claim.” Apparently he expected Grayder not to do so, having taken it for granted that Gleed’s sole purpose was to sneak out and stake an early claim to wine, women and song. For this estimate of motives Gleed had only himself to blame, he being usually the first out and last back on all shore-leaves. But somewhat to Shelton’s surprise Grayder did confirm the story. Replacing the phone, Shelton said, “Very well. Get down to the river as fast as you can— you’ve wasted enough time already.”

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Resenting that but not showing it, Gleed started to clamber down the ladder.

Shelton said, “Where’s your gun?”

“It’s here,” chimed in Harrison, picking it off the floor and showing it.

“What are you doing with it?”

“Holding it,” said Harrison.

“That is perfectly obvious,” said Shelton sarcastically. “Are you mentally backward by any chance?”

“I suggest you ask Captain Grayder’s opinion on that,” Harrison retorted. “He is my commanding officer.”

At that point Gleed scrambled back into the lock, snatched the gun, crammed it into his holster and went down the ladder at top speed. He seemed vastly relieved to be out of it.

Shelton watched him go, then eyed Harrison forbiddingly. “I suppose that not being subject to military discipline you can do pretty much as you please?”

Harrison said nothing.

With a loud sniff Shelton marched back into the ship. He had hardly gone when Sergeant Major Bidworthy clattered into the lock, expanded his chest, took a long, satisfying breath of fresh air. Then he screwed up his eyes for a view of the alien landscape. His face purpled.

“Who said Sergeant Gleed could leave the ship?”

“Colonel Shelton.”

“Did Gleed tell you that?”

“No—I was here when he was given the order.”

“I’ll check on that,” warned Bidworthy. “Heaven help you if you’re lying to support a liar.”

With that, he hustled away in search of Shelton. Behind, Tenth Engineer Harrison shrugged, gazed out of the lock and wiggled his large ears.

Gleed reached the bank just as his quarry hauled the canoe ashore on the other side. The river was wide, slow-flowing and deep. Given enough volume a voice could carry across it. He cupped hands around his mouth and let go with a bellow.

“Ahoy, there!”

The fellow shaded his eyes as he stared across at him. Distance

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was a little too far for Gleed to make out his features; he appeared to be short, squat and sloppily clothed.

“Ahoy, there!” repeated Gleed, making enticing gestures.

After a moment of uncertainty, the other bawled back, “What do you want?” His Terran words were ancient but understandable. They came to Gleed’s ears like, “What dost thou want?” or “What wanteth thou?” This did not surprise the hearer who was well aware that four hundred years is a long, long time.

“Come over here,” shouted Gleed, trying to make his barrack-square voice sound soft and lovable.

“What for?”

“A talk.”

“I am not a gnoit,” responded the other mysteriously. So saying, he took something out of the canoe, shouldered it and started up the farther bank. “Wait!”

Focusing for a better look, Gleed decided that the other’s burden was definitely a weapon. By hokey, yes, a crossbow. He had seen a couple of them in Terran museums but here was the real article in actual use. Since he had all the modern soldier’s hearty contempt for primitive arms it did not occur to him whether he was within effective range of the crossbow. Not that it mattered. The owner was trudging steadily away without showing any inclination to take potshots at him.

“Aren’t you coming?” shrieked Gleed, conscious that a number of official eyes were watching proceedings from the ship.

“Wait!” yelled the other again.

Muttering to himself, Gleed found a thick, cushiony clump of grass, sat down and waited. The far-off figure plodded onward, crossbow on shoulder, reached the building or buildings and vanished from sight. Boredly, Gleed studied the place, noticed for the first time that somebody was in the crow’s-nest atop the mast. Evidently the erection was a look-out post. He found himself wondering why they considered it necessary to keep permanent watch on a world occupied only by their own kind.

Some time passed before a new figure came into view, walked cautiously to the river-bank and stopped alongside the canoe.

“What do you want?” it shouted.

“A talk—that’s all,” Gleed gave back.

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“Just a talk?”

“Yes.”

“What about?”

Controlling his patience, Gleed bawled, “We’re from Terra as you can see by our ship. Our captain wants a word with somebody.”

“Then let him come over here.”

“He wants one of you to visit the ship,” insisted Gleed, somewhat exasperated.

“He would. Does he think we’re a bunch of gnoits?”

“Look,” screamed Gleed, “we don’t even know what a gnoit is.”

The other digested this information, came to a reluctant decision, said, “We send one man there if you send one man here.”

“Why?”

“You kill our man and we’ll kill yours.”

“Are you nuts?” shouted Gleed incredulously.

“Aha!” riposted the other with the air of having had his darkest suspicions confirmed. “And you have just pretended that you don’t know what gnoits are. A liar from the first.”

“Why should we kill your man?” yelled Gleed, unwilling to discuss the obscure relationship between nuts and gnoits.

“Why shouldn’t you?”

“Because we’ve nothing to gain by it.”

“So you say.”

It was now Gleed’s turn to bawl, “Wait!” Then he returned to the ship, mounted the ladder, entered the airlock.

“What did you get?” Harrison asked with great interest. “Free beer?”

“Shut up,” snarled Gleed. He grabbed the wall-phone, replaced it hurriedly as a thought struck him. “Who should I talk to, Shelton or Grayder?”

“Give forth to whoever answers.”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Gleed, thankful for this easy solution. He reached for the phone again. It rang violently just as his fingers closed around it. The unexpectedness of it made him jump. He rammed it against an ear and said, “Sergeant Gleed here.”

“I know,” came Grayder’s voice. “I watched your return. What has happened? Are they going to send someone here or not?”

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“They say we can have one of their men in exchange for one of ours.”

“In exchange? Do they think we’ve come all the way here for the purpose of bartering individuals?”

“They seem to be afraid of us, sir. They say that if we kill their man they will kill ours.”

“Holy smoke!” exclaimed Grayder. “The idea of slaying a visitor would never cross our minds.”

“It appears to be well embedded in theirs, sir.”

“Must be something mighty peculiar going on in this world,” opined Grayder. “Hold on awhile.”

Gleed held on. He could hear a steady mumble of words in the control-cabin as half a dozen people discussed the matter. He recognized the tones of Grayder, Shelton and the Ambassador but couldn’t make out a word they were saying. A vague uneasiness crept over him as the mumbling continued. Slowly he incubated the notion that he was soon to cross water. His crystal ball was serving him well.

Grayder came on. “We find nothing wrong with this proposition for an exchange. Obviously any funny business can be made to cut both ways.”

“Yes, sir,” said Gleed, not liking the word “cut.’

“So you’re it,” finished Grayder.

“What was that, sir?”

“You’re it. You go over there while their man comes here.”

“May I have that order from Colonel Shelton, sir?”

“Certainly.”

Shelton came on and confirmed the instructions. “Keep your eyes and ears wide open, Sergeant, and see what useful information you can pick up while among them.”

“Right, sir.”

“From the males,” added Shelton pointedly.

“Eh?” said Gleed, astonished.

“Don’t waste your time on the females.”

“I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so, sir,” assured Gleed in injured tones.

“I believe you,” said Shelton. “Thousands wouldn’t.”

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Dumping the phone, Gleed gave it an ugly look. “Officers!” he said.

“No spitting in the airlock,” warned Harrison. “Are you staying in or going out?”

“I’m going out. As a hostage.”

“A what?”

“A hostage. A full-blown sergeant as swap for a crummy, flea-bitten civilian.”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of civilians aboard,” mused Harrison, thinking of the bureaucrats. “One of them would never be missed. Tell Shelton to send one in lieu of you.”

“Don’t be silly,” advised Gleed. “An order is an order and that’s that.”

He went down the ladder. Harrison leaned out the lock and watched him.

By the time he reached the river-bank a dozen of the opposition had clustered together on the other side. The whole lot had crossbows slung over one shoulder and were gazing expectantly his way.

He cupped hands and bellowed, “I will go over there.”

Two of them unhitched their weapons, handed them to their fellows, shoved out the canoe and paddled across. Gleed carefully looked them over as they neared, was not wildly enthusiastic about what he could see. They had lean, peaky faces, beady eyes, tousled hair and were wearing clothes that seemed to have been roughly hacked out of old sacks. It could be said in their favor that they shaved, at least once a month. A real pair of hoboes, thought Gleed.

Coming alongside, they held the canoe to the bank. “Get in.”

“Not,” said Gleed, knowing his rights, “before your man has got out.”

The two grinned nastily at each other. One stepped out and stood on the bank idly watching while Gleed stepped in. Then he followed just as his companion pushed the canoe away from the verge. Both started to paddle like mad.

But Gleed had been a space-trooper too long to be bilked thus easily. The canoe had gained only three yards from the bank when he threw his full weight to one side and overturned it. At this point the water was slightly less than four feet deep. Gleed snatched

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the nearest hobo by the scruff of the neck and dragged him with him as he waded ashore.

The other one was now swimming strongly for the opposite side while the canoe drifted bottom-up downstream. On the farther bank the onlookers howled, shook fists and performed an ungainly war-dance. Three of them unslung their crossbows and started winding them up to full stretch.

Now the captive made a dexterous twist that slipped him out of the ragged jacket Gleed was gripping. He tried to dash for the river but Gleed stuck out a swift foot and tripped him. Saying things under his breath, Gleed grabbed him by the hair, jerked him upright and kicked him in the seat.

This produced more zip in the war-dance on the other side. The yells rose louder. Taking no notice, Gleed got an armlock on his prisoner and began marching him toward the ship. Things went snuck-snuck past the two of them and the captive promptly tried to throw himself flat. Gleed held him up.

“They’re shooting at us,” protested the other.

“Then tell ‘em to stop,” said Gleed.

“Stop!” he screamed belatedly as another snuck went past. “Stop, you verminous ponks!”

“I couldn’t have expressed it better,” approved Gleed.

A difference of opinion now arose on the opposite bank, three marksmen boasting of their ability to penetrate Gleed’s chitlings without coming near to his companion while the others begged leave to doubt it. The argument became sufficiently heated for one to snatch another’s crossbow and smite him over the head with it. The victim had a friend who expressed his resentment forcibly and also got bopped.

Glancing back from time to time, Gleed said, “No discipline in your mob. A real bunch of gnoits, eh?”

The prisoner kicked him in the ankle. Gleed responded with a harder one to the tail and hurried him up. They reached the ladder.

“You first, Mortimer,” invited Gleed.

Mortimer jibbed. Gleed seized his hair and bounced his face half a dozen times on the sixth rung. It improved Mortimer’s mind if not his features for he proceeded to climb. Gleed mounted behind him.

An escort of four troopers arrived at the airlock just as Gleed

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and his captive got into it. Taking possession of the latter, they marched him toward the control-cabin. Gleed stood staring sourly at his uniform which was sodden from the waist down.

Harrison observed virtuously, “If I wanted to play in the river I’d get undressed first.”

“Your wit prostrates me,” rasped Gleed. He stamped around making squelching sounds with his boots. “This isn’t all, either. Bet you I’m on a charge for mauling a peaceful citizen.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Harrison, “seeing that this is your day.

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Prologue | TOC | Chapter 2