ch a  tense
grip on the gun that his fingers stood out white and stiff against the satin
brownness of the wood.
     He gasped a little  in his  effort to fight  down the rage that  boiled
inside him,  trying to explode. If they had stayed here  any longer, if he'd
not run them off, he knew he'd have given in to that towering rage.
     And it was better, much better, the way that it had been. He wondered a
little dully how be had managed to hold in.
     And was glad he had. For even as it stood, it would be bad enough.
     They would say he was a madman; that  he had run them off at  gunpoint.
They might even say that he had  kidnapped Lucy and  was holding her against
her will. They would stop  at nothing to make  him all the trouble that they
could.
     He  had no illusions  about what they might do,  for he knew the breed,
vindictive in their smallness-little vicious insects of the human race.
     He stood beside the porch and watched them down the hill, wondering how
a girl so fine as Lucy  could  spring from such decadent stock. Perhaps  her
handicap had served  as  a bulwark  against the kind of folks they were; had
kept her from becoming another one of them.
     Perhaps  if  she could have  talked with them or listened, she would in
time have become as shiftless and as vicious as any one of them.
     It had been a great mistake to get mixed up in a thing like this. A man
in his position had no  business in an involvement such as this. He had  too
much to lose; he should have stood aside.
     And yet what could he have done? Could he have refused to give Lucy his
protection, with  the blood soaking  through her dress from the lashes  that
lay  across her shoulders?  Should  he  have ignored  the  frantic, helpless
pleading in her face?
     He might  have done it  differently, he thought. There  might have been
other, smarter ways in which  to  handle it. But there had  been  no time to
think of any  smarter way. There only had been time to  carry her to  safety
and then go outside to meet them.
     And now, that he thought  of it, perhaps the best thing would have been
not  to go outside at all. If he'd stayed inside the  station, nothing would
have happened.
     It  had been  impulsive,  that  going  out to  face  them. It had been,
perhaps, the human thing to do, but it had not been wise. But he had done it
and it was over now and there was no turning back. If he had it to do again,
he would do it differently, but you got no second chance.
     He turned heavily around and went back inside the station.
     Lucy was still sitting on the sofa and  she held a flashing  object  in
her  hand. She was staring at it raptly and there was in her face again that
same vibrant  and alert expression he had seen that morning  when she'd held
the butterfly.
     He laid  the rifle on the desk  and stood quietly  there, but  she must
have caught the motion of him, for  she looked quickly up. And then her eyes
once more went back to the flashing thing she was holding in her hands.
     He saw that it was the pyramid of spheres  and now all the spheres were
spinning  slowly, in alternating clockwise and counterclockwise motions, and
that as  they spun  they shone  and glittered,  each in  its own  particular
color, as if there might be, deep inside each one of them, a source of soft,
warm light.
     Enoch  caught  his breath  at the  beauty and the wonder of it-the old,
hard wonder of what this thing might be and what it might be meant to do. He
had examined it a hundred times or  more and had puzzled at it and there had
been nothing he could find that was of significance. So far as he could see,
it  was  only something  that  was meant to be looked at, although there had
been  that persistent  feeling that  it  had  a purpose and  that,  perhaps,
somehow, it was meant to operate.
     And  now  it was  in  operation. He had tried a hundred times to get it
figured out and Lucy had picked it up just once and had got it figured out.
     He  noticed  the  rapture  with which  she  was  regarding  it.  Was it
possible, he wondered, that she knew its purpose?
     He went  across the room and touched her arm and she lifted her face to
look at him and in her eyes he saw the gleam of happiness and excitement.
     He made a questioning gesture toward the pyramid, trying to ask  if she
knew what it might be. But she did not understand  him. Or perhaps she knew,
but knew as well how impossible it would be to explain its purpose. She made
that  happy, fluttery  motion with her hand again, indicating the table with
its  load of gadgets and she seemed to  try  to laugh-there was, at least, a
sense of laughter in her face.
     Just a  kid, Enoch  told himself, with a box heaped  high with new  and
wondrous toys. Was that all it was to her? Was she happy and  excited merely
because she  supenly had  become aware  of all the beauty and the novelty of
the things stacked there on the table?
     He turned wearily and went back to the desk. He picked up the rifle and
hung it on the pegs.
     She should not  be in the  station.  No human being  other than himself
should ever be inside the  station. Bringing  her here,  he  had broken that
unspoken understanding he  had  with the aliens who had installed  him as  a
keeper. Although, of all the humans he could have  brought, Lucy was the one
who could possibly be exempt from the understood restriction.  For she could
never tell the things that she had seen.
     She could not remain, he knew. She must be taken home. For if she  were
not taken, there would  be a massive hunt for  her, a lost  girl-a beautiful
deaf-mute.
     A story of a missing deaf-mute girl  would bring  in  newspapermen in a
day or two. It would be in all the papers and on television and on radio and
the woods would be swarming with hundreds of searchers.
     Hank Fisher would  tell how  he'd  tried  to  break into the house  and
couldn't  and there'd be  others who would  try to break into the house  and
there'd be hell to pay.
     Enoch sweated, thinking of it.
     All the years of keeping  out  of  people's way, all the years of being
unobtrusive would be  for nothing then.  This strange house  upon  a  lonely
ridge would become a mystery for the world, and a challenge and a target for
all the crackpots of the world.
     He  went to the medicine cabinet, to get  the healing ointment that had
been included in the drug packet provided by Galactic Central.
     He  found it and opened the little box. More than  half of it remained.
He'd  used it through the  years, but sparingly. There  was, in fact, little
need to use a great deal of it.
     He  went across the room to where Lucy sat and stood back of  the sofa.
He showed her what he had and made motions to show her  what it was for. She
slid her dress off her shoulders and he bent to look at the slashes.
     The bleeding had stopped, but the flesh was red and angry.
     Gently he rubbed ointment into the stripes that the whip had made.
     She had  healed  the  butterfly,  he thought;  but she could  not  heal
herself.
     On the table  in front of her the pyramid of spheres still was flashing
and glinting, throwing a flickering shadow of color all about the room.
     It was operating, but what could it be doing? It was finally operating,
but not a thing was happening as a result of that operation.

        19
     Ulysses came as twilight was deepening into night.
     Enoch and  Lucy had just finished with their supper and were sitting at
the table when Enoch heard his footsteps.
     The alien stood in shadow and he looked,  Enoch thought, more than ever
like the cruel clown. His lithe, flowing body had the look of smoked, tanned
buckskin. The patchwork color of  his hide  seemed  to  shine  with  a faint
luminescence and the sharp, hard angles of his face, the smooth  baldness of
his head, the flat, pointed  ears pasted tight against the skull  lent him a
vicious fearsomeness.
     If one  did not  know  him for the  gentle character that he was, Enoch
told himself,  he  would  be  enough to scare a  man  out of  seven years of
growth.
     "We had been expecting you," said Enoch. "The coffeepot is boiling."
     Ulysses took a slow step forward, then paused.
     "You have another with you. A human, I would say."
     "There is no danger," Enoch told him.
     "Of another gender. A female, is it not? You have found a mate?"
     "No," said Enoch. "She is not my mate."
     "You have  acted  wisely through  the years,"  Ulysses  told him. "In a
position such as yours, a mate is not the best."
     "You  need  not  worry.  There  is  a  malady  upon  her.  She  has  no
communication. She can neither hear nor speak."
     "A malady?"
     "Yes, from the moment she was born.  She has never heard or spoken. She
can tell of nothing here."
     "Sign language?"
     "She knows no sign language. She refused to learn it."
     "She is a friend of yours."
     "For  some  years," said  Enoch. "She  came seeking  my protection. Her
father used a whip to beat her."
     "This father knows she's here?"
     "He thinks she is, but he  cannot know." Ulysses came slowly out of the
darkness and stood within the light.
     Lucy was watching him, but there was  no  terror on her face. Her  eyes
were level and untroubled and she did not flinch.
     "She takes me well," Ulysses said. "She does not run or scream."
     "She could not scream," said Enoch, "even if she wished."
     "I must be  most  repugnant,"  Ulysses  said, "at  first  sight to  any
human."
     "She does not see the outside only. She sees inside of you as well."
     "Would she be frightened if I made a human bow to her?"
     "I think," said Enoch, "she might be very pleased."
     Ulysses  made his bow, formal  and exaggerated, with one  hand upon his
leathery belly, bowing from the waist.
     Lucy smiled and clapped her hands.
     "You see," Ulysses cried, delighted, "I think that she may like me."
     "Why don't you sit down,  then," suggested Enoch, "and we all will have
some coffee."
     "I had  forgotten of the coffee. The sight of  this  other human  drove
coffee from my mind."
     He sat down  at the place where the third cup  had been set and waiting
for  him. Enoch started around the table, but Lucy rose  and went to get the
coffee.
     "She understands?" Ulysses asked.
     Enoch shook his head. "You sat down by the cup and the cup was empty."
     She poured the coffee, then  went over  to the sofa. "She will not stay
with us?" Ulysses asked. "She's intrigued by that tableful  of trinkets. She
set one of them to going."
     "You plan to keep her here?"
     "I can't keep her," Enoch said.  "There'll be a hunt for her. I'll have
to take her home."
     "I do not like it," Ulysses said.
     "Nor do I. Let's admit at once that I should not have brought her here.
But at the time it seemed the  only thing to do.  I had no time  to think it
out."
     "You've done no wrong," said Ulysses softly. "She cannot harm us," said
Enoch. "Without communication ..."
     "It's not that,"  Ulysses told him. "She's just a complication and I do
not  like further  complications. I came tonight to tell you, Enoch, that we
are in trouble."
     "Trouble? But there's not been any trouble."
     Ulysses lifted his coffee cup and took a long drink of it.
     "That is good," he said. "I carry back the bean and make it at my home.
But it does not taste the same."
     "This trouble?"
     "You remember the Vegan that died here several of your years ago."
     Enoch noped. "The Hazer."
     "The being has a proper name ..."
     Enoch laughed. "You don't like our nicknames."
     "It is not our way," Ulysses said.
     "My name for them," said Enoch, "is a mark of my affection."
     "You buried this Vegan."
     "In my family  plot," said Enoch. "As if he were my own. I read a verse
above him."
     "That is well and good,"  Ulysses  said. "That is  as it should be. You
did very well. But the body's gone."
     "Gone! It can't be gone!" cried Enoch.
     "It has been taken from the grave."
     "But you can't know," protested Enoch. "How could you know?"
     "Not I. It's the Vegans. The Vegans are the ones who know."
     "But they're light-years distant ..."
     And then he was not too sure. For on that night  the  wise old  one had
died and he'd  messaged Galactic  Central, he had been told  that the Vegans
had known the  moment  he had died. And there  had  been no need for a death
certificate, for they knew of what he died.
     It   seemed   impossible,   of  course,  but  there   were   too   many
impossibilities in the galaxy  which turned  out,  after all, to be entirely
possible for a man to ever know when he stood on solid ground.
     Was it possible, he wondered, that each Vegan  had some  sort of mental
contact with every other Vegan? Or  that some central census bureau (to give
a  human designation  to something that  was scarcely understandable)  might
have some sort of official linkage with every living Vegan, knowing where it
was and how it was and what it might be doing?
     Something of the sort, Enoch admitted, might indeed be possible. It was
not beyond  the  astounding  capabilities  that  one  found  on  every  hand
throughout the galaxy. But to maintain a similar contact with the Vegan dead
was something else again.
     "The body's  gone," Ulysses  said. "I can tell you that  and know it is
the truth. You're held accountable."
     "By the Vegans?"
     "By the Vegans, yes. And the galaxy."
     "I did what  I could," said Enoch hotly. "I did  what was  required.  I
filled the letter of  the  Vegan law. I paid the dead my honor and the honor
of my planet. It is not right that the  responsibility should go on forever.
Not that I  can believe  the body can  be really gone.  There is  no one who
would take it. No one who knew of it."
     "By human logic," Ulysses told him, "you, of course, are right. But not
by Vegan logic. And in  this case Galactic Central would tend to support the
Vegans."
     "The Vegans," Enoch said testily, "happen to be friends of mine. I have
never met a one of them that I didn't like or couldn't get along with. I can
work it out with them."
     "If only the Vegans were concerned," said Ulysses, "I am quite sure you
could. I would  have no worry.  But the situation gets complicated as you go
along. On the surface it seems a rather simple happening, but there are many
factors. The Vegans, for example, have known for some time that the body had
been  taken  and  they  were  disturbed,  of  course.  But  out  of  certain
considerations, they had kept their silence."
     "They needn't have. They could have come to me. I don't know what could
have been done ..."
     "Silent not because of you. Because of something else."
     Ulysses finished off his  coffee  and  poured  himself  another cup. He
filled Enoch's half-filled cup and set the pot aside.
     Enoch waited.
     "You  may not have been aware  of  it,"  said Ulysses, "but at the time
this station was established, there was considerable opposition to it from a
number of races in the galaxy. There were many reasons cited, as is the case
in all  such situations, but  the underlying reason,  when  you  get down to
basics,  rests squarely  on the continual contest  for  racial  or  regional
advantage. A situation akin, I would imagine, to the continual bickering and
maneuvering which you find here upon the Earth to gain an economic advantage
for one  group or  another,  or one  nation  and another. In  the galaxy, of
course,  the economic  considerations only occasionally are  the  underlying
factors. There are many other factors than the economic."
     Enoch noped.  "I  had  gained a hint of  this.  Nothing recently. But I
hadn't paid too much attention to it."
     "It's  largely a  matter of  direction,"  Ulysses said.  "When Galactic
Central began its expansion into this spiral arm, it meant there was no time
or effort  available for expansions in  other directions. There is one large
group of races which has held a dream for many centuries of  expanding  into
some of  the nearby globular clusters. It does make a  dim sort of sense, of
course. With the techniques  that we have, the longer  jump across  space to
some of the closer clusters is entirely possible. Another thing-the clusters
seem to be extraordinarily  free  of dust and gas, so that once we got there
we  could expand  more  rapidly  throughout the cluster than we can in  many
parts of the galaxy. But at best, it's a speculative business, for we  don't
know what we'll find there. After we've made all  the  effort  and spent all
the time we  may  find little or nothing,  except  possibly  some more  real
estate. And we have plenty of that  in  the  galaxy. But the clusters have a
vast appeal for certain types of minds."
     Enoch noped.  "I can see that.  It  would be the first venturing out of
the galaxy itself.  It might be the first short step on the route that could
lead us to other galaxies."
     Ulysses peered at him. "You, too," he said. "I might have known."
     Enoch said smugly: "I am that type of mind."
     "Well, anyhow, there was this globular-cluster faction-I suppose  you'd
call  it that-which  contended  bitterly when  we  began our  move  in  this
direction.  You  understand-certainly you  do-that  we've barely  begun  the
expansion into  this neighborhood. We have  less than a  dozen stations  and
we'll  need  a  hundred.  It  will  take  centuries before  the  network  is
complete."
     "So this faction is still contending," Enoch said. "There still is time
to stop this spiral-arm project."
     "That is right. And that's what  worries me. For the faction is  set to
use this incident of the missing body as an emotion-charged argument against
the extension of this network. It is being joined by other  groups that  are
concerned with certain special interests.  And these special interest groups
see a  better chance  of  getting  what they  want  if they  can  wreck this
project."
     "Wreck it?"
     "Yes, wreck it. They will start screaming, as soon as the body incident
becomes  open knowledge, that a planet so  barbaric as  the Earth is no  fit
location for a station. They will insist that this station be abandoned."
     "But they can't do that!"
     "They can," Ulysses said. "They will  say it is degrading and unsafe to
maintain  a  station so  barbaric  that even graves are rifled, on  a planet
where  the honored  dead  cannot  rest in peace. It  is  the kind of  highly
emotional  argument  that  will  gain  wide acceptance  and support in  some
sections  of the galaxy.  The Vegans tried their best. They tried to hush it
up, for  the sake  of  the project. They have  never done a thing like  that
before. They are a proud people and they feel a slight to honor-perhaps more
deeply  than  many  other  races- and  yet, for the  greater good, they were
willing to accept dishonor. And would have if they could have kept it quiet.
But  the story  leaked out  somehow-by  good  espionage, no doubt.  And they
cannot stand the loss of face in advertised  dishonor. The Vegan who will be
arriving  here  this  evening  is  an official  representative charged  with
delivering an official protest."
     "To me?"
     "To you, and through you, to the Earth."
     "But the Earth is not concerned. The Earth doesn't even know."
     "Of course it doesn't. So far as Galactic Central is concerned, you are
the Earth. You represent the Earth."
     Enoch  shook his head.  It was a crazy  way  of thinking. But, he  told
himself, he should  not be surprised. It was the kind of  thinking he should
have  expected. He was too hidebound,  he thought, too  narrow. He had  been
trained in the human way of thinking and,  even after all  these years, that
way of thought persisted. Persisted to a point where any way of thought that
conflicted with it must automatically seem wrong.
     This talk of abandoning Earth station was  wrong,  too. It made no sort
of sense.  For  abandoning of  the  station  would  not wreck  the  project.
Although, more than  likely, it would  wreck whatever hope he'd held for the
human race.
     "But even if you have to abandon Earth," he said, "you  could go out to
Mars. You could build  a  station there. If it's necessary to have a station
in this solar system there are other planets."
     "You don't  understand,"  Ulysses told him. "This station  is  just one
point of attack. It is no more  than  a  toehold, just a bare beginning. The
aim is  to wreck the project, to free the time  and effort that is  expended
here  for some other  project. If they  can force us to abandon one station,
then we stand discredited. Then all our motives and our judgment come up for
review."
     "But even if the project should be wrecked," Enoch pointed out,  "there
is no surety that any group would gain. It  would only throw the question of
where the time and energy  should be used into an open debate. You  say that
there are  many special interest  factions banding together to carry  on the
fight against us. Suppose  that they do win. Then they  must turn around and
start fighting among themselves."
     "Of course that's the  case," Ulysses admitted, "but then each of  them
has a chance to get what they want, or think  they have a chance. The way it
is they have no chance at all. Before any of  them has a chance this project
must go down the drain.  There  is  one group on the  far side of the galaxy
that wants to move  out into the thinly populated sections of one particular
section of the rim. They still  believe in an ancient legend which says that
their race arose as  the result of immigrants from another galaxy who landed
on the rim  and worked their way inward over many galactic years. They think
that if they can get out to the rim they can turn that legend  into  history
to their  greater  glory. Another group wants to go into a small spiral  arm
because of an obscure record that  many  eons ago  their ancestors picked up
some  virtually undecipherable messages which  they believed came  from that
direction. Through  the years  the story has  grown,  until today  they  are
convinced a race of intellectual giants will  be found in  that  spiral arm.
And there  is always  the pressure,  naturally, to  probe  deeper  into  the
galactic core. You must realize that we have  only started, that  the galaxy
still is largely unexplored, that  the thousands of  races who form Galactic
Central still are pioneers. And as a result, Galactic Central is continually
subjected to all sorts of pressures."
     "You sound," said Enoch, "as if  you  have  little hope  of maintaining
this station, here on Earth."
     "Almost no hope at  all," Ulysses told him. "But so far as you yourself
are concerned, there will be an option.  You  can stay here  and live out an
ordinary life on Earth or  you can be assigned to another  station. Galactic
Central hopes that you would elect to continue on with us."
     "That sounds pretty final."
     "I am  afraid,"  Ulysses said, "it  is. I  am sorry,  Enoch, to be, the
bearer of bad news."
     Enoch sat  numb and stricken. Bad news!  It was worse than that. It was
the end of everything.
     He sensed the crashing down of not  only his own personal world, but of
all the hopes of Earth. With the station gone, Earth once more would be left
in  the  backwaters  of  the  galaxy,  with  no hope of  help, no chance  of
recognition, no  realization  of  what lay waiting  in  the galaxy. Standing
alone and naked, the human race would go  on  in its same old path, fumbling
its uncertain way toward a blind, mad future.

        20
     The Hazer was elderly. The golden haze that enveloped him had  lost the
sparkle  of its  youthfulness.  It was a mellow  glow, deep and rich-not the
blinding haze of a younger being. He carried himself  with  a solid dignity,
and the flaring topknot that was neither hair nor feathers was white, a sort
of saintly whiteness. His face  was  soft  and tender,  the softness and the
tenderness which in a man might have been expressed in kindly wrinkles.
     "I am sorry," he told  Enoch, "that our meeting  must be such  as this.
Although, under  any circumstances, I am glad to meet  you. I  have heard of
you. It is not often that a being of an outside  planet  is  the keeper of a
station. Because  of this, young  being,  I have been intrigued with you.  I
have wondered what sort of creature you might turn out to be."
     "You need have no apprehension of him," Ulysses said, a little sharply.
"I will vouch for him. We have been friends for years."
     "Yes, I forgot," the Hazer said. "You are his discoverer."
     He  peered  around the room. "Another one," he  said.  "I did  not know
there were two of them. I only knew of one."
     "It's a friend of Enoch's," Ulysses said.
     "There has been contact, then. Contact with the planet."
     "No, there has been no contact."
     "Perhaps an indiscretion."
     "Perhaps," Ulysses said, "but under provocation that I doubt either you
or I could have stood against."
     Lucy  had risen to her  feet and  now  she came across the room, moving
quietly and slowly, as if she might be floating.
     The  Hazer spoke to  her in the common tongue. "I am glad to meet  you.
Very glad to meet you."
     "She cannot speak," Ulysses said. "Nor hear. She has no communication."
     "Compensation," said the Hazer.
     "You think so?" asked Ulysses.
     "I am sure of it."
     He walked slowly forward and Lucy waited.
     "It-she, the female form, you called it-she is not afraid."
     Ulysses chuckled. "Not even of me," he said.
     The  Hazer  reached  out  his  hand  to her and she stood quietly for a
moment, then  one  of  her hands came up and  took the Hazer's fingers, more
like tentacles than fingers, in its grasp.
     It seemed to Enoch, for a moment, that the cloak of golden haze reached
out  to wrap the Earth girl  in  its  glow. Enoch blinked  his eyes  and the
illusion, if it had been illusion, was swept away, and it only was the Hazer
who had the golden cloak.
     And how was it, Enoch wondered,  that there  was no fear in her, either
of Ulysses or the Hazer? Was it because, in truth, as he had said, she could
see  beyond  the outward guise, could  somehow sense the basic humanity (God
help me, I cannot think, even now, except in human terms!) that was in these
creatures?  And  if that  were true, was  it  because  she herself  was  not
entirely  human? A human, certainly,  in form and origin, but not formed and
molded into  the human culture-being  perhaps, what a human  would  be if he
were not hemmed about so closely by  the  rules of behavior and outlook that
through the years had hardened into law to comprise a common human attitude.
     Lucy dropped the Hazer's hand and went back to the sofa.
     The Hazer said, "Enoch Wallace."
     "Yes."
     "She is of your race?"
     "Yes, of course she is."
     "She is most unlike you. Almost as if there were two races."
     "There is not two races. There is only one."
     "Are there many others like her?"
     "I would not know," said Enoch.
     "Coffee," said Ulysses to the Hazer. "Would you like some coffee?"
     "Coffee?"
     "A most delicious brew. Earth's one great accomplishment."
     "I  am  not  acquainted with it," said the Hazer.  "I  don't  believe I
will."
     He turned ponderously to Enoch.
     "You know why I am here?" he asked.
     "I believe so."
     "It is a matter I regret," said the Hazer. "But I must ..."
     "If you'd rather," Enoch  said,  "we  can consider that the protest has
been made. I would so stipulate."
     "Why not?" Ulysses said. "There is no need, it seems to me, to have the
three of us go through a somewhat painful scene."
     The Hazer hesitated.
     "If you feel you must," said Enoch.
     "No," the  Hazer said.  "I  am  satisfied  if  an  unspoken protest  be
generously accepted."
     "Accepted," Enoch said, "on just one  condition. That I satisfy  myself
that the charge is not unfounded. I must go out and see."
     "You do not believe me?"
     "It is not a matter  of belief.  It is something that can be checked. I
cannot accept either for myself  or  for  my  planet until I  have done that
much."
     "Enoch," Ulysses said, "the Vegan has been gracious.  Not only now, but
before  this  happened. His race presses the charge most  reluctantly.  They
suffered much to protect the Earth and you."
     "And the feeling is that I would be ungracious if  I did not accept the
protest and the charge on the Vegan statement."
     "I am sorry, Enoch," said Ulysses. "That is what I mean."
     Enoch shook  his  head.  "For  years  I've  tried to understand and  to
conform to the ethics and ideas of all the people who have come through this
station. I've pushed my own  human instincts  and training to one side. I've
tried to understand other viewpoints and to evaluate other ways of thinking,
many of which did  violence to my  own. I am glad of  all of it, for  it has
given me a  chance to go beyond the narrowness of  Earth.  I think  I gained
something  from  it  all. But none of  this  touched Earth; only myself  was
involved. This  business  touches  Earth  and I  must approach  it  from  an
Earthman's viewpoint. In this particular instance I am not simply the keeper
of a galactic station."
     Neither  of  them said a word. Enoch stood waiting  and still there was
nothing said.
     Finally he turned and headed for the door.
     "I'll be back," he told them.
     He spoke the phrase and the door started to slide open.
     "If you'll have  me,"  said  the,  Hazer quietly, "I'd  like to go with
you."
     "Fine," said Enoch. "Come ahead."
     It  was dark outside and Enoch lit the lantern.  The  Hazer watched him
closely.
     "Fossil  fuel,"  Enoch told  him. "It burns at the  tip of  a saturated
wick."
     The Hazer said, in horror, "But surely you have better."
     "Much better now," said Enoch. "I am just old-fashioned."
     He led the way outside, the lantern throwing a small pool of light. The
Hazer followed.
     "It is a wild planet," said the Hazer.
     "Wild here. There are parts of it are tame."
     "My own planet is  controlled," the Hazer  said. "Every foot  of it  is
planned."
     "I know.  I have talked to many Vegans.  They described  the planet  to
me."
     They headed for the barn.
     "You want to go back?" asked Enoch.
     "No," said  the Hazer. "I find it  exhilarating. Those  are wild plants
over there?"
     "We call them trees," said Enoch.
     "The wind blows as it wishes?"
     "That's right," said  Enoch.  "We do not know as yet how to control the
weather."
     The  spade stood just inside the barn door and Enoch picked  it  up. He
headed for the orchard.
     "You know, of course," the Hazer said, "the body will be gone."
     "I'm prepared to find it gone."
     "Then why?" the Hazer asked.
     "Because I must be sure. You can't understand that, can you?"
     "You said back there in the station,"  the Hazer said, "that  you tried
to understand  the  rest  of us. Perhaps, for a change,  at least  one of us
should try understanding you."
     Enoch  led the way down the path through the  orchard. They came to the
rude  fence enclosing  the burial plot. The sagging gate  stood  open. Enoch
went through it and the Hazer followed.
     "This is where you buried him?"
     "This is my family plot. My mother  and father are here and I  put  him
with them."
     He handed the lantern to the Vegan and, armed with the spade, walked up
to the grave. He thrust the spade into the ground.
     "Would you hold the lantern a little closer, please?"
     The Hazer moved up a step or two.
     Enoch dropped to his  knees and brushed away the leaves that had fallen
on the ground. Underneath them was the soft, fresh earth that had been newly
turned.  There  was  a  depression  and a small  hole at the  bottom  of the
depression. As he brushed at the earth, he could hear the clods of displaced
dirt  falling through the hole and  striking on  something that  was not the
soil.
     The Hazer had moved the lantern again and he could not see.  But he did
not need to see. He knew there  was no use of digging; he knew what he would
find. He  should  have kept  watch. He  should not have put  up the stone to
attract attention-but  Galactic Central had said, "As if he  were your own."
And that was the way he'd done it.
     He  straightened, but  remained upon  his knees, felt  the damp  of the
earth soaking through the fabric of his trousers.
     "No one told me," said the Hazer, speaking softly.
     "Told you what?"
     "The memorial. And what is written on it. I was not aware that you knew
our language."
     "I learned it long ago. There were scrolls I wished to read. I'm afraid
it's not too good."
     "Two   misspelled  words,"  the   Hazer  told  him,  "and  one   little
awkwardness.  But those are  things  which do not  matter. What matters, and
matters very much, is that when you wrote, you thought as one of us."
     Enoch rose and reached out for the lantern.
     "Let's go back," he said sharply, almost  impatiently.  "I know now who
did this. I have to hunt him out."

        21
     The  treetops  far above moaned  in the rising wind. Ahead,  the  great
clump of canoe birch showed whitely in the dim  glow of the lantern's light.
The birch clump, Enoch knew, grew  on the lip of a  small cliff that dropped
twenty feet  or more and here one turned to  the right to get  around it and
continue down the hillside.
     Enoch turned slightly and glanced over his shoulder. Lucy was following
close behind. She smiled at him and made a gesture to say she was all right.
He made a motion to indicate that they must turn to the right, that she must
follow closely. Although, he told himself, it probably wasn't necessary; she
knew the hillside as well, perhaps even better, than he did himself.
     He turned to the right and followed along the  edge of the rocky cliff,
came to  the  break and clambered down to reach the slope below. Off to  the
left he could hear the murmur of the swiftly running creek that tumbled down
the rocky ravine from the spring below the field.
     The  hillside plunged more  steeply now and he led  a  way that  angled
across the steepness.
     Funny, he thought, that even in the darkness he could recognize certain
natural features-the crooked  white oak that twisted  itself,  hanging at  a
crazy  angle  above the  slope of hill; the small grove  of massive red oaks
that  grew out of a  dome of tumbled  rock, so placed that no axman had even
tried to cut them  down; the tiny swamp,  filled with  cattails, that fitted
itself snugly into a little terrace carved into the hillside.
     Far below he caught the gleam  of  window light and angled down  toward
it. He looked back over his shoulder and Lucy was following close behind.
     They came to a rude fence  of poles and crawled through  it and now the
ground became more level.
     Somewhere below a  dog barked in the dark and another  joined him. More
joined  in and the pack came sweeping up the slope toward them. They arrived
in a rush of feet, veered around Enoch and the lantern to  launch themselves
at Lucy-supenly transformed, at the sight of her, into a welcoming committee
rather than a company of guards. They reared upward, a tangled mass of dogs.
Her hands went  out and patted at their heads. As  if by  signal, they  went
rushing off in a happy frolic, circling to come back again.
     A short distance beyond the pole fence was a vegetable garden and Enoch
led the way across, carefully following  a path between  the rows. Then they
were in the  yard  and  the house stood before them, a  tumble-down, sagging
structure,  its  outlines  swallowed by  the  darkness,  the kitchen windows
glowing with a soft, warm lamplight.
     Enoch crossed the yard to  the kitchen door  and knocked. He heard feet
coming across the kitchen floor.
     The  door  came  open and  Ma Fisher stood framed against  the light, a
great, tall, bony woman clothed in something that was more sack than dress.
     She stared at  Enoch, half frightened, half belligerent.  Then, back of
him, she saw the girl.
     "Lucy!" she cried.
     The girl  came forward  with a  rush  and her mother caught her in  her
arms.
     Enoch  set  his lantern on the ground, tucked the  rifle underneath his
arm, and stepped across the threshold.
     The family had been  at supper, seated about a great round table set in
the center of  the kitchen.  An ornate oil lamp stood in the  center  of the
table. Hank had risen to his feet, but his three sons and the stranger still
were seated.
     "So you brung her back," said Hank.
     "I found her," Enoch said.
     "We quit  hunting  for her just a while  ago,"  Hank  told him. "We was
going out again."
     "You remember what you told me this afternoon?" asked Enoch.
     "I told you a lot of things."
     "You  told me that I had the devil in me. Raise  your hand against that
girl once more  and I promise you I'll show you just how much devil there is
in me."
     "You can't bluff me," Hank blustered.
     But the man was frightened. It showed in the limpness of  his face, the
tightness of his body.
     "I mean  it," Enoch said. "just  try me out and see." The two men stood
for a moment, facing one another, then Hank sat down.
     "Would you join us in some victuals?" he inquired.
     Enoch shook his head.
     He looked at the stranger. "Are you the ginseng man?" he asked.
     The man noped. "That is what they call me."
     "I want to talk with you. Outside."
     Claude Lewis stood up.
     "You don't have  to go," said Hank. "He can't  make you go. He can talk
to you right here."
     "I don't  mind," said Lewis. "In fact, I want to  talk with him. You're
Enoch Wallace, aren't you?"
     "That's  who he is," said  Hank. "Should of died of old age fifty years
ago.  But  look at him. He's got the  devil in him. I tell you, him and  the
devil has a deal."
     "Hank," Lewis said, "shut up."
     Lewis came around the table  and went out the door. "Good night," Enoch
said  to the  rest  of them.  "Mr. Wallace,"  said  Ma  Fisher,  "thanks for
bringing back my girl. Hank won't hit her again. I can promise you. I'll see
to that."
     Enoch went outside  and shut the door. He  picked up the lantern. Lewis
was out in the yard. Enoch went to him.
     "Let's walk off a ways," he said.
     They stopped at the edge of the garden and turned to face one another.
     "You been watching me," said Enoch.
     Lewis noped.
     "Official? Or just snooping?"
     "Official, I'm afraid. My  name is Claude  Lewis. There is no  reason I
shouldn't tell you-I'm C.I.A."
     "I'm not a traitor or a spy," Enoch said.
     "No one thinks you are. We're just watching you."
     "You know about the cemetery?"
     Lewis noped.
     "You took something from a grave."
     "Yes," said Lewis. "The one with the funny headstone."
     "Where is it?"
     "You mean the body. It's in Washington."
     "You shouldn't have taken it," Enoch said, grimly. "You've caused a lot
of trouble. You have to get it back. As quickly as you can."
     "It will take a little time," said Lewis. "They'll have to fly it  out.
Twenty-four hours, maybe."
     "That's the fastest you can make it?"
     "I might do a little better."
     "Do the very best you can. It's important that you get that body back."
     "I will, Wallace. I didn't know ..."
     "And, Lewis."
     "Yes."
     "Don't try to play it smart. Don't  ap  any frills. Just do what I tell
you. I'm  trying to be reasonable  because that's the  only thing to be. But
you try one smart move ..."
     He reached  out a hand  and grabbed  Lewis's  shirt front, twisting the
fabric tight.
     "You understand me, Lewis?"
     Lewis  was unmoved.  He  did  not try to pull away. "Yes,"  he said. "I
understand."
     "What the hell ever made you do it?"
     "I had a job."
     "Yeah, a  job.  Watching me. Not robbing graves."  He  let loose of the
shirt.
     "Tell me," said Lewis, "that thing in the grave. What was it?"
     "That's  none  of  your  damn'  business,"  Enoch told  him,  bitterly.
"Getting back that body is. You're sure that you can do it? Nothing standing
in your way?"
     Lewis  shook  his head. "Nothing  at all.  I'll phone  as soon as I can
reach a phone. I'll tell them that it's imperative."
     "It's all of that," said Enoch. "Getting  that  body back  is  the most
important thing you've ever done. Don't forget that for a minute. It affects
everyone on Earth.  You and me and everyone. And if you  fail, you'll answer
to me for it."
     "With that gun?"
     "Maybe,"  Enoch  said.  "Don't fool  around.  Don't  imagine  that  I'd
hesitate to kill you. In this situation, I'd kill anyone-anyone at all."
     "Wallace, is there something you can tell me?"
     "Not  a  thing,"  said Enoch.  He picked up  the lantern. "You're going
home?"
     Enoch noped.
     "You don't seem to mind us watching you."
     "No," Enoch told him. "Not your watching. Just your interference. Bring
back that  body and go on  watching  if you want  to. But don't push me any.
Don't lean on me. Keep your hands off. Don't touch anything."
     "But  good  God,  man,  there's something  going on. You  can  tell  me
something."
     Enoch hesitated.
     "Some idea," said  Lewis, "of what  this is all about. Not the details,
just ..."
     "You bring the body back," Enoch told  him,  slowly, "and  maybe we can
talk again."
     "It will be back," said Lewis.
     "If it's not," said Enoch, "you're as good as dead right now."
     Turning, he went across the garden and started up the hill.
     In the yard, Lewis stood  for a long time, watching the lantern bobbing
out of sight.

        22
     Ulysses was alone in the station  when Enoch returned. He  had sent the
Tuban on his way and the Hazer back to Vega.
     A fresh pot of coffee was brewing and  Ulysses was  sprawled out on the
sofa, doing nothing.
     Enoch  hung up  the rifle and  blew  out the  lantern.  Taking  off his
jacket, he threw  it on the desk.  He  sat down in a  chair  across from the
sofa.
     "The body will be back," he said, "by this time tomorrow."
     "I sincerely hope," Ulysses  said, "that it will  do some good. But I'm
inclined to doubt it."
     "Maybe," said Enoch bitterly, "I should not have bothered."
     "It will show good faith," Ulysses said. "It might have some mitigating
effect in the final weighing."
     "The  Hazer could have told me," Enoch said, "where the body was. If he
knew  it  had been  taken from the  grave, then he  must have known where it
could be found."
     "I would suspect he did," Ulysses said, "but, you see, he couldn't tell
you. All that he could do was to make his protest.  The rest was up  to you.
He could  not lay aside  his dignity by suggesting what you should do  about
it. For the record, he must remain the injured party."
     "Sometimes," said  Enoch, "this business is  enough to drive one crazy.
Despite  the  briefings  from   Galactic  Central,  there  are  always  some
surprises, always yawning traps for you to tumble into."
     "There may  come a day," Ulysses said,  "when it won't be  like that. I
can look  ahead  and see, in some  thousands  of  years, the knitting of the
galaxy together into one great culture, one huge  area of understanding. The
local  and the racial variations still will exist, of course, and that is as
it should be, but overriding all of these will be a tolerance that will make
for what one might be tempted to call a brotherhood."
     "You sound," said Enoch, "almost like a human. That is the sort of hope
that many of our thinkers have held out."
     "Perhaps," Ulysses said.  "You know  that a lot of Earth  seems to have
rubbed  off  on-me.  You can't spend as long as I did on your planet without
picking up at least  a bit of it. And by the way, you made a good impression
on the Vegan."
     "I hadn't noticed it,"  Enoch told him.  "He  was kind and correct,  of
course, but little more."
     "That inscription on the gravestone. He was impressed by that."
     "I didn't put it there to impress anyone. I wrote it out because it was
the way I  felt. And because I like the Hazers. I was only trying to make it
right for them."
     "If  it were not for the pressure  from the galactic factions," Ulysses
said, "I am convinced the Vegans would be willing to forget the incident and
that is a greater concession than you can realize. It may be that,  even so,
they may line up with us when the showdown comes."
     "You mean they might save the station?"
     Ulysses shook his head.  "I  doubt anyone can  do that. But it will  be
easier for all of us  at  Galactic Central if  they  threw their weight with
us."
     The coffeepot was  making  sounds and Enoch went to get it. Ulysses had
pushed some of the trinkets on the coffee table to one side to make room for
two coffee cups. Enoch filled them and set the pot upon the floor.
     Ulysses picked  up his cup, held it for a moment in his hands, then put
it back on the table top.
     "We're  in bad shape,"  he  said.  "Not like  in the  old days.  It has
Galactic Central worried.  All this squabbling and haggling among the races,
all the pushing and the shoving."
     He looked at Enoch. "You thought it was all nice and cozy."
     "No,"  said  Enoch,  "not  that.  I knew  that  there  were conflicting
viewpoints and I knew there was some trouble. But I'm afraid I thought of it
as being on a fairly lofty plane-gentlemanly, you know, and good-mannered."
     "That was the way it  was at one time. There always have been differing
opinions,  but  they were based on principles  and  ethics, not  on  special
interests.  You know about  the  spiritual force,  of  course-the  universal
spiritual force."
     Enoch  noped.  "I've  read  some  of  the  literature.  I  don't  quite
understand, but I'm willing  to accept it. There is a way, I know, to get in
contact with the force."
     "The Talisman," said Ulysses.
     "That's it. The Talisman. A machine, of sorts."
     "I suppose,"  Ulysses agreed, "you could  call it  that.  Although  the
word, 'machine'  is a  little awkward. More  than  mechanics went  into  the
making of it. There is just the one. Only one was ever made, by a mystic who
lived ten thousand  of your years ago. I wish I could tell you what it is or
how  it is constructed, but there  is no one, I am  afraid, who can tell you
that. There have been others who have attempted  to  duplicate the Talisman,
but  no  one  has succeeded. The  mystic  who made it left no blueprints, no
plans,  no  specifications, not a single  note. There  is  no one  who knows
anything about it."
     "There is no reason,  I suppose,"  said Enoch, "that another should not
be  made.  No  sacred  taboos,  I  mean.  To make another  one would not  be
sacrilegious."
     "Not in the least," Ulysses told him. "In fact, we need  another badly.
For now we have no Talisman. It has disappeared."
     Enoch jerked upright in his chair.
     "Disappeared?" he asked.
     "Lost," said Ulysses. "Misplaced. Stolen. No one knows."
     "But I hadn't ..."
     Ulysses smiled bleakly. "You  hadn't heard. I know. It is not something
that  we talk about. We wouldn't  dare. The people must  not know. Not for a
while, at least."
     "But how can you keep it from them?"
     "Not too hard to do. You know how  it worked, how the custodian took it
from planet to  planet and great mass meetings were held, where the Talisman
was exhibited and contact  made through  it with the spiritual force.  There
had never been  a schedule of appearances; the custodian simply wandered. It
might be a hundred of your years or more between the visits of the custodian
to any particular planet.  The  people hold no expectations of a visit. They
simply know there'll be one, sometime; that some day the custodian will show
up with the Talisman."
     "That way you can cover up for years."
     "Yes," Ulysses said. "Without any trouble."
     "The leaders know, of course. The administrative people."
     Ulysses  shook his head. "We have told very  few. The  few that we  can
trust. Galactic Central knows, of course, but we're a close-mouthed lot."
     "Then why ..."
     "Why should I be telling you. I  know;  I shouldn't. I don't know why I
am. Yes,  I  guess  I  do.  How  does  it  feel,  my  friend, to  sit  as  a
compassionate confessor?"
     "You're  worried,"  Enoch  said. "I  never  thought  I  would  see  you
worried."
     "It's a strange business," Ulysses said. "The Talisman has been missing
for several  years or so. And no  one knows about it-except Galactic Central
and the- what would  you call it?-the hierarchy, I suppose, the organization
of mystics who takes care of the spiritual setup. And yet, even  with no one
knowing,  the  galaxy is  beginning to show wear.  It's coming apart  at the
seams.  In time to come, it may fall apart. As if the Talisman represented a
force that all  unknowingly held the races of  the galaxy together, exerting
its influence even when it remained unseen."
     "But even if  it's lost,  it's somewhere," Enoch pointed out. "It still
would be exerting its influence. It couldn't have been destroyed."
     "You forget," Ulysses reminded him, "that without its proper custodian,
without  its sensitive, it  is inoperative. For it's not  the machine itself
that does the trick. The machine merely acts as an intermediary between  the
sensitive and the spiritual force. It is an  extension of the sensitive.  It
magnifies  the capability of the sensitive and acts as a link of some  sort.
It enables the sensitive to perform his function."
     "You feel that the  loss  of the  Talisman has something to do with the
situation here?"
     "The  Earth  station. Well,  not directly, but  it is  typical. What is
happening in regard to  the station  is symptomatic. It involves the sort of
petty  quarreling  and  mean  bickering that  has  broken  out through  many
sections of the galaxy. In the old days it would have been-what did you say,
gentlemanly and on a plane of principles and ethics."
     They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the soft sound that  the
wind made as it blew through the gable gingerbread.
     "Don't worry about it,"  Ulysses said. "It is not your  worry. I should
not have told you. It was indiscreet to do so."
     "You mean I shouldn't pass it on. You can be sure I won't."
     "I know you won't," Ulysses said. "I never thought you would."
     "You really think relations in the galaxy are deteriorating?"
     "Once,"  Ulysses said,  "the races all were bound  together. There were
differences, naturally, but these differences were bridged, sometimes rather
artificially and  not too satisfactorily, but with  both  sides  striving to
maintain  the  artificial  bridging  and generally succeeding. Because  they
wanted  to,  you see. There was  a  common  purpose, the forging  of a great
cofraternity of all intelligences. We realized that  among us, among all the
races,  we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques-that working
together, by putting together all  this  knowledge and capability, we  could
arrive at something that would be far greater and more significant  than any
race, alone, could hope of  accomplishing. We  had our  troubles, certainly,
and as I have said, our differences, but we were progressing. We brushed the
small animosities and the petty differences underneath  the rug  and  worked
only on the big ones. We felt that if we could get the big ones settled, the
small ones would become so small they would  disappear. But  it  is becoming
different now. There is a tendency to pull the pettiness from underneath the
rug  and  blow it  beyond  its  size, meanwhile  letting the  major and  the
important issues fall away."
     "It sounds like Earth," said Enoch.
     "In many ways," Ulysses said. "In principle, although the circumstances
would diverge immensely."
     "You've been reading the papers I have been saving for you?"
     Ulysses noped. "It doesn't look too happy."
     "It looks like war," said Enoch bluntly.
     Ulysses stirred uneasily.
     "You don't have wars," said Enoch.
     "The galaxy, you mean. No, as we are set up now we don't have wars."
     "Too civilized?"
     "Stop being bitter," Ulysses told  him. "There has been a  time or  two
when we came very close, but  not in  recent years. There are many races now
in the cofratemity that in their formative years had a history of war."
     "There is hope for us, then. It's something you outgrow."
     "In time, perhaps."
     "But not a certainty?"
     "No, I wouldn't say so."
     "I've  been working on a chart," said Enoch. "Based on the Mizar system
of statistics. The chart says there is going to be war."
     "You don't need the chart," Ulysses said, "to tell you that."
     "But there was  something else. It was not just knowing if there'd be a
war. I had hoped that the chart might show how to keep the peace. There must
be a  way. A formula, perhaps. If we could only think of it or know where to
look or whom to ask or ..."
     "There is a way," Ulysses said, "to prevent a war."
     "You mean you know ..."
     "It's a drastic measure. It only can be used as a last resort."
     "And we've not reached that last resort?"
     "I  think, perhaps, you have.  The  kind of  war that Earth would fight
could spell an end to thousands of  years of advancement, could wipe out all
the culture, everything but the feeble remnants of civilizations. It  could,
just possibly, eliminate most of the life upon the planet."
     "This method of yours-it has been used?"
     "A few times."
     "And worked?"
     "Oh, certainly. We'd not even consider it if it didn't work."
     "It could be used on Earth?"
     "You could apply for its application."
     "I?"
     "As a representative  of the Earth. You could  appear  before  Galactic
Central and  appeal  for us to use it.  As a member of your  race, you could
give testimony and you would be given a hearing. If there seemed to be merit
in your plea, Central might name  a group to  investigate and then, upon the
report of its findings, a decision would be made."
     "You said I. Could anyone on Earth?"
     "Anyone who  could gain a hearing.  To  gain  a  hearing, you must know
about Galactic Central and  you're the only  man of Earth who does. Besides,
you're a part of Galactic Central's staff. You have served as a keeper for a
long time. Your record has been good. We would listen to you."
     "But one man alone! One man can't speak for an entire race."
     "You're the only one of your race who is qualified."
     "If I could consult some others of my race."
     "You can't. And even if you could, who would believe you?"
     "That's true," said Enoch.
     Of course it  was. To  him there was no  longer any strangeness in  the
idea of  a galactic cofraternity, of  a  transportation network  that spread
among the stars-a sense of wonder at times, but the strangeness had  largely
worn off. Although, he remembered,  it  had taken years. Years even with the
physical evidence there  before his eyes, before he could bring himself to a
complete acceptance  of  it. But tell  it to any other Earthman and it would
sound like madness.
     "And this method?" he  asked,  almost afraid to ask it,  braced to take
the shock of whatever it might be.
     "Stupidity," Ulysses said.
     Enoch gasped. "Stupidity? I don't understand. We are stupid enough,  in
many ways, right now."
     "You're thinking of intellectual stupidity and there is plenty of that,
not only on Earth, but throughout  the galaxy. What I am talking  about is a
mental incapacity. An inability to  understand the science and the technique
that makes possible the  kind of war that Earth would fight. An inability to
operate the machines that are necessary to fight  that kind  of war. Turning
the  people back  to a  mental  position  where  they would not be  able  to
comprehend the mechanical  and  technological and  scientific advances  they
have made.  Those who know would forget. Those who  didn't  know could never
learn. Back to the simplicity of the wheel  and lever. That  would make your
kind of war impossible."
     Enoch  sat  stiff and straight,  unable  to  speak, gripped by  an  icy
terror, while a million disconnected thoughts went chasing one another  in a
circle through his brain.
     "I  told you it  was  drastic," Ulysses said. "It  has  to  be. War  is
something that costs a lot to stop. The price is high."
     "I couldn't!" Enoch said. "No one could."
     "Perhaps you can't. But consider this: If there is a war..."
     "I know. If there is  a war,  it could  be worse. But it  wouldn't stop
war.  It's  not the kind of  thing I had in  mind. People still could fight,
still could kill."
     "With clubs,"  said Ulysses. "Maybe bows and arrows. Rifles, so long as
they still  had  rifles, and until  they  ran out  of ammunition.  Then they
wouldn't know how  to  make more powder or how  to get the metal to make the
bullets  or even how  to  make the bullets. There  might  be  fighting,  but
there'd be no holocaust. Cities would not be  wiped out by nuclear warheads,
for no one could fire a rocket or arm the warhead-perhaps wouldn't even know
what a rocket  or a warhead was. Communications  as you  know them would  be
gone.  All but the simplest transportation would be gone.  War,  except on a
limited local scale, would be impossible."
     "It would be terrible," Enoch said.
     "So is war," Ulysses said. "The choice is up to you."
     "But how long?" asked Enoch. "How long would it last?  We wouldn't have
to go back to stupidity forever?"
     "Several  generations," said Ulysses. "By that time  the effect of-what
shall  we call  it? the  treatment?-would  gradually begin wearing off.  The
people  slowly  would  shake  off  their  moronic  state  and  begin   their
intellectual climb again. They'd be given, in effect, a second chance."
     "They could," said Enoch, "in  a few generations after that  arrive  at
exactly the same situation that we have today."
     "Possibly. I wouldn't expect it, though. Cultural development would  be
most unlikely to be entirely parallel. There'd be a chance that you'd have a
better civilization and a more peaceful people."
     "It's too much for one man ..."
     "Something hopeful," Ulysses said, "that you might consider. The method
is offered only to those races which seem to us to be worth the saving."
     "You have to give me time," said Enoch.
     But he knew there was no time.

        23
     A man  would have a job and supenly  be unable to perform it. Nor could
the men around  him  carry  on their jobs.  For  they  would  not  have  the
knowledge or the backgrounds to do the tasks  that they had been doing. They
might try, of  course-they might keep on trying for a time,  but perhaps for
not too long.  And because  the jobs could not be done, the business or  the
corporation or factory or whatever  it might  be, would cease its operation.
Although the going out of business would not be a formal nor a  legal thing.
It would simply stop. And not entirely because  the jobs  could not be done,
because no  one could  muster the business sense  to keep it operating,  but
also because the transportation  and communications which made the  business
possible also would have stopped.
     Locomotives  could not be operated, nor could  planes  and  ships,  for
there would be no one who would remember how to operate them. There would be
men who at one time had possessed all the skills that had been necessary for
their operation, but  now the skills would have disappeared. There might  be
some who still would try, with tragic consequences. And there still might be
a few who could vaguely remember how to operate the car or truck or bus, for
they were simple things to run  and it would be almost second  nature  for a
man to drive them. But once they had broken down, there would be no one with
the knowledge of mechanics to repair them and they'd not run again.
     In the space of a few hours' time the human race would be stranded in a
world  where  distance once again had come to be a factor.  The  world would
grow the  larger and the oceans would be barriers and a  mile  would be long
once more. And in a few days' time there  would be a panic and a hupling and
a fleeing and a desperation  in the face of  a situation that no  one  could
comprehend.
     How long, Enoch wondered, would it take  a city to use the  last of the
food stacked in its warehouses and then begin  to starve?  What would happen
when  electricity  stopped  flowing  through  the  wires? How  long, under a
situation such as  this,  would a silly symbolic piece of paper  or a minted
coin still retain its value?
     Distribution  would  break  down;  commerce  and  industry  would  die;
government  would   become  a  shadow,  with  neither  the   means  nor  the
intelligence  to keep  it functioning; communications would  cease; law  and
order would disintegrate; the world would sink into a new barbaric framework
and would begin to slowly readjust. That readjustment  would go on for years
and in the  process of  it there would  be death  and pestilence  and untold
misery and  despair.  In time it would work out and  the  world would settle
down to its new way of  life, but in the process  of shaking down there'd be
many who  would die  and many  others  who  would lose  everything  that had
spelled out life for them and the purpose of that life.
     But would it, bad as it might be, be as bad as war?
     Many would  die of  cold and hunger and disease  (for medicine would go
the way of all the rest), but millions would not be annihilated in the fiery
breath of nuclear reaction. There would be  no poison dust  raining from the
skies and  the waters still would be as pure and fresh as  ever and the soil
remain as fertile. There still would be a chance, once the initial phases of
the change  had passed, for  the  human race to  go  on living  and  rebuild
society.
     If  one were certain,  Enoch  told himself, that there would be a  war,
that war was inescapable, then the choice  might  not be  hard to  make. But
there  was  always the  possibility  that  the  world could  avoid war, that
somehow a  frail, thin peace  could  be preserved,  and in  such  a case the
desperate need of the galactic cure for war would be unnecessary. Before one
could decide, he told himself,  one must be sure; and how could one be sure?
The  chart lying in  the desk drawer said there would be a war; many  of the
diplomats and observers  felt that the upcoming peace conference might serve
no other purpose than to trigger war. Yet there was no surety.
     And even if there were, Enoch asked himself, how could one man-one man,
alone-take it upon himself to play  the role of God for the entire race?  By
what right did one man make  a  decision that affected all the rest, all the
billions of others? Could he, if he did, ever be able, in the years to come,
to justify his choice?
     How could a man decide how bad war might be and, in comparison, how bad
stupidity? The  answer seemed to be he couldn't. There was no way to measure
possible disaster in either circumstance.
     After a time, perhaps, a choice either way could be rationalized. Given
time, a conviction might  develop that would enable a man to  arrive at some
sort  of   decision  which,  while  it  might  not  be  entirely  right,  he
nevertheless could square with his conscience.
     Enoch got  to his  feet  and walked to  the  window. The sound  of  his
footsteps echoed hollowly in the station. He looked at his  watch and it was
after midnight.
     There were races in the galaxy, he thought, who could reach a quick and
right  decision on  almost  any question,  cutting  straight  across all the
tangled lines of thought,  guided by rules of logic  that were more specific
than anything the  human  race might have. That would be good, of course, in
the sense that it made  decision possible, but in arriving at decision would
it not tend to minimize, perhaps ignore entirely, some of those very  facets
of the situation that might mean  more to the human  race than  the decision
would itself?
     Enoch stood at the window and stared out across the moonlit fields that
ran  down  to the dark line of  the woods. The clouds had blown away and the
night  was  peaceful.  This  particular  spot, he thought,  always would  be
peaceful, for it was off the beaten track, distant  from any possible target
in  atomic  war.  Except  for  the  remote possibility of  some  ancient and
non-recorded, long forgotten minor conflict  in prehistoric days, no  battle
ever had  been  fought here or ever  would be  fought. And yet it would  not
escape  the  common  fate of poisoned soil and  water  if the  world  should
supenly,  in a  fateful hour  of  fury,  unleash the might  of  its  awesome
weapons. Then  the skies would be  filled with atomic ash,  which would come
sifting down, and it would make little difference where a man might be. Soon
or late,  the  war would come to him, if not in a flash of monstrous energy,
then in the snow of death falling from the skies.
     He  walked  from  the window to the desk and gathered up the newspapers
that had come in the morning mail and put them in a pile, noticing as he did
so that Ulysses had forgotten to take with him the stack of papers which had
been saved for him. Ulysses was  upset,  he told  himself, or he'd not  have
forgotten  the  papers.  God  save  us  both, he  thought; for we  have  our
troubles.
     It had been a busy day. He had done no more, he realized, than read two
or three of the  stories in the  Times,  all touching on  the calling of the
conference. The day had been too full, too full of direful things.
     For a  hundred years, he  thought, things had gone all right. There had
been  the good moments and the bad, but by and large  his  life had  gone on
serenely  and  without  alarming incident. Then today had dawned and all the
serene years had come tumbling down all about his ears.
     There once had been a  hope that Earth could be accepted as a member of
the galactic  family, that  he  might  serve  as the  emissary to gain  that
recognition. But now that hope  was shattered, not only by the fact that the
station might be  closed, but that its very closing would be based  upon the
barbarism of  the human race. Earth was being used  as  a  whipping  boy, of
course, in galactic politics,  but the brand, once placed, could not soon be
lifted. And in any event, even if it could be  lifted, now the  planet stood
revealed as one against which Galactic Central,  in the hope  of saving  it,
might be willing to apply a drastic and degrading action.
     There  was something  he  could salvage out of  all of it, he  knew. He
could  remain an Earthman  and turn  over to the  people  of  the Earth  the
information that he had  gathered  through  the  years and  written down, in
meticulous detail, along with personal happenings  and impressions and  much
other  trivia, in the  long  rows of record books which stood on the shelves
against the wall. That and the alien literature he had obtained and read and
hoarded.  And  the gadgets and  the artifacts which came  from other worlds.
From all of this the people of the Earth  might gain  something  which could
help them along the road that eventually would take them to the stars and to
that further  knowledge and that  greater understanding which would be their
heritage-perhaps  the heritage and  right of all intelligence.  But the wait
for that day would be long-longer now, because of what  had happened on this
day, than it  had  ever  been  before.  And  the  information  that he held,
gathered painfully over the course of  almost a century,  was so  inadequate
compared with  that more complete knowledge which he could have gathered  in
another  century (or a  thousand  years) that  it seemed a pitiful  thing to
offer to his people.
     If there  could  only be  more time, he thought.  But, of course, there
never  was.  There was not the  time  right now and there would never be. No
matter how many centuries he might be able  to  devote, there'd always be so
much more knowledge than he'd  gathered at the moment that the little he had
gathered would always seem a pittance.
     He sat down heavily in the chair before the desk and now, for the first
time, he wondered how he'd do it- how  he could leave Galactic Central,  how
he could  trade  the galaxy for a  single planet, even if that  planet still
remained his own.
     He drove his haggard mind to find the answer and the mind could find no
answer.
     One man alone, he thought.
     One man alone could not stand against both Earth and galaxy.

        24
     The sun  streaming through the window woke  him and he stayed  where he
was, not  stirring  for a  moment,  soaking in its warmth. There was a good,
hard, feeling to the sunlight,  a reassuring touch, and for a moment he held
off the worry  and the questioning. But he sensed its nearness and he closed
his eyes again. Perhaps  if  he could sleep some more it  might  go away and
lose itself somewhere and not be there when he awakened later.
     But there  was  something  wrong, something besides the  worry  and the
questioning.
     His  neck and shoulders ached and there was a strange stiffness in  his
body and the pillow was too hard.
     He opened his eyes again and pushed with  his hands to sit erect and he
was not in  bed. He was sitting in a chair and his head,  instead of resting
on a  pillow, had been laid  upon the desk. He  opened and shut his mouth to
taste it, and it tasted just as bad as he knew it would.
     He got slowly to his feet, straightening and stretching, trying to work
out the kinks that had  tied themselves into joints and muscles. As he stood
there, the  worry and the trouble  and the dreadful need  of  answers seeped
back into him, from wherever they'd been hiding. But he brushed  them to one
side, not  an entirely successful brush,  but enough to make  them retreat a
little and crouch there, waiting to close in again.
     He went to the stove and looked for the coffeepot, then remembered that
last night he'd set it on the  floor beside the coffee table. He went to get
it. The  two cups still stood on the  table, the  dark brown dregs of coffee
covering the bottoms of them. And  in the  mass of  gadgets that Ulysses had
pushed to  one  side to make room  for the cups, the pyramid  of spheres lay
tilted on its side, but it still was sparkling and glinting, each successive
sphere revolving in an opposite direction to its fellow spheres.
     Enoch reached out and  picked it up. His fingers carefully explored the
base  upon  which the spheres were  set, seeking something-some lever,  some
indentation, some trip, some button-by which it might be turned either on or
off.  But there was nothing he could find.  He should  have  known, he  told
himself,  that there would be  nothing. For he had  looked  before.  And yet
yesterday Lucy had done something that had set it operating and it still was
operating. It had operated for more than twelve hours now and no results had
been obtained. Check that, he thought-no results that could be recognized.
     He  set  it  back  on  the table on its base  and stacked the cups, one
inside the other, and  picked them up. He stooped to lift  the coffeepot off
the floor. But his eyes never left the pyramid of spheres.
     It was mapening,  he told himself. There was  no  way to turn it on and
yet,  somehow, Lucy had turned it  on. And now there  was no  way to turn it
off-although it probably did not matter if it were off or on.
     He went back to the sink with the cups and coffeepot.
     The station  was quiet-a heavy, oppressive quietness; although, he told
himself, the  impression of oppressiveness  probably was  no  more  than his
imagination.
     He crossed the room  to the  message machine and  the plate  was blank.
There  had  been no  messages during the  night.  It  was silly  of him,  he
thought,  to  expect there would be, for  if there were, the auditory signal
would be functioning, would continue to sound off until he pushed the lever.
     Was it possible, he wondered, that  the station might already have been
abandoned,  that  whatever  traffic  that  happened  to  be moving was being
detoured around it? That, however, was hardly possible,  for the abandonment
of Earth  station  would  mean, as  well that those beyond  it must also  be
abandoned. There were no  shortcuts in the  network  extending  out into the
spiral arm to  make rerouting possible. It was  not unusual for  many hours,
even  for a day,  to pass without any traffic. The traffic was irregular and
had no pattern  to it. There  were times  when scheduled arrivals bad to  be
held  up  until there were  facilities to take care of them,  and there were
other times when there would be none  at all, when the  equipment  would sit
idle, as it was sitting now.
     Jumpy, he thought. I am getting jumpy.
     Before  they closed the station, they would let him know. Courtesy,  if
nothing else, would demand that they do that.
     He  went  back  to  the  stove  and  started  the  coffeepot.  In   the
refrigerator  he found a package of  mush made from a cereal grown on one of
the Draconian jungle worlds. He took it out, then put it back again and took
out the last two  eggs of the dozen that Wins, the mailman, had  brought out
from town a week or so ago.
     He  glanced  at his watch  and  saw that  he had slept  later  than  he
thought. It was almost time for his daily walk.
     He  put the  skillet on the stove  and spooned in a chunk of butter. He
waited for the butter to melt, then broke in the eggs.
     Maybe, he thought,  he'd not go on the walk today. Except for a time or
two when a  blizzard had been raging, it would be the first time he had ever
missed  his  walk.   But  because  he  always  did   it,  he  told  himself,
contentiously, was no  sufficient reason that he should always take it. He'd
just skip  the walk  and later on go down and get the mail. He could use the
time to catch up on all the things he'd failed  to do yesterday.  The papers
still were piled upon his desk, waiting for his reading. He'd not written in
his  journal,  and there was a  lot to  write,  for he must record in detail
exactly what had happened and there had been a good deal happening.
     It had been  a  rule he'd set  himself  from the first  day,  that  the
station had begun its operation-that he never  skimped the journal. He might
be a little late at times in getting it all down, but  the fact that he  was
late  or  that he was  pressed for time had never made him put down one word
less than he had felt might be required to tell all there was to tell.
     He  looked across the  room at the long  rows of record books that were
crowded on the shelves and  thought,  with  pride  and satisfaction, of  the
completeness of  that  record.  Almost a century of  writing lay between the
covers  of  those books and  there  was not  a single day that he  had  ever
skipped.
     Here was his legacy, he  thought; here  was  his bequest to  the world,
here would be his entrance  fee back into the human race; here  was all he'd
seen and heard and thought for  almost  a  hundred years of association with
those alien peoples of the galaxy.
     Looking at the rows  of books, the  questions that he had  shoved aside
came rushing in  on him and this time there was no denying them. For a short
space  of time he  had held them  off, the little time he'd  needed  for his
brain to clear, for his body to become alive again He did not fight them now
He accepted them, for there was no dodging them.
     He slid the eggs out  of the skillet onto the waiting plate He  got the
coffeepot and sat down to his breakfast.
     He glanced at his watch again.
     There still was time to go on his daily walk.

        25
     The ginseng man was waiting at the spring.
     Enoch  saw him while still some distance down  the trail and  wondered,
with a quick flash of anger, if he might be waiting  there  to tell him that
he  could not return the body of the Hazer, that something had come up, that
he had run into unexpected difficulties.
     And thinking  that,  Enoch  remembered how  he'd threatened  the  night
before  to kill anyone who held up the return of the body. Perhaps,  he told
himself, it had not been smart to say that. Wondering whether he could bring
himself to kill a man-not that it would be the first man he had ever killed.
But  that had been long ago and it had been a matter  then of kill or  being
killed.
     He shut his eyes for a second and once again could see that slope below
him, with the  long  lines  of men advancing  through  the  drifting  smoke,
knowing that those men were climbing up the ridge  for one purpose only,  to
kill himself and those others who were atop the ridge.
     And that had not been the first time nor  had it been the last, but all
the years of killing  boiled down in  essence  to that single moment-not the
time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched
the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him.
     It  had been in that  moment that he had realized  the insanity of war,
the futile gesture  that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning
rage that must be  nursed  long beyond the memory of  the incident that  had
caused the rage,  the sheer  illogic that one man, by death of misery, might
prove a right or uphold a principle.
     Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race
had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today
that  insanity-turned-principle stood  ready to  wipe  out, if not  the race
itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had
been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.
     Lewis had been sitting on  a fallen log and  now,  as Enoch neared,  he
rose.
     "I waited for you here," he said. "I hope you don't mind."
     Enoch stepped across the spring.
     "The  body  will  be  here  sometime  in  early  evening," Lewis  said.
"Washington will fly it out to Madison and truck it here from there."
     Enoch noped. "I am glad to hear that."
     "They were  insistent," Lewis said, "that I should  ask you  once again
what the body is."
     "I told you last night," said Enoch, "that I can't tell you anything. I
wish  I could. I've been figuring for  years how to get it told, but there's
no way of doing it."
     "The body is something from off this Earth," said  Lewis.  "We are sure
of that."
     "You think so," Enoch said, not making it a question.
     "And the house," said Lewis, "is something alien, too."
     "The house," Enoch told him, shortly, "was built by my father."
     "But something  changed it," Lewis  said.  "It is  not the way be built
it."
     "The years change things," said Enoch.
     "Everything but you."
     Enoch grinned  at him. "So it bothers you," he  said. "You figure  it's
indecent."
     Lewis shook  his head.  "No, not indecent.  Not really anything.  After
watching you for years, I've  come  to an acceptance  of you  and everything
about you. No understanding, naturally, but complete acceptance. Sometimes I
tell  myself I'm crazy, but that's only  momentary. I've tried not to bother
you. I've worked to keep everything exactly as it was. And now that I've met
you, I am glad that is the way it was. But we're going at this  wrong. We're
acting as if we were  enemies, as if we were strange dogs-and that's not the
way to do it. I think that  the two of  us may have a lot in common. There's
something  going on and I don't want to  do a thing that will interfere with
it."
     "But you did," said Enoch. "You did the worst thing that you could when
you took  the  body. If  you'd  sat down and planned how to do me  harm, you
couldn't have done worse. And not only me. Not really me, at all. It was the
human race you harmed."
     "I don't understand," 'said Lewis.  "I'm sorry, but I don't understand.
There was the writing on the stone ..."
     "That  was  my fault,"  said  Enoch.  "I should never have  put up that
stone. But at the time it seemed the thing to do. I didn't think that anyone
would come snooping around and ..."
     "It was a friend of yours?"
     "A friend of mine? Oh, you mean the body. Well, not actually. Not  that
particular person."
     "Now that it's done," Lewis said, "I'm sorry."
     "Sorry doesn't help," said Enoch.
     "But isn't there something-isn't there anything that can be  done about
it? More than just bringing back the body?"
     "Yes," Enoch told  him,  "there  might be something. I might need  some
help."
     "Tell me," Lewis said quickly. "If it can be done ..."
     "I  might need a truck," said Enoch. "To  haul away some stuff. Records
and other things like that. I might need it fast."
     "I can have a  truck,"  said Lewis. "I can  have it waiting. And men to
help you load."
     "I  might want to  talk to someone  in  authority. High authority.  The
President. Secretary of State. Maybe  the U.N. I don't know. I have to think
it out. And not only would I need a way to talk to them, but some measure of
assurance that they would listen to what I had to say."
     "I'll arrange," said Lewis, "for mobile short-wave equipment. I'll have
it standing by."
     "And someone who will listen?"
     "That's right," said Lewis. "Anyone you say."
     "And one thing more."
     "Anything," said Lewis.
     "Forgetfulness,"  said Enoch. "Maybe I won't need any  of these things.
Not  the  truck  or any of the rest of it. Maybe I'll have to let  things go
just as they're going now.  And  if that should be the case, could  you  and
everyone else concerned forget I ever asked?"
     "I think we could," said Lewis. "But I would keep on watching."
     "I wish you would," said Enoch. "Later on I  might need some help.  But
no further interference."
     "Are you sure," asked Lewis, "that there is nothing else?"
     Enoch shook  his  head. "Nothing else. All  the rest  of  it  I must do
myself."
     Perhaps, he thought, he'd already talked too much. For how could  he be
sure  that he  could  trust this man? How  could he  be sure he  could trust
anyone?
     And yet, if he decided to leave Galactic Central and cast his lot  with
Earth,  he might need some help. There might be some objection by the aliens
to his taking  along his records and the alien gadgets. If he  wanted to get
away with them, he might have to make it fast.
     But did he want to leave Galactic Central? Could he give up the galaxy?
Could he turn down the offer to become the keeper of another station on some
other planet?  When the time should come, could he cut his tie  with all the
other races and all the mysteries of the other stars?
     Already he had  taken steps to do  those very things. Here, in the last
few moments, without too much thought  about it, almost as if he already had
reached his decision,  he had arranged  a  setup that would turn him back to
Earth.
     He stood there, thinking, puzzled at the steps he'd taken.
     "There'll be someone here," said Lewis. "Someone at this spring. If not
myself, then someone else who can get in touch with me."
     Enoch noped absent-mindedly.
     "Someone  will see  you  every morning  when you  take your walk," said
Lewis. "Or you can reach us here any time you wish."
     Like a conspiracy, thought Enoch. Like a bunch of kids playing cops and
robbers.
     "I have  to be  getting on," he  said. "It's almost time for mail. Wins
will be wondering what has happened to me."
     He started up the hill.
     "Be seeing you," said Lewis.
     "Yeah," said Enoch. "I'll be seeing you."
     He was surprised to find the warm glow spreading in him-as if there had
been  something wrong  and  now  it  was  all right,  as  if there  had been
something lost that now had been recovered.

        26
     Enoch met  the mailman halfway down the road that led into the station.
The  old jalopy  was traveling fast, bumping over the grassy  ruts, swishing
through the overhanging bushes that grew along the track.
     Wins braked to a halt when he caught sight of Enoch and sat waiting for
him.
     "You  got  on  a  detour," Enoch said,  coming up to him. "Or have  you
changed your route?"
     "You weren't waiting at the box," said Wins, "and I had to see you."
     "Some important mail?"
     "Nope,  it isn't mail. It's old Hank  Fisher. He  is down in Millville,
setting up the drinks in Epie's tavern and shooting off his face."
     "It's not like Hank to be buying drinks."
     "He's telling everyone that you tried to kidnap Lucy."
     "I didn't  kidnap her," Enoch said.  "Hank had took a bull  whip to her
and I hid her out until he got cooled down."
     "You shouldn't have done that, Enoch."
     "Maybe. But Hank  was set  on giving her a beating.  He already had hit
her a lick or two."
     "Hank's out to make you trouble."
     "He told me that he would."
     "He  says  you kidnapped her, then got scared and brought  her back. He
says you had her bid  out in the house and when he tried to break in and get
her, he couldn't do it. He says you  have  a funny sort of house. He says he
broke an ax blade on a window pane."
     "Nothing funny about it," Enoch said. "Hank just imagines things."
     "It's all  right  so far," said the  mailman.  "None of them, in  broad
daylight  and their right senses, will do  anything about it. But come night
they'll be  liquored up and won't have good  sense.  There  are some of them
might be coming up to see you."
     "I suppose he's telling them I've got the devil in me."
     "That  and more," said Wins. "I listened for  a  while before I started
out."
     He  reached  into the  mail pouch and  found the  bundle  of papers and
handed them to Enoch.
     "Enoch, there's  something that you have to know. Something you may not
realize. It would be easy to get a lot of  people stirred up against you-the
way  you live and all. You are strange.  No, I don't  mean there's  anything
wrong  with you-I know you and I know there isn't-but it  would be easy  for
people who didn't  know you to get the wrong ideas. They've let you alone so
far because you've  given them no reason to  do  anything about  you. But if
they get stirred up by all that Hank is saying..."
     He did not finish what he was saying. He left it hanging in midair.
     "You're talking about a posse," Enoch said.
     Wins noped, saying nothing.
     "Thanks," said Enoch. "I appreciate your warning me."
     "Is it true," asked the mailman, "that  no  one  can  get  inside  your
house9"
     "I  guess  it is,"  admitted Enoch. "They can't break into  it and they
can't burn it down. They can't do anything about it."
     "Then, if I were you, I'd stay close tonight.  I'd stay inside. I'd not
go venturing out."
     "Maybe I will. It sounds like a good idea."
     "Well," said Wins, "I guess that about covers it. I thought you'd ought
to  know.  Guess  I'll  have to back out to the road.  No chance of  turning
around."
     "Drive up to the house. There's room there."
     "It's not far back to the road," said Wins. "I can make it easy."
     The car started backing slowly.
     Enoch stood watching.
     He lifted a hand in solemn salute as the car began rounding a bend that
would take it out of sight. Wins waved back and then  the car  was swallowed
by the scrub that grew close against both sides of the road.
     Slowly Enoch turned around and ploped back toward the station.
     A mob, he thought-good God, a mob!
     A mob howling about  the  station, hammering at the  doors and windows,
peppering it  with  bullets, would  wipe  out the last faint chance-if there
still remained  a chance-of  Galactic Central standing off the move to close
the station. Such a demonstration would ap one more powerful argument to the
demand that the expansion into the spiral arm should be abandoned.
     Why was it, he wondered, that everything should happen all at once? For
years nothing at all had happened and now everything was happening within  a
few hours' time. Everything, it seemed, was working out against him.
     If  the  mob showed up, not only  would it mean  that  the  fate of the
station  would be  sealed, but it might mean, as well, that he would have no
choice but to accept the  offer  to become the keeper of another station. It
might  make it impossible for him to remain on Earth, even if he wished. And
he  realized, with a start,  that it might just possibly mean that the offer
of another station for  him might be withdrawn. For with the appearance of a
mob  howling for his blood, he, himself, would become involved in the charge
of barbarism now leveled against the human race in general.
     Perhaps, he told himself, he should go down to the spring and see Lewis
once again. Perhaps some measures could be taken to hold off the mob. But if
he did, he knew, there'd be an explanation due and he might have to tell too
much. And there might not be a mob. No one  would place too much credence in
what Hank Fisher said and the whole thing might peter out without any action
being taken.
     He'd stay inside the  station and hope for the best. Perhaps there'd be
no traveler in the station at  the time the mob arrived-if it did arrive-and
the incident would pass with no  galactic notice. If he were lucky it  might
work out  that way.  And by  the  law  of averages, he  was owed some  luck.
Certainly he'd had none in the last few days.
     He came to the broken gate  that led into the yard and stopped  to look
up at the  house, trying for some reason he  could not understand, to see it
as the house he had known in boyhood.
     It stood the same as it had always stood, unchanged, except that in the
olden days there  had been ruffled curtains at each  window. The yard around
it  had changed with the  slow growth of the years, with the clump of lilacs
thicker and more  rank and tangled  with each passing spring, with  the elms
that  his  father had  planted grown from six-foot whips into mighty  trees,
with  the  yellow  rose  bush  at  the  kitchen  corner  gone,  victim of  a
long-forgotten  winter, with the  flower beds vanished  and the  small  herb
garden, here beside the gate, overgrown and smothered out by grass.
     The  old stone fence that had  stood on each  side of the gate was  now
little more than a humpbacked mound.  The heaving of  a hundred frosts,  the
creep of vines and  grasses, the long years of neglect, had done  their work
and in another hundred years, he  thought, it would be  level, with no trace
of it  left. Down in the  field, along the  slope  where erosion had been at
work, there were long stretches where it had entirely disappeared.
     All of this had happened and until this moment he had  scarcely noticed
it. But  now  he noticed it and  wondered why he  did. Was it because he now
might be returning to the Earth again-he who had never left its soil and sun
and air, who had  never left it  physically, but who  had, for a longer time
than  most  men had allotted to them, walked not one, but many  planets, far
among the stars?
     He stood  there, in the late summer sun, and shivered in the  cold wind
that  seemed  to be  blowing  out of  some  unknown  dimension of unreality,
wondering for the first time  (for the first time he ever had been forced to
wonder at it) what kind of man he was. A haunted man who must spend his days
neither completely  alien nor completely human, with divided loyalties, with
old ghosts  to tramp the years  and miles with him no  matter which  life he
might  choose,  the   Earth  life  or  the  stars?  A  cultural  half-breed,
understanding  neither  Earth  nor stars, owing a debt to  each, but  paying
neither one?  A  homeless, footless, wandering creature who  could recognize
neither right  nor wrong  from having  seen  so many different (and logical)
versions of the right and wrong?
     He had climbed the hill above the  spring,  filled with the  rosy inner
glow of a regained humanity, a member of  the human race again, linked in  a
boy-like conspiracy with a human team. But could  he qualify as human-and if
he  qualified  as human,  or tried  to  qualify, then what about the implied
hundred years' allegiance  to Galactic Central? Did  he,  he wondered,  even
want to qualify as human?
     He  moved  slowly through  the  gate,  and  the  questions  still  kept
hammering  in  his brain,  that great, ceaseless flow  of questions to which
there were no answers. Although that was wrong, he  thought. Not no answers,
but too many answers.
     Perhaps Mary and David and the rest of them would come visiting tonight
and they could talk it over-then he supenly remembered.
     They would not be coming. Not Mary, not  David, nor any  of the others.
They had come for years to see  him, but they would  come no longer, for the
magic had been dimmed and the illusion shattered and he was alone.
     As  he  had always been  alone, he  told  himself, with a  bitter taste
inside his brain. It all  had been  illusion; it never  had  been  real. For
years  he'd fooled himself-most eagerly and  willingly he had fooled himself
into peopling the little corner by the fireplace with these creatures of his
imagination. Aided  by an  alien technique, driven by his loneliness for the
sight and sound of humankind, he  had brought them into a being  that defied
every sense except the solid sense of touch.
     And defied as well every sense of decency.
     Half-creatures, he thought. Poor pitiful half-creatures, neither of the
shadow or the world.
     Too human for the shadows, too shadowy for Earth.
     <I>Mary, if I had only known - if I had known, I never would have started.
I'd have stayed with loneliness.</I>
     And he could not mend it now. There was nothing that would help.
     What is the matter with me? he asked himself.
     What has happened to me?
     What is going on?
     He couldn't even think in a straight line any  more.  He'd told himself
that  he'd stay inside  the station to  escape the mob that might be showing
up-and he couldn't  stay inside the  station,  for Lewis,  sometime  shortly
after dark, would be bringing back the Hazer's body.
     And if the mob showed up at the same time Lewis should appear, bringing
back the body, there'd be unsheeted hell to pay.
     Stricken by the thought, he stood undecided.
     If  he  alerted Lewis to the danger,  then he might not bring the body.
And he had  to  bring the body.  Before the night was over the Hazer must be
secure within the grave.
     He decided that he would have to take a  chance. The mob might not show
up. Even if it did, there had to be a way that he could handle it.
     He'd think of something, he told himself.
     He'd have to think of something.

        27
     The station was  as silent as  it had been when he'd left it. There had
been no messages and  the machinery was quiet, not even muttering to itself,
as it sometimes did.
     Enoch laid  the rifle across  the desk  top  and dropped  the bundle of
papers beside it. He  took off  his jacket and  hung it  on the back of  the
chair.
     There  were  still  the  papers  to  be  read,  not  only today's,  but
yesterday's as well, and  the  journal to be gotten  up, and the journal, he
reminded himself,  would take a lot of time. There would be several pages of
it,  even  if  he  wrote  it  close,  and  he  must  write it  logically and
chronologically,  so that it would  appear he had written  the happenings of
yesterday yesterday and not a full day late. He must include  each event and
every facet of each happening and  his own reactions  to it and his thoughts
about it. For that was the way he'd always done and that was the way he must
do it now.  He'd always been able to do it  that way  because he had created
for himself a little special niche, not of the Earth, nor of the galaxy, but
in that vague condition which one might call existence,  and  he had  worked
inside the framework of that  special niche  as  a  medieval monk had worked
inside his  cell.  He had  been an observer  only,  an  intensely interested
observer who had not been content with  observance only, but who had made an
effort to dig into what he had observed, but still basically and essentially
an observer who was not vitally nor personally involved in  what had gone on
about him. But in the last two days, he realized, he had lost that  observer
status. The Earth and  the galaxy had both intruded  on him, and his special
niche  was  gone and he was  personally involved. He  had lost his objective
viewpoint and  no  longer  could command  that  correct and  coldly  factual
approach which had given him a solid basis upon which to do his writing.
     He walked  over  to the shelf  of journals and pulled  out the  current
volume,  fluttering its pages to find where  he had  stopped.  He found  the
place and it was very near the end.  There were only a few blank pages left,
perhaps not enough of them to cover the events  of which he'd have to write.
More than likely, he thought, he'd come to  an end  of the journal before he
had finished with it and would have to start a new one.
     He stood with the journal in his  hand and stared at the page where the
writing ended, the writing that he'd done the day before yesterday. Just the
day  before yesterday and it now was ancient  writing; it  even  had a faded
look about it. And well it might,  he thought, for it had been writing  done
in another age. It had been the last entry he had made before his  world had
come crashing down about him.
     And what, he asked himself, was the use of writing further? The writing
now was done, all the writing that would matter. The station would be closed
and his own planet would be lost-no matter whether he  stayed on or went  to
another station on another planet, the Earth would now be lost.
     Angrily he slammed  shut the book and put it  back into its place  upon
the shelf. He walked back to the desk.
     The Earth was lost, he thought, and he was lost as well, lost and angry
and confused.  Angry  at  fate (if there  were such  a thing as fate) and at
stupidity.  Not only  the intellectual  stupidity of  the Earth, but at  the
intellectual stupidity of the galaxy as well,  at the  petty bickering which
could  still  the  march of  the  brotherhood  of peoples  that  finally had
extended  into  this  galactic  sector. As  on Earth, so in the  galaxy, the
number and  complexity  of  the  gadget, the  noble thought,  the wisdom and
erudition might make for a culture, but not for a civilization. To be  truly
civilized, there  must be something far more  subtle than the  gadget or the
thought.
     He  felt  the tension in  him,  the tension to be  doing something - to
prowl about the station like  a caged  and pacing  beast, to run outside and
shout incoherently until  his lungs were empty, to smash and break,  to work
off, somehow, his rage and disappointment.
     He reached out  a hand and snatched the  rifle off the  desk. He pulled
out a desk drawer where he kept the  ammunition,  and took out a box  of it,
tearing it apart, emptying the cartridges in his pocket.
     He  stood there  for a  moment, with the  rifle  in  his hand, and  the
silence of the room seemed to thunder at him and he caught the bleakness and
the coldness of it and he laid the rifle back on the desk again.
     With childishness, he thought, to  take out his resentment and his rage
on an unreality.  And' when there was  no real reason for resentment  or for
rage. For the pattern of events was one that should be recognized  and  thus
accepted. It was the kind of thing to which a human  being should long since
have become accustomed.
     He  looked around the station  and the quietness and the waiting  still
was there,  as if the  very structure might be marking time for  an event to
come along on the natural flow of time.
     He laughed softly and reached for the rifle once again.
     Unreality or not, it would be something to occupy  his mind, to 'snatch
him for a while from this sea of problems which was swirling all about him.
     And he needed the target practice. It  had been ten days or more  since
he'd been on the rifle range.

        28
     The basement  was  huge. It stretched  out into a dim  haze beyond  the
lights  which  he had  turned on, a place  of tunnels and rooms, carved deep
into the rock that folded up to underlie the ridge.
     Here  were the massive tanks filled with the various solutions for  the
tank  travelers;  here the  pumps and  the  generators,  which operated on a
principle alien to the human manner of  generating electric  power,  and far
beneath the  floor  of  the basement itself those great storage  tanks which
held the acids and the  soupy matter which once had been the bodies of those
creatures which came traveling to the station, leaving behind  them, as they
went on to some other  place, the useless bodies which then must be disposed
of.
     Enoch moved across the floor, past the  tanks and generators,  until he
came to a gallery that  stretched out into the darkness.  He found the panel
and  pressed it to bring on the  lights, then  walked  down the gallery.  On
either side were metal shelves which had been installed  to  accommodate the
overflow  of  gadgets,  of  artifacts, of all sorts  of gifts which had been
brought him  by the travelers. From floor to ceilin