He turned back to his food, without saying anything.

For a whole generation now, the Earth's population had held steady. No further increase could be afforded. Everyone admitted that. There were those, in fact, who said that 'no higher' wasn't enough; the population had to drop. Jennings himself sympathized with that point of view. The globe of the Earth was being eaten alive by its heavy freight of humanity.

But how was the population to be made to drop? Randomly, by encouraging the people to lower the birth rate still further, as and how they wished ? Lately there had been the slow rise of a distant rumble which wanted not only a population drop but a selected drop-the survival of the fittest, with the self-declared fit choosing the criteria of fitness.

Jennings thought: I've insulted him, I suppose.

Later, when he was almost asleep, it suddenly occurred to him that he knew virtually nothing of Strauss's character. What if it were his intention to go out now on a foraging expedition of his own so that he might getsole credit for--?

He raised himself on his elbow in alarm, but Strauss wasbreathing heavily, and even as Jennings listened, the breathing grew into the characteristic burr of a snore.

They spent the next three days in a single-minded search for additional pieces. They found some. They found more than that. They found an area glowing with the tiny phosphorescence of Lunar bacteria. Such bacteria were common enough, but nowhere previously had their occurrence been reported in concentration so great as to cause a visible glow.

Strauss said, 'An organic being, or his remains, may have been here once. He died, but the micro-organisms within him did not. In the end they consumed him.'

'And spread perhaps,' added Jennings. That may be the source of Lunar bacteria generally. They may not be native at all but may be the result of contamination instead-eons ago.'

'It works the other way, too,' said Strauss. 'Since the bacteria are completely different in very fundamental ways from any Earthly form of micro-organism, the creatures they parasitized-assuming this was their source-must have been fundamentally different too. Another indication of extraterrestrial origin.'

The trail ended in the wall of a small crater.

'It's a major digging job,' said Jennings, his heart sinking. 'We had better report this and get help.'

'No,' said Strauss somberly. There may be nothing to get help for. The crater might have formed a million years after the ship had crash-landed.'

'And vaporized most of it, you mean, and left only what we've found?'

Strauss nodded.

Jennings said, 'Let's try anyway. We can dig a bit. If we draw a line through the finds we've made so far and just keep on...'

Strauss was reluctant and worked halfheartedly, so that it was Jennings who made the real find. Surely that counted! Even though Strauss had found the first piece of metal, Jennings had found the artifact itself.

It was an artifact-cradled three feet underground under the irregular shape of a boulder which had fallen in such a way that it left a hollow in its contact with the Moon's surface. In the hollow lay the artifact, protected from everything for a million years or more; protected from radiation, from micrometors, from temperature change, so that it remained fresh and new forever.

Jennings labeled it at once the Device. It looked not remotely similar to any instrument either had ever seen, but then, as Jennings said, why should it ?

There are no rough edges that I can see,' he said. 'It may not be broken.'

There may be missing parts, though.'

'Maybe,' said Jennings, 'but there seems to be nothing movable. It's all one piece and certainly oddly uneven.' He noted his own play on words, then went on with a not-altogether-successful attempt at self-control. This is what we need. A piece of worn metal or an area rich in bacteria is only material for deduction and dispute. But this is the real thing-a Device that is clearly of extraterrestrial manufacture.'

It was on the table between them now, and both regarded it gravely.

Jennings said, 'Let's put through a preliminary report, now.'

'No!' said Strauss, in sharp and strenuous dissent. 'Hell, no!'

'Why not?'

'Because if we do, it becomes a Society project. They'll swarm all over it and we won't be as much as a footnote when all is done. No!' Strauss looked almost sly. 'Let's do all we can with it and get as much out of it as possible before the harpies descend.'

Jennings thought about it. He couldn't deny that he too wanted to make certain that no credit was lost. But still---- He said, 'I don't know that I like to take the chance, Strauss.' For the first time he had an impulse to use the man's first name, but fought it off. 'Look, Strauss.' he said, 'it's not right to wait. If this is of extraterrestrial origin, then it must be from some other planetary system. There isn't a place in the Solar System, outside the Earth, that can possibly support an advanced life form.'

'Not proven, really,' grunted Strauss, 'but what if you'reright?'

Then it would mean that the creatures of the ship had interstellar travel and therefore had to be far in advance, technologically, of ourselves. Who knows what the Device can tell us about their advanced technology. It might be the key to-who knows what. It might be the clue to an unimaginable scientific revolution.'

That's romantic nonsense. If this is the product of a technology far advanced over ours, we'll learn nothing from it. Bring Einstein back to life and show him a microprotowarp and what would he make of it?'

'We can't be certain that we won't learn.'

'So what, even so? What if there's a small delay? What if we assure credit for ourselves ? What if we make sure that we ourselves go along with this, that we don't let go of it?'

'But Strauss'-Jennings felt himself moved almost to tears in his anxiety to get across his sense of the importance of the Device-'what if we crash with it? What if we don't make it back to Earth ? We can't risk this thing.' He tapped it then, almost as though he were in love with it. 'We should report it now and have them send ships out here to get it. It's too precious to--'

At the peak of his emotional intensity, the Device seemed to grow warm under his hand. A portion of its surface, half-hidden under a flap of metal, glowed phosphorescently.

Jennings jerked his hand away in a spasmodic gesture and the Device darkened. But it was enough; the moment had been infinitely revealing.

He said, almost choking, 'It was like a window opening into your skull. I could see into your mind.'

'I read yours,' said Strauss, 'or experienced it, or entered into it, or whatever you choose.' He touched the Device in his cold, withdrawn way, but nothing happened.

'You're an Ultra,' said Jennings angrily. 'When I touched this'-And he did so. 'It's happening again. I see it. Are you a madman ? Can you honestly believe it is humanly decent to condemn almost all the human race to extinction and destroy the versatility and variety of the species ?'

His hand dropped away from the Device again, in repugnance at the glimpses revealed, and it grew dark again. Once more, Strauss touched it gingerly and again nothing happened.

said, lets not start a discussion, for God's sake. This thing is an aid to communication-a telepathic amplifier. Why not? The brain cells have each their electric potentials. Thought can be viewed as a wavering electromagnetic field of microintensities--'

Jennings turned away. He didn't want to speak to Strauss. He said, 'We'll report it now. I don't give a damn about credit. Take it all. I just want it out of our hands.'

For a moment Strauss remained in a brown study. Then he said, 'It's more than a communicator. It responds to emotion and it amplifies emotion.'

'What are you talking about?'

Twice it started at your touch just now, although you'd been handling it all day with no effect. It still has no effect when I touch it.'

'Well?'

'It reacted to you when you were in a state of high emotional tension. That's the requirement for activation, I suppose. And when you raved about the Ultras while you were holding it just now, I felt as you did, for just a moment.'

'So you should.'

'But, listen to me. Are you sure you're so right. There isn't a thinking man on Earth that doesn't know the planet would be better off with a population of one billion rather than six billion. If we used automation to the full-as now the hordes won't allow us to do-we could probably have a completely efficient and viable Earth with a population of no more than, say, five million. Listen to me, Jennings.

Don't turn away, man.'

The harshness in Strauss's voice almost vanished in his effort to be reasonably winning. 'But we can't reduce the population democratically. You know that. It isn't the sex urge, because uterine inserts solved the birth control problem long ago; you know that. It's a matter of nationalism. Each ethnic group wants other groups to reduce themselves in population first, and I agree with them. I want my ethnic group, our ethnic group, to prevail. I want the Earth to be inherited by the elite, which means by men like ourselves. We're the true men, and the horde of half-apes who hold us down are destroying us all. They're doomed to death anyway; why not save ourselves?'

'No,' said Jennings strenuously. 'No one group has a monopoly on humanity. Your five million mirror-images, trapped in a humanity robbed of its variety and versatility, would die of boredom-and serve them right.'

'Emotional nonsense, Jennings. You don't believe that. You've just been trained to believe it by our damn-fool equalitarians. Look, this Device is just what we need. Even if we can't build any others or understand how this one works, this one Device might do. If we could control or influence the minds of key men, then little by little we can superimpose our views on the world. We already have an organization. You must know that if you've seen my mind. It's better motivated and better designed than any other organization on Earth. The brains of mankind flock to us daily. Why not you too? This instrument is a key, as you see, but not just a key to a bit more knowledge. It is a key to the final solution of men's problems. Join us! Join us!' He had reached an earnestness that Jennings had never heard in him.

Strauss's hand fell on the Device, which flickered a second or two and went out.

Jennings smiled humorlessly. He saw the significance of that. Strauss had been deliberately trying to work himself into an emotional state intense enough to activate the Device and had failed.

'You can't work it,' said Jennings. 'You're too darned super-mannishly self-controlled and can't break down, can you?' He took up the Device with hands that were trembling, and it phosphoresced at once.

'Then you work it. Get the credit for saving humanity.'

'Not in a hundred million years,' said Jennings, gasping and barely able to breathe in the intensity of his emotion. 'I'm going to report this now.'

'No,' said Strauss. He picked up one of the table knives. 'It's pointed enough, sharp enough.'

'You needn't work so hard to make your point,' said Jennings, even under the stress of the moment conscious of the pun. 'I can see your plans. With the Device you can convince anyone that I neverexisted. You can bring about an Ultra victory.

Strauss nodded. 'You read my mind perfectly.'

'But you won't,' gasped Jennings. 'Not while I hold this.' He was willing Strauss into immobility.

Strauss moved raggedly and subsided. He held the knife out stiffly and his arm trembled, but he did not advance.

Both were perspiring freely.

Strauss said between clenched teeth, 'You can't keep it-up all-day.'

The sensation was clear, but Jennings wasn't sure he had the words to describe it. It was, in physical terms, like holding a slippery animal of vast strength, one that wriggled incessantly. Jennings had to concentrate on the feeling of immobility.

He wasn't familiar with the Device. He didn't know how to use it skillfully. One might as well expect someone who had never seen a sword to pick one up and wield it with the grace of a musketeer.

'Exactly,' said Strauss, following Jennings' train of thought. He took a fumbling step forward.

Jennings knew himself to be no match for Strauss's mad determination. They both knew that. But there was the skim boat. Jennings had to get away. With the Device.

But Jennings had no secrets. Strauss saw his thought and tried to step between the other and the skim boat.

Jennings redoubled his efforts. Not immobility, but unconsciousness. Sleep, Strauss, he thought desperately. Sleep! Strauss slipped to his knees, heavy-lidded eyes closing.

Heart pounding, Jennings rushed forward. If he could strike him with something, snatch the knife-- But his thoughts had deviated from their all-important concentration on sleep, so that Strauss's hand was on his ankle, pulling downward with raw strength.

Strauss did not hesitate. As Jennings tumbled, the hand that held the knife rose and fell. Jennings felt the sharp pain and his mind reddened with fear and despair.

It was the very access of emotion that raised the flicker of the Device to a blaze. Strauss's hold relaxed as Jennings silently and incoherently screamed fear and rage from his own mind to the other.

Strauss rolled over, face distorted.

Jennings rose unsteadily to his feet and backed away. He dared do nothing but concentrate on keeping the other unconscious. Any attempt at violent action would block out too much of his own mind force, whatever it was; too much of his unskilled bumbling mind force that could not lend itself to really effective use.

He backed toward the skim boat. There would be a suit on board-bandages-- The skim boat was not really meant for long-distance runs. Nor was Jennings, any longer. His right side was slick with blood despite the bandages. The interior of his suit was caked with it.

There was no sign of the ship itself on his tail, but surely it would come sooner or later. Its power was many times his own; it had detectors that would pick up the cloud of charge concentration left behind by his ion-drive reactors.

Desperately Jennings had tried to reach Luna Station on his radio, but there was still no answer, and he stopped in despair. His signals would merely aid Strauss in pursuit.

He might reach Luna Station bodily, but he did not think he could make it. He would be picked off first. He would die and crash first. He wouldn't make it. He would have to hide the Device, put it away in a safe place, then make for Luna Station.

The Device...

He was not sure he was right. It might ruin the human race, but it was infinitely valuable. Should he destroy it altogether? It was the only remnant of non-human intelligent life. It held the secrets of an advanced technology; it was an instrument of an advanced science of the mind. Whatever the danger, consider the value-the potential value-- No, he must hide it so that it could be found again-but only by the enlightened Moderates of the government. Never by the Ultras ...

The skim boat flickered down along the northern inner rim of the crater. He knew which one it was, and the Device could be buried here. If he could not reach Luna Station thereafter, either in person or by radio, he would have to at least get away from the hiding spot: well away, so that his own person would not give it away. And he would have to leave some key to it's location.

He was thinking with an unearthly clarity, it seemed to him. Was it the influence of the Device he was holding ? Did it stimulate his thinking and guide him to the perfect message? Or was it the hallucination of the dying, and would none of it make any sense to anyone? He didn't know, but he had no choice. He had to try.

For Karl Jennings knew he was going to die. He had a matter of hours to live and much to do.

H. Seton Davenport of the American Division of the Terrestrial Bureau of Investigation rubbed the star-shaped scar on his left cheek absently. 'I'm aware, sir, that the Ultras are dangerous.'

The Division Head, M. T. Ashley, looked at Davenport narrowly. His gaunt cheeks were set in disapproving lines. Since he had sworn off smoking once again, he forced his groping fingers to close upon a stick of chewing gum, which he shelled, crumpled, and shoved into his mouth morosely. He was getting old, and bitter, too, and his short iron-gray mustache rasped when he rubbed his knuckles against it.

He said, 'You don't know how dangerous. I wonder if anyone does. They are small in numbers, but strong among the powerful who, after all, are perfectly ready to consider themselves the elite. No one knows for certain who they are or how many.'

'Not even the Bureau ?'

'The Bureau is held back. We ourselves aren't free of the taint, for that matter. Are you ?'

Davenport frowned. 'I'm not an Ultra.'

'I didn't say you were,' said Ashley. 'I asked if you were free of the taint. Have you considered what's been happening to the Earth in the last two centuries? Has it never occurred to you that a moderate decline in population would be a good thing? Have you never felt that it would be wonderful to get rid of the unintelligent, the incapable, the insensitive, and leave the rest. I have, damn it.'

'I'm guilty of thinking that sometimes, yes. But considering something as a wish-fulfillment idea is one thing, but planning it as a practical scheme of action to be Hitlerized through is something else.'

'The distance from wish to action isn't as great as you think. Convince yourself that the end is important enough, that the danger is great enough, and the means will grow increasingly less objectionable. Anyway, now that the Istanbul matter is taken care of, let me bring you up to date on this matter. Istanbul was of no importance in comparison. Do you know Agent Ferrant?'

The one who's disappeared ? Not personally.'

'Well, two months ago, a stranded ship was located on the Moon's surface. It had been conducting a privately financed selenographic survey. The Russo-America Geological Society, which had sponsored the flight, reported the ship's failure to report. A routine search located it without much trouble within a reasonable distance of the site from which it had made its last report.

'The ship was not damaged but its skim boat was gone and with it one member of the crew. Name-Karl Jennings. The other man, James Strauss, was alive but in delirium. There was no sign of physical damage to Strauss, but he was quite insane. He still is, and that's important.'

'Why?' put in Davenport.

'Because the medical team that investigated him reported neurochemical and neuroelectrical abnormalities of unprecedented nature. They'd never seen a case like it. Nothing human could have brought it about.'