Then it began to talk to some of us.

Not all of us there, for I could tell some were not receiving it. I don't attribute it to good or bad in any of us, nor intelligence, nor even sensitivity. Perhaps it was whim on Ithk's part, or the way he(?) wanted to do it out of necessity. But whatever it was, he spoke to only some of us there. I could see Portales was receiving nothing, though old Karl Leus's face was in a state of rapture, and I knew he had the message himself.

For the creature was speaking in our minds telepathically. It did not amaze me, or confound me, nor even shock me. It seemed right. It seemed to go with Ithk's size and look, its aura and arrival.

And it spoke to us.

And when it was done, some of us crawled up on the platform and released the bolts that held the case of gla.s.s shut; though we all knew Ithk could have left it at any second had it desired. But Ithk had been interested in knowing--before it burned itself out as its fellows had done--and it had found out about us little Earth people. It had satisfied its curiosity, on this instant's stopover before it went to hurtling, flaming destruction. It had been curious...for the last time Ithk's people had come here, Earth had been without creatures who went into s.p.a.ce. Even as pitifully short a distance into s.p.a.ce as we could venture.

But now the stopover was finished, and Ithk had a short journey to complete. It had come an unimaginably long way. for a purpose, and though this had been interesting, Ithk was anxious to join his fellows.

So we unbolted the cage--which had never really confined a creature that could be out of it at will--and Ithk was there! not there. Gone!

The sky was still flaming.

One more pinpoint came into being suddenly, slipped down in a violent rush through the atmosphere, and burned itself out like a wasting torch. Ithk was gone.

Then we left.

Karl Leus leaped from the thirty-second story of a building in Washington that evening. Nine others died that day. And though I was not ready for that, there was a deadness in me. A feeling of waste and futility and hopelessness. I went back to the Observatory, and tried to drive the memory of what Ithk had said from my mind and my soul. If I had been as deeply perceptive as Leus or any of the other nine, I might have gone immediately. But I am not in their category. They realized the full depth of what it had said, and so perceiving, they had taken their lives. I can understand their doing it.

Portales came to me when he heard about it.

"They just--just killed themselves!" he babbled. I was sick of his petty annoyances. Sick of them, and not even interested any longer in fighting him.

"Yes, they killed themselves," I answered wearily, staring at the flaming, burning sky from the Observatory catwalk. It always seemed to be night now. Always night--with light.

"But why? Why would they do it?"

I spoke to hear my thoughts. For I knew what was coming. "Because of what the creature said."

"What it said?"

"What it told us, and what it did not tell us."

"It spoke to you?"

"To some of us. To Leus and the nine and others. I heard it."

"But why didn't I hear it? I was right there!"I shrugged. He had not heard, that was all.

"Well, what did it say? Tell me," he demanded.

I turned to him, and looked at him. Would it affect him? No, I rather thought not. And that was good. Good for him, and good for others like him. For without them, Man would cease to exist. I told him.

"The lemmings," I said. "You know the lemmings. For no reason, for some deep instinctual surging, they follow each other, and periodically throw themselves off the cliffs. They follow one another down to destruction. A racial trait. It was that way with the creature and his people. They came across the mega-galaxies to kill themselves here. To commit ma.s.s suicide in our solar system. To burn up in the atmosphere of Mars and Mercury and Venus and Earth, and to die, that's all. Just to die."

His face was stunned. I could see he comprehended that. But what did it matter? That was not what had made Leus and the nine kill themselves, that was not what filled me with such a feeling of frustration. The drive of one race was not the drive of another.

"But--but--I don't underst--"

I cut him off.

"That was what Ithk said."

"But why did they come here to die?" he asked, confused. "Why here and not some other solar system or galaxy?"

That was what Ithk had said. That was what we had wondered in our minds--d.a.m.n us for asking--and in its simple way, Ithk had answered.

"Because, " I explained slowly, softly, "this is the end of the Universe."

His face did not register comprehension. I could see it was a concept he could not grasp. That the solar system, Earth's system, the backyard of Earth to be precise, was the end of the Universe. Like the fiat world over which Columbus would have sailed, into nothingness. This was the end of it all. Out there, in the other direction, lay a known Universe, with an end to it...but they--Ithk's people--ruled it. It was theirs, and would always be theirs. For they had racial memory burnt into each embryo child born to their race, so they would never stagnate. After every lemming race, a new generation was born, that would live for thousands of years, and advance. They would go on till they came here to flame out in our atmosphere. But they would rule what they had while they had it.

So to us, to the driving, unquenchably curious, seeking and roaming Earthman, whose life was tied up with wanting to know, needing to know, there was nothing left. Ashes. The dust of our own system. And after that, nothing.

We were at a dead end. There could be no wandering among the stars. It was not that we couldn't go. We could. But we would be tolerated. It was their Universe, and this, our Earth, was the dead end.

Ithk had not known what it was doing when it said that to us. It had meant no evil, but it had doomed some of us. Those of us who dreamed. Those of us who wanted more than what Portales wanted.

I turned away from him and looked up.

The sky was burning.

I held very tightly to the bottle of sleeping tablets in my pocket. So much light up there.Bluntly put, the following story has truly been used. I am always astounded at writers who sell and re-sell and re-re- sell their stories or books, wringing every last possible penny from them. But in the case of the following epic, I can truly say I take backseat to no man. The idea occurred to me in my first days at Ohio State University, back in the early Fifties. I wrote it and it was published in the Ohio State Sundial, the humor magazine I later edited. When I got to New York in 1956, I submitted the idea as story-continuity to EC Publications, now the producers of Mad magazine, then the producers of such goodies as Weird Science-Fantasy comics, in which this story appeared as "Upheaval." Between these two appearances, however, the story showed up in the amateur science fiction magazine I published, Dimensions. In that incarnation it was called "Green Odyssey." Eventually, I wrote it as a full short story and it appeared in Bill Hamling's short-lived s.p.a.ce Travel Magazine. No two of these setting-downs were alike, incidentally. Then the radio performance rights were purchased by an outfit that was planning to revive Dimension X for Sunday listening on the Mutual Broadcasting System. It never got off the ground, but I had been paid, so that was another sale. There may have been another conversion or two of this story, but I can't remember right now if such was the case. What I do remember is that the basic tenet of this story--You ain't as hot an item as you think, Chollie!--has appealed to every editor who has seen it. Which speaks well for mankind, I guess, if you think there's validity in the encounter viewed in

Mealtime

While the ship Circe burned its way like some eternal Roman Candle through the surrounding dark of forever, within: "You make me sick, Dembois! Absolutely sick to my gut!"

"Sick? Why you sleazy crumb, I ought to break you in half! Who the h.e.l.l do you think you're--"

"All right! Now! That's it from the both of you. I've got enough on my hands now with just getting there and back--I said knock it off, Kradter--just getting there and back, and I've heard enough swill from both of you on this trip! So kill it before I take a spanner to your heads. Read me?"

There were three of them riding the flame to the stars. Three on a Catalog Ship sent to chart the planets of unknown stars, and to take brief studies of the worlds themselves. They were three months out, on a jump between their last world--an ivy-covered ball of green they had named Garbo because it was the single planet of its star--and their next one, which had no name. Nor chart position; nor star whose light had reached the Earth as yet. But there was another island of star cl.u.s.ters across this immensity of black between galaxies, and as soon as they had hopped it through Invers.p.a.ce, they would find yet another shining light to draw them on.

It had been that way for over one year and nine months. They had catalogued over two-hundred and twenty worlds, each one different from its predecessors.

But the work was not enough. Time hangs like an albatross about the neck of the s.p.a.ce-wanderer. He sees blackness all about him, and occasionally the starshine, and even more occasionally the crazy-quilt patchwork that is Invers.p.a.ce. There is no radio contact with Earth. There is little recreation and even less provision made to keep fit and alert.

But nature knows when its creatures need sharpening. So, the arguments.

There were three of them: Kradter, who was descended from Prussians, and had the look of them. Tall, with heavily-muscled torso and the square, close-cropped blonde hair of his ancestors. Rigid in his thinking unless pried forcibly from the clutch of his convictions. Poverty and determination had combined to bring him into the high- paying but dangerous SeekServ branch of the Navy. He was a Lieutenant, with the opinion that rank was unimportant, only drive was essential.

The second was Dembois, who was a bigot.

He came from Louisiana wealth, and his background was one of idleness, dissipation and revelry. A serious affair with a lovely quadroon girl had forced his father to order the boy out of the city, and into the Navy. Authority and wealth and position had saved Dembois from a prison sentence, but for him the Navy was sentence enough. He despised the SeekServ, and it was for that reason he had joined it. Self-punishment, in the adolescent "Look how I'm suffering, aren't you sorry you threw me out of the house!" tradition had prompted his signing-on. He loathed the furry and tracked and tentacled and finned and feathered aliens he discovered on the worlds of s.p.a.ce.

He hated Negros and Jews, Catholics and Orientals. He was uncomfortable in the presence of poor people, sick people, crippled people or hungry people. Yet there was a fierce determination in him, also. What he wanted to do, he did thoroughly and well; what he did not want to do, but knew he must do, he did in a similar fashion. He was an Ensign II.The third was the Captain of the Circe.

His past was the reflective, mysterious face of a mirror; any man might look, but all he would see was the image of himself. No more. His past was silent in its sh.e.l.l, but its form was there to be seen in the man. His name was Calk.

His personality dominated the Circe, held the other two in check. Calk was strong, perhaps too strong for his own good. The bickering was beginning to tell on him.

"What the h.e.l.l was it all about this time?"

Dembois and Kradter spoke together, their voices rising automatically in anger as they found compet.i.tion.

Calk was forced to shut them up again. Then he motioned to Kradter. "Okay. You first. What was it this time?"

Kradter looked disgruntled, and yanked his pipe from where it was thrust pistol-like in his belt. He dug a finger into the blackened bowl and growled something unintelligible.

"Well, now look, Kradter, if you want to say something, say it. If you don't, there isn't an argument, nothing to settle, and I can go the blazes back to my plot-tank."

Kradter looked up, as though ready to throw a string of cursewords, but merely said, instead, "We were arguing the n.o.bility of Man. "

Calk's eyebrows went up. They were thick and black, and struck the impression of two slanted caterpillars inching up his forehead.

Kradter explained hurriedly, expecting Dembois to burst in momentarily. "I was saying that the poor slobs we find on these worlds deserve human care. It's our obligation to these lesser creatures to provide them with the comforts a greater race can offer."

Dembois snorted, and Calk looked over sharply. "Now, what was your beef, that you wanted to start a brawl?"

Dembois looked angrily at Kradter. " And I say it's not our place to do anything for these stinking savages.

The only thing we owe them is conquest. They'd overrun us in a month if we gave them the chance. Kill the b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, that's the answer to colonial expansion out here.

"Put them away for good, the first thing we see them. It's the only way we can be sure we're protected. This a.s.s--" he stopped at Kradter's bleat of anger, and tensed as the other man took a half-step forward.

Calk stopped them. "Okay, knock it off. So one of you thinks we should play Big Daddy to the poor natives, and the other thinks we should mow 'em down on sight. Okay. Fine. Good. Now shut your traps and let me get our plot set, or we'll wind up frying inside some sun when we popout."

He gave them both a strange look, and murmured, "h.o.m.o superior," and walked out of the lounge.

The other two sat staring at points between them. Neither spoke. No crossbow bolts were loosed.

The Circe moved out.

A green fog in the ever-changing pattern of Invers.p.a.ce. Green, roiling, oily dark fog.

A speck of crimson that flickered and steadied and exploded into sharp golden fragments.

A lurch, a twist, the guts heaving and the puke-masks: filling, and the eyeb.a.l.l.s burning without heat. The roots of the hair straining, and the arches of the cheekbones stretching the skin tight as a corpse's. Then a grey-out, a black-out, a white-and-black-out and the ship was traveling in the normal universe again.

They were in sight of the cold, chiselled stars and the steady multi-colored stars. They were a Catalog Ship and there was work to be done. The constellation firmed out in the plot-tank, superimposing itself almost exactly over Calk's lined-in course. The CourseComp chattered eerily and the few discrepancies in course variation were merged, so that the wing-shaped constellation was directly on the Captain's pattern.

Dembois and Kradter knocked politely on the door to the control cabin, and slid it open when Calk said absently, "Come."

"How's it set?" Dembois asked.

"About three points off, but we've corrected already," Calk replied, indicating the plot-tank. He slipped the infrared goggles off and stuck them on their pad. "You start und.o.g.g.i.ng the gear yet?"

Kradter nodded, addressing the nod totally to Calk, and Dembois's lips pursed in annoyance that the conversation had been stolen away from him. He thrust back into it with, "I hope we don't run up against any eetees.

The last batch was enough to turn my stomach for quite a while."

Kradter whirled on him again. "I thought we had this out once and for all, man. I thought you understood our job is to befriend and aid these unfortunate--"

"Bull!" Dembois snarled. "Show me in the Regs where it says that? Show me, or shut your Heinie trap-- eetee lover."

Kradter had swung before Calk could stop him. He caught Dembois along the cheekbone and spun thesmaller man. The Ensign II staggered backward, crashed into the bulkhead and slid to one knee, shaking his head.

Kradter was moving forward when Calk caught him, slipping his hands under the Prussian's armpits and up behind his neck, where they locked. He dragged Kradter half off the floor in a full-nelson and shook him solidly, taking the Lieutenant's breath away.

"Now...knock...off...that...stuff!" Calk whispered loudly in Kradter's ear. He held the man completely paralyzed, his feet dangling a quarter inch off the floor. Tremendous muscles stood out on Calk's arms, beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt, and a blue pulse of nerve throbbed at his right temple.

Dembois staggered erect, clutching his face, and made a few idle stepping motions; then, in a blur, he hurled himself at Kradter and sank a doubled fist into the Lieutenant's belly. Kradter gasped and moaned softly and slumped in Calk's grasp.

The Captain dropped him, reached over with one hand and brought a judo cut down on the Ensign's neck.

Dembois clattered to the deckplates beside his adversary.

Calk returned to the plotting seat, and snapped his goggles back on. Once more he murmured softly to himself: "h.o.m.o superior!"

The three outer planets were catalogued without difficulty. The blue dwarf was not able to reach them with its rays, and they were frozen; but there were deep treasures of pitchblende and phosphorous and trace elements from which ferro-zinc could be collandered and strained with little effort. They were marked in the Jog as triple-A planets, well worth the trouble to reach and mine.

The center ring of planets--fifteen of them--was not as worthwhile. There were three desert worlds (too much harsh silicon), seven barren rock worlds without atmosphere, and ignored by the hand of G.o.d (nothing grew there, nothing of value), four jungle planets (one with technicolored tyrannosauri), and one oddity.

They saved the oddity for last.

Before they would catalogue the inner round of worlds--there appeared to be nineteen, though one of those they credited as being a moon of a blue and white planet might have had an atmosphere of its own--they would set down and explore the oddity.

The oddity was a pale silver globe without ground feature and without atmosphere. It was a great ball of smooth tinfoil set in the black of s.p.a.ce, a featureless plain without hump or depression, mountain or valley, stream or even rock formation. No gra.s.s and no clouds. In fact, nothing.

They stared down at the planet inching its way to greatness in the ports. It was as though they were settling toward a gigantic beachball.

"That's impossible!" Dembois gasped.

"How can it be impossible, you clown? It's there, isn't it?" Kradter was spoiling for another fight. The pains in his stomach had not yet completely left him.

"Break!" Calk snapped. "Not this close to landfall, you, two. And it may be impossible, but it's there, and we have to check it out. No telling what a planet like that might have beneath the surface."

Dembois cast a sharp glance at the potentiometer and the gauging devices for composition. "They say you're wrong, Captain."

Calk turned to the dials and studied them at length. They read zero. Not negative, as they read in s.p.a.ce, but zero. But that, too, was impossible. The planet had to be made of something.

They looked at each other, and said nothing, for there was nothing to say. They had encountered a phenomenon. "Could it be contra-terrene?" The question hung unasked in the air of the control room. The only way to answer it was to test.