Blood spurted out from just below the beard, collected in globules, and floated away. X tried to say something but choked from the unrelenting pressure of the arm around his neck.

Cull stabbed lower down on X's body, into the solar plexus. Blood bubbled in X's throat, and then it gushed out of his mouth.

Cull became aware of someone screaming. It was Phyllis.

He pushed himself away from X toward a tall cabinet and grabbed it to hold himself. He looked back at X. X was dead, and, dead, had lost his weight. With the push given him by Cull as Cull had propelled himself away, he now drifted, face down, a few inches off the floor. Presently, he nudged gently into a cabinet, and all motion ceased.

Cull shouted at Phyllis, "Shut up! Shut up!"

Phyllis, some distance away, clinging to another cabinet, stopped screaming but she was sobbing.

She looked terrified.

"Don't worry!" he called. "I killed him, and there is no lightning from the sky! I killed him, you understand? I can do better than that! Watch!"

He shoved another black disc into the slot, and he watched while the fibers of light danced and twisted around each other. Then, brief flickers of bone, of organs, of veins and arteries, of muscles.

Finally, the cessation of light and another X. Or one who looked exactly like him.

As soon as he saw the bearded man step out of the cabinet, Cull pressed a third disc into the receptacle. A fourth. Within several minutes, three X's stood outside the cabinet.

"All right!" shouted Cull. "Why don't all of you, the Holy Trinity, start giving each other the old spiel? That'd be a new experience, wouldn't it? Having to hear the canned speech you've been handing out to so many people? So, maybe you can answer each other, and I can eavesdrop on the end of the story, find out what the old man should've done?

"Or don't you know, either?"

"What is it?" cried Phyllis. "I don't un-derstand this! What are you doing? Where'd they come from?"

"I don't know," he shouted back. "But I'm going to find out if I have to skin them alive, take them apart piece by piece, unravel their nerves nerve by nerve, tear the truth out of their guts!"

The three X's turned to face Cull, and their mouths, moving in unison, said, "That won't be necessary. I'll tell you now what you would have heard very soon. Although it won't allow you to carry the story to others. You can't be a prophet here. Any more than the so-called demons could."

Cull grasped immediately that someone was using the three as transmitters and speakers. Also, as receivers.

"Who are you?" he said. "Where are you?"

"Just outside the sh.e.l.l of your world, man," said the X's. "I was on the point of entering when an alarm lit up. I investigated the source and found that some obviously unauthorized person was using the X-discs. The soul-body transducer doesn't normally turn out that many X's in such a short time. So, I used the proper instrument -- its t.i.tle would mean nothing to you -- and placed myself in rapport with the X's."

Cull said, "You answered the second question. But who are you?"

"Immortal?" said the X's. "It'd be an exact t.i.tle for my group but it wouldn't distinguish us from you. Precursors? That would be a partial description only. Ethicals? Apt but not inclusive. Let's say: Saviors."

"Saviors?" repeated Cull. "In what way do you save? And whom do you save?"

There was a long silence. The three bearded men stood mutely, looking at Cull with expressions that he thought resembled those of sad sheep. Their arms hung by their sides, and they looked through him.

Then, just as Cull was beginning to think that communication was cut off and that he'd better be getting out of this place before the so-called savior appeared, the X's spoke.

"I have been wrestling with the temptation to appear in person, and I have won. I will not show myself, for I would be so horrible in the flesh to you that you could not bear it. Not that I find you at all appealing, physically, though I love you as a being. I will continue to speak through these machines."

"Machines?" said Cull slowly.

"Automatons of flesh and metal. Yes, these agents are synthetic and have no souls -- right word?

-- because they are too simple to have any genuine intelligence. They do not have even a rudiment of self-consciousness. Their nervous system is as fully developed as any genuine human being's, but they have almost no brain, as you know it. And when they act without control on our part, they do so automatically.

"They are able to walk on the floor, for in-stance, because they have a very small gravity-governing unit imbedded in their bodies. If you were to dissect one of three, you would think that the unit was an organ."

Cull looked speculatively at the dead X floating above the floor.

The X's said, "Do not try to cut the unit from that body. You could not use it unless it were hooked to your nervous system. And, anyway, it will be destroyed by remote control."

So suddenly that it startled Cull and left him shaking, two of the X's rose from the floor and soared toward the exit at the head of the stairs near the opposite end of the room. One paused briefly to examine Fyodor, still floating un-conscious, then flew on.

"They have gone to locate other survivors of the cataclysm," said the remaining X. "This one will remain to instruct you in what you have doubtless so long desired to know. I fear, however, that you will find that you were happier when ignorant."

Again, Cull was startled. Someone touched him, and he turned so swiftly and flung his hands up so violently that he would have propelled him-self helplessly above the machines. But Phyllis' hand grabbed his wrist, and she pulled him back to the shelf to which she was clinging.

"I'm sorry I scared you," she said. "I heard everything. All of a sudden, I felt very much alone all by myself. I had to be near you. I'm so frightened."

He breathed deeply several times and then he recovered. And he felt love and compa.s.sion for her flood through him and out to her. They were two pitifully small and helpless beings who needed each other as much as any two in all the universe had ever needed.

He turned to the beautiful and intelligent-looking automaton, and he spoke very boldly, knowing that he had to do so to keep his terror hidden from the speaker and far away from him-self.

He said, "Why have you dared to do this to us? To treat us as if we were automatons like X?

You spoke of the soul a moment ago. You said that sentient beings had one. If so, Phyllis has a soul. I have one. So, why did you place us here without our permission or without even bothering to tell us why?

Why?"

"It had to be that way," said the X. "As for souls, there are no such things. Not naturally. Beings are born; they live; they die. That is their end forever. Or it would be if it were not for us.

"I'll try to make this short but clear. I won't an-swer all your questions. If I did, I'd be here from now until halfway into eternity. It's enough for me, and will have to be for you, when I say that my people originated on a planet in a Galaxy thrice removed in time from this one. Three times. Our Galaxy died and was disintegrated and a new Galaxy was born from the ashes of the old one. And the second died, and a third was born.

"My planet gave birth to a sentient species, my people, about 50 billion of your years ago. It was not until we had had a civilization for about 10,000 of your years, however, that we had a technology advanced enough to devise an artificial soul, a scientific method of ensuring immortality.

"It is a terrible thing to contemplate that many billions of my people died and were lost forever in the annals of eternity before we discovered the synthetic soul. It does not seem fair, but this is not a fair universe. Besides, we have not given up hope of some day giving these lost ones souls. There are certain means. . . but I will not go into these.

"We are what you would call highly ethical beings. We are not just interested in our own kind and its.preservation. We love life and its products; we hold life sacred. This, in a universe that seems to breed and kill billions upon billions upon billions as if beings were a mere by-product of some cosmic process. .

"Having discovered the means to do so, we determined that every sentient being throughout the universe. . . yes, and even the pets among our animals. . . and a number of representatives of every species on every world. . . should have souls. These specimens of the so-called lower animals include every species: worms, sharks, amoebae, flies, elephants. . . but I digress, I promised to stick to the point."

Cull looked up at Fyodor and wished that he would regain consciousness. The little man had wanted so much to know, he had such faith in the supernatural, in his X. And then Cull thought that it was better this way. For Fyodor would not receive the final word in the form for which he had hoped so devoutly. To find that his beloved X was only a brainless artifice of flesh and metal, that would be too much.

"Soul is the term I use," said the X. "But, what is this soul? Is it a particle? A wave? It is not elec-tromagnetic but a form of energy your kind does not even as yet suspect. When they do, they, too, will be able to invent the soul, but their work will be only duplicating ours and will be useless.

"We'll call the soul a quantum. And the devices which originate and transmit them, quantum-generators. We built these generators, made them indestructible and planted them in many locations in the universe so that, even if some were destroyed by means of which we cannot conceive, others would continue to do their work.

"These generators continuously transmit the soul-quanta, which are not bound by the speed of light but pa.s.s around the universe in less than one Earthly hour. They fill the universe, so that no sentient being can be born and not encounter one at the appropriate time.

"Each quantum contains a built-in factor which makes it 'hook' into a newly formed sentient, a baby yet in the womb. It stops at once when it en-counters the neural pattern of this sentient and remains with the sentient as long as it lives.

"And, once it 'hooks' itself to the flesh, no other soul-quantum can enter. Theoretically, at least, though it may happen that more than one does enter, thus accounting for certain types of schizophrenia.

"Once attached to the body, the quantum im-mediately begins to record everything about the individual. The constantly shifting molecules of the cells, the electrochemical energy changes, nerve messages, everything. And, as it records, it stores the recordings temporarily, then discharges these for new ones. It does this until the body suf-fers a physical death and irreversible decom-position sets in.

"The final recording is the one stored per-manently in the quantum. Decomposition releases the quantum. Full of recordings of the physical being that once lived, it races again through the universe. And, eventually, it is detected by our soul-receivers and captured. Once caught, its recordings are 'played' into a receptacle like one of those black discs you inserted into the re-creation machine.

"The soul, to all effects, is now the individual as he was at the moment of his death, containing all the individual contained.

"When we so wish, we can insert the disc into a -- what would you call it? -- a resurrection machine. This reproduces the protoplasm of the body, and all that the body was, from the data in the disc.

"Thus, you see, there is life after death. And it is not done through supernatural means, such as primitives hope for, but through the science of sentients."

Cull and Phyllis were silent for a long time. Then, Cull, haltingly, as if he had been stunned, said, "But. . . I am not resurrected. Not the real I. . . me. . . This thing that I am, it's just a re-cording embodied in a shape that looked as I once did. It's not me. . ."

"You are wrong," said the X. "The soul-quantum is as much you as the skin which was torn and grows again. It is more than an ex-crescence which is only temporarily attached to you. Would you say that a supernaturally en-dowed soul, slipped into your body, is not you? Then, why say that a scientifically endowed soul is not? Would you, if you had been knocked un-conscious, say that you, on regaining con-sciousness, were not the same individual? The soul is you; it continues as you; the death of your body is only a temporary state; a sleep. Pa.s.sage from a physical body to a physically unperceivable con-dition and back to a physical body is merely changing one state for another. The you remains."

Cull was silent for a few seconds. There were so many questions, and he did not know which to voice first. Phyllis spoke for him. In a high-pitched and trembling voice, she said, "What is happening now? Why are we being destroyed, I mean, why the earthquakes, the cataclysm, the. . . the killing of all of us? Why. . ."

"Because. . ."

The X stopped, and he turned his head slightly sidewise to look up at the entrance above the stair-way. Cull looked also; he saw a demon floating in the doorway. He had a scarlet skin and four thin spiraling horns projecting from the top of a hairless head. Instead of arms, he had two long batlike wings.

A tail also projected from his but-tocks; it seemed to be two vanes of leather sup-ported by two rays of cartilage radiating from his b.u.t.tocks.

"Here is one," said the X, "who will answer your questions. He has been released now from the bonds of silence -- as far as you two are concerned. He recognizes you as one of him."

"What do you mean?" said Cull hoa.r.s.ely.

The X did not reply but rose from the floor and soared toward the demon. The winged creature flapped away from the approaching figure and allowed it to fly through the entrance. Then, it came toward them, extending its wings out slowly, turning them to act as scoops, and pushing the air behind it.

Coming near them, it maneuvered its wings in reverse and halted only a few feet away. Cull, despite his dismay at the X's departure, ad-mired the thing's superb control. It was very dif-ficult to fly under no-gravity conditions.

The demon grinned, showing broad thick teeth, and said, "Welcome, brother! And sister!"

"What do you mean by that?" said Cull. "Brother?"

The thing did not answer. Instead, it gazed around and then, finally, said, "Noticed how hot it's suddenly become? The generators are melting. The Immortals are destroying their equipment. We'd better get out of here before we cook. I like it hot, but not this hot."

Cull knew that, for the first time in his ex-perience, a demon had spoken the truth. The room was getting hot, and it was evident that the cabinets were the source of the rise in temperature.

"They're melting," said the demon. He flew over to Cull, managing to turn while doing so and presenting his backside to the man. "Here, you two grab hold of my tail. I'll pull you out of here, and one of you pick up your unconscious friend on the way out."

A few minutes later, the train of four, the demon acting as engine, sailed out of the doorway and up a tunnel. Then, they were out in the void again, and the complex was whirling away from them.

"We'll be without a roof over our head for a long time," he said cheerfully to them. "Then, when the Immortals have rearranged all the debris into many large ma.s.ses of materials, rotating in defined paths, we'll settle down on one. And we'll start our d.a.m.ned and doomed work."

"We?" said Cull. "Would you mind explaining. . . brother?"

"How much do you know?" said the thing.

Cull told him what he had heard from the X's. The demon laughed, and he said, "So, now you know why we couldn't tell you the truth. Any more than you'll be able to tell the newcomers the truth."

"Newcomers?"

"Oh, yes. Those who will begin to repopulate this sphere. They're a species who evolved inside just such a sphere as this. Only, the sphere was natural, not artificial. And it rotated just enough to generate a centrifugal force equivalent to about one-fiftieth of what your Earth had.

"So, their forms are very different from ours. They don't have wings; they propel themselves by taking in air through an orifice and expelling it forcibly through a cartilaginous tube. They travel backward, and, not needing limbs stiffened with bone, to act as levers against gravity, they have tentacles. But you will meet them in due time, and you will be as monstrous to them as we so-called demons were to you."

Phyllis said, "That. . . that X didn't answer my question. I asked him why our world was changed so suddenly, why so many of us were killed and the rest left to die?"

"Because the same thing will have happened, rather, is going to happen, to your Earth as it did to our planet. Through some agency which I don't know, perhaps an atomic or biological warfare, perhaps an explosion of the sun, perhaps. . . I don't know. My own people were exterminated when they sterilized themselves through the overuse of chemicals meant to destroy all harmful insects. By the time they realized what they were doing, it was too late.

"As a matter of fact, the Immortals themselves must not have realized what was happening.

Otherwise, I and many of my fellows would not have been left over.''

He was quiet for a minute, then he said, "The Immortals have great wisdom. But they're not in-fallible. We are evidence of that. They miscal-culated the numbers that were to be born, and we were the unlucky ones in the surplus."

"I don't understand you at all," said Cull. "Left over? To be born? Surplus?''

The demon laughed uproariously, so much so that he was not able to move his wings efficiently, and the train bobbed up and down.

Cull gritted his teeth and wished he could kill the thing. But he was helpless.

"You will pardon me," said the demon. "I should not laugh. I can still remember, after all this time, how I felt when I first heard the truth. It was too much to bear -- though I did bear it -- that I should be a victim of statistics. One of the unavoidable surplus.

"I'll tell you, brother, something that will completely shatter you. And make you what it made me, that is a truly demonic creature.

"You thought, after the Immortal spoke to you, that you had lived on Earth and died. And that this was the afterlife prepared for you by the Immortals, a strange sort of Heaven or h.e.l.l, to say the least.

"You were wrong! You haven't been born yet!"

Phyllis gave a cry, but it was not the words of the demon that caused it. She said, "Fyodor just died, Jack! He opened his eyes, looked at me, sighed, and asked where he was. Before I could answer, he died!"

Cull did not look back. He said, "Let him go, Phyllis. He's one of the lucky."

"How right you are, brother," said the demon. "Just as you will be if you are killed or find the courage to kill yourself. Then, you'll be sent forth as a soul. But you won't fulfill your natural destiny. Your kind are dead; you'll have to attach yourself to some alien species. And it will be your fate never to feel at home, always to be a stranger."

"What in h.e.l.l are you talking about?" screamed Cull.

"Calm down. Listen. The Immortals couldn't let well enough alone. Having invented the ar-tificial soul to ensure that all sentients should also be immortal, they then conceived of pre-birth con-ditioning.

Why not, they said to themselves, build a prenatal world? Give the soul a body such as the soul is likely to have when it attaches itself to the as-yet-unborn body on the natural planet? Give its brain some synthetic memories, so that it thinks it has existed before? And then attempt to install an ethics before it is born?

"The idea was that the creature would have a difficult enough time on Earth; it would find it hard to act ethically, as the Immortals conceive ethics and as much of mankind conceives it. Same on my planet. It would be a sort of before-Terrestrial-existence reflex conditioning.