"Gahreetia. GalMet Tower. Plumb with the flagpole. One thousand point zero feet from the center of the ball to our center of gravity."

"Roger." The Trains stared into each other's eyes and their muscles set momentarily. "Check it for dex and line."

Deston whistled. "One thousand point zero zero feet and plumb to a split blonde hair. You win the mink-lined whatsits. Now back?"

"As we were, Sess," Train said, and the starship disappeared from Galmetia's atmosphere, to reappear instantaneously at the exact point it would have occupied in subs.p.a.ce if the trip had not been interrupted.

The meeting went on. There is no need to report any more of its results; in fact, nine tenths of those results could not be reported even if there were room.

An hour or so after the meeting was over, Adams sat at his desk, thinking; staring motionlessly at the sheet of paper upon which be had listed eighteen coincidences. He knew, with all his mathematician's mind, that coincidence had no place in reality; but there they were.

Not merely one or two, but eighteen of them... which made the probability a virtually absolute certainty.

There was an operator. The babies? Barbara? Of all the people he knew, they were... but why should it be anyone he knew, or any given one or thing in this or any other galaxy? There were no data. A mutant, hiding indetectably behind his own powers? An attractive idea, but there was no basis whatever for any a.s.sumption at all... anything to be both necessary and sufficient must of necessity be incomprehensible. Anything... anywhere... anywhere...

At this point in his cogitations Barbara knocked on his door and came in, with her mind-blocks full on. He knew what was on her mind; he had perceived it plainly during the wide-open eight-way they had just held. Nevertheless: "Something is troubling you, my dear?"

"Yes." Barbara nibbled at her lip. "... it's just... well, are you positively sure, Uncle Andy, that the babies are... well..." She paused, wriggling in embarra.s.sment.

"Normal? Of course I'm sure, child. Positive. I have a file four inches thick to prove it. Have you any grounds at all for suspecting that they may not be?"

"Put that way, no, I haven't. It's just that... well, once in a while I get a... a feeling... Indescribable..." she paused again.

"It is possible that there is an operator at work," he said, quietly. The girl's eyes widened, but she didn't say anything and he went on, "However, I can find no basis whatever for any a.s.sumption concerning such a phenomenon. It is much more logical, therefore, to a.s.sume that these new and inexplicable 'feelings' are in fact products of our newly enlarged minds, which we do not as yet fully understand."

"Oh?" she exclaimed. "You have them, too? You've been working on it? Watching it?"

"I have been and am working on it."

"Oh, wonderful! If there's anything to it, then, you'll get it!" She hugged him vigorously, kissed him on the ear, and ran out of the room.

Adams stared thoughtfully at the closed door. That let Barbara out-or did it? It did not. Nor did it put her in any deeper. The operator, if any, was supernormal; super-psionic. The problem was, by definition, insoluble; one more of the many mysteries of Nature that the mind of man could not yet solve. Therefore he would not waste any more time on it.

He shrugged his shoulders, crumpled the sheet of paper up into a ball, dropped the ball into his wastebasket, and went to work on a problem that he might be able to solve.

Chapter 13 THE OUTPLANETS.

While no one knows when man first appeared upon Earth, it is generally agreed that it required many hundreds of thousands of years for the human population of Earth to reach the billion mark, which it probably did sometime in the eighteen twenties. In the next scant century, however, it doubled. In another seventy five or eighty years it doubled again, to four billions. Then, due to limitation of births in most cultures and to famine and pestilence in the few remaining backward ones, the rate of increase began to drop; and early in the twenty second century Earth's population seemed to be approaching seven billions as a limit.

Although cities had increased tremendously in size there was still much farmland, and every acre of it including the Sahara, irrigated by demineralized and remineralized water from the ocean-was cultivated and fertilized to the maximum possible constant yield. There were also vast hydroponics installations. Complete diet had been synthesized long since; hence Earthly fare for many years had been synthetic for most, vege- tarian-and-synthetic for almost all of the upper twenty percent. Cow's milk and real meat were for millionaires only.

The dwindling of Earth's reserves of oil and coal had forced the price of hydrocarbons up to where it became profitable to work oil shale, and it was from the immense deposits of that material that most of Earth's oil was being produced. Very little of this oil, however, was being used as fuel; almost every ton of it was going into the insatiable conversion plants of the plastics and synthetics industries.

Of power, fortunately, there was no lack. It was available everywhere, at relatively low cost and in infinite amount.

Infinite? Well, not quite, perhaps. Inexhaustible, certainly. Also incalculable, since no two mathematicians ever agreed even approximately in estimating the total kinetic energy of the universe. And that super-genius Lee Chaytor, in developing the engine that still bears her name-the engine that taps that inexhaustible source of energy-gave to mankind one of the two greatest gifts it has ever received. The other, of course, was Wesley's Subs.p.a.ce Drive; by virtue of which man peopled the planets of the stars.

However, it was only the bold, the hardy, and the independent, and the discontented who went. Nor was there at first any such thing as Capital: the bankers of Earth were, then as now, highly allergic to risking their money in any venture less certain than a fifty-percent of-appraised-value first mortgage upon a practically sure thing. Hence everything was on shares.

Elbridge Warner, Barbara Deston's great-great-great and-so-on grandfather, a multi-millionaire oil man and a rabid anti-union capitalist, was the first big operator to go off-Earth. Following the "hunches" that had made him what he was, he hired a crew of the hardest, toughest, most intransigent men he could find and sniffed out a fantastically oil-rich planet, theretofore unknown to man. He named this planet "Newmars" and claimed it in toto as his own personal private property.

Then, having put down a tremendously productive well, he built and populated a balanced-economy colony. He then put down a few more gushers and built an arms plant and a couple of battleships, after which he: (1) Moved everything he owned that was movable from Earth to Newmars, and (2) Fired every union man in his employ. The United Oil Workers struck, of course, whereupon he made or stole-the record is not clear upon this point-some Chaytor superfusers and destroyed every Warner well on Earth. Destroyed them so thoroughly (everyone has seen a tri-di of what a superfuser does) that not one of them could be made to produce again for years, if ever. He then sat back on his wholly-owned, self-sufficient, fortified planet and waited.

The result was inevitable. Even with Warner Oil at full production, the demand had been crowding the supply. And, because of the meagerness of Earth's reserves and because the shale-oil people would not expand their plants-they knew that Warner could undersell them by any margin he chose-Earth had to make terms with Elbridge Warner. The Chamber of Commerce and the government of the United States of America forced the United Oil Workers to surrender; whereupon Warner graciously allowed fleets of tankers to haul oil from Newmars to Earth-at shale oil's exact delivered price.

Elbridge never did put down another well on Earth. In fact, as far as is known, he did not even visit Earth throughout the remainder of his hundred years of life. He was not bitter, exactly; he was stubborn, hard-headed, fiercely independent, and contumaceous; and he surrounded himself by preference with people of his own hard kind. Which, with that start and with Warner Oil always dominating the business, is why the oil-men of the planets have never been a gentle breed.

The Asteroid Mining Company followed WarnOil's lead. Iron and nickel, of course, and a few other metals, were available in plenty in Sol's asteroid belt; but a great many other highly important metals, particularly the heavier ones, were not. Wherefore the Asteroid Mining Company changed its name to Galactic Metals, Incorporated, and sent hundreds of prospectors out to explore new solar systems. These men, too-hard-muscled, hard-fighting, hard-playing hard-rock men all were rugged, rough, and tough.

They found a sun with an asteroid belt so big and so full of chunks of heavy metal that it was all but unapproachable along any radial line anywhere near the plane of the ecliptic. This sun's fourth planet, while it was Tellus-Type as to gravity, temperature, water, air, and so forth, was much richer than Earth in metals heavier than nickel. Whereupon Galactic Metals pre-empted this metalliferous planet, named it "Galmetia", and pro- ceeded to stock it with metalsmen-a breed perhaps one number Brinnell harder even than Elbridge Warner's oilmen.

With colonization an actuality, and productive of profits far beyond anything possible on Earth, a few of the most venturesome capitalists of Earth decided to dip into this flowing fountain for themselves. Lactia Incorporated, the leading-milk-and-meat producer, was the first banker-backed, consumer-oriented firm to take the big plunge. Knowing that it could fly a fifty-thousand ton tanker from an out-planet to Earth in little more time and at little more expense than was required to ship a five-gallon container from Trempealeau, Wisconsin, to Chicago, Illinois, it found and claimed a Tellus type planet whose tremendous expanses of fertile plains and whose equable climate made it ideal for the production of milk and meat. It named its planet Lactia. Then Lactia the firm colonized Lactia the planet with feedraisers, dairymen, and stockmen, and began to spend money hand over fist.

It required years, of course, to build up the herds, and an immense amount of money, but when many hundreds of millions of cattle lived upon hundreds of millions of fertile acres, the retail price of milk had come down from twenty five dollars a pint to the mythically-old figure of twenty cents per quart. Beef, pork, and mutton were available in every marketplace. Clothing of real wool and of real leather was being sold at prices almost anyone could afford. For, then as now, the businessmen of the planets adhered as closely as they possibly could to the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Dozens of other industries followed Milk's lead. Wheatfields were measured by the "square" (one hundred square kilometers) instead of by the acre and bread again became a basic food. Rice became available in full supply and at low cost. Breakfast cereals reappeared upon the shelves of even the smallest food stores. All of this came about because, with all due respect to the biochemical engineers, natural food tasted better than synthetic and "felt" better in the mouth, and vast numbers of consumers were willing to pay a premium for it.

(With increasing automation, ever-mounting demand, and ever-increasing production as costs were lowered, planetary agriculture eventually, of course, put the synthetic-food industry completely out of business.) These subsidiary planets, unlike Newmars and Galmetia, were at first dependent upon Earth. However, each one grew in population at an exponential rate. For, despite all the automation that is economically feasible, it takes a lot of men to work even as small a holding as a hundred squares of land. Men need women and women go with their men. Men and women have children -on the planets, as many children as they want. Families need services-all kinds of services-and get them. Factories came into being, and schools-elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities. Stores of all kinds, from shoppes to supermarkets. Restaurants and theaters. Cars and trucks. Air-cars. Radio, teevee, and tri-di. Boats and bowling lanes. Golf, even-on the planets there was room for golf! And so on. The works.

At first, all this flood of adult population came from Earth; drawn, not by any urge to pioneer, but by that mainspring of free enterprise, profit. Profit either in the form of high wages or of opportunity to enlarge and to advance, each entrepreneur in his own field. And not one in a hundred of those emigrants from Earth, having lived on an outplanet for a year, ever moved back. "Tellus is a nice place to visit, but live there? If the Tellurians like that kind of living-if they call it living-they can have it."

But the lessening of Earth's population was of very short duration. a.s.sured of cheap and abundant food, and of more and more good, secure jobs, more and more women had more and more children and cities began to encroach upon what had once been farmland.

One of the most important effects of this migration, although it was scarcely noticed at the time, was the difference between the people of the planets and those of Earth. The planetsmen were, to give a thumbnail description, the venturesome, the independent, the ambitious, the chance-taking. Tellurians were, and became steadily more so, the stodgy, the unimaginative, the security-conscious.

Decade after decade this difference became more and more marked, until finally there developed a definite traffic pattern that operated continuously to intensify it. Young Tellurians of both s.e.xes who did not like regimentation-and urged on by the blandishments of planetary advertising campaigns-left Earth for good. Conversely, a thin stream of colonials who preferred security to compet.i.tion flowed to Earth. This condition had existed for over two hundred years. (And, by the way, it still exists.) For compet.i.tion was and is the way of life on the planets. The labor unions of Earth tried, of course; but the Tellurian brand of unionism never did "take", because of the profoundly basic difference in att.i.tude of the men involved. Some Tellus-Type unions were formed in the early years and a few strikes occurred; only one of which, the last and the most violent and which neither side won, will be mentioned here.

The Stockmen's Strike, on Lactia, was the worst strike in all history. Some three thousand men and over five million head of stock lost their lives; about eight billion dollars of invested capital went down the drain. Neither side would give an inch. Warfare and destruction went on until, driven by the force of public opinion-affected no little by the virtual absence of meat and milk from civilizations every table-the ma.s.sed armed forces of all the other planets attacked Lactia and took it by storm. Martial law was declared. Capital was seized. Labor either worked or faced a firing squad. This condition would continue, both Capital and Labor were told, until they got together and worked out a formula that would work.

Experts from both sides, in collaboration with a board of the most outstanding economists of the time, went to work on the problem. They worked for almost a year.

Capital must make enough profit to attract investors, and wants to make as much more than that minimum as it can. Labor must make a living, and wants as much more than the minimum as it can get. Between those two minima lies the line of dispute, which is the locus of all points of reasonable and practicable settlement. Somewhere on that line lies a point, which can be computed from the Law of Diminishing Returns as base, at which Capital's net profit, Labor's net annual income, and the public's benefit, will all three combine to produce the maximum summated good.

Thus was enunciated the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest. It worked. Wherever and whenever it has been given a chance to work, it has worked ever since.

The planet-wide adoption of this Principle (it never did gain much favor on Earth) ended hourly wages and full annual salaries. Every employee, from top to bottom, received an annual basic salary plus a bonus. This bonus varied with the net profit of the firm and with each employee's actual ability. And the Planetsmen, as the production and service personnel of the planets came to he called, liked it that way. They were independent. They were individualists. Very few of them wanted to be held down in pay or in opportunity to any dead level of mediocrity just to help some stupid jerks of incompetents hang onto their jobs.

The Planetsmen liked automation, and not only because of the perennial shortage of personnel on the outplanets. And, week after week, union organizers from Earth tried fruitlessly to crack the Planetsmen's united front. One such attempt, representative of hundreds on record, is quoted in part as follows: Organizer: "But listen! You a.s.sociated Wavesmen are organized already; organized to the Queen's taste. All you have to do is use your brains and join up with us and it wouldn't take hardly any strike at all to..."

Planetsman: "Strike? You crazy in the head? What in h.e.l.l would we strike for?"

Org: "For more money, of course. You ain't dumb, are you? You could be getting a lot more money than you are now."

Plan: "I could like h.e.l.l. I'd be getting less, come the end of the quarter."

Org: "Less? How do you figure that?"

Plan: "I don't. I don't have to. We've got expert computermen figuring for us all the time, and they keep Top Bra.s.s right on the peak of the curve, too, believe me. You never heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns, I guess."

Org: "I did so; but what has that got to do with...?" Plan: "Everything. It works like this, see? My basic is six thousand-and say, how much to Tellurian poleclimbers get?"

Org: "Well, of course we would..."

Plan: "Not with our help you won't. You'll dig your own spuds, brother. Anyway, say we strike-and that's saying a h.e.l.l of a lot-ever hear of Lactia? But say we do, and say they raise our basic to-and that's saying a h.e.l.l of a lot, too, believe me-but say they do, to-h.e.l.l, to anything you please. Okay. So costs go up, so Top Bra.s.s has to raise prices..."

Org: "Uh-uh. Let 'em take it out of their profits."

Plan: "They ain't makin' that much. Anyway, it'd stack up the same, come to the end of the quarter. The point would slide off of the peak and my bonus would get a bad case of the dropsy and I'd wind up the year making less than I will the way things are now."

Or-: "Well, skipping that for just a minute, how about this automation that's putting so many of you men out of jobs?"

Plan: "It ain't, that are worth a d.a.m.n. If a man can't keep on top of the machines, to h.e.l.l with him. Let him take a lower-basic job or go to Tellus and live on security. The more automation we can make work the more production per man-hour and the bigger my bonus gets. And pretty quick I can jump a level and raise my basic, too. It's just that simple. See?"

Org: "I see that it don't make sense. What you don't see is that Capital has been suckering you all along. They've been giving you the business. Feeding you the old boloney and giving you the shaft clear to the hilt and you're dumb enough to take it."

Plan: "Not by seven thousand tanks of juice, chum, and needling won't make us let you lean on us a nickel's worth, either. We get the straight dope and our officers don't dip into the kitty, either, the way yours do. So what you'd better do, meathead, is roll your hoop back to Tellus, where maybe you can make somebody believe part of that c.r.a.p."

Aboard the Explorer, the Adamses and the Destons were discussing the course of civilization. Adams had prepared tables of figures, charts, and graphs. He had determined trends and had extrapolated them into future time. His conclusions were far from cheerful.

"This unstable condition has lasted far longer than was to have been expected two centuries ago," Adams said, definitely. "The only reason why it has lasted so long is because of the stabilizing effect of the planets siphoning off so many of Earth's combative and aggressive people. The situation is now, however, deteriorating; and, considering the ability, the quality, and the state of advancement of the Planetsmen, it will continue to deteriorate at an ever-increasing rate to the point of catastrophe."

"Huh?" Deston asked. "Grind that up a little finer, will you, professor?"

"It's inevitable. The original aim of Communism was to master all Earth. It failed. It also failed to gain any foothold upon any of the outplanets because the basic tenets of Communism are completely unacceptable to the independent and self-reliant peoples of the planets. The fact is, therefore, that Communism is bottled up on something over half of the land surface of one planet, while we contemptible capitalist warmongers' are spreading at an exponential rate over a constantly increasing number of planets. The question is, what will this present Nameless One of EastHem-who is none too stable a character-do about this state of affairs?"

Deston whistled, and after a short silence Barbara said, "He will bomb, I suppose you mean."

"Could be, at that," Deston agreed. "Especially since EastHem never will catch up with our production technology. The most important thing, as I see -it, is when."

"Within a very few years, I think," Adams said. "By these charts, five years at most, and probably much less than that."

"Nice," Deston said, and thought for moments. "And he won't stick around for the fallout. He and the hard core of the Party will take off for some unknown planet -maybe they've been working on it for years-with the idea of bombing a!! our planets. Is that your idea?"

"That is one of many, but I do not have enough data to give a high probability to any one of them."

"But Uncle Andy," Barbara put in, "Since you never have been anybody's professional crepe-hanger, you've already decided what to do about it. So give."

"I have been able to find only one solution having a probability of success of point nine nine. In psionics, I think, lies the only possible answer. Such masters as Li Hing Wong and the mahatmas can do much, but not nearly enough. What we should do is find and train all the latent psiontists we can. I know of many who are not so latent, either-Maynard, Smith, and Champion of GalMet; Lansing and DuPuy of WarnOil; Hatfield, Spehn, and Dann of InStell; to name only a few of those whom I know personally. There must be thousands of others, none of whom any one of us has ever heard of. Such a force would almost certainly be able to cope with EastHem and its bombs; therefore it seems to me that the best course to pursue is to set up a school for psionic development."

"Sounds good to me," Deston approved, "Have you got it going? We'll all get behind it and push."

"How could we have, young man? Even starting in a small way, such a school would require an investment of at least a hundred thousand dollars-which might as well be a million, as far as the Adams resources are concerned."

"A megabuck wouldn't more than start it, the way it ought to be." Deston glanced at Barbara, who nodded. He took a sheet of paper out of a drawer, wrote a couple of lines, and went on, "Doe, for a man with your brains, you've got absolutely the least sense of anybody I know. Any nitwit would know that DesDes would back any such project as that clear up to the hilt. Here, give this to Lansing. It's for twenty five megabucks now, and as much more as you want, whenever you want it."

Chapter 14 THE GENERAL STRIKE.

In their suite, Percival Train put his arm around his wife's supple waist, swung her around, and kissed her lingeringly. "Let's sit down and talk this thing out. We both scanned both kids. We agree that they're both normal-apparently so, anyway-now. So what? Shoot me the load of what's bothering you."

"So a h.e.l.l of a lot." A cigarette appeared between Cecily's lips, lit itself, and she burned a quarter of it in one long inhalation. "I'll give you both barrels. They had mind blocks. Both of them did. Now they either haven't any or are able to hide the fact that they have and I know d.a.m.n well which one it is. Now. How could a baby who can scarcely walk yet-to say nothing of two of them-have anything to hide or want to? Or be able to if they did? Here's how. They were both conceived in subs.p.a.ce..."

"So what? Don't you think that ever happened before?" "Not in any ship that ever picked up a zeta charge, it didn't. No woman ever lived through that before to become a mother. And both periods of gestation were impossibly long. And all four parents were powerful psiontists; just how powerful you and I don't know and can't guess. And they both, at an age when normal babies are completely dependent, have super-normal intelligence and super-normal powers..."

"Hold it, presh, you're just guessing at that."

"Guessing your left eyeball! Look at what happened! Could any normal man alive, of his own ability, do what we know Upton Maynard did? Or Eldon Smith? Or Guerdon Dann? And look at Steve Spehn. You know as well as I do, Perce, that it's starkly impossible to hide an operation as big as that from a spy system as good as EastHem's. And look at me. I never had even a trace of psionic ability before-how did I get it? And so all of a sudden? And those are only a few of the stickers, big boy; if you aren't convinced yet I can go on for half an hour."

Train, his face set hard in concentration, thought for minutes; then said, "I'm convinced that..."

"Good! I didn't expect you to admit it."

"Hold on, Sess! I'm convinced that there's an operator. I never thought about those things before in that way, hut the way you pile them up leaves no room for doubt. But you got off on the wrong foot and never corrected yourself-so you went clear out to the Pleiades, by way of Canopus, Rigel, and S-Doradus, to hit Venus next door. Didn't you ever hear of Occam's Razor?"

"Why, of course, but..."

"Use it, then, and that functional as well as beautiful red-thatched head of yours."

It took her only a couple of seconds. "Why, it's Barbara!" she shrieked then. "It's been Barbara all the time!" "Right. So let's examine Barbara. She's been an honest to-G.o.d witch all her life. The greatest and probably the only one-hundred-percenter ever. She's known it and worked at it. That much we know for sure. What else she is we'll never know, but we can do some freehand guessing. She's had her own way all her life. How? Yet it never spoiled her. Why not? Even as a teenager, n.o.body's line ever fooled her. Why not? Above all, why wasn't she ever shot or strangled or blown up with dynamite?"

Cecily nodded her spectacular head. "Compet.i.tion must have tried. That has always been the cut-throatingest of all cut-throat games. And, underneath, she really is hard."

"Hard! She's harder than the superneotride hubs of h.e.l.l itself. Whenever she has wanted anything she has taken it. Including Carlyle Deston. And speaking of Deston, look at what happened to him-and me. He didn't used to have any more psionic ability than I did-not as much. Then, all of a sudden-both of us-bam-whingo! And you can't say the kids did that-not to him, anyway. Not only they weren't born yet-you might claim they could work pre-natally-they weren't conceived yet... probably, that is..."

She laughed. "You can delete the probably', Perce. They got married right after their first meetings, you know. Anyway, virgin brides or not, they certainly were not pregnant ones. They both knew the facts of life."

"Okay. She made full-scale, high-powered psionic operators out of Herc and Bun, too; long before the kids were born and probably before they were conceived. So, for my money, it was Bobby who worked all of us over and pulled the strings on the Adamses and on Maynard And Company and did everything else that was done."

"But those babies are not normal babies, Perce..." She paused, then went on, "But of course..." She paused again.

"Of course," he agreed "With cat-tractor-psiontist parents on both sides, how could they be? Especially with said parents working on them-just like we'll be working on ours-from the day they were born? Or maybe even before? I'll buy it that they have a lot more stuff than any normal kids could possibly have; up to and including mind-blocks and even the ability to hide them. When they grow up they'll probably have a lot more stuff than any of us. But now? And that kind of stuff? Uh-uh. No sale, presh; wrap it back up and put it back up on the shelf."

"I'll do just that." She drew a deep breath of relief and wriggled herself into closer and fuller contact. "Just the thought of such little monsters as that simply petrified me."

"I know what you mean. You almost gave me gooseflesh there for a minute myself."

"But we can understand Bobby's doing it and play along."