Computers computed briefly; impressed data upon mechanical brains. Missile-killers and torpedoes hurtled away. The first strange warship emerged and the first missile-killer flashed into a raging, s.p.a.ce-wracking fireball miles short of objective.

"I was afraid of that," Dann thought on, quietly. "I don't think they'II follow us-I think I know what they're after-so we'll run. Numbers one to fifty, to Galmetia; fifty one to one hundred, to Newmars; and everybody, get under an umbrella, just in case they do follow us."

En route to Galmetia-the flagship Terra was of course Number One-Dann had a long telepathic conversation with Maynard, and on landing he went straight to GalMet's main office. Maynard was waiting for him, with a staff of some fifty people. Maynard said: "You all know that the purpose of the enemy fleet was not specifically to attack our fleet or our planets, but to break our blockade of Earth. They broke it, and announced that any planet refusing to resume full trade with Earth would be bombed. So," he shrugged his shoulders and grimaced wryly, "we give in and it is now business as usual. We have of course taken the obvious steps; we are beefing up our repulsors and are developing a laser that will cut an eighty-mile asteroid up into thin slices at half a million miles. We've also started on your special torp, Guerd, on a crash-pri basis. TIMPS' is the name: Torpedo, Improved, Missile-Propelled, Screened. But we haven't been able to do anything more than guess at the answers to such questions as: Who are they? Where do they come from? No known planet, of that we are sure. Capital, Communism, Labor, or what? Hatfield, have you anything to offer?"

The meeting went on for four hours; but beyond the obvious fact that there was a planet-and not a Johnny-Come-Lately planet, either, but one long-enough established to have plenty of people, plenty of industry, and plenty of money or its equivalent-the meeting got nowhere. At adjournment time Maynard flashed Deston a thought to stay behind, and after the others had gone he said: "You told me you didn't know anything. I didn't ask you then and I'm not asking you now what you're figuring on doing about it. But you're going to do something. Correct?"

"Correct. I don't know what anybody can do, but we're going to work on it. They have leybyrdite; but they almost certainly did not develop it themselves."

"Cancel the almost'. We've never limited its sale-we can't. Anyone could have bought any amount of it. Dummy concerns-untraceable-is my guess on that. We know that a lot of Tellurian capital has always operated on the old grab-everything-in-sight principle, and everyone knows what Communism does. Either of them could and would run a planet as that one has obviously been run for many years-in a way that would make the robber barons of old sick at the stomach. But since it doesn't make sense that Labor has been doing it... it almost has to be either Capital or Communism."

"It looks that way." Deston frowned in thought. "But I don't know any sure-fire way of finding out which, if either... so I'd better go get hold of some people to help me think. 'Bye."

Deston did not walk out of the room, but 'ported himself to Barbara's side in the University office. "Hi, pet," he said, kissing her lightly. "I got troubles. How about busting in on that squirrel-some foursome that Horse French is in? I want to cry in their beer."

"Uh-uh, let's not bust in; they'll have to come up for air pretty soon. Let's wait 'til they do, then 'port up there with some lemon sour and Gulka fizz and cherry sloosh and stuff for a break."

The foursome did and the Destons did and Deston said: "Well, well, Frenchy old horse, fancy meeting you here!" and four strong hands gripped and shook hard. This was the Communications Officer to whom Deston had reported the survival of the liner Procyon so long before. "n.o.body ever even suspected you of having a brain in your head. All beef-nothing but muscle to keep your ears apart, I always thought."

"Hi, Runt! You? Think? What with? But I'll tell you how it was. So many captains got married that they couldn't find room for enough desks for 'em all to sit at, so they loaned me to this here Adams projecton pay, too. Nice of 'em, what?-but you've never met my wife. Paula, this renegade fugitive from InStell is Babe Deston-the unabashed hero of subs.p.a.ce, you know."

"I know." The slender, graceful, black-haired, black-eyed girl with the almost theatrical make-up, who had been watching and listening to this underplayed meeting as intently as Barbara had, gave him a firm, warm handshake and turned to Barbara. "And you're Bobby, of course. These men of ours..." She raised one carefully-sculptured eyebrow, "but toe don't have to insult each other to prove that we're..."

"Hey!" Deston broke in then. He had been studying the way Paula walked-he'd never seen anybody except Barbara move with such perfect, automatic, unconscious coordination as that "Wha'-d'ya mean, Paula?" he demanded. "She's Angelique de St. Aubin!"

"In Person, not a tri-di," French bragged. "But Paula's her real name. The only things about her that are French are the name she married and her professional accent. This psionics stuff is the only way I could lure her down off of the high wire-she wouldn't come to ground, even after she got her Mrs. degree, just for the honor and privilege of being Mrs. Captain Horace French."

"Let's spread this around a little, huh, and give the rest of us a chance." The coltish but attractive teenager, having gulped the last syrupy bits of a full half liter of cherry sloosh, came in. "I'm May Eberly. I can't tell you two wonderful people how glad I am that you started this and let me in-I never dreamed-well, anyway, it's exactly what I was born for. The others, too. You know what they call us? The Effeff-the Funny Four, no less-but I don't care. I love it! And this," she waved a hand at the oldster, "is t.i.tus Fleming. He's got pots of money, so we call him t.i.te', but of course he isn't, just the opposite, in fact he spoils us all rotten, and..."

"Hush, child," Fleming said, with an affectionate smile. Then, to Deston, "May has an extraordinarily brilliant and agile mind, but she is inclined to natter too much."

"Well, why not?" the youngster demanded, engagingly. When we're en rapport I don't talk at all, so I have to make up for it sometime, don't I? And Mr. Deston -no, I think I'll call you Babe', too. Okay?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Horse, there-I never heard him called that before, but I like it-says if everybody's forbearing enough to let me keep on living long enough to grow up, which will surprise him a megabuck's worth, I'll be a gorgeous hunk of woman some day." She executed a rather awkward pirouette. "I can't do this anywhere near like Paula does yet, but I'm going to sometime, just see if I don't."

"I'd hate to bet one buck against Horse's megabuck that you won't." Deston agreed. The girl was certainly under fourteen, but the promise was there. Unmistakably there. "Or that you won't live to break a hundred, either.

"Oh, thanks, Babe. Oh, I just can't wait! I'm going to be a femme fatale, you know-all slinky and everything-but you prob'ly didn't come all the way out here just to chatter-I think t.i.te's word natter' is cute, don't you?-so maybe before Horse bats my ears down again I'd better keep still awhile. S'pose?"

"Could be-we're in a jam," Deston said, and told them what the jam was. "So you see, to get anywhere at all, we've got to do some really intensive spying, and the only way to do that is to learn how to read non-psionic minds, and the p.o.o.p is that if anybody in total s.p.a.ce can deliver the goods on that order, you four are most apt to be the ones."

"Oh?" May exclaimed. "That's a really funny one, Babe-we must really be psychic..." She broke off with a giggle as the others began to laugh. "No, I mean really-much more so even than we thought-because that's exactly what we've just been working on-not to be just snoopy stinkers, either-or stinky snoopers?-but just to find out why n.o.body could ever do it before we aren't very good at it yet, but it goes like this-no, let's all link up and we'll show you. Oh, this is going to really be fun!"

The four linked up and went to work, and the Destons tuned themselves in; very slowly at first; more as observers than as active partic.i.p.ants in the investigation. The subject this time was a middle-echelon executive, the traffic manager of one division of far-flung War- ner Oil. He was a keen-looking young man, sharp-featured, with a very good head for figures. His king-size desk was littered with schedules, rate-books, and revision sheets. From time to time his fingertips flicked rapidly by touch over the keys of a desk-type computer.

The four were getting a flash of coherent thought once in a while, but that was all.

The Destons watched, studied, a.n.a.lyzed, and compared notes until their fusion finally said, in thought, "Okay, Effeff, come up for air and take a break. Time out for discussion." They emerged as individuals and Deston said, "You aren't making contact and I think I know why. Horse, do either you or Paula know consciously that you're trying to work the Fourth Nume?"

"My Cod, no," Paula said. "We were exposed to that stuff a long time ago, but it didn't take."

"You weren't ready, so Doc wouldn't have tried to give it to you, so who did?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton."

"They would," Barbara said then. "Fortunately, they've learned better now."

"But you two can give it to us."

"We could make a stab at it, but we'd rather not. We need more practice. We'll call Adams and Stella and watch."

The Adamses came in, and wrought; and this time, since the pupils were ready, the lesson "took."

"Now we'll git 'im!" May exclaimed. "Come on, what's holding us up?"

"I am," Deston said. "Don't go off half-c.o.c.ked; we've got a lot to do yet. Before anyone can do a job he has to know exactly what the job is and exactly how to do it, and we don't know either one. So let's examine your four-ply ent.i.ty-the tools you're using. There's no three-dimensional a.n.a.logy, but we can call Horace and Paula an engine, with two vital parts missing-the spark-plug and the flywheel..."

"But I want to learn that fourth-nume stuff now!" May declared. She was, as usual, 'way out ahead. "I don't want to wait until I'm old and decrepit and...

"Tut-tut, youngsters." Fleming reached out and put his hand lightly over the girl's mouth. "That att.i.tude is precisely what makes you the spark-plug; but if you and I had the abilities we lack instead of the ones we have, neither of us would be in this particular engine at all." "That's right," Deston said. "Now as to what this engine does. Postulating a two-dimensional creature, you could pile a million of him up and still have no thickness at all. Similarly, no three-dimensional material body can be compressed to zero thickness. The a.n.a.logy holds in three and four dimensions. However, there are discontinuities, incompatibilities, and sheer logical impossibilities. Hence, ordinarily, a four-dimensional mind, which all psionic minds are, cannot engage any three-dimensional, non-psionic mind at all. All possible points of contact are of zero dimensions...

"But wait up, Babe," French broke in. "We can see three dimensional objects, so why can't we..."

"We can't really see 'em," Deston said, flatly. "We can see what and where they are, but they're absolutely immaterial to us. So forces, already immaterial, become imperceptible. Clear?" "As mud," French said, dubiously. "There's a..." Paula broke in. "I see! The Fourth-they just showed us-remember? Manipulate-immaterial... non-s.p.a.ce-non-time?"

"Oh, sure." French's face cleared. "What we were doing, Babe, was blundering around in the Fourth, making a contact once in a blue moon by luck?"

That's about it. Now, another a.n.a.logy. Consider transformation of coordinates-polar into Cartesian, three-dimensional into two-dimensional, and so on. What a competent operator in the Fourth actually does is manipulate non-s.p.a.ce-non-time attributes in such a way as to construct a matrix that is both three- and four-dimensional. a.n.a.logous to light-particle and/or wave. You follow?"

"Perfectly," the Frenches said in unison. "Four on our side, three on the non-psi's side, with perfect coupling."

"You lost May and me there," Fleming said. "However, you would, of course... but I understand much better now why we four work together so well. I'll venture an a.n.a.logy-poor, perhaps-May scouts out ahead, in a million directions at once. I follow behind, sometimes pushing and sometimes putting on the brakes."

"And steering the sled!" May exclaimed. "I see, now, too-that's the way it works!"

"Close enough," Deston said. "Now. Thought patterns are as individual as fingerprints or the shape of one snowflake or one instantaneous pattern in a kaleidoscope. What two telepaths do is not tune one mind to the other. Instead, each one of a very large number of filaments of thought-all under control, remember-touches its opposite number, thus setting up a pattern that has never existed before and will never exist again..."

"I get it!" French exclaimed. "Reading a non-psi's mind will be a strictly one-way street. Well have to go through the matrix-which doesn't exist in telepathy -and match whatever pattern we find on the other side -which won't change."

"That's right-we hope! Now you can go."

They went; and this time the traffic-manager's mind was wider open to inspection than any book could possibly be. To be comparable, every page of such a book would have to be placed in perfect position to read and all at once!

Paula stood it for something over one second, then broke the linkage with what was almost a scream. "Stop it!"

She drew a deep breath and went on, more quietly, "I'm glad it's you who will have to do that, Babe, not I. That was a worse thing than anything a Peeping Tom could ever do. It's shameful-monstrous-it's positively obscene to do a thing like that to anyone, for any reason."

"Why, Paula, that was fun!" May exclaimed.

"But Babe," Paula said, "that was nothing like telepathy... but of course if wouldn't be."

"Of course. In telepathy the exchange of information is voluntary and selective. This way, the poor devil doesn't stand a chance. He doesn't even know it's happening."

Paula frowned. " Poor devil' is the exactly correct choice of words. Are you going to have to use us like that on the other poor devils you are going to... I can't think of a word bad enough."

"No. I just tried it. I can do it alone now, perfectly. But that's the way it is; opening new cells and learning new techniques. I had the latent capabilities. You others did, too."

"I can, but if you think I ever will you're completely out of your mind," Barbara declared, and Paula agreed vigorously.

But I want to and I can't." May wailed. "Why oh why can't I grow up faster!"

"We don't want you to grow up at all, sweetie," French said. "We don't want to lose our spark-plug. Ever think of that angle?"

"Babe, will I really have to leave this Funny Four then?"

"You'll not only have to, you'll want to," Deston replied, soberly. "That is one of the immutable facts of life."

"Okay, this is lots more fun than being old would be, anyway. What'll we try next, Paula?"

"I'd like to go back up into the Fourth Nume and really explore it-turn it inside out-that is, if there's nothing more important at the moment?" Paula quirked an eyebrow at Deston.

There was not. Goodbyes were said, and promises were made to meet soon and often, and the Destons 'ported themselves away.

Maynard called a special meeting of the Board to order and said, "Since you all know what the Tellurian situation is, politically and otherwise, I won't go into it. It seems to some of us, however, that this recent disaster may not be a disaster at all; that, if we play our cards properly, we may be able to secure much better results than if our blockade of Tellus had succeeded.

"With all threat of nuclear warfare removed, WestHem's so-called defense spending will stop; in fact, much of it has already stopped. Ordinarily, this would not he a blessing, since business would slump into a rapidly accelerating downward spiral. A bad recession, or even a severe panic, would follow. Any such result could be avoided, of course, if WestHem's government would cut taxes in the full amount of defense spending; hut has any one of you an imagination sufficiently elastic to encompa.s.s the idea of that government giving up half its income and firing that many hundreds of thousands of political hangers-on?"

There was a burst of scornful laughter.

"Mine isn't, either. As you know, defense stocks are already plummeting. They are dropping the limit every day. Due to public panic, they will continue to drop to a point below-in some cases to a point much below the actual value of the properties. I propose that we start buying before that point is reached. Not enough to support the market, of course; just enough to control it at whatever rate of decline the specialists will compute as being certain to result in our gaining control.

"Having gained control of the largest-excuse me, I'm getting ahead of myself. I a.s.sure you that this program is financially feasible. I am authorized to say that in addition to GalBank, whose statements you all get, Deston and Deston, Warner Oil, Interstellar, and Galactic Metals will all put their treasuries behind this project." There was a burst of applause.

"Since we are very large holders of these stocks already, there is no doubt that we can obtain control. We will then re-hire all the personnel who have been laid off and convert to the production of luxury goods, preferably of the more expensive and less durable types. We will finance the purchase of these goods ourselves..."

This time, they clapped and whistled and stamped their feet.

... and put on a ma.s.sive advertising campaign for such basic spending as modernization, new housing, and so on. All of this, however, will be secondary to our main purpose. None of you have realized as yet that this is the first chance we have ever had of forming a political party and actually electing a government of WestHem that will govern it...

There was a storm of applause that lasted for five minutes. Then Maynard went on: "The Board seems to be in favor of such action. Mr. Stevens Spehn, who has clone a great deal of work on the political aspects of this idea, will now take the floor."

Chapter 17 PUNSUNBY'S WORLD.

Many pa.r.s.ecs distant from the remotest outpost of civilization there was a planet known to its inhabitants only as The World. The World and everything pertaining to it, including the People and the Sun and the Moons and the little night-lights in the sky, had been created by The Company on Compday, January First in the Year One; and this day-also a Compday, of course-was the two hundred twenty sixth anniversary of that date: Jan. 1, 226. There was no celebration or ceremony-in fact, there were no words in the language to express any such concept-but, since it was Compday, all Operators worked only half a shift.

In the Beginning the Company had decreed that there were to be three hundred eighty four days (plus an extra Compday, to be announced by the Highest Agent, once every few years) in each year. Each year had twelve months; each month four weeks; each week eight days Compday, Sonday, Monday, Tonday, Wonday, Thurday, Furday, and Surday. All Operators were to work exactly half of each of those days except Compday, upon which they were to work only a quarter; the other quarter was to be devoted to being happy and to thinking pleasant thoughts of the Company, of its goodness in furnishing them all with happiness and with life and its comforts.

No other World had ever been created or ever would be, nor any other People. The Company and The World comprised the Cosmic All.

The World had not changed and it never would change; The Company had so decreed. Not to the People directly, of course; the Company was an immaterial, omniscient, omnipotent ent.i.ty that, except in the matter of punishment, dealt with People only through Company Agents. These Agents were not People, but were supermen and superwomen far above People; so far above People that the lowest-caste Company Agents had qual- ities that not even the highest-caste People could understand.

Upon very rare occasions the Company, whose symbol was A A A A A A A, appeared in a form of flesh to the Highest Agent, the Comptroller General of The World, whose symbol was A A A A A A B; and, emitting the pure mercury-vapor Light of the Company and in the sight and the hearing of the highest-caste Company Agents, uttered sacred Company Orders.

Company Agents of various high castes transmitted these Orders to the Managers, who told the a.s.sistant Managers, who told the Chiefs, who told the a.s.sistant Chiefs, who told the Heads, who told the a.s.sistant Heads, who told the Foremen, who told the Shift Bosses, who told the lower-caste People who were the Operators what to do and saw to it that they did it.

At the time of the World's creation The Company had issued a three-fold Prime Directive; which was immutable and eternal: ALL PEOPLE MUST: (1) Be happy. (2) Produce more and more People. (3) Produce more and more Goods.

If a Person obeyed these three injunctions all his life, his immaterial Aura-the thing that made him alive, not dead, and that made him different from all other Persons-when he became dead was absorbed into the Company and he would be happy forever.

On the other hand, there were a few who did not follow the Prime Directive literally and exactly. These were the mals-the malcontents, the maladjusts, the malefactors-the thinkers, the questioners, the unbelievers -the unhappy for any cause. They were blasted out of existence by the Company itself and that was the end of them, auras and all.

And that was fair enough. Every Person was born into a caste. He grew up in that caste. He was trained to do what his ancestors had done and what his descendants would do. He had children in that caste, all of whom became of it. He lived his whole life in that caste and died in it. That was, is, and ever shall be the way of life, and that is precisely the way it should be: for in pure order, and only in pure order, lies security; and in security, and only in security, lies happiness; and happiness is the First Consideration of the Prime Directive. Mals of all kinds are threats to order, to security, and to happiness; therefore all mals must die. So it was, is, and ever shall be. Selah. It is written.

Following the Prime Directive was easy enough; for most people, in fact, easier than not following it. Since happiness was simply the state of not being unhappy, and there was nothing in the normal life to be unhappy about, happiness was the norm.

Producing People, too, was a normal part of life. Furthermore, since the Company punished pre-family s.e.xual experience with Company wrath just a few volts short of death, the family state brought a new and different kind of happiness. Every female Person's job a.s.signment was to produce, between the ages of eighteen and thirty, ten children, and then to keep on running her family unless and until she was transferred to some other job. Since every nubile girl wanted a man of her own, and since children were a source of happiness on their own account, not one woman in a thousand had to be brainwashed at all to really like the job of running a family.

And as for producing Goods-why not? That was what People were created for, and that was all that men were good for-except, of course, for fathering children. Also, there was much happiness to be had in keeping a machine right at the peak of performance, turning out, every shift, an over-quota of pa.s.ses and an under-permittance of rejects-zero rejects being always the target.

No Person in his right mind ever even thought of wondering what the Goods he produced were for, or what became of them. That was Company business and thus incomprehensible by definition.

On this Compday forenoon, then, in a vast machineshop in City One of the World, a young man was hard at work-sitting at ease in a form-fitting chair facing an instrument-board having a hundred-odd dials, meters, gauges, lights, bells, whistles, buzzers, and what-have-you.

Occasionally a green light would begin to shade toward amber and a buzzer would begin to talk to him in Morse code; whereupon he would get up, walk around back of the board to his machine, and make almost imperceptible manual adjustments until the complaining monolog stopped. If, instead of stopping, the signal had turned into a Klaxon blare, he would have been manufacturing rejects, but he was far too good a machiner to make: any such error as that. He hadn't turned out a single reject in eighteen straight shifts. He knew everything there was to be known about his machine-and the fact that he knew practically nothing whatever else had never bothered him a bit. Why should it have? That was precisely the way it should be in this, the perfect World: that was precisely what the all-powerful Company had decreed.

He was of medium height and medium build; trimly, smoothly muscular; with large, strong, and exquisitely sensitive hands. He had a shock of rather unkempt brown hair, clear gray eyes, and a lightly-tanned, unblemished skin. lie wore the green-and-white-striped coveralls of his caste-Machiner Second-and around his neck, on a hard-alloy chain, there hung a large and fairly thick locket. This locket, which had been put on him one minute after he was born and which his body would wear into the crematorium, and which-he firmly believed-could not be opened or removed without causing his death, had seven letters of the English alphabet cut deeply into its face. This group of letters-V T J E S O Q -was his symbol. As far as he knew, the only purpose of the locket was to make him permanently and unmistakably identifiable.

At twelve o'clock noon the machine stopped; for the first time in exactly one week. At the same time he heard the sound of fast-stepping hard heels and turned to see a Company Agent approaching him-the first Agent to come to him in all his twenty years of life. This Agent was a young female, whose spectacular build was spectacularly displayed by a sleeveless, very tight yellow sweater and even tighter black tights. Her boots, laced to the knees, were of fire-engine-red leather. Her short-bobbed hair was deep russet brown in color. Low on her forehead blazed the green jewel of her rank. This jewel, which resembled more than anything else a flaring green spotlight about the size of a half dollar piece and not much thicker, was mounted in platinum on the platinum drop-piece of a plain platinum headband. Under her sweater she, too, wore a locket; upon which was engraved the symbol A C B A A B A.

Be happy, Veety!" the Agent snapped.

"Be happy, Agent." The machiner raised his arms and put both hands flat on the top of his head.

"At ease, Veety! Follow me!"

Whirling on the ball of her left foot, she led the way down a narrow corridor; sharp right into a wider one; sharp left into the main hall and straight into the crowd of operators going off shift. She did not even slow down -the crowd dissolved away from her like magic. They Jell all over themselves to get out of her way; for to touch a Company Agent, however accidentally or however lightly, was to receive a blast of Company wrath that, while not permanently harmful, was as intolerable as it was inexplicable.

Through the huge archway, along a wide walkway she led him, to the second archway on the right. She stopped and whistled sharply through her teeth. The exiting operators stopped in their tracks, put hands on heads, and stood motionless.

"V T J R S Y X-forward!" she snapped, and a green and-white-coveralled, well-built girl-People had to be good physical specimens or they did not live to grow up-came up to within a few feet of the Agent and stopped. She was neither apprehensive nor pleased; merely acquiescent.