ASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITYASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITY
 
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book 
are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely 
coincidental.
 
Copyright © 1953 by Robert A. Heinlein. Renewed 01981 by Robert A. Heinlein.
 
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions 
thereof in any form.
 
A Baen Book
 
Baen Publishing Enterprises
260 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10001
 
“Gulf’ copyright 1949; “Elsewhen” copyright 1941 by Street and Smith 
Publications, Inc.; “Lost Legacy” copyright 1941 by Fictioneers, Inc.; “Jerry 
Was a Man” copyright 1947 by Better Publications, Inc.
 
First Baen printing, September 1987
Second Baen printing, February 1990
 
ISBN:  0-671-65350-4
 
Cover art by John Melo
 
Printed in the United States of America
 
Distributed by
SIMON & SCHUSTER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10020
For Sprague and Catherine


 
Contents
 
 
1. Gulf
2. Elsewhen
3. Lost Legacy
4. Jerry Was a Man


 
ELSEWHEN


 
Excerpt from the Evening, STANDARD:
SOUGHT SAVANT EVADES POLICE City Hall Scandal Looms
Professor Arthur Frost, wanted for questioning in connection with the mysterious 
disappearance from his home of five of his students, escaped today from under 
the noses of a squad of police sent to arrest him. Police Sergeant Izowski 
claimed that Frost disappeared from the interior of the Black Maria under 
conditions which leave the police puzzled. District Attorney Kames labeled 
Izowsld's story as preposterous and promised the fullest possible investigation.
"But, Chief, I didn't leave him alone for a second!" "Nuts!" answered the Chief 
of Police. "You claim you put Frost in the Wagon, stopped with one foot on the 
tailboard to write in your notebook, and when you looked up he was gone. D'yuh 
expect the Grand Jury to believe that? D'yuh expect me to believe that?"
"Honest, Chief," persisted Izowski, "I just stopped to write down-"
"Write down what?"
"Something he said. I said to him, 'Look, Doc, why don't you tell us where you 
hid 'em? You know we're bound to dig 'em up in time.' And he just gives me a 
funny faraway look, and says, Time-ah, time . . . yes, you could dig them up, in 
Time.' I thought it was an important admission and stops to write it down. But I 
was standing in the only door he could use to get out of the Wagon. You know, I 
ain't little;
I kinda fill up a door."
"That's all you do," commented the Chief bitterly. "Izowski, you were either 
drunk, or crazy-or somebody got to you. The way you tell it, it's impossible!"
Izowski was honest, nor was he drunk, nor crazy.
Four days earlier Doctor Frost's class in speculative metaphysics had met as 
usual for their Friday evening seminar at the professor's home. Frost was 
saying, "And why not? Why shouldn't time be a fifth as well as a fourth 
dimension?"
Howard Jenkins, hard-headed engineering student, answered, "No harm in 
speculating, I suppose, but the question is meaningless."
"Why?" Frost's tones were deceptively mild.
"No question is meaningless," interrupted Helen Fisher.
"Oh, yeah? How high is up?"
"Let him answer," meditated Frost.
"I will," agreed Jenkins. "Human beings are constituted to perceive three 
spatial dimensions and one time dimension. Whether there are more of either is 
meaningless to us for there is no possible way for us to know-ever. Such 
speculation is a harmless waste of time."
"So?" said Frost. "Ever run across J. W. Dunne's theory of serial universe with 
serial time? And he's an engineer, like yourself. And don't forget Ouspensky. He 
regarded time as multi-dimensional."
"Just a second, Professor," put in Robert Monroe. "I've seen their writings-but 
I still think Jenkins offered a legitimate objection. How can the question mean 
anything to us if we aren't built to perceive more dimensions? It's like in 
mathematics-you can invent any mathematics you like, on any set of axioms, but 
unless it can be used to describe some sort of phenomena, it's just so much hot 
air."
Fairly put," conceded Frost. "I'll give a fair answer. Scientific belief is 
based on observation, either one's own or that of a competent observer. I 
believe in a two-dimensional time because I have actually observed it."
The clock ticked on for several seconds.
Jenkins said, "But that is impossible. Professor. You aren't built to observe 
two time dimensions."
"Easy, there ..." answered Frost. "I am built to perceive them one at a time-and 
so are you. I'll tell you about it, but before I do so, I must explain the 
theory of time I was forced to evolve in order to account for my experience. 
Most people think of time as a track that they run on from birth to death as 
inexorably as a train follows its rails-they feel instinctively that time 
follows a straight line, the past lying behind, the future lying in front. Now I 
have reason to believe-to know-that time is analogous to a surface rather than a 
line, and a rolling hilly surface at that. Think of this track we follow over 
the surface of time as a winding road cut through hills. Every little way the 
road branches and the branches follow side canyons. At these branches the 
crucial decisions of your life take place. You can turn right or left into 
entirely different futures. Occasionally there is a switchback where one can 
scramble up or down a bank and skip over a few thousand or million years-if you 
don't have your eyes so fixed on the road that you miss the short cut.
"Once in a while another road crosses yours. Neither its past nor its future has 
any connection whatsoever with the world we know. If you happened to take that 
turn you might find yourself on another planet in another space-time with 
nothing left of you or your world but the continuity of your ego.
"Or, if you have the necessary intellectual strength and courage, you may leave 
the roads, or paths of high probability, and strike out over the hills of 
possible time, cutting through the roads as you come to them, following them for 
a little way, even following them backwards, with the past ahead of you, and the 
future behind you. Or you might roam around the hilltops doing nothing but the 
extremely improbable. I cannot imagine what that would be like- perhaps a bit 
like Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass.
"Now as to my evidence- When I was eighteen I had a decision to make. My father 
suffered financial reverses and I decided to quit college. Eventually I went 
into business for myself, and, to make a long story short, in 
nineteen-fifty-eight I was convicted of fraud and went to prison."
Martha Ross interrupted. "Nineteen-fifty-eight, Doctor? You mean forty-eight?"
"No, Miss Ross. I am speaking of events that did not take place on this time 
track."
"Oh." She looked blank, then muttered, "With the Lord all things are possible."
"While in prison I had time to regret my mistakes. I realized that I had never 
been cut out for a business career, and I earnestly wished that I had stayed in 
school many years before. Prison has a peculiar effect on a man's mind. I 
drifted further and further away from reality, and lived more and more in an 
introspective world of my own. One night, in a waynot then clear to me, my ego 
left my cell, went back along the time track, and I awoke in my room at my 
college fraternity house.
"This time I was wiser- Instead of leaving school, I found part-time work, 
graduated, continued as a graduate fellow, and eventually arrived where you now 
see me." He paused and glanced around.
"Doctor," asked young Monroe, "can you give us any idea as to how the stunt was 
done?"
'Yes, I can," Frost assented- "I worked on that problem for many years, trying 
to recapture the conditions. Recently I have succeeded and have made several 
excursions into possibility."
Up to this time the third woman, Estelle Martin, had made no comment, although 
she had listened with close attention. Now she leaned forward and spoke in an 
intense whisper.
"Tell us how, Professor Frost!"
"The means is simple. The key lies in convincing the subconscious mind that it 
can be done-"
"Then the Berkeleian idealism is proved!"
"In a way. Miss Martin. To one who believes in Bishop Berkeley's philosophy the 
infinite possibilities of two-dimensional time offer proof that the mind creates 
its own world, but a Spencerian determinist, such as good friend Howard Jenkins, 
would never leave the road of maximum probability. To him the world would be 
mechanistic and real. An orthodox free-will Christian, such as Miss Ross, would 
have her choice of several of the side roads, but would probably remain in a 
physical environment similar to Howard's.
"I have perfected a technique which will enable others to travel about in the 
pattern of times as I have done. I have the apparatus ready and any who wish can 
try it. That is the real reason why these Friday evening meetings have been held 
in my home-so that when the time came you all might try it, if you wished." He 
got up and went to a cabinet at the end of the room. "You mean we could go 
tonight. Doctor?" "Yes, indeed. The process is one of hypnotism and suggestion. 
Neither is necessary, but that is the quickest way of teaching the sub-conscious 
to break out of its groove and go where it pleases. I use a revolving ball to 
tire the conscious mind into hypnosis. During that period the subject listens to 
a recording which suggests the time-road to be followed, whereupon he does. It 
is as simple as that. Do any of you care to try it?"
"Is it likely to be dangerous. Doctor?" He shrugged his shoulders. "The process 
isn't- just a deep sleep and a phonograph record- But the world of the time 
track you visit will be as real as the world of this time track. You are all 
over twenty-one. I am not urging you, I am merely offering you the opportunity."
Monroe stood up. "I'm going, Doctor." "Good! Sit here and use these earphones. 
Anyone else?"
"Count me in." It was Helen Fisher.
Estelle Martin joined them. Howard Jenkins went hastily to her side. "Are you 
going to try this business?"
"Most certainly."
He turned to Frost. "I'm in. Doc."
Martha Ross finally joined the others. Frost seated them where they could wear 
the ear-phones and then asked, "You will remember the different types of things 
you could do; branch off into a different world, skip over into the past or the 
future, or cut straight through the maze of probable tracks on a path of extreme 
improbability. I have records for all of those."
Monroe was first again. "I'll take a right angle turn and a brand new world."
Estelle did not hesitate. "I want to- How did you put it?-climb up a bank to a 
higher road somewhere in the future."
"I'll try that, too." It was Jenkins.
"I'll take the remote-possibilities track," put in Helen Fisher.
"That takes care of everybody but Miss Ross," commented the professor. "I'm 
afraid you will have to take a branch path in probability. Does that suit you?"
She nodded. "I was going to ask for it."
"That's fine. All of these records contain the suggestion for you to return to 
this room two hours from now, figured along this time track. Put on your 
earphones. The records run thirty minutes. I'll start them and the ball 
together."
He swung a glittering many-faceted sphere from a hook in the ceiling, started it 
whirling, and turned a small spotlight on it. Then he turned off the other 
lights, and started all the records by throwing a master switch. The 
scintillating ball twirled round and round, slowed and reversed and twirled back 
again. Doctor Frost turned his eyes away to keep from being fascinated by it. 
Presently he slipped out into the hall for a smoke. Half an hour passed and 
there came the single note of a gong. He hurried back and switched on the light.
Four of the five had disappeared.
The remaining figure was Howard Jenkins, who opened his eyes and blinked at the 
light. "Well, Doctor, I guess it didn't work."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "No? Look around you."
The younger man glanced about him. "Where are the others?"
"Where? Anywhere," replied Frost, with a shrug, "and way when."
Jenkins jerked off his earphones and jumped to his feet. "Doctor, what have you 
done to Estelle?"
Frost gently disengaged a hand from his sleeve. "I haven't done anything, 
Howard. She's out on another time track."
"But I meant to go with her!"
"And I tried to send you with her."
"But why didn't I go?"
"I can't say-probably the suggestion wasn't strong enough to overcome your 
skepticism. But don't be alarmed, son-we expect her back in a couple of hours, 
you know."
"Don't be alarmed!-that's easy to say. I didn't want her to try this damn fool 
stunt in the first place, but I knew I couldn't change her mind, so I wanted to 
go along to look out for her-she's so impractical! But see here, Doc-where are 
their bodies? I thought we would just stay here in the room in a trance."
"Apparently you didn't understand me. These other time tracks are real, as real 
as this one we are in. Their whole beings have gone off on other tracks, as if 
they had turned down a side street."
"But that's impossible-it contradicts the law of the conservation of energy!"
"You must recognize a fact when you see one- they are gone. Besides, it doesn't 
contradict the law; it simply extends it to include the total universe."
Jenkins rubbed a hand over his face. "I suppose so. But in that case, anything 
can happen to her- she could even be killed out there. And I can't do a damn 
thing about it. Oh, I wish we had never seen this damned seminar!"
The professor placed an arm around his shoulders. "Since you can't help her, why 
not calm down? Besides, you have no reason to believe that she is in any danger. 
Why borrow trouble? Let's go out to the kitchen and open a bottle of beer while 
we wait for them." He gently urged him toward the door.
After a couple of beers and a few cigarettes, Jenkins was somewhat calmed down. 
The professor made conversation.
"How did you happen to sign up for this course, Howard?"
"It was the only course I could take with Estelle."
"I thought so. I let you take it for reasons of my own. I knew you weren't 
interested in speculative philosophy, but I thought that your hard-headed 
materialism would hold down some of the loose thinking that is likely to go on 
in such a class. You've been a help to me. Take Helen Fisher for example. She is 
prone to reason brilliantly from insufficient data. You help to keep her down to 
earth."
"To be frank. Doctor Frost, I could never see the need for all this high-falutin 
discussion. I like facts."
"But you engineers are as bad as metaphysicians- you ignore any fact that you 
can't weigh in scales. If you can't bite it, it's not real. You believe in a 
mechanistic, deterministic universe, and ignore the facts of human 
consciousness, human will, and human freedom of choice-facts that you have 
directly experienced."
'But those things can be explained in terms of reflexes."
The professor spread his Rands. "You sound just like Martha Ross-she can explain 
anything in terms of Bible-belt fundamentalism. Why don't both of you admit that 
there a few things you don't understand?" He paused and cocked his head. "Did 
you hear something?"
"I think I did."
"Let's check. It's early, but perhaps one of them is back."
They hurried to the study, where they were confronted by an incredible and 
awe-inspiring sight.
Floating in the air near the fireplace was a figure robed in white and shining 
with a soft mother-of- pearl radiance. While they stood hesitant at the door, 
the figure turned its face to them and they saw that it had the face of Martha 
Ross, cleansed and purified to an unhuman majesty. Then it spoke.
"Peace be unto you, my brothers." A wave of peace and lovingldndness flowed over 
them like a mother's blessing. The figure approached them, and they saw, curving 
from its shoulders, the long, white, sweeping wings of a classical angel. Frost 
cursed under his breath in a dispassionate monotone.
"Do not be afraid, I have come back, as you asked me to. To explain and to help 
you."
The Doctor found his voice. "Are you Martha Ross?"
"I answer to that name."
"What happened after you put on the ear-phones?"
"Nothing. I slept for a while. When I woke, I went home."
"Nothing else? How do you explain your appearance?"
"My appearance is what you earthly children expect of the Lord's Redeemed. In 
the course of time I served as a missionary in South America. There it was 
required of me that I give up my mortal me in the service of the Lord. And so I 
entered the Eternal City."
"You went to Heaven?"
"These many eons I have sat at the foot of the Golden Throne and sung hosannas 
to His name."
Jenkins interrupted them. "Tell me, Martha-or Saint Martha-Where is Estelle? 
Have you seen her?"
The figure turned slowly and faced him. "Fear not."
"But tell me where she is!"
"It is not needful."
"That's no help," he answered bitterly.
"I will help you. Listen to me; Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
Love thy neighbor as thyself. That is all you need to know."
Howard remained silent, at a loss for an answer, but unsatisfied. Presently the 
figure spoke again. "I must go. God's blessing on you." It flickered and was 
gone.
The professor touched the young man's arm. "Let's get some fresh air." He led 
Jenkins, mute and unresisting, out into the garden. They walked for some minutes 
in silence. Finally Howard asked a question,
"Did we see an angel in there?"
"I think so, Howard."
"But that's insane!"
*There are millions of people who wouldn't think so-unusual certainly, but not 
insane."
"But it's contrary to all modem beliefs-Heaven- Hell-a personal 
God-Resurrection. Everything I've believed in must be wrong, or I've gone 
screwy."
"Not necessarily-not even probably. I doubt very much if you will ever see 
Heaven or Hell. You'll follow a time track in accordance with your nature."
"But she seemed real."
"She was real. I suspect that the conventional hereafter is real to any one who 
believes in it wholeheartedly, as Martha evidently did, but I expect you to 
follow a pattern in accordance with die beliefs of an agnostic-except in one 
respect; when you die, you won't die all over, no matter how intensely you may 
claim to expect to. It is an emotional impossibility for any man to believe in 
his own death. That sort of self-annihilation can't be done. You'll have a 
hereafter, but it will be one appropriate to a materialist."
But Howard was not listening. He pulled at his under lip and frowned. "Say, doc, 
why wouldn't Martha tell me what happened to Estelle? That was a dirty trick."
"I doubt if she knew, my boy. Martha followed a time track only slightly 
different from that we are in;
Estelle chose to explore one far in the past or in the distant future. For all 
practical purposes, each is non-existent to the other."
They heard a call from the house, a clear contralto voice, "Doctor! Doctor 
Frost!"
Jenkins whirled around. "That's Estelle!" They ran back into the house, the 
Doctor endeavoring manfully to keep up.
But it was not Estelle. Standing in the hallway was Helen Fisher, her sweater 
torn and dirty, her stockings missing, and a barely-healed scar puckering one 
cheek. Frost stopped and surveyed her. "Are you all right, child?" he demanded.
She grinned boyishly. "I'm okay. You should see the other guy."
Tell us about it."
"In a minute. How about a cup of coffee for the prodigal? And I wouldn't turn up 
my nose at scrambled eggs and some-lots-of toast. Meals are inclined to be 
irregular where I've been."
"Yes, indeed. Right away." answered Frost, "but where have you been?"
"Let a gal eat, please," she begged. "I won't hold out on you. What is Howard 
looking so sour about?"
The professor whispered an explanation. She gave Jenkins a compassionate glance. 
"Oh, she hasn't? I thought I'd be the last man in; I was away so long. What day 
is this?"
Frost glanced at his wrist watch. "You're right on time; it's just eleven 
o'clock."
"The hell you say! Oh, excuse me. Doctor. 'Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.' 
All in a couple of hours. Just for the record, I was gone several weeks at 
least.'"
When her third cup of coffee had washed down the last of the toast, she began:
"When I woke up I was falling upstairs-through a nightmare, several nightmares. 
Don't ask me to describe that-nobody could. That went on for a week, maybe, then 
things started to come into focus. I don't know in just what order things 
happened, but when I first started to notice clearly I was standing in a little 
barren valley. It was cold, and the air was thin and acrid. It burned my throat. 
There were two suns in the sky, one big and reddish, the other smaller and too 
bright to look at."
'Two suns!" exclaimed Howard. "That's not possible-binary stars don't have 
planets."
She looked at him. "Have it your own way-I was there. Just as I was taking this 
all in, something whizzed overhead and I ducked. That was the last I saw of that 
place.
"I slowed down next back on earth-at least it looked like it-and in a city. It 
was a big and complicated city. I was in trafficway with a lot of fast moving 
traffic. I stepped out and tried to flag one of the vehicles-a long crawling 
caterpillar thing with about fifty wheels-when I caught sight of what was 
driving it and dodged back in a hurry. It wasn't a man and it wasn't an animal 
either-not one I've ever seen or heard of. It wasn't a bird, or a fish, nor an 
insect. The god that thought up the inhabitants of that city doesn't deserve 
worship. I don't know what they were, but they crawled and they crept and they 
stank. Ugh!"
"I slunk around holes in that place," she continued, "for a couple of weeks 
before I recovered the trick of jumping the time track. I was desperate, for I 
thought that the suggestion to return to now hadn't worked. I couldn't find much 
to eat and I was lightheaded part of the time. I drank out of what I suspect was 
their drainage system, but there was nobody to ask and I didn't want to know. I 
was thirsty."
"Did you see any human beings?"
"I'm not sure. I saw some shapes that might have been men squatting in a circle 
down in the tunnels under the city, but something frightened them, and they 
scurried away before I could get close enough to look."
"What else happened there?"
"Nothing. I found the trick again that same night and got away from there as 
fast as I could-I am afraid I lost the scientific spirit. Professor-I didn't 
care how the other half lived.
'This time I had better luck. I was on earth again, but in pleasant rolling 
hills, like the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was summer, and very lovely. I found a 
little stream and took off my clothes and bathed. It was wonderful. After I had 
found some ripe berries, I lay down in the sun and went to sleep.
"I woke wide awake with a start. Someone was bending over me. It was a man, but 
no beauty. He was a Neanderthal. I should have run, but I tried to grab my 
clothes first, so he grabbed me. I was led back into camp, a Sabine woman, with 
my new spring sports outfit tucked fetchingly under one arm.
"I wasn't so bad off. It was the Old Man who had found me, and he seemed to 
regard me as a strange pet, about on a par with the dogs that snarled around the 
bone heap, rather than as a member of his harem. I fed well enough, if you 
aren't fussy-I wasn't fussy after living in the bowels of that awful city.
"The Neanderthal isn't a bad fellow at heart, rather good-natured, although 
inclined to play rough. That's how I got this." She fingered the scar on her 
cheek, "I had about decided to stay a while and study them, when one day I made 
a mistake. It was a chilly morning, and I put on my clothes for the first time 
since I had arrived. One of the young bucks saw me, and I guess it aroused his 
romantic nature. The Old Man was away at the time and there was no one to stop 
him.
' He grabbed me before I knew what was happening and tried to show his 
affection. Have you ever been nuzzled by a cave man, Howard? They have 
halitosis, not to mention B.O. I was too startled to concentrate on the time 
trick, or else I would have slipped right out into space-time and left him 
clutching air."
Doctor Frost was aghast. "Dear God, child! What did you do?"
"I finally showed him a jiu jitsu trick I learned in Phys. Ed. II, then I ran 
like hell and skinned up a tree. I counted up to a hundred and tried to be calm. 
Pretty soon I was shooting upstairs in a nightmare again and very happy to be 
doing it."
"Then you came back here?"
"Not by a whole lot-worse luck! I landed in this present all right, and 
apparently along this time dimension, but there was plenty that was wrong about 
it- I was standing on the south side of Forty-second street in New York. I knew 
where I was for the first thing I noticed was the big lighted letters that chase 
around the TIMES building and spell out news flashes. It was running backwards. 
I was trying to figure out DETROIT BEAT TO HITS NINE GET YANKEES' when I saw two 
cops close to me running as hard as they could-backwards, away from me." Doctor 
Frost smothered an ejaculation. "What did you say?"
"Reversed entropy-you entered the track backwards-your time arrow was pointing 
backwards."
"I figured that out, when I had time to think about it. Just then I was too 
busy. I was in a clearing in the crowd, but the ring of people-was closing in on 
me, all running backwards. The cops disappeared in the crowd, and the crowd ran 
right up to me, stopped, and started to scream. Just as that happened, the 
traffic lights changed, cars charged out from both directions, driving 
backwards. It was too much for little Helen. I fainted.
"Following that I seemed to slant through a lot of places-"
"Just a second," Howard interrupted, "just what happened before that? I thought 
I savvied entropy, but that got me licked."
"Well," explained Frost, "the easiest way to explain it is to say that she was 
travelling backwards in time. Her future was their past, and vice versa. I'm 
glad she got out in a hurry. I'm not sure that human metabolism can be 
maintained in such conditions."
"Hmm- Go ahead, Helen."
"This slanting through the axes would have been startling, if I hadn't been 
emotionally exhausted. I sat back and watched it, like a movie. I think Salvador 
Dali wrote the script. I saw landscapes heave and shift like a stormy sea. 
People melted into plants-I think my own body changed at times, but I can't be 
sure. Once I found myself in a place that was all insides, instead of outsides. 
Some of the things we'll skip-I don't believe them myself.
"Then I slowed down in a place that must have had an extra spatial dimension. 
Everything looked three dimensional to me, but they changed their shapes when I 
thought about them. I found I could look inside solid objects simply by wanting 
to. When I tired of prying into the intimate secrets of rocks and plants, I took 
a look at myself, and it worked Just as well. I know more about anatomy and 
physiology now than an M.D. It's fun to watch your heart beat- kind o'cute.
"But my appendix was swollen and inflamed. I found I could reach in and touch 
it-it was tender. I've had trouble with it so I decided to perform an emergency 
operation, I nipped it off with my nails. It didn't hurt at all, bled a couple 
of drops and closed right up."
"Good Heavens, child! You might have gotten peritonitis and died."
"I don't think so. I believe that ultra-violet was pouring all through me and 
killing the bugs. I had a fever for a while, but I think what caused it was a 
bad case of internal sunburn.
"I forgot to mention that I couldn't walk around in this place, for I couldn't 
seem to touch anything but myself. I sliced right through anything I tried to 
get a purchase on. Pretty soon I quit trying and relaxed. It was comfortable and 
I went into a warm happy dope, like a hibernating bear.
"After a long time-a long, long time, I went sound asleep and came to in your 
big easy-chair. That's all."
Helen answered Howard's anxious inquiries by telling him that she had seen 
nothing of Estelle. "But why don't you calm down and wait? She isn't really 
overdue."
They were interrupted by the opening of the door from the hallway. A short wiry 
figure in a hooded brown tunic and tight brown breeches strode into the room.
"Where's Doctor Frost? Oh-Doctor, I need help!"
It was Monroe, but changed almost beyond recognition. He had been short and 
slender before, but was now barely five feet tall, and stocky, with powerful 
shoulder muscles. The brown costume with its peaked hood, or helmet, gave him a 
strong resemblance to the popular notion of gnome.
Frost hurried to him. "What is it, Robert? How can I help?"
"This first." Monroe hunched forward for inspection of his left upper arm. The 
fabric was tattered and charred, exposing an ugly burn. "He just grazed me, but 
it had better be fixed. If I am to save the arm."
Frost examined it without touching it. "We must rush you to a hospital."
"No time. I've got to get back. They need me- and the help I can bring."
The Doctor shook his head. "You've got to have treatment. Bob. Even if there is 
strong need for you to go back wherever you have been, you are in a different 
time track now. Time lost here isn't necessarily lost there."
Monroe cut him short. "I think this world and my world have connected time 
rates. I must hurry."
Helen Fisher placed herself between them. "Let me see that arm. Bob. Hm-pretty 
nasty, but I think I can fix it. Professor, put a kettle on the fire with about 
a cup of water in it. As soon as it boils, chuck in a handful of tea leaves."
She rummaged through the kitchen cutlery drawer, found a pair of shears, and did 
a neat job of cutting away the sleeve and cleaning the burned flesh for 
dressing. Monroe talked as she worked.
"Howard, I want you to do me a favor. Get a pencil and paper and take down a 
list. I want a flock of things to take back-all of them things that you can pick 
up at the fraternity house. You'll have to go for me-I'd be thrown out with my 
present appearance- What's the matter? Don't you want to?'
Helen hurriedly explained Howard's preoccupation. He listened sympathetically. 
"Oh! Say, that's tough lines, old man." His brow wrinkled- "But look- You can't 
do Estelle any good by waiting here, and I really do need your help for the next 
half hour. Will you do it?"
Jenkins reluctantly agreed. Monroe continued,
"Fine! I do appreciate it. Co to my room first and gather up my reference books 
on math-also my slide rule. You'll find an India-paper radio manual, too. I want 
that. And I want your twenty-inch log-log duplex slide rule, as well. You can 
have my Rabelais and the Droll Stories. I want your Marks' Mechanical Engineers 
Handbook, and any other technical reference books that you have and I haven't. 
Take anything you like in exchange.
"Then go up to Stinky Beanfield's room, and get his Military Engineers Handbook, 
his Chemical Warfare, and his texts on ballistics and ordnance. Yes, and 
Miller's Chemistry of Explosives, if he has one. If not, pick up one from some 
other of the R.O.T.C. boys; it's important." Helen was deftly applying a 
poultice to his arm. He winced as the tea leaves, still warm, touched his seared 
flesh, but went ahead.
"Stinky keeps his service automatic in his upper bureau drawer. Swipe it, or 
talk him out of it. Bring as much ammunition as you can find-I'll write out a 
bill of sale for my car for you to leave for him. Now get going. I'll tell Doc 
all about it, and he can tell you later. Here. Take my car." He fumbled at his 
thigh, then looked annoyed. "Cripes! I don't have my keys."
Helen came to the rescue. "Take mine- The keys are in my bag on the hall table."
Howard got up. "OK, I'll do my damndest. If I get flung in the can, bring me 
cigarettes." He went out.
Helen put the finishing touches on the bandages. 'There! I think that will do. 
How does it feel?"
He flexed his arm cautiously. "Okay. It's a neat job. kid. It takes the sting 
out,"
"I believe it will heal if you keep tannin solution on it. Can you get tea 
leaves where you are going?"
"Yes, and tannic acid, too. I'll be all right. Now you deserve an explanation. 
Professor, do you have a cigaret on you? I could use some of that coffee, too."
"Surely, Robert." Frost hastened to serve him.
Monroe accepted a light and began,
"It's all pretty cock-eyed. When I came out of the sleep, I found myself, 
dressed as I am now and looking as I now look, marching down a long, deep fosse. 
I was one of a column of threes in a military detachment. The odd part about it 
is that I felt perfectly natural. I knew where I was and why I was there-and who 
I was. I don't mean Robert Monroe; my name over there is Igor." Monroe 
pronounced the gutteral deep in his throat and trilled the "r." "I hadn't 
forgotten Monroe; it was more as if I had suddenly remembered him. I had one 
identity and two pasts. It was something like waking up from a clearly 
remembered dream, only the dream was perfectly real. I knew Monroe was real, 
just as I knew Igor was real.
"My world is much like earth; a bit smaller, but much the same surface gravity. 
Men like myself are the dominant race, and we are about as civilized as you 
folks, but our culture has followed a difficult course- We live underground 
about half the time. Our homes are there and a lot of our industry. You see it's 
warm underground in our world, and not entirely dark. There is a mild 
radioactivity; it doesn't harm us.
"Nevertheless we are a surface-evolved race, and can't be healthy nor happy if 
we stay underground all the time. Now there is a war on and we've been driven 
underground for eight or nine months. The war is going against us. As it stands 
now, we have lost control of the surface and my race is being reduced to the 
status of hunted vermin,
"You see, we aren't fighting human beings. I don't know just what it is we are 
fighting-maybe beings from outer space. We don't know. They attacked us several 
places at once from great flying rings the like of which we had never seen. They 
burned us down without warning. Many of us escaped underground where they 
haven't followed us. They don't operate at night either-seem to need sunlight to 
be active. So it's a stalemate-or was until they started gassing our tunnels.
"We've never captured one and consequently don't know what makes them tick. We 
examined a ring that crashed, but didn't learn much. There was nothing inside 
that even vaguely resembled animal life, nor was there anything to support 
animal life. I mean there were no food supplies, nor sanitary arrangements. 
Opinion is divided between the idea that the one we examined was remotely 
controlled and the idea that the enemy are some sort of non-protoplasmic 
intelligence, perhaps force patterns, or something equally odd.
"Our principal weapon is a beam which creates a stasis in the ether, and freezes 
'em solid. Or rather it should, but it will destroy all life and prevent molar 
action-but the rings are simply put temporarily out of control. Unless we can 
keep a beam on a ring right to the moment it crashes, it recovers and gets away. 
Then its pals come and burn out our position.
"We've had better luck with mining their surface camps, and blowing them up at 
night. We're accomplished sappers, of course. But we need better weapons. That's 
what I sent Howard after. I've got two ideas. If the enemy are simply some sort 
of intelligent force patterns, or something like that, radio may be the answer. 
We might be able to fill up the ether with static and jam them right out of 
existence. If they are too tough for that, perhaps some good old-fashioned 
anti-aircraft fire might make them say 'Uncle.' In any case there is a lot of 
technology here that we don't have, and which may have the answer. I wish I had 
time to pass on some of our stuff in return for what I'm taking with me."
"You are determined to go back, Robert?"
"Certainly. It's where I belong. I've no family here. I don t know how to make 
you see it. Doc, but those are my people-that is my world. I suppose if 
conditions were reversed, I'd feel differently.'
"I see," said Helen, "you're fighting for the wife and kids." "
He turned a weary face toward her. "Not exactly. I'm a bachelor over there, but 
I do have a family to think about; my sister is in command of the attack unit 
I'm in. Oh, yes, the women are in it-they're little and tough, like you, Helen."
She touched his arm lightly. "How did you pick up this?"
"That bum? You remember we were on the march. We were retreating down that ditch 
from a surface raid. I thought we had made good our escape when all of a sudden 
a ring swooped down on us. Most of the detachment scattered, but I'm a junior 
technician armed with the stasis ray. I tried to get my equipment unlimbered to 
fight back, but I was burned down before I could finish. Luckily it barely 
grazed me. Several of the others were fried. I don't know yet whether or not Sis 
got hers. That's one of the reasons why I'm in a hurry.
"One of the other techs who wasn't hit got his gear set up and covered our 
retreat. I was dragged underground and taken to a dressing station. The medicos 
were about to work on me when I passed out and came to in the Professor's 
study."
The doorbell rang and the Professor got up to answer it. Helen and Robert 
followed him. It was Howard, bearing spoils.
"Did you get everything?" Robert asked anxiously.
"I think so. Stinky was in, but I managed to borrow his books. The gun was 
harder, but I telephoned a friend of mine and had him call back and ask for 
Stinky. While he was out of the room, I lifted it. Now I'm a criminal-government 
property, too."
"You're a pal, Howard. After you hear the explanation, youll agree that it was 
worth doing. Won't he, Helen?"
"Absolutely!"
"Well, I hope you're right," he answered dubiously. "I brought along something 
else, just in case. Here it is." He handed Robert a book.
"Aerodynamics and Principles of Aircraft Construction," Robert read aloud. "My 
God, yes! Thanks, Howard."
In a few minutes, Monroe had his belongings assembled and fastened to his 
person. He had announced that he was ready when the Professor checked him:
"One moment, Robert. How do you know that these books will go with you?"
"Why not? That's why I'm fastening them to me."
"Did your earthly clothing go through the first time?"
"Noo-" His brow furrowed. "Good grief. Doc, what can I do? I couldn't possibly 
memorize what I need to know."
"I don't know. Son. Let's think about it a bit." He broke off and stared at the 
ceiling. Helen touched his hand.
"Perhaps I can help. Professor."
"In what way, Helen?"
"Apparently I don't metamorphize when I change time tracks, I had the same 
clothes with me everywhere I went. Why couldn't I ferry this stuff over for 
Bob?"
"Hm, perhaps you could."
"No, I couldn't let you do that," interposed Monroe. "You might get killed or 
badly hurt."
"I'll chance it.'
"I've got an idea," put in Jenkins. "Couldn't Doctor Frost set his instructions 
so that Helen would go over and come right back? How about it. Doc?"
"Mmm, yes, perhaps." But Helen held up a hand.
"No good. The boodle might come bouncing back with me. I'll go over without any 
return instructions. I like the sound of this world of Bob's anyway. I may stay 
there. Cut out the chivalry. Bob. One of the things I liked about your world was 
the notion of treating men and women alike. Get unstuck from that stuff and 
start hanging it on me. I'm going."
She looked like a Christmas tree when the dozen-odd books had been tied to 
various parts of her solid little figure, the automatic pistol strapped on, and 
the two slide rules, one long and one short, stuck in the pistol belt.
Howard fondled the large slide rule before he fastened it on. "Take good care of 
this slipstick, Bob," he said, "I gave up smoking for six months to pay for it."
Frost seated the two side by side on the sofa in the study. Helen slipped a hand 
into Bob's. When the shining ball had been made to spin. Frost motioned for 
Jenkins to leave, closed the door after him and switched out the light. Then he 
started repeating hypnotic suggestions in a monotone.
Ten minutes later he felt a slight swish of air and ceased. He snapped the light 
switch. The sofa was empty, even of books.
Frost and Jenkins kept an uneasy vigil while awaiting Estelle's return. Jenkins 
wandered nervously around the study, examining objects that didn't interest him 
and smoking countless cigarets. The Professor sat quietly in his easy chair, 
simulating a freedom from anxiety that he did not feel. They conversed in 
desultory fashion.
"One thing I don't see," observed Jenkins, "is why in the world Helen could go a 
dozen places and not change, and Bob goes just one place and comes back almost 
unrecognizable-shorter, heavier, decked out in outlandish clothes. What happened 
to his ordinary clothes anyhow? How do you explain those things, Professor?"
"Eh? I don't explain them-I merely observe them. I think perhaps he changed, 
while Helen didn't, because Helen was just a visitor to the places she went to, 
whereas Monroe belonged over there-as witness he fitted into the pattern of that 
world. Perhaps the Great Architect intended for him to cross over."
"Huh? Good heavens, Doctor, surely you don't believe in divine predestination!"
"Perhaps not in those terms. But, Howard, you mechanistic skeptics make me 
tired. Your naive ability to believe that things 'jest growed' approaches 
childishness. According a you a fortuitous accident of entropy produced 
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."
"I think that's unfair. Doctor. You certainly don't expect a man to believe in 
things that run contrary to his good sense without offering him any reasonable 
explanation."
Frost snorted. "I certainly do-if he has observed it with his own eyes and ears, 
or gets it from a source known to be credible. A fact doesn't have to be 
understood to be true. Sure, any reasonable mind wants explanations, but it's 
silly to reject facts that don't fit your philosophy.
"Now these events tonight, which you are so anxious to rationalize in orthodox 
terms, famish a clue to a lot of things that scientists have been rejecting 
because they couldn't explain them. Have you ever heard the tale of the man who 
walked around the horses? No? Around 1810 Benjamin Bathurst, British Ambassador 
to Austria, arrived in his carriage at an inn in Perleberg, Germany. He had his 
valet and secretary with him. They drove into the lighted courtyard of the inn. 
Bathurst got out, and, in the presence of bystanders and his two attaches, 
walked around the horses. He hasn't been seen since."
"What happened?"
"Nobody knows. I think he was preoccupied and inadvertently wandered into 
another time track. But there are literally hundreds of similar cases, way too 
many to laugh off. The two-time-dimensions theory accounts for most of them. But 
I suspect that there are other as-yet-undreamed-of natural principles operating 
in some of the rejected cases."
Howard stopped pacing and pulled at his lower hp. "Maybe so. Doctor. I'm too 
upset to think. Look here-it's one o'clock. Oughtn't she to be back by now?"
"Fm afraid so. Son."
"You mean she's not coming back."
"It doesn't look like it."
The younger man gave a broken cry and collapsed on the sofa. His shoulders 
heaved. Presently he calmed down a little. Frost saw his lips move and suspected 
that he was praying. Then he showed a drawn face to the Doctor.
"Isn't there anything we can do?"
"That's hard to answer, Howard. We don't know where she's gone; all we do know 
is that she left here under hypnotic suggestion to cross over into some other 
loop of the past or future."
"Can't we go after her the same way and trace her?"
"I don't know. I haven't had any experience with such a job."
"I've got to do something or I'll go nuts."
"Take it easy, son. Let me think about it." He smoked in silence while Howard 
controlled an impulse to scream, break furniture, anything!
Frost knocked the ash off his cigar and placed it carefully in a tray. "I can 
think of one chance. It's a remote one."
"Anything!"
"I'm going to listen to the record that Estelle heard, and cross over. I'll do 
it wide awake, while concentrating on her. Perhaps I can establish some rapport, 
some extra-sensory connection, that will serve to guide me to her." Frost went 
immediately about his preparations as he spoke. "I want you to remain in the 
room when I go so that you will really believe that it can be done."
In silence Howard watched him don the headphones. The Professor stood still, 
eyes closed. He remained so for nearly fifteen minutes, then took a short step 
forward. The ear-phones clattered to the floor. He was gone.
Frost felt himself drift off into the timeless limbo which precedes transition. 
He noticed again that it was exactly like the floating sensation that ushers in 
normal sleep, and wondered idly, for the hundredth time, whether or not the 
dreams of sleep were real experiences. He was inclined to think they were. Then 
he recalled his mission with a guilty start, and concentrated hard on Estelle.
He was walking along a road, white in the sunshine. Before him were the gates of 
a city. The gateman stared at his odd attire, but let him pass. He hurried down 
the broad tree-lined avenue which (he knew) led from the space port to Capitol 
Hill. He turned aside into the Way of me Gods and continued until he reached the 
Grove of the Priestesses. There he found the house which he sought, its marble 
walls pink in the sun, its fountains tinkling in the morning breeze. He turned 
in.
The ancient janitor, nodding in the sun, admitted him to the house. The slender 
maidservant, barely nubile, ushered him into the inner chamber, where her 
mistress raised herself on one elbow and regarded her visitor through languid 
eyes. Frost addressed her,
"It is time to return, Estelle."
Her eyesbrows showed her surprise. "You speak a strange and barbarous tongue, 
old man, and yet, here is a mystery, for I know it. What do you wish of me?"
Frost spoke impatiently. "Estelle, I say it is time to return!"
"Return? What idle talk is this? Return where? And my name is Star-Light, not 
Ess Tell. Who are you, and from where do you come?" She searched his face, then 
pointed a slender finger at him. "I know you nowl You are out of my dreams. You 
were a Master and instructed me in the ancient wisdom."
"Estelle, do you remember a youth in those dreams?"
"That odd name again! Yes, there was a youth. He was sweet-sweet and straight 
and tall like pine on the mountain. I have dreamed of him often," She swung 
about with a flash of long white limbs. "What of this youth?"
"He waits for you. It is time to return."
"Return!-There is no return to the place of dreams!"
"I can lead you there."
"What blasphemy is this? Are you a priest, that you should practice magic? Why 
should a sacred courtesan go to the place of dreams?"
"There is no magic in it. He is heartsick at your loss. I will lead you back to 
him."
She hesitated, doubt in her eyes, then she replied, "Suppose you could; why 
should I leave my honorable sacred station for the cold nothingness of that 
dream?"
He answered her gently, "What does your heart tell you, Estelle?"
She stared at him, eyes wide, and seemed about to burst into tears. Then she 
flung herself across the couch, and showed him her back. A muffled voice 
answered him, "Be off with you! There is no youth, except in my dreams. I'll 
seek him there!"
She made no further reply to his importunities. Presently he ceased trying and 
left with a heavy heart.
Howard seized him by the arm as he returned. "Well, Professor? Well? Did you 
find her?"
Frost dropped wearily into his chair. "Yes, I found her."
"Was she all right? Why didn't she come back with you?"
"She was perfectly well, but I couldn't persuade her to return."
Howard looked as if he had been slapped across the mouth. "Didn't you tell her I 
wanted her to come back?"
"I did, but she didn't believe me."
"Not believe you?"
"You see she's forgotten most of this life, Howard. She thinks you are simply a 
dream."
"But that's not possible!"
Frost looked more weary than ever. "Don't you think it is about time you stopped 
using that term, son?"
Instead of replying he answered, "Doctor, you must take me to her!" Frost looked 
dubious.
"Can't you do it?"
"Perhaps I could, if you have gotten over your disbelief, but still-"
"Disbelief^-I've been forced to believe. Let's get busy."
Frost did not move. "I'm not sure that I agree. Howard, conditions are quite 
different where Estelle has gone. It suits her, but I'm not sure that it would 
be a kindness to take you through to her." "Why not? Doesn't she want to see 
me?" "Yes-I think she does. I'm sure she would welcome you, but conditions are 
very different."
"I don't give a damn what the conditions are. Let's go."
Frost got up. "Very well. It shall be as you wish." He seated Jenkins in the 
easy chair and held the young man's eyes with his gaze. He spoke slowly in calm, 
unmodulated tones- Frost assisted Howard to his feet and brushed him off. Howard 
laughed and wiped the white dust of the road from his hands.
"Quite a tumble. Master. I feel as if some lout had pulled a stool from under 
me."
"I shouldn't have had you sit down." "I guess not." He pulled a'large 
multi-flanged pistol from his belt and examined it. "Lucky the safety catch was 
set on my blaster or we might have been picking ourselves out of the 
stratosphere. Shall we be on our way?"
Frost looked his companion over; helmet, short military kilt, short sword and 
accoutrements slapping at his thighs. He blinked and answered, "Yes. Yes, of 
course."
As they swung into the city gates. Frost inquired, 'Do you know where you are 
headed?" "Yes, certaintiy. To Star-Light's villa in the Grove." "And you know 
what to expect there?" "Oh, you mean our discussion. I know the customs here. 
Master, and am quite undismayed, I assure you. Star-Light and I understand each 
other. She's
one of these 'Out of sight, out of mind' girls. Now that I'm back from Ultima 
Thule, she'll give up the priesthood and we'll settle down and raise a lot of 
fat babies."
"Ultima Thule? Do you remember my study?"
"Of course I do-and Robert and Helen and all the rest."
"Is that what you meant by Ultima Thule?"
"Not exactly. I can't explain it. Master. I'm a practical military man. I'll 
leave such things to you priests and teachers."
They paused in front of Estelle's house. "Coming in, Master?"
"No, I think not. I must be getting back."
"You know best." Howard clapped him on the shoulder. "You have been a true 
friend. Master. Our first brat shall be named for you."
"Thank you, Howard. Good-bye, and good luck to both of you."
"And to you." He entered the house with a confident stride.
Frost walked slowly back toward the gates, his mind preoccupied with myriad 
thoughts. There seemed to be no end to the permutations and combinations; either 
of matter, or of mind. Martha, Robert, Helen-now Howard and Estelle. It should 
be possible to derive a theory that would cover them all.
As he mused, his heel caught on a loose paving block and he stumbled across his 
easy chair.
The absence of the five students was going to be hard to explain. Frost knew-so 
he said nothing to anyone. The weekend passed before anyone took the absences 
seriously. On Monday a policeman came to his house, asking questions.
His answers were not illuminating, for he had reasonably refrained from trying 
to tell the true story. The District Attorney smelled a serious crime, 
kidnapping or perhaps a mass murder. Or maybe one of these love cults-you can 
never tell about these professors!
He caused a warrant to be issued Tuesday morning, Sergeant Izowski was sent to 
pick him up.
The professor came quietly and entered the black wagon without protest, "Look, 
Doc," said the sergeant, encouraged by his docile manner, "why don't you tell us 
where you hid 'em? You know we're bound to dig them up in time."
Frost turned, looked him in the eyes, and smiled, "Time," he said softly, "ah, 
time . . . yes, you could dig them up, in Time." He then got into the wagon and 
sat down quietly, closed his eyes, and placed his mind in the necessary calm 
receptive condition.
The sergeant placed one foot on the tailboard, braced his bulk in the only door, 
and drew out his notebook. When he finished writing he looked up.
Professor Frost was gone.
Frost had intended to look up Howard and Estelle. Inadvertently he let his mind 
dwell on Helen and Robert at the crucial moment. When he "landed" it was not in 
the world of the future he had visited twice before. He did not know where he 
was-on earth apparently, somewhere and somewhen.
It was wooded rolling country, like the hills of southern Missouri, or New 
Jersey. Frost had not sufficient knowledge of botany to be able to tell whether 
the species of trees he saw around him were familiar or not. But he was given no 
time to study the matter.
He heard a shout, an answering shout. Human figures came bursting out of the 
trees in a ragged line. He thought that they were attacking him, looked wildly 
around for shelter, and found none. But they kept on past him, ignoring him, 
except that the one who passed closest to him glanced at him hastily, and 
shouted something. Then he, too, was gone.
Frost was left standing, bewildered, in the small natural clearing in which he 
had landed.
Before he had had time to integrate these events one of the fleeing figures 
reappeared and yelled to him, accompanying the words with a gesture 
unmistakable-he was to come along.
Frost hesitated. The figure ran toward and hit him with a clean tackle. The next 
few seconds were very confused, but he pulled himself together sufficiently to 
realize that he was seeing the world upside down;
the stranger was carrying him at a strong dogtrot, thrown over one shoulder.
Bushes whipped at his face, then the way led downward for several yards, and he 
was dumped casually to the ground. He sat up and rubbed himself.
He found himself in a tunnel which ran upwards to daylight and downward the Lord 
knew where. Figures milled around him but ignored him. Two of them were setting 
up some apparatus between the group and the mouth of the tunnel. They worked 
with extreme urgency, completing what they were doing in seconds, and stepped 
back. Frost heard a soft gentle hum.
The mouth of the tunnel became slightly cloudy. He soon saw why-the apparatus 
was spinning a web from wall to wall, blocking the exit. The web became less 
tenuous, translucent, opaque. The hum persisted for minutes thereafter and the 
strange machine continued to weave and thicken the web. One of the figures 
glanced at its belt, spoke one word in the tone of command, and the humming 
ceased.
Frost could feel relief spread over the group like a warm glow. He felt it 
himself and relaxed, knowing intuitively that some acute danger had been 
averted.
The member of the group who had given the order to shut off the machine turned 
around, happened to see Frost, and approached him, asking some questions in a 
sweet but peremptory soprano. Frost was suddenly aware of three things; the 
leader was a woman, it was the leader who had rescued him, and the costume and 
general appearance of these people matched that of the transformed Robert 
Monroe.
A smile spread over his face. Everything was going to be all right!
The question was repeated with marked impatience. Frost felt that an answer was 
required, though he did not understand the language and was sure that she could 
not possibly know English. Nevertheless-
"Madame," he said in English, getting to his feet and giving her a courtly bow, 
"I do not know your language and do not understand your question, but I suspect 
that you have saved my life. I am grateful."
She seemed puzzled and somewhat annoyed, and demanded something else-at least 
Frost thought it was a different question; he could not be sure. This was 
getting nowhere. The language difficulty was almost insuperable, he realized. It 
might take days, weeks, months to overcome it. In the meantime these people were 
busy with a war, and would be in no frame of mind to bother with a useless 
incoherent stranger.
He did not want to be turned out on the surface.
How annoying, he thought, how stupidly annoying! Probably Monroe and Helen were 
somewhere around, but he could die of old age and never find them. They might be 
anywhere on the planet. How would an American, dumped down in Tibet, make 
himself understood if his only possible interpreter were in South America? Or 
whereabouts unknown? How would he make the Tibetans understand that there even 
was an interpreter? Botheration!
Still, he must make a try. What was it Monroe had said his name was here? 
Egan-no, Igor. That was it-Igor.
"Igor," he said.
The leader cocked her head. "Igor?" she said,
Frost nodded vigorously. "Igor."
She turned and called out, "Igor!" giving it the marked gutteral, the liquid "r" 
that Monroe had given it. A man came forward. The professor looked eagerly at 
him, but he was a stranger, like the rest. The leader pointed to the man and 
stated, "Igor."
This is growing complicated, thought Frost, apparently Igor is a common name 
here-too common. Then he had a sudden idea:
If Monroe and Helen got through, their badly- needed chattels might have made 
them prominent. "Igor," he said, "Helen Fisher."
The leader was attentive at once, her face alive. "Elen Feesher?" she repeated.
"Yes, yes-Helen Fisher."
She stood quiet, thinking. It was plain that the words meant something to her. 
She clapped her hands together and spoke, commandingly. Two men stepped forward. 
She addressed them rapidly for several moments.
The two men stepped up to Frost, each taking an arm- They started to lead him 
away. Frost held back for a moment and said over his shoulder, "Helen Fisher?"
" 'Elen Feesher'!" the leader assured him. He had to be content with that.
Two hours passed, more or less. He had not been mistreated and the room in which 
they had placed him was comfortable but it was a cell-at least the door was 
fastened. Perhaps he had said the wrong thing, perhaps those syllables meant 
something quite different here from a simple proper name.
The room in which he found himself was bare and lighted only by a dim glow from 
the walls, as had all of this underground world which he had seen so far. He was 
growing tired of the place and was wondering whether or not it would do any good 
to set up a commotion when he heard someone at the door.
The door slid back; he saw the leader, a smile on her rather grim, middle-aged 
features. She spoke in her own tongue, then added, "Igor. . . Ellenfeesher."
He followed her.
Glowing passageways, busy squares where he was subjected to curious stares, an 
elevator which startled him by dropping suddenly when he was not aware that it 
was an elevator, and finally a capsule-like vehicle in which they were sealed 
airtight and which went somewhere very fast indeed to judge by the sudden surge 
of weight when it started and again when it stopped-through them all he followed 
his guide, not understanding and lacking means of inquiring. He tried to relax 
and enjoy the passing moment, as his companion seemed to bear him no ill-will, 
though her manner was brusque-that of a person accustomed to giving orders and 
not in the habit of encouraging casual intimacy.
They arrived at a door which she opened and strode in. Frost followed and was 
almost knocked off his feet by a figure which charged into him and grasped him 
with both arms. "Doctor! Doctor Frost!"
It was Helen Fisher, dresser in the costume worn by both sexes here. Behind her. 
stood Robert-or Igor, his gnome-like face widened with a grin.
He detached Helen's arms gently. "My dear." he said inanely, "imagine finding 
you here."
"Imagine finding you here," she retorted. "Why, professor-you're crying!"
"Oh, no, not at all," he said hastily, and turned to Monroe. "It's good to see 
you, too, Robert."
"That goes double for me. Doc," Monroe agreed.
The leader said something to Monroe. He answered her rapidly in their tongue and 
turned to Frost. "Doctor, this is my elder sister, Margri, Actoon Margri-Major 
Margri, you might translate it roughly,"
"She has been very kind to me," said Frost, and bowed to her, acknowledging the 
introduction. Margri clapped her hands smartly together at the waist and ducked 
her head, features impassive.
"She gave the salute of equals," explained Robert- Igor. "I translated the title 
doctor as best I could which causes her to assume that your rank is the same as 
hers."
"What should I do?"
"Return it."
Frost did so, but awkwardly.
Doctor Frost brought his erstwhile students up to "date"-using a term which does 
not apply, since they were on a different time axis. His predicament with the 
civil authorities brought a cry of dismay from Helen. "Why, you poor thingi How 
awful of them!"
"Oh, I wouldn't say so," protested Frost. "It was reasonable so far as they 
knew. But I'm afraid I can't go back."
"You don't need to," Igor assured him. "You're more than welcome here."
"Perhaps I can help out in your war."
"Perhaps-but you've already done more than anyone here by what you've enabled me 
to do. We are working on it now." He swung his arm in a gesture which took in 
the whole room.
Igor had been detached from combat duty and assigned to staff work, in order to 
make available earth techniques. Helen was helping. "Nobody believes my story 
but my sister," he admitted, "But I've been able to show them enough for them to 
realize that what I've got is important, so they've given me a free hand and are 
practically hanging over my shoulder, waiting to see what we can produce. I've 
already got them started on a jet fighter and attack rockets to arm it."
Frost expressed surprise. How could so much be done so fast? Were the time rates 
different? Had Helen and Igor crossed over many weeks before, figured along this 
axis?
No, he was told, but Igor's countrymen, though lacking many earth techniques, 
were far ahead of earth in manufacturing skill. They used a single general type 
of machine to manufacture almost anything. They fed into it a plan which Igor 
called for want of a better term the blueprints-it was in fact, a careful scale 
model of the device to be manufactured; the machine retooled itself and produced 
the artifact. One of them was, at that moment, moulding the bodies of fighting 
planes out of plastic, all in one piece and in one operation.
"We are going to arm these jobs with both the stasis ray and rockets," said 
Igor. "Freeze 'em and then shoot the damn things down while they are out of 
control."
They talked a few minutes, but Frost could see that Igor was getting fidgety. He 
guessed the reason. and asked to be excused. Igor seized on the suggestion. "We 
will see you a little later," he said with relief. "I'll have some one dig up 
quarters for you. We are pretty rushed. War work-I know you'll understand."
Frost fell asleep that night planning how he could help his two young friends, 
and their friends, in their struggle.
But it did not work out that way. His education had been academic rather than 
practical; he discovered that the reference books which Igor and Helen had 
brought along were so much Greek to him- worse, for he understood Greek. He was 
accorded all honor and a comfortable living because of Igor's affirmation that 
he had been the indispensable agent whereby this planet had received the 
invaluable new weapons, but he soon realized that for the job at hand he was 
useless, not even fit to act as an interpreter.
He was a harmless nuisance, a pensioner-and he knew it.
And underground life got on his nerves. The ever present light bothered him. He 
had an unreasoned fear of radioactivity, born of ignorance, and Igor's 
reassurances did not stifle the fear. The war depressed him. He was not 
temperamentally cut out to stand up under the nervous tension of war. His 
helplessness to aid in the war effort, his lack of companionship, and his 
idleness all worked to increase the malaise.
He wandered into Igor and Helen's workroom one day, hoping for a moment's chat, 
if they were not too busy. They were not. Igor was pacing up and down, Helen 
followed them with worried eyes.
He cleared his throat- "Uh-I say, something the matter?"
Igor nodded, answered, "Quite a lot," and dropped back into his preoccupation.
"It's like this," said Helen. "In spite of the new weapons, things are still 
going against us. Igor is trying to figure out what to try next."
"Oh, I see. Sorry." He started to leave.
"Don't go. Sit down." He did so, and started mulling the matter over in his 
mind. It was annoying, very annoying!
"I'm afraid I'm not much use to you." he said at last to Helen. "Too bad Howard 
Jenkins isn't here."
"I don't suppose it matters," she answered, "We have the cream of modern earth 
engineering in these books."
"I don't mean that. I mean Howard himself, as he is where he's gone. They had a 
little gadget there in the future called a blaster. I gathered that it was a 
very powerful weapon indeed."
Igor caught some of this and whirled around. "What was it? How did it work?"
"Why, really," said Frost, "I can't say. I'm not up on such things, you know. I 
gathered that it was sort of a disintegrating ray."
"Can you sketch it? Think, man, think!"
Frost tried. Presently he stopped and said, "I'm afraid this isn't any good. I 
don't remember clearly and anyhow I don't know anything about the inside of it."
Igor sighed, sat down, and ran his hand through his hair.
After some minutes of gloomy silence, Helen said, "Couldn't we go get it?"
"Eh? How's that? How would you find him?"
"Could you find him. Professor?"
Frost sat up. "I don't know," he said slowly, "-but I'll try!"
There was the city. Yes, and there was the same gate he had passed through once 
before. He hurried on.
Star Light was glad to see him, but not particularly surprised. Frost wondered 
if anything could surprise this dreamy girl. But Howard more than made up for 
her lack of enthusiasm. He pounded Frost's back hard enough to cause pleurisy. 
"Welcome home, Master! Welcome home! I didn't know whether or not you would ever 
come, but we are ready for you. I had a room built for you and you alone, in 
case you ever showed up. What do you think of that? You are to live with us, you 
know. No sense in ever going back to that grubby school."
Frost thanked him, but added, "I came on business. I need your help, urgently."
"You do? Well, tell me, man, tell me!"
Frost explained. "So you see, I've got to take the secret of your blaster back 
to them. They need it. They must have it."
"And they shall have it," agreed Howard.
Some time later the problem looked more complicated. Try as he would Frost was 
simply not able to soak up the technical knowledge necessary to be able to take 
the secret back. The pedagogical problem presented was as great as if an 
untutored savage were to be asked to comprehend radio engineering sufficiently 
to explain to engineers unfamiliar with radio how to build a major station. And 
Frost was by no means sure that he could take a blaster with him through the 
country of Time.
"Well," said Howard at last, "I shall simply have to go with you."
Star Light, who had listened quietly, showed her first acute interest. "Darling! 
You must not-"
"Stop it," said Howard, his chin set stubbornly. "This is a matter of obligation 
and duty. You keep out of it."
Frost felt the acute embarrassment one always feels when forced to overhear a 
husband and wife having a difference of opinion.
When they were ready. Frost took Howard by the wrist. "Look me in the eyes," he 
said, "You remember how we did it before?"
Howard was trembling. "I remember. Master, do you think you can do it-and not 
lose me?"
"I hope so," said Frost, "now relax."
They got back to the chamber from which Frost had started, a circumstance which 
Frost greeted with relief. It would have been awkward to have to cross half a 
planet to find his friends. He was not sure yet just how the spatial dimensions 
fitted into the time dimensions. Someday he would have to study the matter, work 
out an hypothesis and try to check it.
Igor and Howard wasted little time on social amenities. They were deep into 
engineering matters before Helen had finished greeting the professor.
At long last- "There," said Howard, "I guess that covers everything. I'll leave 
my blaster for a model. Any more questions?"
"No," said Igor, "I understand it, and I've got every word you've said recorded. 
I wonder if you know what this means to us, old man? It unquestionably will win 
the war for us."
"I can guess," said Howard. "This little gadget is the mainstay of our 
systemwide pax. Ready, Doctor. I'm getting kinda anxious,"
"But you're not going, Doctor?" cried Helen. It was both a question and a 
protest.
"I've got to guide him back," said Frost.
"Yes," Howard confirmed, "but he is staying to live with us. Aren't you. 
Master?"
"Oh, no!" It was Helen again.
Igor put an arm around her. "Don't coax him," he told her. "You know he has not 
been happy here- I gather that Howard's home would suit him better. If so, he's 
earned it."
Helen thought about it, then came up to Frost, placed both hands on his 
shoulders, and kissed him, standing on tiptoe to do so. "Goodbye, Doc," she said 
in a choky voice, "or anyhow, au revoir!"
He reached up and patted one of her hands.
Frost lay in the sun, letting the rays soak into his old bones. It was certainly 
pleasant here. He missed Helen and Igor a little, but he suspected that they did 
not really miss him. And- life with Howard and Star Light was more to his 
liking. Officially he was tutor to their children, if and when. Actually he was 
just as lazy and useless as he had always wanted to be, with time on his hands. 
Time . . . Time.
There was just one thing that he would liked to have known: What did Sergeant 
Izowsld say when he looked up and saw that the police wagon was empty? Probably 
thought it was impossible.
It did not matter. He was too lazy and sleepy to care. Time enough for a little 
nap before lunch. Time enough . . .
Time.


 
Lost Legacy
 


 
Chapter One "Ye Have Eyes to See With!"
 
"Hi-yah, Butcher!" Doctor Philip Huxley put down the dice cup he had been 
fiddling with as he spoke, and shoved out a chair with his foot. "Sit down."
The man addressed ostentatiously ignored the salutation while handing a yellow 
slicker and soggy felt hat to the Faculty Clubroom attendant, but accepted the 
chair. His first words were to the negro attendant.
"Did you hear that, Pete? A witch doctor, passing himself off as a psychologist, 
has the effrontery to refer to me-to me, a licensed physician and surgeon, as a 
butcher." His voice was filled with gentle reproach.
"Don't let him kid you, Pete. If Doctor Coburn ever got you into an operating 
theatre, he'd open up your head just to see what makes you tick. He'd use your 
skull to make an ashtray."
The man grinned as he wiped the table, but said nothing.
Coburn clucked and shook his head. "That from a witch doctor. Still looking for 
the Little Man Who Wasn't There, Phil?"
"If you mean parapsychology, yes."
"How's the racket coming?"
"Pretty good. I've got one less lecture this semester, which is just as well-I 
get awfully tired of explaining to the wide-eyed innocents how little we really 
know about what goes on inside their think-tanks. I'd rather do research."
"Who wouldn't? Struck any pay dirt lately?"
"Some. I'm having a lot of fun with a law student just now, chap named Valdez."
Coburn lifted his brows. "So? E.S.P.?"
"Kinda. He's sort of a clairvoyant; if he can see one side of an object, he can 
see the other side, too."
"Nuts!"
" 'If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?' I've tried him out under carefully 
controlled conditions, and he can do it-see around comers."
"Hmmmm-well, as my Grandfather Stonebender used to say, 'God has more aces up 
his sleeve than were ever dealt in the game.' He would be a menace at stud 
poker."
"Matter of fact, he made his stake for law school as a professional gambler."
"Found out how he does it?"
"No, damn it." Huxley drummed on the table top, a worried look on his face. "If 
I just had a little money for research I might get enough data to make this sort 
of thing significant. Look at what Rhine accomplished at Duke."
"Well, why don't you holler? Go before the Board and bite 'em in the ear for it. 
Tell 'em how you're going to make Western University famous."
Huxley looked still more morose. "Fat chance. I talked with my dean and he 
wouldn't even let me take it up with the President. Scared that the old fathead 
will clamp down on the.department even more than he has. You see, officially, we 
are supposed to be behaviorists. Any suggestion that there might be something to 
consciousness that can't be explained in terms of physiology and mechanics is 
about as welcome as a Saint Bernard in a telephone booth."
The telephone signal glowed red back of the attendant's counter. He switched off 
the newscast and answered the call. "Hello . . . Yes, ma'am, he is. I'll call 
him. Telephone for you, Doctuh Coburn."
"Switch it over here." Coburn turned the telephone panel at the table around so 
that it faced him; as he did so it lighted up with the face of a young woman. He 
picked up the handset.
"What is it? . . . What's that? How long ago did it happen? . . . Who made the 
diagnosis? . . .
Read that over again . . . Let me see the chart." He inspected its image 
reflected in the panel, then added, "Very well. I'll be right over. Prepare the 
patient for operating." He switched off the instrument and turned to Huxley. 
"Got to go, Phil-emergency."
"What sort?"
"It'll interest you. Trephining. Maybe some cerebral excision. Car accident. 
Come along and watch it, if you have time." He was putting on his slicker as he 
spoke. He turned and swung out the west door with a long, loose-limbed stride. 
Huxley grabbed his own raincoat and hurried to catch up with him.
"How come," he asked as he came abreast, "they had to search for you?"
"Left my pocketphone in my other suit," Coburn returned briefly. "On purpose-I 
wanted a little peace and quiet. No luck."
They worked north and west through the arcades and passages that connected the 
Union with the Science group, ignoring the moving walkways as being too slow. 
But when they came to the conveyor subway under Third Avenue opposite the 
Pottenger Medical School, they found it flooded, its machinery stalled, and were 
forced to detour west to the Fairfax Avenue conveyor.
Coburn cursed impartially the engineers and the planning commission for the fact 
that spring brings torrential rains to Southern California, Chamber of Commerce 
or no.
They got rid of their wet clothes in the Physicians' Room and moved on to the 
gowning room for surgery. An orderly helped Huxley into white trousers and 
cotton shoe covers, and they moved to the next room to scrub. Coburn invited 
Huxley to scrub also in order that he might watch the operation close up. For 
three minutes by the little sand glass they scrubbed away with strong green 
soap, then stepped through a door and were gowned and gloved by silent, 
efficient nurses. Huxley felt rather silly to be helped on with his clothes by a 
nurse who had to stand on tip-toe to get the sleeves high enough. They were 
ushered through the glass door into Surgery III, rubber-covered hands held out, 
as if holding a skein of yarn.
The patient was already in place on the table, head raised up and skull clamped 
immobile.
Someone snapped a switch and a merciless circle of blue-white lights beat down 
on the only portion of him that was exposed, the right side of his skull. Coburn 
glanced quickly around the room, Huxley following his glance-light green walls, 
two operating nurses, gowned, masked, and hooded into sexlessness, a 'dirty' 
nurse, busy with something in the corner, the anesthetist, the instruments that 
told Coburn the state of the patient's heart action and respiration.
A nurse held the chart for the surgeon to read. At a word from Coburn, the 
anesthetist uncovered the patient's face for a moment. Lean brown face, 
acquiline nose, closed sunken eyes.
Huxley repressed an exclamation. Coburn raised his eyebrows at Huxley.
"What's the trouble?"
"It's Juan Valdez!"
"Who's he?"."The one I was telling you about-the law student with the trick 
eyes."
"Hmm-Well, his trick eyes didn't see around enough corners this time. He's lucky 
to be alive. You'll see better, Phil, if you stand over there."
Coburn changed to impersonal efficiency, ignored Huxley's presence and 
concentrated the whole of his able intellect on the damaged flesh before him. 
The skull had been crushed, or punched, apparently by coming into violent 
contact with some hard object with moderately sharp edges. The wound lay above 
the right ear, and was, superficially, two inches, or more, across. It was 
impossible, before exploration, to tell just how much damage had been suffered 
by the bony structure and the grey matter behind.
Undoubtedly there was some damage to the brain itself. The wound had been 
cleaned up on the surface and the area around it shaved and painted. The trauma 
showed up as a definite hole in the cranium. It was bleeding slightly and was 
partly filled with a curiously nauseating conglomerate of clotted purple blood, 
white tissue, grey tissue, pale yellow tissue.
The surgeon's lean slender fingers, unhuman in their pale orange coverings, 
moved gently, deftly in the wound, as if imbued with a separate life and 
intelligence of their own. Destroyed tissue, too freshly dead for the component 
cells to realize it, was cleared away-chipped fragments of bone, lacerated mater 
dura, the grey cortical tissue of the cerebrum itself.
Huxley became fascinated by the minuscule drama, lost track of time, and of the 
sequence of events. He remembered terse orders for assistance, "Clamp!" 
"Retractor!" "Sponge!" The sound of the tiny saw, a muffled whine, then the 
toothtingling grind it made in cutting through solid living bone. Gently a 
spatulate instrument was used to straighten out the tortured convolutions.
Incredible and unreal, he watched a scalpel whittle at the door of the mind, 
shave the thin wall of reason.
Three times a nurse wiped sweat from the surgeon's face.
Wax performed its function. Vitallium alloy replaced bone, dressing shut out 
infection.
Huxley had watched uncounted operations, but felt aga in that almost 
insupportable sense of relief and triumph that comes when the surgeon turns 
away, and begins stripping off his gloves as he heads for the gowning room.
When Huxley joined Coburn, the surgeon had doused his mask and cap, and was 
feeling under his gown for cigarets. He looked entirely human again. He grinned 
at Huxley and inquired, "Well, how did you like it?"
"Swell. It was the first time I was able to watch that type of thing so closely. 
You can't see so well from behind the glass, you know. Is he going to be all 
right?"
Coburn's expression changed. "He is a friend of yours, isn't he? That had 
slipped my mind for the moment. Sorry. He'll be all right, I'm pretty sure. He's 
young and strong, and he came through the operation very nicely. You can come 
see for yourself in a couple of days."
"You excised quite a lot of the speech center, didn't you? Will he be able to 
talk when he gets well? Isn't he likely to have aphasia, or some other speech 
disorder?"
"Speech center? Why, I wasn't even close to the speech centers."
"Huh?"
"Put a rock in your right hand, Phil, so you'll know it next time. You're turned 
around a hundred and eighty degrees. I was working in the right cerebral lobe, 
not the left lobe."
Huxley looked puzzled, spread both hands out in front of him, glanced from one 
to the other, then his face cleared and he laughed. "You're right. You know, I 
have the damndest time with that. I never can remember which way to deal in a 
bridge game. But wait a minute-I had it so.firmly fixed in my mind that you were 
on the left side in the speech centers that I am confused.
What do you think the result will be on his neurophysiology?"
"Nothing-if past experience is any criterion. What I took away he'll never miss. 
I was working in terra incognito, pal-No Man's Land. If that portion of the 
brain that I was in has any function, the best physiologists haven't been able 
to prove it."
 
Chapter Two Three Blind Mice
 
BRRRNNG!
Joan Freeman reached out blindly with one hand and shut off the alarm clock, her 
eyes jammed shut in the vain belief that she could remain asleep if she did. Her 
mind wondered.
Sunday. Don't have to get up early on Sunday. Then why had she set the alarm? 
She remembered suddenly and rolled out of bed, warm feet on a floor cold in the 
morning air. Her pajamas landed on that floor as she landed in the shower, 
yelled, turned the shower to warm, then back to cold again.
The last item from the refrigerator had gone into a basket, and a thermos jug 
was filled by the time she beard the sound of a car on the hill outside, the 
crunch of tires on granite in the driveway. She hurriedly pulled on short boots, 
snapped the loops of her jodphurs under them, and looked at herself in the 
mirror. Not bad, she thought. Not Miss America, but she wouldn't frighten any 
children.
A banging at the door was echoed by the doorbell, and a baritone voice, "Joan! 
Are you decent?"
"Practically. Come on in, Phil."
Huxley, in slacks and polo shirt, was followed by another figure. He turned to 
him. "Joan, this is Ben Coburn, Doctor Ben Coburn. Doctor Coburn, Miss Freeman."
"Awfully nice of you to let me come, Miss Freeman."
"Not at all, Doctor. Phil had told me so much about you that I have been anxious 
to meet you." The conventionalities flowed with the ease of all long-established 
tribal taboo.
"Call him Ben, Joan. It's good for his ego."
While Joan and Phil loaded the car Coburn looked over the young woman's studio 
house. A single large room, panelled in knotty pine and dominated by a friendly 
field-stone fireplace set about with untidy bookcases, gave evidence of her 
personality. He had stepped through open french doors into a tiny patio, paved 
with mossy bricks and fitted with a barbecue pit and a little fishpond, 
brilliant in the morning sunlight, when he heard himself called.
"Doc! Stir your stumps! Time's awastin'!"
He glanced again around the patio, and rejoined the others at the car. "I like 
your house. Miss Freeman. Why should we bother to leave Beachwood Drive when 
Griffith Park can't be any pleasanter?"
"That's easy. If you stay at home, it's not a picnic-it's just breakfast. My 
name's Joan."
"May I put in a request for 'just breakfast' here some morning-Joan?"
"Lay off o' that mug, Joan," advised Phil in a stage whisper. "His intentions 
ain't honorable."
Joan straightened up the remains of what had recently been a proper-sized meal. 
She chucked into the fire three well-picked bones to which thick sirloin steaks 
were no longer attached, added.some discarded wrapping paper and one lonely 
roll. She shook the thermos jug. It gurgled slightly. "Anybody want some more 
grapefruit juice?" she called.
"Any more coffee?" asked Coburn, then continued to Huxley, "His special talents 
are gone completely?"
"Plenty," Joan replied. "Serve yourselves."
The Doctor filled his own cup and Huxley's. Phil answered, "Gone entirely, I'm 
reasonably certain. I thought it might be hysterical shock from the operation, 
but I tried him under hypnosis, and the results were still negative-completely. 
Joan, you're some cook. Will you adopt me?"
"You're over twenty-one."
"I could easily have him certified as incompetent," volunteered Coburn.
"Single women aren't favored for adoption."
"Marry me, and it will be all right-we can both adopt him and you can cook for 
all of us."
"Well, I won't say that I won't and I won't say that I will, but I will say that 
it's the best offer I've had today. What were you guys talking about?"
"Make him put it in writing, Joan. We were talking about Valdez."
"Oh! You were going to run those last tests yesterday, weren't you? How did you 
come out?"
"Absolutely negative insofar as his special clairvoyance was concerned. It's 
gone."
"Hmm-How about the control tests?"
"The Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Test showed exactly the same profile as before 
the accident, within the inherent limits of accuracy of the technique. His 
intelligence quotient came within the technique limit, too. Association tests 
didn't show anything either. By all the accepted standards of neuropsychology he 
is the same individual, except in two respects; he's minus a chunk of his 
cortex, and he is no longer able to see around corners. Oh, yes, and he's 
annoyed at losing that ability."
After a pause she answered, "That's pretty conclusive, isn't it?"
Huxley turned to Coburn. "What do you think, Ben?"
"Well, I don't know. You are trying to get me to admit that that piece of grey 
matter I cut out of his head gave him the ability to see in a fashion not 
possible to normal sense organs and not accounted for by orthodox medical 
theory, aren't you?"
"I'm not trying to make you admit anything. I'm trying to find out something."
"Well, since you put it that way, I would say if we stipulate that all your 
primary data were obtained with care under properly controlled conditions-"
"They were."
"-and that you have exercised even greater care in obtaining your negative 
secondary data."
"I have. Damn it, I tried for three weeks under all conceivable conditions."
"Then we have the inescapable conclusions, first-" He ticked them off on his 
fingers. "that this subject could see without the intervention of physical sense 
organs; and second, that this unusual, to put it mildly, ability was in some way 
related to a portion of his cerebrum in the dexter lobe."
"Bravo!" This was Joan's contribution.
"Thanks, Ben," acknowledged Phil. "I had reached the same conclusions, of 
course, but it's very encouraging to have someone else agree with me."
"Well, now that you are there, where are you?"
"I don't know exactly. Let me put it this way; I got into psychology for the 
same reason a person joins a church-because he feels an overpowering need to 
understand himself and the world around him. When I was a young student, I 
thought modern psychology could tell me the.answers, but I soon found out that 
the best psychologists didn't know a damn thing about the real core of the 
matter. Oh, I am not disparaging the work that has been done; it was badly 
needed and has been very useful in its way. None of 'em know what life is, what 
thought is, whether free will is a reality or an illusion, or whether that last 
question means anything. The best of 'em admit their ignorance; the worst of 
them make dogmatic assertions that are obvio us absurdities- for example some of 
the mechanistic behaviorists that think just because Pavlov could condition a 
dog to drool at the sound of a bell that, therefore, they knew all about how 
Paderewski made music!"
Joan, who had been lying quietly in the shade of the big liveoaks and listening, 
spoke up.
"Ben, you are a brain surgeon, aren't you?"
"One of the best," certified Phil.
"You've seen a lot of brains, furthermore you've seen 'em while they were alive, 
which is more than most psychologists have. What do you believe thought is? What 
do you think makes us tick?"
He grinned at her. "You've got me, kid. I don't pretend to know. It's not my 
business; I'm just a tinker."
She sat up. "Give me a cigaret, Phil. I've arrived just where Phil is, but by a 
different road.
My father wanted me to study law. I soon found out that I was more interested in 
the principles behind law and I changed over to the School of Philosophy. But 
philosophy wasn't the answer.
There really isn't anything to philosophy. Did you ever eat that cotton-candy 
they sell at fairs?
Well, philosophy is like that-it looks as if it were really something, and it's 
awfully pretty, and it tastes sweet, but when you go to bite it you can't get 
your teeth into it, and when you try to swallow, there isn't anything there. 
Philosophy is word-chasing, as significant as a puppy chasing its tail."
"I was about to get my Ph.D. in the School of Philosophy, when I chucked it and 
came to the science division and started taking courses in psyc hology. I 
thought that if I was a good little girl and patient, all would be revealed to 
me. Well, Phil has told us what that leads to. I began to think about studying 
medicine, or biology. You just gave the show away on that. Maybe it was a 
mistake to teach women to read and write."
Ben laughed. "This seems to be experience meeting at the village church; I might 
as well make my confession. I guess most medical men start out with a desire to 
know all about man and what makes him tick, but it's a big field, the final 
answers are elusive and there is always so much work that needs to be done right 
now, that we quit worrying about the final problems. I'm as interested as I ever 
was in knowing what life, and thought, and so forth, really are, but I have to 
have an attack of insomnia to find time to worry about them. Phil, are you 
seriously proposing to tackle such things?"
"In a way, yes. I've been gathering data on all sorts of phenomena that run 
contrary to orthodox psychological theory-all the junk that goes under the 
general name of metapsychics- telepathy, clairvoyance, so-called psychic 
manifestations, clair-audience, levitation, yoga stuff, stigmata, anything of 
that sort I can find."
"Don't you find that most of that stuff can be explained in an ordinary 
fashion?"
"Quite a lot of it, sure. Then you can strain orthodox theory all out of shape 
and ignore the statistical laws of probability to account for most of the rest. 
Then by attributing anything that is left over to charlatanism, credulity, and 
self- hypnosis, and refuse to investigate it, you can go peacefully back to 
sleep."
"Occam's razor," murmured Joan.."Huh?"
"William of Occam's Razor. It's a name for a principle in logic; whenever two 
hypotheses both cover the facts, use the simpler of the two. When a conventional 
scientist has to strain his orthodox theories all out of shape, 'til they 
resemble something thought up by Rube Goldberg, to account for unorthodox 
phenomena, he's ignoring the principle of Occam's Razor. It's simpler to draw up 
a new hypothesis to cover all the facts than to strain an old one that was never 
intended to cover the non-conforming data. But scientists are more attached to 
their theories than they are to their wives and families."
"My," said Phil admiringly, "to think that that came out from under a permanent 
wave."
"If you'll hold him, Ben, I'll beat him with this here thermos jug."
"I apologize. You're absolutely right, darling. I decided to forget about 
theories, to treat these outcast phenomena like any ordinary data, and to see 
where it landed me."
"What sort of stuff," put in Ben, "have you dug up, Phil?"
"Quite a variety, some verified, some mere rumor, a little of it carefully 
checked under laboratory conditions, like Valdez. Of course, you've heard of all 
the stunts attributed to Yoga.
Very little of it has been duplicated in the Western Hemisphere, which counts 
against it, nevertheless a lot of odd stuff in India has been reported by 
competent, cool- minded observers- telepathy, accurate soothsaying, 
clairvoyance, fire walking, and so forth."
"Why do you include fire walking in metapsychics?"
"On the chance that the mind can control the body and other material objects in 
some esoteric fashion."
"Hmm."
"Is the idea any more marvelous than the fact that you can cause your hand to 
scratch your head? We haven't any more idea of the actual workings of volition 
on matter in one case than in the other. Take the Tierra del Fuegans. They slept 
on the ground, naked, even in zero weather.
Now the body can't make any such adjustment in its economy. It hasn't the 
machinery; any physiologist will tell you so. A naked human being caught 
outdoors in zero weather must exercise, or die. But the Tierra del Fuegans 
didn't know about metabolic rates and such. They just slept-nice, and warm, and 
cozy."
"So far you haven't mentioned anything close to home. If you are going to allow 
that much latitude, my Grandfather Stonebender had much more wonderful 
experiences."
"I'm coming to them. Don't forget Valdez."
"What's this about Ben's grandfather?" asked Joan.
"Joan, don't ever boast about anything in Ben's presence. You'll find that his 
Grandfather Stonebender did it faster, easier, and better."
A look of more- in-sorrow-than-in-anger shone out of Coburn's pale blue eyes. 
"Why, Phil, I'm surprised at you. If I weren't a Stonebender myself, and 
tolerant, I'd be inclined to resent that remark. But your apology is accepted."
"Well, to bring matters closer home, besides Valdez, there was a man in my home 
town, Springfield, Missouri, who had a clock in his head."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean he knew the exact time without looking at a clock. If your watch 
disagreed with him, your watch was wrong. Besides that, he was a lightning 
calculator-knew the answer instantly to the most complicated problems in 
arithmetic you cared to put to him. In other ways he was feeble- minded."
Ben nodded. "It's a common phenomenon-idiots savant."."But giving it a name 
doesn't explain it. Besides which, while a number of the people with erratic 
talents are feeble- minded, not all of them are. I believe that by far the 
greater per cent of them are not, but that we rarely hear of them because the 
intelligent ones are smart enough to know that they would be annoyed by the 
crowd, possibly persecuted, if they let the rest of us suspect that they were 
different."
Ben nodded again. "You got something there, Phil. Go ahead."
"There have been a lot of these people with impossible talents who were not 
subnormal in other ways and who were right close to home. Boris Sidis, for 
example-"
"He was that child prodigy, wasn't he? I thought he played out?"
"Maybe. Personally, I think he grew cagy and decided not to let the other 
monkeys know that he was different. In any case he had a lot of remarkable 
talents, in intensity, if not in kind. He must have been able to read a page of 
print just by glancing at it, and he undoubtedly had complete memory. Speaking 
of complete memory, how about Blind Tom, the negro pianist who could play any 
piece of music he had ever heard once? Nearer home, there was this boy right 
here in Los Angeles County not so very many years ago who could play ping-pong 
blindfolded, or anything else, for which normal people require eyes. I checked 
him myself, and he could do it. And there was the Instantaneous Echo."
"You never told me about him, Phil," commented Joan. "What could he do?"
"He could talk along with you, using your words and intonations, in any language 
whether he knew the language or not. And he would keep pace with you so 
accurately that anyone listening wouldn't be able to tell the two of you apart. 
He could imitate your speech and words as immediately, as accurately, and as 
effortlessly as your shadow follows the movements of your body."
"Pretty fancy, what? And rather difficult to explain by behaviorist theory. Ever 
run across any cases of levitation, Phil?"
"Not of human beings. However I have seen a local medium-a nice kid, 
non-professional, used to live next door to me-make articles of furniture in my 
own house rise up off the floor and float. I was cold sober. It either happened 
or I was hypnotized; have it your own way.
Speaking of levitating, you know the story they tell about Nijinsky?"
"Which one?"
"About him floating. There are thousands of people here and in Europe (unless 
they died in the Collapse) who testify that in Le Spectre de la Rose he used to 
leap up into the air, pause for a while, then come down when he got ready. Call 
it mass hallucination-I didn't see it."
"Occam's Razor again," said Joan.
"So?"
"Mass hallucination is harder to explain than one man floating in the air for a 
few seconds.
Mass hallucination not proved-mustn't infer it to get rid of a troublesome fact. 
It's comparable to the 'There aint no sech animal' of the yokel who saw the 
rhinoceros for the first time."
"'Maybe so. Any other sort of trick stuff you want to hear about, Ben? I got a 
million of'em."
"How about forerunners, and telepathy?"
"Well, telepathy is positively proved, though still unexplained, by Dr. Rhine's 
experiments.
Of course a lot of people had observed it before then, with such frequency as to 
make questioning it unreasonable. Mark Twain, for example. He wrote about it 
fifty years before Rhine, with documentation and circumstantial detail. He 
wasn't a scientist, but he had hard common sense and shouldn't have been 
ignored. Upton Sinclair, too. Forerunners are a little harder. Every one has 
heard dozens of stories of hunches that came true, but they are hard to.follow 
up in most cases. You might try J. W. Dunne's Experiment with Time for a 
scientific record under controlled conditions of forerunners in dreams."
"Where does all this get you, Phil? You aren't just collecting 
Believe-It-Or-Nots?"
"No, but I had to assemble a pile of data-you ought to look over my 
notebooks-before I could formulate a working hypothesis. I have one now."
"Well?"
"You gave it to me-by operating on Valdez. I had begun to suspect sometime ago 
that these people with odd and apparently impossible mental and physical 
abilities were no different from the rest of us in any sense of abnormality, but 
that they had stumbled on potentialities inherent in all of us. Tell me, when 
you had Valdez' cranium open did you notice anything abnormal in its 
appearance?"
"No. Aside from the wound, it presented no special features."
"Very well. Yet when you excised that damaged portion, he no longer possessed 
his strange clairvoyant power. You took that chunk of his brain out of an 
uncharted area-no known function. Now it is a primary datum of psychology and 
physiology that large areas of the brain have no known function. It doesn't seem 
reasonable that the most highly developed and highly specialized part of the 
body should have large areas with no function; it is more reasonable to assume 
that the functions are unknown. And yet men have had large pieces of their 
cortices cut out without any apparent loss in their mental powers-as long as the 
areas controlling the normal functions of the body were left untouched.
"Now in this one case, Valdez, we have established a direct connection between 
an uncharted area of the brain and an odd talent, to wit, clairvoyance. My 
working hypothesis comes directly from that: All normal people are potentially 
able to exercise all (or possibly most) of the odd talents we have referred 
to-telepathy, clairvoyance, special mathematical ability, special control over 
the body and its functions, and so forth. The potential ability to do these 
things is lodged in the unassigned areas of the brain."
Coburn pursed his lips. "Mmm-I don't know. If we all have these wonderful 
abilities, which isn't proved, how is it that we don't seem able to use them?"
"I haven't proved anything-yet. This is a working hypothesis. But let me give 
you an analogy. These abilities aren't like sight, hearing, and touch which we 
can't avoid using from birth; they are more like the ability to talk, which has 
its own special centers in the brain from birth, but which has to be trained 
into being. Do you think a child raised exclusively by deaf-mutes would ever 
learn to talk? Of course not. To outward appearance he would be a deaf-mute."
"I give up," conceded Coburn. "You set up an hypothesis and made it plausible. 
But how are you going to check it? I don't see any place to get hold of it. It's 
a very pretty speculation, but without a working procedure, it's just fantasy."
Huxley rolled over and stared unhappily up through the branches. "That's the 
rub. I've lost my best wild talent case. I don't know where to begin."
"But, Phil," protested Joan. "You want normal subjects, and then try to develop 
special abilities in them. I think it's wonderful. When do we start?"
"When do we start what?"
"On me, of course. Take that ability to do lightning calculations, for example. 
If you could develop that in me, you'd be a magician. I got bogged down in first 
year algebra. I don't know the multiplication tables even now!"
 
Chapter Three "Every Man His Own Genius"
 
"Shall we get busy?" asked Phil.
"Oh, let's not," Joan objected. "Let's drink our coffee in peace and let dinner 
settle. We haven't seen Ben for two weeks. I want to hear what he's been doing 
up in San Francisco."
"Thanks, darling," the doctor answered, "but I'd much rather hear about the Mad 
Scientist and his Trilby."
"Trilby, hell," Huxley protested, "She's as independent as a hog on ice. 
However, we've got something to show you this time, Doc."
"Really? That's good. What?"
"Well, as you know, we didn't make much progress for the first couple of months. 
It was all up hill. Joan developed a fair telepathic ability, but it was erratic 
and unreliable. As for mathematical ability, she had learned her multiplication 
tables, but as for being a lightning calculator, she was a washout."
Joan jumped up, crossed between the men and the fireplace, and entered her tiny 
Pullman kitchen. "I've got to scrape these dishes and put them to soak before 
the ants get at 'em. Talk loud, so I can hear you.
"What can Joan do now, Phil?"
"I'm not going to tell you. You wait and see. Joan! Where's the card table?"
"Back of the couch. No need to shout. I can hear plainly since I got my Foxy 
Grandma Stream- lined Ear Trumpet."
"Okay, wench, I found it. Cards in the usual place?"
"Yes, I'll be with you in a moment." She reappeared whisking off a giddy kitchen 
apron, and sat down on the couch, hugging her knees. "The Great Gaga, the Ghoul 
of Hollywood is ready.
Sees all, knows all, and tells a darnsight more. Fortunetelling, teethpulling, 
and refined entertainment for the entire family."
"Cut out the clowning. We'll start out with a little straight telepathy. Throw 
every thing else out of gear. Shuffle the cards, Ben."
Coburn did so. "Now what?"
"Deal 'em off, one at a time, letting you and me see 'em, but not Joan. Call 'em 
off, kid."
Ben dealt them out slowly. Joan commenced to recite in a sing-song voice, "Seven 
of diamonds; jack of hearts; ace of hearts; three of spades; ten of diamonds; 
six of clubs; nine of spades; eight of clubs-"
"Ben, that's the first time I've ever seen you look amazed."
"Right through the deck without a mistake. Grandfather Stonebender couldn't have 
done better."
"That's high praise, chum. Let's try a variation. and sit out this one. Don't 
let me see them. I don't know how it will work, as we never worked with anyone 
else. Try it."
A few minutes later Coburn put down the last card. "Perfect! Not a 
mistake.".Joan got up and came over to the table. "How come this deck has two 
tens of hearts in it?"
She riffled through the deck, and pulled out one card. "Oh! You thought the 
seventh card was the ten of hearts; it was the ten of diamonds. See?"
"I guess I did," Ben admitted, "I'm sorry I threw you a curve. The light isn't 
any too good."
"Joan prefers artistic lighting effects to saving her eyes," explained Phil. 
"I'm glad it happened; it shows she was using telepathy, not clairvoyance. Now 
for a spot of mathematics. We'll skip the usual stunts like cube roots, 
instantaneous addition, logarithms of hyperbolic functions, and stuff. Take my 
word for it; she can do 'em. You can try her later on those simple tricks. 
Here's a little honey I shot in my own kitchen. It involves fast reading, 
complete memory, handling of unbelievable number of permutations and 
combinations, and mathematical investigation of alternatives. You play 
solitaire, Ben?"
"Sure."
"I want you to shuffle the cards thoroughly, then lay out a Canfield solitaire, 
dealing from left to right, then play it out, three cards at a time, going 
through the deck again and again, until you are stuck and can't go any farther."
"Okay. What's the gag?"
"After you have shuffled and cut, I want you to riffle the cards through once, 
holding them up so that Joan gets a quick glimpse of the index on each card. 
Then wait a moment.' Silently he did what he had been asked to do. Joan checked 
him. "You'll have to do it again, Ben. I saw only fifty-one cards."
"Two of them must have stuck together. I'll do it more carefully." He repeated 
it.
"Fifty-two that time. That's fine."
"Are you ready, Joan?"
"Yes, Phil. Take it down; hearts to the six, diamonds to the four, spades to the 
deuce, no clubs."
Coburn looked incredulous. "Do you mean that is the way this game is going to 
come out?"
"Try it and see."
He dealt the cards out from left to right, then played the game out slowly. Joan 
stopped him at one point. "No, play the king of hearts' stack into that space, 
rather than the king of spades.
The king of spades play would have gotten the ace of clubs out, but three less 
hearts would play out if you did so." Coburn made no comment, but did as she 
told him to do. Twice more she stopped him and indicated a different choice of 
alternatives.
The game played out exactly as she had predicted.
Coburn ran his hand through his hair and stared at the cards. "Joan," he said 
meekly, "does your head ever ache?"
"Not from doing that stuff. It doesn't seem to be an effort at all."
"You know," put in Phil, seriously, "there isn't any real reason why it should 
be a strain. So far as we know, thinking requires no expenditure of energy at 
all. A person ought to be able to think straight and accurately with no effort. 
I've a notion that it is faulty thinking that makes headaches."
"But how in the devil does she do it, Phil? It makes my head ache just to try to 
imagine the size of that problem, if it were worked out long hand by 
conventional mathematics."
"I don't know how she does it. Neither does she."
"Then how did she learn to do it?"
"We'll take that up later. First, I want to show you our piece de resistance."
"I can't take much more. I'm groggy now."."You'll like this."
"Wait a minute, Phil. I want to try one of my own. How fast can Joan read?"
"As fast as she can see."
"Hmm-". The doctor hauled a sheaf of typewritten pages out of his inside coat 
pocket. "I've got the second draft of a paper I've been working on. Let's try 
Joan on a page of it. Okay, Joan?"
He separated an inner page from the rest and handed it to her. She glanced at it 
and handed it back at once. He looked puzzled and said: "What's the matter?"
"Nothing. Check me as I read back." She started in a rapid singsong, "page 
four.-now according to Cunningham, fifth edition, page 547: "Another strand of 
fibres, videlicet, the fasciculus spinocerebellaris (posterior), prolonged 
upwards in the lateral fumiculus of the medulla spinallis, gradually leaves this 
portion of the medulla oblongata. This tract lies on the surface, and is-"
"That's enough, Joan, hold it. God knows how you did it, but you read and 
memorized that page of technical junk in a split second." He grinned slyly. "But 
your pronunciation was a bit spotty. Grandfather Stonebender's would have been 
perfect."
"What can you expect? I don't know what half of the words mean."
"Joan, how did you learn to do all this stuff?"
"Truthfully, Doctor, I don't know. It's something like learning to ride a 
bicycle-you take one spill after another, then one day you get on and just ride 
away, easy as you please. And in a week you are riding without handle-bars and 
trying stunts. It's been like that-I knew what I wanted to do, and one day I 
could. Come on, Phil's getting impatient."
Ben maintained a puzzled silence and permitted Phil to lead him to a little desk 
in the corner.
"Joan, can we use any drawer? OK. Ben, pick out a drawer in this desk, remove 
any articles you wish, add anything you wish. Then, without looking into the 
drawer, stir up the contents and remove a few articles and drop them into 
another drawer. I want to eliminate the possibility of telepathy."
"Phil, don't worry about my housekeeping. My large staff of secretaries will be 
only too happy to straighten out that desk after you get through playing with 
it."
"Don't stand in the way of science, little one. Besides," he added, glancing 
into a drawer, "this desk obviously hasn't been straightened for at least six 
months. A little more stirring up won't hurt it."
"Humph! What can you expect when I spend all my time learning parlor tricks for 
you?
Besides, I know where everything is."
"That's just what I am afraid of, and why I want Ben to introduce a little more 
of the random element-if possible. Go ahead, Ben."
When the doctor had complied and closed the drawer, Phil continued, "Better use 
pencil and paper on this one, Joan. First list everything you see in the drawer, 
then draw a little sketch to show approximate locations and arrangement."
"OK." She sat down at the desk and commenced to write rapidly: One large black 
leather handbag, six- inch ruler... Ben stopped her. "Wait a minute. This is all 
wrong. I would have noticed anything as big as a handbag."
She wrinkled her brow. "Which drawer did you say?"
'The second on the right."
"I thought you said the top drawer."."Well, perhaps I did." She started again: 
Brass paper knife, six assorted pencils and a red pencil, thirteen rubber bands, 
pearl-handled penknife... 'That must be your knife, Ben. It's very pretty; why 
haven't I seen it before?"
"I bought it in San Francisco. Good God, girl. You haven't seen it yet."
One paper of matches, advertising the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, eight letters and 
two bills, two ticket stubs, the Follies Burlesque Theatre-"Doctor, I'm 
surprised at you."
"Get on with your knitting."
"Provided you promise to take me the next time you go."
One fever thermometer with a pocket clip, art gum and a typewriter eraser, three 
keys, assorted, one lipstick. Max Factor #3, a scratch pad and some file cards, 
used on one side, one small brown paper sack containing one pair stockings, size 
nine, shade Creole.-"I'd forgotten that I had bought them; I searched all 
through the house for a decent pair this morning."
"Why didn't you just use your X-ray eyes, Mrs. Houdini?"
She looked startled. "Do you know, it just didn't occur to me. I haven't gotten 
around to trying to use this stuff yet."
"Anything else in the drawer?"
"Nothing but a box of notepaper. Just a sec: I'll make the sketch." She sketched 
busily for a couple of minutes, her tongue between her teeth, her eyes darting 
from the paper toward the closed drawer and back again. Ben inquired, "Do you 
have to look in the direction of the drawer to see inside it?"
"No, but it helps. It makes me dizzy to see a thing when I am looking away from 
it."
The contents and arrangement of the drawer were checked and found to be exactly 
as Joan had stated they were. Doctor Coburn sat quietly, making no comment, when 
they had finished.
Phil, slightly irked at his lack of demonstrativeness, spoke to him.
"Well, Ben, what did you think of it? How did you like it?"
"You know what I thought of it. You've proved your theory up to the hilt-but I'm 
thinking about the implications, some of the possibilities. I think we've just 
been handed the greatest boon a surgeon ever had to work with. Joan, can you see 
inside a human body?"
"I don't know. I've never-"
"Look at me."
She stared at him for a silent moment. "Why- why, I can see your heart beat! I 
can see-"
"Phil, can you teach me to see the way she does?"
Huxley rubbed his nose. "I don't know. Maybe-"
Joan bent over the big chair in which the doctor was seated. "Won't he go under, 
Phil?"
"Hell, no. I've tried everything but tapping his skull with a bungstarter. I 
don't believe there's any brain there to hypnotize."
"Don't be pettish. Let's try again. How do you feel, Ben?"
"All right, but wide awake." I'm going out of the room this time. Maybe I'm a 
distracting factor. Now be a good boy and go sleepy-bye." She left them.
Five minutes later Huxley called out to her, "Come on back in, kid. He's under." 
She came in and looked at Coburn where he lay sprawled in her big easy chair, 
quiet, eyes half closed.
"Ready for me?" she asked, turning to Huxley.
"Yes. Get ready." She lay down on the couch. "You know what I want; get in 
rapport with Ben as soon as you go under. Need any persuasion to get to 
sleep?".No.
"Very well, then-Sleep!"
She became quiet, lax.
"Are you under, Joan?"
"Yes, Phil."
"Can you reach Ben's mind?"
A short pause: "Yes."
"What do you find?"
"Nothing. It's like an empty room, but friendly. Wait a moment-he greeted me."
"Just a greeting. It wasn't in words."
"Can you hear me, Ben?"
"Sure, Phil."
"You two are together?"
"Yes. Yes, indeed."
"Listen to me, both of you, I want you to wake up slowly, remaining in rapport. 
Then Joan is to teach Ben how to perceive that which is not seen. Can you do 
it?"
"Yes, Phil, we can." It was as if one voice had spoken.
 
Chapter Four Holiday
 
"Frankly, Mr. Huxley, I can't understand your noncooperative attitude." The 
President of Western University let the stare from his slightly bulging eyes 
rest on the second button of Phil's vest. "You have been given every facility 
for sound useful research along lines of proven worth. Your program of 
instructing has been kept light in order that you might make use of your 
undoubted ability. You have been acting chairman of your sub-department this 
past semester.
Yet instead of profiting by your unusual opportunities, you have, by your own 
admission, been, shall we say, frittering away your time in the childish pursuit 
of old wives' tales and silly superstitions. Bless me, man, I don't understand 
it!"
Phil answered, with controlled exasperation, "But Doctor Brinckley, if you would 
permit me to show you-"
The president interposed a palm. "Please, Mr. Huxley. It is not necessary to go 
over that ground again. One more thing, it has come to my attention that you 
have been interfering in the affairs of the medical school."
"The medical school! I haven't set foot inside it in weeks."
"It has come to me from unquestioned authority that you have influenced Doctor 
Coburn to disregard the advice of the staff diagnosticians in performing 
surgical operations-the best diagnosticians, let me add, on the West Coast."
Huxley maintained his voice at toneless politeness. "Let us suppose for the 
moment that I have influenced Doctor Coburn-I do not concede the point-has there 
been any case in which Coburn's refusal to follow diagnosis has failed to be 
justified by the subsequent history of the case?"
'That is beside the point. The point is-I can't have my staff from one school 
interfering in the affairs of another school. You see the justice of that, I am 
sure."
"I do not admit that I have interfered. In fact, I deny it."
"I am afraid I shall have to be the judge of that." Brinckley rose from his desk 
and came around to where Huxley stood. "Now Mr. Huxley-may I call you Philip? I 
like to have my juniors in our institutio n think of me as a friend. I want to 
give you the same advice that I would give to my son. The semester will be over 
in a day or two. I think you need a vacation. The Board has made some little 
difficulty over renewing your contract inasmuch as you have not yet completed 
your doctorate. I took the liberty of assuring them that you would submit a 
suitable thesis this coming academic year-and I feel sure that you can if you 
will only devote your efforts to sound, constructive work. You take your vacatio 
n, and when you come back you can outline your proposed thesis to me. I am quite 
sure the Board will make no difficulty about your contract then."
"I had intended to write up the results of my current research for my 
thesis.".Brinckley's brows raised in polite surprise. "Really? But that is out 
of the question, my boy, as you know. You do need a vacation. Good-bye then; if 
I do not see you again before commencement, let me wish you a pleasant holiday 
now."
When a stout door separated him from the president, Huxley dropped his pretense 
of good manners and hurried across the campus, ignoring students and professors 
alike. He found Ben and Joan waiting for him at their favorite bench, looking 
across the La Brea Tar Pits toward Wilshire Boulevard.
He flopped down on the seat beside them. Neither of the men spoke, but Joan was 
unable to control her impatience. "Well, Phil? What did the old fossil have to 
say?"
"Gimme a cigaret." Ben handed him a pack and waited. "He didn't say much-just 
threatened me with the loss of my job and the ruination of my academic 
reputation if I didn't knuckle under and be his tame dog-all in the politest of 
terms of course."
"But Phil, didn't you offer to bring me in and show him the progress you had 
already made?"
"I didn't bring your name into it; it was useless. He knew who you were well 
enough-he made a sidelong reference to the inadvisability of young instructors 
seeing female students socially except under formal, fully chaperoned 
conditions-talked about the high moral tone of the university, and our 
obligation to the public!"
"Why, the dirty minded old so-and-so! I'll tear him apart for that!"
"Take it easy, Joan." Ben Coburn's voice was mild and thoughtful. "Just how did 
he threaten you, Phil?"
"He refused to renew my contract at this time. He intends to keep me on 
tenterhooks all summer, then if I come back in the fall and make a noise like a 
rabbit, he might renew-if he feels like it. Damn him! The thing that got me the 
sorest was a suggestion that I was slipping and needed a rest."
"What are you going to do?"
"Look for a job, I guess. I've got to eat."
"Teaching job?"
"I suppose so, Ben."
"Your chances aren't very good, are they, without a formal release from Western? 
They can blacklist you pretty effectively. You've actually got about as much 
freedom in the matter as a professional ballplayer."
Phil looked glum and said nothing. Joan sighed and looked out across the marshy 
depression surrounding the tar pits. Then she smiled and said, "We could lure 
old Picklepuss down here and push him in."
Both men smiled but did not answer. Joan muttered to herself something about 
sissies. Ben addressed Phil. "You know, Phil, the old boy's idea about a 
vacation wasn't too stupid; I could do with one myself."
"Anything in particular in mind?"
"Why, yes, more or less. I've been out here seven years and never really seen 
the state. I'd like to start out and drive, with no particular destination in 
mind.
Then we could go on up past Sacramento and into northern California. They say 
it's magnificent country up there. We could take in the High Sierras and the Big 
Trees on the way back."
"That certainly sounds inviting."
"You could take along your research notes and we could talk about your ideas as 
we drove. If you decided you wanted to write up some phase, we could just lay 
over while you did it.".Phil stuck out his hand. "It's a deal, Ben. When do we 
start?"
"As soon as the term closes."
"Let's see-we ought to be able to get underway late Friday afternoon then. Which 
car will we use, yours or mine?"
"My coupe ought to be about right. It has lots of baggage space."
Joan, who had followed the conversation with interest, broke in on them. "Why 
use your car, Ben? Three people can't be comfortable in a coupe."
"Three people? Wha' d'yu mean, three people? You aren't going, bright eyes."
"So? That's what you think. You can't get rid of me at this point; I'm the 
laboratory case. Oh no, you can't leave me behind."
"But Joan, this is a stag affair."
"Oh, so you want to get rid of me?"
"Now Joan, we didn't say that. It just would look like the devil for you to be 
barging about the country with a couple of men-"
"Sissies! Tissyprissles! Pantywaists! Worried about your reputations."
"No, we're not. We're worried about yours."
"It won't wash. No girl who lives alone has any reputation. She can be as pure 
as Ivory soap and the cats on the campus, both sexes, will take her to pieces 
anyway. What are you so scared of? We aren't going to cross any state lines." 
Coburn and Huxley exchanged the secret look that men employ when confronted by 
the persistence of an unreasonable woman.
"Look out, Joan!" A big red Santa Fe bus took the shoulder on the opposite side 
of the highway and slithered past. Joan switched the tail of the grey sedan 
around an oil tanker truck and trailer on their own side of the road before 
replying. When she did, she turned her head to speak directly to Phil who was 
riding in the back seat.
"What's the matter, Phil?"
"You darn near brought us into a head on collision with about twenty tons of the 
Santa Fe's best rolling stock!"
"Don't be nervous; I've been driving since I was sixteen and I've never had an 
accident."
"I'm not surprised; you'll never have but one. Anyhow," Phil went on, "can't you 
keep your eyes on the road? That's not too much to ask, is it?"
"I don't need to watch the road. Look." She turned her head far around and 
showed him that her eyes were jammed shut. The needle of the speedometer hovered 
around ninety.
"Joan! Please!"
She opened her eyes and faced front once more. "But I don't have to look in 
order to see.
You taught me that yourself, Smarty. Don't you remember?"
"Yes, yes, but I never thought you'd apply it to driving a car!"
"Why not? I'm the safest driver you ever saw; I can see everything that's on the 
road, even around a blind curve. If I need to, I read the other drivers' minds 
to see what they are going to do next."
"She's right, Phil. The few times I've paid attention to her driving she's been 
doing just exactly what I would have done in the same circumstances. That's why 
I haven't been nervous."
"All right. All right," Phil answered, "but would you two supermen keep in mind 
that there is a slightly nervous ordinary mortal in the back seat who can't see 
around corners?"
"I'll be good," said Joan soberly. "I didn't mean to scare you, Phil."."I'm 
interested," resumed Ben, "in what you said about not looking toward anything 
you wanted to see. I can't do it too satisfactorily. I remember once you said it 
made you dizzy to look away and still use direct perception."
"It used to, Ben, but I got over it, and so will you. It's just a matter of 
breaking old habits. To me, every direction is in 'front'-all around and up and 
down. I can focus my attention in any direction, or two or three directions at 
once. I can even pick a point of away from where I am physically, and look at 
the other side of things-but that is harder."
"You two make me feel like the mother of the Ugly Duckling," said Phil bitterly. 
"Will you still think of me kindly when you have passed beyond human 
communication?"
"Poor Phil!" exclaimed Joan, with sincere sympathy in her voice. "You taught us, 
but no one has bothered to teach you. Tell you what, Ben, let's stop tonight at 
an auto camp-pick a nice quiet one on the outskirts of Sacramento-and spend a 
couple of days doing for Phil what he has done for us."
"Okay by me. It's a good idea."
"That's mighty white of you, pardner," Phil conceded, but it was obvious that he 
was pleased and mollified. "After you get through with me will I be able to 
drive a car on two wheels, too?"
"Why not learn to levitate?" Ben suggested. "It's simpler-less expensive and 
nothing to get out of order."
"Maybe we will some day," returned Phil, quite seriously, "there's no telling 
where this line of investigation may lead."
"Yeah, you're right," Ben answered him with equal sobriety. "I'm getting so that 
I can believe seven impossible things before breakfast. What were you saying 
just before we passed that oil tanker?"
"I was just trying to lay before you an idea I've been mulling over in my mind 
the past several weeks. It's a big idea, so big that I can hardly believe it 
myself."
"Well, spill it."
Phil commenced checking points off on his fingers. "We've proved, or tended to 
prove, that the normal human mind has powers previously unsuspected, haven't 
we?"
"Tentatively-yes. It looks that way."
"Powers way beyond any that the race as a whole makes regular use of."
"Yes, surely. Go on."
"And we have reason to believe that these powers exist, have their being, by 
virtue of certain areas of the brain to which functions were not previously 
assigned by physiologists? That is to say, they have organic basis, just as the 
eye and the sight centers in the brain are the organic basis for normal sight?"
"Yes, of course."
"You can trace the evolution of any organ from a simple beginning to a complex, 
highly developed form. The organ develops through use. In an evolutiona ry sense 
function begets organ."
"Yes. That's elementary."
"Don't you see what that implies?"
Coburn looked puzzled, then a look of comprehension spread over his face. Phil 
continued, with delight in his voice, "You see it, too?" The conclusion is 
inescapable: there must have been a time when the entire race used these strange 
powers as easily as they heard, or saw, or smelled.
And there must have been a long, long period-hundreds of thousands, probably 
millions of years-during which these powers were developed as a race. 
Individuals couldn't do it, any.more than I could grow wings. It had to be done 
racially, over a long period of time. Mutation theory is no use either-mutation 
goes by little jumps, with use confirming the change. No indeed-these strange 
powers are vestigial-hangovers from a time when the whole race had 'em and used 
'em."
Phil stopped talking, and Ben did not answer him, but sat in a brown study while 
some ten miles spun past. Joan started to speak once, then thought better of it. 
Finally Ben commenced to speak slowly.
"I can't see any fault in your reasoning. It's not reasonable to assume that 
whole areas of the brain with complex functions 'jest growed'. But, brother, 
you've sure raised hell with modern anthropology."
"That worried me when I first got the notion, and that's why I kept my mouth 
shut. Do you know anything about anthropology?"
"Nothing except the casual glance that any medical student gets."
"Neither did I, but I had quite a lot of respect for it. Professor 
Whoosistwitehell would reconstruct one of our great grand-daddies from his 
collar bone and his store teeth and deliver a long dissertation on his most 
intimate habits, and I would swallow it, hook, line, and sinker, and be much 
impressed. But I began to read up on the subject. Do you know what I found?"
"Go ahead."
"In the first place there isn't a distinguished anthropologist in the world but 
what you'll find one equally distinguished who will call him a diamond-studded 
liar. They can't agree on the simplest elements of their alleged science. In the 
second place, there isn't a corporal's guard of really decent exhibits to back 
up their assertions about the ancestry of mankind. I never saw so much stew from 
one oyster. They write book after book and what have they got to go on?-The 
Dawson Man, the Pelkin Man, the Heidelberg Man and a couple of others. And those 
aren't complete skeletons, a damaged skull, a couple of teeth, maybe another 
bone or two."
"Oh now, Phil, there were lots of specimens found of Cro-Magnon men."
"Yes, but they were true men. I'm talking about submen, our evolutionary 
predecessors. You see, I was trying to prove myself wrong. If man's ascent had 
been a long steady climb, submen into savages, savages to barbarians, barbarians 
perfecting their cultures into civilization ... all this with only minor 
setbacks of a few centuries, or a few thousand years at the most ... and with 
our present culture the highest the race had ever reached ... If all that was 
true, then my idea was wrong.
"You follow me, don't you? The internal evidence of the brain proves that 
mankind, sometime in its lost history, climbed to heights undreamed of today. In 
some fashion the race slipped back. And this happened so long ago that we have 
found no record of it anywhere.
These brutish submen, that the anthropologists set such store by, can't be our 
ancestors; they are too new, too primitive, too young. They are too recent; they 
allow for no time for the race to develop these abilities whose existence we 
have proved. Either anthropology is all wet, or Joan can't do the things we have 
seen her do."
The center of the controversy said nothing. She sat at the wheel, as the big car 
sped along, her eyes closed against the slanting rays of the setting sun, seeing 
the road with an inner impossible sight.
Five days were spent in coaching Huxley and a sixth on the open road. Sacramento 
lay far behind them. For the past hour Mount Shasta had been visible from time 
to time through.openings in the trees. Phil brought the car to a stop on a view 
point built out from the pavement of U.S. Highway 99. He turned to his 
passengers. "All out, troops," he said. "Catch a slice of scenery."
The three stood and stared over the canyon of the Sacramento River at Mount 
Shasta, thirty miles away.
It was sweater weather and the air was as clear as a child's gaze. The peak was 
framed by two of the great fir trees which marched down the side of the canyon. 
Snow still lay on the slopes of the cone and straggled down as far as the 
timberline.
Joan muttered something. Ben turned his head, "What did you say, Joan?"
"Me? Nothing-I was saying over a bit of poetry to myself."
"What was it?"
"Tietjens' Most Sacred Mountain: " 'Space and the twelve clean winds are here; 
And with them broods eternity-a swift white peace, a presence manifest. The 
rhythm ceases here. Time has no place. This is the end that has no end.' "
Phil cleared his throat and self-consciously broke the silence. "I think I see 
what you mean."
Joan faced them. "Boys," she stated, "I am going to climb Mount Shasta."
Ben studied her dispassionately. "Joan," he pronounced, "You are full of hop."
"I mean it. I didn't say you were going to-I said I was.
"But we are responsible for your safety and welfare-and I for one don't relish 
the thought of a fourteen-thousand foot climb."
"You are not responsible for my safety; I'm a free citizen. Anyhow a climb 
wouldn't hurt you any; it would help to get rid of some of that fat you've been 
storing up against winter."
"Why," inquired Phil, "are you so determined so suddenly to make this climb?"
"It's really not a sudden decision, Phil. Ever since we left Los Angeles I've 
had a recurring dream that I was climbing, climbing, up to some high place ... 
and that I was very happy because of it. Today I know that it was Shasta I was 
climbing."
"How do you know it?"
"I know it."
"Ben, what do you think?"
The doctor picked up a granite pebble and shied it out in the general direction 
of the river. He waited for it to come to rest several hundred feet down the 
slope. "I guess," he said, "we'd better buy some hobnailed boots."
Phil paused and the two behind him on the narrow path were forced to stop, too. 
"Joan," he asked, with a worried tone, "is this the way we came?"
They huddled together, icy wind cutting at their faces like rusty razor blades 
and gusts of snow eddying about them and stinging their eyes, while Joan 
considered her answer. "I think so," she ventured at last, "but even with my 
eyes closed this snow makes everything look different."
"That's my trouble, too. I guess we pulled a boner when we decided against a 
guide . . . but who would have thought that a beautiful summer day could end up 
in a snow storm?"
Ben stamped his feet and clapped his hands together. "Let's get going," he 
urged. "Even if this is the right road, we've got the worst of it ahead of us 
before we reach the rest cabin. Don't forget that stretch of glacier we 
crossed."."I wish I could forget it," Phil answered him soberly. "I don't fancy 
the prospect of crossing it in this nasty weather."
"Neither do I, but if we stay here we freeze." With Ben now in the lead they 
resumed their cautious progress, heads averted to the wind, eyes half closed. 
Ben checked them again after a couple of hundred yards. "Careful, gang," he 
warned, "the path is almost gone here, and it's slippery," He went forward a few 
steps. "It's rather-" They heard him make a violent effort to recover his 
balance, then fall heavily. "Ben! Ben!," Phil called out, "are you all right?"
"I guess so," he gasped. "I gave my left leg an awful bang. Be careful."
They saw that he was on the ground, hanging part way over the edge of the path. 
Cautiously they approached until they were alongside him. "Lend me a hand, Phil. 
Easy, now,"
Phil helped him wiggle back onto the path. "Can you stand up?"
"I'm afraid not. My left leg gave me the devil when I had to move just now. Take 
a look at it, Phil. No, don't bother to take the boot off; look right through 
it."
"Of course. I forgot." Phil studied the limb for a moment. "It's pretty bad, 
fella-a fracture of the shin bone about four inches below the knee."
Coburn whistled a couple of bars of Suwannee River, then said, "Isn't that just 
too, too lovely?
Simple or compound fracture, Phil?"
"Seems like a clean break, Ben."
"Not that it matters much one way or the other just now. What do we do next?"
Joan answered him. "We must build a litter and get you down the mountain!"
"Spoken like a true girl scout, kid. Have you figured how you and Phil can 
maneuver a litter, with me in it, over that stretch of ice?"
"We'll have to-somehow." But her voice lacked confidence.
"It won't work, kid. You two will have to straighten me out and bed me down, 
then go on down the mountain and stir out a rescue party with proper equipment. 
I'll get some sleep while you're gone. I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me some 
cigarets."
"No!" Joan protested. "We won't leave you here alone."
Phil added his objections. "Your plan is as bad as Joan's, Ben. It's all very 
well to talk about sleeping until we get back, but you know as well as I do that 
you would die of exposure if you spent a night like this on the ground with no 
protection."
"I'll just have to chance it. What better plan can you suggest"
"Wait a minute. Let me think." He sat down on the ledge beside his friend and 
pulled at his left ear. This is the best I can figure out: We'll have to get you 
to some place that is a little more sheltered, and build a fire to keep you 
warm. Joan can stay with you and keep the fire going while I go down after 
help."
"That's all right," put in Joan, "except that I will be the one to go after 
help. You couldn't find your way in the dark and the snow, Phil. You know 
yourself that your direct perception isn't reliable as yet- you'd get lost."
Both men protested. "Joan, you're not going to start off alone."-"We can't 
permit that, Joan."
"That's a lot of gallant nonsense. Of course I'm going."
"No." It was a duet.
"Then we all stay here tonight, and huddle around a fire. I'll go down in the 
morning."
"That might do," Ben conceded, "if-"."Good evening, friends." A tall, elderly 
man stood on the ledge behind them. Steady blue eyes regarded them from under 
shaggy white eyebrows. He was smooth shaven but a mane of white hair matched the 
eyebrows. Joan thought he looked like Mark Twain.
Coburn recovered first. "Good evening," he answered, "if it is a good 
evening-which I doubt."
The stranger smiled with his eyes. "My name is Ambrose, ma'am. But your friend 
is in need of some assistance. If you will permit me, sir-" He knelt down and 
examined Ben's leg, without removing the boot. Presently he raised his head. 
"This will be somewhat painful. I suggest, son, that yo u go to sleep." Ben 
smiled at him, closed his eyes, and gave evidence by his slow, regular breathing 
that he was asleep.
The man who called himself Ambrose slipped away into the shadows. Joan tried to 
follow him with perception, but this she found curio usly hard to do. He 
returned in a few minutes with several straight sticks which he broke to a 
uniform length of about twenty inches. These he proceeded to bind firmly to 
Ben's left shin with a roll of cloth which he had removed from his trouser 
pocket.
When he was satisfied that the primitive splint was firm, he picked Coburn up in 
his arms, handling the not inconsiderable mass as if it were a child. "Come," he 
said.
They followed him without a word, back the way they had come, single file 
through the hurrying snowflakes. Five hundred yards, six hundred yards, then he 
took a turn that had not been on the path followed by Joan and the two men, and 
strode confidently away in the gloom.
Joan noticed that he was wearing a light cotton shirt with neither coat nor 
sweater, and wondered that he had come so far with so little protection against 
the weather. He spoke to her over his shoulder, "I like cold weather, ma'am."
He walked between two large boulders, apparently disappeared into the side of 
the mount ain.
They followed him and found themselves in a passageway which led diagonally into 
the living rock. They turned a corner and were in an octagonal living room, high 
ceilinged and panelled in some mellow, light-colored wood. It was softly 
illuminated by indirect lighting, but possessed no windows. One side of the 
octagon was a fireplace with a generous hearth in which a wood fire burned 
hospitably. There was no covering on the flagged floor, but it was warm to the 
feet.
The old man paused with his burden and indicated the comfortable fittings of the 
room-three couches.
 
Chapter Five "-Through a Glass, Darkly"
 
When Phil entered the living room the next morning he found a small table set 
with a very sound breakfast for three. While he was lifting plate covers and 
wondering whether good manners required him to wait until joined by others, Joan 
entered the room. He looked up.
"Oh! It's you. Good morning, and stuff. They set a proper table here. Look." He 
lifted a plate cover. "Did you sleep well?"
"Like a corpse." She joined his investigations. "They do understand food, don't 
they? When do we start?"
"When number three gets here, I guess. Those aren't the clothes you had on last 
night."
"Like it?" She turned around slowly with a swaying mannequin walk. She had on a 
pearl grey gown that dropped to her toes. It was high waisted; two silver cords 
crossed between her breasts and encircled her waist, making a girdle. She was 
shod in silver sandals. There was an air of ancient days about the whole 
costume.
"It's swell. Why is it a girl always looks prettier in simple clothes?"
"Simple-hmmf! If you can buy this for three hundred dollars on Wilshire 
Boulevard, I'd like to have the address of the shop."
"Hello, troops." Ben stood in the doorway. They both stared at him. "What's the 
trouble?"
Phil ran his eye down Ben's frame. "How's your leg, Ben?"
"I wanted to ask you about that. How long have I been out? The leg's all well. 
Wasn't it broken after all?"
"How about it, Phil?" Joan seconded. "You examined it, I didn't."
Phil pulled his ear. "It was broken-or I've gone completely screwy. Let's have a 
look at it."
Ben was dressed in pajamas and bathrobe. He slid up the pajama leg, and exposed 
a shin that was pink and healthy. He pounded it with his fist. "See that? Not 
even a bruise."
"Hmm-You haven't been out long, Ben. Just since last night. Maybe ten or eleven 
hours."
"Huh?"
"That's right."
"Impossible."
"Maybe so. Let's eat breakfast."
They ate in thoughtful silence, each under pressing necessity of taking stock 
and reaching some reasonable reorientation. Toward the end of the meal they all 
happened to look up at once.
Phil broke the silence, "Well . . . How about it?"
"I've just doped it out," volunteered Joan. "We all died in the snow storm and 
went to Heaven. Pass the marmalade, will you, please?"
"That can't be right," objected Phil, as he complied, "else Ben wouldn't be 
here. He led a sinful life. But seriously, things have happened which require 
explanation. Let's tick 'em off: One; Ben breaks a leg last night, it's all 
healed this morning."."Wait a minute-are we sure he broke his leg?"
"I'm sure. Furthermore, our host acted as if he thought so too-else why did he 
bother to carry him? Two; our host has direct perception, or an uncanny 
knowledge of the mountainside."
"Speaking of direct perception," said Joan, "have either of you tried to look 
around you and size up the place?"
"No, why?"
"Neither have I."
"Don't bother to. I tried, and it can't be done. I can't perceive past the walls 
of the room."
"Hmm-we'll put that down as point three. Four, our host says that his name is 
Ambrose Bierce. Does he mean that he is the Ambrose Bierce? You know who Ambrose 
Bierce was, Joan?"
"Of course I do-I got eddication. He disappeared sometime before I was born."
"That's right-at the time of the outbreak of the first World War. If this is the 
same man, he must be over a hundred years old."
"He didn't look that old by forty years."
"Well, we'll put it down for what it's worth. Point five-We'll make this one an 
omnibus point-why does our host live up here? How come this strange mixture of 
luxury hotel and cliff dwellers cave anyhow? How can one old man run such a 
joint? Say, have either of you seen anyone else around the place?"
"I haven't,' said Ben. "Someone woke me, but I think it was Ambrose."
"I have," offered Joan. "It was a woman who woke me. She offered me this dress."
"Mrs. Bierce, maybe?"
"I don't think so-she wasn't more than thirty- five. I didn't really get 
acquainted-she was gone before I was wide awake."
Phil looked from Joan to Ben. "Well, what have we got? Add it up and give us an 
answer."
"Good morning, young friends!" It was Bierce, standing in the doorway, his rich, 
virile voice resounding around the many-sided room. The three started as if 
caught doing something improper.
Coburn recovered first. He stood up and bowed. "Good morning, sir. I believe 
that you saved my life. I hope to be able to show my gratitude."
Bierce bowed formally. "What service I did I enjoyed doing, sir. I hope that you 
are all rested?"
"Yes, thank you, and pleasantly filled from your table."
"That is good. Now, if I may join you, we can discuss what you wish to do next. 
Is it your pleasure to leave, or may we hope to have your company for a while 
longer?'"
"I suppose, said Joan, rather nervously, that we should get started down as soon 
as possible.
How is the weather?"
"The weather is fair, but you are welcome to remain here as lo ng as you like. 
Perhaps you would like to see the rest of our home and meet the other members of 
our household?"
"Oh, I think that would be lovely!"
"It will be my pleasure, ma'am."
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Bierce-" Phil leaned forward a little, his face and 
manner serious.
"-we are quite anxious to see more of your place here and to know more about 
you. We were speaking of it when you came in."
"Curiosity is natural and healthy. Please ask any question you wish."."Well-" 
Phil plunged in. "Ben had a broken leg last night. Or didn't he? It's well this 
morning."
"He did indeed have a broken leg. It was healed in the night."
Coburn cleared his throat. "Mr. Bierce, my name is Coburn I am a physician and 
surgeon, but my knowledge does not extend to such healing as that. Will you tell 
me more about it?"
"Certainly. You are familiar with regeneration as practiced by the lower life 
forms. The principle used is the same, but it is consciously controlled by the 
will and the rate of healing is accelerated. I placed you in hypnosis last 
night, then surrendered control to one of our surgeons who directed your mind in 
exerting its own powers to heal its body."
Coburn looked baffled. Bierce continued, "There is really nothing startling 
about it. The mind and will have always the possibility of complete domination 
over the body. Our operator simply directs your will to master its body. The 
technique is simple; you may learn it, if you wish. I assure you that to learn 
it is easier than to explain it in our cumbersome and imperfect language. I 
spoke of mind and will as if they were separate. Language forced me to that 
ridiculous misstatement. There is neither mind, nor will, as entities; there is 
only-" His voice stopped. Ben felt a blow within his mind like the shock of a 
sixteen inch rifle, yet it was painless and gentle. What ever it was, it was as 
alive as a hummingbird, or a struggling kitten, yet it was calm and untroubled.
He saw Joan nodding her head in agreement, her eyes on Bierce.
Bierce went on in his gentle, resonant voice. "Was there any other matter 
troubling any one of you?"
"Why, yes, Mr. Bierce," replied Joan, "several things. What is this place where 
we are?"
"It is my home, and the home of several of my friends. You will understand more 
about us as you become better acquainted with us."
"Thank you. It is difficult for me to understand how such a community could 
exist on this mountain-top without its being a matter of common knowledge."
"We have taken certain precautions, ma'am, to avoid notoriety. Our reasons, and 
the precautions they inspired will become evident to you."
"One more question; this is rather personal; you may ignore it if you like. Are 
you the Ambrose Bierce who disappeared a good many years ago?"
"I am. I first came up here in 1880 in search of a cure for asthma. I retired 
here in 1914 because I wished to avoid direct contact with the tragic world 
events which I saw coming and was powerless to stop." He spoke with some 
reluctance, as if the subject were distasteful, and turned the conversation.
"Perhaps you would like to meet some of my friends now?"
The apartments extended for a hundred yards along the face of the mountain and 
for unmeasured distances into the mountain. The thirty-odd persons in residence 
were far from crowded; there were many rooms not in use. In the course of the 
morning Bierce introduced them to most of the inhabitants.
They seemed to be of all sorts and ages and of several nationalities. Most of 
them were occupied in one way, or another, usually with some form of research, 
or with creative art. At least Bierce assured them in several cases that 
research was in progress-cases in which no apparatus, no recording device, 
nothing was evident to indicate scientific research.
Once they were introduced to a group of three, two women and a man, who were 
surrounded by the physical evidence of their work-biological research. But the 
circumstances were still confusing; two of the trio sat quietly by, doing 
nothing, while the third labored at a bench..Bierce explained that they were 
doing some delicate experiments in the possibility of activating artificial 
colloids. Ben inquired, "Are the other two observing the work?" Bierce shook his 
head. "Oh, no. They are all three engaged actively in the work, but at this 
particular stage they find it expedient to let three brains in rapport direct 
one set of hands."
Rapport, it developed, was the usual method of collaboration. Bierce had led 
them into a room occupied by six persons. One or two of them looked up and 
nodded, but did not speak.
Bierce motioned for the three to come away. "They were engaged in a particularly 
difficult piece of reconstruction; it would not be polite to disturb them."
"But Mr. Bierce," Phil commented, "two of them were playing chess."
"Yes. They did not need that part of their brains, so they left it out of 
rapport. Nevertheless they were very busy."
It was easier to see what the creative artists were doing. In two instances, 
however, their methods were startling. Bierce had taken them to the studio of a 
little gnome of a man, a painter in oil, who was introduced simply as Charles. 
He seemed glad to see them and chatted vivaciously, without ceasing his work. He 
was doing, with meticulous realism but with a highly romantic effect, a study of 
a young girl dancing, a wood nymph, against a pine forest background.
The young people each made appropriate appreciative comments. Coburn commented 
that it was remarkable that he should be able to be so accurate in his 
anatomical detail without the aid of a model.
"But I have a model," he answered. "She was here last week. See?" He glanced 
toward the empty model's throne. Coburn and his companions followed the glance, 
and saw, poised on the throne, a young girl, obviously the model for the 
picture, frozen in the action of the painting.
She was as real as bread and butter.
Charles glanced away. The model's throne was again vacant.
The second instance was not so dramatic, but still less comprehensible. They had 
met, and chatted with, a Mrs. Draper, a comfortable, matronly soul, who knitted 
and rocked as they talked.
After they had left her Phil inquired about her.
"She is possibly our most able and talented artist," Bierce told him.
"In what field?"
Bierce's shaggy eyebrows came together as he chose his words. "I don't believe I 
can tell you adequately at this time. She composes moods-arranges emotional 
patterns in harmonic sequences. It's our most advanced and our most completely 
human form of art, and yet, until you have experienced it, it is very difficult 
for me to tell you about it."
"How is it possible to arrange emotions?"
"Your great grandfather no doubt thought it impossible to record music. We have 
a technique for it. You will understand later."
"Is Mrs. Draper the only one who does this?"
"Oh no. Most of us try our hand at it. It's our favorite art form. I work at it 
myself but my efforts aren't popular-too gloomy."
The three talked it over that night in the living room they had first entered. 
This suite had been set aside for their use, and Bierce had left them with the 
simple statement that he would call on them on the morrow.
They felt a pressing necessity to exchange views, and yet each was reluctant to 
express opinion. Phil broke the silence.."What kind of people are these? They 
make me feel as if I were a child who had wandered in where adults were working, 
but that they were too polite to put me out."
"Speaking of working-there's something odd about the way they work. I don't mean 
what it is they do-that's odd, too, but it's something else, something about 
their attitude, or the tempo at which they work."
"I know what you mean, Ben," Joan agreed, "they are busy all the time, and yet 
they act as if they had all eternity to finish it. Bierce was like that when he 
was strapping up your leg. They never hurry." She turned to Phil. "What are you 
frowning about?"
"I don't know. There is something else we haven't mentioned yet. They have a lot 
of special talents, sure, but we three know something about special talents-that 
ought not to confuse us.
But there is something else about them that is different."
The other two agreed with him but could offer no help. Sometime later Joan said 
that she was going to bed and left the room. The two men stayed for a last 
cigaret.
Joan stuck her head back in the room. "I know what it is that is so different 
about these people," she anounced,-"They are so alive."
 
Chapter Six Ichabod!
 
Philip Huxley went to bed and to sleep as usual. From there on nothing was 
usual.
He became aware that he was inhabiting another's body, thinking with another's 
mind. The Other was aware of Huxley, but did not share Huxley's thoughts.
The Other was at home, a home never experienced by Huxley, yet familiar. It was 
on Earth, incredibly beautiful, each tree and shrub fitting into the landscape 
as if placed there in the harmonic scheme of an artist. The house grew out of 
the ground.
The Other left the house with his wife and prepared to leave for the capital of 
the planet.
Huxley thought of the destination as a "capital" yet he knew that the idea of 
government imposed by force was foreign to the nature of these people. The 
"capital" was merely the accustomed meeting place of the group whose advice was 
followed in matters affecting the entire race.
The Other and his wife, accompanied by Huxley's awareness, stepped into the 
garden, shot straight up into the air, and sped over the countryside, flying 
hand in hand. The country was green, fertile, park- like, dotted with occasional 
buildings, but nowhere did Huxley see the jammed masses of a city.
They passed rapidly over a large body of water, perhaps as large as the modern 
Mediterranean, and landed in a clearing in a grove of olive trees.
The Young Men-so Huxley thought of them- demanded a sweeping change in custom, 
first, that the ancient knowledge should henceforth be the reward of ability 
rather than common birthright, and second, that the greater should rule the 
lesser. Loki urged their case, his arrogant face upthrust and crowned with 
bright red hair. He spoke in words, a method which disturbed Huxley's host, 
telepathic rapport being the natural method of mature discussion. But Loki had 
closed his mind to it.
Jove answered him, speaking for all: "My son, your words seem vain and without 
serious meaning. We can not tell your true meaning, for you and your brothers 
have decided to shut your minds to us. You ask that the ancient knowledge be 
made the reward of ability. Has it not always been so? Does our cousin, the ape, 
fly through the air? Is not the infant soul bound by hunger, and sleep, and the 
ills of the flesh? Can the oriole level the mountain with his glance? The powers 
of our kind that set us apart from the younger spirits on this planet are now 
exercised by those who possess the ability, and none other. How can we make that 
so which is already so?
"You demand that the greater shall rule the lesser. Is it not so now? Has it not 
always been so? Are you ordered about by the babe at the breast? Does the waving 
of the grass cause the wind? What dominion do you desire other than over 
yourself? Do you wish to tell your brother when to sleep and when to eat? If so, 
to what purpose?"
Vulcan broke in while the old man was still speaking. Huxley felt a stir of 
shocked repugnance go through the council at this open disregard of good 
manners.."Enough of this playing with words. We know what we want; you know what 
we want. We are determined to take it, council or no. We are sick of this 
sheeplike existence. We are tired of this sham equality. We intend to put on end 
to it. We are the strong and the able, the natural leaders of mankind. The rest 
shall follow us and serve us, as is the natural order of things."
Jove's eyes rested thoughtfully on Vulcan's crooked leg. "You should let me heal 
that twisted limb, my son.
"No one can heal my limb!"
"No. No one but yourself. And until you heal the twist in your mind, you can not 
heal the twist in your limb."
"There is no twist in my mind!"
"Then heal your limb."
The young man stirred uneasily. They could see that Vulcan was making a fool of 
himself.
Mercury separated himself from the group and came forward.
"Hear me. Father. We do not purpose warring with you. Rather it is our intention 
to add to your glory. Declare yourself king under the sun. Let us be your 
legates to extend your rule to every creature that walks, or crawls, or swims. 
Let us create for you the pageantry of dominion, the glory of conquest. Let us 
conserve the ancient knowledge for those who understand it, and provide instead 
for lesser beings the drama they need. There is no reason why every way should 
be open to everyone. Rather, if the many serve the few, then will our combined 
efforts speed us faster on our way, to the profit of master and servant alike. 
Lead us. Father! Be our King!"
Slowly the elder man shook his head. "Not so. There is no knowledge, other than 
knowledge of oneself, and that should be free to every man who has the wit to 
learn. There is no power, other than the power to rule oneself, and that can be 
neither given, nor taken away. As for the poetry of empire, that has all been 
done before. There is no need to do it again. If such romance amuses you, enjoy 
it in the records-there is no need to bloody the planet again."
"That is the final word of the council. Father?"
"That is our final word." He stood up and gathered his robe about him, 
signifying that the session had ended. Mercury shrugged his shoulders and joined 
his fellows.
There was one more session of the council-the last-called to decide what to do 
about the ultimatum of the Young Men. Not every member of the council thought 
alike; they were as diverse as any group of human beings. They were human 
beings- not supermen. Some held out for opposing the Young Men with all the 
forces at their command-translate them to another dimension, wipe their minds 
clean, even crush them by major force.
But to use force on the Young Men was contrary to their whole philosophy. "Free 
will is the primary good of the Cosmos. Shall we degrade, destroy, all that we 
have worked for by subverting the will of even one man?"
Huxley became aware that these Elders had no need to remain on Earth. They were 
anxious to move on to another place, the nature of which escaped Huxley, save 
that it was not of the time and space he knew.
The issue was this: Had they done what they could to help the incompletely 
developed balance of the race? Were they justified in abdicating?
The decision was yes, but a female member of the council, whose name, it seemed 
to Huxley, was Demeter, argued that records should be left to help those who 
survived the inevitable collapse. "It is true that each member of the race must 
make himself strong, must make himself wise. We cannot make them wise. Yet, 
after famine and war and hatred have stalked the earth, should there not be a 
message, telling them of their heritage?".The council agreed, and Huxley's host, 
recorder for the council, was ordered to prepare records and to leave them for 
those who would come after. Jove added an injunction: "Bind the force patterns 
so that they shall not dissipate while this planet endures. Place them where 
they will outlast any local convulsions of the crust, so that some at least will 
carry down through time."
So ended that dream. But Huxley did not wake-he started at once to dream another 
dream, not through the eyes of another, but rather as if he watched a stereo- 
movie, every scene of which was familiar to him.
The first dream, for all its tragic content, had not affected him tragically; 
but throughout the second dream he was oppressed by a feeling of heartbreak and 
overpowering weariness.
After the abdication of the Elders, the Young Men carried out their purpose, 
they established their rule. By fire and sword, searing rays and esoteric 
forces, chicanery and deception.
Convinced of their destiny to rule, they convinced themselves that the end 
justified the means.
The end was empire-Mu, mightiest of empires and mother of empires.
Huxley saw her in her prime and felt almost that the Young Men had been 
right-for she was glorious! The heart-choking magnificence filled his eyes with 
tears; he mourned for the glory, the beautiful breathtaking glory that was hers, 
and is no more.
Gargantuan silent liners in her skies, broadbeamed vessels at her wharves, 
loaded with grain and hides and spices, procession of priest and acolyte and 
humble believer, pomp and pageantry of power-he saw her intricate patterns of 
beauty and mourned her passing.
But in her swelling power there was decay. Inevitably Atlantis, her richest 
colony, grew to political maturity and was irked by subordinate status. Schism 
and apostasy, disaffection and treason, brought harsh retaliation-and new 
rebellion.
Rebellions rose, were crushed. At last one rose that was not crushed. In less 
than a month two-thirds of the people of the globe were dead; the remainder were 
racked by disease and hunger, and left with germ plasm damaged by the forces 
they had loosed. But priests still held the ancient knowledge.
Not priests secure in mind and proud of their trust, but priests hunted and 
fearful, who had seen their hierarchy totter. There were such priests on both 
sides-and they unchained forces compared with which the previous fighting had 
been gentle.
The forces disturbed the isostatic balance of the earth's crust.
Mu shuddered and sank some two thousand feet. Tidal waves met at her middle, 
broke back, surged twice around the globe, climbed the Chinese plains, lapped 
the feet of Alta Himalaya.
Atlantis shook and rumbled and split for three days before the water covered it. 
A few escaped by air, to land on ground still wet with the ooze of exposed 
seabottom, or on peaks high enough to fend off the tidal waves. There they had 
still to wring a living from the bare soil, with minds unused to primitive 
art-but some survived.
Of Mu there was not a trace. As for Atlantis, a few islands, mountaintops short 
days before, marked the spot. Waters rolled over the twin Towers of the Sun and 
fish swam through the gardens of the viceroy.
The woebegone feeling which had pursued Huxley now overwhelmed him. He seemed to 
hear a voice in his head: "Woe! Cursed be Loki! Cursed be Venus! Cursed be 
Vulcan! Thrice cursed am I, their apostate servant, Orab, Archpriest of the 
Isles of the Blessed. Woe is me! Even as I curse I long for Mu, mighty and 
sinful. Twenty-one years ago, seeking a place to die, on this mountaintop I 
stumbled on this record of the mighty ones who were before us. Twenty-one years 
I have.labored to make the record complete, searching the dim recesses of my 
mind for knowledge long unused, roaming the other planes for knowledge I never 
had. Now in the eight hundred and ninety-second year of my life, and of the 
destruction of Mu the three hundred and fifth, I, Orab, return to my fathers." 
Huxley was very happy to wake up.
 
Chapter Seven "The Fathers Have Eaten Sour Grapes, and the Children's Teeth Are 
Set on Edge"
 
Ben was in the living room when Phil came in to breakfast. Joan arrived almost 
on Phil's heels. There were shadows under her eyes and she looked unhappy. Ben 
spoke in a tone that was almost surly, "What's troubling you, Joan? You look 
like the wrath to come."
"Please, Ben," she answered, in a tired voice, "don't heckle me. I've had bad 
dreams all night,"
"That so? Sorry-but if you think you had bad dreams all night, you should have 
seen the cute little nightmares I've been riding."
Phil looked at the two of them. "Listen-have you both had odd dreams all night?"
"Wasn't that what we were just saying?" Ben sounded exasperated.
"What did you dream about?"
Neither one answered him.
"Wait a minute. I had some very strange dreams myself." He pulled his notebook 
out of a pocket and tore out three sheets. "I want to find out something. Will 
you each write down what your dreams were about, before anyone says anything 
more? Here's a pencil, Joan."
They balked a little, but complied.
"Read them aloud, Joan."
She picked up Ben's slip and read, " 'I dreamed that your theory about the 
degeneracy of the human race was perfectly correct.' "
She put it down and picked up Phil's slip. " 'dreamt that I was present at the 
Twilight of the Gods, and that I saw the destruction of Mu and Atlantis.' "
There was dead silence as she took the last slip, her own.
"My dream was about how the people destroyed themselves by rebelling against 
Odin."
Ben was first to commit himself. "Anyone of those slips could have applied to my 
dreams."
Joan nodded. Phil got up again, went out, and returned at once with his diary. 
He opened it and handed it to Joan.
"Kid, will you read that aloud-starting with 'June sixteenth'?"
She read it through slowly, without looking up from the pages. Phil waited until 
she had finished and closed the book before speaking. "Well," he said, "well?"
Ben crushed out a cigaret which had burned down to his fingers. "It's a 
remarkably accurate description of my dream, except that the elder you call 
Jove, I thought of as Ahuramazda."
"And I thought Loki was Lucifer."
"You're both right," agreed Phil. "I don't remember any spoken names for any of 
them. It just seemed that I knew what their names were."
"Me, too."."Say," interjected Ben, "we are talking as if these dreams were 
real-as if we had all been to the same movie."
Phil turned on him. "Well, what do you think?"
"Oh, the same as you do, I guess. I'm stumped. Does anybody mind if I eat 
breakfast-or drink some coffee, at least?"
Bierce came in before they had a chance to talk it over after breakfast-by tacit 
consent they had held their tongues during a sketchy meal.
"Good morning, ma'am. Good morning, gentlemen."
"Good morning, Mr. Bierce."
"I see," he said, searching their faces, "that none of you look very happy this 
morning. That is not surprising; no one does immediately after experiencing the 
records."
Ben pushed back his chair and leaned across the table at Bierce. "Those dreams 
were deliberately arranged for us?"
"Yes, indeed-but we were sure that yo u were ready to profit by them. But I have 
come to ask you to interview the Senior. If you can hold your questions for him, 
it will be simpler."
"The Senior?"
"You haven't met him as yet. It is the way we refer to the one we judge best 
fitted to coordinate our activities."
Ephraim Howe had the hills of New England in his face, lean gnarled cabinet- 
maker's hands.
He was not young. There was courtly grace in his lanky figure. Everything about 
him-the twinkle in his pale blue eyes, the clasp of his hand, his drawl-bespoke 
integrity.
"Sit yourselves down," he said, "I'll come straight to the point"-he called it 
'pint.' "You've been exposed to a lot of curious things and you've a right to 
know why. You've seen the Ancient Records now-part of 'em. I'll tell you how 
this institution came about, what it's for, and why you are going to be asked to 
join us."
"Wait a minute, Waaaait a minute," he added, holding up a hand. "Don't say 
anything just yet..."
When Fra Junipero Serra first laid eyes on Mount Shasta in 1781, the Indians 
told him it was a holy place, only for medicine men. He assured them that he was 
a medicine man, serving a greater Master, and to keep face, dragged his sick, 
frail old body up to the snow line, where he slept before returning.
The dream he had there-of the Garden of Eden, the Fall, and the Deluge-convinced 
him that it was indeed a holy place. He returned to San Francisco, planning to 
found a mission at Shasta. But there was too much for one old man to do-so many 
souls to save, so many mouths to feed. He surrendered his soul to rest two years 
later, but laid an injunction on a fellow monk to carry out his intention, It is 
recorded that this friar left the northernmost mission in 1785 and did not 
return.
The Indians fed the holy man who lived on the mountain until 1843, by which time 
he had gathered about him a group of neophytes, three Indians, a Russian, a 
Yankee mountainman. The Russian carried on after the death of the friar until 
joined by a Chinese, fled from his indenture.
The Chinese made more progress in a few weeks than the Russian had in half of a 
lifetime; the Russian gladly surrendered first place to him.
The Chinese was still there over a hundred years later, though long since 
retired from administration. He tutored in esthetics and humor.."And this 
establishment has just one purpose," continued Ephraim Howe. "We aim to see to 
it that Mu and Atlantis don't happen again. Everything that the Young Men stood 
for, we are against.
"We see the history of the world as a series of crises in a conflict between two 
opposing philosophies. Ours is based on the notion that life, consciousness, 
intelligence, ego is the important thing in the world." For an instant only he 
touched them telepathically; they felt again the vibrantly alive thing that 
Ambrose Bierce had showed them and been unable to define in words. "That puts us 
in conflict with every force that tends to destroy, deaden, degrade the human 
spirit, or to make it act contrary to its nature. We see another crisis 
approaching; we need recruits. You've been selected.
"This crisis has been growing on us since Napoleon. Europe has gone, and Asia- 
surrendered to authoritarianism, nonsense like the 'leader principle,' 
totalitarianism, all the bonds placed on liberty which treat men as so many 
economic and political units with no importance as individuals. No dignity-do 
what you're told, believe what you are told and shut your mouth!
Workers, soldiers, breeding units . . . "
"If that were the object of life, the re would have been no point in including 
consciousness in the scheme at all!"
"This continent," Howe went on, "has been a refuge of freedom, a place where the 
soul could grow. But the forces that killed enlightenment in the rest of the 
world are spreading here. Little by little they have whittled away at human 
liberty and human dignity. A repressive law, a bullying school board, a blind 
dogma to be accepted under pain of persecution-doctrines that will shackle men 
and put blinders on their eyes so that they will never regain their lost 
heritage."
"We need help to fight it."
Huxley stood up. "You can count on us."
Before Joan and Coburn could speak the Senior interposed. "Don't answer yet. Go 
back to your chambers and think about it. Sleep on it. We'll talk again."
 
Chapter Eight "Precept Upon Precept . . ."
 
Had the place on Mount Shasta been a university and possessed a catalog (which 
it did not), the courses offered therein might have included the following; 
TELEPATHY. Basic course required of all students not qualified by examination. 
Practical instruction up to and including rapport. Prerequisite in all 
departments. Laboratory.
RATIOCINATION, I, II, III, IV. R.I. Memory. R.II. Perception; clairvoyance, 
clairaudience, discretion of mass, -time, -and-space, non-mathematical relation, 
order, and structure, harmonic form and interval. R.III. Dual and parallel 
thought processes. Detachment. R.IV. Meditation (seminar) AUTOKINETICS. Discrete 
kinesthesia. Endocrine control with esp. application to the affective senses and 
to suppression of fatigue, regeneration, transformation (clinical aspects of 
lycanthropy), sex determination, inversion, autoanaesthesia, rejuvenation.
TELEKINETICS. Life-mass-space-time continua. Prerequisite; autokinetics. 
Teleportation and general action at a distance. Projection. Dynamics. Statics. 
Orientation.
HISTORY. Courses by arrangement. Special discussions of psychometry with 
reference to telepathic records, and of metempsychosis. Evaluation is a 
prerequisite for all courses in this department.
HUMAN ESTHETICS. Seminar. Autokinetics and technique of telepathic recording 
(psychometry) a prerequisite.
HUMAN ETHICS. Seminar. Given concurrently with all other courses. Consult with 
instructor.
Perhaps some of the value of the instruction would have been lost had it been 
broken up into disjointed courses as outlined above. In any case the adepts on 
Mount Shasta could and did instruct in all these subjects. Huxley, Coburn, and 
Joan Freeman learned from tutors who led them to teach themselves, and they took 
it as an eel seeks the sea, with a sense of returning home after a long absence.
All three made rapid progress; being possessed of rudimentary perception and 
some knowledge of telepathy, their instructors could teach them directly. First 
they learned to control their bodies. They regained the control over each 
function, each muscle each tissue, each gland, that a man should possess but has 
largely forgotten-save a few obscure students in the far east.
There was a deep, welling delight in willing the body to obey and having it 
comply. They became intimately aware of their bodies, but their bodies no longer 
tyrannized them. Fatigue, hunger, cold, pain-these things no longer drove them, 
but rather were simply useful signals that a good engine needed attention.
Nor did the engine need as much attention as before; the body was driven by a 
mind that knew precisely both the capacity and its limitations. Furthermore, 
through understanding their bodies, they were enabled to increase those 
capacities to their full potential. A week of sustained activity, without rest, 
or food, or water, was as easy as a morning's work had been. As for.mental 
labor, it did not cease at all, save when they willed it-despite sleep, 
digestive languor, ennui, external stimuli, or muscular activity.
The greatest delight was levitation.
To fly through the air, to hang suspended in the quiet heart of a cloud, to 
sleep, like Mohamet, floating between ceiling and floor-these were sensuous 
delights unexpected, and never before experienced, except in dreams, dimly. Joan 
in particular drank this new joy with lusty abandon.
Once she remained away two days, never setting foot to ground, sharing the sky 
and wind and swallow, the icy air of the heights smoothing her bright body. She 
dove and soared, looped and spiralled, and dropped, a dead weight, knees drawn 
up to forehead, from stratosphere to treetop.
During the night she paced a transcontinental plane, flying unseen above it for 
a thousand miles. When she grew bored with this, she pressed her face for a 
moment against the one lighted port of the plane, and looked inside. The 
startled wholesale merchant who stared back into her eyes thought that he had 
been vouchsafed a glimpse of an angel. He went promtly from the airport of his 
destination to the office of his lawyer, who drew up for him a will establishing 
scholarships for divinity students.
Huxley found it difficult to learn to levitate. His inquiring mind demanded a 
reason why the will should apparently be able to set at naught the inexorable 
"law" of gravitation, and his doubt dissipated his volition. His tutor reasoned 
with him patiently.
"You know that intangible will can affect the course of mass in the continuum; 
you experience it whenever you move your hand. Are you powerless to move your 
hand because you can not give a full rational explanation of the mystery? Life 
has power to affect matter; you know that-you have experienced it directly. It 
is a fact. Now there is no 'why' about any fact in the unlimited sense in which 
you ask the question. There it stands, serene, demonstrating itself.
One may observe relations between facts, the relations being other facts, but to 
pursue those relations back to final meanings is not possible to a mind which is 
itself relative. First you tell me why you are . . .then I will tell you why 
levitation is possible.
"Now come," he continued, "place yourself in rapport with me, and try to feel 
how I do, as I levitate."
Phil tried again. "I don't get it," he concluded miserably.
"Look down."
Phil did so, gasped, and fell three feet to the floor. That night he joined Ben 
and Joan in a flight over the High Sierras.
Their tutor enjoyed with quiet amusement the zest with which they entered into 
the sport made possible by the newly acquired mastery of their bodies. He knew 
that their pleasure was natural and healthy, suited to their stage of 
development, and he knew that they would soon learn, of themselves, its relative 
worth, and then be ready to turn their minds to more serious work.
"Oh, no. Brother Junipero wasn't the only man to stumble on the records," 
Charles assured them, talking as he painted. "You must have noticed how high 
places have significance in the religions of every race. Some of them must be 
repositories of the ancient records."
"Don't you know for certain?" asked Phil.
"Indeed yes, in many cases-Alta Himalaya, for example. I was speaking of what an 
intelligent man might infer from matters of common knowledge. Consider how many 
mountains are of prime importance in as many different religions. Mount Olympus, 
Popocatepetl, Mauna.Loa, Everest, Sinai, Tai Shan, Ararat, Fujiyama, several 
places in the Andes. And in every religion there are accounts of a teacher 
bringing back inspired messages from high places- Gautama, Jesus, Joseph Smith, 
Confucius, Moses. They all come down from high places and tell stories of 
creation, and downfall, and redemption.
"Of all the old accounts the best is found in Genesis. Making allowance for the 
fact that it was first written in the language of uncivilized nomads, it is an 
exact, careful account."
Huxley poked Coburn in the ribs. "How do you like that, my skeptical friend?" 
Then to Charles, "Ben has been a devout atheist since he first found out that 
Santa Claus wore false whiskers; it hurts him to have his fondest doubts 
overturned."
Coburn grinned, unperturbed. "Take it easy, son, I can express my own doubts, 
unassisted.
You've brought to mind another matter, Charles. Some of these mountains don't 
seem old enough to have been used for the ancient records-Shasta, for example. 
It's volcanic and seems a little new for the purpose.
Charles went rapidly ahead with his painting as he replied. "You are right. It 
seems likely that Orab made copies of the original record which he found, and 
placed the copies with his supplement on several hiding places around the globe. 
And it is possible that others after Orab, but long before our time, read the 
records and moved them for safekeeping. The copy that Junipero Serra found may 
have been here a mere twenty thousand years, or so."
 
Chapter Nine Fledglings Fly
 
"We could hang around here for fifty years, learning new things, but in the mean 
time we wouldn't be getting anywhere. I, for one, am ready to go back." Phil 
crushed out a cigaret and looked around at his two friends.
Coburn pursed his lips and slowly nodded his head. "I feel the same way, Phil. 
There is no limit to what we could learn here, of course, but there comes a time 
when you just have to use some of the things you leam, or it just boils up 
inside. I think we had better tell the Senior, and get about doing it."
Joan nodded vigorously. "Uh huh. I think so, too. There's work to be done, and 
the place to do it is Western U.-not up here in Never-Never land. Boy, I can 
hardly wait to see old Brinckley's face when we get through with him!"
Huxley sought out the mind of Ephraim Howe. The other two waited for him to 
confer, courteously refraining from attempting to enter the telepathic 
conversation. "He says he had been expecting to hear from us, and that he 
intends to make it a full conference. He'll meet us here."
"Full conference? Everybody on the mountain?"
"Everybody-on the mountain, or not. I gather it's customary when new members 
decide what their work will be."
"Whew!" exclaimed Joan, "that gives me stage fright just to think about it. 
Who's going to speak for us? It won't be little Joan."
"How about you, Ben?"
"Well. . . if you wish."
"Take over."
They meshed into rapport. As long as they remained so, Ben's voice would express 
the combined thought of the trio. Ephraim Howe entered alone but they were aware 
that he was in rapport with, and spokesman for, not only the adepts on the 
mountainside, but also the two-hundred- odd full- geniuses scattered about the 
country.
The conference commenced with direct mind-to- mind exchange: -"We feel that it 
is time we were at work. We have not learned all that there is to learn, it is 
true; ne vertheless, we need to use our present knowledge."
-"That is well and entirely as it should be, Benjamin. You have learned all that 
we can teach you at this time. Now you must take what you have learned out into 
the world, and use it, in order that knowledge may mature into wisdom."
-"Not only for that reason do we wish to leave, but for another more urgent. As 
you yourself have taught us, the crisis approaches. We want to fight it"
-"How do you propose to fight the forces bringing on the crisis?"
-"Well . . ." Ben did not use the word, but the delay in his thought produced 
the impression.
"As we see it, in order to make men free, free so that they may develop as men 
and not as.animals; it is necessary that we undo what the Young Men did. The 
Young Men refused to permit any but their own select few to share in the racial 
heritage of ancient knowledge. For men again to become free and strong and 
independent it is necessary to return to each man his ancient knowledge and his 
ancient powers."
-"That is true; what do you intend to do about it?"
-"We will go out and tell about it. We all three are in the educational system; 
we can make ourselves heard-I, in the medical school at Western; Phil and Joan 
in the department of psychology. With the training you have given us we can 
overturn the traditional ideas in short order. We can start a renaissance in 
education that will prepare the way for everyone to receive the wisdom that you, 
our elders, can offer them."
-"Do you think that it will be as simple as that?"
-"Why not? Oh, we don't expect it to be simple. We know that we will run head on 
into some of the most cherished misconceptions of everyone, but we can use that 
very fact to help. It will be spectacular; we can get publicity through it that 
will call attention to our work. You have taught us enough that we can prove 
that we are right. For example-suppose we put on a public demonstration of 
levitation, and proved before thousands of people that human mind could do the 
things we know it can? Suppose we said that anyone could learn such things who 
first learned the techniques of telepathy? Why, in a year, or two, the whole 
nation could be taught telepathy, and be ready for the reading of the records, 
and all that that implies!"
Howe's mind was silent for several long minutes-no message reached them. The 
three stirred uneasily under his thoughtful, sober gaze. Finally,-"If it were as 
simple as that, would we not have done it before?"
It was the turn of the three to be silent. Howe continued kindly,-"Speak up, my 
children.
Do not be afraid. Tell us your thoughts freely. You will not offend us.
The thought that Coburn sent in answer was hesitant-"If is difficult . . . Many 
of you are very old, and we know that all of you are wise. Nevertheless, it 
seems to us, in our youth, that you have waited overly long in acting. We 
feel-we feel that you have allowed the pursuit of understanding to son your will 
to action. From our standpoint, you have waited from year to year, perfecting an 
organization that will never be perfected, while the storm that overturns the 
world is gathering its force."
The elders pondered before Ephraim Howe answered.-"It may be that you are right, 
dearly beloved children, yet it does not seem so to us. We have not attempted to 
place the ancient knowledge in the hands of all men because few are ready for 
it. It is no more safe in childish minds than matches in childish hands.
-"And yet . . . you may be right. Mark Twain thought so, and was given 
permission to tell all that he had learned. He did so, writing so that anyone 
ready for the knowledge could understand. No one did. In desperation he set 
forth specifically how to become telepathic. Still no one took him seriously. 
The more seriously he spoke, the more his readers laughed. He died embittered.
-"We would not have you believe that we have done nothing. This republic, with 
its uncommon emphasis on personal freedom and human dignity, would not have 
endured as long as it has had we not helped. We chose Lincoln. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes was one of us. Walt Whitman was our beloved brother. In a thousand ways 
we have supplied help, when needed, to avert a setback toward slavery and 
darkness."
The thought paused, then continued.-"Yet each must act as he sees it. It is 
still your decision to do this?".Ben spoke aloud, in a steady voice, "It is!"
-"So let it be! Do you remember the history of Salem?"
-"Salem? Where the witchcraft trials were held? ... Do you mean to warn us that 
we may be persecuted as witches?"
-"No. There are no laws against witchcraft today, of course. It would be better 
if there were. We hold no monopoly on the power of knowledge; do not expect an 
easy victory. Beware of those who hold, some portion of the ancient knowledge 
and use it to a base purpose-witches -black magicians!"
The conference concluded and rapport loosed, Ephraim Howe shook hands solemnly 
all around and bade them goodby.
"I envy you kids," he said, "going off like Jack the Giant Killer to tackle the 
whole educatio nal system. You've got your work cut out for you. Do you remember 
what Mark Twain said? 'God made an idiot for practice, then he made a school 
board.' Still, I'd like to come along."
"Why don't you, sir?"
"Eh? No, 'twouldn't do. I don't really believe in your plan. F'r instance-it was 
frequently a temptation during the years I spent peddlin' hardware in the State 
of Maine to show people better ways of doing things. But I didn't do it; people 
are used to paring knives and ice cream freezers, and they won't thank you to 
show them how to get along without them, just by the power of the mind. Not all 
at once, anyhow. They'd read you out of meetin'-and lynch you, too, most 
probably.
"Still, I'll be keeping an eye on you."
Joan reached up and kissed him good-bye. They left.
 
Chapter Ten Lions Mouth
 
PHIL PICKED HIS LARGEST CLASS to make the demonstration which was to get the 
newspapers interested in them.
They had played safe to the extent of getting back to Los Angeles and started 
with the fall semester before giving anyone cause to suspect that they possessed 
powers out of ordinary. Joan had been bound over not to levitate, not to indulge 
in practical jokes involving control over inanimate objects, not to startle 
strangers with weird abilities of any sort. She had accepted the injunctions 
meekly, so meekly that Coburn claimed to be worried.
"It's not normal," he objected. "She can't grow up as fast as all that. Let me 
see your tongue, my dear."
'Pooh," she answered, displaying that member in a most undiagnostic manner, 
"Master Ling said I was further advanced along the Way than either one of you."
"The heathen Chinee is peculiar. He was probably just encouraging you to grow 
up.
Seriously, Phil, hadn't we better put her into a deep hypnosis and scoot her 
back up the mountain for diagnosis and readjustment?"
"Ben Coburn, you cast an eye in my direction and I'll bung it out!"
Phil built up to his key demonstration with care. His lectures were sufficiently 
innocuous that he could afford to have his head of department drop in without 
fear of reprimand or interference.
But the combined effect was to prepare the students emotionally for what was to 
come.
Carefully selected assignments for collateral reading heightened his chances.
"Hypnosis is a subject but vaguely understood," he began his lecture on the 
selected day, "and formerly classed with witchcraft, magic, and so forth, as 
silly superstition. But it is a commonplace thing today and easily demonstrated. 
Consequently the most conservative psychologists must recognize its existence 
and try to observe its characteristics." He went on cheerfully uttering bromides 
and common-places, while he sized up the emotional attitude of the class.
When he felt that they were ready to accept the ordinary phenomena of hypnosis 
without surprise, he called Joan, who had attended for the purpose, up to the 
front of the room. She went easily into a state of light hypnosis. They ran 
quickly through the small change of hypnotic phenomena-catalepsy, compulsion, 
post-hypnotic suggestion-while he kept up a running chatter about the relation 
between the minds of the operator and the subject, the possibility of direct 
telepathic control, the Rhine experiments, and similar matters, orthodox in 
themselves, but close to the borderline of heterodox thought.
Then he offered to attempt to reach the mind of the subject telepathically.
Each student was invited to write something on a slip of paper. A volunteer 
floor committee collected the slips, and handed them to Huxley one at a time. He 
solemnly went through the hocus-pocus of glancing at each one, while Joan read 
them off as his eyes rested on them. She stumbled convincingly once or 
twice.-"Nice work, kid."-"Thanks, pal. Can't I pep it up a.little?"-"None of 
your bright ideas. Just keep on as you are. They're eating out of our hands 
now."
By such easy stages he led them around to the idea that mind and will could 
exercise control over the body much more complete than that ordinarily 
encountered. He passed lightly over the tales of Hindu holy men who could lift 
themselves up into the air and even travel from place to place.
"We have an exceptional opportunity to put such tales to practical test," he 
told them. "The subject believes fully any statement made by the operator. I 
shall tell Miss Freeman that she is to exert her will power, and rise up off the 
floor. It is certain that she will believe that she can do it.
Her will will be in an optimum condition to carry out the order, if it can be 
done. Miss Freeman!"
"Yes, Mr. Huxley."
"Exert your will. Rise up in the air!"
Joan rose straight up into the air, some six feet-until her head nearly touched 
the high ceiling.
-"How'm doin,' pal?"
-Swell, kid, you're wowin 'em. Look at 'em stare!"
At that moment Brinkley burst into the room, rage in his eyes.
"Mr. Huxley, you have broken your word to me, and disgraced this university!"
It was some ten minutes after the fiasco ending the demonstration. Huxley faced 
the president in Brinkley's private office.
"I made you no promise. I have not disgraced the school," Phil answered with 
equal pugnacity.
"You have indulged in cheap tricks of fake magic to bring your department into 
disrepute."
"So I'm a faker, am I? You stiff- necked old fossil-explain this one!" Huxley 
levitated himself until he floated three feet above the rug.
"Explain what?" To Huxley's amazement Brinckley seemed unaware that anything 
unusual was going on. He continued to stare at the point where Phils head had 
been. His manner showed nothing but a slight puzzlement and annoyance at 
Huxley's apparently irrelevant remark.
Was it possible that the doddering old fool was so completely self-deluded that 
he could not observe anything that ran counter to his own preconceptions even 
when it happened directly under his eyes? Phil reached out with his mind and 
attempted to see what went on inside Brinckley's head. He got one of the major 
surprises of his life. He expected to find the floundering mental processes of 
near senility; he found cold calculation, keen ability, set in a matrix of pure 
evil that sickened him.
It was just a glimpse, then he was cast out with a wrench that numbed his brain. 
Brinckley had discovered his spying and thrown up his defences-the hard defences 
of a disciplined mind.
Phil dropped back to the floor, and left the room, without a word, nor a 
backward glance.
From THE WESTERN STUDENT, October 3rd: PSYCH PROF FIRED FOR FRAUD . . . 
students' accounts varied, but all agreed that it had been a fine show. Fullback 
'Buzz' Arnold told your reporter, "I hated to see it happen; Prof Huxley is a 
nice guy and he certainly.put on a clever skit with some good deadpan acting. I 
could see how it was done, of course-it was the same the Great Arturo used in 
his turn at the Orpheum last spring. But I can see Doctor Brinckley's viewpoint; 
you can't permit monkey shines at a serious center of learning."
President Brinckley gave the STUDENT the following official statement: "It is 
with real regret that I announce the termination of Mr. Huxley's association 
with the institution-for the good of the University. Mr. Huxley had been 
repeatedly warned as to where his steps were leading him. He is a young man of 
considerable ability. Let us devoutly hope that this experience will serve as a 
lesson to him in whatever line of endeavor-"
Coburn handed the paper back to Huxley. "You know what happened to me?" he 
inquired.
"Something new?"
"Invited to resign-No publicity-just a gentle hint. My patients got well too 
fast; I'd quit using surgery, you know."
"How perfectly stinking!" This from Joan.
"Well," Ben considered, "I don't blame the medical director; Brinckley forced 
his hand. I guess we underrated the old cuss."
"Rather! Ben, he's every bit as capable as any one of us, and as for his 
motives-I gag when I think about it."
"And I thought he was just a were-mouse," grieved Joan. "We should have pushed 
him into the tar pits last spring. I told you to. What do we do now?"
"Go right ahead." Phil's reply was grim. "Well turn the situation to our own 
advantage; we've gotten some publicity-we'll use it."
"What's the gag?"
"Levitation again. It's the most spectacular thing we've got for a crowd. Call 
in the papers, and tell 'em that we will publicly demonstrate levitation at noon 
tomorrow in Pershing Square."
"Won't the papers fight shy of sticking their necks out on anything that sounds 
as fishy as that?"
"Probably they would, but here's how we'll handle that: Make the whole thing 
just a touch screwball and give 'em plenty of funny angles to write up. Then 
they can treat it as a feature rather than as straight news. The lid's off, 
Joan-you can do anything you like; the screwier the better. Let's get going, 
troops-I'll call the News Service. Ben, you and Joan split up the dailies 
between you."
The reporters were interested, certainly. They were interested in Joan's obvious 
good looks, cynically amused by Phil's flowing tie and bombastic claims, and 
seriously impressed by his taste in whiskey. They began to take notice when 
Coburn courteously poured drinks for them without bothering to touch the bottle.
But when Joan floated around the room while Phil rode a non-existent bicycle 
across the ceiling, they balked. "Honest, doc," as one of them put it, "we've 
got to eat-you don't expect us to go back and tell a city editor anything like 
this. Come clean; is it the whiskey, or just plain hypnotism?"
"Put it any way you like, gentlemen. Just be sure that you say that we will do 
it all over again in Pershing Square at noon tomorrow.".Phil's diatribe against 
Brinckley came as an anticlimax to the demonstration, but the reporters 
obligingly noted it.
Joan got ready for bed that night with a feeling of vague depression. The 
exhilaration of entertaining the newspaper boys had worn off. Ben had proposed 
supper and dancing to mark their last night of private life, but it had not been 
a success. To start with, they had blown a tire while coming down a steep curve 
on Beachwood Drive, and Phil's gray sedan had rolled ove r and over. They would 
have all been seriously injured had it not been for the automatic body control 
which they possessed.
When Phil examined the wreck, he expressed puzzlement as to its cause. "Those 
tires were perfectly all right, he maintained. "I had examined them all the way 
through this morning." But he insisted on continuing with their evening of 
relaxation.
The floor show seemed dull, the jokes crude and callous after the light, 
sensitive humor they had learned to enjoy through association with Master Ling. 
The ponies in the chorus were young and beautiful. Joan had enjoyed watching 
them, but she made the mistake of reaching out to touch their minds. The 
incongruity of the vapid, insensitive spirits she found -almost every 
instance-added to her malaise.
She was relieved when the floor show ended and Ben asked her to dance. Both of 
the men were good dancers, especially Coburn, and she fitted herself into his 
arms contentedly. Her pleasure didn't last; a drunken couple bumped into them 
repeatedly. The man was quarrelsome, the woman shrilly vitriolic. Joan asked her 
escorts to take her home.
These things bothered her as she prepared for bed. Joan, who had never known 
acute physical fear in her life, feared just one thing-the corrosive, dirty 
emotions of the poor in spirit. Malice, envy, spite, the snide insults of 
twisted, petty minds; these things could hurt her, just by being in her 
presence, even if she were not the direct object of the attack. She was not yet 
sufficiently mature to have acquired a smooth armor of indifference to the 
opinions of the unworthy.
After a summer in the company of men of good will, the incident with the drunken 
couple dismayed her. She felt dirtied by the contact. Worse still, she felt an 
outlander, a stranger in a strange land.
She awakened sometime in the night with the sense of loneliness increased to 
overwhelming proportions. She was acutely aware of the three- million-odd living 
beings around her, but the whole city seemed alive only with malignant entities, 
jealous of her, anxious to drag her down to their own ignoble status. This 
attack on her spirit, this attempt to despoil the sanctity of her inner being, 
assumed an almost corporate nature. It seemed to her that it was nibbling at the 
edges of her mind, snuffling at her defences.
Terrified, she called out to Ben and Phil. There was no answer; her mind could 
not find them.
The filthy thing that threatened her was aware of her failure; she could feel it 
leer. In open panic she called to the Senior.
No answer. This time the thing spoke-"That way, too, is closed."
As hysteria claimed her, as her last defences crumbled, she was caught in the 
arms of a stronger spirit, whose calm, untroubled goodness encysted her against 
the evil thing that stalked her.
"Ling!" she cried, "Master Ling!" before racking sobs claimed her.
She felt the quiet, reassuring humor of his smile while the fingers of his mind 
reached out and smoothed away the tensions of her fear. Presently she slept.
His mind stayed with her all through the night, and talked with her, until she 
awakened..Ben and Phil listened to her account of the previous night with 
worried faces. "That settles it, Phil decided. "We've been too careless. From 
now on until this thing is finished, we stay in rapport day and night, awake and 
asleep. As a matter of fact, I had a bad time of it myself last night, though 
nothing equal to what happened to Joan."
"So did I, Phil. What happened to you?"
"Nothing very much-just a long series of nightmares in which I kept losing 
confidence in my ability to do any of the things we learned on Shasta. What 
about you?"
"Same sort of thing, with variations. I operated all night long, and all of my 
patients died on the table. Not very pleasant-but something else happened that 
wasn't a dream. You know I still use an old- fashioned straight-razor; I was 
shaving away, paying no attention to it, when it jumped in my hand and cut a big 
gash in my throat. See? It's not entirely healed yet." He indicated a thin red 
line which ran diagonally down the right side of his neck.
"Why, Ben!" squealed Joan, "you might have been killed."
"That's what I thought," he agreed dryly.
"You know, kids," Phil said slowly, "these things aren't accidental-"
Open up in there!" The order was bawled from the other side of the door. As one 
mind, their senses of direct perception jumped through solid oak and examined 
the speaker. Plainclothes did not conceal the profession of the over-size 
individual waiting there even had they not been able to see the gold shield on 
his vest. A somewhat smaller, but equally officious, man waited with him.
Ben opened the door and inquired gently, "What do you want?"
The larger man attempted to come in. Coburn did not move.
"I asked you your business."
"Smart guy, eh? I'm from police headquarters. You Huxley?"
No.
"Coburn?" Ben nodded.
"You'll do. That Huxley behind you? Don't either of you ever stay home? Been 
here all night?"
"No," said Coburn frostily, "not that it is any of your business."
"I'll decide about that. I want to talk to you two. I'm from the bunco squad. 
What's this game you were giving the boys yesterday?"
"No game, as you call it. Come down to Pershing Square at noon today, and see 
for yourself."
"You won't be doing anything in Pershing Square today, Bud."
"Why not?"
"Park Commission's orders."
"What authority?"
"Huh?"
"By what act, or ordinance, do they deny the right of private citizens to make 
peaceful use of a public place? Who is that with you?"
The smaller man identified himself. "Name's Ferguson, D.A.'s office. I want your 
pal Huxley on a criminal libel complaint. I want you two's witnesses.
Ben's stare became colder, if possible. "Do either of you," he inquired, in 
gently snubbing tones, "have a warrant?"
They looked at each other and failed to reply. Ben continued, "Then it is hardly 
profitable to continue this conversation, is it?" and closed the door in their 
faces..He turned around to his companions and grinned. "Well, they are closing 
in. Let's see what the papers gave us."
They found just one story. It said nothing about their proposed demonstration, 
but related that Doctor Brinckley had sworn a complaint charging Phil with 
criminal libel. "That's the first time I ever heard of four metropolitan papers 
refusing a juicy news story," was Ben's comment, "what are you going to do about 
Brinckley's charge?"
"Nothing," Phil told him, "except possibly libel him again. If he goes through 
with it, it will be a beautiful opportunity to prove our claims in court. Which 
reminds me-we don't want our plans interfered with today; those bird dogs may be 
back with warrants most any time. Where'll we hide out?"
On Ben's suggestion they spent the morning buried in the downtown public 
library. At five minutes to twelve, they flagged a taxi, and rode to Pershing 
Square.
They stepped out of the cab into the arms of six sturdy policemen.
-"Ben, Phil, how much longer do I have to put up with this?"
-"Steady, kid. Don't get upset."
-"I'm not, but why should we stay pinched when we can duck out anytime?"
-"That's the point; we can escape anytime. We've never been arrested before; 
let's see what it's like"
They were gathered that night late around the fireplace in Joan's house. Escape 
had presented no difficulties, but they had waited until an hour when the jail 
was quiet to prove that stone walls do not a prison make for a person adept in 
the powers of the mind.
Ben was speaking, "I'd say we had enough data to draw a curve now.' "Which is?"
"You state it."
"All right. We came down from Shasta thinking that all we had to overcome was 
stupidity, ignorance and a normal amount of human contrariness and cussedness. 
Now we know better.
Any attempt to place the essentials of the ancient knowledge in the hands of the 
common people is met by a determined, organized effort to prevent it, and to 
destroy, or disable the one who tries it."
"It's worse than that," amended Ben, "I spent our rest in the clink looking over 
the city. I wondered why the district attorney should take such an interest in 
us, so I took a look into his mind. I found out who his boss was, and took a 
look at his mind. What I found there interested me so much that I had to run up 
to the state capital and see what made things tick there. That took me back to 
Spring Street and the financial district. Believe it or not, from there I had to 
look up some of the most sacred cows in the community-clergymen, clubwomen, 
business leaders, and stuff." He paused.
"Well, what about it? Don't tell me everybody is out of step but Willie-I'll 
break down and cry."
"No-that was the odd part about it. Nearly all of these heavyweights were good 
Joes, people you'd like to know. But usually-not always, but usually- the good 
Joes were dominated by someone they trusted, someone who had helped them to get 
where they were, and these dominants were not good Joes, to state it gently. I 
couldn't get into all of their minds, but where I was able to get in, I found 
the same sort of thing that Phil found in Brinckle y-cold calculated awareness 
that their power lay in keeping the people in ignorance."
Joan shivered. "That's a sweet picture you paint, Ben-just the right thing for a 
bed-time story. What's our next move?."What do you suggest?
"Me? I haven't reached any conclusion. Maybe we should take on these tough 
babies one at a time, and smear em"
"How about you, Phil-?"
"I haven't anything better to offer. We'll have to plan a shrewd campaign, 
however."
"Well, I do have something to suggest myself."
"Let's have it."
"Admit that we blindly took on more than we could handle. Go back to Shasta and 
ask for help."
"Why, Ben!" Joan's dismay was matched by Phil's unhappy face. Ben went on 
stubbornly, "Sure, I know it's grovelling, but pride is too expensive and the 
job is too-"
He broke off when he noticed Joan's expression. "What is it kid?"
"We'll have to make some decision quickly-that is a police car that just stopped 
out in front."
Ben turned back to Phil. "What'll it be; stay and fight, or go back for 
reinforcements?"
"Oh, you're right. I've known it ever since I got a look at Brinckley's mind-but 
I hated to admit it."
The three stepped out into the patio, joined hands, and shot straight up into 
the air.
 
Chapter Eleven "A Little Child Shall Lead Them"
 
"Welcome home!" Ephraim Howe met them when they landed. "Glad to have you back." 
He led them into his own private apartment. "Rest yourselves while I stir up the 
fire a mite." He chucked a wedge of pinewood into the wide grate, pulled his 
homely old rocking chair around so that it faced the fire and his guests, and 
settled down. "Now suppose you tell me all about it. No, I'm not hooked in with 
the others-you can make a full report to the council when you're ready."
"As a matter of fact, don't you already know everything that happened to us, Mr. 
Howe?"
Phil looked directly at the Senior as he spoke.
"No, I truly don't. We let you go at it your own way, with Ling keeping an eye 
out to see that you didn't get hurt. He has made no report to me."
"Very well, sir." They took turns telling him all that had happened to them, 
occasionally letting him see directly through their minds the events they had 
taken part in.
When they were through Howe gave them his quizzical smile and inquired, "So 
you've come around to the viewpoint of the council?"
"No, sir!" It was Phil who answered him. "We are more convinced of the need for 
positive, immediate action than we were when we left-but we are convinced, too, 
that we aren't strong enough nor wise enough to handle it alone. We've come back 
to ask for help, and to urge the council to abandon its policy of teaching only 
those who show that they are ready, and, instead, to reach out and teach as many 
minds as can accept your teachings.
"You see, sir, our antagonists don't wait. They are active all the time. They've 
won in Asia, they are in the ascendancy in Europe, they may win here in America, 
while we wait for an opportunity."
"Have you any method to suggest for tackling the problem?"
"No, that's why we came back. When we tried to teach others what we knew, we 
were stopped."
"That's the rub," Howe agreed. "I've been pretty much of your opinion for a good 
many years, but it is hard to do. What we have to give can't be printed in a 
book, nor broadcast over the air.
It must be passed directly from mind to mind, wherever we find a mind ready to 
receive it."
They finished the discussion without finding a solution. Howe told them not to 
worry. "Go along," he said, "and spend a few weeks in meditation and rapport. 
When you get an idea that looks as if it might work, bring it in and we'll call 
the council together to consider it."
"But, Senior," Joan protested for the trio, "you see-Well, we had hoped to have 
the advice of the council in working out a plan. We don't know where to start, 
else we wouldn't have come back."
He shook his head. "You are the newest of the brethren, the youngest, the least 
experienced.
Those are your virtues, not your disabilities. The very fact that you have not 
spent years of this.life in thinking in terms of eons and races gives you an 
advantage. Too broad a viewpoint, too philosophical an outlook paralyzes the 
will. I want you three to consider it alone."
They did as he asked. For weeks they discussed it; in rapport as a single mind, 
hammered at it in spoken conversation, meditated its ramifications. They roamed 
the nation with their minds, examining the human spirits that lay behind 
political and social action. With the aid of the archives they learned the 
techniques by which the brotherhood of adepts had interceded in the past when 
freedom of thought and action in America had been threatened. They proposed and 
rejected dozens of schemes.
"We should go into politics," Phil told the other two, "as our brothers did in 
the past. If we had a Secretary of Education, appointed from among the elders, 
he could found a national academy in which freedom of thought would really 
prevail, and it could be the source from which the ancient knowledge could 
spread."
Joan put in an objection.
"Suppose you lose the election?"
"Huh?"
"Even with all the special powers that the adepts have, it 'ud be quite a chore 
to line up delegates for a national convention to get our candidate nominated, 
then get him elected in the face of all the political machines, pressure groups, 
newspapers, favorite sons, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
"And remember this, the opposition can fight as dirty as it pleases, but we have 
to fight fair, or we defeat our own aims."
Ben nodded. "I am afraid she is right, Phil. But you are absolutely right in one 
thing, this is a problem of education." He stopped to meditate, his mind turned 
inward.
Presently he resumed. "I wonder if we have been tackling this job from the right 
end? We've been thinking of reeducating adults, already set in their ways. How 
about the children? They haven't crystallized, wouldn't they be easier to 
teach?"
Joan sat up, her eyes bright. "Ben, you've got it!"
Phil shook his head doggedly. "No. I hate to throw cold water, but there is no 
way to go about it. Children are constantly in the care of adults; we couldn't 
get to them. Don't think for a moment that you could get past local school 
boards; they are the tightest little oligarchies in the whole political system."
They were sitting in a group of pine trees on the lower slopes of Mount Shasta. 
A little group of human figures came into view below them and climbed steadily 
toward the spot where the three rested. The discussion was suspended until the 
group moved beyond earshot. The trio watched them with casual, friendly 
interest.
They were all boys, ten to fifteen years old, except the leader, who bore his 
sixteen years with the serious dignity befitting one who is responsible for the 
safety and wellbeing of younger charges. They were dressed in khaki shorts and 
shirts, campaign hats, neckerchiefs embroidered with a conifer and the insignia 
ALPINE PATROL, TROOP I. Each carried a staff and a knapsack.
As the procession came abreast of the adults, the patrol leader gave them a wave 
in greeting, the merit badges on his sleeve flashing in the sun. The three waved 
back and watched them trudge out of sight up the slope..Phil watched them with a 
faraway look. "Those were the good old days," he said, "I almost envy them."
"Were you one?" Ben said, his eyes still on the boys. "I remember how proud I 
was the day I got my merit badge in first aid."
"Born to be a doctor, eh, Ben?" commented Joan, her eyes maternal, approving. "I 
didn't- say!"
"What's up?"
"Phil! That's your answer! That's how to reach the children in spite of parents 
and school boards."
She snapped into telepathic contact, her ideas spilling excitedly into their 
minds. They went into rapport and ironed out the details. After a time Ben 
nodded and spoke aloud.
"It might work," he said, "let's go back and talk it over with Ephraim."
"Senator Moulton, these are the young people I was telling you about." Almost in 
awe, Joan looked at the face of the little white-haired, old man whose name had 
become a synonym for integrity. She felt the same impulse to fold her hands 
across her middle and bow which Master Ling inspired. She noted that Ben and 
Phil were having trouble not to seem gawky and coltish.
Ephraim Howe continued, "I have gone into their scheme and I think it is 
practical. If you do too, the council will go ahead with it. But it largely 
depends on you.
The Senator took them to himself with a smile, the smile that had softened the 
hearts of two generations of hard politicians. "Tell me about it," he invited.
They did so-how they had tried and failed at Western University, how they had 
cudgeled their brains for a way, how a party of boys on a hike up the mountain 
had given them an inspiration. "You see Senator, if we could just get enough 
boys up here all at once, boys too young to have been corrupted by their 
environment, and already trained, as these boys are, in the ideals of the 
ancients-human dignity, helpfulness, self-reliance, kindness, all those things 
set forth in their code-if we could get even five thousand such boys up here all 
at once, we could train them in telepathy, and how to impart telepathy to 
others.
"Once they were taught, and sent back to their homes, each one would be a center 
for spreading the knowledge. The antagonists could never stop it; it would be 
too wide spread, epidemic. In a few years every child in the country would be 
telepathic, and they would even teach their elders-those that haven't grown too 
calloused to learn.
"And once a human being is telepathic, we can lead him along the path of the 
ancient wisdom!"
Moulton was nodding, and talking to himself. "Yes. Yes indeed. It could be done.
Fortunately Shasta is a national park. Let me see, who is on that committee? It 
would take a joint resolution and a small appropriation. Ephraim, old friend, I 
am afraid I shall have to practice a little logrolling to accomplish this, will 
you forgive me?"
Howe grinned broadly.
"Oh, I mean it," Moulton continued, "people are so cynical, so harsh, about 
political expediency-even some of our brothers. Let me see, this will take about 
two years, I think, before the first camp can be held-"
"As long as that?" Joan was disappointed.
"Oh, yes, my dear. There are two bills to get before Congress, and much 
arranging to do to get them passed in the face of a full legislative calendar. 
There are arrangements to be made with.the railroads and bus companies to give 
the boys special rates so that they can afford to come.
We must start a publicity campaign to make the idea popular. Then there must be 
time for as many of our brothers as possible to get into the administration of 
the movement in order that the camp executives may be liberally interspersed 
with adepts. Fortunately I am a national trustee of the organization. Yes, I can 
manage it in two years' time, I believe."
"Good heavens!" protested Phil, "why wouldn't it be more to the point to 
teleport them here, teach them, and teleport them back?"
"You do not know what you are saying, my son. Can we abolish force by using it? 
Every step must be voluntary, accomplished by reason and persuasion. Each human 
being must free himself; freedom cannot be thrust on him. Besides, is two years 
long to wait to accomplish a job that has been waiting since the Deluge?"
"I'm sorry, sir."
"Do not be. Your youthful impatience has made it possible to do the job at all."
 
Chapter Twelve "Ye Shall Know the Truth- "
 
On the lower slopes of Mount Shasta, down near McCloud, the camp grew up. When 
the last of the spring snow was still hiding in the deeper gullies and on the 
north sides of ridges, U.S. Army Quartermaster trucks came lumbering over a road 
built the previous fall by the army engineers. Pyramid tents were broken out and 
were staked down in rows on the bosom of a gently rolling alp. Cook shacks, an 
infirmary, a headquarters building took shape. Camp Mark Twain was changing from 
blueprint to actuality Senator Moulton, his toga laid aside for breeches 
leggings, khaki shirt, and a hat marked CAMP DIRECTOR, puttered around the 
field, encouraging, making decisions for the straw bosses, and searching. ever 
searching the minds of all who came into or near the camp for any purpose. Did 
anyone suspect? Had anyone slipped in who might be associated with partial 
adepts who opposed the real purpose of the camp? Too late to let anything slip 
now-too late and too much at stake.
In the middle west, in the deep south, in New York City and New England, in the 
mountains and on the coast, boys were packing suitcases, buying special Shasta 
Camp roundtrip tickets, talking about it with their envious contemporaries.
And all over the country the antagonists of human liberty, of human dignity-the 
racketeers, the crooked political figures, the shysters, the dealers in phony 
religions, the sweat-shoppers, the petty authoritarians, all of the key figures 
among the traffickers in human misery and human oppression, themselves somewhat 
adept in the arts of the mind and acutely aware of the danger of free 
knowledge-all of this unholy breed stirred uneasily and wondered what was taking 
place. Moulton had never been associated with anything but ill for them; Mount 
Shasta was one place they had never been able to touch-they hated the very name 
of the place. They recalled old stories, and shivered.
They shivered, but they acted. Special transcontinental buses loaded with the 
chosen boys- could the driver be corrupted? Could his mind be taken over? Could 
tires, or engine, be tampered with? Trains were taken over by the youngsters. 
Could a switch be thrown? Could the drinking water be polluted? Other eyes 
watched. A trainload of boys moved westward; in it, or flying over it, his 
direct perception blanketing the surrounding territory, and checking the motives 
of every mind within miles of his charges, was stationed at least one adept 
whose single duty it was to see that those boys reached Shasta safely.
Probably some of the boys would never have reached there had not the opponents 
of human freedom been caught off balance, doubtful, unorganized. For vice has 
this defect; it cannot be truly intelligent. Its very motives are its weakness. 
The attempts made to prevent the boys reaching Shasta were scattered and 
abortive. The adepts had taken the offensive for once, and their moves were 
faster and more rationally conceived than their antagonists.
Once in camp a tight screen surrounded the whole of Mount Shasta National Park. 
The Senior detailed adepts to point patrol night and day to watch with every 
sense at their command.for mean or malignant spirits. The camp itself was 
purged. Two of the councilors, and some twenty of the boys, were sent home when 
examination showed them to be damaged souls. The boys were not informed of their 
deformity, but plausible excuses were found for the necessary action.
The camp resembled superficially a thousand other such camps. The courses in 
woodcraft were the same. The courts of honor met as usual to examine candidates. 
There were the usual sings around the camp-fire in the evening, the same 
setting-up exercises before breakfast. The slightly greater emphasis on the oath 
and the law of the organization was not noticeable.
Each one of the boys made at least one overnight hike in the course of the camp. 
In groups of fifteen or twenty they would set out in the morning in company of a 
councilor. That each councilor supervising such hikes was an adept was not 
evident, but it so happened. Each boy carried his blanket roll, and knapsack of 
rations, his canteen, knife, compass and hand axe.
They camped that night on the bank of a mountain stream, fed by the glaciers, 
whose rush sounded in their ears as they ate supper.
Phil started out with such a group one morning during the first week of the 
camp. He worked around the mountain to the east in order to keep well away from 
the usual tourist haunts.
After supper they sat around the campfire. Phil told them stories of the holy 
men of the east and their reputed powers, and of Saint Francis and the birds. He 
was in the middle of one of his yarns when a figure appeared within the circle 
of firelight.
Or rather figures. They saw an old man, in clothes that Davy Crockett might have 
worn, flanked by two beasts, on his left side a mountain lion, who purred when 
he saw the fire, on his right a buck of three points, whose soft brown eyes 
stared calmly into theirs. Some of the boys were alarmed at first, but Phil told 
them quietly to widen their circle and make room for the strangers. They sat in 
decent silence for a while, the boys getting used to the presence of the 
animals. In time one of the boys timidly stroked the big cat, who responded by 
rolling over and presenting his soft belly. The boy looked up at the old man and 
asked, "What is his name, Mister-"
"Ephraim. His name is Freedom."
"My, but he's tame! How do you get him to be so tame?"
"He reads my thoughts and trusts me. Most things are friendly when they know 
you-and most people."
The boy puzzled for moment. "How can he read your thoughts?"
"It's simple. You can read his, too. Would you like to learn how?"
"Jiminy!"
"Just look into my eyes for a moment. There! Now look into his."
"Why-Why-I really believe I can!"
-"Of course you can. And mine too. I'm not talking out loud. Had you noticed?"
-"Why, so you're not. I'm reading your thoughts!"
-"And I'm reading yours. Easy, isn't it?"
With Phil's help Howe had them all conversing by thought transference inside an 
hour. Then to calm them down he told them stories for another hour, stories that 
constituted an important part of their curriculum. He helped Phil get them to 
sleep, then left, the animals following after him. The next morning Phil was 
confronted at once by a young sceptic. "Say, did I dream all that about an old 
man and a puma and a deer?"
-'Did you?"
-"You're doing it now!".-"Certainly I am. And so are you. Now go tell the other 
boys the same thing."
Before they got back to camp, he advised them not to speak about it to any other 
of the boys who had not as yet had their overnight hike, but that they test 
their new powers by trying it on any boy who had had his first all- night hike.
All was well until one of the boys had to return home in answer to a message 
that his father was ill. The elders would not wipe his mind clean of his new 
knowledge; instead they kept careful track of him. In time he talked, and the 
word reached the antagonists almost at once.
Howe ordered the precautions of the telepathic patrol redoubled.
The patrol was able to keep out malicious persons, but it was not numerous 
enough to keep everything out. Forest fire broke out on the windward side of the 
camp late one night. No human being had been close to the spot; telekinetics was 
the evident method.
But what control over matter from a distance can do, it can also undo. Moulton 
squeezed the flame out with his will, refused it permisson to burn, bade its 
vibrations to stop.
For the time being the enemy appeared to cease attempts to do the boys physical 
harm. But the enemy had not given up. Phil received a frantic call from one of 
the younger boys to come at once to the tent the boy lived in; his patrol leader 
was very sick. Phil found the lad in a state of hysteria, and being restrained 
from doing himself an injury by the other boys in the tent. He had tried to cut 
his throat with his jack knife and had gone berserk when one of the other boys 
had grabbed his hand.
Phil took in the situation quickly and put in a call to Ben.
-"Ben! Come at once. I need you." Ben did so, zipping through the air and flying 
in through the door of the tent almost before Phil had time to lay the boy on 
his cot and start forcing him into a trance. The lad's startled tent mates did 
not have time to decide that Dr. Ben had been flying before he was standing in a 
normal fashion alongside their councilor.
Ben greeted him with tight communication, shutting the boys out of the 
circuit.-"What's up?"
-"They've gotten to him . . . and damn near wrecked him."
-"How?"
-"Preyed on his mind. Tried to make him suicide-But I tranced back the hookup. 
Who do you think tried to do him in?-Brinckley!"
-"No!"
-"Definitely. You take over here; I'm going after Brinckley. Tell the Senior to 
have a watch put on all the boys who have been trained to be sensitive to 
telepathy. I'm afraid that any of them may be gotten at before we can teach them 
how to defend themselves." With that he was gone, leaving the boys half 
convinced of levitation.
He had not gone very far, was still gathering speed, when he heard a welcome 
voice in his head, -"Phil! Phil! Wait for me."
He slowed down for a few seconds. A smaller figure flashed alongside his and 
grasped his hand. "It's a good thing I stay hooked in with you two. You'd have 
gone off to tackle that dirty old so-and-so without me."
He tried to maintain his dignity. "If I had thought that you should be along on 
this job, I'd have called you, Joan."
"Nonsense! And also fiddlesticks! You might get hurt, tackling him all alone. 
Besides, I'm going to push him into the tar pits."
He sighed and gave up. "Joan, my dear, you are a bloodthirsty wench with ten 
thousand incarnations to go before you reach beatitude."."I don't want to reach 
beatitude; I want to do old Brinckley in."
"Come along, then. Let's make some speed."
They were south of the Tehachapi by now and rapidly approaching Los Angeles. 
They flitted over the Sierra Madre range, shot across San Fernando Valley, 
clipped the top of Mount Hollywood, and landed on the lawn of the President's 
Residence at Western University.
Brinckley saw, or felt, them coming and tried to run for it, but Phil grappled 
with him.
He shot one thought to Joan.-"You stay out of this, kid, unless I yell for 
help."
Brinckley did not give up easily. His mind reached out and tried to engulf 
Phil's. Huxley felt himself slipping, giving way before the evil onslaught. It 
seemed as though he were being dragged down, drowned, in filthy quicksand.
But he steadied himself and fought back.
When Phil had finished that which was immediately necessary with Brinckley, he 
stood up and wiped his hands, as if to cleanse himself of the spiritual slime he 
had embraced. "Let's get going," he said to Joan, "we're pushed for time."
"What did you do to him, Phil?" She stared with fascinated disgust at the thing 
on the ground.
"Little enough. I placed him in stasis. I've got to save him for use-for a time. 
Up you go, girl. Out of here-before we're noticed."
Up they shot, with Brinckley's body swept along behind by tight telekinetic 
bond. They stopped above the clouds. Brinckley floated beside them, starfished 
eyes popping, mouth loose, his smooth pink face expressionless.
-"Ben!" Huxley was sending, "Ephraim Howe! Ambrose! To me! To me! Hurry!"
-"Coming, Phil!" came Coburn's answer.
-"I hear." The strong calm thought held the quality of the Senior. "What is it, 
son? Tell me."
-"No time!" snapped Phil. "Yourself, Senior, and all others that can. 
Rendezvous! Hurry!"
-"We come." The thought was still calm, unhurried. But there were two ragged 
holes in the roof of Moulton's tent. Moulton and Howe were already out of sight 
of Camp Mark Twain.
Slashing, slicing through the air they came, the handful of adepts who guarded 
the fire. From five hundred miles to the north they came, racing pigeons 
hurrying home. Camp councilors, two-thirds of the small group of camp matrons, 
some few from scattered points on the continent, they came in response to 
Huxley's call for help and the Senior's unprecedented tocsin. A housewife turned 
out the fire in the oven and disappeared into the sky. A taxi driver stopped his 
car and left his fares without a word. Research groups on Shasta broke their 
tight rapport, abandoned their beloved work, and came-fast!
"And now, Philip?" Howe spoke orally as he arrested his trajectory and hung 
beside Huxley.
Huxley flung a hand toward Brinckley. "He has what we need to know to strike 
now! Where's Master Ling?
"He and Mrs. Draper guard the Camp."
"I need him. Can she do it alone?" Clear and mellow, her voice rang in his head 
from half a state away.
-"I can!"
-"The tortoise flies." The second thought held the quality of deathless 
merriment which was the unmistakable characteristic of the ancient Chinese..Joan 
felt a soft touch at her mind, then Master Ling was among them, seated carefully 
tailor-fashion on nothingness. "I attend; my body follows," he announced. "Can 
we not proceed?"
Whereupon Joan realized that he had borrowed the faculties of her mind to 
project himself into their presence more quickly than he could levitate the 
distance. She felt unreasonably flattered by the attention.
Huxley commenced at once. "Through his mind -" He indicated Brinckley, "I have 
learned of many others with whom there can be no truce. We must search them out, 
deal with them at once, before they can rally from what has happened to him. But 
I need help. Master, will you extend the present and examine him?"
Ling had tutored them in discrimination of time and perception of the present, 
taught them to stand off and perceive duration from eternity. But he was 
incredibly more able than his pupils.
He could split the beat of a fly's wing into a thousand discrete instants, or 
grasp a millenium as a single flash of experience. His discrimination of time 
and space was bound neither by his metabolic rate nor by his molar dimensions.
Now he poked gingerly at Brinckley's brain like one who seeks a lost jewel in 
garbage. He felt out the man's memory patterns and viewed his life as one 
picture. Joan, with amazement, saw his ever-present smile give way to a frown of 
distaste. His mind had been left open to any who cared to watch. She peered 
through his mind, then cut off. If there were that many truly vicious spirits in 
the world she preferred to encounter them one at a time, as necessary, not 
experience them all at once.
Master Ling's body joined the group, melted into his projection.
Huxley, Howe, Moulton, and Bierce followed the Chinese's delicate work with 
close attention. Howe's face was bleakly impassive; Moulton's face, aged to 
androgynous sensitivity, moved from side to side while he clucked disapproval of 
such wickedness. Bierce looked more like Mark Twain than ever. Twain in an 
implacable, lowering rage. Master Ling looked up.
"Yes, yes," said Moulton, "I suppose we must act, Ephraim."
"We have no choice," Huxley stated, with a completely unconscious disregard of 
precedent.
"Will you assign the tasks, Senior?"
Howe glanced sharply at him. "No, Philip. No. Go ahead. Carry on."
Huxley checked himself in surprise for the briefest instant, then took his cue. 
"You'll help me. Master Ling. Ben!"
"Waiting!" He meshed mind to mind, had Ling show him his opponent and the data 
he needed.-"Got it? Need any help?"
-"Grandfather Stonebender is enough."
-"Okay. Nip off and attend to it."
-"Chalk it up." He was gone, a rush of air in his wake.
-"This one is yours, Senator Moulton"
-"I know." And Moulton was gone. By ones and twos he gave them their 
assignments, and off they went to do that which must be done.
There was no argument. Many of them had been aware long before Huxley was that a 
day of action must inevitably come to pass, but they had waited with quiet 
serenity, busy with the work at hand, till time should incubate the seed.
In a windowless study of a mansion on Long Island, soundproofed, cleverly locked 
and guarded, ornately furnished, a group of five was met-three men, one woman, 
and a thing in a.wheel chair. It glared at the other four in black fury, glared 
without eyes, for its forehead dropped unbroken to its cheekbones, a smooth 
sallow expanse.
A lap robe, tucked loosely across the chair masked, but did not hide, the fact 
that the creature had no legs.
It gripped the arms of the chair. "Must I do all the thinking for you fools?" it 
asked in a sweet gentle voice. "You, Arthurson-you let Moulton slip that Shasta 
Bill past the Senate. Moron."
The epithet was uttered caressingly.
Arthurson shifted in his chair. "I examined his mind. The bill was harmless. It 
was a swap on the Missouri Valley deal. I told you."
"You examined his mind, eh? Hmm-he led you on a personally conducted tour, you 
fool. A Shasta bill! When will you mindless idiots learn that no good ever came 
out of Shasta?" It smiled approvingly.
"Well, how was I to know? I thought a camp near the mountain might confuse . . . 
them. "
"Mindless idiot. The time will come when I will find you dispensable." The thing 
did not wait for the threat to sink in, but continued, "Enough of that now. We 
must move to repair the damage. They are on the offensive now. Agnes-"
"Yes." The woman answered.
"Your preaching has got to pick up-"
I've done my best." Not good enough. I've got to have a wave of religious 
hysteria that will wash out the Bill of Right before the Shasta camp breaks up 
for the summer. We will have to act fast before that time and we can't be 
hampered by a lot of legalisms."
"It can't be done."
"Shut up. It can be done. Your temple will receive endowments this week which 
you are to use for countrywide television hookups. At the proper time you will 
discover a new messiah."
"Who?"
"Brother Artemis."
"That cornbelt pipsqueak? Where do I come in on this?"
"You'll get yours. But you can't head this movement; the country won't take a 
woman in the top spot. The two of you will lead a march on Washington and take 
over. The Sons of '76 will fill out your ranks and do the street fighting. 
Weems, that's your job.
The man addressed demurred. "It will take three, maybe four months to 
indoctrinate them."
"You have three weeks. It would be well not to fail."
The last of the three men broke his silence. "What's the hurry. Chief? Seems to 
me that you are getting yourself in a panic over a few kids."
"I'll be the judge. Now you are to time an epidemic of strikes to tie the 
country up tight at the time of the march on Washington."
"I'll need some incidents."
"You'll get them. You worry about the unions; I'll take care of the Merchants' 
and Commerce League myself. You give me one small strike tomorrow. Get your 
pickets out and I will have four or five of them shot. The publicity will be 
ready. Agnes, you preach a sermon about it."
"Slanted which way?"
It rolled its non-existent eyes up to the ceiling.
"Must I think of everything? It's elementary. Use your minds."
The last man to speak laid down his cigar carefully and said, "What's the real 
rush, Chief?"
"I've told you."."No, you haven't. You've kept your mind closed and haven't let 
us read your thoughts once.
You've known about the Shasta camp for months. Why this sudden excitement? You 
aren't slipping, are you? Come on, spill it. You can't expect us to follow if 
you are slipping."
The eyeless one looked him over carefully. "Hanson," he said, in still sweeter 
tones, "you have been feeling your size for months. Would you care to match your 
strength with mine?"
The other looked at his cigar. "I don't mind if I do."
"You will. But not tonight. I haven't time to select and train new lieutenants. 
Therefore I will tell you what the urgency is. I can't raise Brinckley. He's 
fallen out of communication.
There is no time-"
"You are correct," said a new voice. "There is no time."
The five jerked puppetlike to face its source. Standing side by side in the 
study were Ephraim Howe and Joan Freeman.
Howe looked at the thing. "I've waited for this meeting," he said cheerfully, 
"and I've saved you for myself."
The creature got out of its wheelchair and moved through the air at Howe. Its 
height and position gave an unpleasant sensation that it walked on invisible 
legs. Howe signalled to Joan- "It starts. Can you hold the others, my dear?"
-"I think so."
-"Now!" Howe brought to bear everything he had learned in one hundred and thirty 
busy years, concentrated on the single problem of telekinetic control. He 
avoided, refused contact with the mind of the evil thing before him and turned 
his attention to destroying its physical envelope.
The thing stopped.
Slowly, slowly, like a deepsea diver caught in an implosion, like an orange in a 
squeezer, the spatial limits in which it existed were reduced. A spherical locus 
in space enclosed it, diminished.
The thing was drawn in and in. The ungrown stumps of its legs folded against its 
thick torso.
The head ducked down against the chest to escape the unrelenting pressure. For a 
single instant it gathered its enormous perverted power and fought back. Joan 
was disconcerted, momentarily nauseated, by the backwash of evil.
But Howe withstood it without change of expression; the sphere shrank again. The 
eyeless skull split. At once, the sphere shrank to the least possible dimension. 
A twenty-inch ball hung in the air, a ball whose repulsive superficial details 
did not invite examination.
Howe held the harmless, disgusting mess in place with a fraction of his mind, 
and inquired- "Are you all right, my dear?"
-"Yes, Senior. Master Ling helped me once when I needed it."
-"That I anticipated. Now for the others." Speaking aloud he said, "Which do you 
prefer: To join your leader, or to forget what you know?" He grasped air with 
his fingers and made a squeezing gesture.
The man with the cigar screamed.
"I take that to be an answer," said Howe. "Very well, Joan, pass them to me, one 
at a time."
He operated subtly on their minds, smoothing out the patterns of colloidal 
gradients established by their corporal experience.
A few minutes later the room contained four sane, but infant adults-and a gory 
mess on the rug..Coburn stepped into a room to which he had not been invited. 
"School's out, boys," he announced cheerfully. He pointed a finger at one 
occupant. "That goes for you." Flame crackled from his finger tip, lapped over 
his adversary. "Yes, and for you." The flames spouted forth a second time. "And 
for you." A third received his final cleansing.
Brother Artemis, "God's Angry Man," faced the television pick- up. "And if these 
things be not true," he thundered, "then may the Lord strike me down dead!"
The coroner's verdict of heart failure did not fully account for the charred 
condition of his remains.
A political rally adjourned early because the principal speaker failed to show 
up. An anonymous beggar was found collapsed over his pencils and chewing gum. A 
director of nineteen major corporatons caused his secretary to have hysterics by 
breaking off in the midst of dictating to converse with the empty air before 
lapsing into cheerful idiocy. A celebrated stereo and television star 
disappeared. Obituary stories were hastily dug out and completed for seven 
members of Congress, several judges, and two governors.
The usual evening sing at Camp Mark Twain took place that night without the 
presence of Camp Director Moulton. He was attending a full conference of the 
adepts, assembled all in the flesh for the first time in many years.
Joan looked around as she entered the hall. "Where is Master Ling?" she inquired 
of Howe.
He studied her face for a moment. For the first time since she had first met him 
nearly two years before she thought he seemed momentarily at a loss. My dear," 
he said gently, "you must have realized that Master Ling remained with us, not 
for his own benefit, but for ours. The crisis for which he waited has been met; 
the rest of the work we must do alone."
A hand went to her throat. "You-you mean-?"
"He was very old and very weary. He had kept his heart beating, his body 
functioning, by continuous control for these past forty-odd years."
"But why did he not renew and regenerate?"
"He did not wish it. We could not expect him to remain here indefinitely after 
he had grown up."
"No." She bit her trembling lip. "No. That is true. We are children and he has 
other things to do-but-Oh, Ling! Ling! Master Ling!" She buried her head on 
Howe's shoulder.
-"Why are you weeping, Little Flower?" Her head jerked up.-"Master Ling!"
-"Can that not be which has been? Is there past or future? Have you learned my 
lessons so poorly? Am I not now with you, as always?"
She felt in the thought the vibrant timeless merriment, the gusto for living 
which was the hallmark of the gentle Chinese. With a part of her mind she 
squeezed Howe's hand. "Sorry," she said. "I was wrong." She relaxed as Ling had 
taught her, let her consciousness flow in the revery which encompasses time in a 
single deathless now.
Howe, seeing that she was at peace, turned his attention to the meeting.
He reached out with his mind and gathered them together into the telepathic 
network of full conference..-"I think that you all know why we meet," he 
thought.-"I have served my time; we enter another and more active period when 
other qualities than mine are needed. I have called you to consider and pass on 
my selection of a successor."
Huxley was finding the thought messages curiously difficult to follow. I must be 
exhausted from the effort, he thought to himself.
But Howe was thinking aloud again.-"So be it; we are agreed." He looked at 
Huxley.
"Philip, will you accept the trust?"
"What?!!"
"You are Senior now-by common consent"
"But. . . but-I am not ready."
"We think so," answered Howe evenly. "Your talents are needed now. You will grow 
under responsibility."
-"Chin up, pal!" It was Coburn, in private message.
-"It's all right, Phil." Joan, that time.
For an instant he seemed to hear Ling's dry chuckle, his calm acceptance.
"I will try!" he answered.
On the last day of camp Joan sat with Mrs. Draper on a terrace of the Home on 
Shasta, overlooking the valley. She sighed. Mrs. Draper looked up from her 
knitting and smiled. "Are you sad that the camp is over?"
"Oh, no! I'm glad it is."
"What is it, then?"
"I was just thinking . . . we go to all this effort and trouble to put on this 
camp. Then we have to fight to keep it safe. Tomorrow those boys go home-then 
they must be watched, each one of them, while they grow strong enough to protect 
themselves against all the evil things there are still in the world. Next year 
there will be another crop of boys, and then another, and then another. Isn't 
there any end to it?"
"Certainly there is an end to it. Don't you remember, in the ancient records, 
what became of the elders? When we have done what there is for us to do here, we 
move on to where there is more to do. The human race was not meant to stay here 
forever."
It still seems endless."
"It does, when you think of it that way, my dear. The way to make it seem short 
and interesting is to think about what you are going to do next. For example, 
what are you going to do next?"
"Me?" Joan looked perplexed. Her face cleared, "Why . . . why I'm going to get 
married!"
"I thought so. " Mrs. Draper's needles clicked away.
 
Chapter Thirteen "-and the Truth Shall Make You Free!"
 
The globe still swung around the sun. The seasons came and the seasons went. The 
sun still shone on the mountainsides, the hills were green, and the valleys 
lush. The river sought the bosom of the sea, then rode the cloud, and found the 
hills as rain. The cattle cropped in the brown plains, the fox stalked the hare 
through the brush. The tides answered the sway of the moon, and the gulls picked 
at the wet sand in the wake of the tide. The earth was fair and the earth was 
full; it teemed with life, swarmed with life, overflowed with life-a stream in 
spate.
Nowhere was man. Seek the high hills; search him in the plains. Hunt for his 
spoor in the green jungles; call for him; shout for him. Follow where he has 
been in the bowels of the earth; plumb the dim deeps of the sea.
Man is gone; his house stands empty; the door open.
A great ape, with a brain too big for his need and a spirit that troubled him, 
left his tribe and sought the quiet of the high place that lay above the jungle. 
He climbed it, hour after hour, urged on by a need that he half understood. He 
reached a resting place, high above the green trees of his home, higher than any 
of his tribe had ever climbed. There he found a broad flat stone, warm in the 
sun. He lay down upon it and slept. But his sleep was troubled. He dreamed 
strange dreams, unlike anything he knew. They woke him and left him with an 
aching head.
It would be many generations before one of his line could understand what was 
left there by those who had departed.


 
JERRY WAS A MAN


 
DONT BLAME THE MARTIANS. The human race would have developed plasto-biology in 
any case.
Look at the older registered Kennel Club breeds- glandular giants like the St. 
Bernard and the Great Dane, silly little atrocities" like the Chihuahua and the 
Pekingese. Consider fancy goldfish.
The damage was done when Dr. Morgan produced new breeds of fruit flies by 
kicking around their chromosomes with X-ray. After that, the third generation of 
the Hiroshima survivors did not teach us anything new; those luckless 
monstrosities merely publicized standard genetic knowledge.
Mr. and Mrs. Bronson van Vogel did not have social reform in mind when they went 
to the Phoenix Breeding Ranch; Mr. van Vogel simply wanted to buy a Pegasus. He 
had mentioned it at breakfast. "Are you tied up this morning, my dear?"
"Not especially. Why?"
"I'd like to run out to Arizona and order a Pegasus designed."
"A Pegasus? A flying horse? Why, my sweet?"
He grinned. "Just for fun. Pudgy Dodge was around the Club yesterday with a 
six-legged dachshund-must have been over a yard long. It was clever, but he 
swanked so much I want to give him something to stare at. Imagine, Martha-me 
landing on the Club 'copter platform on a winged horse. That'll snap his eyes 
back!"
She turned her eyes from the Jersey shore to look indulgently at her husband. 
She was not fooled; this would be expensive. But Brownie was such a dear! "When 
do we start?"
They landed two hours earlier than they started. The airsign read, in letters 
fifty feet high:
PHOENIX BREEDING RANCH Controlled Genetics-licensed Labor Contractors
" 'Labor Contractors'?" she read, "I thought this place was used just to burbank 
new animals?"
"They both design and produce," he explained importantly. "They distribute 
through the mother corporation 'Workers.' You ought to know; you own a big chunk 
of Workers common."
"You mean I own a bunch of apes? Really?"
"Perhaps I didn't tell you. Haskell and I-" He leaned forward and informed the 
field that he would land manually; he was a bit proud of his piloting.
He switched off the robot and added, briefly as his attention was taken up by 
heading the ship down, "Haskell and I have been plowing your General Atomics 
dividends back into Workers, Inc. Good diversification-still plenty of dirty 
work for the anthropoids to do." He slapped the keys; the scream of the nose 
jets stopped conversation.
Bronson had called the manager in flight; they were met-not with red carpet, 
canopy, and footmen, though the manager strove to give that impression. "Mr. van 
Vogel? And Mrs. van Vogel! We are honored indeed!" He ushered them into a tiny, 
luxurious unicar; they jeeped off the field, up a ramp, and into the lobby of 
the administration building! The manager, Mr. Blakesly, did not relax until he 
had seated them around a fountain in the lounge of his offices, struck 
cigarettes for them, and provided tall, cool drinks.
Bronson van Vogel was bored by the attention, as it was obviously inspired by 
his wife's Dun & Bradstreet rating (ten stars, a sunburst, and heavenly music). 
He preferred people who could convince him that he had invented the Briggs 
fortune, instead of marrying it.
"This is business Blakesly. I've an order for you."
"So? Well, our facilities are at your disposal. What would you like, sir?"
"I want you to make me a Pegasus."
"A Pegasus? A flying horse?"
"Exactly."
Blakesly pursed his lips. "You seriously want a horse that will fly? An animal 
like the mythical Pegasus?"
"Yes, yes-that's what I said."
"You embarrass me, Mr. van Vogel. I assume you want a unique gift for your lady. 
How about a midget elephant, twenty inches high, perfectly housebroken, and able 
to read and write? He holds the stylus in his trunk-very cunning."
"Does he talk?" demanded Mrs. van Vogel.
"Well, now, my dear lady, his voice box, you know-and his tongue-he was not 
designed for speech. If you insist on it, I will see what our plasticians can 
do."
"Now, Martha-"
"You can have your Pegasus, Brownie, but I think I may want this toy elephant. 
May I see him?"
"Most surely. Hartstone!"
The air answered Blakesly. "Yes, boss?"
"Bring Napoleon to my lounge."
"Right away, sir."
"Now about your Pegasus, Mr. van Vogel ... I see difficulties but I need expert 
advice. Dr. Cargrew is the real heart of this organization, the most eminent 
bio-designer-of terrestrial origin, of course-on the world today." He raised his 
voice to actuate relays. "Dr. Cargrew!"
"What is it, Mr. Blakesly?"
"Doctor, will you favor me by coming to my office?"
"I'm busy. Later."
Mr. Blakesly excused himself, went into his inner office, then returned to say 
that Dr. Cargrew would be in shortly. In the mean time Napoleon showed up. The 
proportions of his noble ancestors had been preserved in miniature; he looked 
like a statuette of an elephant, come amazingly to life.
He took three measured steps into the lounge, then saluted them each with his 
trunk. In saluting Mrs. van Vogel he dropped on his knees as well.
"Oh, how cute!" she gurgled. "Come here. Napoleon."
The elephant looked at Blakesly, who nodded. Napoleon ambled over and laid his 
trunk across her lap. She scratched his ears; he moaned contentedly.
"Show the lady how you can write," ordered Blakesly. "Fetch your things from my 
room."
Napoleon waited while she finished treating a particularly satisfying itch, then 
oozed away to return shortly with several sheets of heavy white paper and an 
oversize pencil. He spread a sheet in front of Mrs. van Vogel. held it down 
daintily with a fore foot, grasped the pencil with his trunk finger, and printed 
in large, shaky letters, "I LIKE YOU."
"The darling!" She dropped to her knees and put her arms around his neck. "I 
simply must have him. How much is he?"
"Napoleon is part of a limited edition of six," Blakesly said carefully. "Do you 
want an exclusive model, or may the others be sold?"
"Oh, I don't care. I just want Nappie. Can I write him a note?"
"Certainly, Mrs. van Vogel. Print large letters and use Basic English. Napoleon 
knows most of it. His price, nonexclusive is $350,000. That includes five years 
salary for his attending veterinary."
"Give the gentleman a check. Brownie," she said over her shoulder.
"But Martha-"
"Don't be tiresome. Brownie." She turned back to her pet and began printing. She 
hardly looked up when Dr. Cargrew came in.
Cargrew was a chilly figure in white overalls and skull cap. He shook hands 
brusquely, struck a cigarette and sat down. Blakesly explained-
Cargrew shook his head. "It s a physical impossibility."
Van Vogel stood up. "I can see," he said distantly, "That I should have taken my 
custom to NuLife Laboratories, I came here because we have a financial interest 
in this firm and because I was naive enough to believe the claims of your 
advertisements."
"Siddown, young man!" Gargrew ordered. "Take your trade to those thumb-fingered 
idiots if you wish- but I warn you they couldn't grow wings on a grasshopper. 
First you listen to me.
"We can grow anything and make it live. I can make you a living thing-I won't 
call it an animal- the size and shape of that table over there. It wouldn't be 
good for anything, but it would be alive. It would ingest food, use chemical 
energy, give off excretions, and display irritability. But it would be a silly 
piece of manipulation. Mechanically a table and an animal are two different 
things. Their functions are different, so their shapes are different. Now I can 
make you a winged horse-"
"You just said you couldn't."
"Don't interrupt. I can make a winged horse that will look just like the 
pictures in the fairy stories. If you want to pay for it; we'll make it-we're in 
business. But it won't be able to fly."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not built for flying. The ancient who dreamed up that myth knew 
nothing about aerodynamics and still less about biology. He stuck wings on a 
horse, just stuck them on, thumb tacks and glue. But that doesn't make a flying 
machine. Remember, son, that an animal is a machine, primarily a heat engine 
with a control system to operate levers and hydraulic systems, according to 
definite engineering laws. You savvy aerodynamics?"
"Well, I'm a pilot."
"Hummph! Well, try to understand this. A horse hasn't got the heat engine for 
flight. He's a hayburner and that's not efficient. We might mess around with a 
horse's insides so that he could live on a diet of nothing but sugar and then he 
might have enough energy to fly short distances. But he still would not look 
like the mythical Pegasus. To anchor his flying muscles he would need a breast 
bone maybe ten feet long. He might have to have as much as eighty feet wing 
spread. Folded, his wings would cover him like a tent. You're up against the 
cube-square disadvantage."
"Huh?'
Cargrew gestured impatiently- "Lift goes by the square of a given dimension; 
dead load by the cube of the same dimension, other things being equal. I might 
be able to make you a Pegasus the size of a cat without distorting the 
proportions too much."
"No, I want one I can ride. I don't mind the wing spread and I'll put up with 
the big breast bone. When can I have him?"
Cargrew looked disgusted, shrugged, and replied, "I'll have to consult with B'na 
Kreeth." He whistled and chirped; a portion of the wall facing them dissolved 
and they found themselves looking into alaboratory. A Martian, life-size, showed 
in the fore- part of the three-dimensional picture.
When the creature chirlupped back at Cargrew, Mrs. van Vogel looked up, then 
quickly looked away. She knew it was silly but she simply could not stand the 
sight of Martians-and the ones who had modified themselves to a semi-manlike 
form disgusted her the most.
After they had twittered and gestured at each other for a minute or two Cargrew 
turned back to van Vogel. "B'na says that you should forget it; it would take 
too long. He wants to know how you'd like a fine unicorn, or a pair, guaranteed 
to breed true?"
"Unicorns are old hat. How long would the Pegasus take?"
After another squeaky-door conversation Cargrew answered, "Ten years probably, 
sixteen years on the guarantee."
"Ten years? That's ridiculous!"
Cargrew looked shirty. "1 thought it would take fifty, but if B*na says that he 
can do it three to five generations, then he can do it. B'na is the finest 
bio-micrurgist in two planets. His chromosome surgery is unequalled. After all, 
young man, natural processes would take upwards of a million years to achieve 
the same result, if it were achieved at all. Do you expect to be able to buy 
miracles?"
Van Vogel had the grace to look sheepish. "Excuse me. Doctor. Let's forget it. 
Ten years really is too long. How about the other possibility? You said you 
could make a picture-book Pegasus, as long as I did not insist on flight. Could 
I ride him? On the ground?"
"Oh, certainly. No good for polo, but you could ride him."
"I'll settle for that. Ask Benny creeth, or what ever his name is, how long it 
would take."
The Martian had faded out of the screens. "I don't need to ask him," Cargrew 
asserted. "This is my job-purely manipulation. B'na's collaboration is required 
only for rearrangement and transplanting of genes-true genetic work. I can let 
you have the beast in eighteen months."
"Can't you do better than that?"
"What do you expect, man? It takes eleven months to grow a new-born colt. I want 
one month of design and planning. The embryo will be removed on the fourth day 
and will be developed in an extra-uterine capsule. I'll operate ten or twelve 
times during gestation, grafting and budding and other things you've heard of. 
One year from now we'll have a baby colt, with wings. Thereafter I'll deliver to 
you a six-months-old Pegasus."
"I'll take it."
Cargrew made some notes, then read, "One alate horse, not capable of flight and 
not to breed true. Basic breed your choice-I suggest a Palomino, or an Arabian. 
Wings designed after a condor, in white. Simulated pin feathers with a grafted 
fringe of quill feathers, or reasonable facsimile." He passed the sheet over. 
"Initial that and we'll start in advance of formal contract."
"It's a deal," agreed van Vogel. "What is the fee?" He placed his monogram under 
Cargrew's.
Cargrew made further notes and handed them to Blakesly-estimates of professional 
man-hours, technician man-hours, purchases, and overhead. He had padded the 
figures to subsidize his collateral research but even he raised his eyebrows at 
the dollars-and-cents interpretation Blakesly put on the data. "That will be an 
even two million dollars."
Van Vogel hesitated; his wife had looked up at the mention of money. But she 
turned her attention back to the scholarly elephant.
Blakesly added hastily, "That is for an exclusive creation, of course."
"Naturally," Van Vogel agreed briskly, and added die figure to the memorandum.
Van Vogel was ready to return, but his wife insisted on seeing the "apes," as 
she termed the anthropoid workers. The discovery that she owned a considerable 
share in these subhuman creatures had intrigued her. Blakesly eagerly suggested 
a trip through the laboratories in which the workers were developed from true 
apes.
They were arranged in seven buildings, the seven "Days of Creation.' "First Day" 
was a large building occupied by Cargrew, his staff, his operating rooms, 
incubators, and laboratories. Martha van Vogel stared in horrified fascination 
at living organs and even complete embryos, living artificial lives sustained by 
clever glass and metal recirculating systems and exquisite automatic machinery.
She could not appreciate the techniques; it seemed depressing. She had about 
decided against plasto-biology when Napoleon, by tugging at her skirts, reminded 
her that it produced good things as well as horrors.
The building "Second Day" they did not enter; it was occupied by B'na Kreeth and 
his racial colleagues. "We could not stay alive in it, you understand," Blakesly 
explained. Van Vogel nodded; his wife hurried on-she wanted no Martians, even 
behind plastiglass.
From there on the buildings were for development and production of commercial 
workers. "Third Day" was used for the development of variations in the 
anthropoids to meet constantly changing labor requirements. "Fourth Day" was a 
very large building devoted entirely to production-line incubators for 
commercial types of anthropoids. Blakesly explained that they had dispensed with 
normal birth. "The policy permits exact control of forced variations, such as 
for size, and saves hundreds of thousands of worker-hours on the part of the 
female anthropoids."
Martha van Vogel was delighted with "Fifth Day," the anthropoid kindergarten 
where the little tykes learned to talk and were conditioned to the social 
patterns necessary to their station in life. They worked at simple tasks such as 
sorting buttons and digging holes in sand piles, with pieces of candy given as 
incentives for fast and accurate work.
"Six Day" completed the anthropoids' educations. Each learned the particular 
sub-trade it would practice, cleaning, digging, and especially agricultural 
semi-skills such as weeding, thinning, and picking. "One Nisei farmer working 
three neo-chimpanzees can grow as many vegetables as a dozen old-style farm 
hands," Blakesly asserted. "They really like to work-when we get through with 
them." They admired the almost incredibly heavy tasks done by modified gorillas 
and stopped to gaze at the little neo-Capuchins doing high picking on prop 
trees, then moved on toward "Seventh Day."
This building was used for the radioactive mutation of genes and therefore 
located some distance away from the others. They had to walk, as the sidewalk 
was being repaired; the detour took them past workers' pens and barracks. Some 
of the anthropoids crowded up to the wire and began calling to them: "Sigret! 
Sigret! Preese, Missy! Preese, Boss!
Sigret!" "What are they saying?" Martha van Vogel inquired.
"They are asking for cigarettes," Blakesly answered in annoyed tones. "They know 
better, but they are like children. Here-I'll put a stop to it." He stepped up 
to the wire and shouted to an elderly male, "Hey! Strawboss!" The worker 
addressed wore, in addition to the usual short canvas kilt, a bedraggled arm 
band. He turned and shuffled toward the fence. "Strawboss," ordered Blakesly, 
"get those Joes away from here." "Okay, Boss," the old fellow acknowledged and 
started cuffing those nearest him. "Scram, you Joes!
Scram!" "But I have some cigarettes," protested Mrs. Van Vogel, "and I would 
gladly have given them some."
"It doesn't do to pamper them," the Manager told her. "They have been taught 
that luxuries come only from work. I must apologize for my poor children; those 
in these pens are getting old and forgetting their manners."
She did not answer but moved further along the fence to where one old neo-chimp 
was pressed up against the wire, staring at them with soft, tragic eyes, like a 
child at a bakery window. He had taken no part in the jostling demand for 
tobacco and had been let alone by the strawboss. "Would you like a cigarette?" 
she asked him.
"Preese, Missy."
She struck one which he accepted with fumbling grace, took a long, lung-filling 
drag, let the smoke trickle out his nostrils, and said shyly, "Sankoo, Missy. Me 
Jerry."
"How do you do. Jerry?"
"Howdy, Missy." He bobbed down, bending his knees, ducking his head, and 
clasping his hands to his chest, all in one movement.
"Come along, Martha." Her husband and Blakesly had moved in behind her.
"In a moment," she answered. "Brownie, meet my friend Jerry. Doesn't he look 
just like Uncle Albert? Except that he looks so sad. Why are you unhappy, 
Jerry?"
"They don't understand abstract ideas," put in Blakesly.
But Jerry surprised him. "Jerry sad," he announced in tones so doleful that 
Martha van Vogel did not know whether to laugh or to cry.
"Why, Jerry?" she asked gently. "Why are you so sad?" "No work," he stated. "No 
sigret. No candy. No work."
"These are all old workers who have passed their usefulness," Blakesly repeated. 
"Idleness upsets them, but we have nothing for them to do."
"Well!" she said. "Then why don't you have them sort buttons, or something like 
that, such as the baby ones do?"
"They wouldn't even do that properly," Blakesly answered her. "These workers are 
senile."
"Jerry isn't senile! You heard him talk."
"Well, perhaps not. Just a moment." He turned to the apeman, who was squatting 
down in order to scratch Napoleon's head with a long forefinger thrust through 
the fence. "You, Joe! Come here."
Blakesly felt around the worker's hairy neck and located a thin steel chain to 
which was attached a small metal tag. He studied it. "You're right," he 
admitted. "He's not really over age, but his eyes are bad. I remember the 
lot-cataracts as a result of an unfortunate linked mutation." He shrugged.
"But that's no reason to let him grieve his heart out in idleness."
"Really, Mrs. van Vogel, you should not upset yourself about it. They don't stay 
in these pens long-only a few days at the most."
"Oh," she answered, somewhat mollified, "you have some other place to retire 
them to, then. Do you give them something to do there? You should-Jerry wants to 
work. Don't you. Jerry?"
The neo-chimp had been struggling to follow the conversation. He caught the last 
idea and grinned. "Jerry work! Sure Mike! Good worker." He flexed his fingers, 
then made fists, displaying fully opposed thumbs.
Mr. Blakesly seemed somewhat nonplused. "Really, Mrs. van Vogel, there is no 
need. You see-" He stopped.
Van Vogel had been listening irritably. His wife's enthusiasms annoyed him, 
unless they were also his own. Furthermore he was beginning to blame Blakesly 
for his own recent extravagance and had a premonition that his wife would find 
some way to make him pay, very sweetly, for his indulgence.
Being annoyed with both of them, he chucked in the perfect wrong remark. "Don't 
be silly, Martha. They don't retire them; they liquidate them."
It took a little time for the idea to soak in, but when it did she was furious. 
"Why . . . why-I never heard of such a thing! You ought to be ashamed. You . . . 
you would shoot your own grandmother."
"Mrs. van Vogel-please!"
"Don't 'Mrs. van Vogel' me! It's got to stop-you hear me?" She looked around at 
the death pens, at the milling hundreds of old workers therein. "It's horrible. 
You work them until they can't work anymore, then you take away their little 
comforts, and you dispose of them. I wonder you don't eat them!"
"They do," her husband said brutally. "Dog food."
"What! Well, we'll put a stop to that!"
"Mrs. van Vogel," Blakesly pleaded. "Let me explain."
"Hummph! Go ahead. It had better be good."
"Well, it's like this-" His eye fell on Jerry, standing with worried expression 
at the fence. "Scram, Joe!" Jerry shuffled away.
"Wait, Jerry!" Mrs. van Vogel called out. Jerry paused uncertainly. "Tell him to 
come back,' she ordered Blakesly.
The Manager bit his lip, then called out, "Come back here."
He was beginning definitely to dislike Mrs. van Vogel, despite his automatic 
tendency to genuflect in the presence of a high credit rating. To be told how to 
run his own business-well, now, indeed! "Mrs. van Vogel, I admire your 
humanitarian spirit but you don't understand the situation. We understand our 
workers and do what is best for them. They die painlessly before their 
disabilities can trouble them. They live happy lives, happier than yours or 
mine. We trim off the bad part of their lives, nothing more. And don't forget, 
these poor beasts would never have been born had we not arranged it."
She shook her head. "Fiddlesticks! You'll be quoting the Bible at me next. There 
will be no more of it, Mr. Blakesly. I shall hold you personally responsible."
Blakesly looked bleak. "My responsibilities are to the directors,"
"You think so?" She opened her purse and snatched out her telephone. So great 
was her agitation that she did not bother to call through, but signalled the 
local relay operator instead. "Phoenix? Get me Great New York Murray Hill 
9Q-4004, Mr. Haskell. Priority-star subscriber 777. Make it quick." She stood 
there, tapping her foot and glaring, until her business manager answered. 
"Haskell? This is Martha van Vogel. How much Workers, Incorporated, common do I 
own? No, no, never mind that-what per- cent? . . . so? Well, it's not enough. I 
want 51% by tomorrow morning ... all right, get proxies for the rest but get it 
... I didn't ask you what it would cost; I said to get it. Get busy." She 
disconnected abruptly and turned to her husband. "We're leaving, Brownie, and we 
are taking Jerry with us. Mr. Blakesly, will you kindly have him taken out of 
that pen? Give him a check for the amount. Brownie."
"Now, Martha-"
"My mind is made up. Brownie."
Mr. Blakesly cleared his throat. It was going to be pleasant to thwart this 
woman. "The workers are never sold, I'm sorry. It's a matter of policy."
'*Very well then, I'll take a permanent lease."
"This worker has been removed from the labor market. He is not for lease."
"Am I going to have more trouble with you?"
"If you please, Madame! This worker is not available under any terms-but, as a 
courtesy to you, I am willing to transfer to you indentures for him, gratis. I 
want you to know that the policies of this firm are formed from a very real 
concern for the welfare of our charges as well as from the standpoint of good 
business practice. We therefore reserve the right to inspect at any time to 
assure ourselves that you are taking proper care of this worker." There, he told 
himself savagely, that will stop her clock!
"Of course. Thank you, Mr. Blakesly. You are most gracious."
The trip back to Great New York was not jolly. Napoleon hated it and let it be 
known. Jerry was patient but airsick. By the time they grounded the van Vogels 
were not on speaking terms.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. van Vogel. The shares were simply not available. We should have 
had proxy on the O'Toole block but someone tied them up an hour before I reached 
them."
"Blakesly."
"Undoubtedly. You should not have tipped him off; you gave him time to warn his 
employers."
"Don't waste time telling me what mistakes I made yesterday. What are you going 
to do today?"
"My dear Mrs. van Vogel, what can I do? I'll carry out any instructions you care 
to give."
"Don't talk nonsense. You are supposed to be smarter than I am, that's why I pay 
you to do my thinking for me."
Mr. Haskell looked helpless.
His principal struck a cigarette so hard she broke it. "Why isn't Weinberg 
here?"
"Really, Mrs. van Vogel, there are no special legal aspects. You want the stock; 
we can't buy it nor bind it. Therefore-"
"I pay Weinberg to know the legal angles. Get him."
Weinberg was leaving his office; Haskell caught him on a chase-me circuit. 
"Sidney," Haskell called out. "Come to my office, will you? Oscar Haskell."
"Sorry. How about four o'clock?"
"Sidney, I want you-now!" cut in the client's voice. "This is Martha van Vogel."
The little man shrugged helplessly. "Right away," he agreed. That woman-why 
hadn't he retired on his one hundred and twenty-fifth birthday, as his wife had 
urged him to?
Ten minutes later he was listening to Haskell's explanations and his client's 
interruptions. When they had finished he spread his hands. "What do you expect, 
Mrs. van Vogel? These workers are chattels. You have not been able to buy the 
property rights involved; you are stopped. But I don't see what you are worked 
up about. They gave you the worker whose life you wanted preserved."
She spoke forcefully under her breath, then answered him- "That's not important. 
What is one worker among millions? I want to stop this killing, all of it."
Weinberg shook his head. "If you were able to prove that their methods of 
disposing of these beasts were inhumane, or that they were negligent of their 
physical welfare before destroying them, or that the destruction was wanton-"
"Wanton? It certain is!"
"Probably not in a legal sense, my dear lady. There was a case, Julius Hartman 
et al. vs. Hartman Estate, 1972, I believe, in which a permanent injunction was 
granted against carrying out a term of the will which called for the destruction 
of a valuable collection of Persian cats. But in order to use that theory you 
would have to show that these creatures, when superannuated, are notwithstanding 
more valuable alive than dead. You cannot compel a person to maintain chattels 
at a loss."
"See here, Sidney, I didn't get you over here to tell me how this can't be done. 
If what I want isn't legal, then get a law passed."
Weinberg looked at Haskell, who looked embarrassed and answered, "Well, the fact 
of the matter is, Mrs. van Vogel, that we have agreed with the other members of 
the Commonwealth Association not to subsidize any legislation during the 
incumbency of the present administration."
"How ridiculous! Why?"
"The Legislative Guild has brought out a new fair-practices code which we 
consider quite unfair, a sliding scale which penalizes the well-to-do-all very 
nice sounding, with special provisions for nominal fees for veterans' private 
bills and such things-but in fact the code is confiscatory. Even the Briggs 
Foundation can hardly afford to take a proper interest in public affairs under 
this so-called code."
"Hmmph! A fine day when legislators join unions-they are professional men. 
Bribes should be competitive, Get an injunction."
"Mrs. van Vogel," protested Weinberg, "how can you expect me to get an 
injunction against an organization which has no legal existence? In a legal 
sense, there is no Legislative Guild, Just as the practice of assisting 
legislation by subsidy has itself no legal existence."
"And babies come under cabbage leaves. Quit stalling me, gentlemen. What are you 
going to do?"
Weinberg spoke when he saw that Haskell did not intend to. "Mrs. van Vogel, I 
think we should retain a special shyster."
"I don't employ shysters, even-I don't understand the way they THink, I am a 
simple housewife, Sidney."
Mr. Weinberg flinched at her self-designation while noting that he must not let 
her find out that the salary of his own staff shyster was charged to her 
payroll. As convention required, he maintained the front of a simple, barefoot 
solicitor, but he had found out long ago that Martha van Vogel's problems 
required an occasional dose of the more exotic branch of the law. "The man I 
have in mind is a creative artist," he insisted. "It is no more necessary to 
understand him than it is to understand the composer in order to appreciate a 
symphony. I do recommend that you talk with him, at least."
"Oh, very well! Get him up here."
"Here? My dear lady!" Haskell was shocked at the suggestion; Weinberg looked 
amazed. "It would not only cause any action you bring to be thrown out of court 
if it were known that you had consulted this man, but it would prejudice any 
Briggs enterprise for years."
Mrs. van Vogel shrugged. "You men. I never will understand the way you think. 
Why shouldn't one consult a shyster as openly as one consults an astrologer?"
James Roderick McCoy was not a large man, but he seemed large. He managed to 
dominate even so large a room as Mrs. van Vogel's salon. His business card read;
J.R. McCOY
"THE REAL MCCOY"
Licensed Shyster-Fixing, Special Contacts, Angles. All Work Guaranteed.
TELEPHONE SKYLINE 9-8M4554 Ask for MAC
The number given was the pool room of the notorious Three Planets Club. He 
wasted no time on offices and kept his files in his head-the only safe place for 
them.
He was sitting on the floor, attempting to teach Jerry to shoot craps, while 
Mrs. van Vogel explained her problem. "What do you think, Mr. McCoy? Could we 
approach it through the SPCA? My public relations staff could give it a build 
up."
McCoy got to his feet. "Jerry's eyes aren't so bad; he caught me trying to palm 
box cars off on him as a natural. No," he continued, "the SPCA angle is no good. 
It's what 'Workers' will expect. They'll be ready to prove that the anthropoids 
actually enjoy being killed off."
Jerry rattled the dice hopefully. "That's all. Jerry. Scram."
"Okay, Boss." The ape man got to his feet and went to the big stereo which 
filled a comer of the room. Napoleon ambled after him and switched it on. Jerry 
punched a selector button and got a blues singer. Napoleon immediately punched 
another, then another and another until he got a loud but popular band. He stood 
there, beating out the rhythm with his trunk.
Jerry looked pained and switched it back to his blues singer. Napoleon 
stubbornly reached out with his prehensile nose and switched it off.
Jerry used a swear word.
"Boys!" called out Mrs. van Vogel. "Quit squabbling. Jerry, let Nappie play what 
he wants to. You can play the stereo when Nappie has to take his nap.
"Okay, Missy Boss."
McCoy was interested. "Jerry likes music?"
"Like it? He loves it. He's been learning to sing."
"Huh? This I gotta hear."
"Certainly. Nappie-turn off the stereo." The elephant complied but managed to 
look put upon. "Now Jerry-Jingle Bells.' " She led him in it:
"Jingie bells, jingle bells, jingle all the day-", and he followed,
"Jinger hez, jinger bez, jinger awrah day;
Oh, wot fun tiz to ride in one-hoss open sray."
He was flat, he was terrible. He looked ridiculous, patting out the time with 
one splay foot. But it was singing.
"Say, that's fast!" McCoy commented. "Too bad Nappie can't talk-we'd have a 
duet."
Jerry looked puzzled. "Nappie talk good," he stated. He bent over the elephant 
and spoke to him. Napoleon grunted and moaned back at him. "See, Boss?" Jerry 
said triumphantly.
"What did he say?"
"He say, 'Can Nappie pray stereo now?' "
"Very well. Jerry," Mrs. van Vogel interceded. The ape man spoke to his chum in 
whispers. Napoleon squealed and did not turn on the stereo.
"Jerry!" said his mistress. "I said nothing of the sort; he does not have to 
play your blues singer. Come away, Jerry. Nappie-play what you want to."
"You mean he tried to cheat?" McCoy inquired with interest.
"He certainly did."
"Hmm-Jerry's got the makings of a real citizen, Shave him and put shoes on him 
and he'd get by all right in the precinct I grew up in." He stared at the 
anthropoid. Jerry stared back, puzzled but patient. Mrs. van Vogel had thrown 
away the dirty canvas kilt which was both his badge of servitude and a 
concession to propriety and had replaced it with a kilt in the bright Cameron 
war plaid, complete to sporan, and topped off with a Glengarry.
"Do you suppose he could learn to play the bagpipes?" McCoy asked. "I'm 
beginning to get an angle."
"Why, I don't know. What s your idea?"
McCoy squatted down cross-legged and began practicing rolls with his dice. 
"Never mind," he answered when it suited him, "that angle's no good. But we're 
getting there." He rolled four naturals, one after the other. "You say Jerry 
still belongs to the Corporation?"
"In a titular sense, yes. I doubt if they will ever try to repossess him."
"I wish they would try." He scooped up the dice and stood up. "It's in the bag, 
Sis. Forget it. I'll want to talk to your publicity man but you can quit 
worrying about it."
Of course Mrs. van Vogel should have knocked before entering her husband's 
room-but then she would not have overheard what he was saying, nor to whom.
"That's right," she heard him say, "we haven't any further need for him. Take 
him away, the sooner the better. Just be sure the men you send have a signed 
order directing us to turn him over."
She was not apprehensive, as she did not understand the conversation, but merely 
curious. She looked over her husband's shoulder at the video screen.
There she saw Blakesly's face. His voice was saying, "Very well, Mr. van Vogel, 
the anthropoid will be picked up tomorrow."
She strode up to the screen. "Just a minute, Mr. Blakesly-" then, to her 
husband, "Brownie, what in the world do you think you are doing?"
The expression she surprised on his face was not one he had ever let her see 
before. "Why don't you knock?"
"Maybe it's a good thing I didn't. Brownie, did I hear you right. Were you 
telling Mr. Blakesly to pick up Jerry?" She turned to the screen. "Was that it, 
Mr. Blakesly?"
"That is correct, Mrs. van Vogel. And I must say I find this confusion most-"
"Stow it." She turned back. "Brownie, what have you to say for yourself?"
"Martha, you are being preposterous. Between that elephant and that ape this 
place is a zoo. I actually caught your precious Jerry smoking my special, 
personal cigars today . . . not to mention the fact that both of them play the 
stereo all day long until a man can't get a moment's peace. I certainly don't 
have to stand for such things in my own house."
"Whose house. Brownie?"
'That's beside the point. I will not stand for-"
"Never mind." She turned to the screen. "My husband seems to have lost his taste 
for exotic animals, Mr. Blakesly. Cancel the order for a Pegasus."
"Martha!"
"Sauce for the goose. Brownie- I'll pay for your whims; I'm damned if I'll pay 
for your tantrums. The contract is cancelled, Mr. Blakesly. Mr. Haskell will 
arrange the details."
Blakesly shrugged. "Your capricious behavior will cost you, of course. The 
penalties-"
"I said Mr. Haskell would arrange the details. One more thing. Mister Manager 
Blakesly-have you done as I told you to?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean-are those poor creatures still alive and well?"
"That is not your business." He had, in fact, suspended the killings, the 
directors had not wanted to take any chances until they saw what the Briggs 
trust could manage, but Blakesly would not give her the satisfaction of knowing.
She looked at him as if he were a skipped dividend. "It's not, eh? Well, bear 
this in mind, you cold-blooded little pipsqueak: I'm holding you personally 
responsible. If just one of them dies from anything, I'II have your skin for a 
rug." She flipped off the connection and turned to her husband. "Brownie-"
"It's useless to say anything," he cut in, in the cold voice he normally used to 
bring her to heel. "I shall be at the Club. Good-bye!"
"That's just what I was going to suggest."
"What?"
"I'll have your clothes sent over. Do you have anything else in this house?"
He stared at her, "Don't talk like a fool, Martha."
"I'm not talking like a fool." She looked him up and down. "My, but you are 
handsome. Brownie. I guess I was a fool to think I could buy a big hunk of man 
with a checkbook. I guess a girl gets them free, or she doesn't get them at all. 
Thanks for the lesson." She turned and slammed out of the room and into her own 
suite.
Five minutes later, makeup repaired and nerves steadied by a few whiff's of 
Fly-Right, she called the pool room of the Three Planets Club. McCoy came to the 
screen carrying a cue. "Oh, it's you, sugar puss. Well, snap it up-I've got four 
bits on this game."
"This is business."
"Okay, okay-spill it."
She told him the essentials. "I'm sorry about cancelling the flying horse 
contract, Mr. McCoy. I hope it won't make your job any harder. I'm afraid I lost 
my temper,"
"Fine. Go lose it again."
"Huh!"
"You're barrelling down the groove, kid. Call Blakesly up again. Bawl him out. 
Tell him to keep his bailiffs away from you, or you'll stuff 'em and use them 
for hat racks. Dare him to take Jerry away from you."
"I don't understand you."
"You don't have to, girlie. Remember this; You can't have a bull fight until you 
get the bull mad enough to fight. Have Weinberg get a temporary injunction 
restraining Workers, Incorporated, from reclaiming Jerry. Have your boss press 
agent give me a buzz. Then you call in the newsboys and tell them what you think 
of Blakesly. Make it nasty. Tell them you intend to put a stop to this wholesale 
murder if it takes every cent you've got."
"Well ... all right. Will you come to see me before I talk to them?"
"Nope-gotta get back to my game. Tomorrow, maybe. Don't fret about having 
cancelled that silly winged-horse deal. I always did think your old man was weak 
in the head, and it's saved you a nice piece of change. You'll need it when I 
send in my bill. Boy, am I going to clip you! Bye now."
The bright letters trailed around the sides of the Times Building: "WORLD'S 
RICHEST WOMAN PUTS UP FIGHT FOR APE MAN." On the giant video screen above showed 
a transcribe of Jerry, in his ridiculous Highland chief outfit. A small army of 
police surrounded the Briggs town house, while Mrs. van Vogel informed anyone 
who would listen, including several news services, that she would defend Jerry 
personally and to the death.
The public relations office of Workers, Incorporated, denied any intention of 
seizing Jerry; the denial got nowhere.
In the meantime technicians installed extra audio and video circuits in the 
largest courtroom in town, for one Jerry (no surname), described as a legal, 
permanent resident of these United States, had asked for a permanent injunction 
against the corporate person "Workers," its officers, employees, successors, or 
assignees, forbidding it to do him any physical harm and in particular 
forbidding it to kill him.
Through his attorney, the honorable and distinguished and stuffily respectable 
Augustus Pomfrey, Jerry brought the action in his own name.
Martha van Vogel sat in the court room as a spectator only, but she was 
surrounded by secretaries, guards, maid, publicity men, and yes men, and had one 
television camera trained on her alone. She was nervous. McCoy had insisted on 
briefing Pomfrey through Weinberg, to keep Pomfrey from knowing that he was 
being helped by a shyster. She had her own opinion of Pomfrey-
The McCoy had insisted that Jerry not wear his beautiful new kilt but had 
dressed him in faded dungaree trousers and jacket. It seemed poor theater to 
her.
Jerry himself worried her. He seemed confused by the lights and the noise and 
the crowd, about to go to pieces.
And McCoy had refused to go to the trial with her. He had told her that it was 
quite impossible, that his mere presence would alienate the court, and Weinberg 
had backed him up. MenI Their minds were devious-they seemed to like twisted 
ways of doing things. It confirmed her opinion that men should not be allowed to 
vote.
But she felt lost without the immediate presence of McCoy's easy 
self-confidence. Away from him, she wondered why she had ever trusted such an 
important matter to an irresponsible, jumping jack, bird-brained clown as McCoy. 
She chewed her nails and wished he were present.
The panel of attorneys appearing for Worker's Incorporated, began by moving that 
the action be dismissed without trial, on the theory that Jerry was a chattel of 
the corporation, an integral part of it, and no more able to sue than the thumb 
can sue the brain.
The honorable Augustus Pomfrey looked every inch the statesman as he bowed to 
the court and to his opponents. "It is indeed strange," he began, "to hear the 
second-hand voice of a legal fiction, a soulless, imaginary quantity called a 
corporate 'person,' argue that a flesh-and-blood creature, a being of hopes and 
longings and passions, has not legal existence. I see here beside me my poor 
cousin Jerry." He patted Jerry on the shoulder; the ape man, needing 
reassurance, slid a hand into his. It went over well.
"But when I look for this abstract fancy 'Workers,' what do I find? Nothing-some 
words on paper, some signed bits of foolscap-"
"If the Court please, a question," put in the opposition chief attorney, "does 
the learned counsel contend that a limited liability stock company cannot own 
property?"
"Will the counsel reply?" directed the judge.
'Thank you. My esteemed colleague has set up a straw man; I contended only that 
the question as to whether Jerry is a chattel of Workers, Incorporated, is 
immaterial, nonessential, irrelevant. I am part of the corporate city of Great 
New York. Does that deny me my civil rights as a person of flesh and blood? In 
fact it does not even rob me of my right to sue that civic corporation of which 
I am a part, if, in my opinion, I am wronged by it. We are met today in the 
mellow light of equity, rather than in the cold and narrow confines of law. It 
seemed a fit time to dwell on the strange absurdities we live by, whereunder a 
nonentity of paper and legal fiction could deny the existence of this our poor 
cousin. I ask that the learned attorneys for the corporation stipulate that 
Jerry does, in fact, exist, and let us get on with the action."
They huddled; the answer was "No."
"Very well- My client asked to be examined in order that the court may determine 
his status and being."
"Objection! This anthropoid cannot be examined; he is a mere part and chattel of 
the respondent."
"That is what we are about to determine," the judge answered dryly. "Objection 
overruled."
"Go sit in that chair. Jerry."
"Objection! This beast cannot take an oath-it is beyond his comprehension."
"What have you to say to that, Counsel?"
"If it pleases the Court," answered Pomfrey, "the simplest thing to do is to put 
him in the chair and find out."
"Let him take the stand. The clerk will administer the oath." Martha van Vogel 
gripped the arms other chair; McCoy had spent a full week training him for this. 
Would the poor thing blow up without McCoy to guide him?
The clerk droned through the oath; Jerry looked puzzled but patient.
"Your honor," said Pomfrey, "when young children must give testimony, it is 
customary to permit a little leeway in the wording, to fit their mental 
attainments. May I be permitted?" He walked up to Jerry.
"Jerry, my boy, are you a good worker?"
"Sure mike! Jerry good worker!"
"Maybe bad worker, huh? Lazy. Hide from straw- boss."
"No, no, no! Jerry good worker. Dig. Weed. Not dig up vegetaber. Dig up weed. 
Work hard."
"You will see," Pomfrey addressed the court, "that my client has very definite 
ideas of what is true and what is false. Now let us attempt to find out whether 
or not he has moral values which require him to tell the truth. Jerry-"
"Yes, Boss."
Pomfrey spread his hand in front of the anthropoid's face. ' How many fingers do 
you see?"
Jerry reached out and ticked them off. "One-two- sree-four, uh-five."
"Six fingers. Jerry."
"Five, Boss."
"Six fingers. Jerry. I give you cigarette. Six."
"Five, Boss. Jerry not cheat."
Pomfrey spread his hands. "Will the court accept him?"
The court did. Martha van Vogel sighed. Jerry could not count very well and she 
had been afraid that be would forget his lines and accept the bribe. But he had 
been promised all the cigarettes he wanted and chocolate as well if he would 
remember to insist that five was five.
"I suggest," Pomfrey went on, "that the matter has been established. Jerry is an 
entity; if he can be accepted as a witness, then surely he may have his day in 
court. Even a dog may have his day in court. Will my esteemed colleagues 
stipulate?"
Workers, Incorporated, through its battery of lawyers, agreed-just in time, for 
me judge was beginning to cloud up. He had been much impressed by the little 
performance.
The tide was with him; Pomfrey used it. "If it please the court and if the 
counsels for the respondent will permit, we can shorten these proceedings. I 
will state the theory under which relief is sought and then, by a few questions, 
it may be settled one way or another. I ask that it be stipulated that it was 
the intention of Workers, Incorporated, through its servants, to take the life 
of my client."
Stipulation was refused.
"So? Then I ask that the court take judicial notice of the well known fact that 
these anthropoid workers are destroyed when they no longer show a profit; 
thereafter I will call witnesses, starting with Horace Blakesly, to show that 
Jerry was and presumably is under such sentence of death."
Another hurried huddle resulted in the stipulation that Jerry had, indeed, been 
scheduled for euthanasia.
"Then," said Pomfrey, "I will state my theory. Jerry is not an animal, but a 
man. It is not legal to kill him-it is murder."
First there was silence, then the crowd gasped. People had grown used to animals 
that talked and worked, but they were no more prepared to think of them as 
persons, humans, men, than were the haughty Roman citizens prepared to concede 
human feelings to their barbarian slaves.
Pomfrey let them have it while they were still groggy. "What is a man? A 
collection of living cells and tissues? A legal fiction, like this corporate 
'person' that would take poor Jerry's life? No, a man is none of these things. A 
man is a collection of hopes and fears, of human longings, of aspirations 
greater than himself-more than the clay from which he came; less than the 
Creator which lifted him up from the clay. Jerry has been taken from his jungle 
and made something more than the poor creatures who were his ancestors, even as 
you and I. We ask that this Court recognize his manhood."
The opposing attorneys saw that the Court was moved, they drove in fast. An 
anthropoid, they contended, could not be a man because he lacked human shape and 
human intelligence. Pomfrey called his first witness-Master B'na Kreeth.
The Martian's normal bad temper had not been improved by being forced to wait 
around for three days in a travel tank, to say nothing of the indignity of 
having to interrupt his researches to take part in the childish pow-wows of 
terrestrials.
There was further delay to irritate him while Pomfrey forced the corporation 
attorneys to accept B'na as an expert witness. They wanted to refuse but could 
not-he was their own Director of Research. He also held voting control of all 
Martian-held Workers' stock, a fact unmentioned but hampering.
More delay while an interpreter was brought in to help administer the oath-B na 
Kreeth, self-centered as all Martians, had never bothered to learn English.
He twittered and chirped in answer to the demand that he tell the truth, the 
whole truth, and so forth; the interpreter looked pained. "He says he can't do 
it," he informed the judge.
Pomfrey asked for exact translation.
The interpreter looked uneasily at the Judge. "He says that if he told the whole 
truth you fools-not 'fools' exactly; it's a Martian word meaning a sort of 
headless worm-would not understand it."
The court discussed the idea of contempt briefly. When die Martian understood 
that he was about to be forced to remain in a travel tank for thirty days he 
came down off his high horse and agreed to tell the truth as adequately as was 
possible; he was accepted as a witness.
"Are you a man?" demanded Pomfrey.
"Under your laws and by your standards I am a man.
"By what theory? Your body is unlike ours; you cannot even live in our air. You 
do not speak our language; your ideas are alien to us. How can you be a man?'
The Martian answered carefully: "I quote from the Terra-Martian Treaty, which 
you must accept as supreme law. 'All members of the Great Race, while sojourning 
on the Third Planet shall have all the rights and prerogatives of the native 
dominant race of the Third Planet.' This clause has been interpreted by the 
Bi-Planet Tribunal to mean that members of the Great Race are 'men' whatever 
that may be."
"Why do you refer to your sort as the 'Great Race'?"
"Because of our superior intelligence."
"Superior to men?"
"We are men."
"Superior to the intelligence of earth men?"
"That is self-evident."
"Just as we are superior in intelligence to this poor creature Jerry?"
"That is not self-evident."
"Finished with the witness," announced Pomfrey. The opposition counsels should 
have left bad enough alone; instead they tried to get B'na Kreeth to define the 
difference in intelligence between humans and worker-anthropoids. Master B'na 
explained meticulously that cultural differences masked the intrinsic 
differences, if any, and that, in any case, both anthropoids and men made so 
little use of their respective potential intelligences that it was really too 
early to tell which race would turn out to be the superior race in the Third 
Planet.
He had just begun to discuss how a truly superior race could be bred by 
combining the best features of anthropoids and men when he was hastily asked to 
"stand down."
"May it please the Court," said Pomfrey, "we have not advanced the theory; we 
have merely disposed of respondent's contention that a particular shape and a 
particular degree of intelligence are necessary to manhood. I now ask that the 
petitioner be recalled to the stand that the court may determine whether he is, 
in truth, human."
"If the learned court please-" The battery of lawyers had been in a huddle ever 
since B'na Kreeth's travel tank had been removed from the room; the chief 
counsel now spoke.
"The object of the petition appears to be to protect the life of this chattel. 
There is no need to draw out these proceedings; respondent stipulates that this 
chattel will be allowed to die a natural death in the hands of its present 
custodian and moves that the action be dismissed."
"What do you say to that?" the Court asked Pomfrey.
Pomfrey visibly gathered his toga about him. "We ask not for cold charity from 
this corporation, but for the justice of the court. We ask that Jerry's humanity 
be established as a matter of law. Not for him to vote, nor to hold property, 
nor to be relieved of special police regulations appropriate to his group- but 
we do ask that he be adjudged at least as human as that aquarium monstrosity 
just removed from this court room!"
The judge turned to Jerry. "Is that what you want, Jerry?"
Jerry looked uneasily at Pomfrey, then said, "Okay, Boss."
"Come up to the chair."
"One moment-" The opposition chief counsel seemed flurried. "I ask the Court to 
consider that a ruling in this matter may affect a long established commercial 
practice necessary to the economic life of-"
"Objection!" Pomfrey was on his feet, bristling. "Never have I heard a more 
outrageous attempt to prejudice a decision. My esteemed colleague might as well 
ask the Court to decide a murder case from political considerations. I protest-"
"Never mind," said the court. "The suggestion will be ignored. Proceed with your 
witness."
Pomfrey bowed. "We are exploring the meaning of this strange thing called 
'manhood.' We have seen (hat it is not a matter of shape, nor race, nor planet 
of birth, nor of acuteness of mind. Truly, it cannot be defined, yet it may be 
experienced. It can reach from heart to heart, from spirit to spirit." He turned 
to Jerry. "Jerry-will you sing your new song for the judge?"
"Sure mike." Jerry looked uneasily up at the whirring cameras, the mikes, and 
the mikes, then cleared his throat:
"Way down upon de Suwannee Ribber
Far, far away;
Dere s where my heart is turning ebber-"
The applause scared him out of his wits; the banging of the gavel frightened him 
still more-but it mattered not; the issue was no longer in doubt- Jerry was a 
man.