Best FriendBEST FRIEND
Like most of the earliest Futurlan stories, "Best Friend" was written to fill a 
hole in one of the magazines I was editing. I think it was in Edwin Balmer and 
Philip Wylie's After Worlds Collide that I had, years before, read a throwaway 
line about a vanished alien race whose pets had been as intelligent as modern 
human beings. I had wanted to explore Mat further, from the point of view of the 
pets: Cyril agreed, and "Best Friend" was the result 
Moray smoothed his whiskers with one hand as he pressed down on the accelerator 
and swung easily into the top speed lane. Snapping the toggle into a constant 
eighty-per, he lit a meat-flavored cigarette and replaced the small, darkly warm 
bar of metal in its socket. He hummed absently to himself, Nothing to do after 
you were in your right lane – not like flying. He turned on the radio. 
'—by Yahnn Bastion Bock,' said the voice. Moray listened; he didn't know the 
name. 
Then there breathed into the speeding little car the sweetly chilly intervals of 
a flute-stop. Moray smiled. He liked a simple melody. The music ascended and 
descended like the fiery speck on an oscillograph field; slowed almost to 
stopping, and then the melody ended. Why, Moray wondered plain-lively, couldn't 
all music be like that? Simple and clear, without confusing by-play. The melody 
rose again, with a running mate in the oboe register, and like a ceremonial 
dance of old days they intertwined and separated, the silvery flute-song and the 
woody nasal of the oboe. The driver of the little car grew agitated. Suddenly, 
with a crash, diapasons and clarions burst into the tonal minuet and circled 
heavily about the principals. 
Moray started and snapped off the radio. Try as he would, he never could get 
used to the Masters' music, and he had never known one of his people who could. 
He stared out of the window and stroked his whiskers again, forcing his thoughts 
into less upsetting channels. 
A staccato buzz sounded from the dashboard. Moray looked at the road-signs and 
swung into a lower speed-lane, and then into another. He looped around a ramp 
intersection and drove into a side-street, pulling up before a huge apartment 
dwelling. 
Moray climbed out into the strip of fuzzy pavement that extended to the lobby of 
the building. He had to wait a few moments for one of the elevators to discharge 
its burden; then he got in and pressed the button that would take him to Floor 
L, where lived Birch, whom he greatly wanted to marry. 
The elevator door curled back and he stepped out into the foyer. He quickly 
glanced at himself in a long pier glass in the hall, flicked some dust from his 
jacket. He advanced to the door of Birch's apartment and grinned into the 
photo-eye until her voice invited him in. 
Moray cast a glance about the room as he entered. Birch was nowhere to be seen, 
so he sat down patiently on a low couch and picked up a magazine. It was lying 
opened to a story called, 'The Feline Foe.' 
`Fantastic,' he muttered. All about an invading planetoid from interstellar 
space inhabited by cat-people. He felt his skin crawl at the thought, and 
actually growled deep in his throat. The illustrations were terrifying real – in 
natural color, printed in three-ply engravings. Each line was a tiny ridge, so 
that when you moved your head from side to side the figures moved and quivered, 
simulating life. One was of a female much like Birch, threatened by one of the 
felines. The caption said, ' "Now," snarled the creature, "we shall see who will 
be Master !" ' 
Moray closed the magazine and put it aside. 'Birch !' he called protestingly. 
In answer she came through a sliding door and smiled 'at him. 'Sorry I kept you 
waiting,' she said. 
`That's all right,' said Moray. 'I was looking at this thing.' He held up the 
magazine. 
Birch smiled again. 'Well, happy birthday !' she cried. 'I didn't forget. How 
does it feel to be thirteen years old?' 
`Awful. Joints cracking, hair coming out in patches, and all.' Moray was joking; 
he had never felt better, and thirteen was the prime of life to his race. 
'Birch,' he said suddenly. 'Since I am of age, and you and I have been friends 
for a long time --' 
`Not just now, Moray,' she said swiftly. 'We'll miss your show. Look at the 
time!' 
`All right,' he said, leaning back and allowing her to flip on the telescreen. 
'But remember, Birch – I have something to say to you later.' She smiled at him 
and sat back into the circle of his arm as the screen commenced to flash with 
color. 
The view was of a stage, upon which was an elaborately robed juggler. He bowed 
and rapidly, to a muttering accompaniment of drums, began to toss discs into the 
air. Then, when he had a dozen spinning and flashing in the scarlet light, two 
artists stepped forward and juggled spheres of a contrasting color, and then two 
more with conventional Indian clubs, and yet two more with open-necked bottles 
of fluid. 
The drums rolled. 'Hup!' shouted the master-juggler, and pandemonium broke loose 
upon the stage, the artists changing and interchanging, hurling a wild confusion 
of projectiles at each others' heads, always recovering and keeping the flashing 
baubles in the air. 'Hup!' shouted the chief again, and as if by magic the 
projectiles returned to the hands of the jugglers. Balancing them on elbows and 
heads they bowed precariously, responding to the radioed yelps of applause from 
the invisible audience. 
`They're wonderful!' exclaimed Birch, her soft eyes sparkling. 
`Passably good,' agreed Moray, secretly delighted that his suggested 
entertainment was a success from the start. 
Next on the bill was a young male singer, who advanced and bowed with a flutter 
of soulful eyelids. His song was without words, as was usual among Moray's 
people. As the incredible headtones rose without breaking, he squirmed 
ecstatically in his seat, remembering the real pain he had felt earlier in the 
night, listening to the strange, confusing music of the Masters. 
Moray was in ecstasy, but there was a flaw in his ecstasy. Though he was 
listening with all his soul to the music, yet under the music some little 
insistent call for attention was coming through. Something very important, not 
repeated. He tried to brush it aside ... 
Birch nudged him sharply, a little light that you might have called horror in 
her eyes. 'Moray, your call! Didn't you hear it?' 
Moray snatched from a pocket the little receiving set his people always carried 
with them. Suddenly, and unmuffled this time, shrilled the attention-demanding 
musical note. Moray leaped up with haste ... 
But he hesitated. He was undecided – incredibly so. 'I don't want to go,' he 
said slowly to Birch, astonishment at himself in every word. 
The horror in Birch's eyes was large now. 'Don't want to! Moray ! It's your 
Master!' 
`But it isn't – well, fair,' he complained. 'He couldn't have found out that I 
was with you tonight. Maybe he does know it. And if he had the heart to 
investigate he would know that –that —' Moray swallowed convulsively. 'That 
you're more important to me than even he is,' he finished rapidly. 
`Don't say that!' she cried, agitated. 'It's like a crime! Moray you'd better 
go.' 
`All right,' he said sullenly, catching up his cape. And he had known all along 
that he would go. 'You stay here and finish the show. I can get to the roof 
alone.' 
Moray stepped from the apartment into a waiting elevator and shot up to the top 
of the building. 'I need a fast plane,' he said to an attendant. 'Master's 
call.' A speed-lined ship was immediately trundled out before him; he got in and 
the vessel leaped into the air. 
One hundred thousand years of forced evolution had done strange things to the 
canine family. Artificial mutations, rigorous selection, all the tricks and 
skills of the animal breeder had created a super-dog. Moray was about four feet 
tall, but no dwarf to his surroundings, for all the world was built to that 
scale. He stood on his hind legs, for the buried thigh-joint had been extruded 
by electronic surgery, and his five fingers were long and tapering, with 
beautifully formed claws capable of the finest artisanry. 
And Moray's face was no more canine than your face is simian. All taken in all, 
he would have been a peculiar but not a fantastic figure could he have walked 
out into a city of the Twentieth Century. He might easily have been taken for 
nothing stranger than a dwarf. 
Indeed, the hundred thousand years had done more to the Masters than to their 
dogs. As had been anticipated, the brain had grown and the body shrunk, and 
there had been a strong tendency toward increased myopia and shrinkage of the 
distance between the eyes. Of the thousands of sports born to the Masters who 
had volunteered for genetic experimentation, an indicative minority had been 
born with a single, unfocussable great eye over a sunken nosebridge, showing a 
probable future line of development. 
The Masters labored no longer; that was for the dog people and more often for 
the automatic machines. Experimental research, even, was carried on by the 
companion race, the Masters merely collating the tabulated results, and deducing 
from and theorizing upon them. 
Humankind was visibly growing content with less in every way. The first luxury 
they had relinquished had been gregariousness. For long generations men had not 
met for the joy of meeting. There was no such thing as an infringement on the 
rights of others; a sort of telepathy adjusted all disputes. 
Moray's plane roared over the Andes, guided by inflexible directives. A warning 
sounded in his half-attentive ears; with a start he took over the controls of 
the craft. Below him, high on the peak of an extinct volcano, he saw the square 
white block which housed his Master. Despite his resentment at being snatched 
away from Birch he felt a thrill of excitement at the sensed proximity of his 
guiding intelligence. 
He swung the plane down and grooved it neatly in a landing notch which 
automatically, as he stepped out, swung round on silent pivots and headed the 
plane ready for departure. Moray entered through a door that rolled aside as he 
approached. His nostrils flared. Almost at the threshold of scent he could feel 
the emanations of his Master. Moray entered the long, hot corridor that led to 
his Master's living quarters, and paused before a chrome-steel door. 
In a few seconds the door opened, silently, and Moray entered a dark room, his 
face twitching with an exciting presence. He peered through the gloom, acutely 
aware of the hot, moist atmosphere of the chamber. And he saw his Master – tiny, 
shrivelled, quite naked, his bulging skull supported by the high back of the 
chair. 
Moray advanced slowly and stood before the seated human. Without opening his 
eyes, the Master spoke in a slow, thin voice. 
`Moray, this is your birthday.' There was no emphasis on one word more than 
another; the tone was that of a deaf man. 
`Yes, Master,' said Moray. 'A – friend and I were celebrating it when you 
called. I came as quickly as possible.' 
The voice piped out again, 'I have something for you, Moray. A present.' The 
eyes opened for the first time, and one of the Master's hands gripped 
spasmodically a sort of lever in his chair. The eyes did not see Moray, they 
were staring straight ahead; but there was a shallow crease to the ends of his 
lips that might have been an atavistic muscle's attempt at a smile. A panel 
swung open in the wall, and there rolled out a broad, flat dolly bearing an 
ancient and thoroughly rotted chest. Through the cracks in the wood there was 
seen a yellowish gleam of ancient paper. 
The Master continued speaking, though with evidence of a strain. Direct oral 
conversation told on the clairvoyant, accustomed to the short cuts of telepathy. 
'These are the biographies of the lives of the North American Presidents. When 
you were very young – perhaps you do not remember – you expressed curiosity 
about them. I made arrangements then to allow you to research the next important 
find of source-material on the subject. This is it. It was discovered six months 
ago, and I have saved it for your birthday.' 
There was a long silence, and Moray picked up one of the books. It had been 
treated with preservatives, he noted, and was quite ready for work. He glanced 
at a title page unenthusiastically. What had interested him in his childhood was 
boring in full maturity. 
`Are you ready to begin now?' whispered the human. 
Moray hesitated. The strange confusion that he had felt was growing in him 
again, wordlessly, like a protesting howl. 'Excuse me, please,' he stammered, 
stepping back a pace. 
The Master bent a look of mild surprise upon him. 
`I am sorry. I – I don't wish to do this work.' Moray forced himself to keep his 
eyes on the Master. There was a quick grimace on the face of the human, who had 
closed his eyes and was slumped against the back of the chair. His sunken chin 
twitched and fell open. 
The Master did not answer Moray for a long minute. Then his eyes flicked open, 
he sat erect again, and he said, 'Leave me.' 
And then he stared off into space and took no further notice of Moray. 
`Please,' said Moray hastily. 'Don't misunderstand, I want very much to read 
those books. I have wanted to all my life. But I—' He stopped talking. Very 
obviously, the Master had eliminated Moray from his mind. Just as Moray himself, 
having had a cinder in his eyes, would drop from his mind the memory of the 
brief pain. 
Moray turned and walked through the door. 'Please.' he repeated softly to 
himself, then growled in disgust. As he stepped into the plane once more he 
blinked rapidly. In the hundred thousand years of evolution dogs had learned to 
weep. 
Moray, looking ill, slumped deeper into the pneumatic couch's depths. Birch 
looked at him with concern in her warm eyes. `Moray,' She said worriedly, 'when 
did you sleep last?' 
`It doesn't matter,' he said emptily. 'I've been seeing the town.' 
`Can I give you something to eat?' 
`No,' said Moray. With a trace of guilt he took a little bottle from his pocket 
and gulped down a couple of white pills. 'I'm not hungry. And this is more fun.' 

`It's up to you,' she said. There was a long silence, and Moray picked up sheets 
of paper that were lying on a table at his elbow. 'Assignments as of Wednesday,' 
he read, and then put down the sheaf, rubbing his eyes with a tired motion. 'Are 
you doing any work now?' he asked. 
Birch smiled happily. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'My Master wants some statistics 
collated. All about concrete pouring. It's very important work, and I finished 
it a week ahead of time.' 
Moray hesitated, then, as though he didn't care, asked : `How are you and your 
Master getting along?' 
`Very well indeed. She called me yesterday to see if I needed an extension of 
time for the collation. She was very pleased to find I'd finished it already.' 
`You're lucky,' said Moray shortly. And inside himself, bursting with grief, he 
wondered what was wrong between his own Master and himself. Three weeks; not a 
single call. It was dreadful. 'Oh, Birch, I think I'm going mad!' he cried. 
He saw that she was about to try to soothe him. 'Don't interrupt,' he said. 'The 
last time I saw my Master I – made him unhappy. I was sure he would want me 
again in a few days, but he seems to have abandoned me completely. Birch, does 
that ever happen?' 
She looked frightened. The thought was appalling. 'Maybe,' she said hastily. 'I 
don't know. But he wouldn't do that to you, Moray. You're too clever. Why, he 
needs you just as much as you need him!' 
Moray sighed and stared blankly. 'I wish I could believe that.' He took out the 
little pill-bottle again, but Birch laid a hand on his. 
`Don't take any more, please, Moray,' she whispered, trying desperately to ease 
his sorrow. 'Moray – a while ago you wanted to ask me something. Will you ask me 
now?' `I wanted to ask you to marry me – is that what you mean?' `Yes. To both 
questions, Moray. I will.' 
He laughed harshly. `Me! How can you marry me? For all I know I've lost my 
Master. If I have, I – I'm no longer a person. You don't know what it's like, 
Birch, losing half your mind, and your will, and all the ambition you ever had. 
I'm no good now, Birch.' He rose suddenly and paced up and down the floor. 'You 
can't marry me!' he burst out. 'I think I'll be insane within a week! I'm going 
now. Maybe you'd better forget you ever knew me.' He slammed out of the room and 
raced down the stairs, not waiting for an elevator. 
The street-lights were out; it was the hour before dawn. Obeying a vagrant 
impulse, he boarded a moving strip of sidewalk and was carried slowly out to one 
of the suburbs of the metropolis. At the end of the line, where the strip turned 
back on itself and began the long journey back to Central Square, he got off and 
walked into the half-cultivated land. 
He had often wondered – fearfully – of the fate of those of his people who had 
been abandoned by their Masters. Where did they go? Into the outlands, as he 
was? 
He stared at the darkness of the trees and shrubs, suddenly realizing that he 
had never known the dark before. Wherever his people had gone there had been 
light – light in the streets, light in their cars and planes, light even at 
night when they slept. 
He felt the hair on his head prickle and rise. How did one go wild? he wondered 
confusedly. Took off their clothes, he supposed. 
He felt in his pockets and drew out, one by one, the symbols of civilization. A 
few slot-machine tokens, with which one got the little white pills. Jingling 
keys to his home, office, car, locker, and closet. Wallet of flexible steel, 
containing all his personal records. A full bottle of the pills – and another, 
nearly empty. 
Mechanically he swallowed two tablets of the drug and threw the bottle away. A 
little plastic case ... and as he stared at it, a diamond-hard lump in his 
throat, a fine, thin whistle shrilled from its depths. 
Master's call! He was wanted! 
Moray climbed from the plane under the frowning Andes and almost floated into 
the corridor of his Master's dwelling. The oppressive heat smote him in the 
face, but he was near laughing for joy when he opened the door and saw his 
Master sitting naked in the gloom. 
`You are slow, Moray,' said the Master, without inflection. 
Moray experienced a sudden chill. He had not expected this. Confusedly he had 
pictured a warm reconciliation, but there was no mistaking the tone of the 
Master's voice. Moray felt very tired and discouraged. 'Yes,' he said. 'You 
called me when I was out at the fields.' 
The Master did not frown, nor did he smile. Moray knew these moods of the cold, 
bleak intellect that gave him the greater part of his own intelligence and 
personality. Yet there was no greater tragedy in the world of his people than to 
be deserted – or, rather, to lose rapport with this intelligence. It was not 
insanity, and yet it was worse. 
`Moray,' said the Master, 'you are a most competent laboratory technician. And 
you have an ability for archaeology. You are assigned to a task which involves 
both these divisions. I wish you to investigate the researches of Carter Hawkes, 
time, about the Fifteenth Century Anno Cubriensis. Determine his conclusions and 
develop, on them, a complete solution to what he attempted to resolve.' 
`Yes,' said Moray dully. Normally he would have been elated at the thought that 
he had been chosen, and he consciously realized that it was his duty to be 
elated, but the chilly voice of his conscience told him that this was no 
affectionate assignment, but merely the use of a capable tool. 
`What is the purpose of this research?' he asked formally, his voice husky with 
fatigue and indulgence in the stimulant drug. 
`It is of great importance. The researches of Hawkes, as you know, were 
concerned with explosives. It was his barbarous intention to develop an 
explosive of such potency that one charge would be capable of destroying an 
enemy nation. Hawkes, of course, died before his ambition was realized, but we 
have historical evidence that he was on the right track.' 
`Chief among which,' interrupted Moray – deferentially –'is the manner of his 
death.' 
There was no approval in the Master's voice as he answered, `You know of the 
explosion in which he perished. Now, at this moment, the world is faced with a 
crisis more terrible than any ancient war could have been. It involves a 
shifting of the continental blocks of North America. The world now needs the 
Hawkes explosive, to provide the power for re-stabilizing the continent. All 
evidence has been assembled for your examination in the workroom. Speed is 
essential if catastrophe is to be averted.' 
Moray was appalled. The fate of a continent in his hands! `I shall do my best,' 
he said nervelessly, and walked from the room. 
Moray straightened his aching body and turned on the lights. He set the last of 
a string of symbols down on paper and leaned back to stare at them. The formula 
– complete! 
Moray was convinced that he had the right answer, through the lightning-like 
short cuts of reasoning, which humans called `canine intuition.' Moray might 
have felt pride in that ability –but, he realized, it was a mirage. The 
consecutivity of thought of the Masters – not Moray nor any of his people could 
really concentrate on a single line of reasoning for more than a few seconds. In 
the synthesis of thought Moray's people were superb. In its analysis ... 
A check-up on the formula was essential. Repeating the formula aloud, Moray's 
hands grasped half a dozen ingredients from the shelves of the lab, and 
precisely compounded them in the field of a micro-inspection device. Actually, 
Moray was dealing with units measured in single molecules, and yet his touch was 
as sure as though he were handling beakers-full. 
Finally titrated, the infinitesimal compound was set over a cherry-red electric 
grid to complete its chain of reactions and dry. Then it would explode, Moray 
realized – assuming he had the formula correct. But, with such a tiny quantity, 
what would be the difference? 
Perhaps – at utmost – the room would be wrecked. But there was no time to take 
the stuff to the firing-chambers that were suspended high over the crater of the 
extinct volcano on flexible steel masts, bent and supported to handle almost any 
shock. 
Moray swallowed two more pellets of the drug. He had to wait for its effect upon 
him, now, but he dared not take a larger dose. 
He strode from the room, putting the formula in his pocket. 
Wandering aimlessly through the building, he was suddenly assailed by the hot, 
wet aura of his Master. He paused, then nudged the door open a trifle and peered 
longingly within. 
The Master was engaged in solitary clairvoyance, his head sagging down on his 
scrawny chest, veins and muscles visibly pulsing. Even in the utter darkness of 
his room, he was visible by a thin blue light that exuded from the points and 
projections of his body to flow about the entire skin. 
The Master was utterly unconscious of the presence of his servant. Though Moray 
was not a child or a fool, he stemmed directly from the beautiful, intelligent 
creatures that used to hunt and play with men, and he could not stand up to the 
fierce tide of intellect that flowed in that room. With a smothered sound he 
turned, about to leave. 
Then Moray heard a noise – quiet and almost restful at first, like a swarm of 
bees passing overhead. And then it rumbled into a mighty crash that made the 
elastic construction of the Master's house quiver as though stricken. 
Suddenly he realized – the Hawkes explosive! It had worked! He looked at his 
Master, to see the blue glare fade as though it were being reabsorbed into his 
body. As the last of it vanished, lights glowed on around the room, bringing it 
to its accustomed shadowy twilight. The Master's head lifted. 
`Moray,' he whispered tensely. Was that the explosive?' 
A thin little ripple of delight surged along Moray's spine. They could both be 
blown to splintered atoms in the explosion, and the continent they were trying 
to save along with them – he didn't care! His Master had spoken to him! 
He knew what he had to do. With a little growl that was meant to say, `Pardon!' 
he raced to the Master's side, picked him up and flung him over a shoulder – 
gently. They had to get out of the building, for it might yet topple on them. 
Moray tottered to the door, bent under the double burden; pushed it open and 
stepped into the corridor. The Master couldn't walk, so Moray had to walk for 
him. They made slow progress along the interminable hall, but finally they were 
in the open. Moray set his burden down, the gangling head swaying, and—Felt 
unutterably, incontrovertibly idiotic! For the air was still and placid; and the 
building stood firm as a rock; and the only mark of the Hawkes explosive was a 
gaping mouth of a pit where the laboratory had been. Idiot! Not to have 
remembered that the Hawkes would expend its force downward! 
Moray peered shamefacedly at his Master. Yet there was some consolation for him, 
because there was the skeleton of a smile on the Master's face. Clearly he had 
understood Moray's Motives, and ... perhaps Moray's life need not finally be 
blighted. 
For a long second they stood there looking into each other's eyes. Then the 
Master said, gently, 'Carry me to the plane.' Not stopping to ask why, Moray 
picked him up once more and strode buoyantly to the waiting ship. Letting the 
Master down gently at the plane's door, he helped him in, got in himself, and 
took his place at the controls. 
`Where shall we go?' he ask. 
The Master smiled that ghost of a smile again, but Moray could detect a faint 
apprehension in his expression, too. 'Up, Moray,' he whispered. 'Straight up. 
You see, Moray, these mountains are volcanic. And they're not quite extinct. We 
must go away now, up into the air.' 
Moray's reflexes were faster than an electron-stream as he whipped around to the 
knobs and levers that sent the little ship tearing up into the atmosphere. A 
mile and a half in the sky, he flipped the bar that caused the ship to hover, 
turned to regard the scene below. 
The Master had been right! The explosion had pinked the volcano, and the volcano 
was erupting in retaliation — a hot curl of lava-was snaking into the atmosphere 
now, seemingly a pseudo-pod reaching to bring them down. But it was thrown up 
only a few hundred feet; then the lava flow stopped; cataclysmic thunderings 
were heard and vast boulders were hurled into the sky. It was lucky they'd got 
away, thought Moray as he watched the ground beneath quiver and shake; and 
luckier that no other person had been around, for the ship could carry but two. 
And as he stared, fascinated, at the turmoil below, he felt a light, soft touch 
on his arm. It was the Master! — the first time in all Moray's life when the 
Master had touched him to draw attention, Moray suddenly knew, and rejoiced — he 
had found his Master again! 
`Let us go on, Moray,' whispered the Master. 'We have found that the explosive 
will work. Our job, just now, is done.' 
And as Moray worked the controls that hurled the ship ahead, toward a new home 
for his Master and toward Birch for himself, he knew that the wings of the ship 
were of no value at all. Tear them off! he thought, and throw them away! His 
heart was light enough to bear a world!