Other Books for Pulpless.Com by Robert Silverberg 

To Live Again 


To Open the Sky
by
Robert Silverberg



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Copyright © 1967 by Author 
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First Pulpless.Com™, Inc. Edition June, 1999.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-60339
Trade Paperback ISBN: 1-58445-042-8
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Book and Cover designed by CaliPer, Inc.
Cover Illustration by Billy Tackett, Arcadi Studios
© 1999 by Billy Tackett




For Frederik Pohl 


Table of Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

One Blue Fire 2077 ...................................................... 11
Two The Warriors of Light 2095 ................................ 47
Three Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 .................... 99
Four Lazarus Come Forth 2152 ................................ 149
Five To Open the Sky 2164........................................ 193



One


Blue Fire 
2077 

Stations of the Spectrum 

And there is light, before and beyond our vision, for which we give 
thanks. 

And there is heat, for which we are humble. 

And there is power, for which we count ourselves blessed. 

Blessed be Balmer, who gave us our wavelengths. Blessed be Bohr, 
who brought us understanding. Blessed be Lyman, who saw beyond 
sight. 

Tell us now the stations of the spectrum. 

Blessed be long radio waves, which oscillate slowly. 

Blessed be broadcast waves, for which we thank Hertz. 

Blessed be short waves, linkers of mankind, and blessed be microwaves. 

Blessed be infrared, bearers of nourishing heat. 

Blessed be visible light, magnificent in angstroms. (On high holidays 
only: Blessed be red, sacred to Doppler. Blessed be orange. Blessed be 
yellow, hallowed by Fraunhofer’s gaze. Blessed be green. Blessed be 
blue for its hydrogen line. Blessed be indigo. Blessed be violet, flourishing with energy.) 

Blessed be ultraviolet, with the richness of the sun. Blessed be X-
rays, sacred to Roentgen, the prober within. 

Blessed be the gamma, in all its power; blessed be the highest of frequencies. 

We give thanks for Planck. We give thanks for Einstein. We give thanks 
in the highest for Maxwell. 

In the strength of the spectrum, the quantum, and the holy angstrom, 
peace! 


To Open the Sky 


Blue Fire 2077 

one


There was chaos on the face of the earth, but to the man in the 
Nothing Chamber it did not matter. 

Ten billion people—or was it twelve billion by now?— fought 
for their place in the sun. Skyscrapers shot heaven-ward like 
sprouting beanstalks. The Martians mocked. The Venusians spat. 
Nut-cults flourished, and in a thousand veils the Vorsters bowed 
low to their devilish blue glow. All of this, at the moment, was of 
no significance to Reynolds Kirby. He was out of it. He was the 
man in the Nothing Chamber. 

The place of his repose was four thousand feet above the blue 
Caribbean, in his hundredth-story apartment on Tortola in the 
Virgin Islands. A man had to take his rest somewhere. Kirby, as a 
high official in the U.N., had the right to warmth and slumber, 
and a substantial chunk of his salary covered the overhead on 
this hideaway. The building was a tower of shining glass whose 
foundations drove deep into the heart of the island. One could 
not build a skyscraper like this on every Caribbean island; too 
many of them were flat disks of dead coral, lacking the substance 
to support half a million tons of deadweight. Tortola was different, a retired volcano, a submerged mountain. Here they could 
build, and here they had built 

Reynolds Kirby slept the good sleep. 

Half an hour in a Nothing Chamber restored a man to vitality, 
draining the poisons of fatigue from his body and mind. Three 
hours in it left him limp, flaccid-willed. A twenty-four-hour stint 
could make any man a puppet. Kirby lay in a warm nutrient bath, 
ears plugged, eyes capped, feed-lines bringing air to his lungs. 
There was nothing like crawling back into the womb for a while 
when the world was too much with you. 

The Mondschein ticked by. Kirby did not think of Vorsters. Kirby 
did not think of Nat Weiner, the Martian. Kirby did not think of 
the esper girl, writhing in her bed of torment, whom he had seen 


To Open the Sky 

in Kyoto last week. Kirby did not think. 

A voice purred, “Are you ready, Freeman Kirby?” 

Kirby was not ready. Who ever was? A man had to be driven 
from his Nothing Chamber by an angel with a flaming sword. 
The nutrient bath began to bubble out of the tank. Rubber-cushioned metal fingers peeled the caps from his eyeballs. His ears 
were unplugged. Kirby lay shivering for a moment, expelled from 
the womb, resisting the return to reality. The chamber’s cycle 
was complete; it could not be turned on again for twenty-four 
hours, and a good thing, too. 

“Did you sleep well, Freeman Kirby?” 

Kirby scowled rustily and clambered to his feet. He swayed, 
nearly lost his balance, but the robot servitor was there to steady 
him. Kirby caught a burnished arm and held it until the spasm 
passed. 

“I slept marvelously well,” he told the metal creature. “It’s a 
pity to return.” 

“You don’t mean that, Freeman. You know that the only true 
pleasure comes from an engagement with life. You said that to 
me yourself, Freeman Kirby.” 

“I suppose I did,” Kirby admitted dryly. All of the robot’s pious 
philosophy stemmed from things he had said. He accepted a robe 
from the squat, flat-faced thing and pulled it over his shoulders. 
He shivered again. Kirby was a lean man, too tall for his weight, 
with stringy, corded arms and legs, close-cropped gray hair, deep-
set greenish eyes. He was forty, and looked fifty, and before climbing into the Nothing Chamber today he had felt about seventy. 

“When does the Martian arrive?” he asked. 

“Seventeen hours. He’s at a banquet in San Juan right cow, but 
he’ll be along soon.” 

“I can’t wait,” Kirby said. Moodily he moved to the nearest 
window and depolarized it. He looked down, way down, at the 
tranquil water lapping at the beach. He could see the dark line 
of the cord reef, green water on the hither side, deep blue water 


Blue Fire 2077 

beyond. The reef was dead, of course. The delicate creatures 
who had built it could stand only so much motor fuel in their 
systems, and the level of tolerance had been passed quite some 
time ago. The skittering hydrofoils buzzing from island to island 
left a trail of murderous slime in their wake. 

The U.N. man closed his eyes. And opened them quickly, for 
when he lowered the lids there appeared on the screen of his 
brain the sight of that esper girl again, twisting, screaming, biting her knuckles, yellow skin flecked with gleaming beads of 
sweat. And the Vorster man standing by, waving that damned 
blue glow around, murmuring, “Peace, child, peace, you will soon 
be in harmony with the All.” 

That had been last Thursday. This was the following Wednesday. She was in harmony with the All by now, Kirby Thought, 
and an irreplaceable pool of genes had been scattered to the 
four winds. Or the seven winds. He was having trouble keeping 
his clichés straight these days. 

Seven seas, he thought. Four winds. 

The shadow of a copter crossed his line of sight. 

“Your guest is arriving,” the robot declared. 

“Magnificent,” Kirby said sourly. 

The news that the Martian was on hand set Kirby jangling with 
tension. He had been selected as the guide, mentor, and watchdog for the visitor from the Martian colony. A great deal depended 
on maintaining friendly relations with the Martians, for they represented markets vital to Earth’s economy. They also represented 
vigor and drive, commodities currently in short supply on Earth. 

But they were also a headache to handle—touchy, mercurial, 
unpredictable. Kirby knew that he bad a big job on his hands. He 
had to keep the Martian out of harm’s way, coddle him and cosset 
him, all without ever seeming patronizing or oversolicitous. And 
if Kirby bungled it—well, it could be costly to Earth and fatal to 
Kirby’s own career. 

He opaqued the window again and hurried into his bedroom 


To Open the Sky 

to change into robes of state. A clinging gray tunic, green foulard, boots of blue leather, gloves of gleaming golden mesh—he 
looked every inch the important Earthside official by the time 
the annunciator clanged to inform him that Nathaniel Weiner of 
Mars had come to call. 

“Show him in,” Kirby said. 

The door irised open, and the Martian stepped nimbly through. 
He was a small, compact man in his early thirties, unnaturally 
wide-shouldered, with thin lips, jutting cheekbones, dark beady 
eyes. He looked physically powerful, as though he had spent his 
life struggling with the killing gravity of Jupiter, not romping in 
the airy effortlessness of Mars. He was deeply tanned, and a fine 
network of wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes. He 
looked aggressive, thought Kirby. He looked arrogant. 

“Freeman Kirby, it’s a pleasure to see you,” the Martian said in 
a deep, rasping voice. 

“The honor is mine, Freeman Weiner.” 

“Permit me,” Weiner said. He drew his laser pistol. Kirby’s robot scurried forward with the velvet cushion. The Martian placed 
the weapon carefully on the plush mound. The robot slid across 
the floor to bring the gun to Kirby. 

“Call me Nat,” the Martian said. 

Kirby smiled thinly. He picked up the gun, resisted the insane 
temptation to ash the Martian on the spot and briefly examined 
it. Then he replaced it on the cushion and flicked his hand at the 
robot, who carried it back to its owner. 

“My friends call me Ron,” Kirby said. “Reynolds is a lousy first 
name.” 

“Glad to know you, Ron. What’s to drink?” 

Kirby was jarred by the breach of etiquette, but he maintained 
an equable diplomatic mask. The Martian had been punctilious 
enough with his gun ritual, but you’d expect that with any frontiersman; it didn’t mean that his manners extended beyond that. 
Smoothly Kirby said, “Whatever you like, Nat. Synthetics, 


Blue Fire 2077 

realies—you name it and it’s here. What about a filtered rum?” 

“I’ve had so much rum I’m ready to puke it, Ron. Those gabogos 
in San Juan drink it like water. What about some decent whiskey?” 

“You dial it,” Kirby said with a grand sweep of his hand. The 
robot picked up the console of the bar and carried it to the Martian. Weiner eyed the buttons a moment and stabbed almost at 
random, twice. 

“I’m ordering a double rye for you,” Weiner announced. “And 
a double bourbon for me.” 

Kirby found that amusing. The rude colonial was not only selecting his own drink but one for his host. Double rye, indeed! 
Kirby hid his wince and took the drink. Weiner slipped comfortably into a webfoam cradle. Kirby sat also. 

“How are you enjoying your visit to Earth?” Kirby asked. 

“Not bad. Not bad. Sickening the way you people are crammed 
together here, though.” 

“It’s the human condition.” 

“Not on Mars it isn’t. Not on Venus, either.” 

“Give it time,” Kirby said. 

“I doubt it. We know how to regulate our population up there, 
Ron.” 

“So do we. It just took us a while to get the idea across to everybody, and by that time there were ten billion of us. We hope 
to keep the rate of increase down.” 

“You know what?” Weiner said. “You ought to take every tenth 
person and feed ‘em to the converters. Get some good energy 
back out of all that meat Cut your population by a billion overnight.” He chuckled. “Not serious. Wouldn’t be ethical. Just a 
passing joke.” 

Kirby smiled. “You aren’t the first to suggest it, Nat And some 
of the others were plenty serious.” 

“Discipline—that’s the answer to every human problem. Discipline and more self-discipline. Denial. Planning. This whiskey 


To Open the Sky 

is damned good, Ron. How about another round?” 

“Help yourself.” 

Weiner did. Generously. 

“Damned fine stuff,” he murmured. “We don’t get drinks like 
this on Mars. Got to admit it, Ron. Crowded and stinking as this 
planet is, it’s got comforts. I wouldn’t want to live here, mind 
you, but I’m glad I came. The women—mmmm! The drinks! The 
excitement!” 

“You’ve been here two days?” Kirby asked. 

“That’s right. One night in New York—ceremonies, banquet, 
all that garbage, sponsored by the Colonial Association. Then 
down to Washington to see the President. Nice old chap. Soft 
belly, though. Could stand some exercise. Then this idiot thing 
in San Juan, a day of hospitality, meeting the Puerto Rican comrades, that kind of junk. And now here. What’s to do here, Ron?” 

“Well, we could go downstairs for a swim first—” 

“I can swim all I like on Mars. I want to see civilization, not 
water. Complexity.” Weiner’s eyes glowed. Kirby abruptly realized that the man had been drunk when he walked in and that 
the two stiff jolts of bourbon had sent him into a fine glow of 
intoxication. “You know what I want to do, Kirby? I want to get 
out and grub in the dirt a little. I want to go to opium dens. I 
want to see espers have ecstasies. I want to take in a Vorster 
session. I want to live the life, Ron. I want to experience Earth— 
muck and all!” 


Blue Fire 2077 

two


The Vorster hall was in a shabby, almost intolerably seedy old 
building in central Manhattan, practically within spitting distance 
of the U.N. buildings. Kirby felt queasy about entering it; he had 
never really conquered his uneasiness about slumming, even 
now when most of the world was one vast teeming slum. But Nat 
Weiner had commanded it, and so it must be. Kirby had brought 
him here because it was the only Vorster place he had visited 
before, and so he didn’t feel too sharply out of place among the 
worshipers. 

The sign over the door said in glowing but splotchy letters: 

Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance
All Welcome
Services Daily
Heal Your Hearts
Harmonize With the All


Weiner snickered at the sign. “Look at that! Heal your hearts! 
How’s your heart, Kirby?” 

“Punctured in several places. Shall we go in?” 

“You bet we shall,” Weiner said. 

The Martian was sloshingly drunk. He held his liquor well, 
Kirby had to admit. Through the long evening Kirby had not even 
tried to match the colonial envoy drink for drink, and yet he felt 
hazy and overheated. The tip of his nose prickled. He yearned to 
shake Weiner off and crawl back into the Nothing Chamber to 
get all this poison out of his system. 

But Weiner wanted to kick over the traces, and It was hard to 
blame him for that. Mars was a rough place, where there was no 
time for sell-indulgence. Terraforming a planet took a maximum 
effort. The job was nearly done now, after two generations of 
toil, and the air of Mars was sweet and clean, but no one was 


To Open the Sky 

relaxing up there yet. Weiner was here to negotiate a trade agreement, but it was also his first chance to escape from the rigors of 
Martian life. The Sparta of space, they called it. And here he was 
in Athens. 

They entered the Vorster hall. 

It was long and narrow, an oblong box of a room. A dozen 
rows of unpainted wooden benches ran from wall to wall, with a 
narrow aisle down one side. At the rear was the altar, glowing 
with the inevitable blue radiance. Behind it stood a tall, skeleton-thin man, bald, bearded. 

“Is that the priest?” Weiner whispered harshly. 

“I don’t think they’re called priests,” said Kirby. “But he’s in 
charge.” 

“Do we take communion?” 

“Let’s just watch,” Kirby suggested. 

“Look at all these damned maniacs,” the Martian said. 

“This is a very popular religious movement.” 

“I don’t get it.” 

“Watch. Listen.” 

“Down on their knees—groveling to that half-pint reactor—” 

Heads were turning in their direction. Kirby sighed. He had 
no love for the Vorsters or their religion himself, but be was 
embarrassed at this boisterous desecration of their shrine. Most 
undiplomatically, he took Weiner’s arm, guided the Martian into 
the nearest pew, and pulled him down into a kneeling position. 
Kirby knelt beside him. The Martian gave him an ugly glance. 
Colonists didn’t like their bodies handled by strangers. A Venusian might have slashed at Kirby with his dagger for something 
like that. But, then, a Venusian wouldn’t be here on Earth at all, 
let alone cutting capers in a Vorster hall. 

Sullenly, Weiner grabbed the rail and leaned forward to watch 
the service. Kirby squinted through the near darkness at the man 
behind the altar. 

The reactor was on and glowing—a cube of cobalt-60, shielded 


Blue Fire 2077 

by water, the dangerous radiations gobbled up before they could 
sear through flesh. In the darkness Kirby saw a faint blue glow, 
rising slowly in brightness, growing more intense. Now the lattice of the tiny reactor was masked in whitish-blue light, and 
around it swirled a weird greenish-blue glow that seemed almost purple at its core. It was the Blue Fire, the eerie cold light 
of the Cerenkov radiation, spreading outward to envelop the 
entire room. 

It was nothing mystical, Kirby knew. Electrons were surging 
through that tank of water, moving at a velocity greater than 
light in that medium, and as they moved they hurled forth a 
stream of photons. There were neat equations to explain the 
source of the Blue Fire. Give the Vorsters credit: they didn’t say 
it was anything supernatural. But it made a useful symbolic instrument, a focus for religious emotions, more colorful than a 
crucifix, more dramatic than the Tables of the Law. 

The Vorster up front said quietly, “There is a Oneness from 
which all life stems. The infinite variety of the universe we owe 
to the motion of the electrons. Atoms meet; their particles entwine. Electrons leap from orbit to orbit, and chemical changes 
are worked.” 

“Listen to the pious bastard,” Weiner snorted. “A chemistry 
lecture, yet!” 

Kirby bit his lip in anguish. A girl in the pew just in front of 
theirs turned around and said in a low, urgent voice, “Please. 
Please—just listen.” 

She was such a numbing sight that even Weiner was struck 
dumb for once. The Martian gasped in shock. Kirby, who had 
seen surgically altered women before, scarcely reacted at all. 
Iridescent cups covered the openings where her ears had been. 
An opal was mounted in the bone of her forehead. Her eyelids 
were of gleaming foil. The surgeons had done things to her nostrils, to her lips. Perhaps she had been in some terrible accident. 
More likely she had had herself maimed for cosmetic purposes. 


To Open the Sky 

Madness. Madness. 

The Vorster said, “The energy of the sun—the green life surging in plants—the bursting wonder of growth—for this we thank 
the electron. The enzymes of our body—the sparking synapses 
of our brains—the beating of our hearts—for this we thank the 
electron. Fuel and food, light and heat, warmth and nourishment, everything and all, rising from the Oneness, rising from 
the Immanent Radiance—” 

It was a litany, Kirby realized. All around him people were 
swaying in rhythm with the half-chanted words, were nodding, 
even weeping. The Blue Fire swelled and reached to the sagging ceiling. The man at the altar raised his long, spidery arms 
in a kind of benediction. 

“Come forward,” he cried. “Come kneel and join in praise! 
Lock arms, bow heads, give thanks for the underlying unity of 
all things!” 

The Vorsters began to shamble toward the altar. It woke memories of an Episcopalian childhood for Kirby: 

going forward to take communion, the wafer on the tongue, 
the quick sip of wine, the smell of incense, the rustle of priestly 
robes. He hadn’t been to a service in twenty-five years. It was a 
long way from the vaulted magnificence of the cathedral to the 
dilapidated ugliness of this improvised shrine, but for a moment 
Kirby felt a flicker of religious feeling, felt just the faintest urge 
to move forward with the others and kneel before the glowing 
reactor. 

The thought stunned and shocked him. 

How had it stolen upon him? This was no religion. This was 
cultism, a wildfire movement, the latest fad, here today, gone 
tomorrow. Ten million converts overnight? What of it? Tomorrow or the next day would come the newest prophet, exhorting 
the faithful to plunge their hands into a scintillation counter’s 
sparkling bath, and the Vorster halls would be deserted. This 
was no Rock. This was quicksand. 


Blue Fire 2077 

And yet there had been that momentary pull— Kirby tightened his lips. It was the strain, he thought, of shepherding this 
wild Martian around all evening. He didn’t give a damn for the 
supernal Oneness. The underlying unity of all things meant nothing to him. This was a place for the tired, the neurotic, the novelty-hungry, for the kind of person that would cheerfully pay good 
money to have her ears cut off and her nostrils slit. lit was a 
measure of his own desperation that he had been almost ready 
to join the communicants at the altar. 

He relaxed. 

And in the same moment Nat Weiner burst to his feet and went 
careening down the aisle. 

“Save me!” the Martian cried. “Heal my goddam soul! Show 
me the Oneness!” 

“Kneel with us, Brother,” the Vorster leader said smoothly. 

“I’m a sinner!” Weiner howled. “I’m full of booze and corruption! I got to be saved! I embrace the electron! I yield!” 

Kirby hurried after him down the aisle. Was Weiner serious? 
The Martians were notorious for their resistance to any and all 
religious movements, including the established and legitimate 
ones. Had he somehow succumbed to that hellish blue glow? 

“Take the hands of your brethren,” the leader murmured. “Bow 
your head and let the glow enfold you.” 

Weiner looked to his left. The girl with the surgical alterations 
knelt beside him. She held out her hand. Four fingers of flesh, 
one of some turquoise-hued metal. 

“It’s a monster!” Weiner shrieked. “Take it away! I won’t let 
you cut me up!” 

“Be calm, Brother—” 

“You’re a bunch of phonies! Phonies! Phonies! Phonies! Nothing but a pack of—” 

Kirby got to him. He dug his fingertips into the ridged muscles 
of Weiner’s back in a way that the Martian was likely to notice, 
drunk as he was. 


To Open the Sky 

In a low, intense voice Kirby said, “Let’s go, Nat. We’re getting 
out of here.” 

“Take your stinking hands off me, Earther!” 

“Nat, please—this is a house of worship—” 

“This is a bughouse! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Look at them! Down 
on their knees like stinking maniacs!” Weiner struggled to his 
feet. His booming voice seemed to batter at the walls. “I’m a free 
man from Mars! I dug in the desert with these hands! I watched 
the oceans fill! What did any of you do? You cut your eyelids off 
and wallowed in muck! And you—you fake priest, you take their 
money and love it!” 

The Martian grabbed the altar rail and vaulted over it, coming 
perilously close to the glowing reactor. He clawed at the towering, bearded Vorster. 

Calmly the cultist reached out and slipped one long arm 
through the pinwheeling chaos of Weiner’s threshing limbs. He 
touched his fingertips to the Martian’s throat for a fraction of a 
second. 

Weiner fell like a dead man. 


Blue Fire 2077 

three 

“Are you all right now?” Kirby asked, dry-throated. 

Weiner stirred. “Where’s that girl?” 

“The one with the surgery?” 

“No,” he rasped. “The esper. I want her near me again.” 

Kirby glanced at the slender, blue-haired girl. She nodded 
tensely and took Weiner’s hand. The Martian’s face was bright 
with sweat, and his eyes were still wild. He lay back, head propped 
on pillows, cheeks hollow. 

They were in a sniffer palace across the street from the Vorster 
hail. Kirby had had to carry the Martian out of the place himself, 
slung across his shoulders; the Vorsters did not let robots in. The 
sniffer palace seemed as good a place as any to take him. 

The esper girl had come over to them as Kirby staggered into 
the place. She was a Vorster, too—the blue hair was the tip-off— 
but apparently she had finished her worship for the day and was 
topping things off with a quick inhalation. With instant sympathy she had bent to peer at Weiner’s flushed, sweat-flecked face. 
She had asked Kirby if his friend had had a stroke. 

“I’m not sure what happened to him,” Kirby said. “He was 
drunk and began to make trouble in the Vorster place. The leader 
of the service touched his throat.” 

The girl smiled. She was waif-like, fragile, no more than eighteen or nineteen. Cursed with talent. She closed her eyes, took 
Weiner’s hand, clutched the thick wrist until the 

Martian revived. Kirby did not know what she had done. All 
this was mystery to him. 

Now, strength flowing back into him visibly from moment to 
moment, Weiner tried to sit up. He seized the girl’s hand and 
held it. She did not attempt to break free. 

He said, “What did they hit me with?” 

“It was a momentary alteration of your charge,” the girl told 
him. “He turned off your heart and brain for a thousandth of a 


To Open the Sky 

second. There will be no permanent damage.” 

“How’d he do it? He just touched me with his fingers.” 

“There is a technique. But you’ll be all right.” 

Weiner eyed the girl. “You an esper? You reading my mind 
right now?” 

“I’m an esper, but I don’t read Mondschein. I’m just an empath. 
You’re all churned up with hatred. Why don’t you go back across 
the street? Ask him to forgive you. I know he will. Let him teach 
you. Have you read Vorst’s book?” 

“Why don’t you just go to hell?” Weiner said casually. “No, don’t. 
You’re too cute. We got some cute espers on Mars, too. You want 
some fun tonight? My name’s Nat Weiner, and this is my friend, 
Ron Kirby. Reynolds Kirby. He’s a stuffed shirt, but we can give 
him the slip.” The Martian’s grip on the slender arm grew tighter. 
“What do you want?” 

The girl didn’t say anything. She simply frowned, and Weiner 
made a strange face and released her arm. Kirby, watching, had 
to repress a grin. Weiner was running into trouble all over the 
place. This was a complicated world. 

“Go across the street,” the girl whispered. “They’ll help you 
there.” 

She turned without waiting for a reply and faded into the dimness. Weiner passed a hand over his forehead as though brushing cobwebs from his brain. He struggled to his feet, ignoring 
Kirby’s proffered arm. 

“What kind of place is this?” he asked. 

“A sniffer palace.” 

“Will they preach to me here?” 

“They’ll just fog your brain a little,” said Kirby. “Want to try?” 

“Sure. I told you I wanted to try everything. I don’t get a chance 
to come to Earth every day.” 

Weiner grinned, but it was a somber grin. He didn’t seem to 
have the bounce he had had an hour ago. Of course, getting 
knocked out by the Vorster had sobered him some. He was still 


Blue Fire 2077 

game, though, ready to soak up all the sins this wicked planet 
had to offer. 

Kirby wondered whether he was making as big a mess of this 
assignment as it seemed. There was no way of knowing—not 
yet. Later, of course, Weiner might well protest the handling he 
had received, and Kirby might find himself abruptly transferred 
to less sensitive duties. That was not a pleasant thought. He regarded his career as an important matter, perhaps the only important matter in his life. He did not want to wreck it in a night 

They moved toward the sniffer booths. 

“Tell me,” Weiner said. “Do those people really believe all that 
crap about the electron?” 

“I really don’t know. I haven’t made a study of it, Nat.” 

“You’ve watched the movement appear. How many members 
does it have now?” 

“A couple of million, I guess.” 

“That’s plenty. We have only seven million people on all of 
Mars. If you’ve got this many joining this nutty cult—” 

“There are lots of new religious sects on Earth today,” Kirby 
said. “It’s an apocalyptic time. People are hungry for reassurance. They feel the Earth’s being left behind by the stream of 
events. So they look for a unity, for some way out of all the confusion and fragmentation.” 

“Let them come to Mars if they want a unity. We got work for 
everybody, and no time to stew about the alieness of it all.” Weiner 
guffawed. “The hell with it. Tell me about this sniffer stuff.” 

“Opium’s out of fashion. We inhale the more exotic mercaptans. The hallucinations are said to be entertaining.” 

“Said to be? Don’t you know? Kirby, don’t you have firsthand 
information about anything? You aren’t even alive. You’re just a 
zombie. A man needs some vices, Kirby.” 

The U.N. man thought of the Nothing Chamber waiting for 
him in the lofty tower on balmy Tortola. His face was a stony 
mask. He said, “Some of us are too busy for vices. But this visit of 


To Open the Sky 

yours is likely to be a great education for me, Nat. Have a sniff.” 

A robot rolled up to them. Kirby clapped his right thumb against 
the lambent yellow plate set in the robot’s chest. The light brightened as Kirby’s print-pattern was recorded. 

“We’ll bill your Central,” the robot said. Its voice was absurdly 
deep: pitch troubles on the master tape, Kirby suspected. When 
the metal creature rolled away, it was listing a bit to starboard. 
Rusty in the gut, he figured. An even chance that he wouldn’t get 
billed. He picked up a sniffer mask and handed it to Weiner, who 
sprawled out comfortably on the couch along the wall of the 
booth. Weiner donned the mask. Kirby took another and slipped 
it over his nose and mouth. He closed his eyes and settled into 
the webfoam cradle near the booth’s entrance. A moment passed; 
then he tasted the gas creeping into his nasal passages. It was a 
revolting sour-sweet smell, a sulfuric smell. 

Kirby waited for the hallucination. 

There were people who spent hours each day in these booths, 
he knew. The government kept raising the tax to discourage the 
sniffers, but they came anyway, even at ten, twenty, thirty dollars a sniff. The gas itself wasn’t addictive, not in the metabolic 
way that heroin got to you. It was more of a psychological addiction, something you could break if you really tried, but which 
nobody cared to try to break: like the sex addiction, like mild 
alcoholism. For some it was a kind of religion. Everyone to his 
own creed; this was a crowded world, harboring many beliefs. 

A girl made of diamonds and emeralds was walking through 
Kirby’s brain. 

The surgeons had cut away every scrap of living flesh on her 
body. Her eyeballs had the cold glitter of precious gems; her 
breasts were globes of white onyx tipped with. ruby; her lips 
were slabs of alabaster; her hair was fashioned from strings of 
yellow gold. Blue fire flickered around her, Vorster fire, crackling strangely. 

She said,“You’re tired, Ron.You need to get away from yourself.” 


Blue Fire 2077 

“I know. I’m using the Nothing Chamber every other day now. 
I’m fighting off a crackup.” 

“You’re too rigid, that’s your trouble. Why don’t you visit my 
surgeon? Have yourself changed. Get rid of all that stupid meat. 
For this I say, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” 

“No,” Kirby muttered. “It isn’t so. All I need is some rest. A 
good swim, sunshine, decent amount of sleep. But they dumped 
that mad Martian on me.” 

The hallucination laughed shrilly, rippled her arms, performed 
a sinuous convolution. They had sliced away fingers and replaced 
them with spikes of ivory. Her fingernails were of polished copper. The mischievous tongue that flicked out from between the 
alabaster lips was a serpent of gaudy flexiplast. “Behold,” she 
crooned voluptuously, “I show you a mystery. We shall not all 
sleep, but we shall all be changed.” 

“In a moment,” Kirby said. “In the twinkling of an eye. The 
trumpet shall sound.” 

“And the dead shall be raised incorruptible. Do it, Ron. You’ll 
look so much handsomer. Maybe you can hold the next marriage together a little better, too. You miss her—admit it. You 
ought to see what she looks like now. Full fathom five thy loved 
one lies. But she’s happy. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” 

“I’m a human being,” Kirby protested. “I’m not going to turn 
myself into a walking museum piece like you. Or like her, for 
that matter. Even if it’s becoming fashionable for men to have it 
done.” 

The blue glow began to pulse and throb around the vision in 
his brain. “You need something, though, Ron. The Nothing Chamber isn’t the answer. It’s—nothing. Affiliate yourself. Belong. Work 
isn’t the answer, either. Join. Join. You won’t carve yourself? All 
right, become a Vorster, then. Surrender to the Oneness. Let death 
be swallowed up in victory.” 


To Open the Sky 

“Can’t I just remain myself?” Kirby cried. 

“What you are isn’t enough. Not now. Not any more. These are 
hard times. A troubled world. The Martians make fun of us. The 
Venusians despise us. We need new organization, new strength. 
The sting of death is in sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 
Grave, where is thy victory?” 

A riotous swirl of colors danced through Kirby’s mind. The 
surgically altered woman pirouetted, leaped and bobbed, flaunted 
the jewel-bedecked flamboyance of herself in his face. Kirby 
quivered. He clawed fitfully at the mask. For this nightmare he 
had paid good money? How could people let themselves become 
addicts of this sort of thing—this tour through the swamps of 
one’s own mind? 

Kirby wrenched the sniffer mask away and threw it to the floor 
of the booth. He sucked clean air into his lungs, fluttered his 
eyes, returned to reality. 

He was alone in the booth. 

The Martian, Weiner, was gone. 


Blue Fire 2077 

four 

The robot who ran the sniffer palace was of no help. 

“Where’d he go?” Kirby demanded. 

“He left,” came the rusty reply. “Eighteen dollars sixty cents. 
We will bill your Central.” 

“Did he say where he was going?” 

“We did not converse. He left. Awwwrk! We did not converse. 
I will bill your Central. Awwwrk!” 

Sputtering a curse, Kirby rushed out into the street. He glanced 
involuntarily at the sky. Against the darkness he saw the lemon-
colored letters of the timeglow streaming in the firmament, irregularly splotched with red: 

2205 Hours Eastern Standard Time
Wednesday May 8 2077
Buy Preebles—They Crunch!


Two hours to midnight. Plenty of time for that lunatic colonial 
to get himself in trouble. The last thing Kirby wanted was to 
have a drunken, perhaps hallucinated Weiner rampaging around 
in New York. This assignment hadn’t entirely been one of rendering hospitality. Part of Kirby’s job was to keep an eye on 
Weiner. Martians had come to Earth before. The libertarian society was a heady wine for them. 

Where had he gone? 

One place to look was the Vorster hall. Maybe Weiner had gone 
back to raise some more hell over there. With sweat bursting 
from every pore, Kirby sprinted across the street, dodging the 
rocketing teardrops as they turbined past, and rushed into the 
shabby cultist chapel. The service was still going on. It didn’t 
seem as tough Weiner were there, though. Everyone obediently 
knelt in his pew, and there were no shouts, no screams of boozy 
laughter. Kirby silently loped down the aisle, checking every 


To Open the Sky 

bench. No Weiner. The girl with the surgical face was still there, 
and she smiled and stretched a hand toward him. For one bizarre moment Kirby was catapulted back into his sniffer hallucination, and his flesh crawled. Then he recovered himself. He 
managed a faint smile to be polite and got out of the Vorster 
place as fast as he could. 

He caught the slidewalk and let it carry him three blocks in a 
random direction. No Weiner. Kirby got off and found himself in 
front of a public Nothing Chamber place, where for twenty bucks 
an hour you could get wafted off to luscious oblivion. Perhaps 
Weiner had wandered in there, eager to try every mind-sapping 
diversion the city had to offer. Kirby went in. 

Robots weren’t in charge here. A genuine flesh-and-blood entrepreneur came forward, a four-hundred-pounder, opulent with 
chins, Small eyes buried in fat regarded Kirby doubtfully. 

“Want an hour of rest, friend?” 

“I’m looking for a Martian,” Kirby blurted. “About so high, big 
shoulders, sharp cheekbones.” 

“Haven’t seen him.” 

“Look, maybe he’s in one of your tanks. This is important. It’s 

U.N. business.” 
“I don’t care if it’s the business of God Almighty. I haven’t seen 
him.” The fat man glanced only briefly at Kirby’s identification 
plaque. “What do you want me to do—open my tanks for you? 
He didn’t come in here.” 

“If he does, don’t let him rent a chamber,” Kirby begged. “Stall 
him and phone U.N. Security right away.” 

“I got to rent him if he wants. We run a public hall here, buddy. 
You want to get me in trouble? Look, you’re all worked up. Why 
don’t you climb into a tank for a little while? It’ll do wonders for 
you. You’ll feel like—” 

Kirby wheeled and ran out. There was nausea in the pit of his 
stomach, perhaps induced by the hallucinogen. There was also 
fright and a goodly jolt of anger. He visualized Weiner clubbed 


Blue Fire 2077 

in some dark alley, his stocky body expertly vivisected for the 
bootleg organ banks. A worthy fate, perhaps, but it would raise 
hob with Kirby’s reliability rating. More likely was it that Weiner, 
bashing around like a Chinese bull—was that the right simile, 
Kirby wondered?—would stir up some kind of mess that would 
be blasphemously difficult to clean up. 

Kirby had no idea where to look. A communibooth presented 
itself on the corner of the next street, and he jumped in, opaquing 
the screens. He rammed his identification plaque into the slot 
and punched for U.N. Security. 

The cloudy little screen grew clear. The pudgy, bearded face 
of Lloyd Ridblom appeared. 

“Night squad,” Ridblom said. “Hello, Ron. Where’s your Martian?” 

“Lost him. He gave me the slip in a sniffer palace.” 

Ridblom became instantly animated. “Want me to slap a 
televector on him?” 

“Not yet,” Kirby said. “I’d rather he didn’t know we were upset 
about his disappearance. Put the vector on me, instead, and keep 
contact. And open up a routine net for him. If he shows, notify 
me right away. I’ll call back in an hour to change the instructions if nothing’s happened by then.” 

“Maybe he’s been kidnapped by Vorsters,” Ridblom suggested. 
“They’re draining his blood for altar wine.” 

“Go to hell,” Kirby said. He stepped put of the booth and put 
his thumbs briefly to his eyeballs. Slowly, purposelessly, he 
strolled toward the slidewaik and let it take him back to the 
Vorster hall. A few people were coming out of it now. There was 
the girl with the iridescent earshells; she wasn’t content to haunt 
his hallucinations—she had to keep intersecting his path in real 
life, too. 

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was gentle, at least. “I’m Vanna 
Marshak. Where’d your friend go?” 

“I’m wondering that myself. He vanished a little while ago.” 


To Open the Sky 

“Are you supposed to be in charge of him?” 

“I’m supposed to be watching him, anyhow. He’s a Martian, 
you know.” 

‘I didn’t. He’s certainly hostile to the Brotherhood, isn’t be? 
That was sad, the way he erupted during the service. He must 
be terribly ill.” 

“Terribly drunk,” Kirby said. “It happens to all the Martians 
who come here. The iron bars are lifted for them, and they think 
anything goes. Can I buy you a drink?” he added mechanically. 

“I don’t drink, thanks. But I’ll accompany you if you want one.” 

“I don’t want one. I need one.” 

“You haven’t told me your name.” 

“Ron Kirby. I’m with the U.N. I’m a minor bureaucrat. No, I’ll 
correct that: a major bureaucrat who gets paid like a minor one. 
We can go in here.” 

He nudged the doorstud of a bar on the corner. The sphincter 
whickered open and admitted them. She smiled warmly. She was 
about thirty, Kirby guessed. Not easy to tell, with all that hardware where her face used to be. 

“Filtered rum,” he said. 

Vanna Marshak leaned close to him. She wore some subtle 
and unfamiliar perfume. “Why did you bring him to the Brotherhood house?” she asked. 

He downed his drink as though it were fruit juice. “He wanted 
to see what the Vorsters were like. So I took him.” 

“I take it you’re unsympathetic personally?” 

“I don’t have any real opinion. I’ve been too busy to pay much 
attention.” 

“That’s not true,” she said easily. “You think it’s a nut-cult, don’t 
you?” 

Kirby ordered a second drink. “All right,” he admitted, “I do. 
It’s a shallow opinion based on no real information at all.” 

“You haven’t read Vorst’s book?” 

“No.” 


Blue Fire 2077 

“If I give you a copy, will you read it?” 

“Imagine,” he said. “A proselyte with a heart of gold.” He 
laughed. He was feeling drunk again. 

“That isn’t really very funny,” she said. “You’re hostile to surgical alterations, too, aren’t you?” 

“My wife had a complete face job done. While she was still my 
wife. I got so angry about it that she left me. Three years ago. 
She’s dead now. She and her lover went down in a rocket crash 
off New Zealand.” 

“I’m terribly sorry,” Vanna Marshak said. “But I wouldn’t have 
had this done to myself if I had known about Vorst then. I was 
uncertain. Insecure. Today I know where I’m heading—but it’s 
too late to have my real face back. It’s rather attractive, I think, 
anyway.” 

“Lovely,” Kirby said. “Tell me about Vorst.” 

“It’s very simple. He wants to restore spiritual values in the 
world. He wants us all to become aware of our common nature 
and our higher goals.” 

“Which we can express by watching Cerenkov radiation in 
rundown lofts,” Kirby said. 

“The Blue Fire’s just trimming. It’s the inner message that 
counts. Vorst wants to see mankind go to the stars. He wants us 
to get out of our muddle and confusion and begin to mine our 
real talents. He wants to save the espers who are going insane 
every day, harness them, put them together to work for the next 
great step in human progress.” 

“I see,” said Kirby gravely. “Which is?” 

“I told you. Going to the stars. You think we can stop with Mars 
and Venus? There are millions of planets out there. Waiting for 
man to find a way to reach them. Vorst thinks he knows that 
way. But it calls for a union of mental energies, a blending, a— 
oh, I know this sounds mystical. But he’s got something. And it 
heals the troubled soul, too. That’s the short-range purpose: the 
communion, the binding-up of wounds. And the long-range goal 


To Open the Sky 

is getting to the stars. Of course, we’ve got to overcome the frictions between the planets—get the Martians to be more tolerant, and then somehow reestablish contact with the people on 
Venus, if there’s anything human still left in them—do you see 
that there are possibilities here, that it isn’t mumbo jumbo and 
fraud?” 

Kirby didn’t see anything of the kind. It sounded hazy and incoherent to him. Vanna Marshak had a soft, persuasive voice, 
and there was an earnestness about her that made her appealing. He could even forgive her for what she had let the knife-
wielders do to her face. But when it came to Vorst— The communicator in his pocket bleeped. It was a signal from Ridblom, 
and it meant call the office right away. Kirby got to his feet. 

“Excuse me a minute,” he said. “Something important to tend 
to—” 

He lurched across the barroom, caught himself, took a deep 
breath and got into the booth. Into the slot went the plaque; trembling fingers punched out the number. 

Ridblom appeared on the screen again. 

“We’ve found your boy,” the pudgy Security man announced 
blandly. 

“Dead or alive?” 

“Alive, unfortunately. He’s in Chicago. He stopped off at the 
Martian Consulate, borrowed a thousand dollars from the 
consul’s wife, and tried to rape her in the bargain. She got rid of 
him and called the police, and they called me. We have a five-
man tracer on him now. He’s heading for a Vorster cell on Michigan Boulevard, and he’s drunk as a lord. Should we intercept 
him?” 

Kirby bit his lip in anguish. “No. No. He’s got immunity, anyway. Let me handle this. Is there a chopper in the U.N. port I can 
borrow?” 

“Sure. But it’ll take you at least forty Mondschein to get to Chi, 
and…” 


Blue Fire 2077 

“That’s plenty of time. Here’s what I want you to do: get hold 
of the prettiest esper you can find in Chicago, maybe an empath, 
some sexy kid, Oriental if possible, something like that one who 
had the burnout in Kyoto last week. Plunk her down between 
Weiner and that Vorster place and turn her loose on him. Have 
her charm him into submission. Have her stall him in any way 
possible until I can get there, and if she has to part with her 
honor in the process, tell her we’ll give her a good price for it. If 
you can’t find an esper, get hold of a persuasive policewoman, 
or something.” 

“I don’t see why this is really necessary,” Ridblom said. “The 
Vorsters can look out for themselves. I understand they’ve got 
some mysterious way of knocking a troublemaker out so that he 
doesn’t—” 

“I know, Lloyd. But Weiner’s already been knocked out once 
this evening. For all I know, a second jolt of the same stuff tonight might kill him. That would be very awkward all around. 
Just head him off.” 

Ridblom shrugged. “Thy will be done.” 

Kirby left the booth. He was cold sober again. Vanna Marshak 
was sitting at the bar where he had left her. At this distance and 
in this light there was something almost pretty about her artificial disfigurements. 

She smiled. “Well?” 

“They found him. He got to Chicago somehow, and he’s about 
to raise some hell in the Vorster chapel there. I’ve got to go and 
lasso him.” 

“Be gentle with him, Ron. He’s a troubled man. He needs help.” 

“Don’t we all.” Kirby blinked suddenly. The thought of making the trip to Chicago alone struck him abruptly as being nasty. 
“Vanna?” he asked. 

“Yes?” 

“Are you going to be busy for the next couple of hours?” 

five 


To Open the Sky 


Blue Fire 2077 

The copter hovered over Chicago’s sparkling gaiety. Below, 
Kirby saw the bright sheen of Lake Michigan, and the splendid 
mile-high towers that lined the lake. Above him blazed the local 
timeglow in chartreuse banded with deep blue: 

2331 Hours Central Standard Time
Wednesday May 8 2077
Oglebay Realty—The Finest!


“Put her down,” Kirby ordered. 

The robopilot steered the copter toward a landing. It was impossible, of course, to risk the fierce wind currents in those deep 
canyons; they would have to land at a rooftop heliport. The landing was smooth. Kirby and Vanna rushed out. She had given him 
the Vorster message all the way from Manhattan, and at this point 
Kirby wasn’t sure whether the cult was complete nonsense or 
some sinister conspiracy against the general welfare or a truly 
profound, spiritually uplifting creed or perhaps a bit of all three. 

He thought he had the general idea. Vorst had cobbled together 
an eclectic religion, borrowing the confessional from Catholicism, absorbing some of the atheism of ur Buddhism, adding a 
dose of Hindu reincarnation, and larding everything over with 
ultramodernistic trappings, nuclear reactors at every altar, and 
plenty of gabble about the holy electron. But there was also talk 
of harnessing the minds of espers to power a stardrive, of a communion even of non-esper Minds, and—most startling of all, the 
big selling-point—personal immortality, not reincarnation, not 
the hope of Nirvana, but eternal life in the here-and-now present 
flesh. In view of Earth’s population problems, immortality was 
low on any sane man’s priority list. Immortality for other people, 
anyway; one was always willing to consider the extension of one’s 
own life, wasn’t one? Vorst preached the eternal life of the body, 
and the people were buying. In eight years the cult had gone 


To Open the Sky 

from one cell to a thousand, from fifty followers to millions. The 
old religions were bankrupt. Vorst was handing out shining gold 
pieces, and if they were only fool’s gold, it. would take a while 
for the faithful to find that out 

“Come on,” Kirby said. “There isn’t much time.” 

He scrambled down the exit ramp, turning to take Vanna 
Marshak’s hand and help her the last few steps. They hurried 
across the rooftop landing area to the gravshaft, stepped in, 
dropped to ground level in a dizzying five-second plunge. Local 
police were waiting in the street. They had three teardrops. 

“He’s a block from the Vorster place, Freeman Kirby,” one of 
the policeman said. “The esper’s been dragging him around for 
half an hour, but he’s dead set on going there.” 

“What does he want there?” Kirby asked. 

“He wants the reactor. He says he’s going to take it back to 
Mars and put it to some worthwhile use,” 

Vanna gasped at the blasphemy. Kirby shrugged, sat back, 
watched the streets flashing by. The teardrop halted. Kirby saw 
the Martian across the street. 

The girl who was with him was sultry, full-bodied, lush-looking. She had one arm thrust through his, and she was close to 
Weiner’s side, cooing in his ear. Weiner laughed harshly and 
turned to her, pulled her close, then pushed her away. She 
clutched at him again. It was quite a scene, Kirby thought. The 
street had been cleared. Local police and a couple of Ridblom’s 
men were watching grimly from the sidelines. 

Kirby went forward and gestured to the girl. She sensed instantly who he was, withdrew her arm from Weiner, and stepped 
away. The Martian swung around. 

“Found me, did you?” 

“I didn’t want you to do anything you’d regret later on? 

“Very loyal of you, Kirby. Well, as long as you’re here, you can 
be my accomplice. I’m on my way to the Vorster place. They’re 
wasting good fissionables in those reactors. You distract the priest, 


Blue Fire 2077 

and I’m going to grab the blue blinker, and we’ll all live happily 

ever after. Just don’t let him shock you. That isn’t fun.” 

“Nat—” 

“Are you with me or aren’t you, pal?” Weiner pointed toward 
the chapel, diagonally across the street a block away, in a building almost as shabby as the one in Manhattan. He started toward 
it. 

Kirby glanced uncertainly at Vanna. Then he crossed the street 
behind Weiner. He realized that the altered girl was following, 
too. 

Just as Weiner reached the entrance to the Vorster place, Vanna 
dashed forward and cut in front of him. 

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t go in there to make trouble.” 

“Get out of my way, you phony-faced bitch!” 

‘Please,” she said softly. “You’re a troubled man. You aren’t in 
harmony with yourself, let alone with the world around you. 
Come inside with me, and let me show you how to pray. There’s 
much for you to gain in there. If you’d only open your mind, 
open your heart—instead of standing there so smug in your hatred, in your drunken unwillingness to see—” 

Weiner hit her. 

It was a backhand slap across the face. Surgical alteration jobs 
are fragile, and they aren’t meant to be slapped. Vanna fell to 
her knees, whimpering, and pressed her hands over her face. 
She still blocked the Martian’s way. Weiner drew his foot back as 
though he were going to kick her, and that was when Reynolds 
Kirby forgot he was paid to be a diplomat. 

Kirby strode forward, caught Weiner by the elbow, swung him 
around. The Martian was off balance. He clawed at Kirby for 
support. Kirby struck his hand down, brought a fist up, landed it 
solidly in Weiner’s muscular belly. Weiner made a small oofing 
sound and began to rock backward. Kirby had not struck a human being in anger in thirty years, and he did not realize until 
that moment what a savage pleasure there could be in some


To Open the Sky 

thing so primordial. Adrenalin flooded his body. He hit Weiner 
again, just below the heart. The Martian, looking very surprised, 
sagged and went over backward, sprawling in the street. 

“Get up,” Kirby said, almost dizzy with rage. 

Vanna plucked at his sleeve. “Don’t hit him again,” she murmured. Her metallic lips looked crumpled. Her cheeks glistened 
with tears. “Please don’t hit him any more.” 

Weiner remained where he was, shaking his head vaguely. A 
new figure came forward: a small leathery-faced man, in late 
middle age. The Martian consul. Kirby felt his belly churn with 
apprehension. 

The consul said, “I’m terribly sorry, Freeman Kirby. He’s really been running amok, hasn’t he? Well, we’ll take jurisdiction 
now. What he needs is to have some of his own people tell him 
what a fool he’s been.” 

Kirby stammered, “It was my fault. I lost sight of him. He 
shouldn’t be blamed. He—” 

“We understand perfectly, Freeman Kirby.” The consul smiled 
benignly, gestured, nodded as three aides came forward and 
gathered the fallen Weiner into their arms. 

Very suddenly the street was empty. Kirby stood, drained and 
stupefied, in front of the Vorster chapel, and Vanna was with 
him, and all the others were gone, Weiner vanishing like an ogre 
in a bad dream. It had not, Kirby thought, been a very successful 
evening. But now it was over. 

Home, now. 

An hour and a half would see him in Tortola. A quick, lonely 
swim in the warm ocean—then half an hour in the Nothing 
Chamber tomorrow. No, an hour, Kirby decided. It would take 
that much to undo this night’s damage. An hour of disassociation, an hour of drifting on the amniotic tide, sheltered, warm, 
unbothered by the pressures of the world, an hour of blissful if 
cowardly escape. Fine. Wonderful. 

Vanna said, “Will you come in now?” 


Blue Fire 2077 

“Into the chapel?” 

“Yes. Please.” 

“It’s late. I’ll get you back to New York right away. We’ll pay for 
any repairs that—that your face will need. The copter’s waiting.” 

“Let it wait,” Vanna said. “Come inside.” 

“I want to get home.” 

“Home can wait, too. Give me two hours with you, Ron. Just sit 
and listen to what they have to say in there. Come to the altar 
with me. You don’t have to do anything but listen. It’ll relax you, 
I promise that” 

Kirby stared at her distorted, artificial face. Beneath the grotesque eyelids were real eyes—shining, imploring. Why was she 
so eager? Did they pay a finder’s fee of salvation for every lost 
soul dragged into the Blue Fire? Or could it be, Kirby wondered, 
that she really and truly believed, that her heart and soul were 
bound up in this movement that she was sincere in her conviction that the followers of Vorst would live through eternity, would 
live to see men ride to the distant stars? 

He was so very tired. 

He wondered how the security officers of the Secretariat would 
regard it if a high official like himself began to dabble in 
Vorsterism. 

He wondered, too, if he had any career at all left to salvage, 
after tonight’s fiasco with the Martian. What was there to lose? 
He could rest for a while. His head was splitting. Perhaps some 
esper in there would massage his frontal lobes for a while. Espers 
tended to be drawn to the Vorster chapels, didn’t they? 

The place seemed to have a pull. He had made his job his 
religion, but was that really good enough now, he asked himself? Perhaps it was time to unbend, time to shed the mask of 
aloofness, time to find out what it was that the multitudes were 
buying so eagerly in these chapels. Or perhaps it was just time 
to give in and let himself be pulled under by the tide of the new 


To Open the Sky 

creed. The sign over the door said: 

Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance
Come Ye All
Ye Who May Never Die
Harmonize With the All


“Will you?” Vanna said. 

“All right,” Kirby muttered. “I’m willing. Let’s go harmonize 
with the All.” 

She took his hand. They stepped through the door. About a 
dozen people were kneeling in the pews. Up front the chapel 
leader was nudging the moderator rods out of the little reactor, 
and the first faint bluish glow was beginning to suffuse the room. 
Vanna guided Kirby into the last row. He looked toward the altar. The glow was deepening, casting a strange radiance on the 
plump, dogged-looking man at the front of the room. Now greenish-white, now purplish, now the Blue Fire of the Vorsters. 

The opium of the masses, Kirby thought, and the hackneyed 
phrase sounded foolishly cynical as it echoed through his brain. 
What was the Nothing Chamber, after all, but the opium of the 
elite? And the sniffer palaces, what were they? At least here they 
went for the mind and soul, not for the body. It was worth an 
hour of his time to listen, at any rate. 

“My brothers,” said the man at the altar in a soft, fog-smooth 
voice, “we celebrate the underlying Oneness here. Man and 
woman, star and stone, tree and bird, all consist of atoms, and 
those atoms contain particles moving at wondrous speeds. They 
are the electrons, my brothers. They show us the way to peace, 
as I will make clear to you. They—” 

Reynolds Kirby bowed his head. He could not bear to look at 
that glowing reactor, suddenly. There was a throbbing in his skull. 
He was distantly aware of Vanna beside him, smiling, warm, 
close. 


Blue Fire 2077 

I’m listening, Kirby thought. Go on. Tell me! Tell me! I want to 
hear. God and the almighty electron help me—I want to hear! 


To Open the Sky 


Two


The Warriors of Light 
2095 

one 

If Acolyte Third Level Christopher Mondschein had a weakness, it was that he wanted very badly to live forever. The yearning for everlasting life was a common enough human desire, 
and not really reprehensible. But Acolyte Mondschein carried it 
a little too far. 

“After all,” one of his superiors found it necessary to remind 
him, “your function in the Brotherhood is to look after the wellbeing of others. Not to feather your own nest, Acolyte 
Mondschein. Do I make that clear?” 

“Perfectly clear, Brother,” said Mondschein tautly. He felt ready 
to explode with shame, guilt, and anger. “I see my error. I ask 
forgiveness.” 

“It isn’t a matter of forgiveness, Acolyte Mondschein,” the older 
man replied. “It’s a matter of understanding. I don’t give a damn 
for forgiveness. What are your goals, Mondschein? What are you 
after?” 

The acolyte hesitated a moment before answering— both because it was always good policy to weigh one’s words before 
saying anything to a higher member of the Brotherhood, and 
because he knew he was on very thin ice. He tugged nervously 
at the pleats of his robe and let his eyes wander through the 
Gothic magnificence of the chapel. 

They stood on the balcony, looking down at the nave. No service was in progress, but a few worshipers occupied the pews 
anyway, kneeling before the blue radiance of the small cobalt 
reactor on the front dais. It was the Nyack chapel of the Brother


To Open the Sky 

hood of the Immanent Radiance, third largest in the New York 
area, and Mondschein had joined it six months before, the day 
he turned twenty-two. He had hoped, at the time, that it was 
genuine religious feeling that had impelled him to pledge his 
fortunes to the Vorsters. Now he was not so sure. 

He grasped the balcony rail and said in a low voice, “I want to 
help people, Brother. People in general and people in particular. 
I want to help them find the way. And I want mankind to realize 
its larger goals. As Vorst says—” 

“Spare me the scriptures, Mondschein.” 

“I’m only trying to show you—” 

“I know. Look, don’t you understand that you’ve got to move 
upward in orderly stages? You can’t go leapfrogging over your 
superiors, Mondschein, no matter how impatient you are to get 
to the top. Come into my office a moment” 

“Yes, Brother Langholt. Whatever you say.” 

Mondschein followed the older man along the balcony and 
into the administrative wing of the chapel. The building was fairly 
new and strikingly handsome—a far cry from the shabby slum-
area storefronts of the first Vorster chapels a quarter of a century before. Langholt touched a bony hand to the stud, and the 
door of his office irised quickly. They stepped through. 

It was a small, austere room, dark and somber, its ceiling 
groined in good Gothic manner. Bookshelves lined the side walls. 
The desk was a polished ebony slab on which there glowed a 
miniature blue light, the Brotherhood’s symbol. Mondschein saw 
something else on the desk: the letter he had written to District 
Supervisor Kirby, requesting a transfer to the Brotherhood’s genetic center at Santa Fe. 

Mondschein reddened. He reddened easily; his cheeks were 
plump and given to blushing. He was a man of slightly more 
than medium height, a little on the fleshy side, with dark coarse 
hair and close-set, earnest features. Mondschein felt absurdly 
immature by comparison with the gaunt, ascetic-looking man 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

more than twice his age who was giving him this dressing-down. 

Langholt said, “As you see, we’ve got your letter to Supervisor 
Kirby.” 

“Sir, that letter was confidential. I—” 

“There are no confidential letters in this order, Mondschein! 
It happens that Supervisor Kirby turned this letter over to me 
himself. As you can see, he’s added a memorandum.” 

Mondschein took the letter. A brief note had been scrawled 
across its upper left-hand corner: “He’s awfully in a hurry, isn’t 
he? Take him down a couple of pegs. 

The acolyte put the letter down and waited for the withering 
blast of scorn. Instead, he found the older man smiling gently. 

“Why did you want to go to Santa Fe, Mondschein?” 

“To take part in the research there. And the—the breeding 
program.” 

“You’re not an esper.” 

“Perhaps I’ve got latent genes, though. Or at least maybe some 
manipulation could be managed so my genes would be important to the pool. Sir, you’ve got to understand that I wasn’t being 
purely selfish about this. I want to contribute to the larger effort.” 

“You can contribute, Mondschein, by doing your maintenance 
work, by prayer, by seeking converts. If it’s in the cards for you 
to be called to Santa Fe, you’ll be called in due time. Don’t you 
think there are others much older than you who’d like to go there? 
Myself? Brother Ashton? Supervisor Kirby himself? You walk in 
off the street, so to speak, and after a few months you want a 
ticket to utopia. Sorry. You can’t have one that easily, Acolyte 
Mondschein.” 

“What shall I do now?” 

“Purify yourself. Rid yourself of pride and ambition. Get down 
and pray. Do your daily work. Don’t look for rapid preferment. 
It’s the best way not to get what you want.” 


To Open the Sky 

“Perhaps if I applied for missionary service,” Mondschein suggested. “To join the group going to Venus—” 

Langholt sighed. “There you go again! Curb your ambition, 
Mondschein!” 

“I meant it as a penance.” 

“Of course. You imagine that those missionaries are likely to 
become martyrs. You also imagine that if by some fluke you go 
to Venus and don’t get skinned alive, you’ll come back here as a 
man of great influence in the Brotherhood, who’ll be sent to Santa 
Fe like a warrior going to Valhalla. Mondschein, Mondschein, 
you’re so transparent! You’re verging on heresy, Mondschein, 
when you refuse to accept your lot.” 

“Sir, I’ve never had any traffic with the heretics. I—” 

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Langholt said heavily. “I’m 
simply warning you that you’re heading in an unhealthy direction. I fear for you. Look—” He thrust the incriminating letter to 
Kirby into a disposal unit, where it flamed and was gone instantly. 
“I’ll forget that this whole episode ever happened. But don’t you 
forget it. Walk more humbly, Mondschein. Walk more humbly, I 
say. Now go and pray. Dismissed.” 

“Thank you, Brother,” Mondschein muttered. 

His knees felt a little shaky as he made his way from the room 
and took the spiral slideshaft downward into the chapel proper. 
All things considered, he knew he had got off lightly. There could 
have been a public reprimand. There could have been a transfer to some not very desirable place, like Patagonia or the Aleutians. They might even have separated him from the Brotherhood entirely. 

It had been a massive mistake to go over Langholt’s head, 
Mondschein agreed. But how could a man help it? To die a little 
every day, while in Santa Fe they were choosing the ones who 
would live forever—it was intolerable to be on the outside. 
Mondschein’s spirit sank at the awareness that now he had almost certainly cut himself off from Santa Fe for good. 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

He slipped into a rear pew and stared solemnly toward the 
cobalt-60 cube on the altar. 

Let the Blue Fire engulf me, he begged. Let me rise purified and 
cleansed. 

Sometimes, kneeling before the altar, Mondschein had felt the 
ghostly flicker of a spiritual experience. That was the most he 
ever felt, for, though he was an acolyte of the Brotherhood of the 
Immanent Radiance, and was a second-generation member of 
the cult, at that, Mondschein was not a religious man. Let others 
have ecstasies before the altar, he thought. Mondschein knew 
the cult for what it was: a front operation masking an elaborate 
program of genetic research. Or so it seemed to him, though 
there were times when he had his doubts which was the front 
and which the underlying reality. So many others appeared to 
derive spiritual benefits from the Brotherhood—while he had 
no proof that the laboratories at Santa Fe were accomplishing 
anything at all. 

He closed his eyes. His head sank forward on his breast. He 
visualized electrons spinning in their orbits. He silently repeated 
the Electromagnetic Litany, calling off the stations of the spectrum. 

He thought of Christopher Mondschein living through the ages. 
A stab of yearning sliced into him while he was still telling off 
the middling frequencies. Long before he got to the softer X rays, 
he was in a sweat of frustration, sick with the fear of dying. Sixty, 
seventy more years and his number was up, while at Santa Fe— 
Help me. Help me. Help me. Somebody help me. I don’t want to 
die! 

Mondschein looked to the altar. The Blue Fire flickered as 
though to mock him by going out altogether. Oppressed by the 
Gothic gloom, Mondschein sprang to his feet and rushed out into 
the open air. 


To Open the Sky 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

two


He was a conspicuous figure in his indigo robe and monkish 
hood. People stared at him as though he had some supernatural 
power. They did not look closely enough to see that he was only 
an acolyte, and, though many of them were Vorsters themselves, 
they never managed to understand that the Brotherhood had no 
truck with the supernatural. Mondschein did not have a high 
regard for the intelligence of laymen. 

He stepped aboard the slidewalk. The city loomed around him, 
towers of travertine that took on a greasy cast in the dying reddish glow of a March afternoon. New York City had spread up 
the Hudson like a plague, and skyscrapers were marching across 
the Adirondacks; Nyack, here, had long since been engulfed by 
the metropolis. The air was cool. There was a smoky tang in it; 
probably a fire raging in a forest preserve, thought Mondschein 
darkly. He saw death on all sides. 

His modest apartment was five blocks from the chapel. He lived 
alone. Acolytes needed a waiver to marry and were forbidden to 
have transient liaisons. Celibacy did not weigh heavily on 
Mondschein yet, though he had hoped to shed it when he was 
transferred to Santa Fe. There was talk of lovely, willing young 
female acolytes at Santa Fe. Surely not all the breeding experiments were done through artificial insemination, Mondschein 
hoped. 

No matter now. He could forget Santa Fe. His impulsive letter 
to Supervisor Kirby had smashed everything. 

Now he was trapped forever on the lower rungs of the Vorster 
ladder. In due course they would take him into the Brotherhood, 
and he would wear a slightly different robe and grow a beard, 
perhaps, and preside over services, and minister to the needs of 
his congregation. 

Fine. The Brotherhood was the fastest-growing religious movement on Earth, and surely it was a noble work to serve in the 


To Open the Sky 

cause. But a man without a religious vocation would not be happy 
presiding over a chapel, and Mondschein had no calling at all. 
He had sought to fulfill his own ends by enrolling as an acolyte, 
and now he saw the error of that ambition. 

He was caught. Just another Vorster Brother now. There were 
thousands of chapels all over the world. Membership in the Brotherhood was something like five hundred million today. Not bad 
in a single generation. The older religions were suffering. The 
Vorsters had something to offer that the others did not; the comforts of science, the assurance that beyond the spiritual ministry 
there was another that served the Oneness by probing into the 
deepest mysteries. A dollar contributed to your local Vorster 
chapel might help pay for the development of a method to assure immortality, personal immortality. That was the pitch, and 
it worked well. Oh,, there were imitators, lesser cults, some of 
them rather successful in their small way. There was even a 
Vorster heresy now, the Harmonists, the peddlers of the Transcendent Harmony, an offshoot of the parent cult Mondschein 
had chosen the Vorsters, and he had a lingering loyalty to them, 
for he had been raised as a worshiper of the Blue Fire. But— 

“Sorry. Million pardons.” 

Someone jostled him on the slidewalk. Mondschein felt a hand 
slap against his back, dealing him a hard jolt that almost knocked 
him down. Staggering a bit, he recovered and saw a broad-shouldered man in a simple blue business tunic moving swiftly away. 
Clumsy idiot, Mondschein thought. There’s room for everyone 
on the walk. What’s his hellish hurry? 

Mondschein adjusted his robes and his dignity. A soft voice 
said, “Don’t go into your apartment, Mondschein.” 

Just keep moving. There’s a quickboat waiting for you at the 
Tarrytown station.” 

No one was near him. “Who said that?” he demanded tensely. 

“Please relax and cooperate. You aren’t going to be harmed. 
This is for your benefit, Mondschein.” 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

He looked around. The nearest person was an elderly woman, 
fifty feet behind him on the slidewalk, who quickly threw him a 
simpering smile as though asking for a blessing. Who had spoken? For one wild moment Mondschein thought that he had 
turned into a telepath, some latent power breaking through in a 
delayed maturity. But no. It had been a voice, not a thought-message. Mondschein understood. The stumbling man must have 
planted a two-way Ear on him with that slap on the back. A tiny 
metallic transponding plaque, perhaps half a dozen molecules 
thick, some miracle of improbable subminiaturization— 
Mondschein did not bother to search for it. 

He said, “Who are you?” 

“Never mind that. Just go to the station and you’ll be met.” 

“I’m in my robes.” 

“We’ll handle that, too,” came the calm response. 

Mondschein nibbled his lip. He was not supposed to leave the 
immediate vicinity of his chapel without permission from a superior, but there was no time for that now, and in any event he 
had no intention of bucking the bureaucracy so soon after his 
rebuke. He would take his chances. 

The slidewalk sped him ahead. 

Soon the Tarrytown station drew near. Mondschein’s stomach 
roiled with tension. He could smell the acrid fumes of quickboat 
fuel. The chill wind cut through his robes, so that his shivering 
was not entirely from uneasiness. He stepped from the slidewalk 
and entered the station, a gleaming yellowish-green dome with 
lambent plastic walls. It was not particularly crowded. The commuters from downtown had not yet begun to arrive, and the outward-bound rush would come later in the day, at the dinner hour. 

Figures approached him. The voice coming from the device 
on his back said, “Don’t stare at them, but just follow behind 
them casually.” 

Mondschein obeyed. There were three of them, two men and 
a slim, angular-faced woman. They led him on a sauntering stroll 


To Open the Sky 

past the chattering newsfax booth, past the bootblack stands, 
past the row of storage lockers. One of the men, short and square-
headed, with thick, stubby yellow hair, slapped his palm against 
a locker to open it. He drew out a bulky package and tucked it 
under one arm. As he cut diagonally across the station toward 
the men’s washroom, the voice said to Mondschein, “Wait thirty 
seconds and follow him.” 

The acolyte pretended to study the newsfax ticker. He did not 
feel enthusiastic about his present predicament, but he sensed 
that it would be useless and possibly harmful to resist. When the 
thirty seconds were up. he moved toward the washroom. The 
scanner decided that he was suitably male, and the ADMIT sign 
flashed. Mondschein entered. 

“Third booth,” the voice murmured. 

The blond man was not in sight. Mondschein entered the booth 
and found the package from the locker propped against the seat. 
On an order, he picked it up and opened the clasps. The wrapper fell away. Mondschein found himself holding the green robe 
of a Harmonist Brother. 

The heretics? What in the world— “Put it on, Mondschein.” 

“I can’t. If I’m seen in it—” 

“You won’t be. Put it on. We’ll guard your own robe until you 
get back.” 

He felt like a puppet. He shrugged out of his robe, put it on a 
hook, and donned the unfamiliar uniform, it fitted well. There 
was something clipped to the inner surface: a thermoplastic 
mask, Mondschein realized. He was grateful for that. Unfolding 
it, he pressed it to his face and held it there until it took hold. 
The mask would disguise his features just enough so that he 
need not fear recognition. 

Carefully Mondschein put his own robe within the wrapper 
and sealed it. 

“Leave it on the seat,” he was told. 

“I don’t dare. If it’s lost, how will I ever explain?” 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

“It will not be lost, Mondschein. Hurry now. The quickboat’s 
about to leave.” 

Unhappily, Mondschein stepped from the booth. He viewed 
himself in the mirror. His face, normally plump, now looked 
gross: bulging cheeks, stubbly jowls, moist and thickened lips. 
Unnatural dark circles rimmed his eyes as though he had caroused for a week. The green robe was strange, too. Wearing 
the ouffit of heresy made him feel closer to his own organization 
than ever before. 

The slim woman came forward as he emerged into the waiting room. Her cheekbones were like hatchet blades, and her 
eyelids had been surgically replaced by shutters of fine platinum foil. It was an outmoded fashion of the previous generation; Mondschein could remember his mother coming from the 
cosmetic surgeon’s office with her face transformed into a grotesque mask. No one did that any more. This woman had to be at 
least forty, Mondschein thought, though she looked much 
younger. 

“Eternal harmony, Brother,” she said huskily. 

Mondschein fumbled for the proper Harmonist response. Improvising, he said, “May the Oneness smile upon you.” 

“I’m grateful for your blessing. Your ticket’s in order, Brother. 
Will you come with me?” 

She was his guide, he realized. He had shed the Ear with his 
own robe. Queasily, he hoped he would get to see that garment 
again before long. He followed the slim woman to the loading 
platform. They might be taking him anywhere—Chicago, Honolulu, Montreal— 

The quickboat sparkled in the floodlit station, graceful, elegant, 
its skin a burnished bluish-green. As they filed aboard, 
Mondschein asked the woman, “Where are we going?” 

“Rome,” she said. 


To Open the Sky 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

three


Mondschein’s eyes were wide as the monuments of antiquity 
flashed by. The Forum, the Colosseum, the Theater of Marcellus, 
the gaudy Victor Emmanuel Monument, the Mussolini Column— 
their route took them through the heart of the ancient city. He 
saw also the blue glow of a Vorster chapel as he whizzed down 
the Via dei Fori Imperiali, and that struck him as harshly incongruous here in this city of an older religion. The Brotherhood 
had a solid foothold here, though. When Gregory XVIII appeared 
in the window at his Vatican palace, he could still draw a crowd 
of hundreds of thousands of cheering Romans, but many of those 
same Romans would melt from the square after viewing the Pope 
and head for the nearest chapel of the Brotherhood. 

Evidently the Harmonists were making headway here, too, 
Mondschein thought. But he kept his peace as the car sped northward out of the city. 

“This is the Via Flaminia,” his guide announced. “The old route 
was followed when the electronic roadbed was installed. They 
have a deep sense of tradition here.” 

“I’m sure they do,” said Mondschein wearily. It Was mid-
evening by his time, and he had had nothing to eat but a snack 
aboard the quickboat. The ninety-minute journey had dumped 
him in Rome in the hours before dawn. A wintry mist hung over 
the city; spring was late. Mondschein’s face itched fiercely beneath his mask. Fear chilled his fingers. 

They halted in front of a drab brick building some where a 
few dozen miles north of Rome. Mondschein shivered as he hurried within. The woman with platinum eyelids led him up the 
stairs and into a warm, brightly lit room occupied by three men 
in green Harmonist robes. That confirmed it, Mondschein 
thought: I’m in a den of heretics. 

They did not offer their names. One was short and squat, with 
a sallow face and bulbous nose. One was tall and spectrally thin, 


To Open the Sky 

arms and legs like spider’s limbs. The third was unremarkable, 
with pale skin and narrow, bland eyes. The squat one was the 
oldest and seemed to be in charge. 

Without preamble he said, “So they turned you down, did they?” 

“How—” 

“Never mind how. We’ve been watching you, Mondschein. We 
hoped you’d make it. We want a man in Santa Fe just as much as 
you want to be there.” 

“Are you Harmonists?” 

“Yes. What about some wine, Mondschein?” 

The acolyte shrugged. The tall heretic gestured, and the slim 
woman, who had not left the room, came forward with a flask of 
golden wine. Mondschein accepted a glass, thinking dourly that 
it was almost certainly drugged. The wine was chilled and faintly 
sweet, like a middling-dry Graves. The others took wine with 
him. 

“What do you want from me?” Mondschein asked. 

“Your help,” said the squat one. “There’s a war going on, and 
we want you to join our side.” 

“I don’t know of any wars.” 

“A war between darkness and light,” said the tall heretic in a 
mild voice. “We are the warriors of light. Don’t think we’re fanatics, Mondschein. Actually, we’re quite reasonable men.” 

“Perhaps you know,” said the third of the Harmonists, “that 
our creed is derived from yours. We respect the teachings of 
Vorst, and we follow most of his ways. In fact, we regard ourselves as closer to the original teachings than the present hierarchy of the Brotherhood. We’re a purifying body. Every religion 
needs its reformers.” 

Mondschein sipped his wine. He allowed his eyes to twinkle 
maliciously as he remarked, “Usually it takes a thousand years 
for the reformers to put in their appearance. This is only 2095. 
The Brotherhood’s hardly thirty years old.” 

The squat heretic nodded. “The pace of our times Is a fast 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

one. It took the Christians three hundred years to get political 
control of Rome—from the time of Augustus to that of 
Constantine. The Vorsters didn’t need that long. You know the 
story: there are Brotherhood men in every legislative body in 
the world. In some countries they’ve organized their own political parties. I don’t need to tell you about the financial growth of 
the organization, either.” 

“And you purifiers urge a return to the old, simple ways of 
thirty years ago?” Mondschein asked. “The ramshackle buildings, the persecutions, and all the rest? Is that it?” 

“Not really. We appreciate the uses of power. We simply feel 
that the movement’s become sidetracked in irrelevancies. Power 
for its own sake has become more important than power for the 
sake of larger goals.” 

The tall one said, “The Vorster high command quibbles about 
political appointments and agitates for changes in the income 
tax structure. It’s wasting time and energy fooling around with 
domestic affairs. Meanwhile the movement’s drawn a total blank 
on Mars and Venus—not one chapel among the colonists, not 
even a start there, total rejection. And where are the great results of the esper breeding program? Where are the dramatic 
new leaps?” 

“Ifs only the second generation,” Mondschein said. “You have 
to be patient” He smiled at that—counseling patience to others— 
and added, “I think the Brotherhood is heading in the right direction.” 

“We don’t, obviously,” said the pale one. “When we failed to 
reform from within, we had to leave and begin our own campaign, parallel to the original one. The long-range goals are the 
same. Personal immortality through bodily regeneration. And 
fail development of extrasensory powers, loading to new methods of communication and transportation. That’s what we want— 
not the right to decide local tax issues.” 

Mondschein said, “First you get control of the governments. 


To Open the Sky 

Then you concentrate on the long-range goals.” 

“Not necessary,” snapped the squat Harmonist. “Direct action 
is what we’re interested in. We’re confident of success, too. One 
way or another, we’ll achieve our purposes.” 

The slim woman gave Mondschein more wine. He tried to 
shake her away, but she insisted on filling his glass, and he drank. 
Then he said, “I presume you didn’t waft me off to Rome just to 
tell me your opinion of the Brotherhood. What do you need me 
for?” 

“Suppose we were to get you transferred to Santa Fe,” the squat 
one said. 

Mondschein sat bolt upright. His hand tightened on the wineglass, nearly breaking it. 

“How could you do that?” 

“Suppose we could. Would you be willing to obtain certain information from the laboratories there and transmit it to us?” 

“Spy for you?” 

“You could call it that.” 

“It sounds ugly,” Mondschein said. 

“You’d have a reward for it.” 

“It better be a good one.” 

The heretic leaned forward and said quietly, “Well offer you a 
tenth-level post in our organization. You’d have to wait fifteen 
years to get that high in the Brotherhood. We’re a much smaller 
operation; you can rise in our hierarchy much faster than where 
you are. An ambitious man like you could be very close to the 
top before he was fifty.” 

“But what good is it?” Mondschein asked. “To get close to the 
top in the second-best hierarchy?” 

“Ah, but we won’t be second-best! Not with the information 
you’ll provide for us. That will allow us to grow. Millions of people 
will desert the Brotherhood for us when they see what we have 
to offer—all that they have, plus our own values. We’ll expand 
rapidly. And 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

you’ll have a position of high rank, because you threw your lot 
in with us at the beginning.” 

Mondschein saw the logic of that. The Brotherhood was swollen already, wealthy, powerful, top-heavy with entrenched bureaucrats. There was no room for advancement there. But if he 
were to transfer his allegiance to a small but dynamic group 
with ambitions that rivaled his own— 

“It won’t work,” he said sadly. 

“Why?” 

“Assuming you can wangle me into Santa Fe, I’ll be screened 
by espers long before I get there. They’ll know I’m coming as a 
spy, and they’ll screen me out. My memories of this conversation will give me away.” 

The squat man smiled broadly. “Why do you think you’ll remember this conversation? We have our espers, too, Acolyte 
Mondschein!” 


To Open the Sky 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

four


The room in which Christopher Mondschein found himself 
was eerily empty. It was a perfect square, probably built within a 
tolerance of hundredths of a millimeter, and there was nothing 
at all in it but Mondschein himself. No furniture, no windows, 
not so much as a cobweb. Shifting his weight uncomfortably from 
foot to foot, he stared up at the high ceiling, searching without 
success for the source of the steady, even illumination. He did 
not even know what city he was in. They had taken him out of 
Rome just as the sun was rising, and he might be in Jakarta now, 
or Benares, or perhaps Akron. 

He bad profound misgivings about all this. The Harmonists 
had assured him that there would be no risks, but Mondschein 
was not so sure. The Brotherhood had not attained its eminence 
without developing ways of protecting itself. For all the assurances to the contrary, he might well be detected long before he 
got into those secret laboratories at Santa Fe, and it would not 
go happily for him afterward. 

The Brotherhood had its way of punishing those who betrayed 
it. Behind the benevolence was a certain streak of necessary cruelty. Mondschein had heard the stories: the one about the regional supervisor in the Philippines who had let himself be beguiled into providing minutes of the high councils to certain anti-
Vorsterite police officials, for example. 

Perhaps it was apocryphal. Mondschein had heard that the 
man had been taken to Santa Fe to undergo the loss of his pain 
receptors. A pleasant fate, never to feel pain again? Hardly. Pain 
was the measure of safety. Without pain, how did one know 
whether something was too hot or too cold to touch? A thousand 
little injuries resulted: burns, cuts, abrasions. The body eroded 
away. A finger here, a nose there, an eyeball, a swatch of skin— 
why, someone could devour his own tongue and not realize it. 

Mondschein shuddered. The seamless wall in front of him 


To Open the Sky 

abruptly telescoped and a man entered the room. The wall closed 

behind him. 

“Are you the esper?” Mondschein blurted nervously. 

The man nodded. He was without unusual features. His face 
had a vaguely Eurasian cast, Mondschein imagined. His lips were 
thin, his hair glossily dark, his complexion almost olive., There 
was something of a fragile look to him. 

“Lie down on the floor,” the esper said in a soft, tarry voice. 
“Please relax. You are afraid of me, and you should not be afraid.” 

“Why shouldn’t I? You’re going to meddle with my mind!” 

“Please. Relax.” 

Mondschein gave it a try. He settled on the yielding, rubbery 
floor and put his hands by his sides. The esper sank into the 
lotus position in one corner of the room, not looking at 
Mondschein. The acolyte waited uncertainly. 

He had seen a few espers before. There were a goad many of 
them now; after years of doubt and confusion, their traits had 
been isolated and recognized more than a century ago, and a 
fair amount of deliberate esper-to-esper mating had increased 
their number. The talents were still unpredictable, though. Most 
of the espers had little control over their abilities. They were 
unstable individuals, besides, generally high-strung, often lapsing into psychosis under stress. Mondschein did not like the idea 
of being locked in a windowless room with a psychotic esper. 

And what if the esper had a malicious streak? What if, instead 
of simply inducing selective amnesia in Mondschein, he decided 
to make wholesale alterations in his memory patterns? It might 
happen that— “You can get up now,” the esper said brusquely. 
“It’s done.” 

“What’s done?” Mondschein asked. 

The esper laughed triumphantly. “You don’t need to know, fool. 
It’s done, that’s all.” 

The wall opened a second time. The esper left. Mondschein 
stood up, feeling strangely empty, wondering somberly where 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

he was and what was happening to him. He had been going home 
on the slidewalk, and a man had jostled him, and then— 

A slim woman with improbable cheekbones and eyelids of glittering platinum foil said, “Come this way, please.” 

“Why should I?” 

‘Trust me. Come this way.” 

Mondschein sighed and let her lead him down a narrow corridor into another room, brightly painted and lit. A coffin-sized 
metal tank stood in one corner of the room. Mondschein recognized it, of course. It was a sensory deprivation chamber, a Nothing Chamber, in which one floated in a warm nutrient bath, sight 
and hearing cut off, gravity’s pull negated. The Nothing Chamber was an instrument for total relaxation. It could also have 
more sinister uses: a man who spent too much time in a Nothing 
Chamber became pliant, easily indoctrinated. 

“Strip and get in,” the woman said. 

“And if I don’t?” 

“You will.” 

“How long a setting?” 

“Two and a half hours.” 

“Too long,” Mondschein said. “Sorry. I don’t feel that tense. 
will you show me the way out of here?” 

The woman beckoned. A robot rolled into the room, blunt-
nosed, painted an ugly dull black. Mondachein had never 
wrestled with a robot, and he did not intend to try it now. The 
woman indicated the Nothing Chamber once more. 

This is some sort of dream, Mondschein told himself. A very 
bad dream. 

He began to strip. The Nothing Chamber hummed its readiness. Mondschein stepped into it and allowed it to engulf him. 
He could not see. He could not hear. A tube fed him air. 
Mondschein slipped into total passivity, into a fetal comfort. The 
bundle of ambitions, confficts, dreams, guilts, lusts, and ideas 
that constituted the mind of Christopher Mondschein was tem


To Open the Sky 

porarily dissolved. 

In time, he woke. They took him from the Chamber— he was 
wobbly on his legs, and they had to steady him—and gave him 
his clothing. His robe, he noticed, was the wrong color: green, 
the heretic color. How had that happened? Was he being forcibly impressed into the Harmonist movement? He knew better 
than to ask questions. They were putting a thermoplastic mask 
on his face now. I’m to travel incognito, it seems. 

In a short while Mondschein was at a quickboat station. He 
was appalled to see Arabic lettering on the signs. Cairo, he wondered? Algiers? Beirut? Mecca? 

They had reserved a private compartment for him. The woman 
with the altered eyelids sat with him during the swift flight. Several times Mondschein attempted to ask questions, but she gave 
him no reply other than a shrug. 

The quickboat landed at the Tarrytown station. Familjar territory at last. A timesign told Mondschein that this was Wednesday, March 13, 2095, 0705 hours Eastern Standard Time. It had 
been late Tuesday afternoon, he remembered distinctly, when 
he crept home in disgrace from the chapel after getting his comeuppance over the matter of a transfer to Santa Fe. Say, 1630 hours. 
Somewhere he had lost all of Tuesday night and a chunk of 
Wednesday morning, about fifteen hours in all. 

As they entered the main waiting room, the slim woman at his 
side whispered, “Go into the washroom. Third booth. Change 
your clothes.” 

Greatly troubled, Mondschein obeyed. There was a package 
resting on the seat. He opened it and found that it contained his 
indigo acolyte’s robe. Hurriedly he peeled off the green robe and 
donned his own. Remembering the face mask, he stripped that 
off, too, and flushed it away. He packed up the green robe and, 
not knowing what else to do with it, left it in the booth. 

As he came out, a dark-haired man of middle years approached 
him, holding out his hand. 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

“Acolyte Mondschein?” 

“Yes?” Mondschein said, not recognizing him, but taking the 
hand anyway. 

“Did you sleep well?” 

“I—yes,” Mondschein said. “Very well.” There was an exchange 
of glances, and suddenly Mondschein did not remember why he 
had gone into the washroom, nor what he had done in there, nor 
that he had worn a green robe and a thermoplastic mask on his 
flight from a country where Arabic was the main language, nor 
that he had been in any other country at all, nor, for that matter, 
that he had stepped bewildered from a Nothing Chamber not 
too many hours ago. 

He now believed that he had spent a comfortable night at home, 
in his own modest dwelling. He was not sure what he was doing 
at the Tarrytown quickboat station at this hour of the morning, 
but that was only a minor mystery and not worth detailed exploration. 

Finding himself unusually hungry, Mondschein bought a hearty 
breakfast at the food console on the lower level of the station. 
He bolted it briskly. By eight, he was at the Nyack chapel of the 
Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance, ready to aid in the morning service. 

Brother Langholt greeted him warmly. “Did yesterday’s little 
talk upset you too much, Mondschein?” 

“I’m settling down now.” 

“Good, good. You mustn’t let your ambitions engulf you, 
Mondschein. Everything comes in due time. Will you check the 
gamma level on the reactor, please?” 

“Certainly, Brother.” 

Mondschein stepped toward the altar. The Blue Fire seemed 
like a beacon of security in an uncertain world. The acolyte removed the gamma detector from its case and set about his morning tasks. 


To Open the Sky 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

five


The message summoning him to Santa Fe arrived three weeks 
later. It landed on the Nyack chapel like a thunderbolt, striking 
down through layer after layer of authority before it finally 
reached the lowly acolyte. 

One of Mondschein’s fellow acolytes brought him the news, in 
an indirect way. “You’re wanted in Brother Langholt’s office, 
Chris. Supervisor Kirby’s there.” 

Mondschein felt alarm. “What is it? I haven’t done anything 
wrong—not that I know of, anyway.” 

“I don’t think you’re in trouble. It’s something big, Chris. 
They’re all shaken up. It’s some kind of order out of Santa Fe.” 
Mondschein received a curious stare. “What I think they said 
was that you’re being shipped out there on a transfer.” 

“Very funny,” Mondschein said. 

He hurried to Langholt’s office. Supervisor Kirby stood against 
the bookshelf on the left He was a man enough like Langholt to 
be his brother. Both were tall, lean men in early middle age, 
with an ascetic look about them. 

Mondschein had never seen the Supervisor at such close range 
before. The story was that Kirby had been a U.N. man, pretty 
high in the international bureaucracy, until his conversion fifteen or twenty years ago. Now he was a key man in the hierarchy, possibly one of the dozen most important in the entire organization. His hair was clipped short, and his eyes were an odd 
shade of green. Mondschein had difficulty meeting those eyes. 
Facing Kirby in the flesh, he wondered how he had ever found 
the nerve to write that letter to him, requesting a transfer to the 
Santa Fe labs. 

Kirby smiled faintly. “Mondschein?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Call me Brother, Mondschein. Brother Langholt here has said 
some good things about you.” 


To Open the Sky 

He has? Mondschein thought in surprise. 

Langholt said, “I’ve told the Supervisor that you’re ambitious, 
eager, and enthusiastic. I’ve also pointed out that you’ve got those 
qualities to an excessive degree, in some ways. Perhaps you’ll 
learn some moderation at Santa Fe.” 

Stunned, Mondschein said, “Brother Langholt, I thought my 
application for a transfer had been turned down.” 

Kirby nodded. “It’s been opened again. We need some control 
subjects, you see. Non-espers. A few dozen acolytes have been 
requisitioned, and the computer tossed your name up. You fit 
the needs. I take it you still want to go to Santa Fe?” 

“Of course, sir—Brother Kirby.” 

“Good. You’ll have a week to wrap up your affairs here.” The 
green eyes were suddenly piercing. “I hope you’ll prove useful 
out there, Brother Mondschein.” 

Mondschein could not make up his mind whether he was being sent to Santa Fe as a belated yielding to his request or to get 
rid of him at Nyack. It seemed incomprehensible to him tat 
Langholt would approve the transfer after having rejected it so 
scathingly a few weeks before. But the Vorster high ones moved 
in mysterious ways, Mondschein decided. He accepted the puzzling decision in good grace, asking no questions. When his week 
was up, he knelt in the Nyack chapel one last time, said goodbye to Brother Langholt, and went to the quickboat station for 
the noon flight westward. 

He was in Santa Fe by mid-morning local time. The station 
there, he noticed, was thronged with blue-robed ones, more than 
he had ever seen in a public place at any one time. Mondschein 
waited at the station, uneasily eying the immensity of the New 
Mexican landscape. The sky was a strangely bright shade of blue, 
and visibility seemed unlimited. Miles away Mondschein saw 
bare sandstone mountains rising. A tawny desert dotted with 
grayish-green sagebrush surrounded the station. Mondschein 
had never seen so much open space before. 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

“Brother Mondschein?” a pudgy acolyte asked. 

“That’s right.” 

“I’m Brother Capodimonte. I’m your escort. Got your luggage? 
Good. Let’s go, then.” 

A teardrop was parked in back. Capodimonte took 
Mondschein’s lone suitcase and racked it. He was about forty, 
Mondschein guessed. A little old to be an acolyte. A roll of fat 
bulged over his collar at the back of his neck. 

They entered the teardrop. Capodimonte activated it and it 
shot away. 

“First time here?” he asked. 

“Yes,” Mondschein said. “I’m impressed by the countryside.” 

“It’s marvelous stuff, isn’t it? Life-enhancing. You get a sense 
of space here. And of history. Prehistoric ruins scattered all over 
the place. After you’re settled, perhaps we can go up to Frijoles 
Canyon for a look at the cave dwellings. Does that kind of thing 
interest you, Mondschein?” 

“I don’t know much about it,” he admitted. “But I’ll be glad to 
look, anyway.” 

“What’s your specialty?” 

“Nucleonics,” Mondschein said. “I’m a furnace tender.” 

“I was an anthropologist until I joined the Brotherhood. I spend 
my spare time out at the pueblos. It’s good to step back into the 
past occasionally. Especially out here, when you see the future 
erupting with such speed all around you.” 

“They’re really making progress, are they?” 

Capodimonte nodded. “Coming along quite well, they tell me. 
Of course, I’m not an insider. Insiders don’t get to leave the center much. But from what I hear, they’re accomplishing great 
things. Look out there, Brother— that’s the city of Santa Fe we’re 
passing right now.” 

Mondschein looked. Quaint was the word that occurred to him. 
The city was small, both in area and in the size of its buildings, 
which seemed to be no higher than three or four stories any


To Open the Sky 

where. Even at this distance Mondschein could make out the 

dusky reddish-brown of adobe. 

“I expected it to be much bigger,” Mondschein said. 

“Zoning. Historical monument and all that. They’ve kept it 
pretty well as it was a hundred years ago. No new construction’s 
allowed.” 

Mondschein frowned. “What about the laboratory center, 
though?” 

“Oh, that’s not really in Santa Fe. Santa Fe’s just the nearest 
big city. We’re actually about forty miles north,” said 
Capodimonte. “Up near the Picuris country. Still plenty of Indians there, you know.” 

They were beginning to climb now. The teardrop surged up 
hillside roads, and the vegetation began to change, the twisted, 
gnarled junipers and piñon pines giving way to dark stands of 
Douglas fir and ponderosas. Mondschein still found it hard to 
believe that he was soon to arrive at the genetic center. It goes to 
show, he told himself. The only way to get anywhere in the world 
was to stand up and yell. 

He had yelled. They had scolded him for it—but they had sent 
him to Santa Fe anyhow. 

To live forever! To surrender his body to the experimenters 
who were learning how to replace cell with cell, how to regenerate organs, how to restore youth. Mondschein knew what they 
were working on here. Of course, there were risks, but what of 
that? At the very worst, he’d die—but in the ordinary scheme of 
events that would happen anyway. On the other hand, he might 
be one of the chosen, one of the elect. 

A gate loomed before them. Sunlight gleamed furiously from 
the metal shield. 

“We’re here,” Capodimonte announced. 

The gate began to open. 

Mondschein said, “Won’t I be given some kind of esper scanning before they let me in?” 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

Capodimonte laughed. “Brother Mondschein, you’ve been getting a scanning for the last fifteen minutes. If there were any 
reason to turn you back, that gate wouldn’t be opening now. Relax. And welcome. You’ve made it.” 


To Open the Sky 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

six


The official name of the place was the Noel Vorst Center for 
the Biological Sciences. It sprawled over some fifteen square 
miles of plateau country, every last inch of it ringed by a well-
bugged fence. Within were dozens of buildings—dormitories, 
laboratories, other structures of less obvious purpose. The entire enterprise was underwritten by the contributions of the faithful, who gave according to their means—a dollar here, a thousand dollars there. 

The center was heart and core of the Vorster operation. Here 
the research was carried out that served to improve the lives of 
Vorsters everywhere. The essence of the Brotherhood’s appeal 
was that it offered not merely spiritual counseling—which the 
old religions could provide just as well—but also the most advanced scientific benefits. Vorster hospitals existed now in every major population center. Vorster medics were at the forefront of their profession. The Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance healed both body and soul. 

And, as the Brotherhood did not attempt to conceal, the greater 
goal of the organization was the conquest of death. Not merely 
the overthrow of disease, but the downfall of age itself. Even 
before the Vorster movement had begun, men had been making 
great progress in that direction. The mean life expectancy was 
up to ninety-odd, above one hundred in some countries. That 
was why the Earth teemed with people, despite the stringent 
birth-control regulations that were in effect almost everywhere. 
Close to eleven billion people now, and the birth rate, though 
dropping sharply, was still greater than the death rate. 

The Vorsters hoped to push the life expectancy still higher for 
those who wanted longer lives. A hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty years—that was the immediate goal. Why not two 
hundred, three hundred, a thousand later on? “Give us everlasting life,” the multitudes cried, and flocked to the chapels to make 


To Open the Sky 

sure they were among the elect. 

Of course, that prolongation of life would make the population problem all the more complex. The Brotherhood was aware 
of that it had other goals designed to alleviate that problem. To 
open the galaxy to man—that was the real aim. 

The colonization of the universe by humankind had already 
began several generations before Noel Vorst founded his movement. Mars and Venus both had been settled, in differing ways. 
Neither planet had been hospitable to man, to begin with, so 
Mars had been changed to accommodate man, and man had been 
changed to survive on Venus. Both colonies were thriving now. 
Yet little had been accomplished toward solving the population 
crisis; ships would have to leave Earth day and night for hundreds of years in order to transport enough people to the colonies to make a dent in the multitudes on the home world, and 
that was economically impossible. 

But if the extrasolar worlds could be reached, and if they did 
not need to be expensively Terraformed before they could be 
occupied, and if some new and reasonably economical means of 
transportation could be devised— 

“That’s a lot of ifs,” Mondschein said. 

Capodimonte nodded. “I don’t deny that. But that’s no reason 
not to try.” 

“You seriously think that there’ll be a way to shoot people off 
to the stars on esper power?” Mondschein asked. “You don’t think 
that that’s a wild and fantastic dream?” 

Smiling, Capodimonte said, “Wild and fantastic dreams keep 
men moving around. Chasing Prester John, chasing the Northwest Passage, chasing unicorns—well, this is our unicorn, 
Mondschein. Why all the skepticism? Look about you. Don’t you 
see what’s going on?” 

Mondschein had been at the research center for a week. He 
still did not know his way around the place with any degree of 
confidence, but he had learned a great deal. He knew, for ex


The Warriors of Light 2095 

ample, that an entire town of espers had been built on the far 
side of the dry wash that cut the center in half. Six thousand 
people lived there, none of them oldcr than forty, all of them 
breeding like rabbits. Fertility Row, they called the place. It had 
special government dispensation for unlimited childbearing. 
Some of the families had five or six children. 

That was the slow way of evolving a new kind of man. Take a 
bunch of people with unusual talents, throw them into a closed 
environment, let them pick their own mates and multiply the 
genetic pool—well, that was one way. Another was to work directly on the germ plasm. They were doing that here, too, in a 
variety of ways. Tectogenetic microsurgery, polynuclear molding, DNA manipulation—they were trying everything. Cut and 
carve the genes, push the chromosomes around, get the tiny 
replicators to produce something slightly different from what 
had gone before—that was the aim. 

How well was it working? That was hard to tell, so far. It would 
take five or six generations to evaluate the results. Mondschein, 
as a mere acolyte, did not have the equipment to judge for himself. Neither did most of those he had contact with—technicians, 
mainly. But they could speculate, and they did, far into the night. 

What interested Mondschein, far more than the experiments 
in esper genetics, was the work on life span prolongation. Here, 
too, the Vorsters were building on an established body of technique. The organ banks provided replacements for most forms 
of bodily tissue; lungs, eyes, hearts, intestines, pancreases, kidneys, all could be implanted now, using the irradiation techniques 
to destroy the graft-rejecting immune reaction. But such piecemeal rejuvenation was not true immortality. The Vorsters Sought 
a way to make the cells of the body regenerate lost tissue, so that 
the impulse toward continued life came from within, not through 
external grafts. 

Mondschein did his bit. Like most of the bottom-grade people 
at the center, he was required to surrender a morsel of flesh 


To Open the Sky 

every few days as experimental material. The biopsies were a 
nuisance, but they were part of the routine. He was a regular 
contributor to the sperm bank, too. As a non-esper, he was a 
good control subject for the work going on. How did you find the 
gene for teleportation? For telepathy? For any of the paranormal 
phenomena that were lumped under the blanket term of “esp”? 

Mondschein cooperated. He played his humble part in the great 
campaign, aware that he was no more than an infantryman in 
the struggle. He went from laboratory to laboratory, submitting 
to tests and needles, and when he was not taking part in such 
enterprises, he carried out his own specialty, which was to serve 
as a maintenance man on the nuclear power plant that ran the 
entire center. 

It was quite a different life from that in the Nyack chapel. No 
members of the public came here—no worshipers—and it was 
easy to forget that he was part of a religious movement. They 
held services here regularly, of course, but there was a professionalism about the worship that made it all seem rather perfunctory. Without some laymen in the house, it was hard to remain really dedicated to the cult of the Blue Fire. 

In this more rarefied climate, Mondschein felt some of his 
seething impatience ebb away. Now he no longer could dream 
of going to Santa Fe, for he was there, on the spot, part of the 
experiments. Now he could only wait, and tick off the moments 
of progress, and hope. 

He made new friends. He developed new interests. He went 
with Capodimonte to see the ancient ruins, and he went hunting 
in the Picuris Range with a lanky acolyte named Weber, and he 
joined the choral society and sang a lusty tenor. 

He was happy here. 

He did not know, of course, that he was here as a spy for heretics. All that had been deftly erased from his memory. In its 
place had been left a triggering mechanism, which went off one 
night in early September, and abruptly Mondschein felt a strange 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

compulsion take hold. 

It was the night of the Meson Sacrament, a feast that heralded 
the autumn solstice. Mondschein, wearing his blue robe, stood 
between Capodimonte and Weber in the chapel, watching the 
reactor glare on the altar, listening to the voice intoning, “The 
world turns and the configurations change. There is a quantum 
jump in the lives of men, when doubts and fears are left behind 
and certainty is born. There is a flash as of light—a surge of inward radiation, a sense of Oneness with—” 

Mondschein stiffened. They were Vorst’s words, words he had 
heard an infinity of times, so familiar to him that they had cut 
grooves in his brain. Yet now he seemed to be hearing them for 
the first time. When the words “a sense of Oneness” were pronounced, Mondschein gasped, gripped the seat in front of him, 
nearly doubled up in agony. He felt a sensation as of a blazing 
knife twisting in ins bowels. 

“Are you all right?” Capodimonte whispered. 

Mondschein nodded. “Just—cramps—” 

He forced himself to straighten up. But he was not all right, he 
knew. Something was wrong, and he did not know what. He was 
possessed. He was no longer his own master. Willy-nilly, he would 
obey an inner command whose nature he did not at the moment 
know, but which he sensed would be revealed to him at the proper 
time, and which he would not resist. 


To Open the Sky 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

seven


Seven hours later, at the darkest hour of night, Mondschein 
knew that the time had come. 

He woke, sweat-soaked, and slipped into his robe. The dormitory was silent. He left his room, glided quietly down the hail, 
entered the dropshaft. Moments later he emerged in the plaza 
fronting the dormitory buildings. 

The night was cold. Here on the plateau the day’s warmth fled 
swiftly once darkness descended. Shivering a little, Mondschein 
made his way through the streets of the center. No guards were 
on duty; there was no one to fear in this carefully selected, rigorously scanned colony of the faithful. Somewhere a watchful esper 
might be awake, seeking to detect hostile thoughts, but 
Mondschein was emanating nothing that might seem hostile. 
He did not know where he was going, nor what he was about to 
do. The forces that drove him welled from deep within his brain, 
beyond the fumbling reach of any esper. They guided his motor 
responses, not his cerebral centers. 

He came to one of the information-retrieval centers, a stubby 
brick building with a blank windowless facade. Pressing his hand 
against the doorscanner, Mondschein waited to be identified; in 
a moment his pattern was checked against the master list of personnel, and he was admitted. 

There flowered in his brain the knowledge of what he had 
come to find: a holographic camera. 

They kept such equipment on the second level. Mondschein 
went to the storeroom, opened a cabinet, removed a compact 
object six inches square. Unhurriedly, he left the building, sliding the camera into his sleeve. 

Crossing another plaza, Mondschein approached Lab XXIa, 
the longevity building. He had been there during the day, to give 
a biopsy. Now he moved briskly through the irising doorway, 
down a level into the basement, entered the small room just to 


To Open the Sky 

his left. A rack of photomicrographs lay on a workbench along 
the rear wall. Mondschein touched a knuckle to the scanner-
activator, and a conveyor belt dumped the photomicrographs into 
the hopper of a projector. They began to appear in the objective 
of the viewer. 

Mondschein aimed his camera and made a hologram of each 
photomicrograph as it appeared. It was quick work. The camera’s 
laser beam flicked out, bouncing off the subjects, rebounding 
and intersecting a second beam at 45 degrees. The holograms 
would be unrecognizable without the proper equipment for viewing; only a second laser beam, set at the same angle as the one 
with which the holograms had been taken, could transform the 
unrecognizable patterns of intersecting circles on the plates into 
images. Those images, Mondachein knew, would be three-dimensional and of extraordinarily fine resolution. But he did not 
stop to ponder on the use to which they might be put. 

He moved through the laboratory, photographing everything 
that might be of some value. The camera could take hundreds of 
shots without recharging. Mondschein thumbed it again and 
again. Within two hours he had made a three-dimensional record 
of virtually the entire laboratory. 

Shivering a little, he stepped out into the morning chill. Dawn 
was breaking. Mondschein put the camera back where he had 
found it, after removing the capsule of holographic plates. They 
were tiny; the whole capsule was not much bigger than a thumbnail. He slid it into his breast pocket and returned to the dormitory. 

The moment his head touched the pillow, he forgot that he 
had left his room at all that night. 

In the morning Mondschein said to Capodimonte, “Let’s go to 
Frijoles today.” 

“You’re really getting the bug, aren’t you?” Capodi-monte said, 
grinning. 

Mondachein shrugged. “It’s just a passing mood. I want to look 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

at ruins, that’s all.” 

“We could go to Puye, then. You haven’t been there. It’s pretty 
impressive, and quite different from—” 

“No. Frijoles,” Mondschein said. “All right?” 

They got a permit to leave the center—it wasn’t too difficult 
for lower-grade technicians to go out—and in the early part of 
the afternoon they headed westward toward the Indian ruins. 
The teardrop hummed along the road to Los Alamos, a secret 
scientific city of an earlier era, but they turned left into Bandelier 
National Monument before they reached Los Alamos, and 
bumped down an old asphalt road for a dozen miles until they 
came to the main center of the park. 

It was never very crowded here, but now, with summer over, 
the place was all but deserted. The two acolytes strolled down 
the main path, past the circular canyon-bottom pueblo ruin 
known as Tyuonyi, carved from blocks of volcanic tuff, and up 
the winding little road that took them to the cave dwellings. When 
they reached the kiva, the hollowed-out chamber that once had 
been a ceremonial room for prehistoric Indians, Mondschein 
said, “Wait a minute. I want to have a look.” 

He scrambled up the wooden ladder and pulled himself into 
the kiva. Its walls were blackened by the smoke of ancient fires. 
Niches lined the wall where once had been stored objects of the 
highest ritual importance. Calmly and without really understanding what he was doing, Mondschein drew the tiny capsule of 
holograms from his pocket and placed it in an inconspicuous 
corner of the farthest left-hand niche. He spent another moment 
looking around the kiva, and emerged. 

Capodimonte was sitting on the soft white rock at the base of 
the cliff, looking up at the high reddish wall on the far side of the 
canyon. Mondschein said, “Feel like taking a real hike today?” 

“Where to? Frijolito Ruin?” 

“No,” Mondschein said. He pointed to the top of the canyon 
wall. “Out toward Yapashi. Or to the Stone Lions.” 


To Open the Sky 

“That’s a dozen miles,” Capodimonte said. “And we hiked there 
in the middle of July. I’m not up to it again, Chris.” 

“Let’s go back, then.” 

“You don’t need to get angry,” Capodimonte said. “Look, we 
can go to Ceremonial Cave instead. That’s only a short hike. 
Enough’s enough, Chris.” 

“All right,” Mondschein said. “Ceremonial Cave it is. 

He set the pace for the hike, and it was a brisk one. They had 
not gone a quarter of a mile before the pudgy Capodimonte was 
out of breath. Grimly, Mondschein forged on, Capodimonte straggling after him. They reached the ruin, viewed it briefly, and 
turned back. When they came to park headquarters, 
Capodimonte said that he wanted to rest awhile, to have a snack 
before returning to the research center. 

“Go ahead,” Mondschein said. “I’ll browse in the curio shop.” 

He waited until Capodimonte was out of sight Then, entering 
the curio shop, Mondschein went to the communibooth. A number popped into his brain, planted there hypnotically months 
before as he lay slumbering in the Nothing Chamber. He put 
money in the slot and punched out the number. 

“Eternal Harmony,” a voice answered. 

“This is Mondschein. Let me talk to anybody in Section Thirteen.” 

“One moment, please.” 

Mondschein waited. His mind felt blank. He was a sleepwalker 
now. 

A purring, breathy voice said, “Go ahead, Mondschein.. Give 
us the details.” 

With great economy of words Mondschein told where he had 
hidden the capsule of holograms. The purring voice thanked him. 
Mondachein broke the contact and stepped from the booth. A 
few moments later Capodimonte entered the curio shop, looking fed and rested. 

“See anything you want to buy?” he asked. 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

“No,” Mondschein said. “Let’s go.” 

Capodimonte drove. Mondschein eyed the scenery as it 
whizzed past, and drifted into deep contemplation. Why did I 
come here today? he wondered. He had no idea. He did not remember a thing—not a single detail of his espionage. The erasure had been complete. 


To Open the Sky 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

eight


They came for him a week later, at midnight. A ponderous 
robot rumbled into his room without warning and took up a station beside his bed, the huge grips ready to seize him if he bolted. 
Accompanying the robot was a hatchet-faced little man named 
Magnus, one of the supervising Brothers of the center. 

“What’s happening?” Mondschein asked. 

“Get dressed, spy. Come for interrogation.” 

“I’m no spy. There’s a mistake, Brother Magnus.” 

“Save the arguments, Mondschein. Up. Get up. Don’t attempt 
any violence.” 

Mondschein was mystified. But he knew better than to debate 
the matter with Magnus, especially with eight hundred pounds 
of lightning-fast metallic intelligence in the room. Puzzled, the 
acolyte quit his bed and slipped on a robe. He followed Magnus 
out. In the hallway others appeared and stared at him. There 
were guarded whispers. 

Ten minutes later Mondschein found himself in a circular room 
on the fifth floor of the research center’s main administration 
building, surrounded by more Brotherhood brass than he had 
ever expected to see in one room. There were eight of them, all 
high in councils. A knot of tension coiled in Mondschein’s belly. 
Light glared into his eyes. 

“The esper’s here,” someone muttered. 

They had sent a girl, no more than sixteen, pasty-faced and 
plain. Her skin was flecked with small red blotches. Her eyes 
were alert, unpleasantly gleaming, never still. 

Mondschein despised her on sight, and he tried desperately to 
keep the emotion under rein, knowing that she could seal his 
fate with a word. It was no use: she detected his contempt for 
her the moment she came into the room, and the fleshy lips 
moved in a quick twitching smile. She drew her dumpy body 
erect. 


To Open the Sky 

Supervisor Magnus said, “This is the man. What do you read 
in him?” 

“Fear. Hatred. Defiance.” 

“How about disloyalty?” 

“His highest loyalty is to himself,” the esper said, clasping her 
hands complacently over her belly. 

“Has he betrayed us?” Magnus demanded. 

“No. I don’t see anything that says he has.” 

Mondschein said, “If I could ask the meaning of—” 

“Quiet,” Magnus said witheringly. 

Another of the Supervisors said, “The evidence is incontrovertible. Perhaps the girl’s making a mistake.” 

“Scan him more closely,” Magnus directed. “Go back, day by 
day, through his memory. Don’t miss a thing. You know what 
you’re looking for.” 

Baffled, Mondschein looked in appeal at the steely faces about 
him. The girl seemed to be gloating. Stinking voyeur, he thought. 
Have a good scan! 

The girl said thinly, “He thinks I’m going to enjoy this. He ought 
to try swimming through a cesspool sometime, if he wants to 
know what it’s like.” 

“Scan him,” Magnus said. “It’s late and we have many questions to answer.” 

She nodded. Mondschein waited for some sensation telling him 
that his memories were being probed, some feeling as of invisible fingers going through his brain. There was no such awareness. Long moments passed in silence, and then the girl looked 
up in triumph. 

“The night of March thirteenth’s been erased.” 

“Can you get beneath the erasure?” Magnus asked. 

“Impossible. It’s an expert job. They’ve cut the whole night 
right out of him. And they’ve loaded him with countermnemonics 
all the way down the track. He doesn’t know a thing about what 
he’s been up to,” the girl said. 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

The Supervisors exchanged glances. Mondschein felt perspiration soaking through his robe. The smell of it stung his nostrils. A muscle throbbed in his cheek, and his forehead itched 
murderously, but he did not move. 

“She can go,” Magnus said. 

With the esper out of the room, the atmosphere grew a little 
less tense, but Mondschein did not relax. In a bleak, hopeless 
way, he felt that he had been tried and condemned in advance 
for a crime whose nature he did not even know. He thought of 
some of the perhaps apocryphal stories of Brotherhood vindictiveness: the man with the pain centers removed, the esper staked 
out to endure an overload, the lobotomized biologist, the renegade Supervisor who was left in a Nothing Chamber for ninety-
six consecutive hours. He realized that he might find out very 
shortly just how apocryphal those stories were. 

Magnus said, “For your information, Mondschein, someone 
broke into the longevity lab and shot the whole place up with a 
holograph. It was a very neat job, except that we’ve got an alarm 
system in there, and you happened to trip it.” 

“Sir, I swear, I never set foot inside—” 

“Save it, Mondschein, The morning after, we ran a neutron 
activation analysis in there, just as a matter of routine. We turned 
up traces of tungsten and molybdenum that brushed off you while 
you were taking those holograms. They match your skin pattern. It took us awhile to track them to you. There’s no doubt— 
same neutron pattern on the camera, on the lab equipment, and 
on your hand. You were sent in here as a spy, whether you know 
it or not.” 

Another Supervisor said, “Kirby’s here.” 

“I’d like to know what he’s got to say about this,” Magnus 
muttered darkly. 

Mondschein saw the lean, long-limbed figure of Reynolds Kirby 
enter the room. His thin lips were clamped tightly together. He 
seemed to have aged at least ten years since Mondschein had 


To Open the Sky 

seen him in Langholt’s office. 

Magnus whirled and said with open irritation, “Here’s your 
man, Kirby. What do you think of him now?” 

“He’s not my man,” said Kirby. 

“You approved his transfer here,” Magnus snapped. “Maybe 
we ought to run a scan on you, eh? Somebody worked a loaded 
bomb into this place, and the bomb’s gone off. He handed a whole 
laboratory away.” 

“Maybe not,” Kirby said. “Maybe he’s still got the data on him 
somewhere.” 

“He was out of the center the day after the laboratory was entered. He and another acolyte went to visit some ancient Indian 
ruins. It’s a safe bet that he disposed of the holograms while he 
was out there.” 

“Have you tracked the courier?” Kirby asked. 

“We’re getting away from the point,” said Magnus. “The point 
is that this man came to the center on your recommendation. 
You picked him out of nowhere and put him here. What we’d all 
like to know is where you found him and why you sent him here. 
Eh?” 

Kirby’s fleshless face worked wordlessly for a moment He glowered at Mondschein, then stared in even greater hostility at 
Magnus. At length he said, “I can’t take responsibility for shipping this man here. It happens that he wrote to me in February, 
asking to be transferred out of normal chapel duties and sent 
here. He was going over the heads of his local administrators, so 
I sent the letter back suggesting that he be disciplined a little. A 
few weeks later I received instructions that he be transferred 
out here. I was startled, to say the least, but I approved them. 
That’s all I know about Christopher Mondschein.” 

Magnus extended a forefinger and tapped the air. “Wait one 
moment, Kirby. You’re a Supervisor. Who gives you instructions, 
anyway? How can you be pressured into making a transfer when 
you’re in high authority?” 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

“The instructions came from higher authority.” 

“I find that hard to believe,” Magnus said. 

Mondschein sat stock-still, enthralled dcspite his own predicament by this battle between Supervisors. He had never understood how he had managed to get that transfer, and now it began to seem as though no one else understood it, either. 

Kirby said, “The instructions came from a source I’m reluctant to name.” 

“Covering up for yourself, Kirby?” 

“You’re taking liberties with my patience, Supervisor Magnus,” 
said Kirby tightly. 

“I want to know who put this spy among us.” 

Kirby took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you. All 
of you be my witness to this. The order came from Vorst. Noel 
Vorst called me and said he wanted this man sent here. Vorst 
sent him. Vorst! What do you make of that?” 


To Open the Sky 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

nine


They were not finished interrogating Mondschein. Waves of 
espers worked him over, trying to get beneath the erasure, without success. Organic methods were employed, too; Mondschein 
was shot full of truth serums old and new, everything from sodium pentothal on up, and batteries of hard-faced Brothers questioned him rigorously. Mondschein let them strip his soul bare, 
so that every bit of nastiness, every self-seeking moment, everything that made him a human being stood out in bold relief. They 
found nothing useful. Nor did a four-hour immersion in a Nothing Chamber yield results; Mondschein was too wobbly-brained 
to be able to answer questions for three days afterward, that was 
all. 

He was as puzzled as they were. He would gladly have confessed the most heinous of sins; in fact, several times during the 
long interrogation he did confess, simply to have it over with, 
but the espers read his motives plainly and laughed his confessions to scorn. Somehow, he knew, he had fallen into the hands 
of the enemies of the Brotherhood and had concluded a pact 
with them, a pact which he had fulfilled. But he had no inner 
knowledge of any of that. Whole segments of his memory were 
gone, and that was terrifying to him. 

Mondschein knew that he was finished. They would not let 
him remain at Santa Fe, naturally. His dream of being on hand 
when immortality was achieved now was ended. They would 
cast him out with flaming swords, and he would wither and grow 
old, cursing his lost opportunity. That is, if they did not kill him 
outright or work some subtle form of slow destruction on him. 

A light December snow was falling on the day that Supervisor 
Kirby came to tell him his fate. 

“You can go, Mondschein,” the tall man said somberly. 

“Go? Where?” 

“Wherever you like. Your case has been decided. You’re guilty, 


To Open the Sky 

but there’s reasonable doubt of your volition. You’re being expelled from the Brotherhood, but otherwise no action will be 
taken against you.” 

“Does that mean I’m expelled from the church as a communicant, too?” 

“Not necessarily. That’s up to you. If you want to come to worship, we won’t deny our comfort to you,” Kirby said. “But there’s 
no possibility of your holding a position within the church. You’ve 
been tampered with, and we can’t take further chances with you. 
I’m sorry, Mondschein.” 

Mondschein was sorry, too, but relieved, as well. They would 
not take revenge on him. He would lose nothing but his chance 
at life everlasting—and perhaps he would even retain that, just 
as any other common worshiper did. 

He had forfeited, of course, his chance to rise in the Vorster 
hierarchy. But there was another hierarchy, too, Mondschein 
thought, where a man might move more swiftly. 

The Brotherhood took him to the city of Santa Fe proper, gave 
him some money, and turned him loose. Mondschein headed 
immediately for the nearest chapel of the Transcendent Harmony, 
which turned out to be in Albuquerque, twenty minutes away. 

“We’ve been expecting you,” a Harmonist in flowing green 
robes told him. “I’ve got instructions to contact my superiors the 
moment you show up.” 

Mondachein was not surprised at that. Nor was he greatly astonished to be told, a short while later, that he was to leave by 
quickboat for Rome right away. The Harmonists would pay his 
expenses, he was informed. 

A slim woman with surgically-altered eyellds met him at the 
station in Rome. She did not look familiar to him, but she smiled 
at him as though they were old friends. She conveyed him to a 
house on the Via Flaminia, a few dozen miles north of Rome, 
where a squat, sallow-faced Harmonist Brother with a bulbous 
nose awaited him. 


The Warriors of Light 2095 

“Welcome,” the Harmonist said. “Do you remember me?” 

“No, I—yes. Yes!” 

Recollection flooded back, dizzying him, staggering him. There 
had been three heretics in the room that other time, not just 
one, and they had given him wine and promised him a place in 
the Harmonist hierarchy, arid he had agreed to let himself be 
smuggled into Santa Fe, a soldier in the great crusade, a warrior 
of light, a Harmonist spy. 

“You did very well, Mondschein,” the heretic said unctuously. 
“We didn’t think you’d be caught so fast, but we weren’t sure of 
all their detection methods. We could only guard against the 
espers, and we did a fair enough job of that. At any rate, the 
information you provided was extremely useful.” 

“And you’ll keep your end of the bargain? I’m to get a tenth-
level job?” 

“Of course. You didn’t think we’d cheat you, did you? You’ll 
have a three-month indoctrination course so you can attain insight into our movement. Then you’ll assume your new duties 
in our organization. Which would you prefer, Mondschein—Mars 
or Venus?” 

“Mars or Venus? I don’t follow you.” 

“We’re going to attach you to our missionary division. You’ll 
be leaving Earth by next summer, to carry on our work in one of 
the colonies. You’re free to choose the one you prefer.” 

Mondachein was aghast. He had never bargained for this. Selling out to these heretics, only to get shipped off to an alien world 
and likely martyrdom—no, he had never expected anything like 
that 

Faust didn’t expect his troubles, either, Mondschein thought 
coldly. 

He said, “What kind of trick is this? You’ve got no right to ask 
me to become a missionary!” 

“We offered you a tenth-level job,” the Harmonist said quietly. 
“The option of choosing the division it would be remained with 


To Open the Sky 

us.” 

Mondschein was silent. There was a fierce throbbing in his 
skull. The face of the Harmonist seemed to blur and waver. He 
was free to leave—to step out the door and merge into the multitudes. To become nothing. Or he could submit and be—what? 
Anything. Anything. 

Dead in six weeks, as likely as not. 

“I’ll take it,” he said. “Venus. I’ll go to Venus.” His words 
sounded like a cage clanging shut. 

The Harmonist nodded. “I thought you would,” he said. He 
turned to leave, then paused and stared curiously at Mondschein. 
“Did you really think you could name your own position—spy?” 


Three


Where the Changed Ones Go 
2135 

one 

The Venusian boy danced nimbly around the patch of Trouble 
Fungus behind the chapel, avoiding the gray-green killer with 
practiced ease. He hop-skipped past the rubbery bole of the 
Limblime Tree and approached the serried row of jagged nameless stalks that lined the back garden. The boy grinned at them, 
and they parted for him as obligingly as the Red Sea had yielded 
to Moses some time earlier. 

“Here I am,” he said to Nicholas Martell. 

“I didn’t think you’d be back,” the Vorster missionary said. 

The boy—Elwhit—looked mischievous. “Brother Christopher 
said I couldn’t come back. That’s why I’m here. Tell me about 
the Blue Fire. Can you really make atoms give light?” 

“Come inside,” Martell said. 

The boy represented his first triumph since coming to Venus, 
and a small triumph it was, so far. But Martell did not object to 
that. A step was a step. There was a planet to win here. A universe to win, perhaps. 

Inside the chapel the boy hung back, suddenly shy. He was no 
more than ten, Martell guessed. Was it just wickedness that had 
made him come here? Or was he a spy from the chapel of heretics down the road? No matter. Martell would treat him as a 
potential convert. He activated the altar, and the Blue Fire welled 
into the small room, colors dancing against the boards of the 
groined wooden ceiling. Power surged from the cobalt cube, and 
the harmless, dramatic radiations wrung a gasp of awe from 


To Open the Sky 

Elwhit. 

“The fire is symbolic,” Martell murmured. “There’s an underlying oneness in the universe—the common building blocks, do 
you see? Do you know what atomic particles are? Protons, electrons, neutrons? The things everything’s made up of?” 

“I can touch them,” Elwhit said. “I can push them around.” 

“Will you show me how?” Martell was remembering the way 
the boy had parted those knifeblade-sharp plants In back. A 
glance, a mental shove, and they had yielded. These Venusians 
could teleport—he was sure of it. “How do you push things?” 
Martell asked. 

But the boy shrugged the question aside, “Tell me more about 
the Blue Fire,” he said. 

“Have you read the book I gave you? The one by Vorst? That 
tells you all you need to know.” 

“Brother Christopher took it away from me.” 

“You showed it to him?” Martell said, startled. 

“He wanted to know why I came to you. I said you talked to me 
and gave me a book. He took the book. I came back. Tell me why 
you’re here. Tell me what you teach. 

Martell hadn’t imagined that his first convert would be a child. 
He said carefully, “The religion we have here is very much like 
the one that Brother Christopher teaches. But there are some 
differences. His people make up a lot of stories. They’re good 
stories, but they’re only stories.”. 

“About Lazarus, you mean?” 

“That’s right. Myths, nothing more. We try not to need such 
things. We’re trying to get right in touch with the basics of the 
universe. We—” 

The boy lost interest. He tugged at his tunic and nudged at a 
chair. The altar was what fascinated him, nothing else. The glistening eyes roved toward it. 

Martell said, “The cobalt is radioactive. It’s a source of betas— 
electrons. They’re going through the tank and 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

knocking photons loose. That’s where the light comes front” 

“I can stop the light,” the boy said. “Will you be angry If I stop 
it?” 

It was a kind of sacrilege, Martell knew. But he suspected that 
he would be forgiven. Any evidence of teleporting activity that 
he could gather was useful. 

“Go ahead,” he said. 

The boy remained motionless. But the radiance dimmed. It 
was as if an invisible hand reached into the reactor, intercepting 
the darting particles. Telekinesis on the subatomic level! Martell 
was elated and chilled all at once, watching the light fade. Suddenly it flared more brightly again. Beads of sweat glistened on 
the boy’s bluish-purple forehead. 

“That is all,” Elwhit announced. 

“How do you do it?” 

“I reach.” He laughed. “You can’t?” 

“Afraid not,” Martell said. “Listen, if I give you another book 
to read, will you promise not to show it to Brother Christopher? 
I don’t have many. I can’t afford to have the Harmonists confiscate them all.” 

“Next time,” the boy said. “I don’t feel like reading things now. 
I’ll come again. You tell me all about it some other time.” 

He danced away, out of the chapel, and went skipping through 
the underbrush, heedless of the perils that lurked in the deep-
shadowed forest beyond. Martell watched him go, not knowing 
whether he was actually making his first convert or whether he 
was being mocked. 

Perhaps both, the missionary thought. 

Nicholas Martell had come to Venus ten days before, aboard a 
passenger ship from Mars. He had been one of thirty passengers 
aboard the ship, but none of the others had cared for Nicholas 
Martell’s company. Ten of them were Martians, who did not care 
to share the atmosphere Martell breathed. Martians, now that 


To Open the Sky 

their planet had been cozily Terraformed, preferred to fill their 
lungs with an Earthside mix of gases. So had Martell, once, for 
hewas a native Earthman himself. But now he was one of the 
changed ones, equipped with gills in good Venusian fashion. 

Not gills, truly: they would serve no function under water. They 
were high-density filters, to strain the molecules of decent oxygen from the Venusian air. Martell was well adapted. His metabolism had no use for helium or the other inerts, but it could 
draw sustenance from nitrogen and had no real objections to 
fueling on CO2 for short spells. The surgeons at Santa Fe had 
worked on him for six months. It was forty years too late to make 
adjustments on Martell-ovum or Martell-fetus, as was the normal practice in fitting a man for life on Venus, so they had done 
their work on Martell the man. The blood that flowed in his veins 
was no longer red. His skin had a fine cyanotic flush. He was as 
a Venusian born. 

There had been nineteen Venusians of the true blood aboard 
the ship, too. But they felt no kinship for Martell and had forced 
him to withdraw from their presence. The crewmen had set up 
Martell’s cradle in a storage chamber, with gentle apologies: “You 
know those arrogant Venusians, Brother. Give them the wrong 
kind of look and they’re at you with their daggers. You’ll stay 
here. You’ll be safer here.” A thin laugh. “You’ll be even safer, 
Brother, if you head for home without ever setting foot on Venus.” 

Martell had smiled. He was prepared to let Venus do its worst. 

Venus had martyred several dozen members of Martell’s religious order in the past forty years. He was a Vorster, or, more 
formally, a member of the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance, and he had attached himself to the missionary wing. Unlike his martyred predecessors, Martell was surgically adapted 
to live on Venus. The others had had to muffle themselves in 
breathing-suits, and perhaps that had limited their effectiveness. 
The Vorsters had made no headway on Venus at all, though they 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

were the dominant religious group on Earth, and had been for 
more than a generation. Martell, alone and adapted, had taken 
upon himself the long-delayed task of founding a Venusian order of the Brotherhood. 

Martell had had a chilly welcome from Venus. He had blanked 
out in the turbulence of the landing as the ship plunged through 
the cloud layer. Then he had recovered. He sat patiently, a thin 
man with a wedge-shaped face and pale, hooded eyes. Through 
the port he had his first glimpse of Venus: a flat, muddy-looking 
field, stretching perhaps half a mile, with a bordering fringe of 
thick-trunked, ugly trees whose massed bluish leaves had a sinister glint. The sky was gray, and swirling clumps of low-lying 
clouds formed whorling patterns against the deeper background. 
Robot technicians were bustling from a squat, alien-looking 
building to service the ship’s needs. The passengers were coming forth. 

In the landing station a low-caste Venusian stared at the Vorster 
with blank indifference, taking his passport and saying coolly, 
“Religious?” 

‘That’s right.” 

“How’d you get in?” 

“Treaty of 2128,” Martell said. “A limited quota of Earthside 
observers for scientific, ethical, or—” 

“Spare me.” The Venusian pressed his fingertip to a page of 
the passport and a visa stamp appeared, glowing brilliantly. 
“Nicholas Martell. You’ll die here, Martell. Why don’t you go back 
where you came from? Men live forever there, don’t they?” 

“They live a long time. But I have work here.” 

“Fool!” 

“Perhaps,” Martell agreed caimly. “May I go?” 

“Where are you staying? We have no hotels here.” 

‘The Martian Embassy will look after me until I’m established.” 

“You’ll never be established,” the Venusian said. 

Martell did not contradict him. He knew that even a low-caste 


To Open the Sky 

Venusian regarded himself as superior to an Earthman, and that 
a contradiction might seem a mortal insult. Martell was not 
equipped for dagger-dueling. And, since he was not a proud man 
by nature, he was willing to swallow any manner of abuse for 
the sake of his mission. 

The passport man waved him on. Martell gathered up his single 
suitcase and passed out of the building. A taxi now, he thought. 
It was many miles to town. He needed to rest and to confer with 
the Martian Ambassador, Weiner. The Martians were not particularly sympathetic to his aims, but at least they were willing 
to countenance Martell’s presence here. There was no Earth 
Embassy, not even a consulate. The links between the mother 
planet and her proud colony had been broken long ago. 

Taxis waited at the far side of the field. Martell began to cross 
to them. The ground crunched beneath his feet, as though it 
were only a brittle crust. The planet looked gloomy. Not a hint of 
sun came through those clouds. His adapted body was functioning well, though. 

The spaceport, Martell thought, had a forlorn look. Hardly 
anyone but robots seemed to be about. A staff of four Venusians 
ran the place, and there were the nineteen from his ship, and 
the ten Martians, but no one else. Venus was a sparsely populated planet, with hardly more than three million people in its 
seven widely spaced towns. The Venusians were frontiersmen, 
legendary for their haughtiness. They had room to be haughty, 
Martell thought. Let them spend a week on teeming Earth and 
they might change their ways. 

“Taxi!” Martell called. 

None of the robocars budged from their line. Were even the 
robots haughty here, he wondered? Or was there something 
wrong with his accent? He called again, getting no response. 

Then he understood. The Venusian passengers were emerging and crossing to the taxi zone. And, naturally, they had precedence. Martell watched them. They were high-caste men, un


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

like the passport man. They walked with an arrogant, swaggering gait, and Martell knew they would slash him to his knees if 
he crossed their path. 

He felt a bit of contempt for them. What were they, anyway, 
but blue-skinned samurai, border lairds after their proper time, 
childish, self-appointed princelings living a medieval fantasy? 
Men who were sure of themselves did not need to swagger, nor 
to surround themselves with elaborate codes of chivalry. If one 
looked upon them as uneasy, inwardly uncertain hotheads, rather 
than as innately superior noblemen, one could surmount the 
feeling of awe that a procession of them provoked. 

And yet one could not entirely suppress that awe. 

For they were impressive as they paraded across the field. More 
than custom separated the high-caste and the low-caste 
Venusians. They were biologically different. The high-caste ones 
were the first comers, the founding families of the Venus colony, 
and they were far more alien in body and mind than Venusians 
of more recent vintage. The early genetic processes had been 
unsubtle, and the first colonists had been transformed virtually 
into monsters. Close to eight feet tall, with dark blue skins pocked 
with giant pores, and pendulous red gill-bunches at their throats, 
they were alien beings who gave little sign that they were the 
great-great-grandchildren of Earthmen. Later in the process of 
colonizing Venus, it had become possible to adapt men for the 
second planet without varying nearly so much from the basic 
human model. Both strains of Venusians, since they arose from 
manipulation of the germ plasm, bred true; both shared the same 
exaggerated sense of honor and the same disdain for Earth; both 
were now alien strains, inwardly and outwardly, in mind and in 
body. But those whose ancestry went back to the most changed 
of the changed ones were in charge, making a virtue of their 
strangeness, and the planet was their playground. 

Martell watched as the high-caste ones solemnly entered the 
waiting vehicles and drove off. No taxis remained. The ten Mar


To Open the Sky 

tian passengers of the ship could be seen getting into a cab on 
the other side of the depot. Martell returned to the building. The 
low-caste Venusian glowered at him. 

Martell said, “When will I be able to get a taxi to town?” 

“You won’t. They aren’t coming back today.” 

“I want to call the Martian Embassy, then. They’ll send a car 
for me.” 

“Are you sure they will? Why should they bother?” 

“Perhaps so,” Martell said evenly. “I’d better walk.” The look 
he got from the Venusian was worth the gesture. The man stared 
in surprise and shock. And, possibly, admiration, mingled somewhat with patronizing confidence that Martell must be a madman. Martell left the station. He began to walk, following the 
narrow ribbon of a road, letting the unearthly atmosphere soak 
deep into his altered body. 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

two


It was a lonely walk. Not a sign of habitation broke the belt of 
vegetation on either side of the highway, nor did any vehicles 
pass him. The trees, somber and eerie with their bluish cast, 
towered over the road. Their knifeblade-like leaves glimmered 
in the faint, diffused light. There was an occasional rustling sound 
in the woods, as of beasts crashing through the thickets. Martell 
saw nothing there, though. He walked on. How many miles? 
Eight, a dozen? He was prepared to walk forever, if necessary. 
He had the strength. 

His mind hummed with plans. He would establish a small 
chapel and let it be known what the Brotherhood had to offer: 
life eternal and the key to the stars. The Venusians might threaten 
to kill him, as they had killed previous missionaries of the Brotherhood, but Martell was prepared to die, if necessary, that others 
might have the stars. His faith was strong. Before his departure 
the high ones of the Brotherhood had personally wished him 
well: grizzled Reynolds Kirby, the Hemispheric Coordinator, had 
grasped his hand, and then had come an even greater surprise 
as Noel Vorst himself, the Founder, a legendary figure more than 
a century old, had come forth to tell him in a soft, feathery voice, 
“I know that your mission will bear fruit, Brother Martell.” 

Martell still tingled with the memory of that glorious moment. 

Now he strode forward, buoyed by the sight of a few habitations set back from the road. He was at the outskirts, then. On 
this pioneer world, pioneer habits held true, and the colonists 
did not build their homes close together. They spread sparsely 
over a radiating area surrounding the main administrative centers. The man-high walls enclosing the first houses he saw did 
not surprise him; these Venusians were a surly lot who would 
build a wall around their entire planet if they could. But soon he 
would be in town, and then—Martell came to a halt as he saw 
the Wheel hurtling toward him. 


To Open the Sky 

His first thought was that it had broken free from some vehicle. Then he realized what it was: no fragment of machinery, 
but Venusian wildlife. It surged over a crest in the road, a hundred yards in front of him, and came plunging wildly toward 
him at what must have been a speed of ninety miles an hour. 
Martell had a clear though momentary glimpse: two wheels of 
some horny substance, mottled orange and yellow, linked by a 
box-like inner structure. The wheels were nine feet across, at 
least; the connecting structure was smaller, so that wheel-rims 
projected around it. Those rims were razor-sharp. The creature 
moved by ceaselessly transferring its weight within that central 
housing, and it developed terrific momentum as it barreled toward the missionary. 

Martell leaped back. The Wheel hurtled past him, missing his 
toes by inches. Martell saw the sharpness of the rim and felt an 
acrid odor sting his nostrils. If he had been a bit slower, the Wheel 
would have sliced him in two. 

It traveled a hundred yards beyond him. Then, like a gyroscope running amok, it executed a turn in an astonishingly narrow radius and came shooting back toward Martell. 

The thing’s hunting me, he thought. 

He knew many Vorster combat techniques, but none of them 
were designed to cope with a beast like this. All he could do was 
keep sidestepping and hope that the Wheel could not make sudden compensations in its course. It drew near; Martell sucked in 
his breath and leaped back once again. This time the Wheel 
swerved ever so slightly. 

Its leading left-hand edge sliced through the trailing end of 
Martell’s blue cloak, and a ribbon of cloth fluttered to the pavement Panting, Martell watched the thing swing around for another try, and knew that it could indeed correct its course. A few 
more passes and it would split him. 

The Wheel came a third time. 

Martell waited as long as he dared. With the outer blades only 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

a few feet away, he broad-jumped—into the path of the creature. 
Earthborn muscles carried him twenty feet in the light gravity. 
He more than half expected to be bisected in mid-jump, but when 
his feet touched ground he was still in one piece. Whirling, 
Martell saw that he had indeed surprised the beast; it had turned 
inward, toward the place where it had expected him to be, and 
had passed through his suitcase. The suitcase had been sliced 
as though by a laser beam. His belongings were scattered on the 
road. The Wheel, halting once more, was coming back for another try. 

What now? Climb a tree? The nearest one was void of limbs 
for the first twenty feet. Martell could not shinny to safety in 
time. All he could do was keep hopping from side to side in the 
road, trying to outguess the creature. He knew that he could not 
keep that up much longer. He would tire, and the Wheel would 
not, and the slashing rims would pass through him and spill his 
altered guts on the pavement. It did not seem right, Martell 
thought, to die purposelessly in this way before he had even begun his work here. 

The Wheel came. Martell sidestepped it again and heard it 
whistle past. Was it getting angry? No, it was just an insensate 
brute looking for a meal, hunting in the manner some perverse 
nature had designed for it. Martell gasped for breath. On the 
next pass— Suddenly he was not alone. A boy appeared, running out from one of the stockaded buildings at the crest of the 
hill, and trotted alongside the Wheel for a few paces. Then— 
Martell did not see how it was done—the Wheel went awry and 
toppled, landing on one disk with the other in the air. It lay there 
like a huge cheese blocking the road. The boy, who could not 
have been much more than ten, stood by it, looking pleased with 
himself. He was low-caste, of course. A high-caste one would 
not have bothered to save him. Martell realized that probably 
the low-caste boy had had no interest in saving him, either, but 
simply had knocked the Wheel over for the sport of it. 


To Open the Sky 

Martell said, “I offer thanks, friend. Another moment and I’d 
have been cut to ribbons.” 

The boy made no reply. Martell came closer to inspect the fallen 
Wheel. Its upper rim was rippling in frustration as it strained to 
right itself—clearly an impossible task. Martell looked down, saw 
a dark violet cyst near the center of one wheel writhe and open. 

“Look out!” the boy cried, but it was much too late. 

Two whip-like threads burst from the cyst. One wrapped itself 
around Martell’s left thigh, the other around the boy’s waist. 
Martell felt a blaze of pain, as tough the threads were lined with 
acid-edged suckers. A mouth opened on the inner structure of 
the Wheel. Martell saw milling, grinding tooth-like projections 
beginning to churn in anticipation. 

But this was a situation he could handie. He had no way of 
stopping the headlong plunge of the Wheel, for that was mere 
mechanical energy at work, but presumably the creature’s brain 
carried an electrical charge, and the Vorsters had ways of altering current flows in the brain. It was a mild form of esping, within 
the threshold of nearly anyone who cared to master the disciplines involved. Ignoring the pain, Martell seized the tightening 
thread with his right hand and performed the act of neutralization. A moment later the thread went slack and Martell was free. 
So was the boy. The threads did not return to the cyst, but remained lying limp in the roadway. The milling teeth became 
still; the rippling horny plate of the upper wheel subsided. The 
thing was dead. 

Martell glanced at the boy. 

“Fair enough,” he said. ‘I’ve saved you and you’ve saved me. 
So now we’re even.” 

“The debit is still yours,” replied the boy with strange solemnity. “If I had not rescued you first, you never would have lived 
to rescue me. And it would not have been necessary to rescue 
me, anyway, since I would not have come out onto the road, and 
therefore—” 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

Martell’s eyes widened. “Who taught you to reason like that?” 
he asked in amusement. “You sound like a theology professor.” 

“I am Brother Christopher’s pupil.” 

“And he is—” 

“You’ll find out. He wants to see you. He sent me out here to 
fetch you.” 

“And where will I find him?” 

“Come with me.” 

Martell followed the boy toward one of the buildings. They 
left the dead Wheel in the road. Martell wondered what would 
happen if a carload of high-casters came along and had to shove 
the carcass out of the way with their own aristocratic hands. 

Martell and the boy passed through a burnished coppery gate 
that slid open at the boy’s approach. Martell found himself approaching a simple wooden A-frame building. When he saw the 
sign mounted above the door, he was so amazed that he released 
his grip on his sundered suitcase, and for the second time in ten 
minutes his belongings went spilling to the ground. 

The sign said: 

Shrine of the Transcendent Harmony
All Are Welcome


Martell’s knees felt watery. Harmonists? Here? 

The green-robed heretics, offshoots of the original Vorster 
movement, had made some progress on Earth for a while, and 
had even seemed to threaten the parent organization. But for 
more than twenty years now they had been nothing but an absurd little splinter group of no significance. It was inconceivable 
that these heretics, who had failed so utterly on Earth, could 
have established a church here on Venus—something that the 
Vorsters themselves had been unable to do. It was impossible. It 
was unthinkable. 

A figure appeared in the doorway—a stocky man in early 
middle age, about sixty or so, his hair beginning to gray, his fea


To Open the Sky 

tures thickening. Like Martell, he had been surgically adapted 
to Venusian conditions. He looked calm and self-assured. His 
hands rested lightly on a comfortable priestly paunch. 

He said, “I’m Christopher Mondschein. I heard of your arrival, 
Brother Martell. Won’t you come in?” 

Martell hesitated. 

Mondschein smiled. “Come, come, Brother. There’s no peril 
in breaking bread with a Harmonist, is there? You’d be mincemeat now but for the lad’s bravery, and I sent him to save you. 
You owe me the courtesy of a visit. Come in. Come in. I won’t 
meddle with your soul, Brother. That’s a promise.” 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

three


The Harmonist place was unassuming but obviously permanent. There was a shrine, festooned with the statuettes and claptrap of the heresy, and a library, and dwelling quarters. Martell 
caught sight of several Venusian boys at work in the rear of the 
building, digging what might be the foundations of an extension. Martell followed the older man into the library. A familiar 
row of books caught his eye: the works of Noel Vorst, handsomely 
bound, the expensive Founder’s Edition. 

Mondschein said, “Are you surprised? Don’t forget that we 
accept the supremacy of Vorst, too, even if he spurns us. Sit down. 
Wine? They make a fine dry white here.” 

“What are you doing here?” Martell asked. 

“Me? That’s a terribly long story, and not entirely creditable to 
me. The essence of it is that I was a young fool and let myself get 
maneuvered into being sent here. That was forty years ago, and 
I’ve stopped resenting what happened by now. It was the finest 
thing that could have happened to me in my life, I’ve come to 
realize, and I suppose it’s a mark of maturity that I was able to 
see—” 

Mondschein’s garrulity irritated the precise-minded Martell. 
He cut in: “I don’t want your personal history, Brother 
Mondschein. I meant how long has your order been here?” 

“Close to fifty years.” 

“Uninterruptedly?” 

“Yes. We have eight shrines here and about four thousand communicants, all of them low-caste. The high-casters don’t deign 
to notice us.” 

“They don’t deign to wipe you out either,” Martell observed. 

“True,” said Mondschein. “Perhaps we’re beneath their contempt.” 

“But they’ve killed every Vorster missionary who’s ever come 
here,” Martell said. “Us they devour, you they tolerate. Why is 


To Open the Sky 

that?” 

“Perhaps they see a strength in us that they don’t find in the 
parent organization,” suggested the heretic. “They admire 
strength, of course. You must know that, or you’d never have 
tried to walk from the landing station. You were demonstrating 
your strength under stress. But of course it would rather have 
spoiled your demonstration if that Wheel had slashed you to 
death.” 

“As it very nearly did.” 

“As it certainly would have done,” said Mondschein, “if I had 
not happened to notice your predicament. That would have terminated your mission here rather prematurely. Do you like the 
wine?” 

Martell had barely tasted it. “It’s not bad. Tell me, Mondschein, 
have they really let themselves be converted here?” 

“A few. A few.” 

“Hard to believe. What do you people know that we don’t?” 

“It isn’t what we know,” Mondschein said. “It’s what we have 
to offer. Come with me into the chapel.” 

“I’d rather not.” 

“Please. It won’t give you a disease.” 

Reluctantly, Martell allowed himself to be led right into the 
sanctum sanctorum. He looked around with distaste at the ikons, 
the images, and all the rest of the Harmonist rubbish. At the altar, where a Vorster chapel would have had the tiny reactor 
emitting blue Cerenkov radiation, there was mounted a gleaming atom-symbol model along which electron-simulacra pulsed 
in blinding, ceaseless mo-tion. Martell did not think of himself 
as a bigoted man, but he was loyal to his faith, and the sight of all 
this childish paraphernalia sickened him. 

Mondschein said, “Noel Vorst’s the most brilliant man of our 
times, and his accomplishments mustn’t be underrated. He saw 
the culture of Earth fragmented and decadent, saw people everywhere escaping into drug addictions and Nothing Chambers 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

and a hundred other deplorable things. And he saw that the old 
religions had lost their grip, that the time was ripe for an eclectic, synthetic new creed that dispensed with the mysticism of the 
former religions and replaced it with a new kind of mysticism, a 
scientific mysticism. That Blue Fire of his—a wonderful symbol, 
something to capture the imagination and dazzle the eye, as good 
as the Cross and the Crescent, even better, because it was modern, it was scientific, it could be comprehended even while it 
bewildered. Vorst had the insight to establish his cult and the 
administrative ability to put it across. But has thinking was incomplete.” 

“That’s a lofty dismissal, isn’t it? When you consider that we 
control Earth in a way that no single religious movement of the 
past has ever—” 

Mondschein smiled. “The achievement on Earth is very imposing, I agree. Earth was ready for Vorst’s doctrines. Why did 
he fail on the other planets, though? Because his thinking was 
too advanced. He didn’t offer anything that colonists could surrender their hearts and souls to.” 

“He offers physical immortality in the present body,” Martell 
said crisply. “Isn’t that enough?” 

“No. He doesn’t offer a mythos. Just a cold quid-pro-quo, come 
to the chapel and pay your tithe and you can live forever, maybe. 
It’s a secular religion, despite all the litanies and rituals that have 
been creeping in. It lacks poetry. There’s no Christ-child in the 
manger, no Abraham sacrificing Isaac, no spark of humanity, 
no—” 

“No simplistic fairy tales,” said Martell in a brusque tone. 
“Agreed. That’s the whole point of our teaching. We came into a 
world no longer capable of believing the old stories, and instead 
of spinning new ones we offered simplicity, strength, the power 
of scientific achievement—” 

“And took political control of most of the planet, while also 
establishing magnificent laboratories that carried on advanced 


To Open the Sky 

research in longevity and esping. Fine. Fine. Admirable. But you 
failed here. We are succeeding. We have a story to tell, the story 
of Noel Vorst, the First Immortal, his redemption in the atomic 
fire, his awakening from sin. We offer our people a chance to be 
redeemed in Vorst and in the later prophet of Transcendent Harmony, David Lazarus. What we have is something that captures 
the fancy of the low-casters, and in another generation we’ll have 
the high-casters, too. These are pioneers, Brother Martell. 
They’ve cut all ties with Earth, and they’re starting over on their 
own, in a society just a few generations old. They need myths. 
They’re shaping myths of their own here. Don’t you think that in 
another century the first colonists of Venus will be regarded as 
supernatural beings, Martell? Don’t you think that they’ll be 
Harmonist saints by then?” 

Martell was genuinely startled. “Is that your game?” 

“Part of it.” 

“All you’re doing is returning to fifth-century Christianity.” 

“Not exactly. We’re continuing the scientific work, too.” 

“And you believe your own teachings?” Martell asked. 

Mondschein smiled strangely. “When I was young,” he said, “I 
was a Vorster acolyte, at the Nyack chapel. I went into the Brotherhood because it was a job. I needed a structure for my life, and 
I had a wild hope of being sent out to Santa Fe to become a subject in the immortality experiments, and so I enrolled. For the 
most unworthy of motives. Do you know, Martell, that I didn’t 
feel a shred of a religious calling? Not even the Vorster stuff— 
stripped down, secular—could get to me. Through a series of 
confusions that I still don’t fully understand and that I won’t even 
begin to explain to you, I left the Brotherhood and Joined the 
Harmonist movement and came here as a missionary. The most 
successful missionary ever sent to Venus, as it happens. Do you 
think the Harmonist mythologies can move me if I was too rational to accept Vorster thinking?” 

“So you’re completely cynical in handing out this nonsense 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

about saints and images. You do it for the sake of preserving 
your power. A peddler of nostrums, a quack preacher in the backwoods of Venus—” 

“Easy,” Mondschein warned. “I’m getting results. And, as I think 
Noel Vorst himself might tell you, we deal in ends, not in means. 
Would you like to kneel here and pray awhile?” 

“Of course not.” 

“May I pray for you, then?” 

“You just told me you don’t believe your own creed.” 

Smiling, Mondschein said, “Even the prayers of an unbeliever 
may be heard. Who knows? Only one thing is certain: you’ll die 
here, Martell. So I’ll pray for you, that you may pass through the 
purifying flame of the higher frequencies.” 

“Spare me. Why are you so sure I’ll die here? It’s a fallacy to 
assume that, simply because all previous Vorster missionaries 
have been martyred here, I’ll be martyred, too.” 

“Our own position is uneasy enough on Venus. Yours will be 
impossible. Venus doesn’t want you. Shall I tell you the only way 
you’ll possibly live more than a month here?” 

“Do.” 

“Join us. Trade in that blue tunic for a green one. We have 
need for all the capable men we can get.” 

“Don’t be absurd. Do you really think I’d do any such thing?” 

“It isn’t beyond possibility. Many men have left your order for 
mine—myself included.” 

“I prefer martyrdom,” Martell said. 

“In what way will that benefit anybody? Be reasonable, Brother. 
Venus is a fascinating place. Wouldn’t you like to live to see a 
little of it? Join us. You’ll learn the rituals soon enough. You’ll 
see that we aren’t such ogres. And—” 

“Thank you,” said Martell. “Will you excuse me now?” 

“I had hoped you would be our guest for dinner.” 

“That won’t be possible. I’m expected at the Martian Embassy, 
if I don’t meet any more local beasts in the road.” 


To Open the Sky 

Mondschein looked unruffled by Martell’s rejection of his offer—an offer that could not have been made, Martell thought, in 
any great degree of seriousness. The older man said gravely, 
“Allow me, at least, to offer you transportation to town. Surely 
your pride in your own sanctity will permit you to accept that.” 

Martell smiled. “Gladly. It’ll make a good story to tell Coordinator Kirby—how the heretics saved my life and gave me a ride 
into town.” 

“After making an attempt to seduce you from your faith.” 

“Naturally. May I leave now?” 

“It’ll be a few moments until I can arrange for the car. Would 
you like to wait outside?” 

Martell bowed and made a grateful escape from the heretical 
chapel. Passing through the building, he emerged into the yard, 
a cleared space some fifty feet square bordered by scaly, grayish-green shrubbery whose thick-petaled black flowers had an 
oddly carnivorous look. Four Venusian boys, including Martell’s 
rescuer, were at work on an excavation. They were using manual 
tools— shovels and picks—which gave Martell the uncomfortable sensation of having slid back into the nineteenth century. 
Earth’s gaudy array of gadgetry, so conspicuous and so familiar, 
could not be found here. 

The boys glared coldly at him and went on with their work. 
Martell watched. They were lean and supple, and he guessed 
that their ages ranged from about nine to fourteen, though it 
was hard to tell. They looked enough alike to be brothers. Their 
movements were graceful, almost elegant, and their bluish skins 
gleamed lightly with perspiration. It seemed to Martell that the 
bony structure of their bodies was even more alien than he had 
thought; they did improbable things with their joints as they 
worked. 

Abruptly, they tossed their picks and shovels aside and joined 
hands. The bright eyes closed a moment. Martell saw the loose 
dirt rise from the excavation pit and collect itself in a neat mound 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

some twenty feet behind it. 
They’re pushers, Martell thought in wonder. Look at them! 
Brother Mondschein appeared at that precise moment “The 

car is waiting, Brother,” he said smoothly. 


To Open the Sky 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

four


As he entered the Venusian city, Martell could not take his 
mind from the casual feat of the four boys. They had scooped a 
few hundred pounds of loose soil from a pit, using esp abilities, 
and had smugly deposited it just where they wanted it to go. 

Pushers! Martell trembled with barely suppressed excitement. 
The espers of Earth were a numerous tribe now, but their talents were mainly telepathic, not extending in the direction of 
telekinesis to any significant degree. Nor could the development 
of the powers be controlled. A program of scheduled breeding, 
now in its fourth or fifth generation, was intensifying the existing esp powers. It was possible for a gifted esper to reach into a 
man’s mind and rearrange its contents, or to probe for the deepest secrets. There were a few precogs, too, who ranged up and 
down the time sequence as though all points along it were one 
point, but they usually burned out in adolescence, and their genes 
were lost to the pool. Pushers—teleports—who could move physical objects from place to place were as rare as phoenixes on 
Earth. And here were four of them in a Harmonist chapel’s back 
yard on Venus! 

New tensions quivered in Martell. He had made two unexpected discoveries on his first day: the presence of Harmonists 
on Venus, and the presence of pushers among the Harmonists. 
His mission had taken on devastating new urgency, suddenly. It 
was no longer merely a matter of gaining a foothold in an unfriendly world. It was a matter of being outstripped and surpassed 
by a heresy thought to be in decline. 

The car Mondschein had provided dropped Martell off at the 
Martian Embassy, a blocky little building fronting on the wide 
plaza that seemed to be the entire town. The Martians had been 
instrumental in getting Martell to Venus in the first place, and a 
call on the Ambassador was of priority importance. 

The Martians breathed Earth-type air, and they did not care to 


To Open the Sky 

adapt themselves to Venusian conditions. Once he entered the 
building, therefore, Martell had to accept a breathing-hood that 
would protect him against the atmosphere of the planet of his 
birth. 

The Ambassador, Freeman Nat Weiner, was about twice 
Martell’s age, perhaps even older—close to ninety, even. His 
frame was powerful, with shoulders so wide they seemed out of 
proportion to his hips and legs. 

Weiner said, “So you’re here. I really thought you had more 
sense.” 

“We’re determined people, Freeman Weiner.” 

“So I know. I’ve been studying your ways for a long time.” 
Weiner’s eyes became remote. “More than sixty years, in fact. I 
knew your Coordinator Kirby before his conversion—did he ever 
tell you that?” 

“He didn’t mention it,” Martell said. His flesh crept Kirby had 
joined the Vorster Brotherhood about twenty years before Martell 
had been born. To live a century was nothing unusual these days, 
and Vorst himself was surely into his twelfth or thirteenth decade, but it was chilling all the same to think of such a span of 
years. 

Weiner smiled. “I came to Earth to negotiate a trade deal, and 
Kirby was my chaperon. He was with the U.N. then. I gave him a 
hard time. I was a drinker then. Somehow I don’t think he’ll 
ever forget that night.” His gaze riveted on Martell’s unblinking 
eyes. “I want you to know, Brother, that I can’t provide any protection for you if you’re attacked. My responsibility extends only 
to Martian nationals.” 

“I understand.” 

“My advice is the same as it’s been from the start. Go back to 
Earth and live to a ripe old age.” 

“I can’t do that, Freeman Weiner. I’ve come with a mission to 
accomplish.” 

“Ah, dedication! Wonderful! Where will you build your chapel?” 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

“On the road leading to town. Perhaps closer to town than the 
Harmonist place.” 

“And where will you stay until it’s built?” 

“I’ll sleep in the open.” 

“There’s a bird here,” Weiner said. “They call it a shrike. It’s 
as big as a dog, and its wings look like old leather, and it has a 
beak like a spear. I once saw it dive from five hundred feet at a 
man taking a nap in an open field. The beak pinned him to the 
ground.” 

Unperturbed, Martell said, “I survived an encounter with a 
Wheel today. Perhaps I can dodge a shrike, too. I don’t intend to 
be frightened away.” 

Weiner nodded. “I wish you luck,” he said. 

Luck was about all Martell was going to get from the Ambassador, but he was grateful even for that. The Martians were cool 
toward Earth and all it produced, including its religions. They 
did not actually hate Earthmen, as the Venusians of both castes 
appeared to do; the Martians were still Earth-like themselves, 
and not changed creatures whose bond with the mother world 
was tenuous at best. But the Martians were tough, aggressive 
frontiers-men who looked out only for themselves. They served 
as go-betweens for Earth and Venus because there was profit in 
it; they accepted missionaries from Earth because there was no 
harm in it. They were tolerant, in their way, but aloof. 

Martell left the Martian Embassy and set about his tasks. He 
had money and he had energy. He could not hire Venusian labor 
directly, because it would be an act of pollution for a Venusian 
even of the low caste to work for an Earthman, but it was possible to commission workmen through Weiner. The Martians, 
naturally, received a fee for serving as agents. 

Workmen were hired and a modest chapel was erected. Martell 
set up his pocket-size reactor and readied it for use. Alone in the 
chapel, he stood in silence as the Blue Fire flickered into glow


To Open the Sky 

ing life. 

Martell had not lost his capacity for awe. He was a worldly 
man, no mystic, yet the sight of the radiation streaming from the 
water-shielded reactor worked its magic on him, and he dropped 
to his knees, touching his forehead in the gesture of submission. 
He could not carry his religious feeling to the stage of idolatry, 
as the Harmonists did, but he was not without a sense of the 
might of the movement to which he had pledged his life. 

The first day Martell simply carried out the ceremonies of dedication. On the second and third and fourth he waited hopefully 
for some low-caster who might be curious enough to enter the 
chapel. None came. 

Martell did not care to seek worshipers, not just yet. He preferred that his converts be voluntary, if possible. The chapel remained empty. On the fifth day it was entered—but only by a 
frog-like creature ten inches long, armed with wicked little horns 
on its forehead and delicate, deadly-looking spines that sprouted 
from its shoulders. Were there no life-forms on this planet that 
went without armor or weaponry, Martell wondered? He shooed 
the frog out. It growled at him and lunged at his foot with its 
horns. Martell drew his foot back barely in time, interposing a 
chair. The frog stabbed at the wood, sank inch-deep with the left 
horn; when it withdrew, an iridescent fluid trickled down the 
leg of the chair, burning a pathway through the wood. Martell 
had never been attacked by a frog before. On the second try he 
got the animal out the door without suffering harm. A pretty 
planet, he thought. 

The next day came a more cheering visitor: the boy Elwhit. 
Martell recognized him as one of the boys who had been 
teleporting dirt behind the Harmonist place. He appeared from 
nowhere and said to Martell, “You’ve got Trouble Fungus out 
there.” 

“Is that bad?” 

“It kills people. Eats them. Don’t step in it. Are you really a 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

religious?” 

“I like to think so.” 

“Brother Christopher says you shouldn’t be trusted, that you’re 
a heretic. What’s a heretic?” 

“A heretic is a man who disagrees with another man’s religion,” Martell said. “I happen to think Brother Christopher’s the 
heretic, as a matter of fact. Would you like to come inside?” 

The boy was wide-eyed, endlessly curious, restless. Martell 
longed to question him about his apparent telekinetic powers, 
but he knew it was more important at the moment to snare him 
as a convert. Questions at this point might only frighten him away. 
Patiently, elaborately, Martell explained what the Vorsters had 
to offer. It was hard to gauge the boy’s reaction. Did abstract 
concepts mean anything to a ten-year-old? Martell gave him 
Vorst’s book, the simple text. The boy promised to come back. 

“Watch out for the Trouble Fungus,” he said as he left. 

A few days passed. Then the boy returned, with the news that 
Mondschein had confiscated his book. Martell was pleased at 
that, in a way. It was a sign of panic among the Harmonists. Let 
them turn Vorster teachings into something forbidden, and he’d 
win all of Mondschein’s four thousand converts away. 

Two days after Elwhit’s second visit, Martell had a different 
caller—a broad-faced man in Harmonist robes. Without introducing himself, he said, “You’re trying to steal that boy, Martell. 
Don’t do it.” 

“He came of his own free will. You can tell Mondschein—” 

“The child has curiosity. But he’s the one who’ll suffer. If you 
keep allowing him to come here. Turn him away the next time, 
Martell. For his own sake.” 

“I’m trying to take him away from you for his own sake,” the 
Vorster replied quietly. “And any others who’ll come to me. I’m 
ready to battle with you to have him.” 

“You’ll destroy him,” said the Harmonist. “He’ll be pulled apart 
in the struggle. Let him be. Turn him away.” 


To Open the Sky 

Martell did not intend to yield. Elwhit was his opening wedge 
into Venus, and it would be madness to turn him away. 

Later that same day there came another visitor, no friendlier 
than the horned frog. He was a burly Venusian of the lower caste, 
with armpit-daggers bristling on both sides of his chest He had 
not come to worship. He pointed to the reactor and said, “Shut 
that thing off and dispose of the fissionables within ten hours.” 

Martell frowned. “It’s necessary to our religious observance.” 

“It’s fissionables. Not allowed to run a private reactor here.” 

“There was no objection at customs,” Martell pointed out. “I 
declared the cobalt-60 for what it was and explained the purpose. It was allowed through.” 

“Customs is customs. You’re in town now, and I say no 
fissionables. You need a permit to do what you’re doing.” 

“Where do I get a permit?” asked Martell mildly. 

“From the police. I’m the police. Request denied. Shut that 
thing off.” 

“And if I don’t?” 

For an instant Martell thought the sell-styled policeman would 
stab him on the spot The man drew back as though Martell had 
spat in his face. After an ugly silence he said, “Is that a challenge?” 

“It’s a question.” 

“I ask you on my authority to get rid of that reactor. If you defy 
my authority, you’re challenging me. Clear? You don’t look like 
a fighting man. Be smart and do as I say. Ten hours. You hear?” 

He went out. 

Martell shook his head sadly. Law enforcement a matter of 
personal pride? Well, it was only to be expected. More to the 
point: they wanted his reactor off, and without the reactor his 
chapel would not be a chapel. Could he appeal? To whom? If he 
dueled with the intruder and slew him, would that give him the 
right to run the reactor? He could hardly take such a step, anyway. 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

Martell decided not to give up without a struggle. He sought 
the authorities, or what passed for authorities here, and after 
spending four hours waiting to be admitted to the office of a 
minor official, he was told clearly and coldly to dismantle his 
reactor at once. His protests were dismissed. 

Weiner was no help, either. “Shut the reactor down,” the Martian advised. 

“I can’t function without it,” said Martell. “Where’d they get 
this law about private operation of reactors?” 

“They probably invented it to take care of you,” Weiner suggested amiably. “There’s no help for it, Brother. You’ll have to 
shut down.” 

Martell returned to the chapel. He found Elwhit waiting on 
the steps. The boy looked disturbed. 

“Don’t close,” he said. 

“I won’t.” Martell beckoned him inside. “Help me, Elwhit. 
Teach me. I need to know.” 

“What?” 

“How do you move things around with your mind?” 

“I reach into them,” the boy said. “I catch hold of what’s inside. There’s a strength. It’s hard to say.” 

“Is it something you were taught to do?” 

“It’s like walking. What makes your legs move? What makes 
them stand up underneath you?” 

Martell simmered with frustration. “Can you tell me what it 
feels like when you do it?” 

“Warm. On top of my head. I don’t know. I don’t feel much. 
Tell me about the electron, Brother Nicholas. Sing the song of 
photons to me.” 

“In a moment,” Martell said. He crouched down to get on the 
boy’s eye level. “Can your mother and father move things?” 

“A little. I can move them more.” 

“When did you find out you could do it?” 

“The first time I did it.” 


To Open the Sky 

“And you don’t know how you—” Martell paused. What was 
the use? Could a ten-year-old boy find words to describe a telekinetic function? He did it, as naturally as he breathed. The thing 
to do was to ship him to Earth, to Santa Fe, and let the Noel Vorst 
Center for the Biological Sciences have a look at him. Obviously, 
that was impossible. The boy would never go, and it would hardly 
be proper to spirit him away. 

“Sing me the song,” Elwhit prodded. 

“In the strength of the spectrum, the quantum, and the holy angstrom—” 

The chapel door flew open and three Venusians entered: the 
police chief and two deputies. The boy pivoted instantly and skittered past them, out the back way. 

“Get him!” the police chief roared. 

Martell shouted a protest. It was useless. The two deputies 
pounded after the boy, into the yard. Martell and the police chief 
followed. 

The deputies closed in on the boy. Abruptly, the meatier one 
was flipping through the air, legs kicking violently as he headed 
for the deadly patch of Trouble Fungus in the underbrush. He 
landed hard. There was a muffled groan. Trouble Fungus, Martell 
had learned by watching it, moved quickly. The carnivorous mold 
would devour anything organic; its sticky filaments, triggering 
with awesome speed, went to work instantly. The deputy was 
trapped in a network of loops whose adhesive enzymes immediately began to operate. Struggling only made it worse. The man 
thrashed and tugged, but the loops multiplied, stapling him to 
the ground. And now the digestive enzymes were coming into 
play. A sweet, sickly odor rose from the Trouble Fungus clump. 

Martell had no time to study the process of dissolution. The 
man caught in his fatal collars of slime was close to death, and 
the surviving deputy, his face almost black with fear and rage, 
had drawn a knife on the boy. 

Elwhit knocked it out of his hand. He tried to gather strength 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

for another cast into the fungus patch, but his face was sweat-
speckled, and bunching muscles in his cheeks told of the inward struggle. The deputy rocked and swayed, resisting the telekinesis. Martell stood frozen. The police chief bounded forward, 
knife on high. 

“Elwhit!” Martell screamed. 

Even a telekinetic has no way of defending himself against a 
stab in the back. The blade went deep. The boy dropped. In the 
same moment, with the pressure withdrawn, the deputy slipped 
and fell on his face. The chief seized the wounded, convulsing 
boy and hurled him into the Trouble Fungus. He landed beside 
the soft mass of the dead deputy, and Martell watched in honor 
as the sinister loops locked into place. Sickness assailed him. He 
ran halfway through the disciplinary techniques before his mind 
would work properly again. 

By then the police chief and his deputy had recovered their 
calmness. With scarcely a look at the two dissolving corpses, 
they seized Martell and hauled him back into the chapel. 

“You killed a boy,” Martell said, breaking loose. “Stabbed him 
in the back. Where’s your honor?” 

“I’ll settle that before our court, priest. The boy was a murderer. And under the spell of dangerous doctrines. He knew we 
were closing you down. It was a violation to be here. Why isn’t 
that reactor off?” 

Martell groped for words. He wanted to say that he did not 
intend to accept defeat, that he was staying on here, determined 
to fight even to the point of martyrdom, despite their order that 
he shut up shop. But the brutal killing of his only convert had 
smashed his will. 

“I’ll shut the reactor down,” he said hollowly. 

“Go and do it.” 

Martell dismantled it. They waited, exchanging pleased glances 
when the light flickered out. The deputy said, “It isn’t a real chapel 
without the light burning, is it, priest?” 


To Open the Sky 

“No,” Martell replied. “I’m closing the chapel, too, I guess.” 

“Didn’t last long.” 

“No.” 

The chief said, “Look at him with his gills flapping. All tricked 
out to look like one of us, and who’s he fooling? We’ll teach him.” 

They moved in on him. They were burly, powerful men. Martell 
was unarmed, but he had no fear of them. He could defend himself. They neared him, two nightmare figures, grotesquely inhuman, their eyes bright and slitted, inner lids sliding tensely up 
and down, small nostrils flickering, gills atremble. Martell had 
to force himself to remember that he was a monster as much as 
they; he was a changed one now. Their brother. 

“Let’s give him a farewell party,” the deputy said. 

“You’ve made your point,” said Martell. “I’m closing the chapel 
Do you need to attack me, too? What are you afraid of? Are ideas 
that dangerous to you?” 

A fist crashed into the pit of his stomach. Martell swayed. caught 
his breath, forced himself to remain cool. The edge of a hand 
chopped at his throat. Martell slapped at it, deflected it, and seized 
the wrist. There was a momentary exchange of ions and the 
deputy fell back, cursing. 

“Look out! He’s electric!” 

“I mean no harm,” said Martell mildly. “Let me go in peace. 

Hands went to daggers. Martell waited. Then, slowly, the tension ebbed. The Venusians moved away, apparently willing to 
let the matter end here. They had, after all, succeeded in throttling the Vorster mission, and now they appeared to have qualms 
about dealing with the defeated missionary. 

“Get yourself out of town, Earthman,” the police chief 
grumbled. “Go where you belong. Don’t come mucking around 
here with your phony religion. We aren’t buying any. Go!” 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

five


There was no blackness quite like the black of the night sky of 
Venus, Martell thought. It was like a layer of wool swathing the 
vault of the heavens. Not a hint of a star, not a flicker of a moonbeam cut through that arch of darkness overhead. Yet there was 
light, occasional and intermittent: great predatory birds, hellishly luminous, skewered the darkness at unpredictable moments. Standing on the rear veranda of the Harmonist chapel, 
Martell watched a glowing creature soar past, no higher than a 
hundred feet up, near enough for Martell to see the row of hooked 
claws that studded the leading edges of the curved, back-swept 
wings. 

“Our birds have teeth as well,” said Christopher Mondschein. 

“And the frogs have horns,” Martell remarked. “Why is this 
planet so vicious?” 

Mondachein chuckled. “Ask Darwin, my friend. It just happened that way. You’ve met our frogs, then? Deadly little beasts. 
And you’ve seen a Wheel. We have amusing fish, too. And carnivorous fauna. But we are without insects. Can you imagine 
that? No land arthropods at all. Of course, there are some delightful ones in the sea—a kind of scorpion bigger than a man, a 
son of lobster with disturbingly large claws—but no one goes 
into the sea here.” 

“I understand why,” Martell said. Another luminescent bird 
swooped down, skimmed the trees, and rocketed away. From its 
flat head jutted a glowing fleshy organ the size of a melon, wobbling on a thick stem. 

Mondschein said, “You wish to join us, after all?” 

“That’s right.” 

“Infiltrating, Martell? Spying?” 

Color came to Martell’s checks. The surgeons had left him with 
the flush reaction, although he turned a dull gray when affected 
now. “Why do you accuse me?” he asked. 


To Open the Sky 

“Why else would you want to join us? You were haughty about 
it last week.” 

“That was last week. My chapel is closed. I saw a boy who 
trusted me killed before my eyes. I have no wish to see more 
such murders.” 

“So you admit that you were guilty in his death?” 

“I admit that I allowed him to jeopardize his life,” Martell said. 

“We warned you of it.” 

“But I had no idea of the cruelty of the forces that would strike 
at me. Now I do. I can’t stand alone. Let me join you, 
Mondschein.” 

“Too transparent, Martell. You came here bristling with the 
urge to be a martyr. You gave up too soon. Obviously you want to 
spy on our movement. Conversions are never that simple, and 
you’re not an easily swayed man. I suspect you, Brother.” 

“Are you esping me?” 

“Me? I don’t have a shred of ability. Not a shred. But I have 
common sense. I know a bit about spying, too. You’re here to 
sniff.” 

Martell studied a gleaming bird high against the dark backdrop. “You refuse to accept me, then?” 

“You can have shelter for the night. In the morning you’ll have 
to go. Sorry, Martell.” 

No amount of persuasion would alter the Harmonist’s decision. Martell was not surprised, nor greatly distressed; joining 
the Harmonists had been a strategy of doubtful success, and he 
had more than half expected Mondschein to reject him. Perhaps 
if he had waited six months before applying, the response would 
have been different. 

He remained aloof while the little group of Harmonists performed evening vespers. They were not called “vespers,” of 
course, but Martell could not avoid identifying the heretics with 
the older religion. Three altered Earthmen were stationed at 
the mission, and the voices of the two subordinates joined with 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

Mondschein’s in hymns that seemed offensive in their religiosity and yet faintly moving at the same time. Seven low-caste 
Venusians took part in the service. Afterward Martell shared a 
dinner of unknown meat and acrid wine with the three 
Harmonists. They seemed comfortable enough in his presence, 
almost smug. One, Bradlaugh, was slim and fragile-looking, with 
elongated arms and comically blunt features. The other, Lazarus, 
was robust and athletic, his eyes oddly blank, his skin stretched 
mask-tight over his broad face. He was the one who had visited 
Martell’s ill-fated chapel. Martell suspected that Lazarus was an 
esper. His last name aroused the missionary’s curiosity. 

“Are you related to the Lazarus?” Martell asked. 

“His grandnephew. I never knew the man.” 

“No one seems to have known him,” said Martell. “It often 
occurs to me that the esteemed founder of your heresy may have 
been a myth.” 

Faces stiffened around the table. Mondschein said, “I met 
someone who knew him once. An impressive man, they say he 
was tall and commanding, with an air of majesty.” 

“Like Vorst,” Martell said. 

“Very much like Vorst. Natural leaders, both of them,” said 
Mondschein. He rose. “Brothers, good night.” 

Martell was left alone with Bradlaugh and Lazarus. An uncomfortable silence followed; after a while Bradlaugh rose and 
said coolly, “I’ll show you to your room.” 

The room was small, with a simple cot. Martell was content. 
Fewer religious symbols decorated the room than there might 
have been, and it was a place to sleep. He took care of his devotions quickly and closed his eyes. After a while sleep came—a 
thin crust of slumber over an abyss of turmoil. 

The crust was pierced. 

There came the sound of laughter, booming and harsh. Something thumped against the chapel walls. Martell struggled to 
wakefulness in time to hear a thick voice cry, “Give us the 


To Open the Sky 

Vorster!” 

He sat up. Someone entered his room: Mondschein, he realized. “They’re drunk,” the Harmonist whispered. “They’ve been 
roistering all over the countryside all night, and now they’re here 
to make trouble.” 

“The Vorster!” came a roar from outside. 

Martell peered through his window. At first he saw nothing; 
then, by the gleam of the light-cells studding the chapel’s outer 
walls, he picked out seven or eight titanic figures, striding unsteadily back and forth in the courtyard. 

“High-casters!” Martell gasped. 

“One of our espers brought the word an hour ago,” said 
Mondschein. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’ll go out 
and calm them.” 

“They’ll kill you.” 

“It’s not me they’re after,” said Mondschein, and left. 

Martell saw him emerge from the building. He was dwarfed 
by the ring of drunken Venusians, and from the way they closed 
in on him, Martell was certain that they would do him some harm. 
But they hesitated. Mondschein faced them squarely. At this distance Martell could not hear what they were saying. A parley of 
some sort, perhaps. The big men were armed and reeling. Some 
glowing creature shot past the knot of figures, giving Martell a 
sudden glimpse of the faces of the high-caste men: alien, distorted, terrifying. Their cheekbones were like knifeblades; their 
eyes mere silts. Mondschein, his back to the window now, was 
gesticulating, no doubt talking rapidly and earnestly. 

One of the Venusians scooped up a twenty-pound boulder and 
lobbed it against the mission’s whitewashed wall. Martell nibbled 
a knuckle. Fragments of conversation came to him, ugly words: 
“Let us have him…We could take you all…Time we crushed all 
you toads…” 

Mondschein’s hands were upraised now. Imploringly, Martell 
wondered, or was he simply trying to keep the Venusians at bay? 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

Martell thought of praying. But it seemed a hollow, futile gesture. One did not pray for direct reward, in the Brotherhood. 
One lived well and served the cause, and reward came. Martell 
felt tranquil. He slipped into his robe and went outside. 

Never before had he been this close to a group of high-casters. 
There was a rank odor about them, an odor that reminded Martell 
of the scent of the Wheel. They stared in disbelief as the Vorster 
emerged. 

“What do they want?” Martell asked. 

Mondachein gaped at him. “Go back inside! I’m negotiating 
with them!” 

One of the Venusians unfurled a sword. He drove it a foot into 
the spongy earth, leaned on it, and said, “There’s the priestling 
now! What are we waiting for?” 

Mondschein said helplessly to Martell, “You shouldn’t have 
come out. There might have been a chance to quiet them down.” 

“Not a chance. They’ll destroy your whole mission here if I 
don’t pacify them. I’ve got no right to bring that on you.” 

“You’re our guest,” Mondschein reminded him. 

Martell did not care to accept the charity of heretics. He had 
come to the Harmonists, as they had guessed, in the hope of 
spying; that had failed, as had the rest of his mission here, and 
he would not hide behind Mondschein’s green robe. He caught 
the older man’s arm and said, “Go inside. Fast!” 

Mondschein shrugged and disappeared. Martell swung around 
to face thc Venusians. 

“Why are you here?” he asked. 

A gob of spittle caught him in the face. Without speaking directly to him, one Venusian said, “We’ll skewer him and throw 
him in Ludlow Pond, eh?” 

“Hack him! Spit him!” 

“Stake him out for a Wheel!” 

Martell said, “I came here in peace. I bring you the gift of life. 
Why won’t you listen? What are you afraid of?” 


To Open the Sky 

They were big children, he saw, reveling in their power to 
crush an ant. “Let’s all sit down by that tree, Allow me to talk to 
you for a while. I’ll take the drunkenness out of you. If you’ll 
only give me your hand—” 

“Watch out!” a Venusian roared. “He stings!” 

Martell reacted for the nearest of the giants. The man leaped 
back with a most ungallant display of edginess. An instant later, 
as though to atone for bolting that way, his sword was out, a 
glittering anachronism nearly as long as Martell himself. Two 
Venusians drew their daggers. They strutted forward, and Martell 
filled his altered lungs with alien air and waited for the shedding of his no-longer-red blood, and then suddenly he was no 
longer there. 

“How did you get here?” Ambassador Nat Weiner asked. 

“I wish I knew,” said Martell. 

The sudden brightness of the Martian’s office stabbed at 
Martell’s eyes. He still could see the descending blades of the 
fearsome swords, and he was rocked by a sensation of unreality, 
as though he had left one dream to enter another in which he 
was dreaming yet a different thread. 

“This is a maximum-security building,” said Weiner. “You have 
no right to be here.” 

“I have no right even to be alive,” replied the missionary flatly. 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

six


Broodingly, Martell considered retreating to Earth to tell Santa 
Fe what he knew. He could go to the Vorst Center—where, less 
than a year ago, he had gone into a room as an Earthman, to be 
turned by whirling knives and lashing lasers into an alien thing. 
He could request an interview with Reynolds Kirby and let that 
grizzled, thin-lipped centenarian know that the Venusians had 
telekinesis, that they could deflect a Wheel or throw an attacker 
into Trouble Fungus or speed a living human figure safely across 
five miles and pass him through walls. 

Santa Fe would have to know. The situation looked bad. 
Harmonists snugly established on Venus, and the place chock-
full of teleports—it could mean a disastrous blow to Vorst’s master plan. Of course, the Vorsters on Earth had made great gains, 
too. They were masters of the planet. Their laboratories had run 
simulated life spans that showed a tally of from three to four 
hundred years, without organ replacement—simple regeneration from within, amounting to a kind of immortality. But immortality was only one Vorster goal. The other was transport to 
the unreachable stars. 

And there the Harmonists had their big lead. They had teleports 
who already could work miracles. Given a few generations of 
genetic work, they might be sending expeditions to other solar 
systems. Once you could move a man five miles in safety, it was 
only a quantitative jump, not qualitative, to get him to Procyon. 
Martell had to tell them. Santa Fe called to him—that vast sprawl 
of buildings where technicians split genes and laboriously pasted 
them back together, where esper families submitted to an endless round of tests, where bionics men performed wonders beyond comprehension. 

But he did not go. A personal report seemed unnecessary. A 
message cube would do just as well. Earth now was an alien 
world to Martell, and he was uneasy about returning to it, living 


To Open the Sky 

in breathing-suits. He balked at making the return journey. 

Through the good offices of Nat Weiner, Martell recorded a 
cube and had it shipped to Kirby at Santa Fe. He remained at the 
Martian Embassy while waiting for his reply. He had set forth 
the situation on Venus as he understood it, expressing his great 
fear that the Harmonists were too far ahead and would have the 
stars. In time Kirby’s reply arrived. He thanked Martell for his 
invaluable data. And he expressed a calming note: the 
Harmonists, he said, were men. If they were to reach the stars, it 
would be a human achievement. Not theirs, not ours, but 
everyone’s, for the way would be opened. Did Brother Martell 
follow that reasoning, Kirby asked? 

Martell felt quicksand beneath him. What was Kirby saying? 
Means and ends were hopelessly jumbled. Was the purpose of 
the order fulfilled if heretics conquered the universe? In distress, he stood before the improvised altar in the room Weiner 
had given him, seeking answers to unaskable questions. 

A few days later he returned to the Harmonists. 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

seven


Martell stood with Christopher Mondschein by the edge of a 
sparkling lake. Through the clouds came the dull glow of the 
masked sun, imparting a faint gleam to the water-that-was-notwater. It was not that trickle of sunlight that made the water 
sparkle, though; it teemed with luminous coelenterates that lined 
its shallow bottom. Their tentacles, waving in the currents, emitted a gentle greenish radiance. 

There were other creatures in the lake, too. Martell saw them 
gliding beneath the surface, ribbed and bony, with gnashing jaws 
and metallic fins. Now and then a snout split the water and a 
slim, ugly creature whipped twenty yards through the air before 
subsiding. From the depths came writhing, sucker-tipped tendrils that belonged to monsters Martell did not care to know. 

Mondschein said, “I thought I’d never see you again.” 

“When I went out to face the Venusians?” 

“No. Afterward, when you holed up with the Martians. I thought 
you were making arrangements to go back to Earth. You know 
it’s hopeless to try to plant a Vorster chapel here.” 

“I know,” Martell said. “But I’ve got that boy’s death on my 
conscience. I can’t leave. I lured him into visiting me, and he 
died for it. He’d be alive if I had turned him away. And I’d be 
dead if you hadn’t had one of your other little Venusians teleport 
me to safety.” 

“Elwhit was one of our finest prospects,” Mondschein said 
sadly. “But he had this streak of wildness—the thing that brought 
him to us in the first place. A restless boy’ he was. I wish you had 
left him alone.” 

“I did what I had to do,” Martell replied. ‘I’m sorry it worked 
out so awfully.” He followed the path of a sinuous black serpent 
that swept from right to left across the lake. It extended telescoping arms in a sudden terrifying gesture and enveloped a 
low-flying bird. Martell said carefully, “I didn’t came back here 


To Open the Sky 

to spy on you. I came back to join your order.” 

Moudschein’s domed blue forehead wrinided a little. “Please. 
We’ve been through all this already.” 

“Test me! Have one of your espers read me! I swear it, 
Mondschein. I’m sincere.” 

“They’ve embedded a pack of hypnotic commands in you in 
Santa Fe. I know. I’ve been through it myself. They sent you here 
to be a spy, but you don’t know it yourself, and if we probed you, 
we might have trouble finding out the truth.You’ll soak up all 
you can about us, and then you’ll return to Santa Fe, and they’ll 
toss you to a debriefing esper who’ll pump it all out of you. Eh?” 

“No. Not at all.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Listen,” said Martell, “I don’t think they did anything to my 
mind in Santa Fe. I came to you because I belong on Venus. I’ve 
been changed.” He held out his hands. “My skin is blue. My 
metabolism is a biologist’s night-mare. I’ve got gills. I’m a Venusian, and this is where the changed ones go. But I can’t be a 
Vorster here, because the natives won’t have it. Therefore I’ve 
got to join you. Do you see?” 

Mondachein nodded. “I still think you’re a spy.” 

“I tell you—” 

“Stay calm,” said the Harinonist. “Be a spy. That’s quite all right. 
You can stay. You can join us. You’ll be our bridge, Brother. You’ll 
be the link that will span the Vorsters and the Harmonists. Play 
both sides if you like. That’s exactly what we want.” 

Once again Martell felt the foundations giving way beneath 
his feet He imagined himself in a dropshaft with the gravity field 
suddenly gone—falling, falling, endlessly falling. He peered into 
the mild eyes of the older man and perceived that Mondschein 
must be in the grip of some crazy ecumenical scheme, some 
private fantasy that— 

He said, “Are you trying to put the orders back together?” 

“Not personally. It’s part of the plan of Lazarus.” Marteil thought 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

Mondschein was referring to his own assistant. He said, “Is he 
in charge here or are you?” 

Smiling, Mondschein replied, “I don’t mean my Lazarus here. 
I mean David Lazarus, the founder of our order.” 

“He’s dead.” 

“Certainly. But we still follow the course he mapped for us 
half a century ago. And that course envisages the eventual reuniting of the orders. It has to come, Martell. We each have something the other wants. You have Earth and immortality. We have 
Venus and teleportation. There’s bound to be a pooling of interests, and possibly you’ll be one of the men who’ll help to bring it 
about.” 

“You aren’t serious!” 

“As serious as I know how to be,” said Mondschein. Martell 
saw the darkening of his expression; the amiable mask dropped 
away. “Do you want to live forever, Martell?” 

“Tm not eager to die. Except for some overriding purpose, of 
course.” 

“The translation is that you want to live as long as you can, 
with honor.” 

“Right” 

“The Vorsters are getting nearer to that goal every day. We 
have some idea of what’s going on in Santa Fe. Once, about forty 
years ago, we stole the contents of an entire longevity lab. It 
helped us, but not enough. We didn’t have the substratum of 
knowledge. On the other hand, we’ve made some strides, too, as 
I think you’ve discovered. Will it be worth a reunion, do you 
think? We’ll have the stars—you’ll have eternity. Stay here and 
spy, Brother. I think—and I know Lazarus thought—that the fewer 
secrets we have, the faster our progress will be.” 

Martell did not reply. A boy emerged from the woods—a Venusian boy, possibly the one who had saved him from the Wheel, 
perhaps the dead Elwhit’s brother. They looked so interchangeable in their strangeness. Instantly Mondschein’s manner 


To Open the Sky 

changed. He donned a bland smile; cosmic matters receded. 

“Bring us a fish,” he told the boy. 

“Yes, Brother Christopher.” 

There was silence. Veins throbbed on the boy’s forehead. In 
the center of the lake the water boiled, white foam splashing 
upward. A creature appeared, scaly and dull gold in color. It hovered in the air, ten feet of frustrated fury, its great underslung 
jaw opening and closing impotently. The beast soared toward 
the group on the shore. 

“Not that one!” Mondschein gasped. 

The boy laughed. The huge fish slipped back into the lake. An 
instant later something opalescent throbbed on the ground at 
Martell’s feet—a toothy, snapping thing a foot and a half long, 
with fins that nearly were legs, and a fan-like tall in which wicked 
spikes stirred and quivered. Martell leaped away, but he was in 
no danger, he realized. The fish’s skull caved in as though smitten by an invisible fist, and it lay still. Martell knew terror in that 
moment. The slender, laughing boy, who had so mischievously 
pulled that monster from the waters and then this equally deadly 
little thing, could kill with a flicker of his frontal lobes. 

Martell stared at Mondschein. “Your pushers—are they all 
Venusians?” 

“All.” 

“I hope you can keep them under control.” 

“I hope so, too,” Mondschein replied. He seized the dead fish 
carefully by a stubby fin, holding it so the tail-spikes pointed 
away from him. “A great delicacy,” he said. “Once we remove 
the poison sacs, of course. We’ll catch two or three more and 
have a devilfish dinner tonight to celebrate your conversion, 
Brother Martell.” 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

eight


They gave him a room, and they gave him menial jobs to do, 
and in their spare time they instructed him in the tenets of Transcendent Harmony. Martell found the room sufficient and the 
labor unobjectionable, but it was a more difficult matter to swallow the theology. He could not pretend, to himself or to them, 
that it had any meaning for him. Warmed-over Christianity, a 
dollop of Islam, a tinge of latter-day Buddhism—all spread over 
a structure borrowed shamelessly from Vorst—it was an unpalatable mixture for Martell. There was syncretism enough in the 
Vorster teachings, but Martell accepted those because he had 
been born to them. Schooling himself in heresy was a different 
matter. 

They began with Vorst, accepting him as a prophet just as 
Christianity respected Moses and Islam honored Jesus. But, of 
course, there was the later dispensation, represented by the figure of David Lazarus. Vorster writings made no mention of 
Lazarus. Martell knew of him only from his studies in the history of the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance, which mentioned Lazarus in passing as a tangential figure, an early supporter of Vorst’s and then an early dissenter. 

But Vorst lived, and, so said both groups, he would live forever, in tune with the cosmos, the First Immortal. Lazarus was 
dead, a martyr to honesty, cruelly betrayed and slain by the domineering Vorsters in their moment of triumph on Earth. 

The Book of Lazarus told the sad story. Martell twitched beneath his skin as he read it: 
Lazarus was trusting and without guile. But the men whose hearts 
were hard came upon him and slew him in the night, and fed his body 
to the converter so that not even a molecule remained. And when Vorst 

learned of their deed, he wept and said, “I wish you had slain me in

stead, for now you have given him an immortality he can never lose…” 

Martell could find nothing in the Harmonist scriptures that 
was actually discreditable to Vorst. Even the assassination of 


To Open the Sky 

Lazarus itself clearly was shown to be the work of underlings, 
carried out without Vorst’s knowledge or desire. And through 
the writings ran an expression of hope that one day the faith 
would be reunited, though it was stressed that the Harmonists 
must submit to unity only out of a position of strength, and in 
complete equality. 

A few months before, Martell would have regarded their pretensions as absurd. On Earth they were a pip-squeak movement 
losing members from year to year. Now, among them if not entirely of them, he saw that he had badly underestimated their 
power. Venus was theirs. The high-caste natives might boast and 
swagger, but they were no longer the masters. There were espers 
among the downtrodden lower-caste Venusians—pushers, no 
less—and they had given their destinies into Harmonist hands. 

Martell worked. He learned. He listened. And he feared. 

The stormy season came. From the eternal clouds there burst 
tongues of lightning that set all Venus ablaze. Torrents of bitter 
rain flailed the flat plains. Trees five hundred feet tall were ripped 
from the ground and hurled great distances. From time to time, 
high-casters arrived at the chapel to sneer or to threaten, and in 
the shrieking gales they roared their blustering defiance, while 
within the building grinning low-caste boys waited to defend 
their teachers if necessary. Once Martell saw three high-caste 
men thrown twenty yards back from the entrance as they tried 
to break in. “A stroke of lightning,” they told one another. “We’re 
lucky to be alive.” 

In the spring came warmth. Stripping to his alien skin, Martell 
worked in the fields, Bradlaugh and Lazarus beside him. He did 
not yet teach at all. He was well versed by now in the Harmonist 
teachings, but it was all from the outside in, and a seemingly 
impermeable barrier of skepticism prevented it from getting 
deeper. 

Then, on a steamy day when sweat rolled in rivers from the 
altered pores of the four former Earthmen at the Harmonist 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

chapel, Brother Leon Bradlaugh joined the blessed company of 
martyrs. It happened swiftly. They were in the fields, and a 
shadow crossed above them, and a silent voice within Martell 
screamed, “Watch out!” 

He could not move. But this was not his day to die. Something 
plummeted from the sky, something heavy and leather-winged, 
and Martell saw a beak a yard long plunge into Bradlaugh’s chest, 
and there was the fountaining of coppery blood. Bradlaugh lay 
outstretched with the shrike on him, and the great beak was 
withdrawn, and Martell heard a sound of rending and tearing. 

They gave the last rites to what was left of Bradlaugh. Brother 
Christopher Mondschein presided, and called Martell to his side 
afterward. 

“There are only three of us now,” he said. “Will you teach, 
Brother Martell?” 

“I’m not one of you.” 

“You wear a green tunic. You know our creed. Do you still 
think of yourself as a Vorster, Brother?” 

“I don’t know what I am,” answered Martell. “I need to think 
about this.” 

“Give me your answer soon. There’s much to be done here, 
Brother.” 

Martell did not realize that he would know within a day where 
he really stood. A day after Bradlaugh’s funeral the regular thrice-
weekly passenger ship from Mars arrived. Martell knew nothing of it until Mondschein came to him and said, “Take one of 
the boys in the car, and do it quickly. A man needs saving!” 

Martell did not ask questions. Somehow, news had traveled 
down a chain of espers, and it was his task simply to obey. He 
entered the car. One of the little Venusian acolytes slipped in 
beside him. 

“Which way?” Martell asked. 

The boy gestured. Martell thumbed the starter. The car sped 
down the road, toward the airport. When they had gone two and 


To Open the Sky 

a half miles, the boy grunted a command to halt. The car stopped. 

A figure in a blue tunic stood by the side of the road, his back 
to the bole of a mighty tree. Two suitcases lay open on the highway, and a razor-backed beast with a flattened snout and boar-
like tusks was rooting through them, while its mate charged the 
newly arrived Vorster. The beleaguered man was kicking and 
lashing at the beast. 

The boy hopped from the car. Without sign of strain, he caused 
the two animals to rise and slam into trees on the far side of the 
road. They dropped to the ground, looking dazed but determined. 
The boy levitated them again and struck their heads together. 
When they fell this time, they swung around and fled into the 
underbrush. 

Martell said, “Venus always seems to welcome new-corners 
like that. My greeting committee was a thing called a Wheel, 
which I hope you never meet. I’d be in ribbons now except that 
a Venusian boy was kind enough to teleport it over on its side. 
Are you a missionary?” 

The man seemed too dazed to reply immediately. He knotted 
his hands together, released them, adjusted his tunic. Finally he 
said, “Yes—yes, I am. From Earth.” 

“Surgically changed, then?” 

“That’s right.” 

“So am I. I’m Nicholas Martell. How are things in Santa Fe, 
Brother?” 

The newcomer’s lips tightened. He was a fleshless little man, 
a year or two younger than Martell. He said, “How can that matter to you if you’re Martell? Martell the heretic? Martell the renegade?” 

“No,” Martell said. “That is—I—” 

He fell silent His hands tensely smoothed the fabric of his 
Harmonist green tunic. His cheeks were burning. He realized 
painfully the truth about himself—that the change in him had 
worked inward from without—and suddenly he could not meet 


Where the Changed Ones Go 2135 

the gaze of his altered successor in the Venus mission, and he 
turned, staring into the thicket of the no longer very alien forest. 


To Open the Sky 


Four


Lazarus Come Forth 
2152 

one 

Mars Monotrack One, the main line, ran from east to west like 
a girdle of concrete flanking the planet’s western hemisphere. 
To the north lay the Lake District with its fertile fields; to the 
south, closer to the equator, was the belt of throbbing compressor stations that had done so much to foster the miracle. The 
discerning eye could still make out the old craters and gouges of 
the landscape, hidden now under a dusting of sawtooth grass 
and occasional forests of pine. 

The gray concrete pylons of the monotrack marched to the 
horizon. Spurs carried the line to the settlements of the outlands, 
and they were always adding new spurs as the new settlements 
sprouted. Logistically, it might have been simpler to have all the 
Martians live in One Big City, but the Martians were not that sort 
of people. 

Spur 7Y was being added now, advancing in ungainly bounds 
toward the new outpost of Beltran Lakes. Already the pylon foundations had gone up three-quarters of the way from Mono One 
to the settlement; a vast pylon-layer was working its way through 
the countryside, gobbling up sand from ten yards down and spewing out concrete slabs that it stapled into the ground. Gobble, 
spew, staple, and move on—gobble, spew, staple. The machine 
moved rapidly, guided by a neatly homeostatic brain that kept it 
on course. Behind it came the other machines to lay track between the pylons and string the utility lines that would follow 
the same route. The Martian settlers had many miracles at their 
command, but microwave kickover of usable electric power 


To Open the Sky 

wasn’t one of them—not yet—and so the lines had to get strung 
from place to place even as in the Middle Ages. 

The monotrack system was intended for heavy-duty transportation. The Martians used quickboats, like everybody else, for 
getting themselves from place to place. But the slim little vehicles weren’t much use in the shipment of construction materials, and this was a planet under construction. Now that the reconstruction phase was over. The Terraformers were gone. Mars 
was a bosky dell, here in this year of grace 2152, and now the 
task was to plant a civilization on the finally hospitable planet. 
The Martians numbered in the millions. They had passed their 
frontiersman stage and were settling down to enjoy the pleasures of a good commercial boom. And the monotrack marched 
on, mile after mile, skirting the seas, rimming the lakes and rivers. 

The dogwork was done by clever machines. Men rode herd 
on the machinery, though. You never could tell when the homeostasis would slip ever so slightly and your pylon-layer would 
go berserk. It had happened a few years ago, and somehow the 
cutoff relays had been blanked out of the circuit, and before anyone could do anything there were sixteen miles of pylons crisscrossing Holliman Lake—eight hundred feet under water. Martians hate wastefulness. The machines had shown that they were 
not entirely trustworthy, and thereafter they were watched. 

Watching over the construction of this particular spur of 
Monotrack One was a lean, sun-bronzed man of sixty-eight 
named Paul Weiner, who had good political connections, and a 
plump red-haired man named Hadley Donovan, who did not. 
Redheads were rare on Mars for the usual statistical reasons; 
plump men were rare, too, but not so rare as they once had been. 
Life was softer these days, and so were the younger Martians. 
Hadley Donovan was amused by the antics of his gun-toting elders, with their formal etiquette, their theatrically taut bodies, 
their sense of high personal importance. Perhaps it bad been 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

necessary to wear those poses in the pioneer days on Mars, 
Donovan thought, but all that had been over for thirty years. He 
had allowed himself the luxury of a modest paunch. He knew 
that Paul Weiner felt contempt for him. 

The feeling was mutual. 

The two men sat side by side in a landcrawler, edging through 
the roadless landscape twenty miles ahead of the pylon-laying 
rig. Transponders bleeped at appropriate intervals; on the control board in front of them, colors came and went in an evanescent flow. Weiner was supposed to be monitoring the doings of 
the construction rig behind them; Donovan was checking out 
the planned route of the track, hunting for pockets of subsurface 
mushiness that the pylon-builder would not be clever enough to 
evaluate. 

Donovan was trying to do both jobs at once. He didn’t dare let 
a political appointee like Weiner have any real responsibility in 
the work. Weiner was the nephew of Nat Weiner, who stood high 
in ruling councils, was a hundred-and-some years old, and went 
to Earth every few years to have the Vorsters pluck out his pancreas or his kidneys or his carotid arteries and implant handy 
artificial substitutes. Nat Weiner was going to live forever, probably, and he was gradually filling the entire civil service up with 
members of his family, and Hadley Donovan, trying to oversee a 
job that really required two men’s full attention, felt vague desperation as he scanned his own board and covertly glanced over 
at Weiner’s every thirty seconds or so. 

Something was glowing purple on the Anomaly Screen. 
Donovan wondered about it, but he was too busy with his own 
part of the job to mention it, and then Weiner was drawling, “I 
got something peculiar over here, Donovan. What do you make 
of it, Freeman?” 

Donovan kicked the crawler to a halt and studied the board. 
“Underground rock vault, looks like. Three—four miles off the 
track.” 


To Open the Sky 

“Think we ought to take a look?” 

“Why bother?” Donovan asked. “The track won’t come anywhere near it.” 

“You aren’t curious? Might be a treasure vault left by the Old 
Martians.” 

Donovan didn’t dignify that with a reply. 

“What do you think it is, then?” Weiner asked. “Maybe it’s a 
cave carved by an underground stream. You think so? All that 
subsurface water Mars had before they Terraformed it? Rivers 
flowing under the desert?” 

Feeling the needles, Donovan said, “It’s probably just a crawl-
space left by the Terraforming engineers. I don’t see why—oh, 
hell. All right. Let’s go investigate. Shut the whole project down 
for half an hour. What do I care?” 

He began throwing switches. 

It was a foolish, pointless interruption, but the older man’s 
curiosity had to be satisfied. Treasure cave! Under-ground 
stream! Donovan had to admit that he couldn’t think of any rational reason why there’d be such a pocket of open space underground here. Geologically, it didn’t make much sense. 

They cut across to it. It turned out to be about twenty feet down, 
with undisturbed-looking grass growing above it. Some close-
range pinging confirmed that the vault was about ten feet long, 
a dozen feet wide, eight or nine feet deep. Donovan was convinced that it had been left by the Terraformers, But it wasn’t on 
thc charts, at any rate. He summoned a dig-robot and put it to 
work. 

In ten minutes the roof of the vault lay bare: a slab of green 
fusion-glass. Donovan shivered a little. Weiner said, “I think we 
got ourselves a grave here, you know?” 

“Let’s leave it. This isn’t our business. We’ll report it and—” 

“What do we have here?” Weiner asked, and slipped his hand 
into an opening. He seemed to be caressing something within. 
Quickly he drew his hand back as a yellow glow spread over the 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

top of the vault. 

A voice said, “May the blessing of eternal harmony be on you, 
friends. You have come to the temporary resting place of Lazarus. 
Qualified medical assistance will revive me. I ask your help. 
Please do not attempt to open this vault except with qualified 
medical assistance.” 

Silence. 

The voice said again, “May the blessing of eternal harmony be 
on you, friends. You have come to the temporary—” 

‘A voice-cube,” Donovan murmured. 

“Look!” Weiner gasped, and pointed to the clearing vault-roof. 
The glass, lit from below, was transparent now. Donovan peered 
down into a rectangular vault. A thin, hawk-faced man lay on 
his back in a nutrient bath, feed-lines connected to his limbs 
and trunk. It was something like a Nothing Chamber, but far 
more elaborate. The sleeper wore a smile. Arcane symbols were 
inscribed on the walls of the chamber. Donovan recognized them 
as Harmonist symbols. That Venusian cult He felt a stab of confusion. What had they stumbled on here? “The temporary resting place of Lazarus,” the voice-cube said. Lazarus was the 
prophet of the Harmonists. To Donovan, all of these religions 
were equally inane. He would have to report this discovery now, 
and there would be delay in the construction project, and he 
himself would be pushed unwantedly into prominence, and— 
And none of it would ever have happened if Weiner had been 
dozing off as usual. Why had he noticed the anomaly on the 
board? Why? 

“‘We better tell somebody about this,” Weiner said. “I think it’s 
important.” 


To Open the Sky 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

two


In a small jungle-fringed building on Venus, eight men who 
were not men faced a ninth. All wore the cyanotic blue skins of 
Venus, though only three had been born with those skins. The 
others were surgical products, Earthmen converted to Venusians. 
Not just their bodies had been converted, either. The six changed 
ones had all been Vorsters at one time in their spiritual development. 

The Vorsters were the most powerful figures on Earth. But 
this was not Earth but Venus, and Venus was in the hands of the 
Harmonists, sometimes called the Lazarites after their martyred 
founder, David Lazarus. Lazarus, the prophet of Transcendent 
Harmony, had been put to death by Vorster underlings more than 
sixty years before. Now, to the consternation of his followers— 
“Brother Nicholas, may we have your report?” asked 

Christopher Mondschein, the head of the Harmonists on Venus. 

Nicholas Martell, a slender, dogged man in early middle age, 
stared at his eight colleagues wearily. In the past few days he 
had had little sleep and many profound jolts to his equilibrium. 
Martell had made the round trip to Mars to check on the astonishing report that had flashed to the three planets not long before. 

He said, “It’s exactly as the news story had it. Two workmen 
coming upon a vault while supervising the construction of a 
monotrack spur.” 

“You saw the vault?” asked Mondschein. 

“I saw the vault. They’ve got it cordoned.” 

“What about Lazarus?” 

“There was a figure inside the vault. It matched the image of 
Lazarus in Rome. It resembled all the portraits. The vault’s a 
sort of Nothing Chamber, and the figure is hooked up inside. 
The Martian authorities have checked the circuitry of the vault 


To Open the Sky 

and they say that it’s likely to blow sky-high if anybody tampers 
with it.” 

“And the figure,” persisted a hollow-cheeked man named 
Emory. “The figure is Lazarus?” 

“Looks like Lazarus,” Martell said. “You must remember I 
never saw Lazarus in the flesh. I wasn’t born yet when he died. 
If he died.” 

“Don’t say that” Emory snapped. “This is a hoax. Lazarus died, 
all right. He was fed to the converter. There’s nothing left of him 
but loose protons and electrons and neutrons.” 

“So it says in our Scripture,” declared Mondschein warily. He 
closed his eyes a moment. He was the oldest man present; he 
had been on Venus almost sixty years and had built this branch 
of the movement to its present dominant position. He said, “There 
is always the possibility that our text is corrupt.” 

“No!” The outburst came from Emory, young and conservative. “How can you say that?” 

Mondschein shrugged. “The early years of our movement 
Brother, are shrouded in doubt. We know there was a Lazarus, 
that he worked with Vorst at Santa Fe, that he quarreled with 
Vorst over procedure and was assassinated, or at least put out of 
the way. But all that was a long time ago. There’s no one left in 
the movement who was directly associated with Lazarus. We 
aren’t as long-lived as the Vorsters, you know. So if it happened 
that Lazarus wasn’t stuffed into a converter, but was simply carried off to Mars in suspended animation and plugged into a Nothing Chamber for sixty or seventy years—” 

There was silence in the room. Martell gave Mondschein a 
sidelong glance of distress. It was Emory who finally said, “What 
if he’s revived and claims to be Lazarus? What happens to the 
movement?” 

Mondschein replied, “We’ll face that when we get to it. According to Brother Nicholas, there seems to be some doubt as to 
whether the vault can be opened at all.” 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

“That’s correct,” Martell said. “If it’s wired to explode when 
tampered with—” 

“Let’s hope it is,” put in Brother Ward, who had not spoken. 
“For our purposes, the best Lazarus is a martyred Lazarus. We 
can keep the tomb as a shrine, and send pilgrimages there, and 
perhaps get the Martians interested. But if he comes back to life 
and begins to upset things—” 

“What is in that vault is not Lazarus,” Emory said. 

Mondachein stared at him in amazement. Emory seemed ready 
to crack apart. 

“Perhaps you’d better rest awhile,” Mondschein suggested.. 
“You’re taking this much too much to heart.” 

Marten said, “It’s a disturbing business, Christopher. If you 
had seen that figure in the vault—he looks so angelic so confident of resurrection 

Emory groaned. Mondschein furrowed his brow a moment, 
and in response the door opened and one of the native Venusians 
entered, one of the espers the Harmonists had been collecting 
so long on Venus. 

“Brother Emory is tired, Neerol,” Mondschein said. The Venusian nodded. His hand closed on Emory’s wrist, dark purple 
against deep indigo. A nexus formed; there was a momentary 
neural flow; sluices opened somewhere within Emory’s brain. 
Emory relaxed. The Venusian led him from the room. 

Mondschein looked around at the others. “We have to operate 
under the assumption,” he said, “that the genuine body of David 
Lazarus has turned up on Mars, that our book is in error about 
his fate, and that there’s at least the possibility that the body in 
that vault can be brought to life. The question is. how are we 
going to react?” 

Martell, who had seen the vault and who would never be quite 
the same, said, “You know I’ve always been skeptical of the charismatic value of the Lazarus story. But I see this as operating to 
our advantage. If we can gain possession of the vault and make 


To Open the Sky 

it the symbolic center of our movement—something to capture 
the public imagination—” 

“Exactly,” Ward said. “It’s always been our big selling point 
that we’ve got a mythos. The competition’s got Vorst and his 
medical miracles, Santa Fe and all that, but nothing to stir the 
heart. We’ve had the martyrdom of Lazarus, and it’s helped us 
take control of Venus, which the Vorsters never were able to do. 
And now, with Lazarus himself come forth from the dead—” 

“You miss the point,” said Mondschein thinly. “What turned 
up on Mars doesn’t tally with the myth. Lazarus isn’t supposed to 
be resurrected in the flesh. He was blasted to atoms. Suppose 
archaeologists found that Christ had really been beheaded, not 
crucified? Suppose it came to light that Mohammed never set 
foot in Mecca? We’ve been caught with our mythology askew—if 
this is really Lazarus. It could destroy us. It could wreck all we’ve 
built.” 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

three


Thirty miles from the quaint old city of Santa Fe, the sprawling laboratories of the Noel Vorst Center for the Biological Sciences rose within a ring of dark mountains. Here surgeons transformed living creatures into alien flesh. Here technicians laboriously manipulated genes. Here families of espers submitted to 
an endless round of experiments, and bionics men prodded their 
subjects mercilessly toward a new realm of existence. The Center was a mighty machine, bristling with purposefulness. 

Inconceivably old men were at the heart of the machine. 

The core of the movement was the domed building near the 
main auditorium, where Noel Vorst lived when at Santa Fe. Vorst, 
the Founder, acknowledged more than a century and a quarter 
of life. There were those who said that he was dead, that the 
Vorst who occasionally appeared at the chapels of the Brotherhood was a robot, a simulacrum. Vorst himself found this amusing. More of him was artificial than flesh, at this point, but he 
was undeniably alive, with no immediate plans for dying. If he 
had planned to die, he never would have gone to the trouble of 
founding the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance. There had 
been hard years at first. It is not pleasant to be deemed a crackpot 

Among those who had deemed Vorst a crackpot in those days 
was his present second-in-command, the Hemispheric Coordinator, Reynolds Kirby. Kirby had stumbled into the Brotherhood 
at a time of personal stress, looking for something to cling to in 
a storm. That had been in 2077. He was still clinging, seventy-
five years later. By now he was virtually Vorst’s alter ego, an 
adjunct of the Founder’s soul. 

The Founder had been less than candid with Kirby about this 
Lazarus enterprise, though. For the first time in many years Vorst 
had held the details of a project entirely to himself. Some things 
could not be shared. When they were matters concerning David 


To Open the Sky 

Lazarus, Vorst held them in pectore, unable to take even Kirby 
into his confidence. 

The Founder sat cradled in a webfoam net that spared him 
most of gravity’s pull. Once he had been a vigorous, dynamic 
giant of a man, and when he had to, he could wear that set of 
attributes even now, but he preferred comfort. It was necessary 
to spare his strength. His plan had fulfilled itself well, but he 
knew that without his guiding presence it might all yet come to 
nothing. 

Kirby sat before him, thin-lipped, grizzled, his body, like Vorst’s, 
a patchwork of artificial organs. The Vorster laboratories no 
longer needed such clumsy devices to prolong youth. Within the 
last generation they had managed to stimulate regeneration from 
within, the body’s own rebirth, always the most preferable way. 
Kirby had come along too early for that; so had Vorst. For them, 
organ replacement was the road to conditional immortality. With 
luck, they might last two or three centuries, undergoing periodic overhauls. Younger men, those who had joined the movement in the last forty years, might hope for several hundred years 
more than that. Some now living, Vorst knew, would never die. 

Vorst said, “About this Lazarus thing—” 

His voice came from a vocoder box. The larynx had gone sixty 
years ago. The effect was naturalistic enough, though. 

“We can infiltrate our men,” Kirby said. “I can work through 
Nat Weiner. We’ll get a bomb clapped onto that vault and give 
Mr. Lazarus his eternal repose.” 

“No?” 

“Of course not,” Vorst said. He lowered the shutters that lubricated his eyes. “Nothing must happen to that vault or the man 
who’s in it. We’ll infiltrate, all right. You’ll have to use your pull 
with Weiner. But not to destroy. We’re going to bring Lazarus 
back to life.” 

“We’re—” 

“As a gift to our friends, the Harmonists. To show our endur


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

ing affection for our brothers in the Oneness.” 

“No,” Kirby said. Muscles roiled in his fleshless face, and Vorst 
could see him making adrenal adjustments, trying to stay calm 
in the face of this assault on his sense of logic. “This is the prophet 
of the heretics,” Kirby said quietly. “I know that you’ve got your 
reasons for encouraging their growth in certain places, Noel. 
But to give them back their prophet—it doesn’t make sense.” 

Vorst tapped a stud in his desk. A compartment opened and he 
drew forth the Book of Lazarus, the heretic scripture. Kirby 
seemed a little startled to find it here, in the stronghold of the 
movement 

“You’ve read this, haven’t you?” Vorst asked. 

“Of course.” 

“It’s enough to make you weep. How my shameless underlings hunted down this great and good man David Lazarus and 
did away with him. One of the most blasphemous acts since the 
Crucifixion, eh? The blot on our record. We’re the villains in the 
Lazarus story. Now here’s Lazarus, pickled on Mars for the last 
sixty years. Not physically annihilated after all, despite what this 
book says. Fine. Splendid! We throw all the resources of Santa 
Fe into the task of restoring him to life. The grand ecumenical 
gesture. Surely you know that it’s my hope to reunite the sundered branches of our movement” 

Kirby’s eyes flickered brilliantly. “You’ve been saying that for 
sixty or seventy years, Noel. Ever since the Harmonists split away. 
But do you mean it?” 

“I’m sincere in all things,” said Vursi lightly. “Of course I’d 
take them back. On my terms, naturally—but they’d be welcome. 
We all serve the same ends in different ways. Did you ever know 
Lazarus?” 

“Not really. I wasn’t very important in the Brotherhood when 
he died.” 

“I forget that,” Vorst said. “It’s hard for me to keep everyone 
positioned in his temporal matrix. I keep sliding forward and 


To Open the Sky 

backward. But certainly—you were coming to the top as Lazarus 
was moving away. I respected that man, Kirby. I grieved when 
he died, wrongheaded as he was. I intend to redeem the Brotherhood from its stain by bringing Lazarus back to life. He’s appropriately named, wouldn’t you say?” 

Kirby picked up a bright metallic sphere from the desk, a paperweight of some sort, and fingered it. Vorst waited. He kept 
the sphere there so that his visitors could handle it and discharge 
their tensions into it; he knew that for many who came before 
him an interview with Vorst was like a trip to the top of Mount 
Sinai to hear the Law. Vorst found it charming. He watched 
Reynolds Kirby struggling with himself. 

At length Kirby—the only man on the whole planet who could 
use Vorst’s first name to him—said thickly, “Damn it, Noel, what 
kind of game are you playing?” 

“Game?” 

“You sit there with that grin on your lips, telling me you’re 
going to revive Lazarus, and I can see you juggling world-lines 
like billiard balls, and I don’t know what it’s all about. What’s 
your motive? Isn’t this man better off dead?” 

“No. Dead he’s a symbol. Alive he can be manipulated. That’s 
all I’ll say.” Vorst’s blazing eyes found Kirby’s troubled ones and 
held them. “Do you think I’m senile at last, perhaps? That I’ve 
held the plan in my mind so long that it’s rotted in there? I know 
what I’m doing. I need Lazarus alive, or—or I wouldn’t have 
begun this. Get in touch with Nat Weiner. Gain possession of the 
vault, I don’t care how. We’ll do our work on Lazarus here at 
Santa Fe.” 

“All right. Noel. Whatever you say.” 

“Trust me.” 

“What else can I do?” 

Kirby wheeled himself out of the room. Vorst, relaxing, fed 
hormones to his bloodstream and closed his eyes. The world 
wavered. For an instant he found himself drifting, and it was 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

2071 all over again, and he was building cobalt-60 reactors in a 
sordid basement and renting little rooms as chapels for his cult. 
He recoiled, and was whirled forward, dizzyingly, toward the 
border of now and a little beyond it. Vorst was a low-grade esper, 
his skills humble indeed, but occasionally his mind did strange 
things. He looked toward the brink of tomorrow and desperately 
anchored himself. 

With a decisive jab of his fingers Vorst opened his desk-communicator and spoke briefly to an intern in the burnout ward, 
without identifying himself. Yes, the Founder was told, there was 
an esper on the verge of burnout. No, she wasn’t likely to survive. 

“Get her ready,” Vorst said. “The Founder’s going to visit her.” 

Vorst’s assistants clustered around, readying him for his journey. The old man refused to accept immobility and insisted on 
leading the most active kind of existence possible. A dropshaft 
took him to ground level, and then, sheltered by the cavalcade 
of flunkies that accompanied him everywhere, the Founder 
crossed the main plaza of the compound and entered the burnout ward. 

Half a dozen sick espers, segregated by thick walls and shielded 
by protective members of their own kind, lay at the verge of death. 
There were always those for whom the powers proved overwhelming, those who eventually seized more voltage than they 
could handle and were destroyed. From the very beginning Vorst 
had concentrated on saving them, for these were the espers he 
needed most badly. The salvage record was good nowadays. But 
not good enough. 

Vorst knew why the burnouts happened. The ones who went 
were the floaters, insecurely anchored in their own time. They 
drifted back, forth, seesawing from past to present, unable to 
control their movements, building up a charge of temporal force 
that ultimately blasted their minds. It was a dizziness of the time-
sense, a deadly vertigo. Vorst himself had felt flashes of it. For 


To Open the Sky 

ten years, nearly a century ago, he had considered himself insane, until he understood. He had seen the edges of time, a vision of futurity that had shattered him and remade him, and that 
he knew, had been only a hint of what the real espers experienced. 

The burnout case was young and female and Oriental: a fatal 
combination, it seemed. A good eighty percent of the burnouts 
were of Mongoloid stock, generally adolescent girls. Those who 
had the trait didn’t last far into adulthood. This one must have 
been about sixteen, though it was hard to tell; she could have 
been anywhere from twelve to twenty-five. She lay twisting on 
the bed, her body almost bare, clawing at the bedclothes in her 
agony. Sweat gleamed on her yellow-brown skin. She arched 
her back, grimaced, fell back. Her breasts, revealed by the disarray of her robe, were like a child’s. 

Blue-clad Vorsters, awed by the presence of the Founder, 
flanked the bed. Vorst said, “She’ll be gone in an hour, won’t 
she?” 

Someone nodded. Vorst moved himself closer to the bed. He 
seized the girl’s arm in his wizened fingers. Another esper stepped 
in, placed one hand on Vorst, the other on the girl, providing the 
link that Vorst required. Suddenly he was in contact with the 
dying girl. 

Her brain was on fire. She jolted backward and forward in 
time, and Vorst jolted with her, drawn along as a hitchhiker. Light 
flared in his mind, as though lightning danced about him. Yesterday and tomorrow became one. His thin body quivered like a 
buffeted reed. Images danced like demons, shadowy figures out 
of the past, dark avatars of tomorrow. Tell me, tell me, tell me, 
Vorst implored. Show me the path! He stood at the threshold of 
knowledge. For seventy years he had moved step by step this 
way, using the contorted and tortured bodies of these burnouts 
as his bridges to tomorrow, pulling himself forward by his own 
bootstraps along the world-line of his great plan. 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

Let me see, Vorst begged. 

The figure of David Lazarus bestrode the pattern of tomorrow, Vorst knew it would. Lazarus stood like a colossus, come 
forth to an unexpected resurrection, holding his arms out to the 
green-robed brethren of his heresy. Vorst shivered. The image 
wavered and was gone. The frail hand of the Founder relaxed 
its grip. 

“She’s dead,” Vorst said. “Take me away.” 


To Open the Sky 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

four


One old man had given the word, and another obeyed, and a 
third was approached for a favor. Nat Weiner of the Martian Presidium was always willing to oblige his old friend Reynolds Kirby. 
They had known one another for more years then they cared to 
admit. 

Weiner, like nearly all Martians, was neither Vorster nor 
Harmonist. Martians had little use for the cults, and steered a 
neutral and profitable course. On Earth, by now, the Vorsters 
amounted to a planetary government since their influence was 
felt everywhere; it was simple good sense for Mars to retain open 
lines to the Vorster high command, since Mars had business to 
do with Earth. Venus, the planet of adapted men, was a different 
case. No one could be too sure what went on there, except that 
the Harmonist heresy had established itself pretty securely in 
the last thirty or forty years, and might one day speak for Venus 
as the Vorsters spoke for Earth. Weiner had served a tour of duty 
as Martian Ambassador to Venus, and he thought he understood 
the blueskins fairly well. He didn’t like them very much. But he 
was past feeling any strong emotion. He had left that behind with 
his hundredth birthday. 

At staggering cost, Reynolds Kirby in Santa Fe spoke face-toface with Weiner, and begged a favor of him. It was twelve years 
since they had last met—not since Weiner’s last visit to the rejuvenation centers at Santa Fe. It wasn’t customary for unbelievers to be granted the use of the rejuvenation facilities there, but 
Kirby had arranged for Weiner and a select few of his Martian 
friends to come down for periodic treatments, as a favor. 

Weiner understood quite dearly that Kirby was silently accepting promissory notes for those favors, and that the notes would 
be taken down for repayment one of these days. That was all 
right; the important thing was to survive. Weiner might even 
have been willing to become a Vorster, if he had to, in order to 


To Open the Sky 

have access to Santa Fe. But of course that would have hurt him 
politically on Mars, where both Vorsters and Harmonists were 
generally looked upon as subversives. This way he had the benefits, without the risks, and he owed it to his old friend Kirby. 
Weiner would go quite a distance to repay Kirby for that service. 

The Vorster said, “Have you seen the alleged Lazarus vault yet 
Nat?” 

“I was out there two days ago. We’ve got a tight security guard 
on it. It was my nephew who found it, you know. I’d like to kill 
him.” 

“Why?” 

“All we need is finding the Harmonist muck-a-muck out by 
Beltran Lakes. Why couldn’t you people have buried him on Venus, where his own people are?” 

“What makes you think we buried him, Nat?” 

“Aren’t you the ones who killed him? Or put him into a freeze, 
or whatever you did to him?” 

“It all happened before my time,” Kirby said. “Only Vorst knows 
the real story, and maybe not even he. But surely it’s Lazarus’s 
own supporters who tucked him away in that vault, don’t you 
think?” 

“Not at all,” Weiner replied. “Why would they get their own 
story garbled? He’s their prophet. If they put him there, they 
should have remembered it and preached his ressurrection, yes? 
But they were the most surprised ones of all when he turned 
up.” Weiner frowned. “On the other hand, the message that was 
recorded with him is full of Harmonist slogans. And there are 
Harmonist symbols on the vault. I wish I understood. Better still: 
I wish we’d never found him. But why are you calling, Ron?” 

“Vorst wants him.” 

“Wants Lazarus?” 

“That’s right. To bring him back to life. We’ll take the whole 
vault to Santa Fe and open it and revive him. Vorst wants to make 
the announcement tomorrow, all-channel hookup.” 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

“You can’t, Ron. If anybody gets him, it ought to be the 
Harmonists. He’s their prophet. How can I hand him to you boys? 
You’re the ones who supposedly killed him in the first place, and 
now—” 

“And now we’re going to revive him, which, as everyone knows, 
is beyond the capabilities of the Harmonists. They’re welcome 
to try, if they want, but they simply don’t have our kind of laboratory facilities. We’re ready to revive him. Then we’ll turn him 
over to the Harmonists and he can preach all he wants. Just let 
us have access to the vault.” 

“You’re asking for a lot,” Weiner said. 

“We’ve given you a lot, Nat.” 

Weiner nodded. The promissory notes had fallen due, he realized. He said, “The Harmonists will have my head for this.” 

“Your head’s pretty tightly attached, Nat. Find a way to give us 
the vault. Vorst will be pretty rough on us all if you don’t.” 

Weiner sighed. “His will be done.” 

But how, the Martian wondered when contact had broken? By 
force majeure? Hand over the vault and to hell with public opinion? And if Venus got nasty about it? 

“There hadn’t been an interplanetary war yet, but perhaps the 
time was ripe. Certainly the Harmonists wanted—and had every 
right to have—their own founder’s body. Just last week that convert Martell, the one who had come to Venus to plant a Vorster 
cell and ended up in the Harmonist camp, had been here to see 
the vault, Weiner thought, and had tentatively sketched out a 
plan for taking possession. Martell and his boss Mondschein 
would explode when they found out that the relic of Lazarus 
was being shipped to Santa Fe. 

It would have to be handled delicately. 

Weiner’s mind whirred and clicked like a computer, or presenting and rejecting alternate possibilities, opening and dosing 
one circuit after another. It was not seniority alone that kept the 
Martian in power. He was agile. He had gained considerably in 


To Open the Sky 

craftiness since the night when, a drunken young yokel, he ran 
amok in New York. 

Three hours and a great many thousand dollars’ worth of interplanetary calls later, Weiner had his solution worked out satisfactorily. 

The vault was Martian governmental property, as an artifact. 
Therefore Mars had an important voice in its disposal. However, 
the Martian government recognized the unique symbolic value 
of this discovery, and thus proposed to consult with religious 
authorities of the other worlds. A committee would be formed: 
three Harmonists, three Vorsters, and three Martians of Weiner’s 
selection. Presumably the Harmonists and Vorsters would look 
out only for their own cult’s welfare, and the Martians on the 
committee would maintain an imperturbable neutrality assuring an impartial judgment. 

Of course. 

The committee would meet to deliberate on the fate of the 
vault. The Harmonists, naturally, would claim it for themselves. 
The Vorsters, having made public their offer to employ all their 
superscience to bring Lazarus back to life, would ask to be given 
a chance to do so. The Martians would weigh all the possibilities. 

Then, Weiner thought, would come the vote. One of the Martians would vote with the Harmonists—for appearance’s sake. 
The other two would come out in favor of letting the Vorsters 
work on the sleeper, under rigorous supervision to prevent any 
hanky-panky. The five-to-four vote would give the vault to Vorst. 
Mondschein would yelp, of course. But the terms of the agreement would allow a couple of Harmonist representatives to get 
inside the secret labs at Santa Fe for a little while, and that would 
soothe them somewhat. There would be a little grumbling, but 
if Kirby kept his word, Lazarus would be revived and turned 
over to his partisans, and how could the Harmonists possibly 
object to that? 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

Weiner smiled. There was no problem so knotty that it couldn’t 
be untied. Given a little thought, that is. He felt pleased with 
himself. If he had been forty years younger, he might have gone 
out for a roistering celebration. But not now. 


To Open the Sky 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

five 

“Don’t go,” Martell said. 

“Suspicious?” Christopher Mondschein asked. “It’s a chance 
to see their setup. I haven’t been in Santa Fe since I was a boy. 
Why shouldn’t I go?” 

“There’s no telling what might happen to you there. They’d 
love to get their hands on you. You’re the kingpin of the whole 
Venusian movement.” 

“And they’ll lase me to ashes with three planets watching, eh? 
Be realistic, Nicholas. When the Pope visits Mecca, they take 
good care of him. I’m in no danger in Santa Fe.” 

“What about the espers? They’ll scan you.” 

“I’ll have Neerol with me as a mindshield,” Mondschein said. 
“They won’t get a thing. I’ll stack him up —against any esper 
they have. Besides, I have nothing to hide from Noel Vorst. You 
of all people ought to realize that. We took you in, even though 
you were loaded with Vorster spy-commands. It was in our interest to tell Vorst how far we had gone.” 

Martell took a different approach. “By going to Santa Fe you’re 
putting the blessing of our order on this alleged Lazarus.” 

“Now you sound like Brother Emory! Are you telling me it’s a 
phony?” 

“I’m telling you that we ought to treat it as one. It contradicts 
our own legend of Lazarus. It may be a Vorster plant calculated 
to throw us into confusion. What do we do when they hand us a 
walking, talking Lazarus and let us try to reshape our entire order around him?” 

“It’s a touchy matter, Nicholas. We’ve built our faith on the 
existence of a holy martyr. Now, if he’s suddenly 
unmartyred—” 

“Exactly. It’ll crush us.” 

“I doubt that” Mondschein said. The old Harmonist touched 
his gills lightly, nervously. “You aren’t looking far enough ahead, 


To Open the Sky 

Nicholas. The Vorsters have outmaneuvered us so far, I admit. 
They’ve gained possession of this Lazarus, and they’re about to 
give him back to us. Very embarrassing, but what can we do? 
However, the next moves are ours. If he dies, we simply revise 
our writings a bit. If he lives and tries to meddle, we reveal that 
he’s some sort of simulacrum cooked up by the Vorsters to do 
mischief, and destroy him. Score a point for us—our original story 
stands and we reveal the Vorsters as sinister schemers.” 

“And if he’s really Lazarus?” Martell asked. 

Mondschein giowered. “Then we have a prophet on our hands, 
Brother Nicholas. It’s a risk we take. I’m going to Santa Fe.” 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

six


On Earth, the Noel Vorst Center throbbed with more-thanusual activity as preparations continued for the arrival of the 
cargo from Mars. An entire block of the laboratory grounds had 
been set aside for the resuscitation of Lazarus. For the first time 
since the founding of the Center video cameras would be allowed to show the worlds a little of its inner workings. The place 
would be full of strangers—even a delegation of Harmonists. To 
old-line Vorsters like Reynolds Kirby, that was almost unthinkable. Furtiveness had become a matter of course for him. The 
command, though, had come from Vorst himself, and no one 
could quarrel with the Founder. “I believe that it’s time to lift the 
lid a little,” Vorst had said. 

Kirby was doing some lid-lifting of his own as the great day 
drew near. He was troubled by certain blanks in his own memory, 
and by virtue of his rank as second-in-command he went searching through the Vorster archives to fill them in. The trouble was, 
Kirby could not remember much about David Lazarus’s pre-
martyrdom career, and he felt that it was important to know 
something more than the official story. Who was Lazarus, anyway? How had he entered the Vorster picture—and how had he 
left it? 

Kirby himself had enrolled in 2077, kneeling before the Blue 
Fire of a cobalt reactor in New York. As a new convert, he had 
not been concerned with the politics of the hierarchy, but simply 
with the values the cult had to offer: stability, the hope of long 
life, the dream of reaching the stars by harnessing the abilities 
of espers. Kirby was willing to see mankind explore the other 
solar systems, but he did not make that accomplishment the central yearning of his life. Nor did the chance of immortality—the 
chief bait for millions of Vorster converts—seem all that delicious to him. 

What drew him to the movement, at the age of forty, was merely 


To Open the Sky 

the discipline that it offered. His pleasant life lacked structure, 
and the world about him was such chaos that he fled from it into 
one synthetic paradise after another. Along came Vorst offering 
a sleek new belief that snared Kirby totally. For the first few 
months he was content to be a worshiper. Soon he was an acolyte. And then, his natural organizational abilities demonstrating themselves, he found himself moving rapidly upward in the 
movement from post to post until by the time he was eighty he 
was Vorst’s fight hand, and very much concerned with his own 
personal survival. 

According to the official story, the martyrdom of David Lazarus 
had taken place in 2090. Kirby had been a Vorster for thirteen 
years then, and was a District Supervisor in charge of thousands 
of Brothers. 

So far as he could remember, he had never even heard of 
Lazarus as of 2090. 

A few years later the Harmonists, the heretical movement had 
begun gaining strength, decking themselves in green robes and 
scoffing at the craftily secular power orientation of the Vorsters. 
They claimed to be followers of the martyred Lazarus, but even 
then, Kirby thought they hadn’t talked much about Lazarus. Only 
afterward, as Harmonist power mounted and they stole Venus 
from Vorst, did they push the Lazarus mythos particularly hard. 
Why is it, Kirby wondered, that I who was a contemporary of 
Lazarus should never have heard his name? 

He walked toward the archives building. 

It was a milk-white geodesic dome, sheeted with some toothy 
fabric that gave it a sharkskin surface texture. Kirby passed 
through a tiled tunnel, identified himself to the robot guardians, 
moved toward and past a sphincter-door, and found himself in 
the olive-green room where the records were kept lie activated 
a query-stud and demanded knowledge. 

Lazarus, David. 

Drums whirled in the depths of the earth. Memory films came 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

around, offered themselves to the kiss of the scanner, and sent 
images floating upward to the waiting Kirby. Glowing yellow print 
appeared on the reader-Screen. 

A potted biography, scanty and inadequate: 

Born 13 March 2051 

Education Primary Secondary Chicago, A.B. Harvard ‘72, Ph.D. 
(Anthropology) Harvard ’75. 

Physical Description (1/1/88) 6 ft. 3 ins., 179 pounds, dark 
eyes and hair, no dis. scars. 

Affiliation Joined Cambridge chapel 4/11/71. Acolyte status 
conferred 7/17/73. … 

There followed a. list of the successive stages by which Lazarus 
had risen through the hierarchy, culminating with the simple 
entry, Death 2/9/90. 

That was all. It was a lean, spare record, not a word of elaboration, no appended commendations such as Kirby knew festooned his own record, no documentation of Lazarus’s disagreement with Vorst. Nothing. It was the sort of record, Kirby thought 
uncomfortably, that anyone could have tapped out in five minutes and inserted in the archives … yesterday. 

He prodded the memory banks, hoping to fish up some added 
detail about the arch-heretic. He found nothing. It was not really 
valid cause for suspicion; Lazarus had been dead for a long time, 
and probably the record-keeping had been sketchier in those 
early days. But it was upsetting, all the same. Kirby made his 
way out of the building. Acolytes stared at him as though Vorst 
himself had gone striding by. No doubt some of them felt the 
temptation to drop to their knees before him. I/ they only knew, 
Kirby thought darkly, how ignorant I am. After seventy-five years 
with Vorst. If they only knew. 


To Open the Sky 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

seven


The glass vault of David Lazarus, transported intact at considerable expense from Mars, rested in the center of the operating 
room, under the watchful eyes of the video cameras mounted in 
the walls and ceiling. A carefully planted forest of equipment 
surrounded the vault: polygraphs, compressors, centrifuges, 
surgistats, scanners, enzyme calibrators, laser scalpels, retractors, impacters, thorax rods, cerebral tacks, a heart-and-lung 
bypass, kidney surrogates, mortmains, biopticons, elsevirs, a 
Helium II pressure generator, and a monstrous, glowering cryostat. The display was impressive, and it was meant to be. Vorster 
science was on display here, and every awesome-looking superfluity in the place had its part in the orchestration of the effects. 

Vorst himself was not present. That too, was part of the orchestration. He and Kirby were watching the event from Vorst’s 
office. The highest-ranking member of the Brotherhood present 
was plump, cheerful Capodimonte, a District Supervisor. Beside 
him stood Christopher Mondschein of the Harmonists. 
Mondschein and Capodimonte had known each other briefly 
during Mondschein’s short, spectacularly unsuccessful career 
as a Santa Fe acolyte in 2095. Now, though, the Harmonist was a 
terrifying figure, his changed body concealed by a breathing-
suit but still nightmarish and grotesque. A native-born Venusian, looking even more bizarre, clung to Mondschein like a skin 
graft. The visiting Harmonists seemed tense and grim. The television commentator said, “It’s already been determined that the 
atmosphere of the vault is a mixture of inert gases, mainly argon. Lazarus himself is in a nutrient bath. Espers have detected 
signs of life. The tumblers of the vault lock were opened yesterday in the presence of the delegation of Venusian Harmonists. 
Now the inerts are being piped out, and soon the sensitive instruments of the surgeons will reach the sleeping man and begin the infinitely complex process of restoring the life-impulses.” 


To Open the Sky 

Vorst laughed. 

Kirby said, “Isn’t that what’ll happen?” 

“More or less. Exept the man’s as alive as he’ll ever be, right 
now. All they need to do is open the vault and yank him out.” 

“That wouldn’t be very dramatic.” 

“Probably not,” the Founder agreed. Vorst folded his hands 
across his belly, feeling the artificials throbbing mildly inside. 
The commentator reeled off acres of descriptive prose. The spidery array of instruments surrounding the vault was in motion 
now, arms and tendrils waving like the limbs of some being of 
many bodies. Vorst kept his eyes on the altered face of Christopher Mondschein. He hadn’t really believed that Mondschein 
would return to Santa Fe. An admirable person, the old man 
thought. He had borne adversity well, considering how he had 
been bamboozled into his life’s career almost sixty years ago. 

“The vault’s open,” Kirby said. 

“So I observe. Now watch the mummy of King Tut rise and 
walk.” 

“You’re very lighthearted about this, Noel.” 

“Mmmm,” the Founder said. A smile ffickered on his thin lips 
for a moment He made minute adjustments to his hormone flow. 
On the screen the vault opening was almost completely obscured 
by the instruments that had dived into the chamber to embrace 
the sleeper. 

Suddenly there was faint motion in the vault Lazarus stirred! 
The martyr returned! 

“Time for my grand entrance,” Vorst murmured. 

All was arranged. A glistening tunnel transported him swiftly 
to the operating room. Kirby did not follow. The Founder’s chair 
rolled serenely into the room just as the figure of David Lazarus 
groped its way out of sixty years of sleep and rose to a sitting 
position. 

A quivering hand pointed. A rusty voice strained for coherence. 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

“V-V-Vorst!” Lazarus gasped. 

The Founder smiled benevolently, lifted his fleshless arm in 
greeting and blessing. Delicately, an unseen hand slipped a control rod and the Blue Fire flickered along the walls of the room 
to provide the proper theatrical touch. Christopher Mondschein, 
his altered face impassive behind his breathing-mask, clenched 
his fists angrily as the glow enveloped him. 

Vorst said, “And there is light, before and beyond our vision, 
for which we give thanks. 

“And there is heat, for which we are humble. 

“And there is power, for which we count ourselves blessed…. 

“Welcome to life, David Lazarus. In the strength of the spectrum, the quantum, and the holy angstrom, peace, and forgive 
those who did evil to you!” 

Lazarus stood. His hands found and grasped the rim of his 
vault. Inconceivable emotions distorted his face. He muttered, 
“I—I’ve slept.” 

“Sixty years, David. And those who rebuked me and followed 
you have grown strong. See? See the green robes? Venus is yours. 
You head a mighty army. Go to them, David. Give them counsel. 
I restore you to them. You are my gift to your followers. And he 
that was dead came forth…loose him, and let him go.” 

Lazarns did not reply. Mondschein stood agape, leaning heavily 
on the Venusian at his side. Kirby, watching the screen, felt a 
tingle of awe that washed away his skepticism for the moment. 
Even the chatter of the television commentator was stilled by 
the miracle. 

The glow of the Blue Fire engulfed all, rising higher and higher, 
like the flames of the Twilight reaching toward Valhalla. And in 
the midst of it all stood Noel Vorst, the Founder, the First Immortal, serene and radiant, his ancient body erect, his eyes gleaming, 
his hands outstretched to the man who had been dead. All that 
was missing was the chorus of ten thousand, singing the Hymn of 
the Wavelengths while a cosmic organ throbbed a paean of joy. 


To Open the Sky 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

eight


And Lazarus lived, and walked among his people again, holding converse with them. 

And Lazarus was greatly surprised. 

He had slept—for a moment, for the twinkling of an eye. Now 
sinister blue figures surrounded him— 

Venusians, hooded like demons against the poisonous air of 
Earth—and hailed him as their prophet. All about rose Vorst’s 
metropolis, dazzling buildings that testified to the present might 
of the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance. 

The chubby Venusian—Mondschein, was it?—pressed a book 
into Lazarus’s hands. “The Book of Lazarus,” he said. “The account of your life and work.” 

“And death?” 

“Yes, your death.” 

“You’ll need a new edition now,” Lazarus said. He smiled, but 
he was alone in his mirth. 

He felt strong. How had muscles failed to degenerate in his 
long sleep? How was it that he could rise and go among men, 
and make vocal cords obey him, and his body withstand the strain 
of life? 

He was alone with his followers. In a few days they would take 
him back to Venus with them, where he would have to live in a 
self-contained environment. Vorst had offered to transform him 
into a Venusian, but Lazarus, stunned that such things were possible at all, was not sure that he cared to become a gilled creature. He needed time to ponder all this. The world he had so 
unexpectedly re-entered was very different from the one he had 
left. 

Sixty-odd years. Vorst had taken over the whole planet now, it 
seemed. That was the direction he had been heading in back in 
the Eighties, when Lazarus had begun to disagree with him. Vorst 
had begun with a religio-scientific movement when Lazarus had 


To Open the Sky 

joined it. Hocus-pocus with cobalt reactors, a litany of spectrum 
and electron, plenty of larded-on spiritualism, but at the bottom 
a bluntly materialistic creed whose chief come-on was the promise of long (or eternal) life. Lazarus had gone for that. But soon, 
feeling his strength, Vorst had begun to slide men into parliaments, take over banks, utilities, hospitals, insurance companies. 

Lazarus had opposed all that. Vorst had been accessible then, 
and Lazarus remembered arguing with him against this deviation into finance and power politics. And Vorst had said, “The 
plan calls for it.” 

“It’s a perversion of our religious motives.” 

“It’ll get us where we want to go.” 

Lazarus had disagreed. Quietly, gathering a few supporters, 
he had established a rival group, while still nominally retaining 
his loyalty to Vorst. His apprenticeship with Vorst made him an 
expert on founding a faith. He proclaimed the reign of eternal 
harmony, gave his people green robes, symbols, reformist fervor, prayers, a developing liturgy. He could not say that his movement had become particularly powerful beside the Vorst machine, but at least it was a leading heresy, attracting hundreds of 
new followers each month. Lazarus had been looking toward a 
missionary movement, knowing that his ideas had a better 
chance of taking root on Venus and perhaps Mars than Vorst’s. 

And on a day in 2090 men in blue robes came to him and took 
him away, blanking out his guard of espers and stealing him as 
easily as though he had been a lump of lead. After that he knew 
no more, until his awakening in Santa Fe. They told him that the 
year was 2152 and that Venus was in the hands of his people. 

Mondschein said, “will you let yourself be changed?” 

“I’m not sure yet. I’m considering it.” 

“It’ll be difficult for you to function on Venus unless you let 
them adapt you.” 

“Perhaps I could stay on Earth,” Lazarus suggested. 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

“Impossible. You have no power base here. Vorst’s generosity 
will stretch only so far. He won’t let you remain here after the 
excitement of your return dies down.” 

“You’re right.” Lazarus sighed. “I’ll let myself be changed, then. 
I’ll come to Venus and see what you’ve accomplished.” 

“You’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Mondschein promised. 

Lazarus had already been sufficiently surprised for one incarnation. They left him, and he studied the scriptures of his faith, 
fascinated by the martyr’s role they had written for him. A book 
of Harmonist history told Lazarus his own value: where the 
Brotherhood’s religious emotions crystallized around the remote, 
forbidding figure of Vorst, the Harmonists could safely revere 
their gentle martyr. How awkward it must be for them that I’m 
back, Lazarus thought. 

Vorst did not come to him while he rested in the Brotherhood’s 
hospital. A man named Kirby came, though, frosty-faced with 
age and said he was the Hemispheric Coordinator and Vorst’s 
closest collaborator. 

“I joined the Brotherhood before your disappearance,” Kirby 
said. “Did you ever hear of me?” 

“I don’t believe so.” 

“I was only an underling,” Kirby said. “I suppose you wouldn’t 
have had reason to hear of me. But I hoped your memory would 
be clear, if we ever had met. I’ve got all these intervening years 
to cope with, but you can look back across a clean slate.” 

“My memory’s fine,” Lazarus said evenly. “I’ve got no recollection of you.” 

“Nor I of you.” 

The resuscitated man shrugged. “I worked beside Vorst. I had 
disputes with him. That much is beyond question. Eventually I 
split with him. I founded the Harmonists. 

Then I—disappeared. And here I am. Do you have trouble believing in me?” 

“Perhaps I’ve been tampered with,” Kirby said. “I wish I re


To Open the Sky 

membered you.” 

Lazarus lay back. He stared at the green, rubbery walls. The 
instruments monitoring his life-processes whirred and t clicked. 
There was an acrid odor in the air: asepsis at work. Kirby looked 
unreal. Lazarus wondered what sort of maze of pumps and 
trestles held him together beneath his thick, warm blue robe. 

Kirby said, “You understand that you can’t remain on Earth, 
don’t you?” 

“Of course.” 

“Life will be uncomfortable for you on Venus unless you’re 
changed. We’ll do it for you. Your own men can supervise the 
operation. I’ve talked to Mondschein about it. Are you interested?” 

“Yes,” Lazarus said. “Change me.” 

They came the next day to turn him into a Venusian. He resented the public nature of the operation, but it was idle to pretend that his life was his own any more, anyway. It would take 
several weeks, they said, to effect the transformation. Once it 
had taken months to do it. They would equip him with gills, fit 
him out to breathe the poisonous muck that was the atmosphere 
of Venus, and turn him loose. Lazarus submitted. They carved 
him, and put him back together again, and readied him for shipment. 

Vorst came to him, feathery-voiced and shrunken, but still a 
commanding figure, and said, “You must realize I had no part in 
your kidnapping. It was totally unauthorized—the work of zealots.” 

“Of course.” 

“I appreciate diversity of opinion. My way is not necessarily 
the only right way. I’ve felt the lack of a dialogue with Venus for 
many years. Once you’re installed—there, I trust you’ll be willing to communicate with me.” 

Lazarus said, “I won’t close my mind against you, Vorst. You’ve 
given me life. I’ll listen to what you have to say. There’s no reason why we can’t cooperate, so long as we respect each other’s 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

sphere of interests.” 

“Exactly! Our goal is the same, after all. We can join forces.” 

“Warily,” Lazarus said. 

“Warily, yes. But wholeheartedly.” Vorst smiled and departed. 

The surgeons completed their work. Lazarus, now alien to 
Earth, journeyed to Venus with Mondschein and the rest of the 
Harmonist retinue. It was in the nature of a triumphant homecoming, if one can be said to come home to a place where one 
has never been before. 

Green-robed brethren with bluish-purple skins greeted him. 
Lazarus saw the Harmonist shrines, the holy ikons of his order. 
They had carried the spiritualistic element further than he had 
ever visualized, practically deifying him, but Lazarus did not intend to correct that. He knew how precarious his position was. 
There were men of entrenched power in his organization who 
secretly might not welcome a prophet’s return, and who might 
give him a second martyrdom if he challenged their vested interests. Lazarus moved warily. 

“We have made great progress with the espers,” Mondschein 
told him. “We’re considerably ahead of Vorst’s work in that line, 
so far as we know.” 

“Do you have telekinesis yet?” 

“For twenty years We’re building the power steadily. Another 
generation—” 

“I’d like a demonstration.” 

“We have one planned,” Mondschein said. 

They showed him what they could do. To reach into a block of 
wood and set its molecules dancing in flame—to move a boulder through the sky—to whisk themselves from place to place— 
yes, it was impressive, it defied comprehension. It certainly must 
be beyond the abilities of the Brotherhood on Earth. 

The Venusian espers cavorted for Lazarus, hour after hour. 
Mondschein, sedate and complacent, gleamed with satisfaction, 
spoke of thresholds, levitation, telekinetic impetus, fulcrums of 


To Open the Sky 

unity, and other matters that left Lazarus baffled but encouraged. 

He who had returned pointed to the gray band of clouds that 
hid the heavens. 

“How soon?” Lazarus asked. 

“We’re not ready for interstellar transport yet,” Mondschein 
replied. “Not even interplanetary, though in theory one shouldn’t 
be any harder than the other. We’re working on it. Give us time. 
We’ll succeed.” 

“Can we do it without Vorst’s help?” Lazarus asked. 
Mondschein’s complacence was punctured. “What kind of help 
can he give us? I’ve told you, we’re a generation ahead of his 
espers.” 

“And will espers be enough? Perhaps he can supply what we’re 
missing. A joint venture—Harmonists and Vorsters collaborating—don’t you think the possibilities are worth exploring, Brother 
Christopher?” 

Mondschein smiled blandly. “Why, yes, yes, of course. Certainly they’re worth exploring. It’s an approach we hadn’t considered. I admit, but you give us a fresh insight into our problems. I’d like to discuss the matter with you further, after you’ve 
had a chance to settle down here.” 

Lazarus accepted Mondschein’s flow of words graciously. He 
had not, though, been away so long that he had forgotten how to 
read the meanings behind the meanings. 

He knew when he was being humored. 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

nine


At Santa Fe, with the unaccustomed invasion of Harmonists at 
its end, things returned to normal. Lazarus was come forth and 
loose upon the worlds, and the television men had retreated, 
and work went on. The tests, the experiments, the probing of 
the mysteries of life and mind—the ceaseless tasks of the Vorster 
inner movement. 

Kirby said, “Was there ever really a David Lazarus, Noel?” 

Vorst glowered up at him out of a thermoplastic cocoon. Hardly 
had the surgeons finished with Lazarus than they had gone to 
work on the Founder, who was suffering from an aneurysm in a 
twice-reconstituted blood vessel. Sensors had nailed the spot, 
subcutaneous scoops had exposed it, microtapes had been 
slammed into place, a network of thread and looping polymers 
replacing the dangerous bubble. Vorst was no stranger to such 
surgery. 

He said, “You saw Lazarus with your own eyes, Kirby.” 

“I saw something come out of that vault and stand up and talk 
rationally. I had conversations with it. I watched it get turned 
into a Venusian. That doesn’t mean it was real. You could build a 
Lazarus, couldn’t you, Noel?” 

“If I wanted to. But why would I want to?” 

“That’s obvious. To get control of the Harmonists.” 

“If I had designs against the Harmonists,” Vorst explained patiently, “I would have blotted them out fifty years ago, before 
they took Venus. They’re all right. That young man, 
Mondschein—he’s developed nicely.” 

“He isn’t young, Noel. He’s at least eighty.” 

“A child.” 

“Will you tell me whether Lazarus is genuine?” 

Vorst’s eyes fluttered in irritation. “He’s genuine, Kirby. Satisfied?” 

“Who put him in that vault?” 


To Open the Sky 

“His own followers, I suppose.” 

“Who then forgot all about it?” 

“Well, perhaps my men did it. Without authorization. Without 
telling me. It happened a long time ago.” Vorst’s hands moved in 
quick, agitated gestures. “How can I remember everything? He 
was found. We brought him back to life. I gave him to them. 
You’re annoying me, Kirby.” 

Kirby realized that he was treading a field salted with mines. 
He had pushed Vorst as far as Vorst could be pushed, and anything further would be disastrous. Kirby had seen other men 
presume too deeply on their closeness to Vorst, and he had seen 
that closeness imperceptibly withdrawn. 

“I’m sorry,” Kirby said. 

Vorst’s displeasure vanished. “You overrate my deviousness, 
Kirby. Stop worrying about Lazarus’s past. Simply consider the 
future. I’ve given him to the Harmonists. He’ll be valuable to 
them, whether they think so now or not. They’re indebted to me. 
I’ve planted a good, heavy obligation on them. Don’t you think 
that’s useful? They owe me something now. When the right time 
comes, I’ll cash that in.” 

Kirby remained mute. He sensed that somehow Vorst had altered the balance of power between the two cults, that the 
Harmonists, who had been on a rising curve ever since gaining 
possession of Venus and its rich lode of capers, had been brought 
to heel. But he did not know how it had been accomplished, and 
he did not care to try again to learn. 

Vorst was using his communicator. He looked up at Kirby. 

“They’ve got another burnout” he said. “I want to be there. 
Come with me, yes?” 

“Of course,” Kirby said. 

He accompanied the Founder through the maze of tubes. They 
emerged in the burnout ward. An esper lay dying, a boy this time, 
perhaps Hawaiian, his body jerking as though he were skewered 
on cords. 


Lazarus Come Forth 2152 

Vorst said, “A pity you’ve got no esping, Kirby. You’d see a 
glimpse of tomorrow.” 

“I’m too old to regret it now,” Kirby said. 

Vorst rolled forward and gestured to a waiting caper. The link 
was made. Kirby watched. What was Vorst experiencing now? 
The Founder’s lips were moving, almost writhing in a kind of 
sneer, pulling back from the gums with each twitch of the esper’s 
body. The boy was shuttling along the time-track, so they said. 
To Kirby that meant nothing. And Vorst, somehow, was shuttling 
with him, seeing a clouded view of the world on the other side of 
the wall of time. 

Now—now—back—forth— 

For a moment it seemed to Kirby that he, too, had joined the 
linkup and was riding the time-track as the esper’s other passenger. Was that the chaos of yesterday? And the golden glow of 
tomorrow? Now—now—damn you, you old schemer, what have 
you done to me?—Lazarus, rising above all else, Lazarus who 
wasn’t even real, only some android stew cooked up in an underground laboratory at Vorst’s command, a useful puppet, Kirby 
thought, Lazarus had grasped tomorrow and was stealing it— 
The contact broke. The esper was dead. 

“We’ve wasted another one,” Vorst muttered. The Founder 
looked at Kirby. “Are you sick?” he asked. 

“No. Tired.” 

“Get some rest. Six history spools and climb into a relaxer tank. 
We can ease up now. Lazarus is off our hands.” 

Kirby nodded. Someone drew a sheet over the dead esper’s 
body. In an hour the boy’s neurons would be in refrigeration 
somewhere in an adjoining building. Slowly, walking as if eight 
centuries and not just one weighed upon him, Kirby followed 
Vorst from the room. Night had fallen, and the stars over New 
Mexico had their peculiar hard brightness, and Venus, low 
against the mountainous horizon, was the brightest of all. They 
had their Lazarus, up there. They had lost a martyr and had 


To Open the Sky 

gained a prophet. And, Kirby was beginning to realize, the whole 
tribe of heretics had been swept neatly into Vorst’s pocket. The 
old man was damnable. Kirby huddled down into his robe and 
kept pace, with an effort, as Vorst wheeled himself toward his 
office. His head ached from that brief, unfathomable contact with 
the esper. But in ten minutes it was better. 

He thought of going to a chapel to pray. But what was the use? 
Why kneel before the Blue Fire? He need only go to Vorst for a 
blessing—Vorst, his mentor for almost eight decades. Vorst, who 
could make him feel still like a child, Vorst, who had brought 
Lazarus forth from the dead. 


Five


To Open the Sky 
2164 

one 

The surgical amphitheater was a chilly horseshoe lit by a pale 
violet glow. At the north end, windows on the level of the second 
gallery admitted frosty New Mexico sun-light. From where he 
sat, overlooking the operating table, Noel Vorst could see the 
bluish mountains in the middle distance beyond the confines of 
the research center. The mountains did not interest him. Neither did what was taking place on the operating table. But he 
kept his lack of interest to himself. 

Vorst had not needed to attend the operation in person, of 
course. He knew already that a successful outcome was improbable, and so did everyone else. But the Founder was 144 years 
old, and thought it useful to appear in public as often as his 
strength could sustain the effort, it did not do to have people 
think he had lapsed into senility. 

Down below, the surgeons were clustered about a bare brain. 
Vorst had watched them lift the dome of a skull and thrust their 
scalpels of light deep into the wrinkled gray mass. There were 
ten billion neurons in that block of tissue, and an infinity of axonal terminals and dendritic receptors. The surgeons hoped to 
rearrange the synaptic nets of that brain, altering the protein-
molecular switchgear to render the patient more useful to Vorst’s 
plan. 

Folly, the old man thought. He hid his pessimism and sat quietly, listening to the pulsing of the blood in his own glossy artifi


To Open the Sky 

cial arteries. 

What they were doing down there was remarkable, of course. 
Summoning all the resources of modem microsurgery, the leading men of the Noel Vorst Center for the Biological Sciences were 
altering the protein-protein molecular recognition patterns 
within a human brain. Twist the circuits about a bit: change the 
transsynaptic structures to build a better link between pre- and 
postsynaptic membranes; shunt individual synaptic inputs from 
one dendritic tree to another; in short, reprogram the brain to 
make it capable of doing what Noel Vorst wanted it to be capable 
of doing. 

Which was to serve as the propulsive force needed to hurl a 
team of explorers across the gulf of light-years to another star. 

It was an extraordinary project. For some fifty years the surgeons here at Vorst’s Santa Fe research center had prepared for 
it by meddling with the brains of cats and monkeys and dolphins. 
Now they had at last begun operating on human subjects. The 
patient on the table was a middle-grade esper, a precog with 
poor timebinding ability; his life expectancy was on the order of 
six months, and then a burnout could be anticipated. The precog 
knew all about that, which was why he had volunteered to be 
the subject. The most skilful surgeons in the world were at work 
on him. 

There were only two things wrong with the project, Vorst knew: 
It was not likely to succeed. 

And it was not at all necessary in the first place. 

You did not tell a group of dedicated men, however that their 
life’s work was pointless. Besides, there was always the faint hope 
that they might artificially create a pusher—a telekinetic—down 
there. So Vorst dutifully attended the operation. The men on the 
amphitheater floor knew that the Founder’s numinous presence 
was with them. Though they did not look up toward the gallery 
where Vorst sat, they knew the withered but still vigorous old 
man was smiling benignly down on them, cushioned against the 


To Open the Sky 2164 

pull of Earth by the webfoam cradle that sheltered his ancient 
limbs. 

The lenses of his eyes were synthetic. The coils of his intestines had been fashioned from laboratory polymers. The stoutly 
pumping heart came from an organ bank. Little remained of the 
original Noel Vorst but the brain itself, which was intact though 
awash with the anticoagulants that preserved it from disabling 
strokes. 

“Are you comfortable, sir?” the pale young acolyte at his side 
asked. 

“Perfectly. Are you?” 

The acolyte smiled at Vorst’s little joke. He was only twenty 
years old, and full of pride because it was his turn to accompany 
the Founder on his daily round. Vorst liked young people about 
him. They were tremendously in awe of him, naturally, but they 
managed to be warm and respectful without canonizing him. 
Within his body there throbbed the contributions of many a young 
Vorster volunteer: a film of lung tissue from one, a retina from 
another, kidneys from a pair of twins. He was a patch-work man, 
who carded the flesh of his movement about with him. 

The surgeons were bending low over the exposed brain down 
there. Vorst could not see what they were doing. A pickup embedded in a surgical instrument relayed the scene to a lambent 
screen on the level of the viewing gallery, but even the enlarged 
image did not tell Vorst much. Baffled and bored, he retained his 
look of lively interest all the same. 

Quietly he pushed a communicator stud on his armrest and 
said, “Is Coordinator Kirby going to get here soon?” 

“He’s talking to Venus, sir.” 

“Who’s ho speaking to? Lazarus or Mondschein?” 

“Mondschein, sir. I’ll tell him to come to you as soon as he’s 
off.” 

Vorst smiled. Protocol suggested that such high-level negotiations be carried on at the administrative level, between the ex


To Open the Sky 

ecutives and not between the prophets. So the second-in-commands were speaking: Hemispheric Coordinator Reynolds Kirby 
on behalf of the Vorsters of Earth, and Christopher Mondschein 
for the Harmonists who ran Venus. But in time it would be necessary to close the deal with a conference between those most 
closely in tune with the Eternal Oneness, and that would be the 
task of Vorst and Lazarus. 

…to close the deal… 

A tremor pulled Vorst’s right hand into a sudden claw. The 
acolyte swung around attentively, ready to jab buttons until he 
had restored the Founder’s metabolic equilibrium. Grimly Vorst 
compelled the hand to relax. 

“I’m all right,” he insisted. 

…to open the sky… 

They were so close to the end now that it had all begun to 
seem like a dream. A century of scheming, playing chess with 
unborn antagonists, rearing a fantastic edifice of theocracy on a 
single slender, arrogant hope—Was it madness, Vorst wondered, 
to wish to reshape the pattern of history? 

Was it monstrous, he asked himself, to succeed? On the operating table, the patient’s leg came swimming up out of a sea of 
swathing and kicked fitfully and convulsively at the air. The 
anesthetist’s fingers played over his console, and the esper who 
was standing by for such an emergency went into silent action. 
There was a flurry of activity about the table. 

In that moment a tall, weathered-looking old man entered the 
gallery and presented himself to Vorst. 

“How’s the operation going?” Reynolds Kirby asked. 

“The patient just died,” said Vorst. “Things seemed to be going so well, too.” 


To Open the Sky 2164 

two


Kirby had not expected much from the operation. He had discussed it fully with Vorst the day before; though he was no scientist himself, the Coordinator tried to keep abreast of the work 
being done at the research center. His own sphere of responsibility was administrative; it was Kirby’s job to oversee the far-
flung secular activities of the religious cult that virtually ruled 
the planet. It was almost ninety years since Kirby himself had 
been converted, and had watched the cult grow mighty. 

Political power, though it was useful to wield, was not supposed to be the Brotherhood’s goal. The essence of the movement was its scientific program, centering on the facilities at 
Santa Fe. Here, over the decades, an unsurpassable factory of 
miracles had been constructed, lubricated by the cash contributions of billions of tithing Vorsters on every continent. And the 
miracles had been forthcoming. The regeneration processes now 
insured a predictable life span of three or four centuries for the 
newborn, perhaps more, for no one could be certain that immortality had been achieved until a few millennia of testing had 
elapsed. The Brotherhood could offer a reasonable facsimile of 
life eternal, at any rate, and that was a sufficient redemption of 
the promissory note on which the whole movement had been 
founded a hundred years before. 

The other goal, though—the stars—had given the Brotherhood 
a harder pursuit. Man was locked into his solar system by the 
limiting velocity of light. Chemical-fueled rockets and even ion-
drive ships simply took too long to get about. Mars and Venus 
were within easy reach, but the cheerless outer planets were 
not, and the round trip to the nearest star would take a few decades by current technology, nine years even at the very best. So 
man had transformed Mars into a habitable world, and he had 
transformed himself into something capable of inhabiting Venus. He mined the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, paid occasional 


To Open the Sky 

visits to Pluto, and sent robots down to examine Mercury and 
the gas giants. And looked hopelessly to the stars. 

The laws of relativity governed the motions of real bodies 
through real space, but they did not necessarily apply to the 
events of the paranormal world. To Noel Vorst, it had seemed 
that the only route to the stars was the extrasensory one. So he 
had gathered espers of all varieties at Santa Fe, and for generations now had carried on breeding programs and genetic manipulations. The Brotherhood had spawned an interesting variety of espers, but none with the talent of transporting physical 
bodies through space. While on Venus the telekinetic mutation 
had happened spontaneously, an ironic byproduct of the adaptation of human life to that world. 

Venus was beyond direct Vorster control. The Harmonists of 
Venus had the pushers that Vorst needed to reach into the galaxy. They showed little interest, though, in collaborating with 
the Vorsters on an expedition. For weeks now Reynolds Kirby 
had been negotiating with his opposite number on Venus, attempting to bring about an agreement. 

Meanwhile the surgeons at Santa Fe had never given up their 
dream of creating pushers out of Earthmen, thus making the 
cooperation of the unpredictable Venusians unnecessary. The 
synaptic-rearrangement project, flowering at last, had come to 
the stage where a human subject would go under the beam. 

“It won’t work,” Vorst had said to Kirby. “They’re still fifty years 
away from anything.” 

“I don’t understand it, Noel. The Venusians have the gene for 
telekinesis, don’t they? Why can’t we just duplicate it? Considering all we’ve done with the nucleic acids—” 

Vorst smiled. “There’s no ‘gene for telekinesis,’ as such, you 
know. It’s part of a constellation of genetic patterns. We’ve been 
trying consciously to duplicate it for thirty years, and we aren’t 
even close. We’ve also been trying a random approach, since 
that’s how the Venusians got the ability. No luck there, either. 


To Open the Sky 2164 

And then there’s this synapse business: alter the brain itself, not 
the genes. That may get us somewhere, eventually. But I can’t 
wait another fifty years.” 

“You’ll live that long, certainly.” 

“Yes,” Vorst agreed, “but I still can’t wait any longer. The 
Venusians have the men we need. It’s time to win them to our 
purposes.” 

Patienty Kirby had wooed the heretics. There were signs of 
progress in the negotiations now. In view of the failure of the 
operation, the need for an agreement with Venus was more urgent. 

“Come with me,” Vorst said, as the dead patient was wheeled 
away. “They’re testing that gargoyle today, and I want to watch.” 

Kirby followed the Founder out of the amphitheater. Acolytes 
were close by in case of trouble. Vorst, these days, rarely tried to 
walk any more, and rolled along in his cradling net of webfoam. 
Kirby still preferred to use his feet, though he was nearly as ancient as Vorst. The sight of the two of them promenading through 
the plazas of the research center always stirred attention. 

“You aren’t disturbed over the failure just now?” Kirby asked. 

“Why should I be? I told you it was too soon for success.” 

“What about this gargoyle? Any hope?” 

“Our hope,” Vorst said quietly, “is Venus. They already have 
the pushers.” 

“Then why keep trying to develop them here?” 

“Momentum. The Brotherhood hasn’t slowed down in a hundred years. I’m not closing any avenues now. Not even the hopeless ones. It’s all a matter of momentum.” 

Kirby shrugged. For all the power he held in the organization—and his powers were immense—he had never felt that he 
held any real initiative. The plans of the movement were generated, as they had been from the first, by Noel Vorst. He and only 
he knew what game he was playing. And if Vorst died this afternoon, with the game unfinished? What would happen to the 


To Open the Sky 

movement then? Run on its own momentum? To what end, Kirby 
wondered. 

They entered a squat, glittering little building of irradiated 
green foamglass. An awed hush preceded them: Vorst was coming! Men in blue robes came out to greet the Founder. They led 
him to the room in the rear where the gargoyle was kept. Kirby 
kept pace, ignoring the acolytes who were ready to catch him if 
he stumbled. 

The gargoyle was sitting enmeshed in lacy restraining ribbons. 
He was not a pretty sight. Thirteen years old, three feet tall, grotesquely deformed, deaf, crippled, his corneas clouded, his skin 
pebbled and granulated. A mutant, though not one produced by 
any laboratory; this was Hurler’s Syndrome, a natural and congenital error of metabolism, first identified scientifically two and 
a half centuries before. The unlucky parents had brought the 
hapless monster to a chapel of the Brotherhood in Stockholm, 
hoping that by bathing him in the Blue Fire of the cobalt reactor 
his defects would be cured. The defects had not been cured, but 
an esper at the chapel had detected latent talents in the gargoyle, and so be was here to be probed and tested. Kirby felt a 
shiver of revulsion. 

“What causes such a thing?” he asked the medic at his elbow. 

“Abnormal genes. They produce metabolic error that results 
in an accumulation of mucopolysaccharides in the tissues of the 
body.” 

Kirby nodded solemnly. “And is there supposed to be a direct 
link with esping?’ 

“Only coincidental,” said the medic. 

Vorst had moved up to study the creature at close range. The 
Founder’s eye-shutters clicked as he peered forward. The gargoyle was humped and folded, virtually unable to move its limbs. 
The milky eyes held a look of pure misery. To the euthanasia 
heap with this one, Kirby thought. Yet Vorst hoped that such a 
monster would take him to the stars! 


To Open the Sky 2164 

“Begin the examination,” Vorst murmured. 

A pair of espers came forward, general-purpose types: a slick 
young woman with frizzy hair, and a plump, sad-faced man. Kirby, 
whose own esping facilities were deficient to the point of nonexistence, watched in silence as the wordless examination commenced. What were they doing? What shafts were they aiming 
at the huddled creature before them? Kirby did not know, and 
he took comfort in the fact that Vorst probably did not know himself. The Founder wasn’t much of an esper, either. 

Ten minutes passed. Then the girl looked up and said, “Loworder pyrotic, mainly.” 

“He can push molecules about?” Vorst said. “Then he’s got a 
shred of telekinesis.” 

“Only a shred,” the second esper said. “Nothing that others 
don’t have. Also low-order communication abilities. He sits there 
telling us to kill him.” 

“I’d recommend dissection,” said the girl. “The subject 
wouldn’t mind.” 

Kirby shuddered. These two bland espers had peered within 
the mind of that crippled thing, and that in itself should have 
been enough to shrivel their souls. To see, for an empathic moment, what it was like to be a thirteen-year-old human gargoyle, 
to look out upon the world through those clouded eyes—! But 
they were all business, these two. They had merged minds with 
monstrosities before. 

Vorst waved his hand. “Keep him for further study. Maybe he 
can be guided toward usefulness. If he’s really a pyrotic, take 
the usual precautions.” 

The Founder whirled his chair around and started to leave the 
ward. At that same moment an acolyte came hurrying in, bearing a message. He froze at the unexpected sight of Vorst wheeling toward a collision with him. Vorst smiled paternally and 
guided himself around the boy, who went limp with relief. 

The acolyte said, “Message for you, Coordinator Kirby.” 


To Open the Sky 

Kirby took it and jammed his thumb against the seal. The en

velope popped open. 
The message was from Mondschein. 
“Lazarus is ready to talk to Vorst,” it said. 


To Open the Sky 2164 

three


Vorst said, “I was insane, you know. For something like ten 
years. Later I discovered what the trouble was. I was suffering 
from time-float.” 

The pallid esper girl’s eyes were very round as she gazed at 
him. They were alone in the Founder’s personal quarters. She 
was thin, loose-limbed, thirty years old. Strands of black hair 
dangled like painted straw down the sides of her face. Her name 
was Delphine, and in all the months that she had served Vorst’s 
needs she had never become accustomed to his frankness. She 
had little chance to; when she left his office after each session, 
other espers erased her recollections of the visit. 

She said, “Shall I turn myself on?” 

“Not yet, Delphine. Do you ever think of yourself as insane? In 
the difficult moments, the moments when you start ranging along 
the time-line and don’t think you’ll ever get back to now?” 

“It’s pretty scary sometimes.” 

“But you get back. That’s the miraculous thing. You know how 
many floaters I’ve seen burn out?” Vorst asked. “Hundreds. I’d 
have burned out myself, except that I’m a lousy precog. Back 
then, though, I kept breaking loose, drifting along the time-line. 
I saw the whole Brotherhood spread out before me. Call it a vision, call it a dream. I saw it, Delphine. Blurred around the edges.” 

“Just as you told it in your book?” 

“More or less,” said the Founder. “The years between 2055 
and 2063—those were the years I had the visions worst. When I 
was thirty-five, it started. I was just an ordinary technician, a 
nobody, and then I got what could be called divine inspiration, 
except all it was was a peek at my own future. I thought I was 
going crazy. Later I understood.” 

The esper was silent. Vorst shuttered his eyes. The memories 
glowed in him: after years of internal chaos and collapse he had 
come from the crucible of madness purified, aware of his pur


To Open the Sky 

pose. He saw how he could reshape the world. More than that, 
he saw how he had reshaped the world. After that it was just a 
matter of making the beginning, of founding the first chapels, 
dreaming up the rituals of the cult, surrounding himself with 
the scientific talent necessary to realize his goals. Was there a 
touch of paranoia in his purpose, a bit of Hitler, a tinge of Napoleon, a tincture of Genghis Khan? Perhaps. Vorst complacently 
viewed himself as a fanatic and even as a megalomaniac. But a 
cool, rational megalomanic, and a successful one. He had been 
willing to stop at nothing to gain his ends, and he was just enough 
of a precog to know that he was going to gain them. 

He said, “It’s a big responsibility, setting out to transform the 
world. A man has to be a little daft to attempt it or even to think 
he can attempt it. But it helps to know what the outcome must 
be. One doesn’t feel so idiotic, knowing that he’s simply acting 
out the inevitable.” 

“It takes the challenge out of life,” said the esper. 

“Ah, Delphine, you touch the gaping wound! But you’d know, 
of course. How dreary it is to be playing out your own script, 
aware of what’s ahead. At least I’ve had the mercy of uncertainty 
in the small things. I can’t see very much myself, so I have to 
hitchhike with floaters like you, and the visions aren’t clear. But 
you see clearly, don’t you, Delphine? You’ve been along your own 
world-line. Have you seen your own burnout yet, Delphine?” 

The esper’s cheeks colored. She looked at the floor and did 
not answer. 

“I’m sorry, Delphine,” Vorst said. “I had no right to ask that. I 
retract it. Turn on for me, Deiphine. Do your trick. Take me along. 
I’ve said too much today.” 

Shyly, the girl composed herself for her great effort. She had 
more control than most of her kind, Vorst knew. Whereas most 
of the precogs eventually slipped their moorings, Deiphine had 
clung to her powers and her life and had reached what was, for 
her kind of esper, a ripe old age. She would burn out, too, one 


To Open the Sky 2164 

day, when she over-reached herself. But up to now she had been 
invaluable to Vorst, his crystal ball, the most helpful of all the 
floaters who had aided him in plotting his course. And if she 
could hold out just a while longer, until he saw his route past the 
final obstacles, the long journey would end and they both could 
rest. 

She released her grip on the present and moved into that realm 
where all moments are now. 

Vorst watched and waited and felt the girl taking him along as 
she began her time-shuttling. He could not initiate the journey 
himself, but he could follow. Mists enfolded him, and he swung 
dizzily along the line of time, as he had done so often before. He 
saw himself, here and here and here, and saw others, shadow-
figures, dream-figures, lurking behind the curtains of time. 

Lazarus? Yes, Lazarus was there. Kirby, too. Mondschein. All 
of them, the pawns in the game. Vorst saw the glow of otherness 
and looked out upon a landscape that was neither Earth nor Mars 
nor Venus. He trembled. He looked up at a tree eight hundred 
feet high, with a corona of azure leaves against a foggy sky. Then 
he was ripped away, and hurled into the stinking confusion of a 
rain-spattered city street, and stood before one of his early chapels. The building was on fire in the rain, and the smell of scorched 
wet wood assailed his nostrils. And then, smiling into the stunned, 
parched face of Reynolds Kirby. And then— 

The sense of motion left him. He slipped back into his own 
matrix of time, making the adrenal adjustments that compensated for his exertions. The floater lay slumped in her chair, 
sweat-flecked, dazed. Vorst summoned an acolyte. 

“Take her to her ward,” he said. “Have them work on her until 
she comes back to her strength.” 

The acolyte nodded and lifted the girl. Vorst sat motionless 
until they were gone. He was satisfied with the session. It had 
confirmed his own intuitive ideas of his immediate direction, 
and that was always comforting. 


To Open the Sky 

“Send me Capodimonte,” Vorst said into the communicator. 

The chubby blue-robed figure entered a few minutes later. 
When Vorst was in Santa Fe, one did not waste time in getting to 
his quarters after a summons. Capodimonte was the District 
Supervisor for the Santa Fe region, and was customarily in charge 
here except when such figures as Vorst or Kirby were in residence. Capodimonte was stolid, loyal, useful. Vorst trusted him 
for delicate assignments. They exchanged quick, casual benedictions now. 

Then Vorst said, “Capo, how long would it take you to pick the 
personnel for an interstellar expedition?” 

“Inter—” 

“Say, for departure later this year. Run the specs off at Archives 
and get together a few possible teams.” 

Capodimonte had recovered his aplomb. “What size teams?” 

All sizes. From two persons to about a dozen. Start with an 
Adam-and-Eve pair, and work up to, say, six couples. Matched 
for health, adaptability, compatibility, skills, and fertility.” 

“Espers?” 

“With caution. You can throw in a couple of empaths, a couple 
of healers. Stay away from the exotics, though. And remember 
that these people are supposed to be pioneers. They’ve got to be 
flexible. We can do without geniuses on this trip, Capo.” 

“You want me to report to you or to Kirby when I’ve made the 
lists?” 

“To me, Capo. I don’t want you to utter a syllable about this to 
Kirby or anyone else. Just get in there and run off the groups as 
we’ve already programmed them. I’m not sure what size expedition we’ll be sending, and I want to have a group ready that’ll 
be self-sufficient at any level—two, four, eight, whatever it turns 
out to be. Take two or three days. When you’ve done that, put 
hail a dozen of your best men to work on the logistics of the trip. 
Assume an esper-powered capsule and go over the optimum 
designs. We’ve had decades to plan it; we must have a whole 


To Open the Sky 2164 

arsenal full of blueprints. Look them over. This is your baby, 

Capo.” 

“Sir? One subversive question, please?” 

“Ask it.” 

“Is this a hypothetical exercise I’m doing, or is this the real 
thing?” 

“I don’t know,” said Vorst. 


To Open the Sky 


To Open the Sky 2164 

four


The blue face of a Venusian looked out of the screen, alien 
and forbidding, but its owner had been born an Earthman, and 
the terrestrial heritage betrayed itself in the shape of the skull, 
the set of the lips, the thrust of the chin. The face was that of 
David Lazarus, founder and resurrected head of the cult of Transcendent Harmony. Vorst had conferred often with Lazarus in 
the twelve years since the arch-heresiarch’s resurrection. And 
always the two prophets had allowed themselves the luxury of 
full visual contact. It was monumentally expensive to bounce 
not only voices but images down the chain of relay stations that 
led from Venus to Earth, but expense meant little to these men, 
Vorst insisted. He liked to see Lazarus’s transformed face as they 
spoke. It gave him something to focus on during the long, dull 
time-lags in their conversations. Even at the speed of light it 
took a while for a message to get from planet to planet. Even a 
simple exchange of views required more than an hour. 

Comfortable in his nest of webfoam, Vorst said, “I think it’s 
time to unite our movements, David. We complement one another. There’s nothing to gain from further division.” 

“There might be something to lose by union,” said Lazarus. 
“We’re the younger branch. If you reabsorbed us, we’d be swallowed up in your hierarchy.” 

“Not so. I guarantee you that your Harmonists will remain fully 
autonomous. More than that, I’ll guarantee you a dominant role 
in policy setting.” 

“What kind of guarantee can you offer?” 

“Let that pass a moment,” Vorst said. “I’ve got an interstellar 
team ready to go. They’ll be fully equipped in a matter of months. 
I mean fully equipped. They’ll be able to cope with anything they 
meet. But they have to have a way of getting out of the solar 
system. Give us a push, David. You’ve got the personnel now. 
We’ve monitored your experiments.” 


To Open the Sky 

Lazarus nodded, his gill-bunches quivering. “I won’t deny what 
we’ve done. We can push a thousand tons from here to Pluto. We 
can keep the same mass going right to infinity.” 

“How long to get to Pluto?” 

“Fast. I won’t tell you exactly how fast. But let’s just say the 
stars are in reach. Have been for the past eight or ten months. 
We could get a ship there in—oh, let’s call it a year. Of course, 
we’d have no way of maintaining contact. We can push, but we 
can’t talk across a dozen light-years. Can you?” 

“No,” said Vorst. “The expedition would be out of contact the 
moment it got past radio range. It would have to send back a 
conventional relay ship to announce its safe arrival. We wouldn’t 
know for decades. But we have to try. Give us your men, David.” 

“You realize it would burn out dozens of our most promising 
youngsters?” 

“I realize. Give us your men, anyway. We understand techniques for repairing burnouts. Let them push the ship to the stars, 
and when they drop in their tracks, we’ll try to fix them up again. 
That’s what Santa Fe is for.” 

“First drive them to exhaustion, then patch them together?” 
Lazarus asked. “That’s ruthless. Are the stars that important? I’d 
rather see these boys develop their powers here on Venus and 
remain intact.” 

“We need them.” 

“So do we?’ 

Vorst made use of the interval to flood his body with stimulants. He was tingling, palpitating with vigor by the time his reply was due. He said, “David, I own you. I made you and I want 
you. I put you to sleep in 2090 when you were nothing, an upstart, and I brought you back to life in 2152 and gave you a world. 
You owe me everything. Now I’m calling in that obligation. I’ve 
been waiting a hundred years to reach this position. You people 
finally have the espers who can send my people to the stars. 
Whatever the personal cost at your end, I want you to send them.” 


To Open the Sky 2164 

The strain of that speech left Vorst dizzy with fatigue. But he 
had time to recover. Time to think, to wait for the reply. He had 
made his gamble, and now it was up to Lazarus. Vorst did not 
have many cards left to play. 

The blue-faced figure in the screen was motionless; Vorst’s 
words had not even reached Venus yet. Lazarus’s reply was a 
long time in coming. 

He said, “I didn’t think you’d be so blunt, Vorst. Why should I 
be grateful to you for reviving me, when you jammed me into 
that hole in the first place? Oh, I know. Because my movement 
was insignificant when you took me away from it and a major 
force when you brought me back. Do you take credit for that 
too?” A pause. “Never mind. I don’t want to give you my espers. 
Breed your own, if you want to get to the stars.” 

“You’re talking foolishness. You want the stars, too, David. But 
you don’t have the technical facilities, up there in the backwoods, 
to equip an expedition. I do. Let’s join forces. It’s what you yourself want to do, no matter how tough you talk now. Let me tell 
you what’s holding you back from agreeing to join me, David. 
You’re afraid of what your own people will do to you when they 
find out you’ve agreed to cooperate. They’ll say you’ve sold out 
to the Vorsters. You’re frozen in a position you don’t believe, just 
because you don’t have real independence. Assert yourself, 
David. Use your powers. I put that planet into your hands. Now I 
want you to repay me.” 

“How can I go to Mondschein and Martell and the others and 
tell them that I’ve meekly agreed to submit to you?” Lazarus 
asked. “They’re restless enough at having had a resurrected 
martyr slapped down on top of them. There are times when I 
expect them to martyr me again, and this time for good. I need a 
bargaining point.” 

Vorst smiled. Victory was in his grasp now. He said, “Tell them, 
David. that I offer you supreme authority over both worlds. Tell 
them that the Brotherhood not only will welcome the Harmonists 


To Open the Sky 

back, but that you’ll be made the sole head of both branches of 

the faith.” 

“Both?” 

“Both.” 

“And what becomes of you?” 

Vorst told him. And once the words were past his lips, the 
Founder sank back, limp with relief, knowing that he had made 
the final move in a game a century old, and that it had all come 
out in the right way. 


To Open the Sky 2164 

five


Reynolds Kirby was with his therapist when the summons came 
to go to Vorst. The Hemispheric Coordinator lay in a nutrient 
bath, an adapted Nothing Chamber whose purpose was not 
oblivion but revivification. If Kirby had chosen to escape into 
temporary nothingness, he could have sealed himself off from 
the universe and entered complete suspension. He had long since 
outgrown the need for such amusements, though. Now he was 
content to loll in the nutrient bath, restoring the vital substances 
after a fatiguing day, while an esper therapist combed the snags 
from his soul. 

Ordinarily, Kirby did not tolerate interruptions of such sessions. At his age he needed all the peace he could get. He had 
been born too early to share the quasi-immortality of the younger 
generations; his body could not snap back to vitality the way a 
twenty-second-century man’s body could, for he had not had the 
benefit of a century of Vorster research when he was born. There 
was one exception to Kirby’s rule, however: a summons from 
Vorst took precedence over everything, even a session of needed 
therapy. 

The therapist knew it. Deftly he brought the session to a premature close and fortified Kirby for his return to the tensions of 
the world. In less than half an hour the Coordinator was on his 
way to the white dome-roofed building where Vorst made his 
headquarters. 

Vorst looked shaky. Kirby had never seen the Founder look so 
drained of strength. The vault of Vorst’s forehead was like the 
roof of a skull, and the dark eyes blazed with a peculiarly discomfiting intensity. A low pumping sound was evident in the 
room: Vorst’s machinery, feeding strength to the ancient body. 
Kirby took the seat toward which Vorst beckoned him. Strong 
fingers in the upholstery grasped him and began to knead the 


To Open the Sky 

tension out of him. 

Vorst said, “I’ll be calling a council meeting in a little while to 
ratify the steps I’ve just taken. But before the entire group gathers. I want to discuss things with you, run them through once or 
twice.” 

Kirby’s expression was guarded. After decades with Vorst, he 
could supply an instant translation: I’ve done something authoritarian, Vorst was saying, and I’m going to call in everybody to 
rubber-stamp an okay on it, but first I’m going to force a rubber-
stamping out of you. Kirby was prepared to acquiesce in whatever Vorst had done. He was not a weak man by nature, but one 
did not dispute the doings of Vorst. The last one who had seriously attempted to try was Lazarus, who had slept in a box on 
Mars for sixty years as a result. 

Into Kirby’s wary silence Vorst murmured, “I’ve talked to 
Lazarus and closed the deal. He’s agreed to supply us with pushers, as many as we need. It’s possible we’ll have an interstellar 
expedition on its way by the end of the year.” 

“I feel a little numb at that, Noel.” 

“Anticlimactic, isn’t it? For a hundred years you move an inch 
at a time toward that goal, and suddenly you find yourself staring at the finish line, and the thrill of pursuit becomes the boredom of accomplishment.” 

“We haven’t landed that expedition on another solar system 
yet,” Kirby reminded the Founder quietly. 

“We will We will. That’s beyond doubt. We’re at the finish line 
now. Capodimonte’s already running personnel checks for the 
expedition. We’ll be outfitting the capsule soon. Lazarus’s bunch 
will cooperate, and off we’ll go. That much is certain.” 

“How did you get him to agree, Noel?” 

“By showing him how it will be after the expedition has set 
out. Tell me, have you given much thought to the goals of the 
Brotherhood once we’ve sent that first expedition?” 

Kirby hesitated. “Well—sending more expeditions, I guess. And 


To Open the Sky 2164 

consolidating our position. Continuing the medical research. 
Carrying on with all our current work.” 

“Exactly. A long smooth slide toward utopia. No longer an uphill climb. That’s why I won’t stay around to run things any 
longer.” 

“What?” 

“I’m going on the expedition,” Vorst said. 

If Vorst had ripped off one of his limbs and clubbed him to the 
floor with it, Kirby would not have been more amazed. The 
Founder’s words hit him with an almost physical jolt, making 
him recoil. Kirby seized the arms of his chair, and in response 
the chair seized him, cradling him gently until his spasm of shock 
abated. 

“You’re going?” Kirby blurted. “No. No. It’s beyond belief, Noel. 
It’s madness.” 

“My mind’s made up. My work on Earth is done. I’ve guided 
the Brotherhood for a century, and that’s long enough. I’ve seen 
it take control of Earth, and by proxy I have Venus, too, and I 
have the cooperation if not exactly the support of the Martians. 
I’ve done all I’ve intended to do here. With the departure of the 
first interstellar expedition, I will have fulfilled what I’ll be so 
gaudy as to call my mission on Earth. It’s time to be moving along. 
I’ll try another solar system.” 

“We won’t let you go,” Kirby said, astounded by his own words. 
“You can’t go! At your age—to get aboard a capsule bound for— 
” 

“If I don’t go,” said Vorst, “there will be no capsule bound for 
anywhere.” 

“Don’t talk that way, Noel. You sound like a spoiled child threatening to call the party off if we don’t play the game your way. 
There are others bound up in the Brotherhood, too.” 

To Kirby’s surprise, Vorst looked merely amused at the harsh 
accusation. “I think you’re misinterpreting my words,” he said. 
“I don’t mean to say that unless I go along, I’ll halt the expedi


To Open the Sky 

tion. I mean that the use of Lazarus’s espers is contingent on my 
leaving. If I’m not aboard that capsule, he won’t lend his pushers.” 

For the second time in ten Mondschein Kirby was rocked by 
amazement. This time there was pain, too, for he was aware 
that there had been a betrayal. 

“Is that the deal you made, Noel?” 

“It was a fair price to pay. A shift of power is long overdue. I 
step out of the picture; Lazarus becomes supreme head of the 
movement; you can be his vicar on Earth. We get the espers. We 
open the sky. It works well for everybody concerned.” 

“No, Noel.” 

“I’m weary of being here. I want to leave. Lazarus wants me to 
leave, too. I’m too big, I overtop the entire movement. It’s time 
for mortals to move in. You and Lazarus can divide the authority. He’ll have the spiritual supremacy, but you’ll run Earth. The 
two of you will work out some kind of communicant relation 
between the Harmonists and the Brotherhood. It won’t be too 
hard; the rituals are similar enough. Ten years and any lingering bitterness will be gone. And I’ll be a dozen light-years away, 
safely out of your path, unable to meddle, living in retirement. 
Out to pasture on World XI of System Y. Yes?” 

“I don’t believe any of this, Noel. That you’d abdicate after a 
century, go swooshing off to nowhere with a bunch of pioneers, 
live in a log cabin on an unknown planet at the age of nearly a 
hundred and fifty, drop the reins—” 

“Start believing it,” said Vorst. For the first time in the conversation the old whiplash tone returned to his voice. “I’m going. 
It’s decided. In a sense, I have gone.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“You know I’m a very low-order floater. That I plan things by 
hitchhiking with precogs.” 

“Yes” 

“I’ve seen the outcome. I know how it was, and so I know how 


To Open the Sky 2164 

it’s going to be. I leave. I’ve followed the plan this far—followed 
and led, all in one, heels over head through time. Everything 
I’ve done I’ve had a hint of beforehand. From founding the Brotherhood right to this moment. So it’s settled. I go.” 

Kirby closed his eyes. He struggled for balance. 

Vorst said, “Look back on the path I’ve traveled. Was there a 
false step anywhere? The Brotherhood prospered. It took Earth. 
When we were strong enough to afford a schism, I encouraged 
the Harmonist heresy.” 

“You encouraged—” 

“I chose Lazarus for what he had to do and filled him full of 
ideas. He was just an insignificant acolyte, clay in my hands. 
That’s why you never knew him in the early days. But he was 
there. I took him. I molded him. I got his movement going in 
opposition to ours.” 

“Why, Noel?” 

“It didn’t pay to be monolithic. I was hedging my bets. The 
Brotherhood was designed to win Earth, and it did, but the same 
principles didn’t—couldn’t—appeal to Venus, So I started a second cult. I tailored that one for Venus and gave them Lazarus. 
Later I gave them Mondschein, too. Do you remember that, in 
2095? He was only a greedy little acolyte, but I saw the strength 
in him, and I nudged him around until he found himself a 
changed one on Venus. I built that entire organization.” 

“And you knew that they’d come up with pushers?” Kirby asked 
incredulously. 

“I didn’t know. I hoped. All I knew was that setting up the 
Harmonists was a good idea, because I saw that it had been a 
good idea. Follow? For the same reason I took Lazarus away and 
hid him in a crypt for sixty years. I didn’t know why at the time. 
But I knew it might be useful to keep the Harmonist martyr in 
my pocket for a while, as a card to play in the future. I played 
that card twelve years ago, and since then the Harmonists have 
been mine. Today I played my last card: myself. I have to leave. 


To Open the Sky 

My work is done, anyway. I’m bored with running out the skein. 
I’ve juggled everything for a hundred years, setting up my own 
opposition, creating conflicts designed to lead to an ultimate synthesis, and that synthesis is here, and I’m leaving.” 

After a long silence Kirby said, “You humiliate me, Noel, by 
asking me to ratify a decision that’s already as immutable as the 
tides and the sunrise.” 

“You’re free to oppose it at the council meeting.” 

“But you’ll go, anyway?” 

“Yes. I’d like your support, though. It won’t matter to the eventual outcome, but I’d still rather have you on my side than not I’d 
like to think that you of all people understand what I’ve been 
doing all these years. Do you believe there’s any reason for me 
to stay on Earth any longer?” 

“We need you, Noel. That’s the only reason.” 

“Now you’re the one who’s being childish. You don’t need me. 
The plan is fulfilled. It’s time to clear out and turn the job over to 
others. You’re too dependent on me, Ron. You can’t get used to 
the idea that I’m not going to be pulling the strings forever.” 

“Perhaps that’s it,” admitted Kirby. “But whose fault is that? 
You’ve surrounded yourself with yes-men. You’ve made yourself 
indispensable. Here you sit at the heart of the movement like a 
sacred fire, and none of us can get close enough to be singed. 
Now you’re taking the fire away.” 

“Transferring it,” said Vorst. “Here, I’ve got a job for you. The 
members of the council will be arriving in six hours. I’m going 
to make my announcement, and I suppose it’ll shake everybody 
else the way it shook you. Go off by yourself for the next six 
hours and think about all I’ve just said. Reconcile yourself to it. 
More, don’t just accept it, but approve of it. At the meeting stand 
up and explain not simply why it’s all right if I go, but why it’s 
necessary and vital to the future of the Brotherhood that I go.” 

“You mean—” 

“Don’t say anything now. You’re still hostile. You won’t be af


To Open the Sky 2164 

ter you’ve examined the dynamics of it. Keep your mouth closed 

till then.” 

Kirby smiled. “You’re still pulling strings, aren’t you?” 

“It’s an old habit by now. But this is the last one I’ll ever pull. 
And I promise you, your mind will change. You’ll see my point of 
view in an hour or two. By nightfall you’ll be willing to stuff me 
in that capsule yourself. I know you will. I know you.” 


To Open the Sky 


To Open the Sky 2164 

six 

In a leafy glade on Venus, the pushers were at their sport. 

An avenue of vast trees unrolled toward the pearly horizon. 
Their jagged leaves met overhead to form a thick canopy. Below, on the muddy, fungus-dotted ground, a dozen Venusian boys 
with bluish skins and green robes exercised their abilities. At a 
distance several larger figures watched them. David Lazarus 
stood in the center of the group. About him were the Harmonist 
leaders: Christopher Mondschein, Nicholas Martell, Claude 
Emory. 

Lazarus had been through a great deal at the hands of these 
men. To them, he had been only a name in a martyrology, a revered and unreal figure by whose absent power they governed a 
creed. They had had to adjust to his return, and it had not been 
easy. There had been a time when Lazarus thought they would 
put him to death. That time was past now, and they abided by his 
wishes. But because he had slept so long, he was at once younger 
and older than his lieutenants, and sometimes that interfered 
with the exercising of his full authority. 

He said, “It’s settled. Vorst will leave and the schism will end. 
I’ll work something out with Kirby.” 

“It’s a trap,” said Emory gloomily. “Keep away from it, David. 
Vorst can’t be trusted.” 

“Vorst brought me back to life.” 

“Vorst put you in that crypt in the first place,” Emory insisted. 
“You said so yourself.” 

“We can’t be sure of that,” Lazarus replied, though it was true 
that Vorst himself had admitted the act to him in a their last conversation. “We’re only guessing. There’s no evidence that—” 

Mondschein broke in, “We don’t have any reason to trust Vorst, 
Claude. But if he’s really and verifiably aboard that capsule, what 
do we have to lose by pushing him to Betelgeuse or Procyon? 
We’re rid of him, and we’ll be dealing with Kirby. Kirby’s a rea


To Open the Sky 

sonable man. None of that damnable superdeviousness about 
him.” 

“It’s too pat,” Emory insisted. “Why should a man with Vorst’s 
power just step down voluntarily?” 

“Perhaps he’s bored,” said Lazarus. “There’s something about 
absolute power that can’t be understood except by someone who 
holds it. It’s dull. You can enjoy moving and shaking the world 
for twenty years, thirty, fifty—but Vorst’s been on top for a hundred. He wants to move along. I say take the offer. We’re well rid 
of him, and we can handle Kirby. Besides, he’s got a good point: 
neither his side nor ours can get to the stars without the help of 
the other. I’m for it. It’s worth the try.” 

Nicholas Martell gestured toward the pushers. “We’ll lose some 
of them, don’t forget. You can’t push a capsule to the stars without overloading the pushers.” 

“Vorst has offered rehabilitation services,” said Lazarus. 

“One other point,” Mondschein remarked. “Under the new 
agreement, we’d have access to Vorster hospitals ourselves. Just 
as a purely selfish matter, I’d like that. I think the time has come 
to turn away from haughtiness and give in to Vorst. He’s willing 
to cheek out. All right. Let him go, and look for our own advantage with Kirby.” 

Lazarus smiled. He had not hoped to win Mondschein’s support that easily. But Mondschein was old, past ninety, and he 
was hungry for the care that Vorster medics could give him, care 
that was not to be had on rugged Venus. Monschein had seen 
the Santa Fe hospitals himself when he was a young man, and 
he knew what miracles they could perform. It was not a terribly 
worthy motive, thought Lazarus. But it was a human motive, at 
least, and Mondschein was human behind his gills and blued 
skin. So are we all, Lazarus realized. Though they aren’t. 

He looked toward the pushers. They were fifth- and sixth-generation Venusians. The seed of Earth was in them, but they were 
far removed from the original stock. The genetic manipulations 


To Open the Sky 2164 

that had first adapted mankind for life on Venus bred true; these 
boys were something other than human by this time. They were 
intent on their games. It was little effort for them to transport 
objects great distances now. They could send each other around 
Venus virtually instantaneously, or hurl a boulder to Earth in an 
hour or two. What they could not do was transport themselves, 
for they needed a fulcrum to do their pushing with. But that was 
minor. They could not flit from place to place on the strength of 
their own powers, but they could thrust each other about. 

Lazarus watched them: appearing, disappearing, lifting, throwing. Only children, not yet in full command of their powers. What 
strengths would be theirs when they were fully mature, he wondered? 

And how many would die to send mankind beyond his present 
boundaries? 

A saw-winged bird, faintly luminous in the midday dusk, shot 
diagonally across the sky just above the treetop canopy. One of 
the young pushers looked up, grinned, caught the bird and sent 
it whirling half a mile through the clouds. A squawk of rage, 
distant but audible, filtered back. 

Lazarus said, “The deal is closed. We help Vorst, and Vorst 
goes. Done?” 

“Done,” said Mondschein quickly. 

“Done,” Martell murmured, scuffing at the grayish moss that 
festooned the ground. 

“Claude?” Lazarus asked. 

Emory scowled. He peered at a long-limbed boy, returning from 
a jaunt to some other continent, who materialized no more than 
six yards away. Emory’s narrow-featured face looked dark with 
tension. 

“Done,” he said. 


To Open the Sky 


To Open the Sky 2164 

seven


The capsule was an obelisk of beryllium steel, fifty feet high, 
an uncertain ark to send across the sea of stars. It contained 
living quarters for eleven, a computer of uncomfortably awe-
inspiring abilities, and a subminiaturized treasury of all that was 
worth salvaging from two billion years of life on Earth. 

“Prepare the capsule,” Vorst had instructed Brother 
Capodimonte, “as though the sun were going nova next month 
and we had to save what was important.” 

As a former anthropologist, Capodimonte had his own ideas 
about the contents of such an ark, but he kept them separate 
from his concept of what Vorst required. Quietly, a subcommittee of Brothers had planned the interstellar expedition on a someday-far-away basis decades ago, and had replanned it several 
times, so that Capodimonte had the benefit of the thinking of 
other men. That was a comfort to him. 

There were troublesome elements of mystery about the project. 
He did not, for example, know the nature of the world to which 
the pioneers were bound. No one did. There was no telling, at 
this distance, whether it really could harbor Terran-style life. 

Astronomers had found hundreds of planets scattered through 
other systems. Some could dimly be picked up by telescopic sensors; others could only be inferred from computations of disturbed stellar orbits. But the planets were there. Would they 
welcome Earthmen? 

Only one planet out of nine in Earth’s own system was naturally habitable—not a cheering prognosis for other systems. It 
had taken two generations of hard work to Terrafonn Mars; the 
eleven pioneers would hardly be able to do that It had taken the 
highest genetic skills to convert men into Venusians; that, too, 
would be beyond the range of the voyagers. They would have to 
find a suitable world, or fail. 

Espers in the Santa Fe retinue said that suitable worlds ex


To Open the Sky 

isted. They had peered into the heavens, reached forth their 
Mondschein, made contact with tangible and habitable planets 
out there. Illusion? Deception? Capodimonte was in no position 
to determine that 

Reynolds Kirby, troubled by the project from first to last, said 
to Capodimonte, “Is it true that they don’t even know what star 
they’ll be aiming for?” 

“That’s true. They’ve detected some kind of emanations coming from somewhere. Don’t ask me how. The way this thing is 
planned, our espers will supply the guidance and their pushers 
will supply the propulsion. We find, they heave.” 

“A voyage to anywhere?” 

“To anywhere,” Capodimonte agreed. “They rip a hole in the 
sky and shove the capsule through. It doesn’t travel through normal space, whatever normal space is. It lands on this world that 
our espers claim to have connected with out there, and they send 
a message back, telling us where they are. We get the message 
about a generation from now. But meanwhile we’ll have sent 
other expeditions. A one-way journey to nowhere. And Vorst is 
the first to take it.” 

Kirby shook his head. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But evidently it’s going to be a success.” 

“Oh?” 

“Yes. Vorst’s had his floaters out there looking, you see. They 
tell him that he arrived safely. So he’s willing to step out into the 
dark, because he knows in advance that he’s not running any 
risks.” 

“Do you believe that?” asked Capodimonte, shuffling through 
his inventory sheets. 

“No.” 

Neither did Brother Capodimonte. But he did net quarrel with 
the role assigned to him. He had been at the council meeting 
where Vorst had announced his stunning intention, and he had 
heard Reynolds Kirby rise and eloquently argue the case for al


To Open the Sky 2164 

lowing the Founder to depart. Kirby’s thesis had been a sound 
one, within the context of nightmare that this whole project 
embraced. And so the capsule would leave, powered by the joint 
efforts of some blue-skinned boys, and guided on a thread 
through the heavens by the roving Mondschein of Brotherhood 
capers, and Noel Vorst would never walk the Earth again. 

Capodimonte checked his lists. 

Food. 

Clothing. 

Books. 

Tools. 

Medical equipment 

Communication devices. 

Weapons. 

Power sources. 

The expedition, Capodimonte thought would be adequately 
furnished for its adventure. The whole thing might be madness, 
or it might be the grandest enterprise ever attempted by man; 
Brother Capodimonte could not tell which. But one thing was 
certain: the expedition would be adequately furnished. He had 
seen to that. 


To Open the Sky 


eight


It was the day of departure. Chill winter winds raked New 
Mexico on this late-December day. The capsule stood in a desert 
flat a dozen miles from the inner compound of the Santa Fe research center. From here to the horizon it was a wilderness of 
sagebrush and juniper and piñon pine, and in the distance the 
bowl of mountains rose. Though he was well insulated, Reynolds 
Kirby shivered as the wind assailed the plateau. In another few 
days the year 2165 would be dawning, but Noel Vorst would not 
be here to welcome it. Kirby was not accustomed to that idea 
yet. 

The pushers from Venus had arrived a week ago. There were 
twenty of them, and since it was inconvenient for them to live in 
breathing-suits all their time on Earth, the Vorsters had erected 
a little bit of Venus for them. A domed building not far from the 
capsule housed them; it was pumped full of the poisonous muck 
that they were accustomed to breathing. Lazarus and 
Mondschein had come with them and were under the dome now, 
getting everything prepared. 

Mondschein would remain after the event, to undergo an overhauling in Santa Fe, Lazarus was going back to Venus in a couple 
of days. But first he and Kirby would face each other across a 
conference table and hammer out the basic clauses of the new 
entente. They had met once, twelve years ago, but not for long. 
Since Lazarus’s arrival on Earth, Kirby had spoken briefly to him 
and had come away with the feeling that the Harmonist prophet, 
though strong-willed and purposeful, would not be difficult ultimately to reach understandings with. He hoped not. 

Now, on the wintry plateau, the high leaders of the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance were gathering to watch their 
leader vanish. Kirby, glancing around, saw Capodimonte and 
Magnus and Ashton and Langholt and all the others, dozens of 
them, spiraling down the echelons into the middle levels of the 


To Open the Sky 

organization. They were all watching him. They could not watch 
Vorst, for Vorst was in the capsule already, along with the other 
members of the expedition. Five men, five women, and Vorst. 
All of the others under forty, healthy, capable, resilient. And Vorst. 
The Founder’s quarters aboard the capsule were comfortable, 
but it was lunacy to think of that old man plunging into the universe like this. 

Supervisor Magnus, the European Coordinator, stepped to 
Kirby’s side. He was a small, sharp-featured man who, like most 
of the other leaders of the Brotherhood, had served in its ranks 
for more than seventy years. 

“He’s actually going,” Magnus said. 

“Soon. Yes. No doubt of it.” 

“Did you speak to him this morning?” 

“Briefly,” Kirby said. “He seems very calm.” 

“He seemed very calm when he blessed us last night,” said 
Magnus. “Almost joyful.” 

“He’s putting down a great burden. You’d be joyful, too, if you 
could be translated into the sky and shrug off your responsibilities.” 

Magnus said, “I wish we could prevent this.” 

Kirby turned and looked bluntly at the little man. “This is a 
necessary thing,” he said. “It must happen, or the movement 
will founder of its own success.” 

“I heard your speech before the council, yes, but—” 

“We’ve reached the fulfillment level of our first evolutionary 
stage,” said Kirby. “Now we need to extend our mythology. Symbolically, Vorst’s departure is invaluable to us. He ascends into 
the sky, leaving us to carry on his work and go on to new purposes. If he remained, we’d begin to mark time. Now we can use 
his glorious example to inspire us. With Vorst leading the way to 
the new worlds, we who remain can build on the foundation he 
bequeaths us.” 

“You sound as though you believed it.” 


To Open the Sky 2164 

“I do,” said Kirby. “I didn’t at first. But Vorst was right. He said 
I’d understand why he was going, and I came to see it. He’s ten 
times as valuable to the movement doing this as he would be if 
he remained.” 

Magnus murmured, “He isn’t content to be Christ and 
Mohammed. He has to be Moses, too, and also Elijah.” 

“I never thought I’d hear you speak of him so coarsely,” said 
Kirby. 

“I never did either,” Magnus replied. “Damn it, I don’t want 
him to go!” 

Kirby was astonished to see tears glistening in Magnus’s pale 
eyes. 

“That’s precisely why he’s leaving,” Kirby said, and then both 
men were silent 

Capodimonte moved toward them. “Everything’s ready,” he 
announced. “I’ve got the word from Lazarus that the pushers 
are in series.” 

“What about our guidance people?” Kirby asked. 

“They’ve been ready for an hour.” 

Kirby looked toward the gleaming capsule. “Might as well get 
it over with, then.” 

“Yes,” Capodimonte said. “Might as well.” 

Lazarus, Kirby knew, was waiting for a signal from him. From 
now on, all signals would come from him, at least on Earth. But 
that thought no longer disturbed him. 

had adjusted to the situation. He was in command. 

Symbolic regalia cluttered the field—Harmonist ikons, a big 
cobalt reactor, the paraphernalia of both the cults that now were 
merging. Kirby gestured to an acolyte, and moderator rods were 
withdrawn. The reactor surged into life. 

The Blue Fire danced high above the reactor, and its glow 
stained the hull of the capsule. Cold light, Cerenkov radiation, 
the Vorster symbol, sparkled on the plateau, and all through the 
watching multitude ran the sounds of devotion, the whispered 


To Open the Sky 

litanies, the murmured recapitulatons of the stations of the spectrum. While the man who had devised those words sat hidden 
within the walls of that teardrop of steel in the center of the gathering. 

The flare of the Blue Fire was the signal to the Venusians in 
their nearby dome. Now was their moment to gather their power 
and hurl the capsule outward, planting man’s hand on a new 
world in the stars. 

“What are they waiting for?” Magnus asked querulously. 

“Maybe it won’t happen,” said Capodimonte. 

Kirby said nothing. And then it began to happen. 


To Open the Sky 2164 

nine


Kirby had not quite known what to expect. In his fantasies of 
the scene he had pictured a dozen capering Venusians dancing 
around the capsule, holding hands, their foreheads bulging with 
the effort of lifting the vehicle and hurling it out of the world. 
But the Venusians were nowhere to be seen; they were off in 
their dome, several hundred yards away, and Kirby suspected 
that they were neither holding hands nor showing outward signs 
of strain. 

In his reveries, too, he had imagined the capsule taking off the 
way a rocket would, rising a few feet from the ground, wobbling 
a bit, rising a little more, suddenly soaring up, crossing the sky 
on a potent trajectory, dwindling, vanishing from sight at last. 
But that was not the way it was really to be, either. 

He waited. A long moment passed. 

He thought of Vorst, making landfall on same other world. An 
inhabited world, perhaps? What would be Vorst’s impact when 
he came to that virgin territory? Vorst was an irresistible force, 
terrifying and unique. Wherever he went, he would transform 
all that was about him. Kirby felt sorry for the ten hapless pioneers who would have the benefit of Vorst’s immediate guidance. He wondered what kind of colony they would build. 

Whatever it was, it would succeed. Success was in Vorst’s nature. He was hideously old, but he had frightening vitality still 
locked within him. The Founder seemed to relish the challenge 
of beginning anew. Kirby wished him well. 

“There they go,” Capodimonte whispered. 

It was true. The capsule was still on the ground, but now the 
air about it wavered, as though stirred by heat waves rising from 
the parched, sandy soil. 

Then the capsule was gone. 

That was all. Kirby stared at the empty place where it had been. 
Vorst had been taken up into the heavens, and a gateway to some


To Open the Sky 

where had been opened. 

“There is a Oneness from which all life stems,” someone said 
gently behind Kirby. “The infinite variety of the universe we owe 
to—” 

Another voice said, “Man and woman, star and stone, tree and 
bird—” 

Another said, “In the strength of the spectrum, the quantum, 
and the holy angstrom—” 

Kirby did not remain to listen to the familiar prayers, nor did 
he pray himself. He looked briefly at the bareness in the desert 
once more, and then upward at the harsh blue sky, already deepening toward nightfall. It was done. Vorst was gone, his scheming ended so far as Earth was concerned, and now it was the 
turn of lesser men. The way was open. Humanity could spill out 
across the heavens. Perhaps. Perhaps. 

Alone in this great assembly of the faithful, Kirby turned his 
back on the now sacred spot from which Vorst had made his 
ascent. Very slowly, a tall figure whose late-afternoon shadow 
stretched for yards, Kirby walked away from the place where 
Noel Vorst had been, and toward the place where David Lazarus 
was waiting to speak with him. 


Noel Vorst was a god and
technology his religion.


Earth’s wildly overpopulated surface was frenetic, its billions 
swept away by mass hysteria. 

Noel Vorst had cobbled together an eclectic religion, 
borrowing the confessional from Catholicism, absorbing 
some of the atheism of ur-Buddhism, adding a dose of 
Hindu reincarnation, and larding everything over with 
ultramodernistic trappings, nuclear reactors at every altar, 
and plenty of gabble about the holy electron. But there was 
also talk of harnessing the minds of espers to power a 
stardrive, of a communion even of non-esper minds, and 

— most startling of all, the big selling–point — personal 
immortality, not reincarnation, not the hope of Nirvana, but 
eternal life in the here–and–now present flesh. 
But some held out, believing in the wonder that is man, 
in his ability to adapt to the miracle of the universe, to 
become one with it. And some few grew powers forever 
barred to the Vorsters. 

No man fights as viciously as the man who knows he is 
right. 

In To Open The Sky, New York Times’ best–selling author 
Robert Silverberg shows us once again that he is a master 
of the science–fiction genre. 


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