Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Showing posts with label Arthur Dekker Savage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arthur Dekker Savage. Show all posts

Friday, January 29, 2016

Fly By Night by Arthur Dekker Savage


FLY by NIGHT

By Arthur Dekker Savage

Illustrated by Ed Emsh

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


A young man and a young woman alone on the first over-the-moon ship. The world cheered them as the most romantic adventurers in all history. Do-gooders decried them as immoral stunters. Gaunt, serious militarists pronounced them part of the most crucial experiment ever undertaken....

The general introduced them in the ship's shadow, a trim lieutenant, a clean-cut major. "You probably already think of each other as Carol and Ken. At any rate, there are no two people in the world who have heard as much about each other without previously meeting."

She offered her hand and he took it, held it for a long moment while their eyes locked. "Hello, Carol," he said warmly. "I'd have known you from your pictures." And he realized as never before what a poor substitute were the hoarded scraps of paper.

"Hello—Ken." A smile made her face radiant. "I've sort of studied your pictures too."

Ken turned his eyes to the crowd—a roaring, cheering multitude surrounding the poised rocket ship here on the California desert in this zero hour. To certain harried physicists and engineers, it was a moment promising paramount achievement. To romanticists of 1966, watching their video screens avidly, it was fulfillment of their most sensual dreams: a beautiful girl being given wholly and unreservedly to a handsome young man; the flight around the moon was merely an added fillip. To a few gaunt military psychologists it was the end of a long nightmare of protests by women's clubs, demonstrations by national female societies and actual attempts at murder by fanatical blue-noses; and a mere beginning of the most crucial experiment ever undertaken—which had to be a success.

Suddenly Ken was angry at the knowing looks from the throng's nearest ranks. While the general continued his prepared speech into the mike, focus of the hollow, hungry eyes of the video cameras, Ken pulled Carol to his side and held her with an arm about her waist, glaring when the crowd murmured and the cameras swung their way again. He had not questioned the actions of the military, of the world, before. But now—a public spectacle—

During the years of rigorous, specialized training almost from childhood they had kept him away from Carol, teasing him—it was the only word that now occurred to his mind—with the dangled promise of her presence on the flight. They had let him see her pictures—intimate, almost-nude photos harvested by the gossip columnists, snaps of her glory in bathing attire as she lounged by a swimming pool.

Swimming. Since he had been selected as a boy, every free afternoon he had been made to swim, swim, swim—developing the long, smooth muscles they wanted him to have. It had been, he knew, the same with Carol.

Had they taunted her with his pictures too? Had she responded by wanting him, loving him, longing for him? How did she feel about their first moment together being shared by the greedy eyes of continents?

The President was speaking now, rolling sonorous sentences into the mike, words which would officially sanction this unorthodox act of the military, which would justify the morally unprecedented dispensing of maid to man without benefit of—anything. Because the psychologists had wanted it that way. Ken leaned down to whisper in her ear, "I wish I could get you inside the ship."

She looked at him with sudden coolness. "Impatient, Major?" She turned away quickly and he could feel her body stiffen.

Had he said something wrong? Or—the new thought was jarring disharmony: did he represent the end of this girl's—his girl's—hopes for a conventional, happy marriage? Did she think him the altar of sacrifice, whereupon she would accrue the moralist's scorn and, tomorrow, attract only the lecherous? Or was it just an act? What, besides ship and instrument operation, had they taught her?

Grimly he listened to the President, who was then extolling their merits as though—well, as though they were some sort of laboratory specimens. "... acute hearing, 20/10 vision ... perfect health ... highest combination of intelligence and fast physical reactions ... exceptional bravery and loyalty." Cheers. "... intensive training ... youngest to receive their military ranks ... expert pilots ... fittest humans for this attempt."

Stubbornly, Ken continued to hold her waist. He watched the sun sneak around one stubby wing of the Latecomer. He'd need those glinting wings to land. Land? What were the actual odds against circling the moon and landing again on earth? That phase—and a lot of others—had never been discussed. The speeches were over and he put the thought from his mind. They were extending the mike to him, waiting for his farewell—or his last words?

Abruptly, ignoring the mike, he swung Carol up the ramp and crawled in through the port behind her.


In the narrow confines she slipped out of her uniform. She glanced at him once, quickly, then cast down her eyes. "You don't have to look, you know."

There was a hurt in his throat. "I want to look, Carol. I don't ever want to stop looking at you. I—" He choked off, tore his eyes from her and hurriedly began to get out of his uniform.

Hidden from the spectators outside, they divested themselves of all but filmy, clinging, chemically inert garb. Carol's body was sheathed in a kind of sarong. Ken wore a short, kilt-like affair. They pulled on soft, tough-soled sandals. The medics had insisted on this specific attire, but the psychologists had planned it that way. Their discarded clothing was dropped into a basket. Ken shoved it out the port, down the ramp, slammed and bolted the hatch. Then he stared at it. Clamped to the inner side were two knives: one was about the length of a bayonet, shaped like a saber; the other was half that length, and straight. Both were sheathed, with belts wrapped around checkered handles.

All his official instructions flashed through his head in an instant. All the technical data, instrument operation, procedures, emergency measures. There had never been mention of knives. Except—of course. Survival training. If he were unable to bring the ship to its proper destination, was forced down in uninhabited territory, a knife would be essential equipment. But so would a gun, fishing tackle, matches, clothing....

The ship's radio said, "Fourteen minutes to take-off."

Ken flung himself on the couch. Carol moved in quietly beside him.

"You understand, Carol," he said, "you're to touch no controls unless I'm unable to."

"Yes."

"You'll handle the cameras only, but you'll keep reminding me of every step to be taken, as though I'd forgotten, and make sure I answer sensibly each time."

"Yes, Ken."

Yes, Ken. A pulse throbbed in his temple.

They watched the crowd on the screen—scattered now, far from that area below and behind the ship which would be washed in radiation. They listened to the radio calling off the minutes before departure. Ken kept his thoughts on the structure of the space vessel, similar in many ways to vastly cheaper atmosphere models he and Carol had flown—separately—for hundreds of training hours. Behind them, and lining the inner hull, was a light, spongy wall protecting them from the atomic converters aft. The surrounding couch could be regulated to form a resilient cocoon during high-G acceleration and deceleration, or during periods of weightlessness. Forward were the controls, instruments and hooded viewport.

Escape velocity was not needed to pull away from gravity. With atomic engines and the new, low-mass shielding, fuel quantity was a problem of dollars only—and none had been spared for this voyage. The psychologists had seen to that.

"Eight minutes to take-off."

He started the atomic reactors, a mighty purring here in the sealed cabin. Gently, watching the instruments, he tested bow and stern rockets, matching fore and aft forces delicately, tentatively increasing stern thrust until the craft barely stirred in its silicone-greased, magnetized launching rack.

"Two minutes to take-off."

They placed their faces against soft masks in the couch, down through which they could watch the instruments, in a mirror, the video screen and bow viewport. The couch encompassed them, their arms in padded slots reaching to the controls.

"... thirty-four, thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one...."

Thunder hammered at their ears. The couch squeezed them as the Latecomer shot beyond its ramp, increased its velocity. Ken gripped a lever which cut in the autopilot to take them beyond atmosphere, beyond gravity.


Ken unhooded the viewport, leaving covered only that section which blocked a tiny blinding sun. They stared into an utter, absolute ebony that suddenly seemed to be straining against the thick canopy, mocking the dim lights of the compartment. For many hours now, nothing to do but wait and watch, make occasional control corrections.

He caused the couch to relax, offered Carol a water sausage. They had eaten nothing, and drunk but sparingly, since twenty-four hours before take-off. Her hand touched his as she took the container. It was like an electric shock, and his heart thudded. Deliberately, he brushed his fingers over hers, clasped her wrist, looking at her.

She became motionless. Then she looked up at him, lingeringly. Her lips parted.

The pressure within him mounted. Almost reverently he reached for her—then stopped when tears formed in her eyes. He drew back, uncomprehending. Could desire be coupled with sorrow? Or was he merely reading desire into some emotion not remotely connected with passion? She had been given to him without reservation, but he could not bring himself to take her unwillingly. The difference, he realized, between love and lust—damn the psychologists. He let out his breath, fumbled in a small plastic box near the controls, dug out several nutriment bars. He handed a couple to Carol without looking at her and munched unhappily at the chocolate-flavored ration.

They watched the blackness of space for hours. The stars appeared as bright glowing blobs sunk dismally far into the heavy depths of some Stygian jelly. It was a time to be savoring the first experience of man beyond his mortal sphere, but Ken stared unseeingly, his mind dulled, vacant with indecision and disillusion that was almost a physical hurt. The zest of adventure, in the midst of adventure, was throttled before it saw life. The sustaining dreams of training and preparation were dusty misery. Robotically, he watched the instruments, occasionally made microscopic adjustments. Carol's hands, close to his, infrequently changed camera settings.

Unexpectedly the radio sounded. Ken tuned to maximum volume, strained to hear the muted words. It was a moment before he realized they were drawling, abnormally slow, like one of the old spring-wound phonographs running down. When he caught it, the message stunned him.

"Late-comm-merr pers-sonn-nell. Re-turnn noww, noww, noww. Emerr-genn-cy orr-derr of the Prezz-zi-dent. Llate-comm-merr pers-sonn-nell...."

He listened to it twice more before silencing the radio. Turn back? Now? He looked at Carol. She returned his stare, drawing her arms up out of the slots and leaning on her elbows, frowning in puzzlement. Her breasts were pendent promises of—further disappointment? Were both love and life to be reduced, in a day, to twin voids of defeat? Love was Carol and life was a successful flight around the moon.

Discipline kept his act just short of viciousness as he slapped the controls back to manual. Grimly he silenced the stern rockets, cut in the bow units slowly. The flight was to have been a loop "over" the moon, almost intersecting its orbit at the precise time it swung ponderously by. What possible emergency could have arisen?


Ken couldn't remember just when the fear had started—maybe on the way outward, now that he thought of it: the feeling of deep depression. They were in free fall, weightless, the couch adjusted to keep them floating within a few inches of its confines. The brilliant, abandoned moon had just swung behind its big-sister world, the glaring furnace of Sol was still thwarted by a section of bow hood.

He felt the fear mount—little tugging fingers frantically at work within his chest. The blue sphere of Earth seemed to recede in the black muck, although he knew it was only an optical effect of space—of the vast, scornful emptiness in which the stars were but helpless, hopelessly enmeshed droplets of dross.

He shivered involuntarily. With the movement he touched the side of the couch and rebounded against Carol.

She screamed.

He stared at her, his fear mounting swiftly through panic to abject, uncaring terror. Carol had drawn herself up into a knot, the fetal position of infantile regression; her eyes were wide, unseeing, her mouth open in the scream that was now soundless.

Ken felt his mind brinking on madness. He continued to stare in a terrified frenzy until, from some tiny nook of sanity deep inside him, came the realization that this was Carol beside him—Carol, who was his, who needed him....

He fought. He staggered up from depths of bleak despair, aided by that deep-rooted male instinct which rouses raging fury at danger to his beloved. The innate protective impulse was heightened, strengthened by that emotional desire which is strongest at first contact, undiluted by familiarity and the consequent dissolution of ideals. The prime strength of manhood blasted in a coruscating mental flare against the forces of darkness and the unknown. Tenderly, he encircled her floating body with his arms and drew her close. He soothed her as one might a baby.

Slowly her eyes came back from horrific infinity. Slowly they focused on his. And then, comprehension returned, she pressed tightly against him, clung to him, sobbing with the remnant fear of fear remembered.

He talked to her for an hour, caressing, reassuring, until her responses were normal beyond any doubt. Then he told her he loved her.

She raised her head from where it was burrowed against his chest. "Love me, Ken? Love me?"

He blinked in astonishment. "Of course I love you. It seems like I've always loved you. I tried to tell you. I—"

But she was crying again, shaking her head a little, saying, "Ken, Ken," over and over.

This time he continued to hold her intimately close. "What's the matter? Anything wrong with love?"

"But Ken—you could have any girl in the world!"

"Me? Where'd you get that idea?"

"Why, everyone knows the story of your training, and what it was for. The swoon clubs must have sent you tons of letters!"

"I never got any."

"Censors?"

He shrugged. "Could be. I used to drive myself nuts thinking of all the guys you must be going out with. Your story was spread around just as much as mine."

"They picked my few escorts with care. I used to lie awake thinking of you running around with hundreds of girls."

Ken snorted. "The army kept me too busy. I went out with a few, but I never loved anybody but you. Hell, I'm only nineteen, you know."

She nodded, her eyes bright with happiness. She was a year younger. Then her words came in a flood. "I couldn't believe you'd love me. They told me I was to go with you and do anything you said—anything. No explanation, but I knew what they meant and I agreed because you were doing such a great thing for the world and—I wanted you too. But I thought you'd just want me for the trip, and afterward you'd go back to your other girls, and—"

He kissed her. Again. And again. Surely there never was, never could be, a greater delight embracing than in the floating, heady, free fall of null-G. Certainly the psychologists knew no other method of retaining sanity in the cruelly endless jet pit engulfing the stars. Which was why they had planned it that way.


Well out of atmosphere he began to brake skillfully, easing the craft into an orbital arc that would later be changed to a descending spiral. Biting into rarified air, he adjusted the hull heat distributor, cut in the refrigeration unit, increased oxygen a trifle. He removed a small envelope from its taped position on a panel and opened it to read his landing instructions. Then he looked questioningly at Carol.

"Southwest Oregon. The Oregon Caves National Monument. We're to go in on a beacon signal."

"You don't suppose they want us to show survival ability?"

"On a deal like this? No, something's haywire here. First, there's not a strip that'll take the Latecomer for at least a hundred miles around, and the only road into the area twists like a snake. This baby wasn't built with a chute, either. Second, it's only about ten miles from some ranches, even if there's no one at the chateau, so it wouldn't be a survival problem." He dropped the craft's nose a few more degrees.

"Are there any more instructions?"

"Must be." He unfolded the slip. "'Abandon ship immediately upon landing. Enter bronze portal to Caves with all possible haste. Look for inscribed square beside door, with a slot at each corner. Activate door as follows: simultaneously insert curved blade of longer knife entirely in upper left-hand slot, and straight blade of shorter knife entirely in lower right-hand slot. Extreme emergency. Memorize and destroy these orders.'" Carol hadn't seen the knives.

They lay in stunned silence until she gasped, "But, Ken—this means they knew about the emergency before we took off!"

He nodded grimly. "We were never supposed to reach the moon." He crumpled the paper, thrust it into his mouth and chewed on it awhile, then slipped it into the waste disposal unit. "Well, we'll pick up the beacon and buzz the Caves area for possibilities. There was nothing said about making radio contact, so we'll just listen in. Want to take over the radio on the way down?" He forced the Latecomer into as tight a spiral as he dared. The wings were still useless here in the ionosphere.

Carol turned on the receiver, dialed expectantly. "Ken—the whole band is silent!"

"Take it easy, Lieutenant honey—we're barely through the F2 layer."

But all bands remained dead except for sun static. Rockets chattering for a 2G brake and directional control, they plunged through the F1 stratum, losing Sol behind the eastern rim of Terra. Down, down for dim countless minutes, through the thin ionization of E, past the lowest ranges of auroras and noctilucent clouds and below the ozone layer. Still no signals of any kind on any frequency.

At last Ken leveled off in the troposphere, at an altitude of five miles. A placid, swollen sun rode into view while they flashed west-ward over the Atlantic in a straight and lowering course that would take them over New York. The momentous—even though aborted—flight was over. Each tiniest mechanism of the Latecomer had functioned perfectly. Ken took a deep breath at the sheer pleasure of normal gravity. Man held the key to the planets, at least—if the psychologists could figure some way to nullify the soul-shattering fear imbued by deep space. Or had he and Carol reached the maximum distance life could tolerate? Was that the foreseen emergency, withheld from them lest it sap their carefully-nurtured morale? He felt a vague, gnawing worry about the silence of earth's transmitters.

New York would supply the answer. Over New York the cacaphony of blaring broadcasts would practically tear the receivers from their moorings.

And New York did yield an answer—of sorts. With Long Island in visual range, and not a sound or a picture on any wave length which Carol's flying fingers tuned in at maximum volume, Ken dipped below legal ceiling to drag the city.

Then his reactions galvanized him to motion of a speed outstripping his thoughts. Hardly hearing Carol's gasp of dismay, he snapped the coccoon tight about them like a sprung trap, blasted the ship's nose to a skidding vertical and spurted away from the yawning craters of New York City at five Gs.


He leveled off in ozone over Canada and relaxed the couch. Unbelievingly, he looked at Carol. She looked back at him, wide-eyed.

"Listen, Carol—we can't both be crazy the same way. You tell me exactly what you saw."

"Well—everything had been bombed."

"What else?"

"There—there wasn't any movement or people or—"

"What else."

"There—oh, Ken, there were trees growing in the craters!"

Some of the tenseness left his features. "Okay, honey. Now we know a little bit. The war came and went and there's not an active transmitter in the world. Somebody knew it was coming, even before we left, so they want us to land at a hideout in Oregon. There'll be a landing strip there—they've had more than a month to build it since I was at the Caves, and it only took a day for the whole war, for the radiation to clear up—and for twenty—maybe fifty-year-old trees to grow!" His ending sarcasm was directed at himself; youth angers at the spur of illogicalness.

Carol pressed his shoulder and kissed him. "Darling—maybe we shouldn't even think about it now. They must be waiting for us in Oregon."

"Yeah," he said absently. "Wonder what happened farther inland?" He herded the Latecomer down along the border of Lakes Ontario and Erie. Cleveland was dotted with lakes, the city rubble choked with brush. On a zig-zag course, Detroit was a wilderness, Chicago almost a part of Lake Michigan. Carol's spirits sank with each revelation.

They arced high above the jet winds, on course to Oregon.

Ken almost shouted with joy when their beacon code came in weakly, strengthening as they approached the Pacific. Carol hugged him until he relinquished control to the autopilot and gave her his undivided attention.

The chronometer ticked away time, but Sol gave up the unequal race, and so it was another morning of the same day when Ken slipped the Latecomer over the mighty Cascades, homing on the beacon until they both saw the outline of a long, level, arrow straight runway carved from forested mountainside and spanning chasmal, growth-choked gulches.

But it was the outline only, discernible through a light rain. "At least two years' work," mused Ken, "littered with at least a hundred years' debris. And we've only been gone a day." He killed signal reception, circled the runway.

Carol pressed his arm. "It's been longer than a day, Ken. I mean, we've actually used up more time, because it was morning when we were over New York, and it's still—"

"Okay—day and night don't mean much. But we've clocked a little over thirty-three hours since we took off. That's our time."

There was a catch in her throat. "I know, darling. Something's horribly wrong. Everybody we know must be dead!"

His jaw set, then he said gently, "Snug down, kitten, we're going in."

She glanced through the port. "But how can you land on that?"

He tightened the couch about them. "Blow the stuff out of the way," he said cheerfully. "Maybe." He swooped in from the east. "Keep an eye peeled for the Caves' entrance—I bet it won't look like it did last month."

The Latecomer touched the runway at little more than a hundred miles per hour. Its forward rockets braked sharply, blasting aside the scattered dead limbs and smaller trees—roaring, bucking and hissing. Its underside buckled from triphammer contact with rock slides and a few larger logs. It grated to a bumpy halt, gouged, scarred, split, its warped hull a forever useless thing.

Before opening the port he buckled the long knife at his waist, had Carol do the same with the short one. He climbed out, breathing deeply of the warm, moist air, savoring the incense of pine while helping Carol to the ground.


They avoided the radioactive path made by the ship, picked their way along the side of the strip until Carol pointed and cried, "There it is!"

Ken gripped her arm. "You follow behind me, and if the welcoming committee moves this way you get up in that big madrona over there."

"What?"

He pointed out the bear, watching from a wet tangle of brush. "If it's a male—or a female with no cubs—we're probably all right."

"Oh. But what will you do?"

"Don't argue, Lieutenant." His hand moved to the pommel of his knife. Ranger training wasn't exactly qualification for tangling with a bear, but long odds were becoming commonplace.

The animal remained where it was. They climbed over a rock slide and faced a wide bronze door protected by a concrete foyer. Out a way from the door was—

"Look, Ken—that's been a recent campfire!"

He whipped the blade from its sheath. "C'mon, kitten—get that knife out!" He vaulted the ashes.

A six-inch square was cut deeply in the dense metal. Ken poised his knife over a slot, and as Carol plunged her blade into the wall he rammed his home to the guard.

With a squeak and a sigh the door, terraced like a vault portal, swung outward slowly. Ken grabbed a recessed knob to hurry it up. Lights flashed inside, flooding a man-changed interior.

He leaped across the raised threshold, dragging Carol with him, swung the door shut and shot home two great bolts on its inner surface. On a rack just beside the door was an automatic rifle, ready for instant use. The psychologists had not known about the campfire, but they had planned for the possibility of a hostile builder.

Ken and Carol looked about the first of the labyrinthine caverns. Squared walls were lined solidly with glass-enclosed bookshelves stretching as far as they could see. Crowding the floor were machines, cabinets of tools, implements, instruments, weapons and medical and surgical supplies.

They moved to stand before a large video screen set near the door. Ken flipped the single toggle below it. A scene grew, showing a white-haired army colonel seated behind a desk, facing them.

"Ken—it's Dr. Halsey," Carol whispered.

"Was Dr. Halsey," said Ken heavily. "I used to wonder if we had the same instructors."

The officer's lips moved. "Hello, Ken and Carol. I've been selected to make this film to greet you, and I know both of you will return to see it." His eyebrows lifted in the quizzical expression they knew well. "I'm going to rattle off a lot of explanations and suggestions, but I imagine the first thing you'll want to know is how all the things you've seen could have happened so quickly. And knowing that, will clarify the rest.

"You remember the experiments the Air Force made, sending small animals above the stratosphere. By means of controlled diets and more complicated devices you'll find explained in a book, we learned that these animals were not subjectively experiencing the time-span they should have aloft. In effect, they were aging hardly at all away from gravity—the farther away, the less aging.

"We got some fairly accurate figures on the time-distance ratios. Briefly, assuming you held to your course until you were recalled, you can figure that an average of ten years has elapsed on the earth's surface for every hour you were in space."

Ken muttered, "We were actually out of atmosphere about twenty-four hours. That would make it the year—"

"About 2200," finished Carol breathlessly.

"... how or why, but that Time was evidently a variable. The realm of physics was a madhouse—discreetly so, lest our enemies profit by our knowledge. There is no visual or other subjective means to sense the deceiving change in time-rate, or its illogical effects; we knew, for instance, that you would not see the moon as a solid ring girding a gyroscopic earth, as might seemingly be expected.

"Your message of recall was a record, slowed down to be within an intelligible range of fast chatter or slow drawl when you received it. We could have told you to open the envelope at a certain time or distance, but even minutes and miles were critical and"—the pictured features smiled paternally—"we knew your interest in each other might cause a delay, while"—the expression changed to serious sympathy—"we didn't know just when Space-Fear would strike."

Carol blushed and laid her cheek against Ken's chest. "They knew everything that would happen, didn't they? They—they planned everything!"

He crushed her to him. "Lucky they did, honey. Seems like they've put all their hopes in us."

"... imminent war, and what radiation would do to surface life. We could not go with you, nor was there time to build underground installations for surviving more than half a century and emerging to a temporarily unproductive soil. We selected you to inherit the world, and you have had the hopes and prayers of your nation and your people."

They sat on a low chest and listened to the psychologist's voice for nearly an hour more. He finished on a message of hope. "You have seen the results of war. With the knowledge and material at hand, and the atmosphere craft waiting at the sealed exit, you can contact what survivors' descendants you may find in hidden corners of the world and lead them to the peaceful glory of Earth's future.

"Obviously, life will not visit back and forth between the stars, or even the planets. The laws of Space and Time confine man to one world—but it can be made the best of all possible worlds, free of war within, and free of conquest from without, since the reasons which keep man from visiting other spheres will keep other life from visiting him."

The screen faded and was silent, followed by a clear, trilling whistle which swelled in a paean of lilting sound. While Ken squeezed Carol's hand in mounting amazement, the piping strain formed clearly into words—

With understanding of universal laws, life may do as it wills, go where it wills ... we have come to your planet to help you ... may we?

The psychologists had not foreseen quite everything....

The Butterfly Kiss by Arthur Dekker Savage


The BUTTERFLY KISS

by Arthur Dekker Savage

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1 number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

THE WAR WAS ON, THE FINAL CATACLYSM HAD BEGUN. THOUSANDS WOULD DIE, EONS OF HUMAN HISTORY WOULD BE WIPED OUT, CENTURIES OF CULTURE BE DESTROYED ... UNLESS ONE MAN COULD CARRY OUT HIS PLAN.

When Sykin Supcel was kidnaped, no one on Earth was less surprised than Dr. Horace Wilton, Chief Military Psychologist of the Solar Navy. And since he had been Sy's mentor, and obviously responsible for his safety, Dr. Wilton was the first high official sought by representatives of the news syndicates.

"It has become increasingly difficult," said the psychologist carefully to the group sitting in his office, "to ignore such actions by the Sur-Malic." He gazed through an open window-wall to where the newsmen's tiny jet-copters glinted beneath a summer sun at the forest's edge. "Of course, I might have predicted it; Sy insisted upon browsing through old city ruins for relaxation, and he seemed to delight in eluding his guard escort."

A reporter with the long nose and narrow head of a Venusian—or, for that matter, a Sur-Malic—raised his voice. "Y'mean he was all alone when he was snatched?"

The doctor rested one hip on the edge of a gleaming alloy desk. Military specifications, like civilian preference, demanded that every artifact possible be of enduring, stainless metal. "I am afraid so," he answered slowly.

"Then how," demanded the reporter, "d'you know it was the Sur-Malic that got him?"

"Simple logic. The Sur-Malic have been sporadically making off with first-class Earth scientists for a century—and Sy had recently developed an important improvement in our so-called cosmic ray engine. If he is forced to divulge the information, there may be tragic repercussions to the Interstellar League." Pencils raced eagerly across note pads. "Furthermore, Sy was well equipped to handle any ordinary emergency. Nor would a League world commit such an act, while any member of the Radical Alliance other than the Sur-Malic would be incapable of it."

A stocky brown Martian glowered. "Why the hell, sir, don't we wipe out the Sur-Malic? We all know they're straining every seam to get a war fleet built on Pronuleon II, and that their attack's only a matter of time. If we hit them where they are, they'd never recover—but if we wait for them to strike first...."

Dr. Wilton held up his hand to stem the torrent. "I can't speak for the government, young man, but I might point out that it has never been our policy to foment war. We are making such preparations as allotted funds permit, and the combined Solar Fleet is on the alert. Also, knowing that the Sur-Malic stole our laboratory speci—er—Unique, and being able to prove it are two different matters."

"Excuse me, doctor." A keen-eyed Earth reporter stood up. "You started to say 'specimen'. How about that? Are Sy and the other Uniques in the special lab groups actually some kind of humanoid robots or something? I know it's top-drawer stuff, but are these Uniques actually people? Do you make 'em, or are they born, or what? What are they for, and why their odd names?" He resumed his seat. The others maintained an expectant silence. It was not often they found themselves in the tropical, trackless forest area of the American Great Lakes region, which was almost invisibly dotted with naval installations, and personal interviews with military psychologists were rare events; but data pertaining to the almost fabulous Uniques would take news precedence on every video screen of the meadow, valley and woodland homes of Earth.

Dr. Wilton neatly snipped the legal filter from a cigarette, evoking sympathetic grins from his audience. Many took immediate advantage of the tacit permission to smoke. "I can answer those questions safely, I am sure. First," he smiled, "your shrewd observation of the term 'specimen': in some respects the Uniques are specimens—but only to the extent that in childhood some of them underwent certain surgical operations, mainly brain and glandular. All were kept on special diets during their early youth, and were meticulously trained by special instructors and psychologists. Other than having exceptional attributes in one or more designated fields, they are as normal as you and I—if you will pardon my hopeful attitude about myself."

There was a ripple of subdued laughter. The doctor cleared his throat and shifted his position. "They are the children of normal Earth parents, and are selected quietly, with parental approval, when certain combinations of factors appear on their school entrance examination records. They are naturally gifted; we try to encourage and improve these gifts, so that when they reach adulthood they will have a particular skill or skills to employ in the research and developmental laboratories. They are citizens, of course—and extremely valuable ones; they receive salaries commensurate with their military rank; they are free to travel, but we try to guard them against accident and mishap. Their real names are not revealed for security reasons; their laboratory names, such as Sykin Supcel AA-87, are a sort of code which designates their capabilities to their instructors and teammates."

He pressed a button on his desk. "To establish their complete normalcy, you might like to meet Arna Matt A-94, who happens to be waiting in the next room."

A door opened. A girl stopped on the threshold, a picture of poised surprise. The men looked at her appreciatively.

"Come in, my dear."

She moved to the doctor's side, lithely and with an easy grace. The shining metallic cloth of her brief uniform rustled in the silence. Many breaths were expelled at the same time, and she repressed a smile.

Dr. Wilton introduced her. "You will notice—" he coughed "—you have noticed," he continued broadly, "that Arna possesses several attributes." There were low murmurings. "But the single A in her number indicates that she ranks at the top of one field, and the number itself means that she is the ninety-fourth to become a trainee in the program which develops these unique humans; her code name reveals that she possesses Awareness in Mathematics—which is to say that she somehow immediately knows the answer to any mathematical problem presented, without having to consciously calculate or even think about it. Her particular gift was known on Earth as far back as the Seventeenth Century, but it has always been extremely rare and relatively undeveloped."

"Can she talk?" questioned a voice good-humoredly.

The psychologist chuckled. "Say something for the boys, Arna," he invited.

With the timing of a video star the girl parted her lips provocatively, leaned slightly forward and then, when expectancy was at its height, said "Boo!"

Friendly laughter echoed through the paneled room, coming from all but the Venusian. He rose stiffly. "This is all very well, but we're here t'get all the dope on Sykin Supcel. Aren't you holding out something?"

Dr. Wilton looked at the man squarely. "Yes," he said softly. "Yes, I am." His gaze swept the others. "The interview is terminated, gentlemen—I hope your news stories will be sufficiently popular to make your trip worthwhile. Your lapel cameras and their eyepieces will be returned as you enter your 'copters."

The Venusian was the first to voice his thanks, with a ring of sincerity as true as in the others' polite speeches.

Alone with Arna, Dr. Wilton punched several buttons on the desk, consulted a memo and spoke briskly to a blank video screen. "Start—all—in. Step seven two eight of Operation Catskin successful. Sur-Malic spy among reporters, as predicted by eighty-two point six probability. Lor'lsoon, posing as Venusian, exposed by his inadequate training—probability about sixty; his unconscious belligerency—probability about ninety. He is to be undisturbed for forty-eight hours, then detained after an apparently routine round-up. Any contacts he may reveal during the next two days are to be observed but not disturbed. End—all—out."

Arna leaned over the desk and kissed him lightly. "Nice work, Dad." Then she went on, tensely: "Any word from Sy—or is he supposed to make contact later?"


It was by merest chance that Sykin Supcel happened to be at the military spaceport of Dirik when the prisoner was made to land—and he had brought along an alibi to prove it. A year after his capture and removal to the key city of Pronuleon II, he had successfully convinced the Sur-Malic High Command that he would have been a willing traitor even without the rank and gold and promises. "Damned, dirty Earth lice," he had been wont to growl—at precisely propitious moments—"murdered my folks and stuck me in a stinking lab and cut up my insides—can't even be comfortable in a room with regular people because my temperature's too high. I'll wreck the whole League for that!" And he would angrily swipe at a perspiring brow.

It was easily established that his normal body temperature stayed about two degrees above average; he early established his need for long, cooling outdoor walks through the semi-tropical city and surrounding countryside. He had become the most trusted of all renegade aliens after voluntarily becoming a Sur-Malic citizen of Pronuleon II.

This afternoon he had insisted that Commander Rilth, his immediate superior in war fleet construction, walk with him in one of his restless moods. They had left the mighty hangars where Sy was supervising experimental work with the Earth-developed cosmic ray engines, and were lounging on a stone bench at the edge of the field, shaded from blazing yellow Pronuleon by a huge tree.

"It's the theoretical math, Rilth," complained Sy. "We just haven't got the calculators that Earth has. Slows things no end."

The thin, grim commandant turned to him. "Cursed theory is always a problem to a Sur-Malic. We hoped that your weak genius would be of avail!"

"Well, it's availing, isn't it?" Sy demanded gruffly. "If I had assistants that were anything but idiots, the job would be done!" In the cruel, ruthless culture of the Sur-Malic, this was no argument, but an accepted form of discussion, without rancor.

When Rilth did not answer, Sy gloomily watched the prisoner being escorted across the field. Suddenly he stood up and squinted at the group in the distance. "Say—who's that they're bringing in?"

Rilth strained to see. "Some rotten Earthling or Aldeberanian, no doubt. They look alike to me—and both are Leaguers."

Sy tugged at the other's arm excitedly. "Come on—let's get over to Detention Headquarters. If that's who I think it is, we'll have our new engines—installed—in three months!"

The Sur-Malic jerked free of Sy's hand, but matched his trot across the field. Although he moved carefully, it seemed that whenever he glanced away from the ground, small stones somehow managed to be under the edges of his soles, causing him to lurch, stumble and curse.

"You'll have to quit soaking up that cheap stuff, Rilth," taunted Sy. "You're clumsy as a bovine!" He dropped slightly to the rear, his loose, raw-boned frame jogging along without effort, his eyes darting ahead at the terrain.

Rilth looked at him with a snarl, uttered a stream of invectives. But as one foot landed on the end of a small branch the opposite end whipped up and blocked his other ankle. He sprawled in the dirt.

"Slimy beast!" he raged. He drew away from Sy's mocking offer of assistance. "It seems that in your vile presence all things go wrong!"

Inside the grey stone Detention building, Sy became suddenly exuberant. He made for the prisoner eagerly. Guards, in deference to his uniform insignia, stood aside at his approach.

"Arna!" He folded the girl in his arms, burying his face in the long waves beneath her trim headgear. "Love me," he whispered quickly. "Hate Earth—weak will—faint."

The girl looked at him. Her expression, which could be interpreted as surprise either on the basis of recognition or of a stranger's unexpected actions, changed to one of adoration. "Darling!" she gasped. She tried to embrace him, but apparently the strain of her past few hours had been too great; she slumped in his arms.

"Get a doctor!" Sy shouted to evoke maximum confusion. He lowered Arna to the floor as though her weight were too much to hold; a living pretense of physical weakness had served well to counteract envy. He made no attempt to cover her long, smooth thigh when it became exposed at the action—effectively diverting the guards' thoughts and eradicating any suspicion they might have felt at his behavior. He appealed to Rilth with his eyes. "She must be sick! Damn it, man, get a doctor!"

The commandant regarded him narrowly. "Anyone with the mind of a worm could see she has only fainted. She will revive shortly."

Arna did recover as predicted, coincident with the arrival of Lord Krut of the High Command. Sy pleaded his case artfully. "It was the work of genius, Your Lordship, to find Arna Matt—the one person in space who can hasten our plans! As you know, she is a human calculator, as well as—well—we were just about to escape the Earth laboratories and get married when you found me and brought me here."

Lord Krut glowered. He pondered before answering. "We neither planned her capture nor knew her qualities, High Technician Supcel," he said heavily. "Our scout-ships noticed her craft near Aldebaran, marked with the League military insignia. Following our policy of harassment, the scouts destroyed her escort ships. She," he gestured, "surrendered." His eyes raked slyly over the seemingly bewildered girl's body. "If we can use her talents, the Great Mokaine himself will be pleased. In view of your relationship, is it your opinion that she will not require indoctrination other than your efforts?"

"Hell, yes, Your Lordship. Why, they tortured her in the labs. If anything she hates the League worse than I do!" He placed an arm about the girl. "How about it, honey?"

Arna looked at Lord Krut with wide eyes. "Damn right," she said uncertainly. And then she asked meekly, "Could I have a drink of water, please?"

Sy seemed in no hurry to leave Detention Headquarters, even after Arna had been given over officially into his care with a token military rank. She had not batted an eyelash when Sy had explained to Rilth, with a leer, that his quarters would suffice for them both; she had even managed to simper a bit.

But, alone with Sy in his ample, almost luxurious apartment, with her personal gear from the Needle stacked in the main room, she placed both hands on her hips and stared at him questioningly.

"Big stakes," said Sy with meaning. He rattled on with a patter of propaganda tailored for possible ears in the walls. He grinned at her obvious relief when he silently indicated a comfortable room for her private bedchamber. When at last they were outdoors, Sy ignored the ground vehicle at his disposal and led Arna along a winding, tree-lined roadway which led to the cavernous hangars. Once out of earshot of the buildings, he spoke abruptly: "They kill your escort?"

Arna looked surprised, then laughed throatily. "Poor Sy—always worrying about our personnel!" Her voice was soothing and melodious. "The other ships were dummies; Mek Enj rigged up a neat little auto-tronic device, tuned to the Needle's controls. After your message for aid came to young Tel, I played meteor through half the galaxy, trying to get picked up!" She smiled at him. "Anyway, here I am. Have you run into trouble?"

He slipped an arm about her waist. "Sure have. I missed you like the devil."

Arna's smile faded. She slipped out of his embrace. "Sy! Do you mean to say you risked exposure of the only Sur-Malic-type telepath that young Tel can receive, when you didn't need help?"

Sy evaded the question. "Tomorrow we can shoot over to Haldane," he suggested. "There's an old Earth clergyman there who got stranded when the Alliance broke off chummy relations with Leaguers."

Arna eyed him icily. "And why should we visit this clergyman?"

"Well," said Sy innocently, "the old guy's almost two hundred now, which is crowding the limit for his generation. And you know the Sur-Malic don't have any marriage cere—"

"Oh, you knobhead! Here you have the most critical job of anyone in the League, and—and—who said I was going to marry you, anyway?"

"I did," returned Sy promptly. "Remember? I've been telling you that since we were kids—and you never once denied it."

Arna made a sound that was partly a sob and partly a laugh. She shook her head unbelievingly. "With the fate of a galaxy depending on your abilities and judgment, you drag me across a thousand million miles of space to prate about marriage."

"Yes," admitted Sy, "but think of how far it might have been. If spatial distances were actually as great as the old astronomers used to think, before they learned that light slows down after it travels—"

There was no slightest chance that Arna's small hand would actually strike Sy. She knew the attempt was futile, but she tried her best—and uttered a rueful sound when the blow seemed to pass right through his cheek, while he apparently stood still, grinning. "Some day," she promised, "I'm going to shoot you in the back—just to see what happens."

"That sounds more like my cheerful little calc-bird," he said. "But let's wait till after we're married, huh?" They continued along the unpaved road.

"I think," Arna said levelly, "there will be no marriage. There will certainly be none for me until the completion of the unimportant, completely insignificant Operation Catskin—or," she finished sweetly, "have you given that any thought lately?"

Sy frowned. A small stone in the road suddenly sped along the ground and cracked against another; the other snapped away, rolled, slowed, reversed, shot backward and hit the first one. He spoke thoughtfully. "Yes, I've given it a great deal of thought. And there's going to be—uh—a slight change of plan. That's really why I needed you here, Arna."

The girl stared. "Sy! Have you shorted a circuit? For heaven's sake, don't you realize this thing has been planned, and calculated, and re-arranged bit by bit for twenty years? That each of us is merely a small—no matter how important—cog in a far-reaching activity of infinite complexity? Don't you understand that everything is in a state of delicate, constantly shifting balance, with ambassadors, scientists and agents making each tiny move with precise timing and skill throughout a hundred worlds? And you want to change things!" Her voice softened, and she laid a hand on his arm. "Sy," she pleaded, "if you've run into some insurmountable obstacle, let's report it and try to ease out without upsetting everything. That's happened three times before, you know, and it's no disgrace if you can't—"

"Hell!" said Sy bitterly. "I can do it—I think. And if I can do it at all, I can go one step better. But I need help."

"But can't you see, Sy, that you can't change the plans now? Why, no one even knows what you have in mind—and I won't have anything to do with it!"

The hangars loomed not far ahead. Sy spoke patiently. "Look. As it stands, Operation Catskin now boils down to installing new engines in the Sur-Malic fleet, slipping gimmicks into the stabilizer works and controlling the gimmicks psychokinetically when the League and Alliance fleets meet for battle. If the Alliance ships operate erratically, they can't bring their guns to bear, and the League will mop up—even with our pint-sized fleet and inferior armament. Check?"

"Of course. That's what—"

"Okay. Now suppose we can rig a deal so it won't be necessary to shoot up the Alliance boats nor kill the poor deluded devils in them? The League wins the war, gets a brand-new, superior fleet, and hardly anyone gets smeared."

Arna sighed. "Let's be practical, Sy. All you know about engineering has been implanted hypnotically just for this job; all I can do is answer questions of pure math. I wouldn't know how to devise any gadgetry, and you're in no position to waste time trying—and in war some must be destroyed that others may survive."

"But suppose I've just about got the thing whipped already? I've learned enough, since I've been here, to rate Mech C even home."

"Sy, I just won't be a party to anything that might possibly upset League plans!"

Sy's chest heaved resignedly. "Will you help me with the computational math needed to finish Operation Catskin?"

"That's better!" Arna squeezed his arm happily. "Of course I will, you big, bony, restless idealist!"

He smiled fondly at her—at her answer, her young beauty and her nearness.


The weeks passed swiftly—weeks in which the swarming Sur-Malic workmen ripped from their foundations the massive, cumbersome atomic converters of the mighty space fleet and replaced them with light, radically designed engines which would feed eternally upon the all-pervading cosmic emanations that streaked the universe.

Sy and Arna had worked furiously. Surrounded by a corps of physicists, mathematicians, engineers, technicians and draftsmen, Arna had unerringly replied to endless queries as fast as she could speak. Sy had translated equations, converted values, integrated, correlated and directed. Subtly, he had inserted certain innocent equations of his own bit by bit, fed his results into the basic plans and disguised the all-important device with the cloak of dual function—one of which was vital to ship performance, the other of which was vulnerable to his psychokinetic ability to move objects of small mass by mental concentration alone.

But all things are subject to the vagaries of pure chance. Commandant Rilth, as chief of the project, continually prowled the immense planning rooms, workshops and assembly areas, giving of his not-inconsiderable technical knowledge where needed. And one day he came upon Sy delicately checking the tiny installation which would spell doom to Alliance schemes of conquest.

"You have found a flaw, perhaps?" demanded the Sur-Malic officer. He squatted and peered through the maze of ducts and cables at the shielded mechanism.

Sy crawled back out of the metallic web. "Not yet," he grunted. "I was just testing my brainstorm—works like a charm."

"To me," sneered Rilth, "it looks clumsy and inefficient. Could not your addled brain devise an electronic circuit, instead of a mechanical device subject to frictional wear?"

Sy wiped the perspiration from a dripping brow and spoke boldly. "This simplifies the master controls for your stupid crewmen. See those little plates on the shaft—like a butterfly's wings? When they fold up, the ship revolves; the closer together they get, the greater the artificial gravity. When they touch, you've got normal gravity in the ship. They function perfectly—and if you don't like them, rip them out of every boat and design your own G control!"

Rilth smiled coldly. "I suppose we must accept some of the more imbecilic aspects of your warped genius." He turned on his heel and left.

Sy whispered at his retreating back. "You'll never know how warped until that butterfly folds its wings down—and they kiss like little angels."

As the gigantic task of installation hummed and whined and boiled its way to completion, Sy and Arna found time to slip away into sprawling, dirty Dirik, where war-feverish activity catered to the whims and desires of teeming, pleasure-seeking officers and common warriors. In the boisterous cafes the Earth couple sat close together and whispered freely, relaxing from their grueling pace. They watched the dull, surging masses of characteristically thin Sur-Malic commoners ebb and flow along the dim, moonless, star-canopied streets, seeking surcease from the demands of their cruel and exacting lords. Under the sting of stimulants, listless, drab women became as gay as their noisy companions. There was endless bicker and chatter.

Frequently the Earth pair walked along winding country lanes, hand in hand, inhaling deeply of cool, sweet air beneath the everlasting ebon arch of the heavens. On one such evening Sy turned in to a farmer's dimly lit cottage, almost concealed in a stygian grove of fruit trees, and called its occupant to the door. He introduced Arna to a lean, toothless, grinning man.

"This is Loor, darling, our loyal Venusian agent—our contact with young Tel and the League."

Loor served them with simple wine. He showed Arna the delicate telepathic amplifier which carried his mental transmissions across the dust-voids of space, to be received by the unaided mind of a youthful Unique. Afterward, he returned the apparatus to its place of concealment beneath the floor.

It was but a few days before the scheduled space trials of the fleet when Arna brought Sy disquieting news.

"I overheard Rilth say he was going to investigate the ships' G mechanism," she whispered rapidly. "He seems to be suspicious of—"

"Poor kid," Sy said loudly. "You can't work when you feel like that. You go on home and sleep." He added casually, "I may be late tonight—lots of work to do." He located Rilth in a great noisy hangar and piloted him away from a crowd of noisy engineers. "Filthy vermin," he said by way of greeting, "you look like you need an airing." He lowered his voice. "Let's dodge our females tonight and slice up Dirik a bit—it'd do us both good."

Rilth grimaced. "It is unfortunate, gutter-born, that Ruza wants to celebrate tonight. Some miserable party or other."

"You can always work late, can't you, son of cattle? We'll snag a couple of lively young peasants from one of the pleasure dens."

Rilth's cold eye glittered. "Your vile mouth speaks temptingly."

"I'll meet you at a sidewalk table of the Wild Snake, on the Street of Delight. We'll blast the town!"

It was completely dark when the two met at the cafe. They finished a goblet of wine, and Sy suggested they move on to a place he knew. They threaded their way through jostling crowds and walked along side streets which led away from the city's riotous heart. Pedestrians became fewer. Rilth cursed Sy for not thinking to use a vehicle.

"It's just around the next corner, slimehead," Sy assured him. "And I've already made arrangements."

But there was a narrow, lightless alleyway a few steps ahead. Had Arna been following them, instead of at home worrying, she would have seen Sy stumble sideways at the mouth of the alley, bumping hard against his companion. She would have seen them both disappear into the blackness for an instant, and then would have seen Sy emerge from the shadows and reel onward alone, obviously drunk. Had she then rushed into the alley, she would have found Rilth's corpse sprawled on a pile of rubbish, still oozing gore from death wounds in throat and heart, and she might have noticed that his needle gun was gone, and that his empty money pouch lay on another wet stain of his uniform where a blade had been wiped clean.

By the time Sy returned to the Street of Delight his staggering gait had almost disappeared, and by the time he located a group of technicians whom he knew, dicing in a gambling establishment, it was gone entirely. He was welcomed with hearty curses into the group—and he began to play....

It is not known how far the story eventually traveled—and certainly it did not penetrate even all of the city for many hours, or every gambling den would have bolted its doors—but by morning a goodly sector of Pronuleon II was buzzing with the tale. It seemed that a certain group of Fleet Technicians, led by a High Technician—an Earth renegade—known as Sykin Supcel, had broken the hearts and some of the furniture of every gambling proprietor in Dirik. Each player had made good every cast of the dice in a run of luck unequaled in the known universe, and had returned to their quarters in groaning ground vehicles only when there was no more gold coin to be found on the Street of Delight, the Avenue of Pleasure or the Way of Joy.

But Sy's exuberance was dulled the next day when he heard of the brutal robbery-assassination of his friend, Commandant Rilth. "Not that I bore any love for the reptile," he said sorrowfuly to Lord Krut, thus spreading a counter-irritant for possible suspicion, "but he had a good head—a keen and valuable mind we would have missed sorely a month ago. As it is...." He straightened resignedly and accepted the responsibility of Acting Commandant of Fleet Construction Technicians.

A week later, in the midst of official excitement at the gratifyingly successful fleet trials, Sy and Arna slipped away by fast ground vehicle to the tiny isolated cottage of old Loor. Hurriedly they set up the ampli-tel apparatus. Loor reclined on his rude cot with his long, narrow head in the mesh helmet, and Sy taped down contacts and checked adjustments. He and Arna huddled over the Venusian for half an hour, until he finally opened his eyes and smiled toothlessly.

"Contact with Tel. He says hello."

Sy's face was strained. "Okay. Give him this: Start—all—in. A nail and a corncob, a book and a button. No nail, no corncob, no book, no button. You can strum a zither. End—all—out."

Loor was silent in concentration. Finally he spoke. "Start—all—in. You need a drink. End—all—out."

"Good work, Loor!" Sy began to untape the contacts. "Your job here is now fin—"

The door creaked viciously wide. Arna gasped. A Sur-Malic officer behind a needle gun moved into the small room. Five others crowded in behind him, similarly armed.

The leader smiled venomously. "Very convenient, Sykin Supcel, for you to leave your vehicle in the open. We have been watching your purulent friend for days, but we didn't suspect tele—"

Even Arna, who knew what to expect, could detect only a blur of motion. Loor jumped nervously as a pistol stuttered four times and four tiny needles exploded in the floor; he blinked and finally managed to focus his eyes on Sy only as the last Sur-Malic crumpled lifelessly.

"Solar Mother!" he muttered. "What happened?" He tore the helmet from his head and leaped spryly to his feet.

Arna answered while Sy wiped his long knife on one of the bodies and returned it to a sheath under his jacket. "Sy is able to move pretty fast," she explained. "It's one of his lab-developed abilities. The normal eye can't keep up with him when he puts on a spurt."

Loor continued to blink while Sy reduced the amplifier to jumbled scrap, and then the old man found his voice again. "Why," he asked Sy, "didn't you use your pistol on them? Wouldn't that be easier?"

Sy dragged the dead officers out of the doorway. "Can't depend on mechanical things," he said briefly. He mopped perspiration from his forehead and neck. "It's a matter of timing; I size up a situation, sort of estimate distances and positions, and kind of see myself carrying out the actions—and then I go into high gear. It's hard to see, hear, or even consciously think while I'm speeded up. At that speed triggers just don't pull fast enough."

"If those men had been able to move aside fast enough," said Arna, "Sy might have missed them entirely and not even known it until he slowed down again." She looked with distaste at the bodies, but without repugnance or fear.

Sy hurriedly thrust a bulging pouch of gold into Loor's hand. "Lock this place up," he directed, "and start walking immediately for Haldane. We've got to assume we're all known to Sur-Malic Intelligence. Arna and I will remove the outside evidence. All we need now is a little chunk of time!"

He walked out warily and soon pulled away in the dead officers' vehicle. Arna followed close behind.

Having driven slowly back to Dirik, Sy parked beside a row of similar vehicles to the rear of a city food market in the merchandise district. He walked to where Arna waited and climbed into his own conveyance. "Head for our little love-nest, slave," he directed. "You'll want your toothbrush, and it would be a shame to leave my hard-won gold behind."

Arna breathed excitedly. "Are we leaving the planet, Sy? Is our work completed? Was that what your message meant?"

"My, what a curiosity!" he taunted. He placed an arm about her shoulders. "We're going into seclusion," he leered. "I'll have you all to myself for days and days! Won't that be fun?"

Arna squirmed. "Stop it, Sy—I almost hit that old woman! And stop making those pebbles jump up in the road!" She glanced at him bitingly. "I suppose you've got things all arranged so we'll have to hide in a single room!"

"The choice is yours, love." He waved expansively. "Either we steal a scoutship or—how's the Needle for speed?"

"Oh, Sy! Can we actually get the Needle? She'll outstrip any warship! And she has a nice private compartment, with a good solid deck outside it for you. I'll loan you a pillow, maybe."

They took from the apartment only what would fit into small shoulder bags that were matched to their uniforms. Sy briefed Arna while they sped to the vast enclosure which walled off hundreds of impounded alien ships.

His towering rage was very evident even as he climbed from the ground vehicle. A callow sentry straightened at the approach of his glittering insignia. Sy fixed him with a malific eye. The youth's mouth began to twitch.

"Where," shouted Sy furiously, "is the moronic officer-in-charge?"

The sentry tried to speak.

"Never mind, you brainless rodent!" Sy roared. "Why wasn't that accursed League ship delivered to the testing grounds this morning?"

The boy began to stammer.

"Quiet, you miserable lump of offal!" screamed Sy. He turned and brutally cuffed Arna toward the gate. "Get in there, filthy drone, and raise that ship before I kick your belly to pulp!"

The sentry unlocked the high gate frantically. He watched with ashen features as Sy followed Arna across the yard, cursing, striking and reviling her.

Out of the guard's sight, Sy quickly located the Needle and broke the port seal. Arna clambered in, adjusted controls to planetary drive, wakened the powerful engines to a sighing song of readiness and then ran to her bunk to strap herself down. Sy sealed the port and dived into the soft, deep clutches of the pilot's gimbaled throne. Within seconds the craft darted for the horizon, veered, and streaked out from the planet on a straight drive for the blinding orb of Pronuleon.

A hundred miles or more from the blue world behind, the Needle shot through the detector field of a Sur-Malic scoutship. Sy didn't bother to switch on audio for a challenge. Grimly, he located the scoutship's relative position by the pip on his detector screen and stabbed a pattern of buttons to spew quickly-congealing clouds of magnetized dust into automatically calculated trajectory paths. He smiled with relief as pips sparked into life, indicating the interception of homing missiles. Out of the pursuer's range, he set an erratic course for the sun and called to Arna.

For three clock periods they hugged blazing, searing Pronuleon in an orbit that was almost too close for safety. Refrigeration units strained far beyond specified tolerances. Twice, tail toward the inferno for minimum radiation absorption, they barely fought clear of stupendous, surging tentacles of the shifting, agonized gravitational fields of Pronuleon. But they could not be detected so close to a raging sun.

Arna, wretched and exhausted, the thin fabric of a single garment clinging wetly to her body, leaned wearily against the throne. "Isn't it possible they think we took a fast course for Sol?" she sighed.

"Very probable," Sy whispered gauntly. Only an hour before he had revealed what the girl already suspected—that his code message had been the long-awaited signal for the entire Interstellar League fleet to ring the void about Pronuleon II. "But on this mission we can't take chances."

Arna laughed feebly. "Can't take chances!" she echoed, and shook her head.

Sy attempted a smile, sopped the streaming sweat from his eyes and studied a chronometer. He clamped a drinking tube, then let it fall from his mouth. "Get on some clothes and G-shoes, woman. We're going to keep an appointment."

The Needle's rotation slowly died; the vessel turned, lined up with Pronuleon's orbit, burst her bonds with a tangential spurt and then arced away from the seething fury behind.

Free of the obliterating sea of sun static, Sy threw open all detection and reception circuits and flung his detector field to its farthest reaches, dimming its accuracy but increasing its range. Immediately he stared in consternation at the activity in the three-dimensional depths of his screen. "Arna!" he called hoarsely. "Arna!" The girl ran clinkingly to him on jointed shoe-plates. "We're damn near too late," he groaned. "Look, the fleets are approaching each other!" The tiny red screen dot which indicated their position showed them to be on a course that would slice directly between both fleets. Sy leaped from the throne and fairly threw Arna into its confines. He braced his metal-shod feet on the deck and seized a ring cleat beside the control panel. "Steady as you go!" he gritted. "This is it—and we've got to make it!"

"Sy! Can you control the gadgets from this distance?"

"Yeah—but we've got to stay in planetary range. Don't leave the Pronuleon system." His fingers sped along a row of knobs. "I've got to call our fleet."

"Contact the fleet now? But Sy—"

"Quiet, honey!" He glanced at her once, quickly. "I rigged those gadgets like I intended to."

"Sy!" It was almost a scream. "What have you—"

"Shut up!" he snapped. "And that's an order!" Ignoring secrecy, code and even special wavelength, he signaled the League flagship on an open channel. He arranged a three-way video hook-up between the Needle, Admiral Grimes on the Forward Star and Dr. Horace Wilton on the Mars Moon. "No time," he ground out. "Operation set up as scheduled—but you won't have to fire. In five minutes all enemy crews will be flat under eight G's; when ships stop, grapple and board. Out!" He broke contact and turned to Arna. "Skitter and spit dust—use it all, but keep us clear for three minutes!" He locked both hands on the cleat and closed his eyes in concentration.


In the deep recesses of his mind, he created a clear picture of a typical, prototype butterfly gimmick. He imagined it in the approximate position it would be to keep a ship spinning slowly on its longitudinal axis—to exert the mild centrifugal force permitted for battle alert and preliminary maneuver. Then he willed the little wings to bend downward—slowly—past the null-G setting—to fold—down ... to kiss ... to close....

After a seeming century, and from a great distance, Arna's voice reached him, dragged him up from autohypnotic depths. "Sy! Sy! They've stopped firing! The League's closing in! Sy!"

He straightened, relaxed his bloodless grip on the cleat, drew a deep, shuddering breath, shook his head to clear it. Throbbing pains began to course from his arms and shoulders, where they had been buffeted against the panel housing during Arna's wild, skillful gyrations. He looked at the screen, adjusted it for close range.

Mote beside mote, League ships had paired off with the furiously whirling Alliance craft, attending all the major vessels and as many smaller ones as their fewer numbers could cover. Sy smiled tiredly. He could almost see the Sur-Malic crewmen, unconscious, lying pinned to their decks by their own terrible weight. Briefly, he closed his eyes again....


"I couldn't actually test the gadget's reverse setting, of course," Sy explained to Dr. Wilton, "but I knew Arna's calc would check out to infinity." He glanced through a window at the celebrating throngs below, in the streets of Dirik. "And now, sir," he turned to the girl at his side, "I think she—uh—I mean we—or rather I have something to say to you, sir. Uh...." He flushed and hesitated.

Arna took over competently. "I guess I'll simply have to marry this bumbling hero, Dad. Not that I want to," she added, with a mischievous glance at Sy, "though his psychokinetics aren't much of a problem—but I just can't do a thing against that darn Superior Celerity he's been using on me!"