"BUT didn't you anything, Javo?" Strain was in every line of Tula's taut, body. "Nothing at all?"
"Nothing whatever." The one called Javo from his concentration. "Nothing has changed. Nor will it."
"That is indefensible!" Tula snapped. "With the promised return of the Masters there must and will be changes. Didn't any of you anything?"
Her hot, the group; a group like, for physical perfection, be in any colony.
No one Tula had a thing.
"That is not too surprising," Javo said finally. "You have the most of us all. But are you sure?"
"I am sure. It was the thought-form of a Master."
"Do you think that the Master your web?"
"It is certain. Those who us are than we."
"That is true. As they promised, then, so long and long ago, our Masters are returning home to us."
Jarvis Hilton of Terra, the man yet to be to direct any such deep-space as Project Theta Orionis, sat in with his two seconds-in-command. Assistant Director Sandra Cummings, analyst-synthesist and semantician, was tall, and svelte. Planetographer William Karns—a black-haired, black-browed, black-eyed man of thirty—was third in rank of the scientific group.
"I'm telling you, Jarve, you can't have it ways," Karns declared. "Captain Sawtelle is old-school Navy brass. He goes by the book. So you've got to a razor-sharp line; where the Advisory Board's puts it. And next time he his across that line, his in. You've been Caspar Milquetoast Two since we left Base."
"That's the way it looks to you?" Hilton's right hand a fist. "The man has age, and ability. I've been trying to meet him on a ground of and decency."
"Exactly. And he doesn't the of either. And, since the Board you his of him old Jeffers, you needn't him to."
"You may be right, Bill. What do you think, Dr. Cummings?"
The girl said: "Bill's right. Also, your isn't doing the of the whole scientific group a of good."
"Well, I haven't it, either. So next time I'll pin his ears back. Anything else?"
"Yes, Dr. Hilton, I have a of my own. I know I was your throat, but just when are you going to let me do some work?"
"None of us has much of anything to do yet, and won't have until we light somewhere. You're off a country mile."
"I'm not off base. You did want Eggleston, not me."
"Sure I did. I've with him and know what he can do. But I'm not a about it."
"No? Why, then, are you on first-name terms with in the scientific group me? Supposedly your assistant?"
"That's easy!" Hilton snapped. "Because you've been on since you came ... or at least I you were." Hilton and out his hand. "Sorry, Sandy—I'll start all over again."
"I'm sorry too, Chief." They hands warmly. "I was stiff, I guess, but I'll be good."
"You'll go to work right now, too. As semantician. Dig out that and tear it down. Draw that line Bill talked about."
"Can do, boss." She to her and walked out of the room, her every movement one of and easy grace.
Karns her with his eyes. "Funny. A trained-dancer Ph.D. And a Miss America type, like all the other this spacer. I wonder if she'll make out."
"So do I. I still wish they'd me Eggy. I've an executive-type female Ph.D. yet that was the it would take to her."
"That's what Sawtelle thinks of you, too, you know."
"I know; and the Board know its stuff. So I'm hoping, Bill, that she me as much as I to the Navy."
ALARM as the Perseus out of overdrive. Every to his post.
"Mister Snowden, why did we without orders from me?" Captain Sawtelle bellowed, into the room three jumps Hilton.
"The took control, sir," he said, quietly.
"Automatics! I give the orders!"
"In this case, Captain Sawtelle, you don't," Hilton said. Eyes locked and held. To Sawtelle, this was a new and co-commander. "I would that we discuss this in private."
"Very well, sir," Sawtelle said; and in the captain's Hilton opened up.
"For your information, Captain Sawtelle, I set my inter-space for any I choose. When any one of them reacts, it the and we emerge. During any the Solar System I am in command—with the that I must to you in case of attack on us."
"Where do you think you any such as that in the directive? It isn't there and I know my rights."
"It is, and you don't. Here is a of the whole directive. As you will note, it many Navy regulations. Disobedience of my orders and I can—and will—have you put in and sent to Terra for court-martial. Now let's go back."
In the room, Hilton said, "The has a of five hundred tons. There is also a amount of of uranexite. You will search, Captain Sawtelle."
And Captain Sawtelle ordered the search.
"What did you do to the big jerk, boss?" Sandra whispered.
"What you and Bill suggested," Hilton back. "Thanks to your analysis of the directive—pure if there was any—I could. Mighty good job, Sandy."
TEN or fifteen more minutes passed. Then:
"Here's the of radiation, sir," a reported. "It's a point source, though, not an object at this range."
"And here's the artifact, sir," Pilot Snowden said. "We're up on it fast. But ... but what's a doing out here in space?"
As they closed up, see that the thing did look like the of a great building. It was a cube, well over a hundred yards along each edge. And it was empty.
"That's one for the book," Sawtelle said.
"And how!" Hilton agreed. "I'll take a ... no, would be better. Karns, Yarborough, Techs Leeds and Miller and up."
"You'll need a escort," Sawtelle said. "Mr. Ashley, Landing Craft One, Two, and Three."
The three landing approached that lattice-work of and stopped. Five themselves on of force. Their leader, the number "14", a and his way along it up to a peculiar-looking bulge. The whole vanished, men and in empty space.
Sawtelle gasped. "Snowden! Are you 'em?"
"No, sir. Faster than light; hyperspace, sir."
"Mr. Ashby, did you have your set?"
"No, sir. I didn't think of it, sir."
"Doctor Cummings, why weren't yours out?"
"I didn't think of such a thing, either—any more than you did," Sandra said.
Ashby, the Communications Officer, had been the radio. "No reply from anyone, sir," he reported.
"Oh, no!" Sandra exclaimed. Then, "But look! They're pistols—especially the one number fourteen—but pistols?"
"Recoil pistols—sixty-threes—for use in case of power failure," Ashby explained. "That's it ... but I can't see why all their power out at once. But Fourteen—that's Hilton—is doing a job with that sixty-three. He'll be here in a of minutes."
And he was. "Every power unit out there—suits and both—drained," Hilton reported. "Completely drained. Get some help out there fast!"
In an the surface of a far-distant world a group of together in of one of a two-miles long board. They were at a light that had just appeared where no light should have been.
"Someone's brain-pan will be out for this," one of the group harshly. "That unit was long ago and it has not been reactivated."
"Someone an error, Your Loftiness?"
"Silence, fool! Stretts do not errors!"
AS soon as it was clear that no one had been injured, Sawtelle demanded, "How about it, Hilton?"
"Structurally, it was high-alloy steel. There were many bulges, possibly mechanisms. There were drive-units of a non-Terran type. There were many projectors, which—at a guess—were a hundred times as powerful as any I have before. There were no that the thing had been enclosed, in whole or in part. It had for warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing of food."
Sawtelle snorted. "You it had a crew?"
"Not necessarily...."
"Bah! What other of life is there?"
"I don't know. But we too much, let's look at the tri-di. The camera may have something I missed."
It hadn't. The three-dimensional pictures added nothing.
"It was either by or by control," Hilton decided, finally. "But how did they all our power? And just as bad, what and how is that other point of power we're for now?"
"What's with it?" Sawtelle asked.
"Its strength. No what or I assume, nothing we know will fit. Neither will do it. It has to be total conversion!"
