AS has been intimated, no Terran can know what Larry and Tuly and the other Oman performed, or how they at the they reached. However, in less than a week Larry reported to Hilton.
"It can be done, sir, with complete safety. And you will live more than you do now."
"How long?"
"The will be about five thousand Oman years—you don't know that an Oman year is equal to one point two nine three plus Terran years?"
"I didn't, no. Thanks."
"The maximum, a little less than six thousand. The minimum, a little over four thousand. I'm very sorry we had no data upon which to a closer estimate."
"Close enough." He at the Oman. "You also my wife?"
"Of course, sir."
"Well, we might be able to it, after we got used to the idea. Minimum, over five thousand Terran years ... accidents, of course?"
"No, sir. No accidents. Nothing will be able to kill you, by total of the brain. And then, sir, there will be the pattern."
"I'll ... be ... damned...." Hilton twice. "Okay, go ahead."
"Your skins will be like ours, energy-absorbers. Your 'blood' will of energy of oxygen. Thus, you may breathe or not, as you please. Unless you wish otherwise, we will continue the function. It would be while to the that now it. And you will wish at times to speak. You will still and drinking, although will be eliminated, as at present, as waste."
"We'd add to our food, I suppose. Or drink radioactives, or sleep under cobalt-60 lamps."
"Yes, sir. Your family life will be normal; your sexual and the same. Fertilization and period of unchanged. Your children will at the same as they do now."
"How do you—oh, I see. You wouldn't any or in the or chromosomes."
"We not, sir, if we wished. Such can be only in exact one-for-one replacements. In the near you will, of course, have to rigorously."
"We sure would. Let's see ... say we want a population of a hundred on our planet. Each to have two children, a boy and a girl. Born when the are about fifty ... um-m-m. The can have all the children they want, then, until our population is about a million; then on the limit of two couple. Right?"
"Approximately so, sir. And after you alone will be able to with the full power of your eight, without tiring. You will also, of course, be able to almost all the and of the old Masters."
Hilton twice he speak. "You wouldn't be anything else back, would you?"
"Nothing important, sir. Everything else is minor, and to you."
"I it. How long will the job take, and how much notice will you need?"
"Two days, sir. No notice. Everything is ready."
Hilton, somber, for minutes. "The more I think of it the less I like it. But it to be a put ... and Temple will sky high ... and have I got the to go it alone, if she'd let me...." He himself out of the black mood. "I'll look her up and let you know, Larry."
HE looked her up and told her everything. Told her bluntly; starkly; the full picture in black, with very little white.
"There it is, sweetheart. The works," he concluded. "We are not going to have ten years; we may not have ten months. So—if such a brain as that can be had, do we or do we not have to have it? I'm it up to you."
Temple's face, which had been and paler, was now as nearly as it become; the yellow of her skin's light by any of red blood.
Her whole was and strained.
"There's a on that question.... Can't I do it? Or else you?"
"No. Anyway, job is it, sweetheart?"
"I know, but ... but I know just how close Tuly came to killing you. And that wasn't anything to such a as this. I'm it'll kill you, darling. And I just couldn't it!"
She herself into his arms, and he her in the ages-old fashion of man with maid.
"Steady, hon," he said, as soon as he her tear-streaked from his shoulder. "I'll live through it. I you were the about having to live for six thousand years and to Terra for a Q T visit now and then."
She away from him, her and glared. "So that's what you thought! What do I how long I live, or how, or where, as long as it's with you? But what makes you think we can possibly live through such a as that?"
"Larry wouldn't do it if there was any question whatever. He didn't say it would be painless. But he did say I'd live."
"Well, he knows, I ... I hope." Temple's natural color to come back. "But it's that just the second you come out of the vat, I go right in."
"I hadn't ought to let you, of course. But I don't think I take it alone."
That a special type of conference, which some little time. Eventually, however, Temple answered it in words.
"Of you couldn't, sweetheart, and I wouldn't let you, if you could."
There were a that had to be done those two be made. There was the of the wedding, which was now to be in quadruplicate. Arrangements had to be so that eight Big Wheels of the Project all be away on at once.
All these were done.
OF the operations themselves, nothing more need be said. The honeymooners, having left ship and town on a Friday afternoon, came one week from the Monday[1] morning. The eight met in Bachelors' Hall; the girls each other and the men and enthusiastically; the men zestfully.
[1]While it took some time to the exact Ardrian calendar, Terran day names and Terran were used from the first. The Omans watches, clocks, and which the Ardrian day into twenty-four Ardrian hours, with minutes and as usual.
Temple at all, she was so in trying to out or not anyone was noticing any change. No one to notice anything out of the ordinary. So, finally, she asked.
"Don't any of you, really, see anything different?"
The six others all at that, and Sandra, and snorts, said: "No, precious, it doesn't a bit. Did you think it would?"
Temple and Hilton came to his bride's rescue. "Chip-chop the comedy, gang. She and I aren't any more. We're a good jump toward being Omans. I couldn't make her it doesn't show."
That stopped the levity, cold, but none of the six it. However, after Hilton had a twenty-penny into a perfect his fingers, and after he and Temple had each up and a piece of uranexite, there were no left for doubt.
"That settles it ... it it," Karns said then. "Start all over again, Jarve. We'll listen, this time."
Hilton told the long again, and added: "I had to re-work a of of Temple's brain, but now she can read and the records as well as I can. So I I'd take her place on Team One and let her the job on all the other teams. Okay?"
"So you don't want to let the of us in on it." Karns's level was a from the way he had looked at his a moment before. "If there's any one thing in the I had you for, it's a dog in the manger."
"Huh? You you actually want to be a ... a ... hell, we don't know what we are!"
"I do want it, Jarvis. We all do." This was, of all people, Teddy! "No one in all history has had more than about fifty years of thinking. And just the idea of having time ..."
"Hold it, Teddy. Use your brain. The Masters couldn't take it—they suicide. How do you we can do any better?"
"Because we'll use our brains!" she snapped. "They didn't. The Omans will us; and that's all they'll do."
"And do you think you'll be able to your children and and so on to do the same? To have to the of such an habit-forming as this Oman service is?"
"I'M sure of it." She positively. "And we'll all through a screen to—that is, if we our own BuSci people. And there's another reason." She grinned, got up, out of her coverall, and in and panties. "Look. I can keep most of this for five years. Quite a of it for ten. Then comes the struggle. What do you think I'd do for the ability, it to or flabby, to the whole thing off and put on a brand-spanking-new one? You name it, I'll do it! Besides, Bill and I will just and cold-bloodedly you if you try to keep us out."
"Okay." Hilton looked at Temple; she looked at him; looked at all the others. There was no at all. Nothing but eagerness.
Temple took over.
"I'm surprised. We're surprised. You see, Jarve didn't want to do it at all, but he had to. I not only didn't want to, I was green and yellow at just the idea of it. But I had to, too, of course. We didn't think would want to. We we'd be left here alone. We still will be, I think, when you've it clear through, Teddy. You just haven't yet that we aren't any more. We're nothing but monsters!" Temple's voice a wail.
"I've said my piece," Teddy said. "You tell 'em, Bill."
"Let me say something first," Kincaid said. "Temple, I'm of you. This line isn't at all your thinking. What you actually are is superior. Bill?"
"I can add one to that. I don't wonder that you were silly, Temple. Utterly new and you into it cold. But now we see the product and we like it. In fact, we drool."
"I'll say we're drooling," Sandra said. "I do and with joy."
"Let's see you," Hilton said. "That we'd all a out of."
"Not now—don't want to this up—but I just will. Bev?"
"I'm for it—and how! And won't Bernadine be amazed," Beverly laughed gleefully, "at her wise-crack about the 'race to end all races' true?"
"I'm in of it, too, one hundred cent," Poynter said. "Has it to you, Jarve, that this opens up exploration? No to and of time and fuel?"
"No, it hadn't. You've got a point there, Frank. That might take a little of the off of it, at that."
"When some of our to be twenty years old or so and married, I'm going to take a of them to Andromeda. We'll arrange, then, to our another week," Hilton said. "What will our policy be? Keep it dark for a while with just us eight, or spread it to the rest?"
"Spread it, I'd say," Kincaid said.
"We can't keep it secret, anyway," Teddy argued. "Since Larry and Tuly were in on the whole deal, every Oman on the all about it. Somebody is going to ask questions, and Omans always answer questions and always tell the truth."
"QUESTIONS have already been asked and answered," Larry said, going to the door and opening it.
Stella in. "We've been the things!" She everybody, with Hilton, she by shoulders. "Is it actually true, boss, that you can me up so I'll live and can eat more than eleven a day without as a pig? Candy, ice cream, cake, pie, eclairs, puffs, French pastries, sugar and of thick in my coffee...?"
Half a dozen others, the Moen twins, came in. Beverly a of joy. "Bernadine! The mother of the to end all races!"
"You it, birdie!" Bernadine caroled. "I'm going to have ten or twelve, each one than all the others. I told you I was a prophet—I'm going to out my shingle. Wholesale and retail prophecy; special for large parties." Her voice was out in a clamor.
"Hold it, everybody!" Hilton yelled. "Chip-chop it! Quit it!" Then, as the noise subsided, "If you think I'm going to tell this tall over and over again for the next two you're all crazy. So the plant and out here."
"Not everybody, Jarve!" Temple snapped. "We don't want scum, and there's some of that, in BuSci."
"You're so right. Who, then?"
"The of the and assistants, of ... and all the girls and their husbands and boy-friends. I know they are all okay. That will be for now, don't you think?"
"I do think;" and the others were sent for; and in a minutes arrived.
The Omans chairs and Hilton on a table. He spoke for ten minutes. Then: "Before you decide you want to or not, think it over very carefully, it's a one-way street. Fluorine can not be displaced. Once in, you're for life. There is no way back. I've told you all the and I know of, but there may be a more that I haven't of yet. So think it over for a days and when each of you has definitely up his or her mind, let me know." He jumped off the table.
HIS listeners, however, did not need days, or seconds, to decide. Before Hilton's the there was a of approval.
He looked at his wife. "Do you we're nuts?"
"Uh-uh. Not a bit. Alex was right. I'm going to just love it!" She his ecstatically. "So are you, darling, as soon as you stop looking at only the black side."
"You know ... you be right?" For the time since the "ghastly" Hilton saw that there was a and to study it. "With most of BuSci—and part of the Navy, and from Terra—it will be terrific, at that!"
"And that 'habit-forming-drug' isn't insuperable, darling," Temple said. "If the start we'll the Omans. I wouldn't want to them out entirely, but ..."
"But how do we settle priority, Doctor Hilton?" a girl called out; a tall, striking, laboratory name Hilton needed a second to recall. "By or hair? Or by or each other or what?"
"Thanks, Betty, you've got a point. Sandy Cummings and first, then assistants. Then you girls, in order, each with her own husband or fiance."
"And my name is Ames. Oh, goody!"
"Larry, tell them to ..."
"I already have, sir. We are set up to four at once."
"Good boy. So scat, all of you, and to work—except Sandy, Bill, Alex, and Teddy. You four go with Larry."
Since the new was not peyondix, Hilton had started calling it "perception" and the others the term as a of course. Hilton use that for what like years—and actually was whole minutes—at a time without or strain. He not, however, the Omans, give his power to anyone else.
As he had said, he do a amount of reworking; but the amount of possible to make upon what there was to work on. Thus, Temple about six hundred light-years. It later that the others of the Big Eight from one hundred up to four hundred or so. The other and out to be still weaker, and not one of the rank and file able to more than a single planet.
This was not telepathy; at least not what Hilton had always would be. If anything, however, it was more. It was a together of all five senses—and a dozen unknown ones called, collectively, "intuition"—into one super-sense that was all-inclusive and all-informative. If he learn what it was and what it did and how it did it ... but he'd chip-chop the wool-gathering and onto the job.
THE Stretts had the old Masters very easily, and to out the Omans and the humans. They had no at all as to their ability to do it. Maybe they could. If the Masters hadn't some progress that the Omans didn't know about, they could. That was the thing to out. As soon as they'd been he'd call in all the and they'd go through the Masters' records like a of salts through a schoolma'am.
At that point in Hilton's Sawtelle came in.
He had come in his gig, to with Hilton as to the newly beefed-up fleet. Instead of being and and foreboding, he was and enthusiastic. They had a thousand Oman ships. By Oman and Terran science, and adding the First Team had been able to to practise, they had up the power by a good fifteen cent. Seven hundred of those ships, and all his men, were now in defense around Ardry. Three hundred, by Omans, were around Fuel Bin.
"Why?" Hilton asked. "It's Fuel Bin they've been attacking."
"Uh-uh. Minor objective," the captain demurred, positively. "The attack will be here at you; the and the brains. Then Fuel Bin will be soup. But the thing that pleased me most is the control. Man, you such control! No in history had such of ten ships as I have of seven hundred. Those Omans spread orders so fast that I don't one and it's being executed. And no misunderstandings, no slips. For instance, this last batch—fifteen skeletons. Far out; they're cagy. I just 'Box 'em in and 'em' and—In! Across! Out! Socko! Pffft! Just like that and just that fast. None of 'em had time to light a beam. Nobody of such control!"
"That's great, and I like it ... and you're only a captain. How many ships can Five-Jet Admiral Gordon put into space?"
"That on what you call ships. Superdreadnoughts, Perseus class, six. First-line battleships, twenty-nine. Second-line, smaller and some old, seventy-three. Counting that will air, something over two hundred."
"I it was something like that. How would you like to be Five-Jet Admiral Sawtelle of the Ardrian Navy?"
"I wouldn't. I'm Terran Navy. But you that and you know me. So—what's on your mind?"
HILTON told him. I ought to put this on a tape, he to himself, and it every hour on the hour.
"They took the old Masters like fish in a barrel," he concluded, "and I'm they're going to us unless we take a of big, fast steps. But the of it is that I can't tell you anything—not one single thing—about any part of it. There's no way at all of through to you without making you over into the same of a thing I am."
"Is that bad?" Sawtelle was used to making fast. "Let's at it."
"Huh? Skipper, do you just what that means? If you think they'll let you resign, it. They'll you—brand you as a and God only what else."
"Right. How about you and your people?"
"Well, as civilians, it won't be as bad...."
"The it won't. Every man and woman that here will be posted as the old Terra herself by spawning."
"You've got a point there, at that. We'll all have to our relatives—the ones we think much of, at least—out here with us."
"Definitely. Now see what you can do about me through your mill."
By his authority, Hilton got Sawtelle put through the "Preservatory" in the second processed. Then, minds with the captain, he their joint attention to the Hall of Records. Into the right room; into the right chest; along miles and miles of wire some of the of the Masters.
Then:
"Now you know a little of it," Hilton said. "Maybe a thousandth of what we'll have to have we can take the Stretts as they will have to be taken."
For Sawtelle not speak. Then: "My ... God. I see what you mean. You're right. No Omans can go to Terra; and no Terrans can come here to forever."
The two then out into space, to the flagship—which had been the Orion—and called in the six commanders.
"What is all this we've been getting, Jarve?" Elliott demanded.
Hilton all six with disfavor. "You six are the hardest-headed of that unhung," he remarked, dispassionately. "So it wouldn't do any good to tell you anything—yet. The and I will you a thing first. Take her away, Skip."
The Orion away under drive and for hours Hilton and Sawtelle at re-wiring and two that no one, Oman or human, had touched since the Perseus had on Ardry.
"What are you ... I don't what you are doing, sir," Larry said. For the time since Hilton had him, the Oman's mind was and unsure.
"I know you don't. This is a of top-secret Masters' stuff. Maybe, some day, we'll be able to re-work your brain to take it. But it won't be for some time."
