THE Stretts' fuel-supply line had been cut long since. Many Strett cargo-carriers had been destroyed. The enemy would of have a very of fuel on hand. But there was no way of how large it was, how many it supply, or how long it would last.
Two were, however, unquestionable. First, the Stretts were a that in their minds would be invincible. Second, they would attack Ardane as soon as that be ready. The question was: how long would that take?
"So we want to every ship we have. How many? Five thousand? Ten? Fifteen? We want them to maximum possible power as soon as we possibly can," Sawtelle said. "And I want to out there with my boys to things."
"You aren't going to. Neither you your boys are expendable. Particularly you." Jaw hard-set, Hilton the for minutes. "No. What we'll do is take your Oman, Kedy. We'll re-set the Guide to drive into him you and the Masters about arms, armament, strategy, and so on. And we'll add I know of coordination, synthesis, and perception. That ought to make him at least a junior-grade genius."
"You can play that in spades. I wish you do it to me."
"I can—if you'll take the full Oman transformation. Nothing else can the punishment."
"I know. No, I don't want to be a that badly."
"Check. And we'll take the Kedy and make nine of him. Each one will learn from and profit by the mistakes by numbers and will assume the his number is killed."
"Oh, you expect, then...?"
"Expect? No. I know it well, and so do you. That's why we Ardans will all aground. Why the Kedys' job will be to make the in and around Ardane as as it can be made. Why it'll all be on twenty-four-hour alert. Then they can put as many thousands of Omans as you to work at all the Oman ships you want and doing anything else you say. Check?"
Sawtelle for a of minutes. "A details, is all. But that can be out as we go along."
Both men then, almost for six solid days; at the end of which time of relief. They had done possible for them to do. The defense of Ardvor was now at speed toward its objective.
Then captain and director, in two Oman ships with fifty men and a thousand Omans, the world-girdling to the operation of the Stretts. There they as usual. The still stripped; the still and their along their perfect terraces; the little still the and the silos. The that there was on hand to last a world for a hundred years no at all to these automatics; a of erector-mechs was new as fast as ones were being filled.
Since the men now that was going on, it was a for them to stop the whole Strett operation in its tracks. Then every man and every Oman to his job. Three days later, all the to work. Now, however, they were for the Ardans.
The miners, of concentrate, now larger of Navy-Standard uranexite. The carriers, of one-gallon cans, five-ton drums. The were larger—thirty in and two hundred into the air. The were not, however, being used as yet. One of the two Oman ships had been into a fuel-tanker and its were being first.
The Orion to Ardane and an eight-day wait began. For the time in over seven months Hilton time actually to loaf; and he and Temple, on the beach or in the mountains, themselves and each other to the full.
All too soon, however, the appeared in the sky over Ardane. The Orion joined it; and the two ships into sub-space for Earth.
THREE days out, Hilton used his of to the thought-controlled that had been all the of the Perseus in neutral. He her officers—by a public-address tape—that they were now free to return to Terra.
Three days later, one day of Sol, Sawtelle got Five-Jet Admiral Gordon's office on the sub-space radio. An to him, of course.
"Shut up, Perkins, and listen," Sawtelle said, bruskly. "Tell Gordon I'm in one hundred twenty thousand two hundred forty-five of uranexite. And if he isn't on this in sixty he'll a of it."
The admiral, almost to the point of apoplexy, came in. "Sawtelle, report for court-martial at ..."
"Keep still, Gordon," the captain snapped. In old Five-Jets obeyed. "I am no longer Terran Navy; no longer to your orders. As a of cold fact, I am no longer human. For which I will later to the full Advisory Board, some of the of Project Theta Orionis into a of life able to live in an of so as to kill any being in ten seconds. Under we will supply, free of charge, FOB Terra or Luna, all the the Solar System can use. The are these," and he gave them. "Do you accept these or not?"
"I ... I would vote to accept them, Captain. But that weight! One hundred twenty thousand tons—incredible! Are you sure of that figure?"
"Definitely. And that is minimum. The error is plus, not minus."
"This power-shortage would be over?" For the time since Sawtelle had him, Gordon that he was not solid Navy brass.
"It's over. Definitely. For good."
"I'd not only agree; I'd you a monument. While I can't speak for the Board, I'm sure they'll agree."
"So am I. In any event, your is all that's for this load." The had from Sawtelle's shoulders. "Where do you want it, Admiral? Aristarchus or White Sands?"
"White Sands, please. While there may be some in it to ..."
"While they out how much they can tax it?" Sawtelle asked, sardonically.
"Well, if they don't tax it it'll be the thing in history that isn't. Have you any to all this to the press?"
"None at all. The they it and the they spread it, the better. Will you have this to Astrogation, please?"
"Of course. And thanks, Captain. I'll see you at White Sands."
Then, as the now positively Gordon away, Sawtelle to his own staff. "Fenway—Snowden—take over. Better double-check micro-timing with Astro. Put us into a twenty-four-hour over White Sands and us there. We won't go down. Let the on remote, they want it."
THE of the Ardvorian Orion and the UC-1 (Uranexite Carrier Number One) was one of the most events old Earth had known. Air and space clear out to Emergence Volume Ninety to meet them. By the time the UC-1 was in on its remote-controlled landing the press of small ships was so great that all the police available were in a trying to it.
This was what Hilton had wanted. It possible the of dozen small from the Orion herself.
One of these a very high and very fast to Chicago. With all and under the of a perfectly Registry Number it on O'Hare Field. Eleven men from it and their way to a taxi stand, where each a vehicle.
Sam Bryant into his cab, gave the driver a number on Oakwood Avenue in Des Plaines, and settled to scan. He was lucky. He would have gone she was, of course, but the way were, he give her a little to the shock. She had taken the out for an River Road, and was on her way back. By having the taxi kill ten minutes or so he arrive just after she did. Wherefore he stopped the at a public and his home.
"Mrs. Bryant is not at home, but she will return at fifteen thirty," the said, crisply. "Would you to record a message for her?"
He the RECORD button. "This is Sam, Dolly baby. I'm right you. Turn around, why don't you, and tell your ever-lovin' star-hoppin' husband hello?"
The taxi up at the just as Doris closed the door; and Sam, after the driver a five-dollar bill, ran up the walk.
He waited just the door, key in hand, while she the handle, took off her and by long-established out to the communicator's switch. At the word, however, she rigidly—froze solid.
Smiling, he opened the door, walked in, and closed it him. Nothing of a blast have taken Doris Bryant's attention from that then.
"That is not so," she told the firmly, with shut. "They him on the Perseus. He won't be in for at least three days. This is some cretin's idea of a joke."
"Not this time, Dolly honey. It's me."
Her open as she whirled. "SAM!" she shrieked, and herself at him with all the pent-up and of two hundred thirty-four counted, husbandless, days.
After an unknown length of time Sam her up by the chin, at the stroller, and said, "How about me to the little stranger?"
"What a mother I out to be! That was the thing I was going to about, the very thing I saw you! Samuel Jay the Fourth, seventy-six days old today." And so on.
Eventually, however, the proud mother the father their first-born upstairs; where together, they put him—still asleep—to in his crib. Then again they were in each other's arms.
SOME time later, she around in the circle of his arm and to her into the of his back. She then his and, backward, him intently.
"You're you, I know, but you're different. No or any possibly the you have all over. To say nothing of a space officer on duty. And I know it isn't any of a disease. You've been acting all the time as though I were fragile, out of or something—as though you were of me in two. So—what is it, sweetheart?"
"I've been trying to out an easy way of telling you, but there isn't any. I am different. I'm a hundred times as as any man was. Look." He a chair, took one leg and thumb and what looked like a to it. The leg with a pistol-sharp report and Doris in surprise. "So you're right. I am afraid, not only of you in two, but killing you. And if I any of your or arms or I'll myself. So if I let myself go for a second—I don't think I will, but I might—don't wait until you're to start screaming. Promise?"
"I promise." Her wide. "But tell me!"
He told her. She was in turn surprised, amazed, apprehensive, and eager; and she more and more right up to the end.
"You that we ... that I'll just as I am—for thousands of years?"
"Just as you are. Or different, if you like. If you any of this you've been doing about being too big in the hips—I think you're right, myself—you can any way you please. Or your shape every hour on the hour. But you haven't my yet."
"Don't be silly." She into his arms again and on his left ear. "I'd go with you, of course, any time, but this—but you're positively sure Sammy Small will be all right?"
"Positively sure."
"Okay, I'll call mother...." Her fell. "I can't tell her that we'll see them again and that we'll live ..."
"You don't need to. She and Pop—Fern and Sally, too, and their boy-friends—are on the list. Not this time, but in a month or so, probably."
Doris like a sunburst. "And your folks, too, of course?" she asked.
"Yes, all the close ones."
"Marvelous! How soon are we leaving?"
AT six o'clock next morning, two hundred thirty-five days after Earth, Hilton and Sawtelle set out to make the Ardans' official call upon Terra's Advisory Board. Both were lead armor, the of which was radioactive. They did not need it, of course. But it would make all Ardans in Terran and would the that any other Ardans were landing.
Their was met at the spaceport; not by a limousine, but by a five-ton truck, into which they were one at a time by a lift. Cameras clicked, reporters scurried, and tri-di whirred. One of those scanners, men knew, was directly and only to the Advisory Board—which, of course, took anything either for or at its value.
Their stop was at a truck-scale, where each visitor was weighed. Hilton the at four thousand six hundred fifteen pounds; Sawtelle, a smaller man, in at four thousand one hundred ninety. Thence to the Radiation Laboratory, where it was and reported that the did not leak—which was enough, since each was with Masters' plastics.
Then into lead-lined cells, where each opened his face-plate to a element. Whereupon the of two in the main laboratory through the full range of red and against their stops.
Both Ardans the of shocked, astonished, almost that through the scientists and, in measure (because they less about radiation) through the Advisory Board itself in a big room across town. And from the Radiation Laboratory they were taken, and elevator, to the Office of the Commandant, where the Board was sitting.
The story, which had been sent in to the Board the day on a beam, was one upon which the Ardans had for days. Many be withheld. However, every man the Perseus would agree on some things. Indeed, the Earthship's officers had in already about and perfect health and Oman service and many other matters. Hence all such would have to be and countered.
Thus the report, while it was air-tight, perfectly logical, perfectly consistent, and complete, did not the Board at all. It wasn't to.
"WE cannot and do not approve of such favoritism," the Chairman of the Board said. "Longevity has always been man's goal. Every being has the right to ..."
"Flapdoodle!" Hilton snorted. "This is not being and this room is proofed, so climb off your soapbox. You don't need to talk like a politician here. Didn't you read paragraph 12-A-2, one of the many marked 'Top Secret'?"
"Of course. But we do not how purely can possibly have any upon purely physical transformations. Thus it not that any screened would die in the process. That is, of course, unless you deliberate, cold-blooded murder."
That stopped Hilton in his tracks, for it was too close for to the truth. But it did not the captain for an instant. He was used to death, in many of its forms.
"There are a of no Terran will understand," Sawtelle instantly. "Reasonable, or not, that's what will happen. And, or not, it'll be suicide, not murder. There isn't a thing that either Hilton or I can do about it."
Hilton the silence. "You can say with equal truth that every being has the right to a four-minute mile or to a great symphony. It isn't a of right at all, but of ability. In this case the are more necessary than the physical. You as a Board did a very job of the BuSci for Project Theta Orionis. Almost eighty of them proved able to the Ardan conversion. On the other hand, only a very small of the Navy did so."
"Your report said that the of the Project were not as to the death of the transformation," Admiral Gordon said. "Why not?"
"That should be self-explanatory," Hilton said, flatly. "They are still and still Terrans. We did not and will not upon either the or the of Terra's Advisory Board. What you tell all Terrans, and how much, and how, must be by yourselves. This also applies, of course, to the other 'Top Secret' paragraphs of the report, none of which are to any Terran the Board."
"But you haven't said anything about the method of selection," another Advisor complained. "Why, that will take all the of the world, full time; continuously."
"We said we would do the selecting. We meant just that," Hilton said, coldly. "No one the very will know anything about it. Even if it were an blessing—which it very definitely is not—do you want all into such an as that would cause? Or the possible it might set up? To say nothing of the question of how much of Terra's best blood do you want to off, and permanently? No. What we is that you paint the picture so black, using Sawtelle and me and what all has just as examples, that nobody would take it as a gift. Make them it like the plague. Hell, I don't have to tell you what your can do."
THE Chairman of the Board again his rostrum. "Do you to that we are to the record?" he declaimed. "To try to make out of hundreds of eyewitnesses? You ask us to the truth, to at ..."
"We aren't you to do anything!" Hilton snapped. "We don't give a what you do. Just study that record, with all that it implies. Read the lines. As for those on the Perseus, no two of them will tell the same and not one of them has the idea of what the is. I, personally, not only did not want to a monster, but would have I had to human. My wife the same way. Neither of us would have if there'd been any other way in God's of the and doing some other that must be done."
"What other things?" Gordon demanded.
"You'll know," Hilton answered, quietly. "Things no Terran will know. We hope. Things that would drive any Terran mad. Some of them are at—as much as we dared—between the lines of the report."
The report had not mentioned the Stretts. Nor were they to be mentioned now. If the Ardans stop them, no Terran need know anything about them.
If not, no Terran should know anything about them what he would learn for himself just the end. For Terra would be able to do anything to herself against the Stretts.
"Nothing can drive me mad," Gordon declared, "and I want to know all about it—right now!"
"You can do one of two things, Gordon," Sawtelle said in disgust. His was visible through the six-ply, plastic-backed lead of his face-plate. "Either up or accept my personal to come to Ardvor and try to go through the wringer. That's an to your own funeral." Five-Jet Admiral Gordon, to ribbons, no reply.
"I repeat," Hilton on, "we are not you to do anything whatever. We are to give you; free of but under conditions, all the power your can possibly use. We set no as to quantity and with no limit as to time. The only point at issue is or not you accept the conditions. If you do not accept them we'll now—and the offer will not be repeated."
"And you would, I presume, take the UC-1 with you?"
"Of not, sir. Terra needs power too badly. You are perfectly welcome to that one of uranexite, no what is here."
"That's one way of it," Gordon sneered. "But the truth is that you know well I'll of your ships out of space if you so much as ..."
"Oh, chip-chop the jaw-flapping, Gordon!" Hilton snapped. Then, as the to orders into his microphone, he on: "You want it the hard way, eh? Watch what happens, all of you!"
THE UC-1 into the air. Through its and into and through the stratosphere. Earth's fleet, already on full and to strike, to the attack. But the had the Orion and Ardvorian ships had been waiting, motionless, for a good minute the Terran and to blast with they had.
"Flashlights and firecrackers," Sawtelle said, calmly. "You aren't up our screens. As soon as you making a of by energy that way, we'll set the UC-1 where she was and on with our here."
"You will order a cease-fire at once, Admiral," the said, "or the of us will, as of now, remove you from the Board." Gordon his teeth in rage, but gave the order.
"If he hasn't had yet to him," Hilton suggested, "he might send up a drone. We don't want to kill anybody, you know. One with the he's got—just to see what to it."
"He's had enough. The of us have had more than enough. That was not only uncalled-for and disgusting—it was outrageous!"
The meeting settled down, then, from to discussion, and many were gone over. Certain were, however, so self-evident that they were not mentioned.
Thus, it was a self-evident that no Terran visit Ardvor; for the instrument-readings with the report's as to the of the Ardvorian environment, and no Terran possibly walk around in two of lead. Conversely, it was self-apparent to the Terrans that no Ardan visit Earth without being for what he was. Wearing such its plain. No one from the Perseus say that any Ardan, after having on the surface of Ardvor, would not be as as the laboratory's had Hilton and Sawtelle actually to be.
Wherefore the on, and cooperatively, to its planned end.
One minute after the Terran Perseus into normal space, the Orion into sub-space for her long to Ardvor.
THE last two days of that seven-day were the longest-seeming that either Hilton or Sawtelle had known. The sub-space radio was on and Kedy-One reported to Sawtelle every five minutes. Even though Hilton that the Oman commander-in-chief was as good at as he himself was, he himself the screened Strett world or fifty times an hour.
However, in of worry and apprehension, time on. The Orion emerged, to Ardvor and on Ardane Field.
Hilton, after properly and to his wife, to his office. There he that Sandra had well in hand for a that only he handle. Sawtelle and his officers to the new Command Central, where was and very much than Sawtelle had hope.
The Terran had to live in the Orion, of course, until into Ardans. Almost of course—since the Bryant was the only in the lot—Doris and her Sammy Small were, by popular acclaim, in the to be converted. For little Sammy had taken the entire by storm. No Oman female had a to act as nurse as long as any of the girls were around. Which was all the time. Especially the platinum-blonde twins; for months, now, Bernadine Braden and Hermione Felger.
"And you said they were so hard-boiled," Doris said to Sam, at the twins. On hands and on the floor, to with Sammy Small them, they were deep-throated at each other and at the baby, who was having the time of his life. "You couldn't have been any wronger, my sweet, if you'd had the whole Octagon helping you go astray. They're just as as they can be, of them."
Sam and grinned. His wife across the room to the pair and their out from them.
"Quit it, you two," she directed, the up and him a-straddle her left hip. "You're just him rotten."
"You think so, Dolly? Uh-uh, be it from such." Bernadine came to her feet. She at her own taut, abdomen; upon which a micrometrically-precise job might have an otherwise bulge. "Just you wait until Junior and I'll you how to a baby. Besides, what's the hurry?"
"He needs his supper. Vitamins and and hard and things, and then he's going to bed. I don't approve of this no-sleep business. So along, of you, until tomorrow."
