The Stars My Brothers

: The Stars, My Brothers

He was afraid--not of the present or the future,

but of the past. He was afraid of the thing

tagged Reed Kieran, that stiff blind voiceless

thing wheeling its slow orbit around the Moon,

companion to dead worlds and silent space.









1.



Something tiny went wrong, but no one ever knew whether it was in an

electric relay or in the brain of
the pilot.



The pilot was Lieutenant Charles Wandek, UNRC, home address: 1677

Anstey Avenue, Detroit. He did not survive the crash of his ferry into

Wheel Five. Neither did his three passengers, a young French

astrophysicist, an East Indian expert on magnetic fields, and a

forty-year-old man from Philadelphia who was coming out to replace a

pump technician.



Someone else who did not survive was Reed Kieran, the only man in Wheel

Five itself to lose his life. Kieran, who was thirty-six years old, was

an accredited scientist-employee of UNRC. Home address: 815 Elm Street,

Midland Springs, Ohio.



Kieran, despite the fact that he was a confirmed bachelor, was in Wheel

Five because of a woman. But the woman who had sent him there was no

beautiful lost love. Her name was Gertrude Lemmiken; she was nineteen

years old and overweight, with a fat, stupid face. She suffered from

head-colds, and sniffed constantly in the Ohio college classroom where

Kieran taught Physics Two.



One March morning, Kieran could bear it no longer. He told himself, "If

she sniffs this morning, I'm through. I'll resign and join the UNRC."



Gertrude sniffed. Six months later, having finished his training for the

United Nations Reconnaissance Corps, Kieran shipped out for a term of

duty in UNRC Space Laboratory Number 5, known more familiarly as Wheel

Five.



Wheel Five circled the Moon. There was an elaborate base on the surface

of the Moon in this year 1981. There were laboratories and observatories

there, too. But it had been found that the alternating fortnights of

boiling heat and near-absolute-zero cold on the lunar surface could play

havoc with the delicate instruments used in certain researches. Hence

Wheel Five had been built and was staffed by research men who were

rotated at regular eight-month intervals.



* * * * *



Kieran loved it, from the first. He thought that that was because of the

sheer beauty of it, the gaunt, silver deaths-head of the Moon forever

turning beneath, the still and solemn glory of the undimmed stars, the

filamentaries stretched across the distant star-clusters like shining

veils, the quietness, the peace.



But Kieran had a certain intellectual honesty, and after a while he

admitted to himself that neither the beauty nor the romance of it was

what made this life so attractive to him. It was the fact that he was

far away from Earth. He did not even have to look at Earth, for nearly

all geophysical research was taken care of by Wheels Two and Three that

circled the mother planet. He was almost completely divorced from all

Earth's problems and people.



Kieran liked people, but had never felt that he understood them. What

seemed important to them, all the drives of ordinary day-to-day

existence, had never seemed very important to him. He had felt that

there must be something wrong with him, something lacking, for it seemed

to him that people everywhere committed the most outlandish follies,

believed in the most incredible things, were swayed by pure

herd-instinct into the most harmful courses of behavior. They could not

all be wrong, he thought, so he must be wrong--and it had worried him.

He had taken partial refuge in pure science, but the study and then the

teaching of astrophysics had not been the refuge that Wheel Five was. He

would be sorry to leave the Wheel when his time was up.



And he was sorry, when the day came. The others of the staff were

already out in the docking lock in the rim, waiting to greet the

replacements from the ferry. Kieran, hating to leave, lagged behind.

Then, realizing it would be churlish not to meet this young Frenchman

who was replacing him, he hurried along the corridor in the big spoke

when he saw the ferry coming in.



He was two-thirds of the way along the spoke to the rim when it

happened. There was a tremendous crash that flung him violently from his

feet. He felt a coldness, instant and terrible.



He was dying.



He was dead.



The ferry had been coming in on a perfectly normal approach when the

tiny something went wrong, in the ship or in the judgment of the pilot.

Its drive-rockets suddenly blasted on full, it heeled over sharply, it

smashed through the big starboard spoke like a knife through butter.



Wheel Five staggered, rocked, and floundered. The automatic safety

bulkheads had all closed, and the big spoke--Section T2--was the only

section to blow its air, and Kieran was the only man caught in it. The

alarms went off, and while the wreckage of the ferry, with three dead

men in it, was still drifting close by, everyone in the Wheel was in his

pressure-suit and emergency measures were in full force.



* * * * *



Within thirty minutes it became evident that the Wheel was going to

survive this accident. It was edging slowly out of orbit from the

impetus of the blow, and in the present weakened state of the

construction its small corrective rockets could not be used to stop the

drift. But Meloni, the UNRC captain commanding, had got first reports

from his damage-control teams, and it did not look too bad. He fired

off peremptory demands for the repair materials he would need, and was

assured by UNRC headquarters at Mexico City that the ferries would be

loaded and on their way as soon as possible.



Meloni was just beginning to relax a little when a young officer brought

up a minor but vexing problem. Lieutenant Vinson had headed the small

party sent out to recover the bodies of the four dead men. In their

pressure-suits they had been pawing through the tangled wreckage for

some time, and young Vinson was tired when he made his report.



"We have all four alongside, sir. The three men in the ferry were pretty

badly mangled in the crash. Kieran wasn't physically wounded, but died

from space-asphyxiation."



The captain stared at him. "Alongside? Why didn't you bring them in?

They'll go back in one of the ferries to Earth for burial."



"But--" Vinson started to protest.



Meloni interrupted sharply. "You need to learn a few things about

morale, Lieutenant. You think it's going to do morale here any good to

have four dead men floating alongside where everyone can see them? Fetch

them in and store them in one of the holds."



Vinson, sweating and unhappy now, had visions of a black mark on his

record, and determined to make his point.



"But about Kieran, sir--he was only frozen. Suppose there was a chance

to bring him back?"



"Bring him back? What the devil are you talking about?"



Vinson said, "I read they're trying to find some way of restoring a man

that gets space-frozen. Some scientists down at Delhi University. If

they succeeded, and if we had Kieran still intact in space--"



"Oh, hell, that's just a scientific pipe-dream, they'll never find a way

to do that," Meloni said. "It's all just theory."



"Yes, sir," said Vinson, hanging his head.



"We've got trouble enough here without you bringing up ideas like this,"

the captain continued angrily. "Get out of here."



Vinson was now completely crushed. "Yes, sir. I'll bring the bodies in."



* * * * *



He went out. Meloni stared at the door, and began to think. A commanding

officer had to be careful, or he could get skinned alive. If, by some

remote chance, this Delhi idea ever succeeded, he, Meloni, would be in

for it for having Kieran buried. He strode to the door and flung it

open, mentally cursing the young snotty who had had to bring this up.



"Vinson!" he shouted.



The lieutenant turned back, startled. "Yes, sir?"



"Hold Kieran's body outside. I'll check on this with Mexico City."



"Yes, sir."



Still angry, Meloni shot a message to Personnel at Mexico City. That

done, he forgot about it. The buck had been passed, let the boys sitting

on their backsides down on Earth handle it.



Colonel Hausman, second in command of Personnel Division of UNRC, was

the man to whom Meloni's message went. He snorted loudly when he read

it. And later, when he went in to report to Garces, the brigadier

commanding the Division, he took the message with him.



"Meloni must be pretty badly rattled by the crash," he said. "Look at

this."



Garces read the message, then looked up. "Anything to this? The Delhi

experiments, I mean?"



Hausman had taken care to brief himself on that point and was able to

answer emphatically.



"Damned little. Those chaps in Delhi have been playing around freezing

insects and thawing them out, and they think the process might be

developed someday to where it could revive frozen spacemen. It's an iffy

idea. I'll burn Meloni's backside off for bringing it up at a time like

this."



Garces, after a moment, shook his head. "No, wait. Let me think about

this."



He looked speculatively out of the window for a few moments. Then he

said,



"Message Meloni that this one chap's body--what's his name, Kieran?--is

to be preserved in space against a chance of future revival."



Hausman nearly blotted his copybook by exclaiming, "For God's sake--" He

choked that down in time and said, "But it could be centuries before a

revival process is perfected, if it ever is."



Garces nodded. "I know. But you're missing a psychological point that

could be valuable to UNRC. This Kieran has relatives, doesn't he?"



Hausman nodded. "A widowed mother and a sister. His father's been dead a

long time. No wife or children."



Garces said, "If we tell them he's dead, frozen in space and then

buried, it's all over with. Won't those people feel a lot better if we

tell them that he's apparently dead, but might be brought back when a

revival-technique is perfected in the future?"



"I suppose they'd feel better about it," Hausman conceded. "But I don't

see--"



Garces shrugged. "Simple. We're only really beginning in space, you

know. As we go on, UNRC is going to lose a number of men, space-struck

just like Kieran. A howl will go up about our casualty lists, it always

does. But if we can say that they're only frozen until such time as

revival technique is achieved, everyone will feel better about it."



"I suppose public relations are important--" Hausman began to say, and

Garces nodded quickly.



"They are. See that this is done, when you go up to confer with Meloni.

Make sure that it gets onto the video networks, I want everyone to see

it."



Later, with many cameras and millions of people watching, Kieran's body,

in a pressure-suit, was ceremoniously taken to a selected position where

it would orbit the Moon. All suggestions of the funerary were carefully

avoided. The space-struck man--nobody at all referred to him as

"dead"--would remain in this position until a revival process was

perfected.



"Until forever," thought Hausman, watching sourly. "I suppose Garces is

right. But they'll have a whole graveyard here, as time goes on."



As time went on, they did.





2.



In his dreams, a soft voice whispered.



He did not know what it was telling him, except that it was important.

He was hardly aware of its coming, the times it came. There would be the

quiet murmuring, and something in him seemed to hear and understand, and

then the murmur faded away and there was nothing but the dreams again.



But were they dreams? Nothing had form or meaning. Light, darkness,

sound, pain and not-pain, flowed over him. Flowed over--who? Who was he?

He did not even know that. He did not care.



But he came to care, the question vaguely nagged him. He should try to

remember. There was more than dreams and the whispering voice. There

was--what? If he had one real thing to cling to, to put his feet on and

climb back from-- One thing like his name.



He had no name. He was no one. Sleep and forget it. Sleep and dream and

listen--



"Kieran."



It went across his brain like a shattering bolt of lightning, that word.

He did not know what the word was or what it meant but it found an echo

somewhere and his brain screamed it.



"Kieran!"



Not his brain alone, his voice was gasping it, harshly and croakingly,

his lungs seeming on fire as they expelled the word.



He was shaking. He had a body that could shake, that could feel pain,

that was feeling pain now. He tried to move, to break the nightmare, to

get back again to the vague dreams, and the soothing whisper.



He moved. His limbs thrashed leadenly, his chest heaved and panted, his

eyes opened.



He lay in a narrow bunk in a very small metal room.



He looked slowly around. He did not know this place. The gleaming white

metal of walls and ceiling was unfamiliar. There was a slight,

persistent tingling vibration in everything that was unfamiliar, too.



He was not in Wheel Five. He had seen every cell in it and none of them

were like this. Also, there lacked the persistent susurrant sound of the

ventilation pumps. Where--



You're in a ship, Kieran. A starship.



* * * * *



Something back in his mind told him that. But of course it was

ridiculous, a quirk of the imagination. There weren't any starships.



You're all right, Kieran. You're in a starship, and you're all right.



The emphatic assurance came from somewhere back in his brain and it was

comforting. He didn't feel very good, he felt dopey and sore, but there

was no use worrying about it when he knew for sure he was all right--



The hell he was all right! He was in someplace new, someplace strange,

and he felt half sick and he was not all right at all. Instead of lying

here on his back listening to comforting lies from his imagination, he

should get up, find out what was going on, what had happened.



Of a sudden, memory began to clear. What had happened? Something, a

crash, a terrible coldness--



Kieran began to shiver. He had been in Section T2, on his way to the

lock, and suddenly the floor had risen under him and Wheel Five had

seemed to crash into pieces around him. The cold, the pain--



You're in a starship. You're all right.



For God's sake why did his mind keep telling him things like that,

things he believed? For if he did not believe them he would be in a

panic, not knowing where he was, how he had come here. There was panic

in his mind but there was a barrier against it, the barrier of the

soothing reassurances that came from he knew not where.



He tried to sit up. It was useless, he was too weak. He lay, breathing

heavily. He felt that he should be hysterical with fear but somehow he

was not, that barrier in his mind prevented it.



He had decided to try shouting when a door in the side of the little

room slid open and a man came in.



He came over and looked down at Kieran. He was a young man,

sandy-haired, with a compact, chunky figure and a flat, hard face. His

eyes were blue and intense, and they gave Kieran the feeling that this

man was a wound-up spring. He looked down and said,



"How do you feel, Kieran?"



Kieran looked up at him. He asked, "Am I in a starship?"



"Yes."



"But there aren't any starships."



"There are. You're in one." The sandy-haired man added, "My name is

Vaillant."



It's true, what he says, murmured the something in Kieran's mind.



"Where--how--" Kieran began.



Vaillant interrupted his stammering question. "As to where, we're quite

a way from Earth, heading right now in the general direction of Altair.

As to how--" He paused, looking keenly down at Kieran. "Don't you know

how?"



Of course I know. I was frozen, and now I have been awakened and time

has gone by--



Vaillant, looking searchingly down at his face, showed a trace of

relief. "You do know, don't you? For a moment I was afraid it hadn't

worked."



He sat down on the edge of the bunk.



"How long?" asked Kieran.



Vaillant answered as casually as though it was the most ordinary

question in the world. "A bit over a century."



* * * * *



It was wonderful, thought Kieran, how he could take a statement like

that without getting excited. It was almost as though he'd known it all

the time.



"How--" he began, when there was an interruption.



Something buzzed thinly in the pocket of Vaillant's shirt. He took out a

thin three-inch disk of metal and said sharply into it,



"Yes?"



A tiny voice squawked from the disk. It was too far from Kieran for him

to understand what it was saying but it had a note of excitement, almost

of panic, in it.



Something changed, hardened, in Vaillant's flat face. He said, "I

expected it. I'll be right there. You know what to do."



He did something to the disk and spoke into it again. "Paula, take over

here."



He stood up. Kieran looked up at him, feeling numb and stupid. "I'd like

to know some things."



"Later," said Vaillant. "We've got troubles. Stay where you are."



He went rapidly out of the room. Kieran looked after him, wondering.

Troubles--troubles in a starship? And a century had passed--



He suddenly felt an emotion that shook his nerves and tightened his

guts. It was beginning to hit him now. He sat up in the bunk and swung

his legs out of it and tried to stand but could not, he was too weak.

All he could do was to sit there, shaking.



His mind could not take it in. It seemed only minutes ago that he had

been walking along the corridor in Wheel Five. It seemed that Wheel Five

must exist, that the Earth, the people, the time he knew, must still be

somewhere out there. This could be some kind of a joke, or some kind of

psychological experiment. That was it--the space-medicine boys were

always making way-out experiments to find out how men would bear up in

unusual conditions, and this must be one of them--



A woman came into the room. She was a dark woman who might have been

thirty years old, and who wore a white shirt and slacks. She would, he

thought, have been good-looking if she had not looked so tired and so

edgy.



She came over and looked down at him and said to him,



"Don't try to get up yet. You'll feel better very soon."



Her voice was a slightly husky one. It was utterly familiar to Kieran,

and yet he had never seen this woman before. Then it came to him.



"You were the one who talked to me," he said, looking up at her. "In the

dreams, I mean."



She nodded. "I'm Paula Ray and I'm a psychologist. You had to be

psychologically prepared for your awakening."



"Prepared?"



The woman explained patiently. "Hypnopedic technique--establishing facts

in the subconscious of a sleeping patient. Otherwise, it would be too

terrific a shock for you when you awakened. That was proved when they

first tried reviving space-struck men, forty or fifty years ago."



* * * * *



The comfortable conviction that this was all a fake, an experiment of

some kind, began to drain out of Kieran. But if it was true--



He asked, with some difficulty, "You say that they found out how to

revive space-frozen men, that long ago?"



"Yes."



"Yet it took forty or fifty years to get around to reviving me?"



The woman sighed. "You have a misconception. The process of revival was

perfected that long ago. But it has been used only immediately after a

wreck or disaster. Men or women in the old space-cemeteries have not

been revived."



"Why not?" he asked carefully.



"Unsatisfactory results," she said. "They could not adjust

psychologically to changed conditions. They usually became unbalanced.

Some suicides and a number of cases of extreme schizophrenia resulted.

It was decided that it was no kindness to the older space-struck cases

to bring them back."



"But you brought me back?"



"Yes."



"Why?"



"There were good reasons." She was, clearly, evading that question. She

went on quickly. "The psychological shock of awakening would have been

devastating, if you were not prepared. So, while you were still under

sedation, I used the hypnopedic method on you. Your unconscious was

aware of the main facts of the situation before you awoke, and that

cushioned the shock."



Kieran thought of himself, lying frozen and dead in a graveyard that was

space, bodies drifting in orbit, circling slowly around each other as

the years passed, in a macabre sarabande-- A deep shiver shook him.



"Because all space-struck victims were in pressure-suits, dehydration

was not the problem it could have been," Paula was saying. "But it's

still a highly delicate process--"



He looked at her and interrupted roughly. "What reasons?" And when she

stared blankly, he added, "You said there were good reasons why you

picked me for revival. What reasons?"



Her face became tight and alert. "You were the oldest victim, in point

of date. That was one of the determining factors--"



"Look," said Kieran. "I'm not a child, nor yet a savage. You can drop

the patronizing professional jargon and answer my question."



Her voice became hard and brittle. "You're new to this environment. You

wouldn't understand if I told you."



"Try me."



"All right," she answered. "We need you, as a symbol, in a political

struggle we're waging against the Sakae."



"The Sakae?"



"I told you that you couldn't understand yet," she answered impatiently,

turning away. "You can't expect me to fill you in on a whole world

that's new to you, in five minutes."



She started toward the door. "Oh, no," said Kieran. "You're not going

yet."



He slid out of the bunk. He felt weak and shaky but resentment energized

his flaccid muscles. He took a step toward her.



The lights suddenly went dim, and a bull-throated roar sounded from

somewhere, an appalling sound of raw power. The slight tingling that

Kieran had felt in the metal fabric around him abruptly became a

vibration so deep and powerful that it dizzied him and he had to grab

the stanchion of the bunk to keep from falling.



Alarm had flashed into the woman's face. Next moment, from some hidden

speaker in the wall, a male voice yelled sharply,



"Overtaken--prepare for extreme evasion--"



"Get back into the bunk," she told Kieran.



"What is it?"



"It may be," she said with a certain faint viciousness, "that you're

about to die a second time."





3.



The lights dimmed to semi-darkness, and the deep vibration grew worse.

Kieran clutched the woman's arm.



"What's happening?"



"Damn it, let me go!" she said.



The exclamation was so wholly familiar in its human angriness that

Kieran almost liked her, for the first time. But he continued to hold

onto her, although he did not feel that with his present weakness he

could hold her long.



"I've a right to know," he said.



"All right, perhaps you have," said Paula. "We--our group--are operating

against authority. We've broken laws, in going to Earth and reviving

you. And now authority is catching up to us."



"Another ship? Is there going to be a fight?"



"A fight?" She stared at him, and shock and then faint repulsion showed

in her face. "But of course, you come from the old time of wars, you

would think that--"



Kieran got the impression that what he had said had made her look at him

with the same feelings he would have had when he looked at a decent,

worthy savage who happened to be a cannibal.



"I always felt that bringing you back was a mistake," she said, with a

sharpness in her voice. "Let me go."



She wrenched away from him and before he could stop her she had got to

the door and slid it open. He woke up in time to lurch after her and he

got his shoulder into the door-opening before she could slide it shut.



"Oh, very well, since you insist I'm not going to worry about you," she

said rapidly, and turned and hurried away.



Kieran wanted to follow her but his knees were buckling under him. He

hung to the side of the door-opening. He felt angry, and anger was all

that kept him from falling over. He would not faint, he told himself. He

was not a child, and would not be treated like one--



He got his head outside the door. There was a long and very narrow

corridor out there, blank metal with a few closed doors along it. One

door, away down toward the end of the corridor, was just sliding shut.



* * * * *



He started down the corridor, steadying himself with his hand against

the smooth wall. Before he had gone more than a few steps, the anger

that pushed him began to ebb away. Of a sudden, the mountainous and

incredible fact of his being here, in this place, this time, this ship,

came down on him like an avalanche from which the hypnopedic

pre-conditioning would no longer protect him.



I am touching a starship, I am in a starship, I, Reed Kieran of Midland

Springs, Ohio. I ought to be back there, teaching my classes, stopping

at Hartnett's Drug Store for a soft drink on the way home, but I am here

in a ship fleeing through the stars ...



His head was spinning and he was afraid that he was going to go out

again. He found himself at the door and slid it open and fell rather

than walked inside. He heard a startled voice.



This was a bigger room. There was a table whose top was translucent and

which showed a bewildering mass of fleeting symbols in bright light,

ever changing. There was a screen on one wall of the room and that

showed nothing, a blank, dark surface.



Vaillant and Paula Ray and a tall, tough-looking man of middle age were

around the table and had looked up, surprised.



Vaillant's face flashed irritation. "Paula, you were supposed to keep

him in his cabin!"



"I didn't think he was strong enough to follow," she said.



"I'm not," said Kieran, and pitched over.



The tall middle-aged man reached and caught him before he hit the floor,

and eased him into a chair.



He heard, as though from a great distance, Vaillant's voice saying

irritatedly, "Let Paula take care of him, Webber. Look at this--we're

going to cross another rift--"



There were a few minutes then when everything was very jumbled up in

Kieran's mind. The woman was talking to him. She was telling him that

they had prepared him physically, as well as psychologically, for the

shock of revival, and that he would be quite all right but had to take

things more slowly.



He heard her voice but paid little attention. He sat in the chair and

blankly watched the two men who hung over the table and its flow of

brilliant symbols. Vaillant seemed to tighten up more and more as the

moments passed, and there was still about him the look of a coiled

spring but now the spring seemed to be wound to the breaking-point.

Webber, the tall man with the tough face, watched the fleeting symbols

and his face was stony.



"Here we go," he muttered, and both he and Vaillant looked up at the

blank black screen on the wall.



Kieran looked too. There was nothing. Then, in an instant, the blackness

vanished from the screen and it framed a vista of such cosmic, stunning

splendor that Kieran could not grasp it.



* * * * *



Stars blazed like high fires across the screen, loops and chains and

shining clots of them. This was not too different from the way they had

looked from Wheel Five. But what was different was that the starry

firmament was partly blotted out by vast rifted ramparts of blackness,

ebon cliffs that went up to infinity. Kieran had seen astronomical

photographs like this and knew what the blackness was.



Dust. A dust so fine that its percentage of particles in space would be

a vacuum, on Earth. But, here where it extended over parsecs of space,

it formed a barrier to light. There was a narrow rift here between the

titan cliffs of darkness and he--the ship he was in--was fleeing across

that rift.



* * * * *



The screen abruptly went black again. Kieran remained sitting and

staring at it. That incredible fleeting vision had finally impressed the

utter reality of all this upon his mind. They, this ship, were far from

Earth--very far, in one of the dust-clouds in which they were trying to

lose pursuers. This was real.



"--will have got another fix on us as we crossed, for sure," Vaillant

was saying, in a bitter voice. "They'll have the net out for us--the

pattern will be shaping now and we can't slip through it."



"We can't," said Webber. "The ship can't. But the flitter can, with

luck."



They both looked at Kieran. "He's the important one," Webber said. "If a

couple of us could get him through--"



"No," said Paula. "We couldn't. As soon as they caught the ship and

found the flitter gone, they'd be after him."



"Not to Sako," said Webber. "They'd never figure that we'd take him to

Sako."



"Do I have a word in this?" asked Kieran, between his teeth.



"What?" asked Vaillant.



"This. The hell with you all. I'll go no place with you or for you."



* * * * *



He got a savage satisfaction from saying it, he was tired of sitting

there like a booby while they discussed him, but he did not get the

reaction from them he had expected. The two men merely continued to look

thoughtfully at him. The woman sighed,



"You see? There wasn't time enough to explain it to him. It's natural

for him to react with hostility."



"Put him out, and take him along," said Webber.



"No," said Paula sharply. "If he goes out right now he's liable to stay

out. I won't answer for it."



"Meanwhile," said Vaillant with an edge to his voice, "the pattern is

forming up. Have you any suggestions, Paula?"



She nodded. "This."



She suddenly squeezed something under Kieran's nose, a small thing that

she had produced from her pocket without his noticing it, in his angry

preoccupation with the two men. He smelled a sweet, refreshing odor and

he struck her arm away.



"Oh, no, you're not giving me any more dopes--" Then he stopped, for

suddenly it all seemed wryly humorous to him. "A bunch of bloody

incompetents," he said, and laughed. "This is the one thing I would

never have dreamed--that a man could sleep, and wake up in a starship,

and find the starship manned by blunderers."



"Euphoric," said Paula, to the two men.



"At that," said Webber sourly, "there may be something in what he says

about us."



Vaillant turned on him and said fiercely, "If that's what you think--"

Then he controlled himself and said tightly, "Quarrelling's no good.

We're in a box but we can maybe still put it over if we get this man to

Sako. Webber, you and Paula take him in the flitter."



Kieran rose to his feet. "Fine," he said gaily. "Let us go in the

flitter, whatever that is. I am already bored with starships."



He felt good, very good. He felt a little drunk, not enough to impede

his mental processes but enough to give him a fine devil-may-care

indifference to what happened next. So it was only the spray Paula had

given him--it still made his body feel better and removed his shock and

worry and made everything seem suddenly rather amusing.



"Let us to Sako in the flitter," he said. "After all, I'm living on

velvet, I might as well see the whole show. I'm sure that Sako, wherever

it is, will be just as full of human folly as Earth was."



"He's euphoric," Paula said again, but her face was stricken.



"Of all the people in that space-cemetery, we had to pick one who

thinks like that," said Vaillant, with a sort of restrained fury.



"You said yourself that the oldest one would be the best," said Webber.

"Sako will change him."



Kieran walked down the corridor with Webber and Paula and he laughed as

he walked. They had brought him back from nothingness without his

consent, violating the privacy of death or near-death, and now something

that he had just said had bitterly disappointed them.



"Come along," he said buoyantly to the two. "Let us not lag. Once aboard

the flitter and the girl is mine."



"Oh for God's sake shut up," said Webber.





4.



It was ridiculous to be flying the stars with a bad hangover, but Kieran

had one. His head ached dully, he had an unpleasant metallic taste in

his mouth, and his former ebullience had given way to a dull depression.

He looked sourly around.



He sat in a confined little metal coop of a cabin, hardly enough in

which to stand erect. Paula Ray, in a chair a few feet away was

sleeping, her head on her breast. Webber sat forward, in what appeared

to be a pilot-chair with a number of crowded control banks in front of

it. He was not doing anything to the controls. He looked as though he

might be sleeping, too.



That was all--a tiny metal room, blank metal walls, silence. They were,

presumably, flying between the stars at incredible speeds but there was

nothing to show it. There were no screens such as the one he had seen in

the ship, to show by artful scanning devices what vista of suns and

darknesses lay outside.



"A flitter," Webber had informed him, "just doesn't have room for the

complicated apparatus that such scanners require. Seeing is a luxury you

dispense with in a flitter. We'll see when we get to Sako."



After a moment he had added, "If we get to Sako."



Kieran had merely laughed then, and had promptly gone to sleep. When he

had awakened, it had been with the euphoria all gone and with his

present hangover.



"At least," he told himself, "I can truthfully say that this one wasn't

my fault. That blasted spray--"



He looked resentfully at the sleeping woman in the chair. Then he

reached and roughly shook her shoulder.



She opened her eyes and looked at him, first sleepily and then with

resentment.



"You had no right to wake me up," she said.



Then, before Kieran could retort, she seemed to realize the monumental

irony of what she had just said, and she burst into laughter.



"I'm sorry," she said. "Go ahead and say it. I had no right to wake

you up."



"Let's come back to that," said Kieran after a moment. "Why did you?"



Paula looked at him ruefully. "What I need now is a ten-volume history

of the last century, and time enough for you to read it. But since we

don't have either--" She broke off, then after a pause asked, "Your date

was 1981, wasn't it? It and your name were on the tag of your

pressure-suit."



"That's right."



"Well, then. Back in 1981, it was expected that men would spread out to

the stars, wasn't it?"



Kieran nodded. "As soon as they had a workable high-speed drive. Several

drives were being experimented with even then."



"One of them--the Flournoy principle--was finally made workable," she

said. She frowned. "I'm trying to give you this briefly and I keep

straying into details."



"Just tell me why you woke me up."



"I'm trying to tell you." She asked candidly, "Were you always so

damned hateful or did the revivification process do this to you?"



Kieran grinned. "All right. Go ahead."



* * * * *



"Things happened pretty much as people foresaw back in 1981," she said.

"The drive was perfected. The ships went out to the nearer stars. They

found worlds. They established colonies from the overflowing population

of Earth. They found human indigenous races on a few worlds, all of them

at a rather low technical level, and they taught them.



"There was a determination from the beginning to make it one universe.

No separate nationalistic groups, no chance of wars. The governing

council was set up at Altair Two. Every world was represented. There are

twenty-nine of them, now. It's expected to go on like that, till there

are twenty-nine hundred starworlds represented there, twenty-nine

thousand--any number. But--"



Kieran had been listening closely. "But what? What upset this particular

utopia?"



"Sako."



"This world we're going to?"



"Yes," she said soberly. "Men found something different about this world

when they reached it. It had people--human people--on it, very low in

the scale of civilization."



"Well, what was the problem? Couldn't you start teaching them as you had

others?"



She shook her head. "It would take a long while. But that wasn't the

real problem. It was-- You see, there's another race on Sako beside the

human ones, and it's a fairly civilized race. The Sakae. The trouble

is--the Sakae aren't human."



Kieran stared at her. "So what? If they're intelligent--"



"You talk as though it was the simplest thing in the world," she

flashed.



"Isn't it? If your Sakae are intelligent and the humans of Sako aren't,

then the Sakae have the rights on that world, don't they?"



She looked at him, not saying anything, and again she had that stricken

look of one who has tried and failed. Then from up forward, without

turning, Webber spoke.



"What do you think now of Vaillant's fine idea, Paula?"



"It can still work," she said, but there was no conviction in her voice.



"If you don't mind," said Kieran, with an edge to his voice, "I'd still

like to know what this Sako business has to do with reviving me."



* * * * *



"The Sakae rule the humans on that world," Paula answered. "There are

some of us who don't believe they should. In the Council, we're known as

the Humanity Party, because we believe that humans should not be ruled

by non-humans."



Again, Kieran was distracted from his immediate question--this time by

the phrase "Non-human".



"These Sakae--what are they like?"



"They're not monsters, if that's what you're thinking of," Paula said.

"They're bipeds--lizardoid rather than humanoid--and are a fairly

intelligent and law-abiding lot."



"If they're all that, and higher in development than the humans, why

shouldn't they rule their own world?" demanded Kieran.



Webber uttered a sardonic laugh. Without turning he asked, "Shall I

change course and go to Altair?"



"No!" she said. Her eyes flashed at Kieran and she spoke almost

breathlessly. "You're very sure about things you just heard about,

aren't you? You know what's right and you know what's wrong, even though

you've only been in this time, this universe, for a few hours!"



Kieran looked at her closely. He thought he was beginning to get a

glimmer of the shape of things now.



"You--all you who woke me up illegally--you belong to this Humanity

Party, don't you? You did it for some reason connected with that?"



"Yes," she answered defiantly. "We need a symbol in this political

struggle. We thought that one of the oldtime space pioneers, one of the

humans who began the conquest of the stars, would be it. We--"



Kieran interrupted. "I think I get it. It was really considerate of you.

You drag a man back from what amounts to death, for a party rally.

'Oldtime space hero condemns non-humans'--it would go something like

that, wouldn't it?"



"Listen--," she began.



"Listen, hell," he said. He was hot with rage, shaking with it. "I am

glad to say that you could not possibly have picked a worse symbol than

me. I have no more use for the idea of the innate sacred superiority of

one species over another than I had for that of one kind of man over

another."



Her face changed. From an angry woman, she suddenly became a

professional psychologist, coolly observing reactions.



"It's not the political question you really resent," she said. "You've

wakened to a strange world and you're afraid of it, in spite of all the

pre-awakening preparation we gave your subconscious. You're afraid, and

so you're angry."



Kieran got a grip on himself. He shrugged. "What you say may be true.

But it doesn't change the way I feel. I will not help you one damned

bit."



Webber got up from his seat and came back toward them, his tall form

stooping. He looked at Kieran and then at the woman.



"We have to settle this right now," he said. "We're getting near enough

to Sako to go out of drive. Are we going to land or aren't we?"



"Yes," said Paula steadily. "We're landing."



Webber glanced again at Kieran's face. "But if that's the way he

feels--"



"Go ahead and land," she said.





5.



It was nothing like landing in a rocket. First there was the business

referred to as "going out of drive". Paula made Kieran strap in and she

said, "You may find this unpleasant, but just sit tight. It doesn't last

long." Kieran sat stiff and glowering, prepared for anything and

determined not to show it no matter how he felt. Then Webber did

something to the control board and the universe fell apart. Kieran's

stomach came up and stuck in his throat. He was falling--up? Down?

Sideways? He didn't know, but whichever it was not all the parts of him

were falling at the same rate, or perhaps it was not all in the same

direction, he didn't know that either, but it was an exceptionally

hideous feeling. He opened his mouth to protest, and all of a sudden he

was sitting normally in the chair in the normal cabin and screaming at

the top of his lungs.



He shut up.



Paula said, "I told you it would be unpleasant."



"So you did," said Kieran. He sat, sweating. His hands and feet were

cold.



Now for the first time he became aware of motion. The flitter seemed to

hurtle forward at comet-like speed. Kieran knew that this was merely an

ironic little joke, because now they were proceeding at something in the

range of normal velocity, whereas before their speed had been quite

beyond his comprehension. But he could comprehend this. He could feel

it. They were going like a bat out of hell, and somewhere ahead of them

was a planet, and he was closed in, blind, a mouse in a nose-cone. His

insides writhed with helplessness and the imminence of a crash. He

wanted very much to start screaming again, but Paula was watching him.



In a few moments that desire became academic. A whistling shriek began

faintly outside the hull and built swiftly to a point where nothing

could have been heard above it. Atmosphere. And somewhere under the

blind wall of the flitter a rock-hard world-face reeling and rushing,

leaping to meet them--



* * * * *



The flitter slowed. It seemed to hang motionless, quivering faintly.

Then it dropped. Express elevator in the world's tallest building, top

to bottom--only the elevator is a bubble and the wind is tossing it from

side to side as it drops and there is no bottom.



They hung again, bounding lightly on the unseen wind.



Then down.



And hang again.



And down.



Paula said suddenly, "Webber. Webber, I think he's dying." She began to

unstrap.



Kieran said faintly, "Am I turning green?"



She looked at him, frowning. "Yes."



"A simple old malady. I'm seasick. Tell Webber to quit playing

humming-bird and put this thing down."



Paula made an impatient gesture and tightened her belt again.



Hang and drop. Once more, twice more. A little rocking bounce, a light

thump, motion ceased. Webber turned a series of switches. Silence.



Kieran said, "Air?"



* * * * *



Webber opened a hatch in the side of the cabin. Light poured in. It had

to be sunlight, Kieran knew, but it was a queer color, a sort of tawny

orange that carried a pleasantly burning heat. He got loose with Paula

helping him and tottered to the hatch. The air smelled of clean

sun-warmed dust and some kind of vegetation. Kieran climbed out of the

flitter, practically throwing himself out in his haste. He wanted solid

ground under him, he didn't care whose or where.



And as his boots thumped onto the red-ochre sand, it occurred to him

that it had been a very long time since he had had solid ground

underfoot. A very long time indeed--



His insides knotted up again, and this time it was not seasickness but

fear, and he was cold all through again in spite of the hot new sun.



He was afraid, not of the present, nor of the future, but of the past.

He was afraid of the thing tagged Reed Kieran, the stiff blind voiceless

thing wheeling its slow orbit around the Moon, companion to dead worlds

and dead space, brother to the cold and the dark.



He began to tremble.



Paula shook him. She was talking but he couldn't hear her. He could only

hear the rush of eternal darkness past his ears, the thin squeak of his

shadow brushing across the stars. Webber's face was somewhere above him,

looking angry and disgusted. He was talking to Paula, shaking his head.

They were far away. Kieran was losing them, drifting away from them on

the black tide. Then suddenly there was something like an explosion, a

crimson flare across the black, a burst of heat against the cold.

Shocked and wild, the physical part of him clawed back to reality.



Something hurt him, something threatened him. He put his hand to his

cheek and it came away red.



Paula and Webber were yanking at him, trying to get him to move.



* * * * *



A stone whizzed past his head. It struck the side of the flitter with a

sharp clack, and fell. Kieran's nervous relays finally connected. He

jumped for the open hatch. Automatically he pushed Paula ahead of him,

trying to shield her, and she gave him an odd startled look. Webber was

already inside. More stones rattled around and one grazed Kieran's

thigh. It hurt. His cheek was bleeding freely. He rolled inside the

flitter and turned to look back out the hatch. He was mad.



"Who's doing it?" he demanded.



Paula pointed. At first Kieran was distracted by the strangeness of the

landscape. The flitter crouched in a vastness of red-ochre sand laced

with some low-growing plant that shone like metallic gold in the

sunlight. The sand receded in tilted planes lifting gradually to a range

of mountains on the right, and dropping gradually to infinity on the

left. Directly in front of the flitter and quite literally a stone's

throw away was the beginning of a thick belt of trees that grew beside a

river, apparently quite a wide one though he could not see much but a

tawny sparkling of water. The course of the river could be traced clear

back to the mountains by the winding line of woods that followed its

bed. The trees themselves were not like any Kieran had seen before.

There seemed to be several varieties, all grotesque in shape and exotic

in color. There were even some green ones, with long sharp leaves that

looked like spearheads.



Exotic or not, they made perfectly adequate cover. Stones came whistling

out of the woods, but Kieran could not see anything where Paula was

pointing but an occasional shaking of foliage.



"Sakae?" he asked.



Webber snorted. "You'll know it when the Sakae find us. They don't throw

stones."



"These are the humans," Paula said. There was an indulgent softness in

her voice that irritated Kieran.



"I thought they were our dear little friends," he said.



"You frightened them."



"I frightened them?"



"They've seen the flitter before. But they're extremely alert to modes

of behavior, and they knew you weren't acting right. They thought you

were sick."



"So they tried to kill me. Nice fellows."



"Self-preservation," Webber said. "They can't afford the luxury of too

much kindness."



"They're very kind among themselves," Paula said defensively. To Kieran

she added, "I doubt if they were trying to kill you. They just wanted to

drive you away."



"Oh, well," said Kieran, "in that case I wouldn't dream of disappointing

them. Let's go."



Paula glared at him and turned to Webber. "Talk to them."



"I hope there's time," Webber grunted, glancing at the sky. "We're

sitting ducks here. Keep your patient quiet--any more of that moaning

and flopping and we're sunk."



* * * * *



He picked up a large plastic container and moved closer to the door.



Paula looked at Kieran's cheek. "Let me fix that."



"Don't bother," he said. At this moment he hoped the Sakae, whoever and

whatever they were, would come along and clap these two into some

suitable place for the rest of their lives.



Webber began to "talk".



Kieran stared at him, fascinated. He had expected words--primitive

words, perhaps resembling the click-speech of Earth's stone-age

survivals, but words of some sort. Webber hooted. It was a soft

reassuring sound, repeated over and over, but it was not a word. The

rattle of stones diminished, then stopped. Webber continued to make his

hooting call. Presently it was answered. Webber turned and nodded at

Paula, smiling. He reached into the plastic container and drew forth a

handful of brownish objects that smelled to Kieran like dried fruit.

Webber tossed these out onto the sand. Now he made a different sound, a

grunting and whuffling. There was a silence. Webber made the sound

again.



On the third try the people came out of the woods.



In all there were perhaps twenty-five of them. They came slowly and

furtively, moving a step or two at a time, then halting and peering,

prepared to run. The able-bodied men came first, with one in the lead, a

fine-looking chap in early middle age who was apparently the chief. The

women, the old men, and the children followed, trickling gradually out

of the shadow of the trees but remaining where they could disappear in a

flash if alarmed. They were all perfectly naked, tall and slender and

large-eyed, their muscles strung for speed and agility rather than

massive strength. Their bodies gleamed a light bronze color in the sun,

and Kieran noticed that the men were beardless and smooth-skinned. Both

men and women had long hair, ranging in color from black to tawny, and

very clean and glistening. They were a beautiful people, as deer are a

beautiful people, graceful, innocent, and wild. The men came to the

dried fruits which had been scattered for them. They picked them up and

sniffed them, bit them, then began to eat, repeating the

grunt-and-whuffle call. The women and children and old men decided

everything was safe and joined them. Webber tossed out more fruit, and

then got out himself, carrying the plastic box.



* * * * *



"What does he do next?" whispered Kieran to Paula. "Scratch their ears?

I used to tame squirrels this way when I was a kid."



"Shut up," she warned him. Webber beckoned and she nudged him to move

out of the flitter. "Slow and careful."



Kieran slid out of the flitter. Big glistening eyes swung to watch him.

The eating stopped. Some of the little ones scuttled for the trees.

Kieran froze. Webber hooted and whuffled some more and the tension

relaxed. Kieran approached the group with Paula. There was suddenly no

truth in what he was doing. He was an actor in a bad scene, mingling

with impossible characters in an improbable setting. Webber making

ridiculous noises and tossing his dried fruit around like a caricature

of somebody sowing, Paula with her brisk professionalism all dissolved

in misty-eyed fondness, himself an alien in this time and place, and

these perfectly normal-appearing people behaving like orang-utans with

their fur shaved off. He started to laugh and then thought better of it.

Once started, he might not be able to stop.



"Let them get used to you," said Webber softly.



Paula obviously had been here before. She had begun to make noises too,

a modified hooting more like a pigeon's call. Kieran just stood still.

The people moved in around them, sniffing, touching. There was no

conversation, no laughing or giggling even among the little girls. A

particularly beautiful young woman stood just behind the chief, watching

the strangers with big yellow cat-eyes. Kieran took her to be the man's

daughter. He smiled at her. She continued to stare, deadpan and

blank-eyed, with no answering flicker of a smile. It was as though she

had never seen one before. Kieran shivered. All this silence and

unresponsiveness became eerie.



"I'm happy to tell you," he murmured to Paula, "that I don't think much

of your little pets?"



She could not allow herself to be sharply angry. She only said, in a

whisper, "They are not pets, they are not animals. They--"



She broke off. Something had come over the naked people. Every head had

lifted, every eye had turned away from the strangers. They were

listening. Even the littlest ones were still.



Kieran could not hear anything except the wind in the trees.



"What--?" he started to ask.



Webber made an imperative gesture for silence. The tableau held for a

brief second longer. Then the brown-haired man who seemed to be the

leader made a short harsh noise. The people turned and vanished into the

trees.



"The Sakae," Webber said. "Get out of sight." He ran toward the flitter.

Paula grabbed Kieran's sleeve and pushed him toward the trees.



"What's going on?" he demanded as he ran.



"Their ears are better than ours. There's a patrol ship coming, I

think."



* * * * *



The shadows took them in, orange-and-gold-splashed shadows under strange

trees. Kieran looked back. Webber had been inside the flitter. Now he

tumbled out of the hatch and ran toward them. Behind him the hatch

closed and the flitter stirred and then took off all by itself, humming.



"They'll follow it for a while," Webber panted. "It may give us a chance

to get away." He and Paula started after the running people.



Kieran balked. "I don't know why I'm running away from anybody."



Webber pulled out a snub-nosed instrument that looked enough like a gun

to be very convincing. He pointed it at Kieran's middle.



"Reason one," he said. "If the Sakae catch Paula and me here we're in

very big trouble. Reason two--this is a closed area, and you're with us,

so you will be in very big trouble." He looked coldly at Kieran. "The

first reason is the one that interests me most."



Kieran shrugged. "Well, now I know." He ran.



Only then did he hear the low heavy thrumming in the sky.





6.



The sound came rumbling very swiftly toward them. It was a completely

different sound from the humming of the flitter, and it seemed to Kieran

to hold a note of menace. He stopped in a small clearing where he might

see up through the trees. He wanted a look at this ship or flier or

whatever it was that had been built and was flown by non-humans.



But Webber shoved him roughly on into a clump of squat trees that were

the color of sherry wine, with flat thick leaves.



"Don't move," he said.



Paula was hugging a tree beside him. She nodded to him to do as Webber

said.



"They have very powerful scanners." She pointed with her chin. "Look.

They've learned."



The harsh warning barks of the men sounded faintly, then were hushed.

Nothing moved, except by the natural motion of the wind. The people

crouched among the trees, so still that Kieran would not have seen them

if he had not known they were there.



The patrol craft roared past, cranking up speed as it went. Webber

grinned. "They'll be a couple of hours at least, overhauling and

examining the flitter. By that time it'll be dark, and by morning we'll

be in the mountains."



The people were already moving. They headed upstream, going at a steady,

shuffling trot. Three of the women, Kieran noticed, had babies in their

arms. The older children ran beside their mothers. Two of the men and

several of the women were white-haired. They ran also.



"Do you like to see them run?" asked Paula, with a sharp note of passion

in her voice. "Does it look good to you?"



"No," said Kieran, frowning. He looked in the direction in which the

sound of the patrol craft was vanishing.



"Move along," Webber said. "They'll leave us far enough behind as it

is."



* * * * *



Kieran followed the naked people through the woods, beside the tawny

river. Paula and Webber jogged beside him. The shadows were long now,

reaching out across the water.



Paula kept glancing at him anxiously, as though to detect any sign of

weakness on his part. "You're doing fine," she said. "You should. Your

body was brought back to normal strength and tone, before you ever were

awakened."



"They'll slow down when it's dark, anyway," said Webber.



The old people and the little children ran strongly.



"Is their village there?" Kieran asked, indicating the distant

mountains.



"They don't live in villages," Paula said. "But the mountains are safer.

More places to hide."



"You said this was a closed area. What is it, a hunting preserve?"



"The Sakae don't hunt them any more."



"But they used to?"



"Well," Webber said, "a long time ago. Not for food, the Sakae are

vegetarians, but--"



"But," said Paula, "they were the dominant race, and the people were

simply beasts of the field. When they competed for land and food the

people were hunted down or driven out." She swung an expressive hand

toward the landscape beyond the trees. "Why do you think they live in

this desert, scraping a miserable existence along the watercourses? It's

land the Sakae didn't want. Now, of course, they have no objection to

setting it aside as a sort of game preserve. The humans are protected,

the Sakae tell us. They're living their natural life in their natural

environment, and when we demand that a program be--"



She was out of breath and had to stop, panting. Webber finished for her.



"We want them taught, lifted out of this naked savagery. The Sakae say

it's impossible."



"Is it true?" asked Kieran.



"No," said Paula fiercely. "It's a matter of pride. They want to keep

their dominance, so they simply won't admit that the people are anything

more than animals, and they won't give them a chance to be anything

more."



There was no more talking after that, but even so the three outlanders

grew more and more winded and the people gained on them. The sun went

down in a blaze of blood-orange light that tinted the trees in even more

impossible colors and set the river briefly on fire. Then night came,

and just after the darkness shut down the patrol craft returned, beating

up along the winding river bed. Kieran froze under the black trees and

the hair lifted on his skin. For the first time he felt like a hunted

thing. For the first time he felt a personal anger.



The patrol craft drummed away and vanished. "They won't come back until

daylight," Webber said.



* * * * *



He handed out little flat packets of concentrated food from his pockets.

They munched as they walked. Nobody said anything. The wind, which had

dropped at sundown, picked up from a different quarter and began to blow

again. It got cold. After a while they caught up with the people, who

had stopped to rest and eat. The babies and old people for whom Kieran

had felt a worried pity were in much better shape than he. He drank from

the river and then sat down. Paula and Webber sat beside him, on the

ground. The wind blew hard from the desert, dry and chill. The trees

thrashed overhead. Against the pale glimmer of the water Kieran could

see naked bodies moving along the river's edge, wading, bending,

grubbing in the mud. Apparently they found things, for he could see that

they were eating. Somewhere close by other people were stripping fruit

or nuts from the trees. A man picked up a stone and pounded something

with a cracking noise, then dropped the stone again. They moved easily

in the dark, as though they were used to it. Kieran recognized the

leader's yellow-eyed daughter, her beautiful slender height outlined

against the pale-gleaming water. She stood up to her ankles in the soft

mud, holding something tight in her two hands, eating.



The sweat dried on Kieran. He began to shiver.



"You're sure that patrol ship won't come back?" he asked.



"Not until they can see what they're looking for."



"Then I guess it's safe." He began to scramble around, feeling for dried

sticks.



"What are you doing?"



"Getting some firewood."



"No." Paula was beside him in an instant, her hand on his arm, "No, you

mustn't do that."



"But Webber said--"



"It isn't the patrol ship, Kieran. It's the people. They--"



"They what?"



"I told you they were low on the social scale. This is one of the basic

things they have to be taught. Right now they still regard fire as a

danger, something to run from."



"I see," Kieran said, and let the kindling fall. "Very well, if I can't

have a fire, I'll have you. Your body will warm me." He pulled her into

his arms.



* * * * *



She gasped, more in astonishment, he thought, than alarm. "What are you

talking about?"



"That's a line from an old movie. From a number of old movies, in fact.

Not bad, eh?"



He held her tight. She was definitely female. After a moment he pushed

her away.



"That was a mistake. I want to be able to go on disliking you without

any qualifying considerations."



She laughed, a curiously flat little sound. "Was everybody crazy in your

day?" she asked. And then, "Reed--"



It was the first time she had used his given name. "What?"



"When they threw the stones, and we got back into the flitter, you

pushed me ahead of you. You were guarding me. Why?"



He stared at her, or rather at the pale blur of her standing close to

him. "Well, it's always been sort of the custom for the men to-- But now

that I think of it, Webber didn't bother."



"No," said Paula. "Back in your day women were still taking advantage of

the dual standard--demanding complete equality with men but clinging to

their special status. We've got beyond that."



"Do you like it? Beyond, I mean."



"Yes," she said. "It was good of you to do that, but--"



Webber said, "They're moving again. Come on."



The people walked this time, strung out in a long line between the trees

and the water, where the light was a little better and the way more

open. The three outlanders tagged behind, clumsy in their boots and

clothing. The long hair of the people blew in the wind and their bare

feet padded softly, light and swift.



Kieran looked up at the sky. The trees obscured much of it so that all

he could see was some scattered stars overhead. But he thought that

somewhere a moon was rising.



He asked Paula and she said, "Wait. You'll see."



Night and the river rolled behind them. The moonlight became brighter,

but it was not at all like the moonlight Kieran remembered from long ago

and far away. That had had a cold tranquility to it, but this light was

neither cold nor tranquil. It seemed somehow to shift color, too, which

made it even less adequate for seeing than the white moonlight he was

used to. Sometimes as it filtered through the trees it seemed,

ice-green, and again it was reddish or amber, or blue.



They came to a place where the river made a wide bend and they cut

across it, clear of the trees. Paula touched Kieran's arm and pointed.

"Look."



Kieran looked, and then he stopped still. The light was not moonlight,

and its source was not a moon. It was a globular cluster of stars, hung

in the sky like a swarm of fiery bees, a burning and pulsing of many

colors, diamond-white and gold, green and crimson, peacock blue and

smoky umber. Kieran stared, and beside him Paula murmured, "I've been on

a lot of planets, but none of them have anything like this."



The people moved swiftly on, paying no attention at all to the sky.



Reluctantly Kieran followed them into the obscuring woods. He kept

looking at the open sky above the river, waiting for the cluster to rise

high so he could see it.



It was some time after this, but before the cluster rose clear of the

trees, that Kieran got the feeling that something, or someone, was

following them.





7.



He had stopped to catch his breath and shake an accumulation of sand out

of his boots. He was leaning against a tree with his back to the wind,

which meant that he was facing their back-trail, and he thought he saw a

shadow move where there was nothing to cast a shadow. He straightened up

with the little trip-hammers of alarm beating all over him, but he could

see nothing more. He thought he might have been mistaken. Just the same,

he ran to catch up with the others.



The people were moving steadily. Kieran knew that their senses were far

keener than his, and they were obviously not aware of any danger other

than the basic one of the Sakae. He decided that he must have been

seeing things.



But an uneasiness persisted. He dropped behind again, this time on

purpose, after they had passed a clearing. He stayed hidden behind a

tree-trunk and watched. The cluster-light was bright now but very

confusing to the eye. He heard a rustling that he did not think was

wind, and he thought that something started to cross the clearing and

then stopped, as though it had caught his scent.



Then he thought that he heard rustlings at both sides of the clearing,

stealthy sounds of stalking that closed in toward him. Only the wind, he

told himself, but agai



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