Fox B. Holden

“ Although there was no sign of a rotor assembly on either ship, Doug knew that for all their size, they were capable, in the thick atmosphere of Venus, of hovering at very little more than the speed of a slow human run. Everything, planned to the last detail. Everything, irrevocably woven into the unchangeable fabric of destiny itself. ”

“ Too tired to look now for another time-track, to throw the Contraption wildly out of focus and careen through a thousand tracks, a million, and look for a place where a man and a woman could be simply that and nothing either more nor less. For in all infinity there was no such place, and the running would be worth less than the wasted breath it took.
With Dot, one last time, then.
She stirred. Her eyes opened, and she smiled.
"Doug? Did you finish it, Doug?"
"Yes. Yes, I finished it, as far as it ever will be finished."
She dropped her eyes. "We can keep trying." They met his. ”

“ Somehow maybe he could fake long enough to get the materials, build the Contraption and get out. A tele-radio machine he had examined in the house while Dot slept might provide some of the needed material, but not the vital stuff. He would order that from a government supply office as soon as he returned to the house. His rank should be sufficient to get him what he needed without questions being asked. The Earth he knew with all its clatter of empty heads, its life-long familiarity—Terry and Mike were there. Or this world of seeming intelligence, efficiency, forthright honesty of conviction? ”

“ After the first thrill of watching Earth grow smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than another planet in the heavens, after the realization that the studded blackness to each side was real, and not some gigantic planetarium show, the trip had been a seemingly motionless thing, like high flight in a light plane at less than cruising speed. ”

“ Mike had his sword half free of its wide scabbard.
Jon let his arms drop to his sides.
"Come on, wise guy, who's crazy?" Terry glared at him.
"You know what'll happen to you if you do anything to a section leader?"
"We didn't ask to be here," Mike said. "And we didn't ask to be pushed around, either, or told where we could go and couldn't go. Or be called crazy, either. The whole thing is dumb."
"After the games, if you're still alive, I'll report you for that," Jon said.
"Still alive? Who you kidding? You talk like there was going to be a war. Grown-ups do that, kids don't." ”

“ Moments later he released it, eased pressure on it as the blue blur shaped itself into the coastline of the northern land mass. Gradually, he depressed the panel a full ninety degrees.
And the hurtling craft swung again on her blazing tail. Doug let the panel return to zero and held the bottom button in. The belly-jets had automatically cut out, and again he hovered, sinking slightly, this time not above the dark blue waste of the Venusian sea, but above the place where fantastic young armies with ten-year-old soldiers were writhing, dying. ”

“ And suddenly, Tayne's voice grated, "You had better drop the sword, Blair." There was the tightness of pain in his words, but they were clear. "I refuse to invert the ship. If we are to land, it must be inverted in sixty seconds. If you kill me, you kill yourself, for you do not know how to operate the panel beyond what you have seen—and you have not seen the operation for inversion. If you give me the sword, you will land alive."
"You're out of your head, Mr. Tayne! I'm Senior Quadrate Blair, remember? I know how to operate the panel as well or better than you do. Get going!" ”

“ And with the prayer still at his lips lest his words be either too loud or drowned altogether, Doug shouted almost in their faces: "Terry, Mike! It's Dad! The Contraption's done all of this! Watch for me—I'll pick you up off the field!"
Their eyes were suddenly wide but the roar was already subsiding. He had managed about twenty quick words. He turned to Tayne. And Tayne's sword was not drawn. On his face was the masked look of hatred, but not the unveiled one of sudden comprehension. He had not heard....
"My sons, without doubt, Quadrate. You may order them to fall in, and reform your ranks. ”

“ Tayne was pressing buttons, and Doug knew that the trajectory had been broken, and that the ship was free of its autorobot and under Tayne's sole command.
The manual control console. Tayne had had enough! Were he an Earthman as Doug was an Earthman—but he was not! He was a creature of pattern, and there was only the pattern to follow. And an 'insurmountable emergency' had indeed arisen. Flight with a madman who spoke of other universes, and who, by definition of orders, dare not be killed. ”

“ The boys knelt at either side of her, Doug himself before her.
"Don't, please don't, Dot," he said.
"Oh, Doug—"
And then she clung to him, and her face was wet against his own, but they were the last of her tears.
"Afraid?"
"No. Scared a little, but just scared. I don't fear them, Doug ... they're not worth enough to fear."
Mike and Terry had gone over to where the Contraption was, had pulled off its dust-cover, and stood looking at it as though puzzled, as though wondering why, so suddenly, it had become a worthless thing.
"Nobody's touched it, Dad," Doug heard Mike saying. ”

“ The interior of the compartment in which he stood had been designed with the same simplicity of line as had the ship itself, and with so smooth a compactness that it seemed to occupy more of the ship's long interior than a bare third. The two crewmen had evidently not seen him as yet; they stood with their backs to him, their eyes intent on the long, curving banks of dials which ran the gamut of geometrical shapes. Oddly, their hands hung idle at their sides. Doug wondered if they constituted the entire crew, and if they did not, how many more of them there were. ”

“ Blair smiled, this time openly. Tayne could have the directorship back there! Here there was no Tayne. Here was a world for the asking, upon which he would at last be the object of primary, not tertiary, worship by a planet! He could take the shapeless clay—could cultivate it, could forge it in time into a great, brilliant civilization—and it would be his, all his. What greater monument to the genius of a man.... ”

“ It landed atop the building itself. It was like a towering, silver spire there, as though to become an integral fixture to transform the sprawling Colossus from administrative nerve-center to the temple of empire. Doug's own ship beside it would have been as a sloop to a battleship. ”

“ The words Doug heard still weren't making sense, but he was on his feet and had his balance. He had slid oddly down to the metal deck from the bulkhead on which the hammock was built, and he had the peculiar feeling that up was no longer up, nor down exactly where it was supposed to be. His body did not feel as though it were all of lead as he'd half-expected, although it didn't feel its usual hundred and sixty pounds, either.
He was still focusing his eyes when they saw the weird blur of color on the bulkhead above the crewman's head. Teleview screen of course—and the middle blur—Earth. ”

“ Yes, he could attack Tayne, and Tayne would kill him. But that would not be a fight. It would be simply the choice of suicide, at the hands of the man who would derive the most satisfaction from being its prime instrument. The man who already signed the death warrants for Mike and Terry....
And Dot. Dot, after some awful agony would see him again perhaps, but she would see with uncomprehending eyes, hear with unrecognizing ears. If she lived through what they did to her, she would no longer be Dot at all. ”

“ Tayne reddened. "If it were not for my orders, Blair—"
"Why, such a lack of conditioning, Quadrate! Don't you know killing me is supposed to be so repulsive to you that you couldn't even stomach the thought of it? Tell me, don't I make you sick, Quadrate?"
Tayne's hand went to the hilt of his weapon. He half-drew it, slammed it back in its scabbard.
"Blair, we have twenty hours aboard this ship together. We can be at each other's throats like children. Or not, as you please."
Doug sat down on the edge of the acceleration hammock. Perhaps it would not be so difficult. ”

“ Mike touched the half-healed flesh-wound on his right shoulder. He remembered how the short, dark-haired kid had laughed when it had started to bleed, and then how mad he got when he found he couldn't use the sword well enough to cut him back.
"I'd like to get that guy."
"Don't be a dope. It's only a dream—you didn't really get hurt. Come on, let's see what that place is. Nobody's around...."
"Maybe it is only a dream, but he made me mad. Boy I'll cut his ears off if I—"
"Aw, come on."
They had barely started down the opposite side of the knoll when Jon Tayne's voice hailed them. ”

“ Doug, what are you talking about?"
"The rest of it. You see, sooner or later the initial shock is going to wear off, Carl. Then, perhaps if we're lucky, we'll be evenly matched in armament and personnel under arms, but that will be all. A balance of peace is no good. You convince no one that peace is desired. You simply convince them that for awhile, there's no way they dare break it. ”

“ Another man, too, hated a Tayne, and killed him. Can you help us kill the things that all Taynes stood for? In our way?"
Great mountains were looming before them, and the 'copter was beginning to lower into their darkened maw. And suddenly he felt a new strength in him from depths of his being that were opening to him for the first time. Another man had killed Tayne. And could he—
"But what of the other man?" he suddenly heard himself asking. "What have I done to him? What have I done to his world?"
"He must be a man of great courage." Lisa answered slowly. ”

“ Bloody young warriors sought desperately to give the great craft room as he descended. Some were incinerated in its back-blast, and Doug murmured a prayer that they had been among the already-dying. He would not let himself think that of all he had seen die, any two could have been Terry and Mike. He refused to let himself think that of the dozen turned to cinders by his descending jets, any two could have been Terry and Mike.... ”

“ Yet the burden of detail is always with us. It is the small details, after all, each built on each, that have brought us to the high level we've achieved. There has always been room for correction, for experiment, for change. Therefore I, and I think here I may speak for the others, am puzzled that, with the first phase of the games but a week hence, we have received nothing—and there were details of last year's Operational Procedure that I know Quadrate Klauss as well as myself felt should have been further examined in the field. ”

“ Doug kept on relentlessly, "I don't imagine you expected even me to act like this, did you? No, of course not. Not very much the officer and gentleman. But that makes us more or less even. You don't know what a gentleman is. You're so stupid you don't even know who the next President of the United States is going to be!—Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting—I don't think I ever told you that I'm not the real Senior Quadrate Blair, and that I'm not from your universe at all, did I, Tayne? ”

“ No form of birth control could ever have solved the problems of over-crowding and starvation and war as well as the games. You should know! Without work like yours, Doug, just think what the whole world could be like! There'd be the problem of enforcing the birth control laws again, knowing that every time they were violated the threat of unbalance would grow a little more. ”

“ Doug repeated. His lips were dry across his teeth and it was hard to keep his voice even. "I had to break out the manual. He tried to take them over, too, so I had to kill him. He was like a maniac—you know how he hated me. Must have figured out the whole plan somehow, and went berserk. I'll file a complete report when this is finished. Over." He waited, sweat rolling in icy rivulets the length of his arms. The wound on his back stung, and his muscles were trembling with fatigue.
"What do you mean, when this is finished? Got to be immediate, man! There'll be hell to pay as it is. ”