The Project Gutenberg eBook of The silent invaders
    
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Title: The silent invaders

Author: Robert Silverberg

Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller

Release date: November 21, 2023 [eBook #72190]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1958

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SILENT INVADERS ***





                          THE SILENT INVADERS

                           By CALVIN M. KNOX

                        Illustrated by ED EMSH

              _Even a perfect disguise creates problems
              for its wearer. How, for one thing, can he
               be sure anyone else is what he seems?_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                        Infinity October 1958.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




                               CHAPTER I


The starship _Lucky Lady_ thundered out of overdrive half a million
miles from Earth, and began the long steady ion-drive glide at
Earthnorm grav toward the orbiting depot. In his second-class cabin
aboard the starship, the man whose papers said he was Major Abner
Harris of the Interstellar Development Corps stared at his face in the
mirror. He wanted to make sure for the hundredth time that there was no
sign of where his tendrils once had been.

He smiled; and the even-featured, undistinguished face they had put
on him drew back, lips rising in the corners, cheeks tightening, neat
white teeth momentarily on display. Major Harris scowled, and the
face darkened.

It behaved well. The synthetic white skin acted as if it were his own.
The surgeons back on Darruu had done a superb job on him.

They had removed the fleshy four-inch-long tendrils that sprouted at
a Darruui's temples; they had covered his deep golden skin with an
overlay of convincingly Terran white, and grafted it so skilfully that
by now it had become his real skin. Contact lenses turned his eyes
from red to blue-gray. Hormone treatments had caused hair to sprout
on head and body, where none had been before. They had not meddled
with his internal plumbing, and there he remained alien, with the
Darruui digestive organ where a Terran had so many incredible feet of
intestine, with the double heart and the sturdy liver just back of his
three lungs.

Inside he was alien. Behind the walls of his skull, he was Aar Khiilom
of the city of Helasz--a Darruui of the highest caste, a Servant of the
Spirit. Externally, though, he was Major Abner Harris. He knew Major
Harris' biography in great detail.

Born 2520, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, Earth. Age now,
42--with a good hundred years of his lifespan left. Attended Western
Reserve University, studying galactography; graduated '43. Entered the
Interstellar Redevelopment Corps '46, commissioned '50, now a Major.
Missions to Altair VII, Sirius IX, Procyon II, Alpheratz IV. Unmarried.
Parents killed in highway jet-crash in '44; no known relatives. Height
five feet ten, weight 220, color fair, retinal index point-oh-three.

Major Harris was visiting Earth on vacation. He was to spend eight
months on Earth before reassignment to his next planetary post.

Eight months, thought the one who called himself Major Harris, would be
ample time for Major Harris to lose himself in the billions of Earth
and carry out the purposes for which he had been sent here.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Lucky Lady_ was on the last lap of her journey. Harris had boarded
her on Alpheratz IV, after having been shipped there from Darruu by
private warpship. For the past three weeks, while the giant vessel
had slipped through the sleek gray tunnel in the continuum that was
its overdrive channel, Harris had been learning to walk at Earthnorm
gravity.

Darruu was a large world--radius 11,000 miles--and though its density
was not as great as Earth's, still the gravitational attraction was
half again as intense. Darruu's gravity was 1.5 Earthnorm. Or, as
Harris had thought of it in the days when his mind centered not on
Earth but on Darruu, Earth's gravity was .67 Darruunorm. Either way, it
meant that his muscles would be functioning in a field two-thirds as
strong as the one they had developed in. He could use the excuse that
he had spent most of his time on heavy planets, and that would explain
away some of his awkwardness.

But not all. A native Earther, no matter how long he stays on a heavy
world, still knows how to cope with Earthnorm gravity. Harris had to
learn that. He _did_ learn it, painstakingly, during the three weeks of
overdrive travel toward the system of Sol.

Now the journey was almost complete. All that remained was the transfer
from the starship to an Earth shuttle, and then he could begin life as
an Earthman.

Earth hung outside the main viewport twenty feet from Harris's
cabin. He stared at it. A great green ball of a world, with two huge
continents here, another land-mass there, a giant moon moving in slow
procession around it, keeping one pockmarked face eternally staring
inward, the other glaring at outer space like a single beady bright
eye.

The sight made Harris homesick.

Darruu was nothing like this. Darruu, from space, seemed to be a giant
red fruit, covered over by the crimson mist that was the upper layer of
its atmosphere. Beneath that could be discerned the great blue seas and
the two hemisphere-large continents of Darraa and Darroo.

And the moons, Harris thought nostalgically. Seven glistening blank
faces like coins in the sky, each at its own angle to the ecliptic,
each taking its place in the sky nightly like a gem moved by clockwork.
And the Mating of the Moons, when the seven came together once a year
in a fiercely radiant diadem that filled half the sky--

Angrily he cut the train of thought.

_You're an Earthman. Forget Darruu._

A voice on a speaker overhead said, "Please return to your cabins,
ladies and gentlemen. In eleven minutes we will come to a rest at the
main spaceborne depot. Passengers intending to transfer here please
notify their area steward."

Harris returned to his cabin while the voice repeated the statement in
other languages. Earth still spoke more than a dozen major tongues,
which surprised him; Darruu had reached linguistic homogeneity three
thousand years or more ago.

Minutes ticked by; at last came the word that the _Lucky Lady_ had
ended its ion-drive cruise and was tethered to the orbital satellite.
Harris left his cabin for the last time and headed downramp to the
designated room on D Deck where outgoing passengers were assembling.

"Your baggage will be shipped across. You don't have to worry about
that."

Harris nodded. His baggage was important.

More than three hundred of the passengers were leaving ship here.
Harris was herded along with the others through an airlock. Several
dozen ungainly little ferries hovered just outside, linked to the
huge starliner by connecting tubes. Harris entered a swaying tube,
crossed over, and found a seat in the ferry. Minutes later, he was
repeating the process in the other direction, as the ferry unloaded its
passengers into the main airlock of Orbiting Station Number One.

Another voice boomed, "_Lucky Lady_ passengers continuing on to Earth
report to Routing Channel Four. _Lucky Lady_ passengers continuing on
to Earth report to Routing Channel Four. Passengers transhipping to
other starlines should go to the nearest routing desk at once."

At Routing Channel Four, Harris was called upon to produce his papers.
He handed over the little fabrikoid portfolio; a spaceport official
riffled sleepily through it and handed it back without a word.

As he boarded the Earth-Orbiter shuttle, an attractive stewardess
handed him a multigraphed sheet of paper which contained information of
a sort a tourist was likely to want to know. Harris scanned it quickly.

"_The Orbiting Station is located eighty thousand miles from Earth.
It is locked in a twenty-four hour orbit that keeps it hovering
approximately above Quito, Ecuador, South America. During a year the
Orbiting Station serves an average of 8,500,000 travellers_--"

He finished reading the sheet and put it down. He eyed his fellow
passengers in the Earthbound shuttle. There were about fifty of them.

For all he knew, five were disguised Darruui like himself. Or they
might be enemies--Medlins--likewise in disguise. Perhaps he was
surrounded by agents of Earth's own intelligence corps who had already
penetrated his disguise.

Trouble lay on every hand. Inwardly Major Harris felt calm, though
there was the faint twinge of homesickness for Darruu that he knew he
would never be able entirely to erase.

The shuttle banked into a steep deceleration curve. Artificial grav
aboard the ship remained constant, of course. Earth drew near.

Landing came.

       *       *       *       *       *

The shuttle hung over the skin of the landing-field for thirty seconds,
then dropped; a gantry crane shuffled out to support the ship, and
buttress-legs sprang from the sides of the hull. A steward's voice
said, "Passengers will please assemble at the airlock in single file."

They assembled. A green omnibus waited outside on the field, and the
fifty of them filed in. Harris found a seat by the window and stared
out across the broad field. A yellow sun was in the blue sky. The air
was cold; he shivered involuntarily and drew his cloak around him for
warmth.

"Cold?" asked the man who shared his seat with him.

"A bit."

"That's odd. Nice balmy spring day like this, you'd think everybody
would be enjoying the weather."

Harris grinned. "I've been on some pretty hot worlds the last ten
years. Anything under ninety degrees and I start shivering, now."

The other chuckled and said, "Must be near eighty in the shade today."

"I'll be accustomed to it again before long," Harris said. "Once an
Earthman, always an Earthman."

He made a mental note to carry out a trifling adjustment on his body
thermostat. His skin was lined with sub-miniaturized heating and
refrigerating units--just one of the useful modifications the surgeons
had given him.

Darruu's mean temperature was 120 degrees, on the scale used by the
Earthers. When it dropped to 80, Darruui cursed the cold. It was 80
now, and he was uncomfortably cold. He would have to stay that way
for most of the day, at least, until in a moment of privacy he could
make the necessary adjustments. Around him, the Earthers seemed to be
perspiring and feeling discomfort because of the heat.

The bus filled finally, and spurted across the field to a high domed
building of gleaming steel and green plastic. The driver said, "First
stop is customs. Have your papers ready."

Inside, Harris found his baggage already waiting for him at a
counter labelled HAM-HAT. There were two suitcases, both of them with
topological secret compartments. He surrendered his passport and, when
told to do so, pressed his thumb to the opener-plate. The suitcases
sprang open. The customs man poked through them perfunctorily, nodded,
said, "Anything to declare?"

"Nothing."

"Okay. Close 'em up."

Harris locked the suitcases again, and the customs official briefly
touched a tracer-stamp to them. It left no visible imprint, but the
photonic scanners at every door would be watching for the radiations,
and no one with an un-stamp could get through the electronic barriers.

"Next stop is Immigration, Major."

At Immigration they studied his passport briefly, noted that he was
a government employee, and passed him along to Health. Here he felt
a moment of alarm; about one out of every fifty incoming passengers
from a starship was detained for a comprehensive medical exam, and if
the finger fell upon him the game was up right here. Ten seconds in
front of a fluoroscope would tell them that nobody with that kind of
skeletal structure had ever been born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

He got through with nothing more than a rudimentary checkup. At the
last desk his passport was stamped with a re-entry visa, and the clerk
said, "You haven't been on Earth for a long time, eh, Major?"

"Not in ten years. Hope things haven't changed too much."

"The women are still the same, anyway." The clerk shuffled Harris'
papers together, stuck them back in the portfolio, and handed them to
him. "Everything's in order. Go straight ahead and out the door to your
left."

Harris thanked him and moved along, gripping one suitcase in each hand.
A month ago, at the beginning of his journey, the suitcases had seemed
heavy to him. But that had been on Darruu; here they weighed only
two-thirds as much. He carried them jauntily.

_Soon it will be spring on Darruu_, he thought. The red-leaved jasaar
trees would blossom and their perfume would fill the air.

With an angry inner scowl he blanked out the thought. He was Major
Abner Harris, late of Cincinnati, here on Earth for eight months'
vacation.

He knew his orders. He was to establish residence, avoid detection,
and in the second week of his stay make contact with the chief Darruui
agent on Earth. Further instructions would come from him.




                              CHAPTER II


It took twenty minutes by helitaxi to reach the metropolitan area
from the spaceport. Handling the Terran currency as if he had used
it all his life, Harris paid the driver, tipped him, and got out. He
had asked for and been taken to a hotel in the heart of the city--the
Spaceways Hotel. There was one of them in every major spaceport city in
the galaxy; the spacelines operated them jointly, for the benefit of
travelers who had no place to stay on the planet of their destination.

He signed in and was given a room on the 58th floor. The Earther at the
desk said, "You don't mind heights, do you, Major?"

"Not at all."

He gave the boy who had carried his bags a quarter-unit piece, received
grateful thanks, and locked the door. For the first time since leaving
Darruu he was really _alone_. Thumbing open his suitcases, he performed
the series of complex stress-pressures that gave access to the
hidden areas of the grips; miraculously, the suitcases expanded to
nearly twice their former volume. There was nothing like packing your
belongings in a tesseract if you wanted to keep the customs men away
from them.

Busily, he unpacked.

First thing out was a small device which fit neatly and virtually
invisibly to the inside of the door. It was a jammer for spybeams. It
insured privacy.

A disruptor-pistol came next. He slipped it into his tunic-pocket.
Several books; a flask of Darruui wine; a photograph of his birth-tree.
Bringing these things had not increased his risk, since if they had
been found it would only be after much more incriminating things had
come to light.

The subspace communicator, for example. Or the narrow-beam amplifier
he would use in making known his presence to the other members of the
Darruui cadre on Earth.

He finished unpacking, restored his suitcases to their
three-dimensional state, and took a tiny scalpel from the toolkit he
had unpacked. Quickly stripping off his trousers, he laid bare the
desensitized area in the fleshy part of his thigh, stared for a moment
at the network of fine silver threads underlying the flesh, and, with
three careful twists of the scalpel's edge, altered the thermostatic
control in his body.

He shivered a moment; then, gradually, he began to feel warm. Closing
the wound, he applied nuplast; moments later it had healed. He dressed
again.

He surveyed his room. Twenty feet square, with a bed, a desk, a closet,
a dresser. An air-conditioning grid in the ceiling. A steady greenish
electroluminescent glow. An oval window beneath which was a set of
polarizing controls. A molecular bath and washstand. Not bad for twenty
units a week, he told himself, trying to think the way an Earthman
might.

The room-calendar told him it was five-thirty in the afternoon, 22 May
2562. He was not supposed to make contact with Central for ten days or
more; he computed that that would mean the first week of June. Until
then he was simply to act the part of a Terran on vacation.

The surgeons had made certain minor alterations in his metabolism to
give him a taste for Terran food and drink and to make it possible for
him to digest the carbohydrates of which Terrans were so fond. They had
prepared him well for playing the part of Major Abner Harris. And he
had been equipped with fifty thousand units of Terran money, enough to
last him quite a while.

Carefully he adjusted the device on the door to keep intruders out
while he was gone. Anyone entering the room would get a nasty jolt of
energy now. He checked his wallet, made sure he had his money with him,
and pushed the door-opener.

It slid back and he stepped through into the hallway. At that moment
someone walking rapidly down the hall collided with him, spinning him
around. He felt a soft body pressed against his.

A woman!

The immediate reaction that boiled up in him was one of anger, but he
blocked the impulse to strike her before it rose. On Darruu, a woman
who jostled a Servant of the Spirit could expect a sound whipping. But
this was not Darruu.

He remembered a phrase from his indoctrination: _it will help to create
a sexual relationship for yourself on Earth_.

The surgeons had changed his metabolism in that respect, too, making
him able to feel sexual desires for Terran females. The theory was that
no one would expect a disguised alien to engage in romantic affairs
with Terrans; it would be a form of camouflage.

"Excuse me!" Harris and the female Terran said simultaneously.

His training reminded him that simultaneous outbursts were cause for
laughter on Earth. He laughed. So did she. Then she said, "I guess I
didn't see you. I was hurrying along the corridor and I wasn't looking."

"The fault was mine," Harris insisted. _Terran males are obstinately
chivalrous_, he had been told. "I opened my door and just charged out
blind. I'm sorry."

She was tall, nearly his height, with soft, lustrous yellow hair and
clear pink skin. She wore a black body-tight sheath that left her
shoulders and the upper hemispheres of her breasts uncovered. Harris
found her attractive. Wonderingly he thought, _Now I know they've
changed me. She has hair on her scalp and enormous bulging breasts and
yet I feel desire for her._

She said, "It's my fault and it's your fault. That's the way most
collisions are caused. Let's not argue about that. My name is Beth
Baldwin."

"Major Abner Harris."

"Major?"

"Interstellar Development Corps."

"Oh," she said. "Just arrived on Earth?"

He nodded. "I'm on vacation. My last hop was Alpheratz IV." He smiled
and said, "It's silly to stand out here in the hall discussing things.
I was on my way down below to get something to eat. How about joining
me?"

She looked doubtful for a moment, but only for a moment. She
brightened. "I'm game."

       *       *       *       *       *

They took the gravshaft down and ate in the third-level restaurant,
an automated affair with individual conveyor-belts bringing food to
each table. Part of his hypnotic training had been intended to see him
through situations such as this, and so he ordered a dinner for two,
complete with wine, without a hitch.

She did not seem shy. She told him that she was employed on Rigel XII,
and had come to Earth on a business trip; she had arrived only the day
before. She was twenty-nine, unmarried, a native-born Earther like
himself, who had been living in the Rigel system the past four years.

"And now tell me about you," she said, reaching for the wine decanter.

"There isn't much to tell. I'm a fairly stodgy career man in the IDC,
age forty-two, and this is the first day I've spent on Earth in ten
years."

"It must feel strange."

"It does."

"How long is your vacation?"

He shrugged. "Six to eight months. I can have more if I really want it.
When do you go back to Rigel?"

She smiled strangely at him. "I may not go back at all. Depends on
whether I can find what I'm looking for on Earth."

"And what are you looking for?"

She grinned. "My business," she said.

"Sorry."

"Never mind the apologies. Let's have some more wine."

After Harris had settled up the not inconsiderable matter of the bill,
they left the hotel and went outside to stroll. The streets were
crowded; a clock atop a distant building told Harris that the time
was shortly after seven. He felt warm now that he had adjusted his
temperature controls, and the unfamiliar foods and wines in his stomach
gave him an oddly queasy feeling, though he had enjoyed the meal.

The girl slipped her hand through his looped arm and squeezed the
inside of his elbow. Harris grinned. He said, "I was afraid it was
going to be an awfully lonely vacation."

"Me too. You can be tremendously alone on a planet that has twenty
billion people on it."

They walked on. In the middle of the street a troupe of acrobats was
performing, using nullgrav devices to add to their abilities. Harris
chuckled and tossed them a coin, and a bronzed girl saluted to him from
the top of a human pyramid.

Night was falling. Harris considered the incongruity of walking
arm-in-arm with an Earthgirl, with his belly full of Earth foods, and
enjoying it.

Darruu seemed impossibly distant now. It lay eleven hundred light-years
from Earth; its star was visible only as part of a mass of blurred dots
of light.

But yet he knew it was there. He missed it.

"You're worrying about something," the girl said.

"It's an old failing of mine."

He was thinking: _I was born a Servant of the Spirit, and so I was
chosen to go to Earth. I may never return to Darruu again._

As the sky darkened they strolled on, over a delicate golden bridge
spanning a river whose dark depths twinkled with myriad points of
light. Together they stared down at the water, and at the stars
reflected in it. She moved closer to him, and her warmth against his
body was pleasing to him.

Eleven hundred light-years from home.

_Why am I here?_

He knew the answer. Titanic conflict was shaping in the universe. The
Predictors held that the cataclysm was no more than two hundred years
away. Darruu would stand against its ancient adversary Medlin, and all
the worlds of the universe would be ranged on one side or on the other.

He was here as an ambassador. Earth was a mighty force in the
galaxy--so mighty that it would resent the role it really played, that
of pawn between Darruu and Medlin. Darruu wanted Terran support in
the conflict to come. Obtaining it was a delicate problem in consent
engineering. A cadre of disguised Darruui, planted on Earth, gradually
manipulating public opinion toward the Darruu camp and away from
Medlin--that was the plan, and Harris, once Aar Khiilom, was one of its
agents.

They walked until the hour had grown very late, and then turned back
toward the hotel. Harris was confident now that he had established the
sort of relationship that was likely to shield him from all suspicion
of his true origin.

He said, "What do we do now?"

"Suppose we buy a bottle of something and have a party in your room?"
she suggested.

"My room's a frightful mess," Harris said, thinking of the many things
in there he would not want her to see. "How about yours?"

"It doesn't matter."

They stopped at an autobar and he fed half-unit pieces into a machine
until the chime sounded and a fully wrapped bottle slid out the
receiving tray. Harris tucked it under his arm, made a mock-courteous
bow to her, and they continued on their way to the hotel.

The signal came just as they entered the lobby.

       *       *       *       *       *

It reached Harris in the form of a sudden twinge in the abdomen; that
was where the amplifier had been embedded. He felt it as three quick
impulses, _rasp rasp rasp_, followed after a brief pause by a repeat.

The signal had only one meaning: _Emergency. Get in touch with your
contact-man at once._

Her hand tightened on his arm. "Are you all right? You look so pale!"

In a dry voice he said, "Maybe we'd better postpone our party a few
minutes. I'm--not quite well."

"Oh! Can I help?"

He shook his head. "It's--something I picked up on Alpheratz."
Turning, he handed her the packaged bottle and said, "It'll just take
me a few minutes to get myself settled down. Suppose you go to your
room and wait for me there."

"But if you're sick I ought to--"

"No. Beth, I have to take care of this myself, without anyone else
watching. Okay?"

"Okay," she said doubtfully.

"Thanks. Be with you as soon as I can."

They rode the gravshaft together to the 58th floor and went their
separate ways, she to her room, he to his. The signal in his abdomen
was repeating itself steadily now with quiet urgency: _Rasp rasp rasp.
Rasp rasp rasp. Rasp rasp rasp._

He neutralized the force-field on the door with a quick energy impulse
and opened the door. Stepping inside quickly, he activated the spy-beam
jammer again. Beads of sweat were starting to form on his skin.

_Rasp rasp rasp. Rasp rasp rasp._

He opened the closet, took out the tiny narrow-beam amplifier he had
hidden there, and tuned it to the frequency of the emergency signal.
Immediately the rasping stopped as the narrow-beam amplifier covered
the wavelength.

Moments passed. The amplifier picked up a voice speaking in the code
devised for use by Darruui agents alone.

"Identify yourself."

Harris identified himself according to the regular procedure. He went
on to say, "I arrived on Earth today. My instructions were not to
report to you for about two weeks."

"I know that. There's an emergency situation."

"What kind of emergency?"

"There are Medlin agents on Earth. Normal procedures will have to be
altered. Meet me at once." He gave an address. Harris memorized it and
repeated it. The contact was broken.

_Meet me at once._ The orders had to be interpreted literally. _At
once_ meant right now, not tomorrow afternoon. His tryst with the
yellow-haired Earthgirl would just have to wait.

He picked up the house-phone and asked for her room. A moment later he
heard her voice.

"Hello?"

"Beth, this is Abner Harris."

"How are you? Everything under control? I'm waiting for you."

Hesitantly he said, "I'm fine now. But--Beth, I don't know how to
say this--will you believe me when I say that a friend of mine just
phoned, and wants me to meet him right away downtown?"

"Now? But it's after eleven!"

"I know. He's--a strange sort."

"I thought you didn't have any friends on Earth, Major Harris. You said
you were lonely."

"He's not really a _friend_. He's a business associate. From IDC."

"Well, I'm not accustomed to having men stand me up. But I don't have
any choice, do I?"

"Good girl. Make it a date for breakfast in the morning instead?"

"Lousy substitute, but it'll have to do. See you at nine."




                              CHAPTER III


The rendezvous-point the other operative had named was a street corner
in another quarter of the city. Harris hired a helitaxi to take him
there.

It was a nightclub district, all bright lights and brassy music. A
figure leaned against the lamppost on the southeast corner of the
street. Harris crossed to him. In the brightness of the streetlamp he
saw the man's face: lean, lantern-jawed, solemn.

Harris said, "Pardon me, friend. Do you know where I can buy a mask
for the carnival?"

It was the recognition-query. The other answered, in a deep harsh
voice, "Masks are expensive. Stay home." He thrust out his hand.

Harris took it, gripping the wrist in the Darruui way, and grinned.
Eleven hundred light-years from home and he beheld a fellow Servant of
the Spirit! "I'm Major Abner Harris."

"Hello. I'm John Carver. There's a table waiting for us inside."

"Inside" turned out to be the Nine Planets Club, across the street.
The atmosphere inside was steamy and smoke-clouded; bubbles of light
drifted round the ceiling. A row of long-limbed nudes pranced gaily
to the accompaniment of the noise that passed for music on Terra. The
surgeons, Harris thought, had never managed to instill a liking for
Terran music in him.

Carver said quietly, "Have you had any trouble since you arrived?"

"No. Should I expect any?"

The lean man shrugged. "There are one hundred Medlin agents on Earth
right now. Yesterday we discovered a cache of secret Medlin documents.
We have the names of the hundred and their photographs. We also know
they plan to wipe us out."

"How many Darruui are on Earth?"

"You are the tenth to arrive."

Harris' eyes widened. One hundred Medlins against ten Darruui! "Stiff
odds," he said.

Carver nodded. "But we know their identities. We can strike first.
Unless we eliminate them, we will not be able to proceed with our work
here."

The music reached an ear-splitting crescendo. Moodily Harris stared
at the nude chorus-line as it gyrated. He sensed some glandular
disturbance at the sight, and frowned. By Darruui standards, the girls
were obscenely ugly.

But this was not Darruu.

He said, "How do we go about eliminating them?"

"You have weapons. I'll supply you with the necessary information. If
you can get ten of them before they get you, you'll be all right." He
drew forth a billfold and extracted a snapshot from it. "Here's your
first one, now. Kill her and report back to me. You can find her at the
Spaceways Hotel."

Harris felt a jolt. "_I'm_ staying at that hotel."

"Indeed? Here. Look at the picture."

Harris took the photo from the other. It was a tridim in full color. It
showed a blonde girl wearing a low-cut black sheath.

Controlling his voice, he said, "This girl's too pretty to be a Medlin
agent."

"That's why she's so deadly," Carver said. "Kill her first. She goes
under the name of Beth Baldwin."

Harris stared at the photo a long while. Then he nodded. "Okay. I'll
get in touch with you again when the job's done."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly two in the morning when he returned to the hotel. He had
spent nearly an hour with the man who called himself John Carver. He
felt tired, confused, faced with decisions that frightened him.

Beth Baldwin a Medlin spy? How improbable that seemed! But yet Carver
had had her photo.

It was his job to kill her, now. He was a Servant of the Spirit. He
could not betray his trust.

_First I'll find out for certain, though._

He took the gravshaft to the 58th floor, but instead of going to his
room he turned left and headed toward the room whose number she had
given him--5820. He paused a moment, then nudged the door-signal.

There was no immediate response, so he nudged it again. This time he
heard the sound of a doorscanner humming just above him, telling him
that she was awake and just within the door.

He said, "It's me--Abner. I have to see you, Beth."

"Hold on," came the sleepy reply from inside. "Let me get something on."

A moment passed, and then the door slid open. Beth smiled at him. She
had "put something on," but the something had not been much--a flimsy
gown that concealed her body as if she were wearing so much gauze.

But Harris was not interested in her body just now, attractive
though it was. She held a tiny glittering weapon in her hand.
Harris recognized the weapon. It was the Medlin version of the
disruptor-pistol.

"Come on in, Abner."

Numbly he stepped forward, and the door shut behind him. Beth gestured
with the disruptor.

"Sit down over there."

"How come the gun, Beth?"

"You know that answer without my having to tell it to you. Now that
you've seen Carver, you know who I am."

He nodded. "A Medlin agent."

It was hard to believe. He stared at the girl who stood ten feet
from him, a disruptor trained at his skull. The Medlin surgeons
evidently were as skillful as those of Darruu, it seemed, for the wiry
pebble-skinned Medlins were even less humanoid than the Darruui--and
yet he would swear that those breasts, the flaring hips, the long
well-formed legs, were genuine.

She said, "We had information on you from the moment you entered the
orbit of Earth, Abner--or should I say Aar Khiilom?"

"How did you know that name?"

She laughed lightly. "The same way I knew you were from Darruu, the
same way I knew the exact moment you were going to come out of your
room before."

"The same way you knew I was coming here to kill you just now?"

She nodded.

Harris frowned. "Medlins aren't telepathic. There isn't a single
telepathic race in the galaxy."

"None that _you_ know about, anyway."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing," she said.

He shrugged. Apparently the Medlin spy system was formidably well
organized. This nonsense about telepathy was merely to cloud the
trail. But the one fact about which there was no doubt was--

"I came here to kill you," Harris said. "But you trapped me. I guess
you'll kill me now."

"Wrong. I just want to talk," she said.

"If you want to talk, put some clothing on. Having you sitting around
like this disturbs my powers of conversation."

She said pleasantly, "Oh? You mean this artificial body of mine stirs
some response in that artificial body of yours? How interesting!"
Without turning her back on him, she drew a robe from the closet and
slipped it on over the filmy gown. "There. Is that easier on your
glandular balance?"

"Somewhat."

The Darruui began to fidget. There was no way he could activate his
emergency signal without moving his hands, and any sudden hand-motion
was likely to be fatal. He sat motionless while sweat streamed down the
skin they had grafted to his own.

Beth said, "You're one of ten Darruui on Earth. Others are on their
way, but there are only ten of you here now. Correct me if I'm wrong."

"Why should I?" Harris said tightly.

She nodded. "A good point. But I assure you we have all the
information about you we need, so you needn't try to make up tales. To
continue: you and your outfit are here for the purpose of subverting
Terran allegiance and winning Earth over to the side of Darruu."

"And you Medlins are here for much the same kind of reason."

"That's where you're wrong," the girl said. "We're here to help the
Terrans, not to dominate them. We Medlins don't believe in violence if
peaceful means will accomplish our goals."

"Very nice words," Harris said. "But how can _you_ help the Terrans?"

"It's a matter of genetics. This isn't the place to explain in detail."

He let that pass. "So you deliberately threw yourself in contact
with me earlier, let me take you out to dinner, walked around
arm-in-arm--and all this time you knew I was a disguised Darruui?"

"Of course. I also knew that when you pretended to be sick it was
because you had to contact your chief operative, and that when you
said you were going to visit a friend you were attending an emergency
rendezvous. I also knew what your friend Carver was going to tell you
to do, which is why I had my gun ready when you rang."

He stared at her. "Suppose I _hadn't_ gotten that emergency message.
We were going to come here and drink and probably make love. Would you
have gone to bed with me even knowing what you knew?"

"Most likely," she said without emotion. "It would have been
interesting to see what sort of biological reactions the Darruui
surgeons are capable of building."

       *       *       *       *       *

A flash of hatred ran through Harris-Khiilom. He had been raised to
hate Medlins anyway; they were the ancestral enemies of his people,
galactic rivals for four thousand years or more. Only the fact that
she was clad in the flesh of a handsome Earthgirl had kept Harris from
feeling his normal revulsion for a Medlin.

But now it surged forth at this revelation of her calm and callous
biological "curiosity."

He wondered how far her callousness extended. Also, how good her aim
was.

He mastered his anger and said, "That's a pretty cold-blooded way of
thinking, Beth."

"Maybe. I'm sorry about it."

"I'll bet you are."

She smiled at him. "Let's forget about that, shall we? I want to tell
you a few things."

"Such as?"

"For one: did you know that you're fundamentally disloyal to the
Darruui cause?"

Harris laughed harshly. "You're crazy!"

"Afraid not. Listen to me, Abner. You're homesick for Darruu. You never
wanted to come here in the first place. You were born into a caste that
has certain obligations, and you're fulfilling those obligations. But
you don't know very much about what you're doing here on Earth, and
for half a plugged unit you'd give the whole thing up and go back to
Darruu."

"Very clever," he said stonily. "Now give me my horoscope for the next
six months."

"Easy enough. You'll come to our headquarters and learn why my people
are on Earth--"

"I know that one already."

"You _think_ you do," she said smoothly. "Don't interrupt. You'll learn
why we're on Earth; once you've seen that, you'll join us and help to
protect Earth against Darruu."

"And why will I do all these incredible things?"

"Because it's in your personality makeup to do them. And because you're
falling in love."

"With a lot of fake female flesh plastered over a scrawny Medlin body?
Hah!"

She remained calm. Harris measured the distance between them, wondering
whether she would use the weapon after all. A disruptor broiled the
neural tissue; death was instantaneous and fairly ghastly.

He decided to risk it. His assignment was to kill Medlins, not to let
himself be killed by them. He had nothing to lose by making the attempt.

In a soft voice he said, "You didn't answer. Do you really think I'd
fall in love with something like _you_?"

"Biologically we're Earthers now, not Medlins or Darruui. It's
possible."

"Maybe you're right. After all, I _did_ ask you to cover yourself up."
He smiled and said, "I'm all confused. I need time to think things
over."

"Of course. You--"

He sprang from the chair and covered the ten feet between them in two
big bounds, stretching out one hand to grab the hand that held the
disruptor. He deflected the weapon toward the ceiling. She did not
fire. He closed on her wrist and forced her to drop the tiny pistol.
Pressed against her, he stared into eyes blazing with anger.

The anger melted suddenly into passion. He stepped back, reaching for
his own gun, not willing to have such close contact with her. She was
too dangerous. Better to kill her right now, he thought. She's just a
Medlin. A deadly one.

He started to draw the weapon from his tunic. Suddenly she lifted her
hand; there was the twinkle of something bright between her fingers,
and then Harris recoiled, helpless, as the bolt of a stunner struck him
in the face like a club against the back of his skull.

She fired again. He struggled to get his gun out, but his muscles would
not obey.

He toppled forward, paralyzed.




                              CHAPTER IV


Harris felt a teeth-chattering chill as he began to come awake. The
stunner-bolt had temporarily overloaded his motor neurons, and the
body's escape from the frustration of paralysis was unconsciousness.
Now he was waking, and the strength was ebbing slowly and painfully
back into his muscles.

The light of morning streamed in through a depolarized window on the
left wall of the unfamiliar room in which he found himself. He felt
stiff and sore all over, and realized he had spent the night--where?--

He groped in his pockets. His weapons were gone; they had left his
wallet.

He got unsteadily to his feet and surveyed the room. The window was
beyond his reach; there was no sign of a door. Obviously some section
of the wall folded away to admit people to the room, but the door and
door-jamb, wherever they were, must have been machined as smoothly as a
couple of jo-blocks, because there was no sign of a break in the wall.

He looked up. There was a grid in the ceiling. Airconditioning, no
doubt--and probably a spy-mechanism also. He stared at the grid and
said, "Okay. I'm awake now. You can come work me over."

There was no immediate response. Surreptitiously Harris slipped a hand
inside his waistband and squeezed a fold of flesh between his thumb and
index finger. The action set in operation a minute amplifier embedded
there; a distress signal, directionally modulated, was sent out to any
Darruui agents who might be within a thousand-mile radius. He completed
the gesture by lazily scratching his chest, stretching, yawning.

He waited.

Finally a segment of the door flipped upward out of sight, and three
figures entered.

He recognized one of them: Beth. She smiled at him and said, "Good
morning, Major."

Harris glared sourly at her. Behind her stood two males--one an
ordinary-looking sort of Earther, the other rather special. He was
about six feet six, well-proportioned for his height, with a regularity
of feature that seemed startlingly beautiful.

Beth said, "Major Abner Harris, formerly Aar Khiilom of Darruu--this is
Paul Coburn of Medlin Intelligence and David Wrynn of Earth."

"A real Earthman? Not a phony like the rest of us?"

Wrynn smiled pleasantly and said, "I assure you I'm a home-grown
product, Major Harris." His voice was like the mellow boom of a
well-tuned cello.

The Darruui folded his arms. "Well. How nice of you to introduce us
all. Now what?"

"Still belligerent," he heard Beth murmur to the other Medlin, Coburn.
Coburn nodded. The giant Earthman merely looked unhappy in a calm sort
of way.

Harris eyed them all coldly. "If you're going to torture me, why not
get started with it?"

"Who said anything about torture?" Beth asked.

"Why else would you bring me here? Obviously you want to wring
information from me. Well, go ahead. I'm ready for you."

Coburn chuckled and fingered his double chins. "Don't you think we know
that torture's useless on you? That if we tried any kind of forcible
neural extraction of information from your mind your memory-chambers
would automatically short-circuit?"

Harris' jaw dropped. "How did you know--" He stopped. The Medlins
evidently had a fantastically efficient spy service. The filter-circuit
in his brain was a highly secret development.

Beth said, "Relax and listen to us. We aren't out to torture you. We
know already all you can tell us."

"Doubtful. But go ahead and talk."

"We know how many Darruui are on Earth. And we know approximately where
they are. We'd like you to serve as a contact-man for us."

"And do what?"

"Kill the other nine Darruui on Earth," Beth said simply.

Harris smiled. "Is there any special reason why I should do this?"

"For the good of the universe."

He laughed derisively. "For the good of Medlin, you mean."

"No. Listen to me. When we arrived on Earth--it was years ago, by
the way--we quickly discovered that a new race was evolving here.
A super-race, you might say. One with abnormal physical and mental
powers. But in most cases children of this new race were killed or
mentally stunted before they reached maturity. People tend to resent
being made obsolete--and even a super-child is unable to defend himself
until he's learned how. By then it's usually too late."

It was a nice fairy-tale, Harris thought. He made no comment, but
listened with apparent interest.

Beth continued, "We discovered isolated members of this new race here
and there on Earth. We decided to _help_ them--knowing they would help
us, some day, when it became necessary. We protected these children. We
brought them together and raised them in safety. David Wrynn here is
one of our first discoveries."

Harris glanced at the big Earthman. "So you're a superman?"

Wrynn smiled. "I'm somewhat better equipped for life than most other
Earthmen. My children will be as far beyond me as I am beyond my
parents."

"Our purpose here on Earth is to aid this evolving race until it's
capable of taking care of itself--which won't be too long now. There
are more than a hundred of them, of which thirty are adult. But now
Darruui agents have started to arrive on Earth. Their purpose is to
obstruct us, to interfere with our actions, and to win Earth over to
what they think is their 'cause.' They don't see that they're backing a
dead horse."

"Tell me," Harris said. "What's your motive in bringing into being this
super-race?"

"Motive?" Beth said. "You Darruui always think in terms of motives,
don't you? Profit and reward. Major, there's nothing in this for us but
the satisfaction of knowing that we're bringing something wonderful
into being in the universe."

Harris swallowed that with much salt. The concept of altruism was not
unknown on Darruu, certainly, but it seemed highly improbable that
a planet would go to the trouble of sending emissaries across space
for the sole purpose of serving as midwives to an emerging race of
super-beings on Earth.

No, he thought. It was simply part of an elaborate propaganda maneuver
whose motives did not lie close to the surface. There were no
supermen. Wrynn was probably a Medlin himself, on whom the surgeons
had done a specially good job.

Whatever the Medlins' motive, he determined to play along with them. By
now Carver had probably picked up his distress signal and had worked
out the location of the place where he was being held.

He said, "So you're busily raising a breed of super-Earthmen, and you
want me to help? How?"

"We told you. By disposing of your comrades before they make things
complicated for us."

"You're asking me to commit treason against my people, in other words."

"We know what sort of a man you are," Beth said. "You aren't in
sympathy with the Darruui imperialistic ideals. You may _think_ you
are, but you aren't."

_I'll play along_, Harris thought. He said, "You're right. I didn't
want to take the job on Earth in the first place. What can I do to
help?"

Coburn and Beth exchanged glances. The "Earthman" Wrynn merely smiled.

Beth said, "I knew you'd cooperate. The first target is the man who
calls himself Carver. Get rid of him and the Darruui agents are
without a nerve-center. After him, the other eight will be easy
targets."

"How do you know I won't trick you once you've released me?" Harris
said.

Coburn said, "We have ways of keeping watch."

Harris nodded. "I'll go after Carver first. I'll get in touch with you
as soon as he's out of the way."

       *       *       *       *       *

It seemed too transparent, Harris thought, when they had set him loose.
He found himself in a distant quarter of the city, nearly an hour's
journey by helitaxi from his hotel.

All this talk of supermen and altruism! It made no sense, he
thought--but Medlin propaganda was devious stuff, and he had good
reason to distrust it.

Were they as simple as all that, though, to release him merely on his
promise of good faith? If they were truly altruistic, of course, it
made sense; but he knew the Medlins too well to believe that. Darkly he
thought he must be part of some larger Medlin plan.

Well, let Carver worry about it, he thought.

Though he was hungry, he knew he had no time to bother about breakfast
until he got in touch with the Darruui chief agent. He signalled for a
helitaxi and gave his destination as the Spaceways Hotel.

When he finally arrived, fifty minutes later, he headed straight for
his room, activated the narrow-beam communicator, and waited until the
metallic voice from the speaker said in code, "Carver here."

"Harris speaking."

"You've escaped?"

"They set me free. It's a long story. Did you get a directional fix on
the building?"

"Yes. Why did they let you go?"

"I promised to become a Medlin secret agent," Harris said. "My first
assignment is to assassinate you."

The chuckle that came from the speaker grid held little mirth. Carver
said, "Fill me in on everything that's happened to you since last
night."

"For one thing, the Medlins know everything, but _everything_. When
I went to visit the girl last night she was waiting for me with a
gun. She stunned me and carted me off to the Medlin headquarters.
When I woke up they gave me some weird line about raising a breed of
super-Earthmen, and would I help them in this noble cause?"

"You agreed?"

"Of course. They let me go and I'm supposed to eradicate all the
Darruui on Earth, beginning with you."

"The others are well scattered," Carver said.

"They seem to know where they are."

Carver was silent for a moment. Then he said, "We'll have to strike at
once. We'll attack the Medlin headquarters and kill as many as we can.
Do you really think they trust you?"

"Either that or they're using me as bait for an elaborate trap," Harris
said.

"That's more likely. Well, we'll take their bait. Only they won't be
able to handle us once they've caught hold of us."

Carver broke contact. Carefully Harris packed the equipment away again.

He breakfasted in the hotel restaurant after a prolonged session under
the molecular showerbath to remove the fatigue and grime of his night's
imprisonment. The meal was close to tasteless, but he needed the
nourishment.

Returning to his room, he locked himself in and threw himself wearily
on the bed. He was tired and deeply troubled.

Supermen, he thought.

Did it make sense for the Medlins to rear a possible galactic
conqueror? Earthmen were dangerous enough as it was; though the spheres
of galactic influence still were divided as of old between Darruu and
Medlin, the Earthmen in their bare three hundred years of galactic
contact had taken giant strides toward holding a major place in the
affairs of the universe.

Their colonies stretched halfway across the galaxy. The Interstellar
Development Corps of which he claimed to be a member had planted
Earthmen indiscriminately on any uninhabited world of the galaxy that
was not claimed by Darruu or Medlin.

And the Medlins, the ancient enemies of his people, the race he had
been taught all his life to regard as the embodiment of evil--these
were aiding Earthmen to progress to a plane of development far beyond
anything either Darruu or Medlin had attained?

Ridiculous, he thought. No race breeds its own destruction knowingly.
And the Medlins are no fools.

Certainly not fools enough to let me go on a mere promise that I'll
turn traitor and aid them, he thought.

He shook his head. After a while he uncorked his precious flask of
Darruui wine and poured a small quantity. The velvet-textured dark
wine of his homeworld soothed him a little, but the ultimate result
was simply to increase his already painful longing for home. Soon, he
thought, it would be harvest-time, and the first bottles of new wine
would reach the shops. This would be the first year that he had not
tasted the year's vintage while it still held the bouquet of youth.

Instead I find myself on a strange planet in a strange skin, caught up
in the coils of the devil Medlins. He scowled darkly, and took another
sip of wine to ease the ache his heart felt.




                               CHAPTER V


A day of nerve-twisting inactivity passed. Harris did not hear from
Carver, nor did any of the Medlins contact him. Once he checked Beth
Baldwin's room at the hotel, but no one answered the door, and when he
inquired at the desk he learned that she had moved out earlier in the
day, leaving no forwarding address. It figured. She had established
quarters in the hotel only long enough to come in touch with him, and,
that done, had left.

Regretfully Harris wished he had had a chance to try that biological
experiment with her, after all. Medlin though she was, his body was now
Terran-oriented, and it might have been an interesting experience.
Well, no chance for that now.

He ate alone, in the hotel restaurant, and kept close to his room all
day. Toward evening his signal-amplifier buzzed. He activated the
communicator and spoke briefly with Carver, who gave him an address and
ordered him to report there immediately.

It was a shabby, old-fashioned building far to the east, at the edge
of the river. He rode up eight stories in a gravshaft that vibrated so
badly he expected to be hurled back down at any moment, and made his
way down a poorly-lit dusty corridor to a weather-beaten door that gave
off the faint yellow glow that indicated a protection-field.

Harris felt the gentle tingling in his stomach that told him he was
getting a radionic scanning. Finally the door opened. Carver said to
him, "Come in."

There were four others in the room--a pudgy balding man named Reynolds,
a youthful smiling man who called himself Tompkins, a short, cold-eyed
man introduced as McDermott, and a lanky fellow who spoke his name
drawlingly as Patterson. As each of them in turn was introduced, he
gave the Darruui recognition signal.

"The other four of us are elsewhere in the eastern hemisphere of
Earth," Carver said. "But six should be enough to handle the situation."

Harris glanced at his five comrades. "What are you planning to do?"

"Attack the Medlins, of course. We'll have to wipe them out at once."

Harris nodded. Inwardly he felt troubled; it seemed to him now that the
Medlins had been strangely sincere in releasing him, though he knew
that that was preposterous. He said, "How?"

"They trust you. You're one of their agents, so far as they think."

"Right."

"You'll return to them and tell them you've disposed of me, as
instructed. Only you'll be bearing a subsonic on your body. Once you're
inside, you activate it and knock them out--you'll be shielded."

"And I kill them when they're unconscious?"

"Exactly," Carver said. "You can't be humane with Medlins. It's like
being humane with bloodsucking bats or with snakes."

The Darruui called McDermott said, "We'll wait outside until we get the
signal that you've done the job. If you need help, just let us know."

Harris moistened his lips and nodded. "It sounds all right."

Carver said, "Reynolds, insert the subsonic."

The bald man produced a small metal pellet the size of a tiny bead,
from which three tantalum filaments projected. He indicated to Harris
that he should roll up his trousers to the thigh.

Instead, Harris dropped them. Reynolds drew a scalpel from somewhere
and lifted the flap of nerveless flesh that served as trapdoor to the
network of devices underneath. With steady, unquivering fingers, he
affixed the bead to the minute wires already set in Harris' leg, and
closed the wound with nuplast.

Carver said, "You activate it by pressing against the left-hip neural
nexus. It's self-shielding for a distance of three feet around you, so
make sure none of your victims are any closer than that."

"It radiates a pretty potent subsonic," Reynolds said. "Guaranteed
knockout for a radius of forty feet."

"Suppose the Medlins are shielded against subsonics?" Harris asked.

Carver chuckled. "This is a variable-cycle transmitter. If they've
perfected anything that can shield against a random wave, we might as
well give up right now. But I'm inclined to doubt they have."

       *       *       *       *       *

All very simple, Harris thought as he rode across town to the Medlin
headquarters. Simply walk in, smile politely, stun them all with the
subsonic, and boil their brains with your disruptor.

He paused outside the building, thinking.

Around him, Earthmen hurried to their homes. Night was falling. The
stars blanketed the sky, white flecks against dark cloth. Many of those
stars swore allegiance to Darruu. Others, to Medlin.

Which was right? Which wrong?

A block away, five fellow Darruui lurked, ready to come to his aid if
he had any trouble in killing the Medlins. He doubted that he would
have trouble, if the subsonic were as effective as Carver seemed to
think.

For forty Darruui years he had been trained to hate the Medlins. Now,
in a few minutes, he would be doing what was considered the noblest act
a Servant of the Spirit could perform--ridding the universe of a pack
of them. Yet he felt no sense of anticipated glory. It would simply be
murder, the murder of strangers.

He entered the building.

The Medlin headquarters were at the top of the building, in a large
penthouse loft. He rode up in the gravshaft and it seemed to him that
he could feel the pressure of the tiny subsonic generator in his thigh.
He knew that was just an illusion, but the presence of the metal bead
irritated him all the same.

He stood for a moment in a scanner field. A door flicked back suddenly,
out of sight, and a strange face peered at him--an Earthman face, on
the surface of things at least.

The Earthman beckoned him in.

"I'm Armin Moulton," he said in a deep voice. "You're Harris?"

"That's right."

"Beth is waiting to see you."

_The subsonic has a range of forty feet in any direction_, Harris
thought. _No one Should be closer to you than three feet._

He was shown into an inner room well furnished with drapes and
hangings. Beth stood in the middle of the room, smiling at him. She
wore thick, shapeless clothes, quite unlike the seductive garb she had
had on when Harris first collided with her.

There were others in the room. Harris recognized the other Medlin,
Coburn, and the giant named Wrynn who claimed to be a super-Earthman.
There was another woman of Wrynn's size in the room, a great golden
creature nearly a foot taller than Harris, and two people of normal
size who were probably Medlins.

"Well?" Beth asked.

In a tight voice Harris said, "He's dead. I've just come from there."

"How did you carry it out?"

"Disruptor," Harris said. "It was--unpleasant. For me as well as him."

He was quivering with tension. He made no attempt to conceal it, since
a man who had just killed his direct superior might be expected to show
some signs of extreme tension.

"Eight to go," Coburn said. "And four are in another hemisphere."

"Who are these people?" Harris asked.

Beth introduced them. The two normal-sized ones were disguised Medlins;
the giant girl was Wrynn's wife, a super-woman. Harris frowned
thoughtfully. There were a hundred Medlin agents on Earth. Four of
them were right in this room, and it was reasonable to expect that two
or three more might be within the forty-foot range of the concealed
subsonic.

Not a bad haul at all. Harris began to tremble.

Beth said, "I suppose you don't even know who and where the other
Darruui are yourself, do you?"

Harris shook his head. "I've only been on Earth a couple of days, you
know. There wasn't time to make contact with anyone but Carver. I have
no idea how to do so."

He stared levelly at her. The expression on her face was unreadable;
it was impossible to tell whether she believed he had actually killed
Carver.

"Things have happened fast to you, haven't they?" she said. She
drew a tridim photo from a case and handed it to Harris. "This is
your next victim. He goes under the name of Reynolds here. He's the
second-in-command; first-in-command now, since Carver's dead."

Harris studied the photo. It showed the face of the bald-headed man who
had inserted the subsonic beneath the skin of his thigh.

Tension mounted in him. He felt the faint _rasp rasp rasp_ in his
stomach that was the agreed-upon code; Carver, waiting nearby, wanted
to know if he were having any trouble.

Casually Harris kneaded his side, activating the transmitter. The
signal he sent out told Carver that nothing had happened yet, that
everything was all right.

       *       *       *       *       *

He handed the photo back to Beth.

"I'll take care of him," he said.

_I press the neural nexus in the left hip and render them unconscious.
Then I kill them with the disruptor and leave._

_Very simple._

He looked at Beth and thought that in a few minutes she would lie
dead, along with Coburn and the other two Medlins and these giants who
claimed to be Earthmen. He tensed. His hand stole toward his hip.

Beth said, "It must have been a terrible nervous strain, killing him.
You look very disturbed."

"You've overturned all the values of my life," Harris said glibly.
"That can shake a man up."

"You didn't think I'd succeed!" Beth said triumphantly to Coburn. To
Harris she explained, "Coburn didn't think you could be trusted."

"I can't," Harris said bluntly.

He activated the concealed subsonic.

The first waves of inaudible sound rippled out, ignoring false flesh
and striking through to the Medlin core beneath. Protected by his
three-foot shield, Harris nevertheless felt sick to the stomach, rocked
by the reverberating sound-waves that poured from the pellet embedded
in his thigh.

Coburn was reaching for his weapon, but he never got to it. His arm
drooped slackly; he slumped over. Beth dropped. The other two Medlins
fell. Still the subsonic waves poured forth.

To his surprise Harris saw that the two giants still remained on their
feet and semi-conscious, if groggy. _It must be because they're so
big_, he thought. _It takes longer for the subsonic to knock them out._

Wrynn was sagging now. His wife reeled under the impact of the
noiseless waves and slipped to the floor, followed a moment later by
her husband.

The office was silent.

Harris pressed his side again, signalling the _all clear_ to the five
Darruui outside. Six unconscious forms lay awkwardly on the floor.

He found the switch that opened the door, pulled it down, and peered
out into the hall. Three figures lay outside, unconscious. A fourth was
running toward them from the far end of the long hall, shouting, "What
happened? What's going on?"

Harris stared at him. The Medlin ran into the forty-foot zone and
recoiled visibly; he staggered forward a few steps and fell, joining
his comrades on the thick velvet carpet.

Ten of them, Harris thought.

He drew the disruptor.

It lay in his palm, small, deadly. The trigger was a thin strand of
metal; he needed only to flip off the guard, press the trigger back,
and watch the Medlins die. But his hand was shaking. He did not fire.

A silent voice said, _You could not be trusted after all. You were a
traitor. But_ we _had to let the test go at least this far, for the
sake of_ our _consciences_.

"Who said that?"

_I did._

"Where are you? I don't see you."

_In this room_, came the reply. _Put down the gun, Harris-Khiilom. No,
don't try to signal your friends. Just let the gun fall._

As if it had been wrenched from his hand, the gun dropped from his
fingers, bounced a few inches, and lay still.

_Shut off the subsonic_, came the quiet command. _I find it unpleasant._

Obediently Harris deactivated the instrument. His mind was held in some
strange stasis; he had no private volitional control.

"Who are you?"

_A member of that super-race whose existence you refused to accept._

Harris looked at Wrynn and his wife. Both were unconscious. "Wrynn?" he
said. "How can your mind function if you're unconscious?"




                              CHAPTER VI


Gently Harris felt himself falling toward the floor. It was as if an
intangible hand had yanked his legs out from under him and eased him
down. He lay quiescent, eyes open, neither moving nor wanting to move.

The victims of the subsonic slowly returned to consciousness as the
minutes passed.

Beth woke first. She stared at the unconscious form of Wrynn's wife and
said, "You went to quite an extent to prove a point!"

_You were in no danger_, came the answer.

The others were awakening now, sitting up, rubbing their foreheads.
Harris watched them. His head throbbed too, as if he had been stunned
by the subsonic device himself.

"Suppose you had been knocked out by the subsonic too?" Beth said to
the life within the giant woman. "He would have killed us."

_The subsonic could not affect me._

Harris said, "That--embryo can think and act?" His voice was a harsh
whisper.

Beth nodded. "The next generation. It reaches sentience while still in
the womb. By the time it's born it's fully aware."

"And I thought it was a hoax," Harris said dizzily. He felt dazed. The
values of his life had been shattered in a moment, and it would not be
easy to repair them with similar speed.

"No. No hoax. And we knew you'd try to trick us when we let you go. At
least, Wrynn said you would. He's telepathic too, though he can only
receive impressions. He can't transmit telepathically to others the way
his son can."

"If you knew what I'd do, why did you release me?" Harris asked.

Beth said, "Call it a test. I hoped you might change your beliefs if we
let you go. You didn't."

"No. I came here to kill you."

"We knew that the moment you stepped through the door. But the seed of
rebellion was in you. We hoped you might be swayed. You failed us."

Harris bowed his head. The signal in his body rasped again, but he
ignored it. _Let Carver sweat out there. This thing is bigger than
anything Carver ever dreamed of._

"Tell me," he said. "Don't you know what will happen to Medlin--and
Darruu as well--once there are enough of these beings?"

"Nothing will happen. Do you think they're petty power-seekers, intent
on establishing a galactic dominion?" The girl laughed derisively.
"That sort of thinking belongs to the obsolete non-telepathic species.
Us. The lower animals. These new people have different goals."

"But they wouldn't have come into existence if you Medlins hadn't aided
them!" Harris protested. "Obsolete? Of course. And you've done it!"

Beth smiled oddly. "At least we were capable of seeing the new race
without envy. We helped them as much as we could because we knew they
would prevail anyway, given time. Perhaps it would be another century,
or another millennium. But our day is done, and so is the day of
Darruu, and the day of the non-telepathic Earthmen."

"And our day too," Wrynn said mildly. "We are the intermediates--the
links between the old species and the new one that is emerging."

Harris stared at his hands--the hands of an Earthman, with Darruui
flesh within.

He thought: _All our striving is for nothing._

A new race, a glorious race, nurtured by the Medlins, brought into
being on Earth. The galaxy waited for them. They were demigods.

He had regarded the Earthers as primitives, creatures with a mere
few thousand years of history behind them, mere pale humanoids of no
importance. But he was wrong. Long after Darruu had become a hollow
world, these Earthers would roam the galaxies.

Looking up, he said, "I guess we made a mistake, we of Darruu. I was
sent here to help sway the Earthers to the side of Darruu. But it's the
other way around; it's Darruu that will have to swear loyalty to Earth,
some day."

"Not soon," Wrynn said. "The true race is not yet out of childhood.
Twenty years more must pass. And we have enemies on Earth."

"The old Earthmen," Coburn said. "How do you think they'll like being
replaced? _They're_ the real enemy. And that's why we're here. To help
the mutants until they can stand fully alone. You Darruui are just
nuisances getting in our way."

That would have been cause for anger, once. Harris merely shrugged. His
whole mission had been without purpose.

But yet, a lingering doubt remained, a last suspicion. The silent voice
of the unborn superman said, _He still is not convinced._

"I'm afraid he's right," Harris murmured. "I see, and I believe--and
yet all my conditioning tells me that it's impossible. Medlins are
hateful creatures; I _know_ that, intuitively."

Beth smiled. "Would you like a guarantee of our good faith?"

"What do you mean?"

To the womb-bound godling she said, "Link us."

Before Harris had a chance to react a strange brightness flooded over
him; he seemed to be floating far above his body. With a jolt he
realized where he was.

He was looking into the mind of the Medlin who called herself Beth
Baldwin. And he saw none of the hideous things he had expected to find
in a Medlin mind.

He saw faith and honesty, and a devotion to the truth. He saw dogged
courage. He saw many things that filled him with humility.

The linkage broke.

Beth said, "Now find the mind of his leader Carver, and link him to
_that_."

"No," Harris protested. "Don't--"

It was too late.

He sensed the smell of Darruu wine, and the prickly texture of thuuar
spines, and then the superficial memories parted to give him a
moment's insight into the deeper mind of the Darruui who wore the name
of John Carver.

It was a frightening pit of foul hatreds. Shivering, Harris staggered
backward, realizing that the Earther had allowed him only a fraction of
a second's entry into that mind.

He covered his face with his hands.

"Are--we all like that?" he asked. "Am I?"

"No. Not--deep down," Beth said. "You've got the outer layer of hatred
that every Darruui has--and every Medlin. But your core is good. Carver
is rotten. So are the other Darruui here."

"Our races have fought for centuries," Coburn said. "A mistake on both
sides that has hardened into blood-hatred. The time has come to end it."

"How about those Darruui outside?"

"They must die," Beth said.

Harris was silent a moment. The five who waited for him were Servants
of the Spirit, like himself; members of the highest caste of Darruui
civilization, presumably the noblest of all creation's beings. To kill
one was to set himself apart from Darruu for ever.

"My--conditioning lies deep," he said. "If I strike a blow against
them, I could never return to my native planet."

"Do you _want_ to return?" Beth asked. "Your future lies here. With us."

Harris considered that. After a long moment he nodded. "Very well. Give
me back the gun. I'll handle the five Darruui outside."

Coburn handed him the disruptor he had dropped. Harris grasped the
butt of the weapon, smiled, and said, "I could kill some of you now,
couldn't I? It would take at least a fraction of a second to stop me. I
could pull the trigger once."

"You won't," Beth said.

He stared at her. "You're right."

       *       *       *       *       *

He rode down alone in the gravshaft and made his way down the street
to the place where his five countrymen waited. It was very dark now,
though the lambent glow of street-lights brightened the path.

The stars were out in force now, bedecking the sky. Up there somewhere
was Darruu. Perhaps now was the time of the Mating of the Moons, he
thought. Well, never mind; it did not matter now.

They were waiting for him. As he approached Carver said, "You took long
enough. Well?"

Harris thought of the squirming ropy thoughts that nestled in the
other's brain like festering living snakes. He said, "All dead. Didn't
you get my signal?"

"Sure we did. But we were getting tired of standing around out here."

"Sorry," Harris said.

He was thinking, these are Servants of the Spirit, men of Darruu. Men
who think of Darruu's galactic dominion only, men who hate and kill and
spy.

"How many were there?" Reynolds asked.

"Five," Harris said.

Carver looked disappointed. "Only five?"

Harris shrugged. "The place was empty. At least I got five, though."

He realized he was stalling, unwilling to do the thing he had come out
here to do.

A silent voice said within him, _Will you betray us again? Or will you
keep faith this time?_

Carver was saying something to him. He did not hear it. Carver said
again, "I asked you--were there any important documents there?"

"No," Harris said.

A cold wind swept in from the river. Harris felt a sudden chill.

He said to himself, _I will keep faith._

He stepped back, out of the three-foot zone, and activated the
subsonic generator in his hip.

"What--" Carver started to say, and fell. They all fell: Carver,
Reynolds, Tompkins, McDermott, Patterson, slipped to the ground and
lay in huddled heaps. Five Darruui wearing the skins of Earthmen. Five
Servants of the Spirit.

He drew the disruptor.

It lay in his hand for a moment. Thoughtfully he released the safety
guard and squeezed the trigger. A bolt of energy flicked out, bathing
Carver. The man gave a convulsive quiver and was still.

Reynolds, Tompkins, McDermott, Patterson.

All dead.

Smiling oddly, Harris pocketed the disruptor again and started to walk
away, walking uncertainly, as the nervous reaction started to swim
through his body. He had killed five of his countrymen. He had come to
Earth on a sacred mission and had turned worse than traitor, betraying
not only Darruu but the entire future of the galaxy.

He had cast his lot with the Earthmen whose guise he wore, and with the
smiling yellow-haired girl named Beth beneath whose full breasts beat a
Medlin heart.

_Well done_, said the voice in his mind. _We were not deceived in you
after all._

Harris began to walk back toward the Medlin headquarters, slowly,
measuredly, not looking back at the five corpses behind him. The
police would be perplexed when they held autopsies on those five, and
discovered the Darruui bodies beneath the Terran flesh.

He looked up at the stars.

Somewhere out there was Darruu, he thought. Wrapped in its crimson
mist, circled by its seven moons--

He remembered the Mating of the Moons as he had last seen it: the
long-awaited, mind-stunning display of beauty in the skies. He knew he
would never see it again.

He could never return to Darruu now.

He would stay here, on Earth, serving a godlike race in its uncertain
infancy. Perhaps he could forget that beneath the skin of Major Abner
Harris lay the body and mind of Aar Khiilom.

Forget Darruu. Forget the fragrance of the jasaar trees and the
radiance of the moons. Earth has trees that smell as sweet, it has a
glorious pale moon that hangs high in the night sky. Put homesickness
away. Forget Darruu.

It would not be easy. He looked up again at the stars as he reached the
entrance to the Medlin headquarters. Earth was the name of his planet
now.

Earth.

He took a last look at the speckled sky covered with stars, and for the
last time wondered which of the dots of brightness was Darruu. Darruu
no longer mattered now.

Smiling, Aar Khiilom turned his face away from the stars.





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