The Project Gutenberg eBook of Deny the Slake, by Richard Wilson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Deny the Slake

Author: Richard Wilson

Illustrator: GAUGHAN

Release Date: June 26, 2022 [eBook #68410]

Language: English

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

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DENY THE SLAKE ***

DENY THE SLAKE

By RICHARD WILSON

Illustrated by GAUGHAN

      Those couplets held
       (unless they lied)
The reason why
        a world had died!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity, April 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The skipper looked at what Ernest Hotaling had scribbled on the slip of paper.

The color of my true love's cheek
Will turn to gray within a week.

The skipper read it and exploded. "What kind of nonsense is this?"

"Of course it wouldn't rhyme in a literal translation," Ernest said mildly. "But that's the sense of it."

"Doggerel!" the skipper exclaimed. "Is this the message of the ages? Is this the secret of the lost civilization?"

"There are others, too," Ernest said. He was the psychologist-linguist of the crew. "You've got to expect them to be obscure at first. They didn't purposely leave any message for us."

Ernest sorted through his scraps of paper and picked one out:

They warn me once, they warn me twice.
Alas! my heedn't turns me spice.

"There seems to be something there," Ernest said.

The skipper snorted.

"No, really," Ernest insisted. "An air of pessimism—even doom—runs all through this stuff. Take this one, for instance:

"Music sings within my brain:
I think I may go mad again."

"Now that begins to make some sense," said Rosco, the communications chief. "It ties in with what Doc Braddon found."

The skipper looked searchingly at his technicians, as if he suspected a joke. But they were serious.

"All right," the skipper said. "It baffles me, but I'm just a simple spacefaring man. You're the experts. I'm going to my cabin and communicate with the liquor chest. When you think you've got something I can understand, let me know. 'I think I may go mad again.' Huh! I think I may get drunk, myself."


What the technicians of the research ship Pringle were trying to learn was why the people of Planetoid S743 had turned to dust.

They had thought at first they were coming to a living, if tiny, world. There had been lights on the nightside and movement along what seemed to be roads.

But when they landed and explored, they found only powder in the places where there should have been people. There were heaps of fine-grained gray powder in the streets, in the driving compartments of the small cars—themselves perfectly preserved—and scattered all through the larger vehicles that looked like buses.

There was powder in the homes. In one home they found a heap of the gray stuff in front of a cookstove which was still warm, and another heap on a chair and on the floor under the chair. It was as if a woman and the man for whom she'd been preparing a meal had gone poof, in an instant.

The crew member who'd been on watch and reported the lights said later they could have been atmospherics. The skipper himself had seen the movement along the roads; he maintained a dignified silence.

It had been a highly developed little world and the buildings were incredibly old. The weather had beaten at them, rounding their edges and softening their colors, but they were as sturdy as if they'd been built last week.

All the cities on the little world were similar. And all were dead. The Pringle flew over a dozen of them, then returned to the big one near the plain where the ship had come down originally.

The tallest building in each city was ornate out of all proportion to the rest. The researchers reasoned that this was the palace, or seat of government. Each of these buildings had a network of metal tubing at its peak. Where there were great distances between cities, tall towers rose from the plains or sat on tops of mountains, each with a similar metal network at the apex.

The communications chief guessed that they were radio-video towers but he was proved wrong. There were no radio or television sets anywhere, or anything resembling them.

Still, it was obvious that they were a kind of communications device.

Doc Braddon got part of the answer from some of the gray dust he'd performed an "autopsy" on.

The dust had been found in a neat mound at the bottom of a large metal container on the second-story of a medium-sized dwelling. Doc theorized that one of the people had been taking some sort of waterless bath in the container when the dust death came. The remains were thus complete, not scattered or intermingled as most of the others were.

Doc sorted the particles as best he could and found two types, one definitely inorganic. He conferred with Rosco on the inorganic residue. Rosco thought this might be the remains of a tiny pararadio transceiver. Possibly each of the people had carried one around with him, or built into him.

"We're only guessing that they were people," Doc said cautiously, "though it would seem safe to assume it, since we've found dust everywhere people could be expected to be. What we need is a whole corpse."

While patrols were out looking for bodies Rosco tested his theory by sending a radio signal from one of the towers and watching a feeble reaction in the dust.

"If we can assume that they were people," Rosco said, "they apparently communicated over distances by personalized radio. Maybe through a mechanism built into the skull. Would that mean there wouldn't be any written language, Ernest?"

Ernest Hotaling shrugged. "Not necessarily. I should think they'd have kept records of some kind. They could have been written, or taped—or chipped into stone, for that matter."

He asked the lieutenant to enlarge his search. "Bring me anything that looks like a book, or parchment, or microfilm, or tape. If it's chipped in stone," he added with a grin, "I'll come to it."

Meanwhile they ran off the film that had been grinding away automatically ever since the planetoid came within photoradar range of the ship. The film confirmed what the lookout reported—there had been lights on the nightside.

Furthermore, one of the sensitized strips at the side of the film showed that signals, which had been going out from the tower tops in a steady stream, increased furiously as the Pringle approached. Then, as the ship came closer, they stopped altogether. At the same instant the lights on the nightside of the planetoid went out. The film showed that the road movement the skipper had seen stopped then, too.

Ernest tried to analyze the signals reproduced on the film. He had small success. If they represented a language, it would take years before he could even guess what they meant. The only thing he was sure of was that the signals, just before they died, had become a thousand times more powerful.

"Maybe that's what killed them," Rosco said.

"Possibly," Ernest said. "It begins to look as if the people were deliberately killed, or committed suicide, all at once, when we hove into sight. But why?"

"You tell me," Rosco said. "That sounds like your department."

But Ernest could tell him nothing until after the lieutenant came back with a long slender cylinder enclosing a seemingly endless coil of fine wire. The lieutenant also brought a companion cylinder, apparently a means of playing back what was recorded on the coil.

Ernest experimented until he learned how to operate it, then shooed everybody out of his cabin and went to work.


Ernest Hotaling had joined the crew of the research ship Pringle on Ganymede as a replacement for Old Craddock, who'd decided on short notice that thirty years of spacefaring were enough. It would be another ten or twelve years before the Pringle returned to Earth and though Craddock was only seventy-eight his yearning to start a proper bee farm became overwhelming.

The others were not unhappy about his departure. The swarm he'd kept in his cabin was small but the bees were gregarious and were as likely to be found in the recreation room as in their hive. So when Craddock and the paraphernalia he'd collected over the decades had debarked, the rest of the crew sighed in collective relief and the skipper went looking for a replacement.

Ernest Hotaling, fresh out of Ganymede U., was the only man qualified, on the record, for the job. He had the necessary languages and his doctorate was in psychology, though his specialty was child therapy.

The skipper puzzled through the copy of Ernest's master's thesis. The lad—he was twenty-three then—had devoted it to children's folklore. The skipper, admittedly a simple man, wasn't sure it contributed profitably to the world's knowledge to spend a year in the study and explanation of Winnie the Pooh, or Step on a crack/Break your mother's back, or The Wizard of Oz.

The skipper had gone to Space Prep at the age of fourteen and later to the Academy itself and there were obviously wide areas of childhood that had passed him by. He'd never heard of Struwwelpeter, for instance, or Ibbety bibbety gibbety goat, and he wondered if a grown man who immersed himself in this sort of thing was the one for the job.

What was worse was that Hotaling, according to the University yearbook, was a poet.

But when the skipper interviewed Hotaling and found him to be a lean, muscular young man who'd obviously had a haircut in the past week and who laughed genuinely at one of the skipper's more purple stories, he signed him on immediately.

The skipper had one last thought. "You don't keep bees, do you?"

"Not even in my bonnet," Ernest said.

"Then we'll get along. Just keep your nursery rhymes to yourself."

"Aye, aye, sir," said Ernest.


"Look," Ernest told the skipper, "I've studied their literature, if that's what it is, until I'm saturated with it. Maybe it doesn't make sense to you but I've worked out a sort of pattern. It's an alien culture, sure, and there are gaps in it, but what there is fits together."

"All right," the skipper said. "I'm not questioning your findings. I just want to know why it has to be in that ridiculous rhyme."

"Because they were a poetic people, that's why. And it doesn't have to be in rhyme. I could give you the literal translation, but it was rhymed originally and when I make it rhyme in English too you get a more exact idea of the kind of people they were."

"I suppose so," the skipper said. "As long as we don't have to report to the Flagship in the sonnet form I guess I can put up with it. I just don't want to become the laughing stock of the fleet."

"It's no laughing matter," Ernest said. "It's pretty tragic, in any number of ways. In the first place, as Rosco suspected, they communicated by radio. But they had no privacy and couldn't hide anything from anybody. They were always listened in on by the big boys in the palace."

"How do you know?"

"By the coil I worked from. It's a listening-storing device. These aren't official records I've transcribed; they're the everyday expressions of everyday people. And every one of them had been taken down and stored away, presumably so it could be used against the person who expressed it, if it ever became necessary.

"But they couldn't always get through to the person they wanted to reach, even though they got through to the coil. Here's a sad little lover's lament, for instance:

"My plea to her is lost, as though
The other three command the flow."

"Like a busy signal?" asked the skipper.

"Very much like one," Ernest said, pleased by the skipper's comprehension. "On the other hand, they always got the messages from the palace. These took priority over all other traffic and were apt to come at any time of the day or night. The people were just one big captive audience."

"What about the dust? That seems to be a recurring theme in those jingles of yours."

"It is." Ernest quoted:

"Dust is he and dust his brother;
They all follow one another."

"They're all dust now," the skipper said. "Did they have a revolution, finally, that killed everybody off?"

"Both sides—the rulers and the ruled, simultaneously? Maybe so." Ernest sorted through his pieces of paper. "There's this one, with its inference of the death of royalty along with that of the common man:

"Comes the King! O hear him rustle;
Falter, step, and wither, muscle."

The skipper was beginning to be exasperated again.

"I'll be in my cabin," he said. "You seem to accomplish more when I keep out of your way. But if you want to join me in a little whiskey to keep the falters and withers at bay, come along."


The lieutenant knocked at Ernest's door in the middle of the night. "Mister Hotaling!" he called urgently.

Ernest fumbled into a pair of pants and opened the door.

"One of the men found this thing," the lieutenant said. "We were going to keep it locked up till morning but it's driving me crazy. Figured you'd better have a look at it."

The thing was a blue-green puppet of a creature wearing—or made of—a kind of metallic sailcloth. It was about three feet tall, a caricature of a human being. It hung limp by one arm from the lieutenant's grasp, its head lolling on its shoulder.

"What is it?" Ernest asked sleepily, "a doll?"

"No; it's just playing dead now. It was doing a clog step in the cage before." He gave the thing a shake. "The worst of it is, it hummed all the time. And the humming seems to mean something."

"Bring it in here," Ernest said. He was fully awake now. "Put it in the armchair and stick around in case I can't handle it."

The creature sat awkwardly where it was put. But then the eyes, which a moment ago had seemed to be painted on the face, shifted and looked squarely at Ernest. It hummed at him.

"I see what you mean," he told the lieutenant. "It seems to be trying to communicate. It's the same language as on the coils." He stared at it. "I wish it didn't remind me of Raggedy Andy. Where did you find it?"

"In the throneroom of the palace. One of the men on guard there grabbed it as it came out of a panel in the wall. He grabbed it and it went limp, like a doll."

"Listen," said Ernest.

"Don't you cry, boys; don't you quiver,
Though all the sand is in your liver."

"What's that?" the lieutenant said. "Do you feel all right, Mister Hotaling?"

"Sure. That's what he said. Raggedy Andy here. I translated it—with a little poetic license."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't think it's a direct message to us. More likely it's something filed away inside his brain, or electronic storage chamber or whatever he's got. The verse is in the pattern of the ones I translated the other day. The question now is whether Andy has any original thoughts in his head or whether he's just a walking record library."

"How can you tell?"

"By continuing to listen to him, I suppose. A parrot might fool you into thinking it had intelligence of its own, if you didn't know anything about parrots, but after a while you'd realize it was just a mimic. Right, Andy?"

The puppet-like creature hummed again and Ernest listened, gesturing the lieutenant to be quiet.

Finally Ernest said:

"Down the valley, down the glen
Come the Mercials, ten by ten."

"That makes as much sense as the one about the liver," the lieutenant said.

"Takes it a bit further, I think. No, seriously. 'Mercials' is a set of syllables I made up, as short for 'commercials'—or the sand in their craw, the thumb in their soup—all the things they had to put up with as the most captive of all audiences."

"That wasn't an original thought, then?"

"Probably not. Andy may be trying me out with a few simple couplets before he throws a really hard one. I wonder if he knows he's got through to me." He laughed as the lieutenant looked at him oddly. "I don't mean he, personally. I know as well as you do he's some kind of robot."

"I see. You mean, is somebody controlling him now, or is he just reacting to a stimulus the way he was built to do?"

"Exactly." Ernest frowned at the doll-like creature. "I suppose the scientific way would be to dissect him—it. Take it apart, I mean. I've got to stop thinking of it as a him. We'd better get Doc Braddon in on this."

He punched the 'com button to Doc's cabin. The sleepy voice that answered became alert as Ernest explained. Doc arrived minutes later with an instrument kit, looking eager.

"So this is your new toy," he said. The creature, which had been slumped listlessly in the chair, seemed to look at Doc with distaste. It hummed something. Doc looked inquiringly at Ernest. "Have you two established communication?"

"It's a robot," Ernest said defensively. "The question is, could we learn more by leaving it intact and pumping it for whatever information is stored up inside it, or by taking it apart? For instance, it just said:

"Uninterred beyond the hills
Lie never weres and never wills."

Doc became excited. "It really said that?"

"Well, not in so many words. It said—"

"I know, I know. Your poetic license hasn't expired. I mean, that is the gist of it? That somewhere back of the hills there's a charnel heap—a dump of corpses, of miscarriages—something of the sort?"

"You could put that interpretation on it," Ernest said. "I got the impression of something abortive."

"That's the best lead yet," Doc said. "If we could find anything other than dust piles, no matter how embryonic—Lieutenant, your boys must have been looking in the wrong places. How soon can you get a detail out over the hills?"

The lieutenant looked at his watch. "If I've got this screwy rotation figured out, dawn's about half an hour off. That soon enough?"

"It'll have to do."

"What about Raggedy Andy here?" Ernest asked. "Do we keep him intact?"

"Don't touch a hair of his precious head," Doc said. "He's earned a stay of dissection."

The creature, still quiet in the chair, its eyes vacant now, hummed almost inaudibly. Ernest bent to listen.

"Well?" Doc said.

"Strictly a non-sequitur," Ernest told him:

"Here we go, lass, through the heather;
Naught to daunt us save the tether."

"It makes me sad," Doc said. He yawned. "Maybe it's just the hour."


Cook had accomplished his usual legerdemain with the space rations but the breakfast table was less appreciative than usual.

"The detail's been gone a long time," Doc Braddon said, toying with an omelet. "Do you think it's a wild goose chase?"

"Reminds me of a time off Venus," the skipper said. "Before any of you were born, probably...."

His juniors listened politely until the familiar narrative was interrupted by the 'com on the bulkhead. They recognized the voice of Sergeant Maraffi, the non-com in charge of the crew in the scout craft.

"We found something. Looks like bodies. Well preserved but incomplete. Humanoid."

"Bring 'em back," the skipper said. "As many as you've got room for in the sling." He added as an afterthought: "Do they smell?"

"Who knows?" Maraffi said. "I sure don't aim to take off my helmet to find out. They're not decomposed, though."

The skipper grumbled to Doc: "I thought you checked the atmosphere."

"There isn't any," Doc said, annoyed. "Didn't you read my report?"

"All right," the skipper said, not looking at him. "I can't do everything. I naturally assumed these people breathed."

"If they did, it wasn't air," Doc said.

"Bring back all you can, Maraffi," the skipper said. "But leave them outside the ship. Everybody on the detail takes double decontamination. And we'll put you down for hazard pay."

"Aye, aye, sir. We're on our way."


"They're androids," Doc said. He'd gone out in a protective suit to the grisly pile. "These must be the false starts."

The other technicians watched him on a closed-circuit hook-up from inside the ship.

"Are they like us?" Ernest asked. "They look it from here—what there is of them."

"Damn near," Doc said. "Smaller and darker, though. Rosco, you were right about the communication. There's a tiny transceiver built into their skulls. Those that have heads, that is."

"If that's the case," Rosco said, "then why weren't these—stillbirths, whatever you want to call them—turned to dust like the others?"

"Because they'd never been activated," Doc said. "You can't blow a fuse if it isn't screwed in. Skipper, I've seen about all my stomach can stand for now. I suppose I'm a hell of a queasy sawbones, but these—things—are too much like human beings for me to take much more of them at the moment."

"Come on back," the skipper said. "I don't feel too sturdy myself."


Ernest Hotaling was writing verse in his cabin when the lieutenant intercommed him. He had just written, in free translation:

A girl is scarcely long for the road
If passion'd arms make her corrode.

Ernest wasn't entirely satisfied with the rhyme, though he felt he'd captured the sense of it. The lieutenant's call interrupted his polishing. He touched the 'com and said: "Hotaling."

"Patrol's back, Mister Hotaling. You'll want to see what they found."

"Another heap of false starts? No, thanks."

"Not this time. They found some people. Two live people."

"Alive! Be right there."

He raced down, then fretted as he waited for Doc to fumigate the people as they came through the airlock. Ernest saw them dimly through the thick glass. They were quite human-looking. But how had they survived whatever had turned thousands of their fellows to dust? Or were these—a man and a woman, elderly and fragile-looking—the rulers who had dusted the others?

"How much longer, Doc?" he asked.

Doc grinned. "In about two quatrains and a jingle, Ernest."


They brought the couple to the main lounge and set them down at a long table. The skipper took a seat at the far end. Apparently he planned to listen but not take part in the questioning. That would be up to Ernest Hotaling, if he could establish communication.

He'd mastered the language to the extent that he'd been able to transcribe the record-coils and understand the robot, but whether he could speak it intelligibly enough so that these living—he almost thought "breathing"—people would understand him was a question.

Doc Braddon took a seat next to the couple. Rosco was on the other side of them and Ernest opposite them, across the table.

Up close, it was obvious that they were androids. But they had been remarkably made. They had none of the jerkiness of movement or blankness of expression that had characterized Earth's attempts along the same lines.

Ernest explained his doubts about his ability to make himself understood and asked his shipmates to be patient with him. He smiled at the couple and said to them in English: "Welcome to our ship." Then he repeated it in their humming language.

They returned his smile and the old woman said something to the man. Rosco looked inquiringly at Ernest, who shook his head.

Ernest made a face. "I forgot to put it in verse. I'll try again."

This time the response was immediate. Both man and woman spoke at once. Then the woman smiled and nodded to the man to talk for both of them.

It was just a curious sing-song humming for the rest of them, but Ernest listened with rapt attention and apparent comprehension, though not without strain.

Finally the man stopped.

"What did he say?" Rosco demanded.

"Let me get the rest of it first," Ernest said. He spoke to the man briefly. His expression became grave as he listened to the reply.

"Well, come on!" Doc said impatiently. "Give us a translation."

"All right," Ernest said. He looked troubled. "These two are the only ones left of their race. The rest are dead—de-activated. The others—the other race—left the planetoid some time ago."

Ernest spoke again to the man. Listening to his reply, he found it difficult to think of him as non-human. There was a sadness, a fatalism, in his eyes, yet a dignity that came only with humanity. Only a hairline separated these two from mankind.

The impatience of the others made Ernest interrupt, so he could give them a resumé.

"As I said, they're the last. They survived only because they'd made a pilgrimage to a kind of underground shrine. The signals that killed the others didn't reach them through the layers of rock. Apparently the shrine had something to do with a planned revolt against the electronic law that governed them.



"It was an insidious law," Ernest went on, "with built-in enforcement. Any infraction could be punished instantly from central control in the palace. The infraction would trigger a shock wave, tuned to the individual frequency of the offender. The intensity of the wave was geared to the seriousness of the offense. Treason meant death from the strongest wave of all—the one that turned them to dust."

"Absolute rule," Doc said. "Pretty hopeless."

"Yes, in one way. But paradoxically they had an infinite amount of freedom of speech. You see that in their verses. No one was punished for what he said—only for what he did. I suppose it had to be that way, otherwise there'd have been wholesale slaughter."

"Which there was, at the end," Doc pointed out. "Who do you think exercised the control that killed all the others?"

"We did," Ernest said. "We killed them."


"We killed them?" Doc said. "You're crazy!"

"You'd better explain yourself, Hotaling," the skipper said. "Stop talking in riddles."

"Aye, aye, sir. When I say we killed them, I don't mean directly or deliberately. And of course I don't mean killed, since they were all androids. But we de-activated them by triggering some mechanism when our ship came to the planetoid their masters had left."

"Hold on," the skipper said. "Now you're going too fast. Since they were androids, and were created, the important thing is to find out where these creators went—and whether it was last month or ten thousand years ago."

Ernest spoke to the couple.

"It was a long time before we came," he translated. "They don't know how long—their feeling of time is vague. They kept no records of their own and because there were no children they have no conception of generations. They were created adults, in various stages of maturity. As for who the others were—they were the Masters, with a capital M; gods, almost, in their view, with absolute power over them."

"Where did they go?" the skipper asked. "And why? Let's try to get more facts and less philosophy."

"They went looking for a better world, where conditions for life would be more favorable. Whether that means for the Masters or for their creations isn't clear. Nobody consulted them. They'd been given experimental life, only it was more a loan than a gift, to be foreclosed if they displeased the Masters or in any way threatened their experiment.

"The Masters were like themselves in appearance. Whether they were air breathers isn't clear because these two have no conception of what breathing is. The Masters did wear elaborate costumes but whether these were breathing suits or merely the trappings of their superiority is a question.

"I asked if the Masters were trying to create a new set of bodies for themselves, possibly because their own were breaking down or were diseased. The answer to that, like the answer to so many other questions, is that they simply don't know."

There was a commotion at the doorway. The soldier on guard there made a futile grab at something. The something was the puppet-like creature Ernest had named Andy, which evaded him and ran into the room. It jumped lightly to the table, faced the old couple and pointed both its arms at them.



Their expressions, as they regarded the puppet, were of sorrowful resignation. The man clasped the woman's hand.

The puppet spoke, in a brief piercing hum. There was an instant of quiet, then the dullest of popping sounds. The couple, who one second had seemed as alive as any of the Earthmen, the next second were little mounds of gray powder on the chairs and under the chairs.

The lieutenant burst in, followed by the sergeant. "The Andy doll got out of the cage!" he cried. "Did it come in here?"

"Did it come in here?" the skipper mimicked. "Get out, lieutenant, and take your comic-opera soldiers with you." To the technicians at the table he yelled: "Grab that obscene thing!"

The doll, grabbed from several directions, was torn apart, spilling out a reddish-brown spongelike substance.

Something else came out, too: a perforated disk the size of a fist. Rosco retrieved it as it rolled along the table, then quickly dropped it in an ash tray.

"The damn thing's hot," he said.

Doc Braddon, still looking stunned, asked Ernest: "What did the doll say to them before it destroyed them?"

"It was a sort of law-enforcing robot. They told me about it. A kind of custodian the Masters left behind to keep things in line." Ernest stared dully at the empty chairs.

"It said:

"You hid, and I
Now bid you die!"

Rosco toyed with the ash tray in which he'd put the disk. "There's a clue to the Masters right in this gadget," he said. "Maybe it's simply a servo-mechanism that was set once and has been functioning automatically ever since. But on the other hand it may still be linked directly to the Masters."

"Good point," the skipper said. "Give it a run-through for what it's worth. If it does give us a line on where they got to, I'll ask the Flagship for permission to track them down."

Doc Braddon said to Ernest: "You said the Masters were godlike. You're not implying anything supernatural?"

"No. That was the androids' view, not mine. As a race of almost-people created in a laboratory they naturally held their creators in a certain awe. They hoped for liberation, and even tried to do something about it; but they knew it was futile. The Masters built them so they'd turn to dust if they misbehaved and when they left they fixed it so the vibrations of any spaceship other than their own would do the same thing—presumably so their creations wouldn't fall into other hands. The sad thing is that the almost-people knew it. One of their verses went:

"If comes the ship to make us free,
It killeth you, it killeth me."

"Do you mean we could have saved them if we'd come in with engines silent?" the skipper asked.

"I don't know," Ernest said. "They certainly didn't think much of their potential. There's a fatalism, a sense of thwarted destiny running all through their literature. Their hope died on the vine, so to speak. If you can stand one more of their verses, this one might sum up their philosophy:

"This they give to us they make:
They give us thirst, deny the slake."

The skipper was silent for a time, staring down at the little mounds of gray dust.

Then he said to his technicians:

"You've done a good job, all of you. We'll send a coordinated report to the Flagship tomorrow and stand by for orders. In the meantime, if there's anyone here with an honest physical thirst, I'd be glad to have him join me in slaking it in my cabin. No offense implied, Ernest."

"None taken, sir."

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DENY THE SLAKE ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.