Subs.p.a.ce Encounter.

by Doc Smith.

PROLOGUE.

TO ASCRIBE the occurrence of two or more events to coincidence is either to admit ignorance of, or to deny the existence of, some fundamental relationship. Nevertheless, all previous investigations into the Early Psionic Age "explained" it, as can be shown by rigorous a.n.a.lysis, by employing coincidence to an extent that is scientifically preposterous.

This one does not, as a matter of fact, it denies the existence of coincidence. This work is the result of years-long study of that Age. It is not, however; strictly speaking, a history; since it does contain some material that is not incontrovertibly factual. On the other hand, it is far from being a mere historical novel. Therefore, it should, perhaps-and using the term more or less loosely-be called a chronicle. At the time in which this chronicle is laid, interstellar flight, while not the one hundred percent-safe matter it now is, was far and away the safest means of travel known. Insurance companies offered odds of tens of thousands of dollars to one dollar that any given star-traveler would return unharmed from any given startrip to any one of the ninety-five colonized planets of explored s.p.a.ce aboard any starship he chose. There were a few accidents, of course. Worse, there were a few complete disappearances of starships; cases in which no calls of distress were sent out and of which no traces were ever found.

Aboard the starship Procyon there were four psychics. Barbara Warner was a full-fledged psiontist. She knew it and worked at the trade. Whenever her father; the owner of WarnOil (Warner Oil, to give the business ent.i.ty its full name) wanted another million-barrel gusher she went out, looked around, and told him where to bore his well. In ten years, on ninety-six planets, WarnOil had not drilled a dry hole. All were gushers of fantastic production.

The other three were latents. Carlyle Deston, First Officer of the Procyon, and Theodore Jones, its Second, had always had hunches, but neither had ever mentioned the fact. Bernice Burns, a post-deb of upper-crust society, was actually a clairvoyant psiontist, but she would not admit the fact even to herself. Deston and Barbara fell in love at first sight and were married a few minutes later, and Jones and Bernice were not far behind them. Catastrophe struck-without warning, with split-second speed and with utter and incredible devastation, reducing the great starship to a fused hulk of destructively radioactive metal. Its cause? There was nothing whatever to indicate the source, no follow-up attack; and for almost all aboard the Procyon it was instant death.

Like all starship disasters, there was no time for any report to be made. The four-Carlyle Deston, Barbara Warner Deston, Theodore Jones. and Bernice Burns Jones-being highly psychic, had enough warning of catastrophe so that each couple reached a lifeboat.

The Destons found already in their lifeboat, studying subs.p.a.ce, one Doctor Andrew Adams, a Fellow of the Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study. These five were the only survivors of the disaster to get back to civilization. Decontamination-thorough but most unpleasant-followed; as soon as it was safe to do so, they reboarded the hulk, finding all subs.p.a.ce gear inoperable. Most normal-s.p.a.ce equipment, however, would work-after a fashion. It would take a year or more to reach the nearest solar system, but they had plenty of power, air, water, and food. Shortly after the shipwreck, both girls became pregnant; and long before the year was up, it became evident that both periods of gestation wore going to be extraordinarily long. This gave super-mathematician Adams new data with which to work, and he proved that time was not an absolute constant, but could, under certain conditions, become a parameter.

(The Adams Theory and The Adams Effect.) He deduced, (1) that the Procyon had struck a field of subspatial force that he called the "zeta" field; (2) that the entire ma.s.s of the ship and all its contents were charged to an extremely high potential with a force more or less a.n.a.logous to that which produces lightning; (3) that the ships which had disappeared had been completely destroyed by the discharge of zeta force to a planet upon approach; and (4) that extreme precautions had to be observed if they themselves were not to be destroyed in the same way.

In due time-or rather, about five months after due time two babies were born. Theodore Warner Deston and Barbara Bernice Jones. A barren planet was found and plans were made to rid the Procyon of zeta force. Extreme caution was observed. The force was discharged in successive decrements by means of twenty-five-mile lengths of ultra-high-tensile wire. With all potentials at the zero of normal s.p.a.ce, the subs.p.a.ce communicators were again in working order and Deston reported in. It was of course a simple matter for the subs.p.a.ce-going machine shops to jury-rig enough subs.p.a.ce gear for the Procyon to get back to her home port under her own power. Both Deston and Jones were promoted on the spot; but, since both were now married, neither could serve InStell (The Interstellar Corporation) in either subs.p.a.ce or s.p.a.ce. Captain Theodore Jones went back to Earth-Bernice was not very rich-to work in the main office.

Captain Carlyle Deston resigned and went with Barbara to the palatial Warner home - her home now, since her parents had died in the wreck-on the planet Newmars. But he was not going to live on his wife's money all the rest of his life. Barbara knew that Deston had tremendous latent powers, and she helped him develop them. He became able to do with metals what she had done with oil. He found a mountain of uranium, which Deston and Deston, Incorporated, sold to Galactic Metals.

He also found copper in quant.i.ties which made automation feasible, a discovery which played an important role in early psionic history. The Destons and Joneses (psiontists now, too) and Adams went into s.p.a.ce in search of other natural resources. They found everything they sought; and eventually what Maynard of GalMet wanted most-rhenium, the rarest and costliest ingredient of an ultra-alloy, Leybyrdite. Deston met Doctor Cecily Byrd, Director of Project Rhenium; a woman whom Maynard described as "a carrot-topped, freckle-faced, shanty-Irish mick-with the shape men drool about, with a megavac for a brain and an ice-cube for a heart." The source of this rarest of minerals they called Rhenia Four, a h.e.l.lish planet indeed, one of its creatures, the "kittyhawks," having teeth and claws of the very alloy MetEnge had been developing.

"Curly" Byrd proved herself able to set up full automation even there. She was helped by, among others. an engineer named Percival Train, whom she married. Surprisingly, the Trains also developed psionic abilities, as did Dr. Adams and his wife Stella, to bring to eight the unmatched psiontists who made up the brains of the new super starship Explorer. The remainder of the first volume of this chronicle is devoted to the beginnings of the Psionic Age on Tellus; the three-p.r.o.nged conflict between Communism, corrupt labor and capital, and what became the Galactic Federation; and the unaccountably rapid growth of psionics through the ninety-five colonized planets. Volume two continues the chronicle the record of two psionic civilizations.

1 - THE GAMESMEN.

The Justiciate, composed at that moment of one hundred eighty-three Tellus-type planets, lay in a part of the Cosmos the very existence of which no mind of the ninety-six planets of Tellurian civilization had ever envisioned. Not even the farthest ranging subs.p.a.ces of either civilization had ever discovered any hint of the presence of the other. Nevertheless, the Justicians were human beings to the last letter of cla.s.sification; human even to the extent of varying in skin color from white through different shades of yellow and red and brown to almost black. Unlike racial distinctions as they occurred on Tellurian planets, with different races inhabiting single worlds, normally each world of the Justiciate was the home of a single race. There was little interracial marriage, joining lives as they put it-not because any race felt itself superior to any other except for the insufferable red-brown Garshans-but because most ordinary people never left their home worlds. All the Justician planets were linked together by hundreds of subs.p.a.ce freight or pa.s.senger lines and by hundreds of thousands of subs.p.a.ce communications channels. They were also linked together in that they were ruled by, and were more or less willingly obedient to, a harsh and dictatorial government known as the Council of Grand Justices; of which His Magnificence Supreme Grand Justice Sonrathendak Ranjak of Slaar was the unquestioned and unquestionable BOSS.

The planet Slaar was and is the Justiciate's most populous planet; and the city Meetyl-On-Slaar; the Justiciate's largest city-population ten and a quarter million-was and is the capital of both the planet and the empire. To Tellurian eyes Meetyl would have looked very little indeed like a city. It was built on and inside a rugged, steep-in many places sheerly precipitous-range of mountains; it extended upward from an ocean's c.o.c.kily narrow beach to an alt.i.tude of well over ten thousand feet. If structures built inside and outside of a mountain can be called, respectively, internal and external buildings, some of Meetyl's external buildings were one story high, some were a thousand; but all were in harmony with each other and with the awesomely rugged terrain. There were no streets, all traffic, freight and pa.s.senger alike, moved via air or via tunnel. In a pressurized section of the ten-thousand-foot level, in a large and sumptuous office on the gla.s.s door of which there was an ornately gold-leafed gladiatorial design and the words "Sonfay and Baylor-Games," a fat man reclined at an elaborately inlaid piece of free-form furniture that was his desk. He was a big man, with a fish-belly-pale face and small, piercing, almost-black eyes. He was three-quarters bald and what hair he had left was a pepper-and-salt gray. Three of the room's walls, its floor, and it-, ceiling, were works of sheerest art in fine-particled mosaic. Its front wall, one great sheet of water-clear plastic, afforded a magnificent view of turbulent ocean, of stupendous cliffs, and of cloud flecked, sunny sky. The man was concerned. however, neither with art nor with nature; he was watching a young man and a young woman who, arrowing through the air from the north and from the south, respectively, were climbing fast and would apparently hit his landing stage at the same time. He glanced at the timepiece on his desk and said aloud to himself, "Good they're both exactly on time."

He pushed the b.u.t.ton to open the outer valve of his airlock and turned on the "Come in and shed and stow" sign, the two visitors let themselves in and, without a word, began to "shed" their flying harnesses and to "stow" them in a closet designed for the purpose. The male visitor was of medium height and medium build, with the broad and somewhat sloping shoulders, the narrow waist, and the long-fibered, smoothly flowing muscles of the hard-trained athlete who specializes in speed and maneuverability rather than in brute strength. His eyes were a cold gray; his thick, bushy hair was a sun-faded brown, and so was what little clothing he wore-singlet, shorts, and plastic-soled ground-gripper canvas shoes. His smooth-shaven face and bare legs and arms and shoulders were deeply tanned-and were marked and cross-marked with the hair-thin, almost invisible scars of the expertly-treated wounds of the top-bracket knife fighter. Top bracket'? Definitely. Only the very best of the best lived long enough in that game to acquire as many scars as this man bore. The girl, rid of her flying helmet, shook her head vigorously, so that a ma.s.s of brilliant violet-colored hair, hitherto so tightly confined, swirled about her head. Then, reaching up with both hands, she fluffed her hair into shape with her fingers. She was almost as tall as her fellow visitor, was not too many pounds lighter than he in weight. and was super-superbly built. Her eyes were a gold-flecked hazel. Her clothing, while newer and more ornamental than the man's, was no more abundant or c.u.mbersome, and-femininity all solar systems over!-she wore, dangling from a fine platinum chain encircling her left eat; a two-inch octagonal diffraction grating. Like the man's, her face and shoulders and arms and legs were deeply tanned; and, like his, they too were plenteously and finely scarred, if not quite as abundantly as his, numerously enough to show unmistakably that the worn rawhide haft of the knife at her belt did not get that way from skinning orksts. With no change of expression-or rather, with no expression at all on his face-the male visitor tuned his mind to the girl's and drove a thought.

"You're Daught."

"Quiet!" she interrupted mentally. Not a muscle of her face moved. Her eyes showed, strictly unchanged, only the customary interest in a strange young man who was as much of a man as this man very evidently was.

"Are you sure this fat slob can't yarn? Or anyone else within range, so you're sure you're not making eaglemeat out of both of us."

"Positive," he telepathed.

"He's no more psionic than the toad he looks like, and Knuaire of Spath's on guard. You know him."

"Songladen Knuaire? The theoretician? I've met him once, is all. He's an operator."

"You can carve that on the highest cliff in town." All this, of course, at the transfinite speed of thought, had taken the merest fraction of a second of time. The fat man was speaking.

"Sonrodnar Rodnar of Slaar-Daughtmatja Marrjyl of OrmI greet," he said formally, and the two replied in unison, "Sonfayand Baylor of Slaar, I greet."

"You two haven't met, I understand," the games-master said, and went on to introduce his two visitors to each other, using the informal mode.

"Rodnar, Status Thirty-Eight..." -the person of higher status was always named first.. and Marrjyl, Status Forty, meet each other." Both smiled and bowed.

"I'm very glad to, Marrjyl," and, "I am, too, Rodnar-so glad!" they said; and as they clasped hands firmly, Rodnar went on, "No, Baylor, we've never met before. And Marrjyl, when I said I was mighty glad to meet you, I wasn't just being polite. I've heard a lot about you-all good." She smiled again.

"Thanks, Rodnar, but not half as much as I've heard about you, I'm sure."

"Maybe you know, then, Rod," the fat man said, "that she isn't a real pro, either. Like you, she's a spare-time games man, in it partly for the junex, but mostly for augmentation of status. She's a Designer First just in from Orm-this is her first stab at the big time and the big chance and the big money-but, as you can see, she's good. Okay, peel your jerseys and turn around." The word "peel" was strictly appropriate, especially in the girl's case. Her upper garment was almost as tight as the skin of an orange. Her jersey came off to reveal that her firm, boldly outstanding b.r.e.a.s.t.s were startlingly white, showing that she was not in the habit of exposing them to the public eye. Yet she neither showed nor felt any twinge of embarra.s.sment at baring them here. Also, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were not scarred, showing that she wore breast-shields in combat-which was logical enough. Female gladiators, if they lived long enough to become mothers, were such excellent breeding stock that their mammary glands were held inviolate. Naked to their waists, the two turned their backs to the promoter, showing fourteen-digit numbers tattooed in black across their backs from shoulder to shoulder. The fat man aimed a mechano-optical instrument-that looked like a cross between a typewriter and a Questar 'scope-first at Rodnar's back, then at Marrjyl's; and the machine, after chattering busily for a few seconds, disgorged four eighteen-inch lengths of tape. Baylor thumb-printed all four of these slips, then handed two of them to the man and two to the girl; each thumb printed both and handed one back.

"That for that," the fat man said.

"Thanks. And here are your checks-a thousand each-for signing the contracts." Marrjyl nodded.

"Thanks a lot," she said, and Rodnar added, "Thanks, Fay, this'll do me fine." He then quirked an eyebrow at the girl. She nodded, and the two harnessed up and took off. As they were jetting along through the air, side by side, Rodnar said in thought, "When I said I was glad to meet you, Marrjyl-or why not make it Marr."

"Yes, do, Rod. If this thing works out at all, we'll be working together too long and too closely for formality"

"My thought exactly-so, to proceed, I wasn't just flapping my tongue. I didn't want to let on to Fatso Sonfayand, of course, but my personal treasury's lower than the proverbial snake's hip in a swamp. Everything we could raise on Slaar and Spath both. Knu has a.s.sets, of course, but they're mostly frozen. And anyway I couldn't let him carry the whole load. And buying your way through channels takes junex, lot's of 'em. We got as far as His Magnificence's second secretary...

"You did? Already? That's better than almost anyone expected."

"Yeah. As you said, Knu is really an operator. And the purse I'll get tomorrow night should get us past her If I kill the Masked Marvel, that is."

"If you kill him? Of course you'll kill him! Why shouldn't you."

"You know why not. He's got a mighty good record-too good altogether for a non-psi-in fact, I've checked him out and he is psionic. Evidently a renegadea loner-out strictly for number one instead of for the good of all psiontists as a group." She nodded, a.s.suming an expression that was startlingly ugly for such an attractive face to wear "Uh-huh, they're the ones that need killing the worst of anybody... but you're more than somewhat nuts to think any such sc.u.m could have what it would take to kill you. The worst he'll do is nick you a little, maybe, instead of you letting him nick you to make it look like a contest."

"We hope," he said, with not too much conviction in his tone.

"Who are you fighting, and when."

"I don't know who yet; I'm signed to fight the survivor of the eliminations now going on for female finalists at the next Most Magnificent Eagle-Feeding-a week from Sat.u.r.day night, you know, in Games Hall One. On form, it'll be Daughtmargann Loygann of Gloane and she'll be a summer breeze." He nodded.

"On form, yes-but just remember to probe her hard and plenty, because any bladesman who has lasted very long has got to be more or less psionic. But to get back to money-I hope you brought along a bale."

"I did. I fine-toothed both Orm and Skane. Over a hundred thousand junex." He whistled. A hundred thousand Justician Units of Exchange was a lot of cash; much more than he had expected from the underground psionic groups of those two compara- tively young, comparatively underdeveloped planets.

"That's the kind of talk I like to hear, girl. Just for that I'll cash this here check, take you up top to the Eyrie, and ply you with drink and with prime-orkst steak."

"And that, man," she laughed, "is the kind of talk I like to hear." Games Hall One was a subterranean amphitheater, so designed that every seat in the whole vast cavern afforded a perfect view of what was going on in the small central arena; a view that could at will be reinforced by individual tri-di viewers at each of all seats except "ringside." The whole splendidly-decorated Hall was illuminated by an apparently sourceless light of just the right quality and intensity for maximum viewing pleasure. Its atmosphere was pure, briskly circulating air, at a temperature of seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of twenty-nine percent. Every seat of the Hall's many thousands was occupied. The spectators were fairly evenly divided as to s.e.x, and were of all ages from babies in arms up to white-haired oldsters. All the people except the infants were keyed up and tense, all were reveling vicariously in the mayhem, carnage, and sheer slaughter of the Games. The eagles had been fed. That is, brutish executioners, after breaking convicts' arms and legs with their mauls, had thrown their helpless but still living bodies into great cages of steel bars; there they had been torn to grisly bits and devoured by deliberately-starved, forty-pound Mountain King eagles. The five preliminary bouts, in ascending order of skill and of savagery, were over; two women and three men had died. Bloodily. Now Games-master Sonfayand Baylor stepped up onto the "table"-the circular platform twenty-five feet in diameter and twelve inches above the arena's floor-that was the site of action. Unlike the squared rings of Tellus, this site had no ropes or guards, any games man leaving the table during combat, for any reason whatever; became eaglemeat then and there.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Baylor bellowed happily. Like so many sports announcers, he liked to bellow and always stood ten feet away from the nearest microphone so that he could bellow.

"On my right, the champion professional bladesman of Meetyl! The one and only-the world-renowned Masked Marvel..." Amidst a tremendous roar of applause a tall, trim, splendidly-muscled man leaped in one bound to the center of the table and bowed four ways, saluting the crowd gracefully with his knife at each bow. He wore fighting shoes, a tight breech-clout, and a light mask of yellow gold-a mask that did not conceal his Garshan beak of a nose, to say nothing of interfering with even his widest peripheral vision. The games-master finally broke into the applause, still bellowing and still loving the sound of his own voice.

"All I'm allowed to tell you about the champ is that he's a Garshan, and..."

"You're telling us?" a stentorian voice came raucously from ringside-and that statement had been entirely unnecessary. The Masked Marvel's reddish-brown skin and his veritable beak of a nose could not possibly have belonged to anyone except a native of Garsh-the home of the proudest, the haughtiest, the purest of blood and the most intransigently warlike of all the Justiciate's races of men.

"Chop it off get on with the fight!" the heckler howled, and the crowd went wild-clapping, stamping, whistling, shrieking, cat-calling, booing.

"QUIET! SILENCE! SHUT UP!!!" the games-master yelled; so loud now and so close to a microphone that even Hall One's super-powered public-address system squawked under the overload... and the crowd did quiet down enough so that his voice could again be heard.

"He's a Garshan, and he's always had high status and a number, and he's got an awful lot of kills on his belt. Forty-six. Enough so he's now Status Ten point Nine Nine Four.

"And on my left the challenger-Sonrodnar Rodnar of Slaar-Status Thirty-Eight-an amma-CHOOR... There was some applause-not very much-as Rodnar leaped lightly to the purple-and-gold triple-ringed star in the table's center and made his four-point bows. Most of the noise seemed to be the offering and taking of bets as to how long the challenger would last.

"Although he's an ammachoor" the fat man bawled happily on, "he's got nineteen good tough kills chalked up and he's one of the very few men who is actually good enough to bet his life that he can take the champ. Like all championships, this match is unlimited and to the death, not to any set number of bleeding wounds or to incapacitation. Unlimited! Anything goes! To the winnah the diamond-studded gold belt, the purse of twentyfive thousand junex, and two full numbers in status. To the loozah one free cremation. Take stations, gentlemen." The Garshan sprang to the ring's center as was the champion's right, with his back to the games-master; Rodnar stationed himself half a radius out from the center, facing his opponent, with knees and elbows slightly sprung and with knife at the ready.

"Go!" Baylor yelled. Simultaneously with the word, a bell clanged and the games-master, surprisingly agile for a man of his bulk and ma.s.s, leaped from the table and took the seat of Arbiter-In-Chief. At the first sound-wave of the bell's clangor both gladiators sprang furiously into action. The Garshan leaped straight at the Slaaran; his eager knife in his right hand, point outthrust; the fingers of his left hand spread and flexed to grab anything that could be grabbed. Each man had long since studied his opponent, of course, and also his opponent's seconds. The Masked Marvel's mental shield was as solid and as tight as was Rodnar's own; nothing whatever could be read through either. So also were those of the two strapping Garshan seconds seated to the right of the Arbiter-In-Chief; as were those of Knuaire of Spath and Manjyl of Orm, sitting at that official's left. Although no nonpsi even suspected it, the real business of those seconds was to protect their respective princ.i.p.als against such psionic shenanigans and low blows as telepathically confusing the opponent's thoughts or by imperceptibly-to the non-psionic judges, that is-teleporting that opponent's knife and hand an inch or so off-target at critical instants of the engagement. Or in the threat of sure death a games man 'porting himself to safety. Those seconds, all four, were very good indeed at their business. (There was of course no outward hint or sign whatever of any psionic activity. Since all officialdom was not only non-psi but also rabidly anti-psi, psionics did not officially exist, and at any display whatever of "witchcraft" the offender became eaglemeat on the spot. So all fighting was strictly honest no psionic fudging was or could be permitted.) Rodnar leaped, too-or, rather made a spectacular gymnast's dive-and faster even than the champion; but not directly toward him. Off-line slightly to his own right, and flipping his knife into his left hand while still in the air, with the double purpose of flying unscathed under the Masked Marvel's blade and of slashing his left leg half off. The smaller and faster man's normal strategy would be to take all possible advantage of his superiority in speed. Thus, whatever the crowd might think of his tactics and however it might yell and boo at him, he would ordinarily get onto his bicycle and stay on it out of the taller man's longer reach, and try to wear him down. Wherefore Rodnar's instantaneous and slashing attack, a fractional instant ahead of the champion's, took all of the experts by surprise and almost succeeded. In fact, and in a very small way, it did succeed. In spite of everything the Garshan could do to change the trajectory of his leap, to get his leg out of the way, and/or to cut, kick, stamp, or grab Rodnar's suddenly-wrong-sided knife-hand, the very point of Rodnar's knife did nick the champion's leg and Garshan blood did begin to flow.

It was not at all a serious wound; it was the veriest nick. Since such wounds bleed quite freely, however, when made by razorsharp cutting edges, it looked much worse than it really was and the crowd went even wilder than before. For, in spite of that crowd's innate and long-cultured savagery, practically everyone who did not have money down on the champion was in favor of the underdog; especially since that underdog, instead of running away from the champion, had actually taken the fight to him in the first fractional second of the match and had actually scored first blood! Slamming the non-skid soles of both fighting shoes against the resined texture of the table's tightly stretched plastic cove Rodnar sprang erect and whirled around, hoping to find the Garshan off balance and unready. He wasn't-but he wasn't quite organized for attack yet, either, so Rodnar maintained the offensive. He feinted another dive at the champion's backhand; then as the Garshan began to lower his guard and to whirl, he leaped high into the air and somewhat to his own left, swinging his right leg-with the fullest intention of driving the steel-lined toe of his fighting shoe into and through the champion's face. But the Garshan had been feinting, too. Or, if not exactly feinting, he knew his trade well enough to be very skeptical indeed about 'this apparent exact repet.i.tion of technique. Wherefore he was prepared to straighten up instantly; and it took everything Rodnar had to arch his belly out of the way of the Garshan's ultra-fast and ultra-vicious riposte-a return slash intended to spread Rodnar's bowels all over the floor. In fact, he should have had just a little more, for he did not escape entirely unscathed. The frantically wriggling twist that saved him from disembowelment brought his left hip into the knife's line of drive and he took a nick-about as serious a wound as he had inflicted on the champion a few seconds before. Still in the air, Rodnar grabbed the wrist of the Garshan's knife-hand and, with the anchorage thus afforded, spun and twisted like a cat and struck with foot and hand-to kick his foe in the solar plexus and at the same time to cut his throat. The Garshan, however was familiar with that maneuver, too. He seized Rodnar's wrist and yanked it; simultaneously moving his solar plexus just enough so that the combination resultant of the motions made Rodnar miss both objectives. Then, both knife-hands being immobilized, the Garshan went viciously into close quarters. This, he thought exultantly, was his dish, he had broken a dozen mens' backs from this exact situation. To break a man's back, however, you have to hold him at least momentarily in some position or other; and Rodnar of Slaar was as hard to hold as a double armful of live eels and angleworms. Thrusting his head in close, he went for the champion's throat with his teeth. Foiled there by a hard and bristly chin, he went for his ear, but only got his mask-the first time that the Masked Marvel had been unmasked in combat. Then, wriggling and wrenching himself partially free, he shoved with all the strength of arms, torso, and legs; and as the two gladiators reeled apart the spectators saw the stream of blood running down the Slaaran's thigh-and the whole vast crowd exploded into pandemonium.

Then, for the first time, Rodnar mounted his velocipede. No athlete, however hard and however well-trained, could maintain that pace of violence for long.

He was fairly sure that it was taking more out of the champion-an older, heavier, slower man-than it was out of him; but there would be no cessation of combat until one of them was dead and he would have to save some of his strength. But not too much-he could not afford to let the Garshan get very much rest-he would have to wear him down to where he would make a mistake. Wherefore very shortly he resumed his harrying, sniping, lightning-fast attacks; circling, reversing, feinting, thrusting, leaping... giving nicks and taking them... but as time wore on giving more and more than he took... until both men were literally plastered with slowly-congealing, sweat streaked blood, and foot-wide areas of the ring's floor were slippery with gore despite the resin... and the s.a.d.i.s.tic uproar of the crowd mounted higher and higher... Until finally, after what seemed like hours and was actually twenty-eight minutes, the champion did make a mistake. His knife was too high and he was a fraction of a second slow and a bit awkward and a couple of inches out of place in coping with a triple feint; and Rodnar, with chin and left shoulder protecting the vital areas of heart and throat, drove straight in for the kill. He knew he'd have to take a savage counter-stroke, a slash or a stab, but there'd be only the one and in his position it wouldn't kill him-this was too good a chance altogether to miss. Wherefore he drove in, swinging. He deflected the champion's slashing stab to shoulder and arm and ribs, even while he was driving his own blade to the hilt into unresisting flesh and twisting it viciously, in a mangling spiral, as he withdrew it. The ex-champion collapsed; and Rodnar, deafened by a roar of noise that seemed almost solid, stood there, holding his ghastly, gaping, blood-spurting wound together as best he could with his right hand, while his surgeon with his tool-kit and Knuaire and Marrjyl with a stretcher rushed up to him. Rodnar did lie on the stretcher while the doctor did his preliminary work. That done, however; he stood up and, refusing all help and acknowledging the bedlam-roar of the crowd with a couple of nods, he walked under his own power to and through the fighters' exit of Games Hall One. Outside that exit, however, he was very glad indeed to rest most of his weight on his friends' shoulders, and to let them half-carry him to the ambulance that was to take him to the hospital.

2 - THE GRANT.

Nothing like the civilization and culture and government of the Justiciate and its Tyranny had ever come to flower on Tellus or on any other planet of Tellurian civilization. To approximate them there would have to be something possessing in combination the dictatorship of Communist Russia, a caste system but little less rigid than that of old India, the brutality and savagery of ancient Rome, and a technological advancement fully equal to that of the Western Hemisphere of Tellus. Impossible'? It might seem so. Nevertheless, it worked. Creakingly at times, it is true; and by dint of occasional bloodlettings and purges of horrible scope and type; but, after its fashion, it had been working for many thousands of Justician Standard years. It had been kept working, all these millennia, by the Tyrant's enforcement arm; the hated and feared planetary police, the Guard of the Person-disrespectfully called the "Purps" from the gold- and silver-trimmed purple splendor of their full-dress uniforms. At the top of this sweet-smelling heap there was one and only one o'stat, (ovcrstat-above status or zero status) the Dictator-the Tyrant-the Supreme Grand Justice-His Magnificence Sonrathendak Ranjak of Slaar. In Status One to Status Five, inclusive, with their status numbers carried out to three decimal places from 1.000 to 5.999, were the members of the Dictator's Board of Advisors, the members of the Council of Grand Justices, and a few very VIPs. In Status Six to Status Fifteen, equally finely graded, were all other major executives of the Justiciate. Any one of these persons could act as judge and jury and could impose the death penalty. Status Sixteen to Status One Hundred, inclusive, none of which were fractionated, contained everyone else of any importance at all; and every person having status, and also the o'stat, had his or her fourteen-digit Citizen Number tattooed across his or her back. This status-and-number system of caste and regimentation did not include the millions of teeming millions of un'statspeople under status, beneath notice or consideration-people who, being non-citizens and possessing neither status nor numbers, had little or no recourse against exploitation. In the musty tomes of law they had some rightsrights which varied considerably from planet to planet-but in everyday life the extent of realization of those rights varied just about inversely to the status of the citizens concerned in the exploitation. These un'stats were not exactly serfs; nor were very many of them slaves. On most of the planets of the Justiciate it was perfectly legal for any citizen to enslave any number of un'stats at will; but such enslavement was a very risky business indeed. Most un'stats preferred death to slavery; and, in dying, it was their custom to take as many numbered persons as possible with them into the hereafter. And many un'stats, the ablest physically and mentally or both, won citizenship and numbers and status in many and various ways. Rodnar's great grandfather, for instance, had been born an un'stat. Having inherited psionic genes from both parents, however, he became an outstandingly successful bladesman and advanced himself and his line accordingly.

Perhaps it should be mentioned, though it hardly seems necessary-through the millennia the Justiciate had outlawed all languages except the dominant one, that of Slaar; so a universal language was spoken on all the one hundred eightythree planets; with one notable exception, proud, recalcitrant Garsh.

A few days after winning the championship of Meetyl, Rodnar-now of Status Thirty-Six and with his left arm in a sling-took an aircab to the edifice housing the outer offices of His Magnificence the Supreme Grand Justice. Armed this time with a letter of introduction to the First Secretary herself, he was ushered immediately into that Able's inner private office. Her Ability First Secretary Daughtelna Starrlah of Slaar, Status Eleven point One Nine Zero, was a tall, brown-eyed, breasty, muscular-swimmer type-young woman; with mus- cles and other attributes startlingly on display through a tightly stretched jersey made of white nylon gauze. She wore the dangling, sparkling ear-pendants that were the mode of the moment; her shining, jet-black hair was piled high in what would be the mode of week after next. She was made up to the eyeb.a.l.l.s. She was sitting in a posture chair at an oversized desk littered with correspondence baskets, folders of all colors, business- and star-charts, handbooks, technical journals, tapes, and viewers. In her left hand she held a green folder with Rodnar's name printed on it in black. As Rodnar entered the room she stared at him intently; she fairly riveted his eyes with hers with a look as old as woman and man. While the usherette was showing Rodnar where he was to sit, the FirSec half-rose behind her desk and half-extended an exquisitely-worked crystal flask.

"A whiff?" she asked, but went on without a pause, "But I don't suppose you inhale, though, at that," and she withdrew the flask and sat down again.

"No, thanks, Your Ability, I'm in training; but please go ahead."

"Uh-uh; I don't really like the stuff my inhaling is strictly social." The office-girl having left the room and closed the door behind her, the FirSec flipped the switch that turned on the red "IN CONFERENCE" sign across the outer side of that door. She then said "No calls" to her squawk-box and flipped its power-switch to "OFF"; continuing the while to look at him with an intensity and a purpose that surprised him to the core. It was not that a woman was taking the initiative-in their culture, that was the woman's inalienable right and her exclusive privilege-it was that this particular woman would deign to make a pa.s.s at him. She was a high Eleven, an Able, and he was a mere Thirty-Six; more than one-third down the status scale toward being nothing at all. Beyond making sure she was a non-psi he had not read her mind, not even the most superficial of her surface thoughts, and he did not read it now. Very few if any top-bracket psiontists were or are peeping toms.

"Subs.p.a.ce Technologist First Sonrodnar Rodnar of Slaar, I've been..." she began, formally, but broke off and went on in a strangely altered tone, "Oh, down the cliff with that stuff!" Dropping the folder onto the desk, she got up, walked around to face him-he got up, too, of course-took his right hand in both of hers, and squeezed it hard. Her face paled, then flushed, and her nostrils began to flare as she went on, "I watched you kill that utterly unspeakable louse of a Garshan the other night..." A light flashed on in Rodnar's mind. He knew the connection, in strongly pa.s.sionate women, between violent death and s.e.x; and his own quick pa.s.sion began to flame into being. But he wondered. That was days ago... it wouldn't last this long... or could it? And how could a top-drawer FirSecan Ableever have had enough to do with even a high-star Garshan to hate him that much? But there was more to come, and worse.

"... and I reveled in every second of it," the girl went on.

"Death of Eagles, how I hated that slimy, nolligenous pfauld! So when your dossier; with your request for an interview, hit my desk I became completely unstuck. I owed you so much... I'd been wondering so much what-or how to..." She broke off and licked a lip with the tip of her tongue, for the man was moving. He tossed his sling to the floor and, with left arm dangling carefully loose, he stepped up to her until his chest just touched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Yes?" he asked quietly. She started to nod, then shook her head.

"Uh-uh," she said, quite evidently very much against both will and desire.

"I shouldn't've-we mustn't-that ghastly wound; we'd tear it wide open."

"Uh-uh," he disagreed.

"It ought to be stuck together strong enough to hold by this time, I should think. Anyway, so what? Even if we do pull a few st.i.tches Doc can stick 'em back in." He put his good arm powerfully around her and the dam broke-their two bodies tried mightily to weld themselves full length into one... and, all unconsciously, his left arm came up and went to work in sync with his right.

"Um-m-m-nh?" he asked, after a little of that. His mouth was in no position to talk. Neither was hers.

"Umnh-hmnh!" she agreed, enthusiastically, and managed to move her head enough, without interfering in the least with what they were doing, to indicate what was evidently the door to a room that was even more inner and more private than her inner private office. And, awkwardly-blissfully unwilling to give up any iota of contact-still straining together-the two turned toward the door... and Rodnar caught his breath, flinched uncontrollably, and stopped dead in his tracks, his face turning white.

"Oh?...Oh!... Oh, no!" she cried, in three entirely different tones, pulling away from him far enough to see that the whole left side of his shirt was soggy with blood-blood that was already plastering her thin nylon jersey to every fine contour of her right breast.

"Death of Eagles! I thought I felt something! All-Powers d.a.m.n me for a fool!..."

"Think nothing of it, Starr!" he protested.

"Just a little leak, is all, and it's strictly my own fault-I should've known enough not to use that arm..."

"Lie down here!" she snapped, paying no attention to his protests and practically forcing him down onto her office couch.

"Lemme look... oh, good..." She sighed deeply in relief.

"It isn't spurting, so it'll be all right to get your doctor-he's mine, too, you know-or did you?-in here instead of rushing you to the hospital."

"Doctor? Nuts to that. Maybe we'd better take a rain check on these doings until that slash heals a little more, but it won't take long to transact our bit of official business. Then I'll go see Doc."

"Nuts to that right back at you, Rod." She flipped the switch to her com, punched a number, and waited until a handsome, forty-year-old face appeared upon her screen.

"I'm awfully sorry to have to bother you, Doom" she said then, "but I wonder if you could dash over here to my office right away and sew Rod up again."

"What? How in... T' The pictured eyes looked searchingly at the patient, then glanced once at the girl.

"Cancel. I see how. What a brain! Rod, if your brain was solid U-235 and it all fissioned at once it wouldn't crack your skull..." he paused, grinning at them both, and emitted a chuckle that turned into a belly laugh.

"But I can't say I blame you-either of you-at that; I might even do the same thing myself. Don't worry, Starr; he's perfectly all right and I'll be right over." The doctor punched off. Starrlah, without changing the adjustment of her set, said "Lanjy" and a top-half view of the usherette, seated now, appeared on the screen.

"Yes, Your Ability?" the picture asked.

"I just had an accident, Lanjy-please skip down to Brazzoin's, will you, and get me a zero-gauge white See-Mor jersey, Sec-Style, size thirty-eight."

"Right away, Your Ability; thank you!" the girl caroled, and took off on the run. Starrlah cut com, sat down on the edge of the couch, licked her lips, and gulped twice.