Pohl, Frederik & Jack Williamson - Starchild Trilogy

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Contents

POCKET BOOKS, a Simon Be Schuster division of

GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

Published by arrangement with the authors

whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books.

ISBN: 0-671-82284-5

First Pocket Books printing December, 1977

3rd printing

Trademarks registered in tie United States and other countries.

Printed in the U.S.A.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Reefs of Space was first published in World of IF Science Fiction.

A much shorter version of Starchild appeared in serial rorm in Gal«ry Magazine. Copyright, £),

1964, by Galaxy Publishing Corporation.

A shorter version of Rogue Star appeared in serial form in IF Magazine. Copyright, ©, 1968, by

Galaxy Publishing Corporation.

The three novels that make up The StarchiUl Trilogy were previously published in paperback as

three separate volumes by Ballantine Books, Inc.

The Reefs of Space Starchild Rogue Star

157

297

THE REEFS OF SPACE

The major snapped: "Check in, you Risks! What's the matter with you?" His radar horns made him

look like Satan—a sleepy young Satan with an underslung jaw, but dangerous.

"Yes, sir," said Steve Ryeland, peering around. This was Reykjavik—a new world to Ryeland, who had

just come from a maximum-security labor camp inside the rim of the Arctic Circle. Ryeland blinked

at the buildings, a thousand feet high, and at the jets and rockets scattered 'across the air

field. The little man next to Ryeland sneezed and nudged him. "All right," Ryeland said, and went

into the bare little Security lounge. On the teletype that stood in the corner of the room—hi the

corner of every room— he tapped out:

Information. Steven Ryeland, Risk, AWC-38440, and O. B. Oporto, Risk, XYZ-99942, arrived at—

He took the code letters from the identification plate on the machine.

—Station 3-Radius 4-261, Reykjavik, Iceland. Query. What are personal orders?

In a moment the answer came from the Planning Machine, a single typed letter "R." The Machine had

received and understood the message and adjusted its records. The orders would follow.

A Togetherness-girl glanced into the lounge, saw the collars on Ryeland and the little man. Her

lips had started to curve in the smile of her trade, but they clamped into a thin line. Risks. She

nodded to the major and turned away.

The teletype bell rang, and the Machine tapped out:

Action. Proceed to Train 667, Track 6, Compartment 93.

Ryeland acknowledged the message. The major, leaning over his shoulder, grinned. "A one-way ticket

to the Body Bank if you want my guess."

"Yes, sir." Ryeland was not going to get into a discussion. He couldn't win. No Risk could win an

argument with a man who wore the major's radar horns.

"Well, get going," the major grumbled. "Oh, and Rye-land—"

"Yes, sir?"

The major winked. "Thanks for the chess games. I'll be seeing you, I guess. Parts of you!" He

laughed raucously as he strode away. "No side trips, remember," he warned.

"I'll remember," said Steve Ryeland softly, touching the collar he wore.

Oporto sneezed again. "Come on," he grumbled.

"All right What was that number?"

The little dark man grinned. 'Train 667, Track 6, Compartment 93. That's an easy one—ahchoo!

Dafabit," he complained, "I'm catching cold. Let's get out of this draft."

Ryeland led off. They walked unescorted across the pavement to a cab rank and got in. AH around

them, travelers, air field workers and others glanced at them, saw the iron collars—and at once,

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on each face a curtain descended. No one spoke to them. Ryeland punched the code number for their

destination, and the car raced through broad boulevards to a huge marble structure on the other

side of the city.

Over its wide entrance were the carved letters:

THE PLAN OF MAN SUBTRAIN STATION

They made their way through a wide concourse, noisy and crowded; but everyone gave them plenty of

room. Ryeland grinned sourly to himself. No side trips! Of course not—and for the same reason. It

wasn't healthy for a man who wore the collar to step out of line. And it wasn't healthy for anyone

else to be in his immediate neighborhood if he did.

'Track Six, was it?**

'Train 667, Compartment 93. Can't you remember anything?" Oporto demanded.

"There's Track Six." Ryeland led the way. Track Six was a freight platform. They went down a

flight of motionless moving stairs and emerged beside the cradle track of the subtrains.

Since the subtrains spanned the world, there was no clue as to where they were going. From Iceland

they could be going to Canada, to Brazil, even to South Africa; the monstrous atomic drills of the

Plan had burrowed perfectly straight shafts from everywhere to everywhere. The subtrains rocketed

through air-exhausted tunnels, swung between hoops of electrostatic force. Without friction, their

speed compared with the velocity of interplanetary travel.

"Where is it?" Oporto grumbled, looking around. A harsh light flooded the grimy platforms,

glittering on the huge aluminum balloons that lay in their cradles outside the vacuum locks. Men

with trucks and cranes were loading a long row of freightspheres in th_ platform next to theirs; a

little cluster of passengers began to appear down the moving stairs of a platform a hundred yards

away. Oporto said abruptly: "I'll give you six to five the next train in is ours."

"No bet." Ryeland knew better than to take him up. But he hoped the little man was right. It was

cold on the platform. Chill air roared around them from the ventilators; Oporto, already chilled,

sneezed and began to sniffle. Ryeland himself was shivering in his thin maximum-security denims.

At the camp, when their travel orders came through, regulations demanded a thorough medical

examination before they left. That was the rule under the Plan, and

the examination included a steaming shower. "They want nice clean meat at the Body Bank," the

guard guffawed; but Ryeland paid no attention. He couldn't afford to.

A man who wore the iron collar around his neck could only afford a limited look into the future.

He could think about the day when the collar came off, and nothing else.

A warning horn shrieked into the pit. Ryeland jumped; Oporto turned more slowly, as though he had

been expecting it. Which he had.

Red signals flickered from the enormous gates of the vacuum lock on Track Six. Air valves gasped.

The gates swung slowly open and a tractor emerged towing a cradle with the special car they were

waiting for. "You would have lost," Oporto commented and Ryeland nodded; of course he would have.

The car stopped. Equalizer valves snorted again, and then its tall door flopped out from the top,

forming a ramp to the platform. Escalators began to crawl along it.

Oporto said anxiously: "Steve, I don't like the looks of this!" Out of the opening door of the car

two men in uniform came running. They ran up the escalators, raced onto the platform and up the

stairs. They didn't look at Ryeland or Oporto; they were in a hurry. They were bearing thick

leather dispatch cases the same color as their uniforms.

Bright blue uniforms!

Why, that was the uniform of the special guard of—

Ryeland lifted his eyes to look, unbelieving. At the roof of the shed, amid the ugly web of ducts

and pipes and cables, a brilliant light burst forth, shining down on the sphere. And across its

top, forty feet above the platform, there was a gleaming blue star and under it, etched in

crystalline white, the legend:

THE PLAN OF MAN OFFICE OF THE PLANNER

The special car they had been waiting for was the private car of the Planner himself!

The first thought that crossed Steve Ryeland's mind was: Now I can present my case to the Planner!

But the second thought canceled it. The Planner, like every other human on Earth or the planets,

was only an instrument of the Planning Machine. If clearance ever came to Ryeland— if the collar

came off his neck—it would be because the

Machine had considered all the evidence and reached a proper decision. Human argument would not

affect it.

With an effort, Ryeland put the thought out of his mind; but all the same, he couldn't help

feeling a touch better, a degree stronger. At least it was almost certain that their destination

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would not be the Body Bank!

"What was that compartment number?"

Oporto sighed. "93. Can't you remember anything? Train 667—the product of the two primes, 23 and

29. Track 6, their difference. Compartment 93, then- last digits hi reverse order. That's an easy

one—" But Ryeland was hardly listening. The intimate acquaintance that Oporto seemed to have with

all numbers was no longer news to him, and he had more urgent things on his mind. He led the way

up the ramp and into the Planner's subtrain car. A woman in the blue uniform of the guard passed

them, glanced at their collars and frowned. Before Ryeland could speak to her she had brushed past

them busily and was gone. It said a lot for the efficiency of the collars, he thought wryly, that

she didn't bother to find out what two Risks were doing wandering freely around the Planner's

private car. There was no cause for worry; if they took a wrong turning, the collars would make it

their last.

But by the same token, it was highly dangerous for them to wander around. Ryeland stopped short

and waited until someone else came by. "Sir!" he called. "Excuse me!"

It was a straight, gray-haired man in the blue of the Planner's guard, wearing the silver

mushrooms of a Techni-corps colonel ."What is it?" he demanded impatiently.

"We're ordered to compartment 93," Ryeland explained.

The colonel looked at him thoughtfully, "Name," he snapped.

"Ryeland, Steven. And Oporto."

"Umm." Presently the colonel sighed. "All right," he said grouchily. "Can't have you messing up

the Planner's car with your blood. Better get secured. This way." He led them to a tiny room,

ushered them in. "Look," he said, flexing the knob of the door. "No lock. But I should warn you

that most of the corridors are radar-trapped. Do you understand?" They understood. "All right."

He hesitated. "By the way. My name's Lescure, Colonel Pascal Lescure. We'll meet again." And he

closed the door behind him.

Ryeland looked quickly around the room, but it wasn't the splendor of its furnishings or the

comfort of its appoint-

ments that interested him. It was the teletype. Quickly he reported in for himself and Oporto. The

answer came:

R. Action. Await further orders.

Oporto was beginning to look flushed and to tremble. "Always it's lige this," he said thickly. "I

ged a cold and if I don't tage care I'm sick for weegs. I'm feeling lighd-beaded already!" He

stood up, tottering.

Ryeland shook his head. "No, you're not lightheaded. We're moving." The hand at the controls of

the subtrain knew whose private car he was driving down the electrostatic tubes. The giant sphere

was being given a featherbed ride. They had felt no jar at all on starting, but now they began to

feel curiously light.

That was intrinsic to the way of travel. The subtrain was arrowing along a chord from point to

point; on long hauls the tunnels dipped nearly a thousand miles below the earth's surface at the

halfway mark. Once the initial acceleration was over, the first half of a trip by subtrain was

like dropping in a super-speed express elevator.

Absently Ryeland reached out an arm to brace Oporto as the little man weaved and shuddered. He

frowned. The helical fields which walled the tunnels of the subtrains owed part of their stability

to himself. On that Friday night, three years before, when the Plan Police burst in upon him, he

had just finished dictating the specifications for a new helical unit that halved hysteresis

losses, had a service life at least double the old ones.

And yet _he could only remember that much and no more.

Had something been done to his mind? For the thousandth time Ryeland asked himself that question.

He could remember the equations of his helical field theory that transformed the crude "magnetic

bottles" that had first walled out the fluid rock, as early nucleonicists had walled in the plasma

of fusing hydrogen. Yet he could not remember the work that had led him to its design. He could

remember his design for ion accelerators to wall the atomic rockets of spaceships, and yet the

author of that design— himself—was a stranger. What sort of man had he been? What had he done?

"Sdeve," Oporto moaned. "You wouldn't have a drink on you?"

Ryeland turned, brought back to reality. A drink! Oporto was feverish. "I'd better call the

machine," he said.

Oporto nodded weakly. "Yes, call in. I'm sick, Sdeve."

Ryeland hesitated. The little man did look sick. While he was standing there, Oporto blundered

past him. "I'll do id myself," he grumbled. "Get out of my way."

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He reached with fumbling fingers for the keyboard, his face turned angrily toward Ryeland. That

was a mistake; he should have been watching. In the unsteady footing he lurched, reached for the

keyboard, missed, stumbled and fell heavily against the teletype.

It toppled with a crash. There was a quick white flash from inside it and a sudden pungent smell

of burning.

Oporto got slowly to his feet.

Ryeland opened his mouth and then closed it without saying anything. What was the use? Obviously

the teletype was out of commission; obviously Oporto hadn't done it on purpose.

Oporto groaned: "Oh, dabbit. Steve, where'd thad colonel go? Maybe he could ged me something ..."

'Take it easy," Ryeland said absently. The little man's condition was clearly not good but, in

truth, it was not Oporto that was on Ryeland's mind just then. It was the teletype.

Always, since the first days after school, there had been no move Steve Ryeland made, no action he

performed, without checking in with the Machine. Even at the maximum-security camp there had been

a teletype on direct linkage with the Machine, standing in one desolate comer of the bare

barracks.

He felt curiously naked, and somehow folorn.

"Steve," said Oporto faintly, "could you ged me a' glass of water?"

That at least was possible; there was a silver carafe and crystal tumblers, fired with gold

designs. Ryeland poured the little man a glass and handed it to him. Oporto took it and sank back

against a huge, richly upholstered chair, his eyes closed.

Ryeland roamed around the tittle cubicle. There wasn't much else for him to do. The colonel had

warned them against radar-traps in the corridors; it was not to be thought of that they would go

out and take the chance of being destroyed by a single wrong move.

For they were Risks; and the iron collars they wore contained eighty grams of a high explosive. A

step into

an area proscribed for Risks (and such areas were common all over the world) meant that a

triggering radar beam would touch off the explosive. Ryeland had seen that happen once. He didn't

want it to happen to him.

Brig or no brig, this room was part of the Planner's private car and it was furnished in a way

that Ryeland had not seen in three years. He fingered the drapes around a mock-window and reached

out to touch the polished mirror of a hardwood table top.

Three years ago Ryeland had lived in a room something like this. No, he admitted, not quite as

lavish. But a room that belonged to him, with furniture that no one else used and a place for his

clothes, his books, the things he kept around him. But in that life he had been a cleared man,

with a place in the Plan of Man and a quota to be met. That life had ended three years ago, on

that fatal Friday afternoon.

Even now, after endless sessions of what was called reconstructive therapy, Ryeland couldn't

understand what had happened to him. The vaguely worded charge was "unplanned thinking," but all

his merciless therapists had failed to help him recall any thoughts disloyal to-the machine. The

only material evidence of unplanned activities was his collection of space literature—the yellowed

old copies of books by Ley and Gamow and Hoyle and Einstein that he had saved from his father's

library.

Of course he knew that the books were not on the list approved by the Plan, but he had intended no

disloyalty with his hobby. In fact, as he had many times told the therapists, the special

equations of the helical field were related to the mathematics of the whole universe. Without

knowing the equations for the expansion of the universe and the continuous creation of matter in

the space between the galaxies, he could not have improved the helical units for the subtrain

tunnels.

But the therapists had always refused to specify exact charges. Men under the Plan no longer had

rights, but merely functions. The purpose of the therapists was not to supply him with

information, but to extract information from him. The sessions had failed, because he couldn't

remember whatever it was that the therapists had been attempting to extract.

There was so much that he could not remember ...

Oporto said weakly: "Sdeve, ged me a doctor."

"I can't!" Ryeland said bitterly: "If the Plan wants you sick you'll have to be sick."

Oporto's face turned a shade paler. "Shut up! Somebody may be listening."

"I'm not criticizing the Plan. But we have to stay here, you know that."

"Ryeland," Oporto begged, and went into a coughing fit

Ryeland looked down at the little man. He seemed to be in serious trouble now. Evidently his

system was of an ultra-allergic type. Swept clean of disease organisms in the sterile air that

blew down on the isolation camp from the Pole, he had been ripe for infection. He was breathing

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heavily and raggedly, and heat wafted off his forehead as Ryeland brought his hand near it.

"Hold on, Oporto," he said. "It'll only be a little while. Maybe a couple of hours." At a thousand

miles an hour, there was no place on Earth much farther away than that.

"I can be dead in a couble of hours," said Oporto. "Can't you ged me a doctor?"

Ryeland hesitated. There was truth to what the little man said. The Plan provided constant

immunization for those who lived in areas exposed to disease; but the hypo-allergic, like Oporto,

might well lose that immunity in a few months. And Oporto had been breathing sterile air for three

years.

"All right," said Ryeland wearily, "I'll do what I can. You come with me, Oporto." Booby-trapped

the halls might be, dangerous the trip certainly was; but it was life and death to Oporto.

The door opened easily.

Ryeland, half supporting Oporto, looked out into the corridor. No one was in sight. He sighed; he

had hoped that they might find a passerby. Oporto babbled: "Steve, what are you doing? Led me

alone. We can't go oud here —the colonel warned us!"

"We have to get you to a doctor, remember?" Ryeland scanned the corridor. At the intersections

were curious canopied devices like the sun-shelter over a mogul's how-dah. Perhaps they were the

radar traps; at least, Ryeland couldn't imagine what else they might be. But there was one back

the way they had come, and surely there had been no trap there.. ..

No. Ryeland thought it out carefully. The fact that they had been allowed to get to Compartment 93

didn't prove

anything at all; quite possibly the traps had been turned off to allow them to pass. In fact,

thinking it over, it seemed certain that the one route that would be prohibited would be the

corridor going back to the entrance port.

"Oporto," he said, "do you see those doors? I think we can go into one of them."

"You do, Steve? What mages you think so?" the little man asked sardonically.

"Because there's nothing better to try," Ryeland snapped, and dragged the little man with him.

Around his neck the iron collar weighed heavier than ever. If only he were a superman, like that

Donderevo whose name stuck half-forgotten in his mind , . . whose fate, somehow, was linked with

Ryeland's own.

Who was Donderevo, exactly? The therapists had questioned him so persistently about the man that

there had to be some strong reason. Did Ryeland know him? When had he last seen him? When had he

received a message from him? What was the message about?

Donderevo was the son of an explorer and trader who had gathered a fortune from the asteroids and

the moons of the outer planets, and had built a commercial empire outside the Plan of Man. Ron

Donderevo had come to Earth as a student of space medicine at the great technological institute

where Ryeland's father was a mathematics professor. While he was there, the Plan had annexed the

last reluctant asteroids and moons which had remained outside. Donderevo's father had been

defeated in a space fight, resisting the annexation. Donderevo himself had been placed in an iron

collar, as a result of a student demonstration. Then one day he had disappeared. The legends said

that he had somehow removed the collar, and escaped into space beyond the power of the Plan.

Ryeland remembered meeting him only once, in his own father's study. Ryeland was an eight-year-old

Technicub. Donderevo was a grown man, a graduate student, romantic and mysterious with his

knowledge of far planets and unknown space. But was that enough to account for the questions?

Ryeland had denied receiving any message from him, but the therapists were unconvinced.

In any event, whatever Donderevo might have been, Ryeland wasn't; his collar was on for good, or

until the Machine relented.

Ryeland wondered crazily if he would hear the tiny click 10

of the relay before the decapitation charge went off. Would there be any warning? Would he know?

Or would it all be over, literally, before he knew what was happening?

Tlie only way to find out was to open a door and walk through it.

He pushed a door open, selecting it at random from the half-dozen in the corridor. Oporto broke

away from him and, surprisingly spry, ran a few paces down the corridor, whirled and watched him

with a face of tense anticipation.

Ryeland didn't stop to think it over, he walked in the door; and nothing happened.

Grinning, embarrassed, Oporto trailed after. "That one was all right, huh, Steve?"

Ryeland nodded; but there was no point in recrimination, although there were a lot of things he

had in mind to say to the man who had urged him to take a chance— and then ducked out of the way

of the possible consequences. But of more immediate interest was the room they were in.

It was about the size of Compartment 93 and empty. It was quietly furnished: A narrow bed, a table

with a few flowers, a large mirror, an array of cabinets. A girl's room, Ryeland guessed, but from

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the relative modesty of its furnishings, not the room of a girl who was part of the higher brass

on this de luxe subtrain. Possibly a secretary's room; perhaps a maid's. Whoever she was, she

wasn't in.

But there was another door, leading to a flight of steps.

This time Ryeland didn't wait for Oporto. He caught his breath and held it, and when he had passed

through and established once again that that particular door was not radar-trapped, he tasted salt

and acid on bis lip. He had bitten hard enough to draw blood.

But he was through.

The stairs were steep, but it was easy enough to help Oporto up them, with the plunging of the car

taking pounds off their weight. They came out into another room, also empty and small.

But this one was sumptuously furnished. It seemed to be a woman's dressing room. It was white and

gold, with ivory-backed brushes and combs on a little vanity table, before a gold-rimmed ova!

mirror. The stairs, Ryeland guessed, were for the use of the personal maid to whoever used this

room.

And he heard someone singing,

Ryeland took a deep breath and called out: "Hello there! Do you hear me? I'm looking for a

doctor!"

There wasn't any answer. The singing went on, a girl's voice, clear and attractive; she was

singing for her own amusement. Every once in a while she would go back and repeat a phrase, pause,

then start again aimlessly. And under the singing was a sort of musical cooing accompaniment

Ryeland looked at Oporto, shrugged and pushed the door open.

They looked into a room that was green and silver. Its walls swam with fading, shifting green

light. In the center was a round silver tub, six feet across, partly recessed into the floor. From

the mouths of carved crystal dolphins tiny jets of perfumed warm water leaped and splashed, in a

foam of bubbles, into the tub.

And above the thick blanket of foam protruded one knee, the head and the arms of the most

beautiful girl Ryeland had ever seen.

"I—I beg your pardon," he said, awkward and disturbed.

She turned her head and looked at him calmly. On her wet, white shoulders were perched a pair

of—birds? No. They were shaped like birds, like doves, but they were made of metal; their feathers

were fine silver scales; their eyes were red-lit jewels. The metal things moved restlessly, as the

little eyes poked hotly at Ryeland and Oporto. They cooed soft threats, and the rustle of their

wings was like thin whispering bells.

Oporto opened his eyes, stared and emitted a strangling sound. "She—She—" He swallowed and

clutched at Rye-land. "Steve, it's the Planner's daughter!" he gasped, and flung himself to the

floor. "Please!" he begged, writhing toward her. "Please, we didn't mean to bother you!"

But the approach must have alarmed her. Not very much; for she didn't raise her voice; but she

stopped singing in the middle of a note and said, quite softly: "Guards."

There must have been a microphone to pick up her words, for there was a sudden commotion outside.

But more than that, she had defenders nearer still. The doves on her shoulders leaped into the air

and flung themselves at the prostrate little man. Sharp beaks tore, wingtips like knives beat at

him. The door opened and four tall women in the blue of the Planner's guard raced in,

Death had not been far from Steve Ryeland for these three years. It had worn the neat white smock

of Dr. Thrale, the fat, bald, oily man who had been his chief therapist. It had whispered in the

soft, asthmatic voice of Dr. Thrale, warning him a thousand times that he stood in danger of the

Body Bank, unless he could recall a message from Ron Donderevo, unless he could find the right

answers to nonsense questions about a string of words and names that meant nothing to

him—spaceling, reefs of space, Donderevo, jetless drive.

Death had taken other forms. The concealed trigger of a radar trap, the menacing horns of a radar-

headset, the more subtle and more worrisome peril of orders to the Body Bank; these were the

deaths he had known and learned to live with. These women, though, carried projectile weapons, not

radar. Queer, thought Ryeland, even in that moment, for if carried through the thought indicated

that there were some dangers to the person of the Planner's daughter that did not come from

classified Risks like himself. Could ordinary citizens—cleared citizens—be dangerous to the Plan?

But there was no answer to that question just then. Oporto was screaming under the attack of the

silvery doves, the woman guards were bearing down on them.

The girl stopped them all with a single word. "Wait." She swept a mound of bubbles away from her

face to see better, exposing a throat of alabaster. Her eyes were green-gray and serene. She

looked very lovely and very young.

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She caught Ryeland completely undefended.

In the isolation camp there had been no women—not even a pin-up picture; and here he was in the

presence of a most beautiful woman, in what should have been the privacy of her bath. Apart from

everything else, she could hardly have been unaware of the shattering effect she had on him. But

she seemed completely at ease. She said, in a voice more polite than curious: "What do you want?"

Ryeland coughed. "This man needs a doctor," he said hoarsely, looking away.

The first of the female guards laughed sharply. She was tall, brunette; a heroic figure of what

might have been a lovely girl, if reduced ten per cent in all dimensions. She said in a voice that

just missed being baritone: "Come on, Risk! We'll take care of you and your friend too!"

But the girl in the tub shifted position lazily. She waved an arm through the foam, watched the

bubbles billow in slow concentric waves and said: "Never mind, Sergeant. Take the sick man to a

doctor, if that's what he wants. Leave the other one here."

"But, Madam! The Planner—"

"Sergeant," said the gentle voice, not raised at all; the sergeant turned almost white. She

gestured at the others; they half carried Oporto out. The door closed behind them, cutting hi

twain a look of pure hatred and contempt that passed from the sergeant to Ryeland.

The doves, which had been describing precise circles in the air, shook themselves and returned to

the girl's shoulders. Their hot small eyes never left Ryeland, but after a moment they began to

coo again.

"You're an iron-collar man, aren't you?" the girl asked suddenly.

Ryeland nodded. "A risk. Yes."

"I've never spoken to an iron-collar man," she said thoughtfully. "Do you mind if we talk? I'm

Donna Creery. My father is the Planner."

"I know." Suddenly Ryeland was aware of his rumpled denims, of the fact that he was an intruder on

this girl's bath. He coughed. "Don't you think your father—I mean, I don't mind if we talk, but—"

"Good," said the girl, nodding gravely. She shifted position to get a better look at him. The

bubbles rippled wildly. "I was afraid you might be sensitive about it," she told him. "I'm glad

you're not. What's your name?"

Ryeland raised his chin and spread the coHar of his denim shirt to display the iron band.

"Steven Ryeland," she read, squinting to make out the glowing scarlet letters with his name and

number. "Why, I think I know that name. A doctor? No. A rocket pilot?"

"I am a mathematician, Miss Creery."

She cried: "Oh, of course! Your folder is on my father's desk. I saw it this morning, when we were

leaving Copenhagen."

An anxious eagerness took his breath. For three years he had been trying to learn the charges

against him. The

therapists had refused to give him information. Their questions had been carefully phrased to tell

him nothing— they had asked him a thousand times what the word spaceling meant, and punished him

more then once for guessing that it meant an inhabitant of space.

"Did the folder tell—" He gulped. "Did it specify any charges against me?"

Her greenish eyes surveyed him, unalarmed.

"You displayed unplanned interests."

"Huh? What does that mean?"

"You possessed a secret collection of books and manuscripts, which had not been approved by the

machine."

"No, I didn't." A cold breath touched the back of his neck. "There has been some terrible

mistake—"

"The Planning Machine permits no mistakes," she reminded him gravely. "The titles of the forbidden

books were listed in the folder. The authors were scientists of the wicked times before the Plan.

Einstein. Gamow. Hoyle—"

"Oh!" He gasped. "Then those were just my father's books—a few that I saved. You see, when I was a

kid I used to dream of going to space. I've met Ron Donderevo. I wanted to pilot a spaceship, and

discover new planets. The Machine killed that dream."

He sighed.

"It transferred me out of the Technicorps and reclassi-fied me as a research mathematician. It

assigned me to an installation somewhere underground—I don't know where it was; we were not

allowed even to guess whether we were under dry land or the ocean floor or the polar ice. I don't

remember, even, if I ever guessed. My memory has . . . holes in it. I had two helpers—a teletype

girl and a little man named Oporto, who is a sort of human computing machine. The Machine sent us

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problems, like the problem of hysterisis loss in the subtrain tunnels. They were problems the

Machine couldn't answer, I suppose— even it doesn't know quite everything. Anyhow, we solved the

problems.

"Of course I wasn't supposed to see reference books, because I could ask the Machine for any fact

I wanted. But for the sake of efficiency it had let me keep a few handbooks, and I had brought

those books of my father's among them."

He smiled at her hopefully.

"You see, for a man who had set his heart on space, life in a tunnel isn't very exciting. For a

sort of hobby, I read

those books about space. They were full of old theories about the nature of the universe. Using

modern mathematics, I worked out a new set of equations to describe the expanding universe and the

continuous creation of matter in the space bewteen the galaxies—"

Her frown checked him. This was not quite the sort of talk for a young girl in her bath!

"But that was not unplanned," he finished desperately. "It was just a harmless hobby. In fact, it

was useful to the Plan. The equations that I used in improving the helical field units were

derived from the equations that describe the continuous creation of matter and space."

"And that's what made you a risk?" She looked at him thoughtfully and frowned. "You don't look

dangerous."

He could find no answer to that. He waited while she waved a hand absent-mindedly. One of the

doves left her shoulder to fly, tinkling, to the crystal dolphin. It pecked precisely at a fin-

shaped lever on the dolphin's back, and obediently the spray of perfumed water dwindled away.

Ryeland watched, more than half lulled by the scent of lilac and the strangeness of his

surroundings. The room was warm but not steamy; invisible ducts must be sucking the moisture out,

"Are you dangerous?" the girl asked suddenly.

Ryeland said: "No, Miss Creery." He hesitated, wondering how to explain it to this child. "The

collar isn't a punishment. It's a precaution,"

"Precaution?"

He said steadily: "The Machine has reason to believe that under certain circumstances I might work

against the Plan of Man. I have never done anything, you must understand that. But the Machine

can't take chances, and so— the collar."

She said wonderingly: "But you sound as though you approve of it!"

"I'm loyal to the Plan!"

She thought that over. Then: "Well, aren't we all? But the rest of us don't wear iron collars."

He shook his head. "I never did anything that was against Security."

"But perhaps you did something that wasn't—quite?"

Ryeland grinned. She was amazingly easy to get along with, he thought; the grin became a smile—a

real one, and the first one he had worn in some time. "Yes," he admitted, "I did something that

wasn't There was a girL"

"Steven, Sieven!" Donna Creery shook her head mock-ruefully. "Always a girl. I thought that was

only in stories."

"In real life too, Miss Creery." He was almost relaxed ... Then, abruptly, her mood changed.

"Your folder contains another specification," she rapped out. "You are charged with concealing

information about a device which is dangerous to the security of the Plan of Man."

"But I'm not!" he protested desperately. "Somebody has made a mistake—in spite of the Machine. For

three years the therapists in the maximum-security camp have been working me over, trying to

extract information that I don't have."

Her eyes widened, with a calm concern.

"What kind of information?"

."I'm not sure." He winced, with remembered pain. *'They were careful not to give me hints, and

they punished me for guessing.

"They questioned me about a list of words," he said. "They strapped me down, with electrodes

clamped all over me, recording every reaction. They repeated the words a million times. Spaceling.

Reefs of space. Fusor-ian, Pyropod. Jetless drive. And two names—Ron Don-derevo and Daniel

Horrock.

"Putting all those words and names and other clues together, I guessed that the therapists thought

that Horrock had brought me a message from Donderevo. A message from space, about things called

reefs and spacelings and fusorians. Particularly, about something called a jet-less drive. That

was what they were trying to dig out of me—how to build a jetless drive."

She frowned.

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"What is a jetless drive?"

"There isn't any," he said. "Because a jetless drive would be a system of reactionless propulsion.

Crackpots for three hundred years have been trying to invent such a system, but everybody knows it

would be a violation of the Third Law of Motion. It's as impossible as pushing a rowboat forward

without pushing the water back."

"I see." She was nodding gravely. "Impossible as creating new atoms and new space between the

galaxies."

He looked at her sharply. "But I couldn't have bad a message from Horrock—or anybody else," he

insisted desperately. "Not when they seem to think I did. On the Friday it happened, Oddball

Oporto and the teletype girl

.JR.

had been with me all day. We were working late, finishing the specifications for the new helical

unit. I let Oddball go about eighteen hundred hours, because he was getting a headache. The

teletype girl went out with him, to bring coffee and sandwiches for us. They hadn't been gone half

an hour, when somebody knocked on the door. I thought it was the girl—but it was the Plan Police."

"That wasn't on Friday." Donna Creery*s eyes were veiled, strange. "According to the records in

your folder, you were taken into precautionary custody at eighteen hundred hours on a Monday

afternoon. That leaves at least three days missing from your story."

Ryeland gulped.

"That couldn't be!" He shook his head. "Oddball and the teletype girl had just gone out—"

"I studied your folder with considerable care." She failed to say why. "I am certain that you were

picked up on a Monday."

Ryeland felt a tingle of excitement. This was more than he had ever been able to learn about the

case against him.

"I suppose it's possible," he muttered. "At first I was in a place miscalled a recreation center,

somewhere underground. We weren't allowed to inquire where. The therapy sessions went on around

the clock. I had no way of knowing the time or the date.

"But I still don't know how to build a reactionless propulsion system. And I still believe that

the Machine has permitted itself to make a mistake."

Donna Creery shook her head reprovingly.

Ryeland stopped, the collar tight around his neck. This was crazy! Staying here like this with the

Planner's daughterl He said abruptly, harshly: "Miss Creery, I'm interrupting your bath. I must

go!"

She laughed, like a shimmer of pale music. "I don't want you to," she coaxed.

"But—your bath—"

"I always stay in the tub in these subtrain rides, Ste-ven. It's comfortable, when the up-grav

drag begins to work. And don't worry about my father. He rules the world—under the Plan, of

course! But he doesn't rule me." She was smiling. She could hardly be twenty, Rye-land thought

ruefully, but there was no more doubt in his mind that she knew she was a woman. She said

comfortably: "Sit down, Steven. There. On the bench."

One slim arm, wearing wristlets of foam, gestured at 18

an emerald bench next to the tub. The doves moved nervously as he approached.^Donna Creery said:

"Don't be afraid of my Peace Doves." He looked quizzically at the silver-steel beaks. "Oh, I'm

sorry they hurt your friend," she apologized, "but they thought he was going to hurt me. You see,

even without the guard I am protected."

She waved a hand, and faint music seeped into the room from concealed speakers. "What was the girl

like?" she demanded.

"She was beautiful," he said shortly.

"And dangerous?"

He nodded, but under the heavy weight of the collar the stiff hairs at the back of his neck were

trying to rise. Dangerous? This girl was far more dangerous to him. He had no right to be here.

The Machine would not be blind to this. But Donna Creery said soothingly: "Tell me about her. Was

she really lovely?"

"I believed she was. She had long yellow hair and green eyes. Eyes like yours. And she was in the

secret police, but I didn't know that until the day of the raid."

Laughter pealed from the girl's lips, and the Peace Doves fluttered their wings fretfully for

balance. "And she betrayed you. Are you afraid I might? But I won't, Steven, I promise."

He shrugged. *Tve told you. I suppose I was lucky, at that. I was sent to a maximum-security camp.

It could have been the Body Bank."

She tilted her head to ponder that, and he watched the red glints flow through the dark waves of

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her hair. At last she sighed and said, "And for that you became a Risk. But you should have been

more careful, Steven. You should not have defied the Plan. And now you have to wear that collar.

Can't you get it off?"

He laughed sharply.

She said seriously: "No, I suppose not. But if I were you, I think I might. You said you were a

mathematician. If I were a mathematician, and wore the collar, it would be only one more problem

for me. I would find a way to solve it."

He said with a touch of anger: 'The collar was invented by Colonel Zamfirescu, the best engineer

in the Technicorps—before he was salvaged himself. He thought of everything."

"It's only a metal band, Steven." 19

"The toughest armor plate in the world! And inside it there's a decapitation charge, fused with a

hydrogen power cell—it won't last forever, no, but it will keep full power for a century! And

that's longer than I can wait. And the collar's booby-trapped. If I try to cut it open— if I even

try to unlock it, and use the wrong key, or turn it the wrong way—it will kill me on the spot.

Have you ever seen a decapitation charge go off, Miss Creery? I have."

She shuddered, but she said: "If I were you, I would run away."

"Not very far! Radar runs faster. And even if you could get away—out to the Cold Planets, say, or

to one of the orbiting stations around Mercury—there's a timing device in the cpllar. It has to be

reset periodically, with a key. If not—boom. And you never know when; just that it will be less

than a year."

"Oh." She shook her head sadly. "Then you must take it off," she said wisely.

He laughed out loud; he couldn't help it. The idea was preposterous!

"Don't laugh, Steven. Ron Donderevo did," she told him.

"Donderevo! What do you know about Donderevo?"

She said, "Oh, a little. I knew him, you see, when I was very small. I remember seeing him with

the collar— and I saw him again, without."

He stopped, staring. He began: "You saw Donderevo—"

But there was a sudden, harsh knocking at the door. "Miss Creery!" a worried male voice clamored.

"The Planner has sent for that Risk!"

Ryeland sat bolt upright. For a moment he had forgotten; the voice had brought him back to the

realities of his life.

The girl said, "You'll have to go, Steven." She whispered, and one of the Peace Doves restlessly

rose from her shoulders and circled the room, its hot red eyes fixed on Ryeland. It touched the

door, and without sound the door opened. "Be careful," the girl said gently. "And don't think too

much about Angela."

"All right," Ryeland said, numb, walking like a mechanical man to where the radar-horned officer

of the Planner's guard waited for him, with an expression like malevolent granite. It wasn't until

the door had slid si-

lently closed behind him that he remembered he had never mentioned the name of the girl who

betrayed him, his teletype girl, Angela Zwick.

For all of Ryeland's life the Planner had been watching him. That fearless, genial, giant face had

looked down on him tfonri stereo posters in the home of his parents, the barracks of the

Technicubs, the classrooms of his school—in every public square, and all the laboratories and

buildings where he had worked. Ryeland knew that face as well as his own father's—better—and so

did every other human alive.

The Planner sat behind a great hardwood desk in a chair that was all air cushions and cunning

springs. He was looking absorbedly through a folder of papers on his desk. Uncomfortably Ryeland

stood waiting.

There was no resemblance between the Planner and his daughter. She was brunette and lovely, with

the face of a child saint; he was square and silver, a lion's face. His hair was short, gray-

white; it sat firmly on his head like a collision mat And over his head, on the back of the great

chair, a steel-gray raven sat frozen; but it was not an ornament, for slowly metal-sheathed eyes

opened and tiny bright red eyes peered out at Ryeland.

At last the Planner looked up and smiled. He said in a velvet bass voice: "Son, don't you check

in?"

Ryeland jumped. "Oh. Sorry, sir." He hurried over to the gold-plated teletype and tapped out his

name. The station plate on the machine said simply: "ONE".

The old man chuckled. "You're Steven Ryeland. I saw you once before, but you wouldn't remember

that."

Ryeland started. "Sir?"

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