Leinster, Murray - The Duplicators

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THE DUPLICATORS

NO TRUCE WITH TEHBA

IT OCCURRED to Link Denham, as a matter for mild regret, that he was about to wake up, and he'd had much too

satisfactory a pre-slumber evening to want to do so. He lay between sleeping and awake, and he felt a splendid peace-

fulness, and the festive events in which he'd relaxed after six months on Glaeth ran pleasantly through his mind. He didn't

want to think about Glaeth any more. He'd ventured forth for a large evening because he wanted to forget that man-killing

world. Now, not fully asleep and very far from wide-awake, snatches of charming memory floated through his

consciousness. There had been song, this past evening.

There had been conversation, man-talk upon matters of great interest and no importance whatever. And things had gone on

to a remarkably enjoyable climax.

He did not stir, but he remembered that one of his new-found intimate friends had been threatened with ejection from the

place where Link and others relaxed. There were protests, in which Link joined. Then there was conflict, in which he took

part. The intended ejectee was rescued before he was heaved into the darkness outside this particular spaceport joint. There

was celebration of his rescue. Then the spaceport cops arrived, which was an insult to all the warm friends who now

considered that they had been celebrating together.

Link drowsily and pleasurably recalled the uproar. There were many pleasing items it was delightful to review.

Somebody'd defied fate and chance and spaceport cops from a pyramid of piled-up chairs and tables. Link himself, with

many loyal comrades, had charged the cops who tried to pull him down. He recalled bottles spinning in the air, spouting

their contents as they flew. Spaceport cops turned fire hoses on Link's new friends, and they and he heaved chairs at

spaceport cops. Some friends fought cordially on the floor and others zestfully at other places, and all the tensions and all

the tautness of nerves developed on Glaeth—where the death rate was ten per cent a month among carynth-hunters—were

relieved and smoothed out and totally erased. So Link now felt completely peaceful and beatifically content.

Somewhere, something mechanical clicked loudly. Something else made a subdued grunting noise which was also

mechanical. These sounds were reality, intruding upon the blissful tranquility Link now enjoyed.

He remembered something. His eyes did not open, but his hand fumbled at his waist. He was reassured. His stake-belt was

still there, and it still contained the gritty small objects for which he'd risked his life several times a day for some

months in succession. Those pinkish crystals were at once the reason and the reward for his journey to Glaeth. He'd been

lucky. But he'd become intolerably tense. He'd been unable to relax when the buy-boat picked him up with other carynth-

hunters, and he hadn't been able to loosen up his nerves at the planet to which the buy-boat took him. But here, on this

remoter planet, Trent, he had relaxed at last. He was soothed. He was prepared to face reality with a cheerful confidence.

Remembering, he had become nearly awake. It occurred to him that the laws of the planet Trent were said to be severe.

The cops were stern. It was highly probable that when he opened his eyes he would find himself in jail, with fines to be

paid and a magistrate's lecture on proper behavior to be listened to. But he recalled unworriedly that he could pay his fines,

and that he was ready to behave like an angel, now that he'd relaxed.

The loud clicking sound repeated. It was followed again by the grunting noise. Link opened his eyes.

Something that looked like a Wall turned slowly around some six feet away from him. A moment later he found himself

regarding a corner where three walls came together. He hadn't moved his head. The wall moved. Again, later, a square and

more or less flat object with a billowing red cloth on it floated into view. He deduced that it was a table.

He was not standing on his feet, however. He was not lying on a bunk. He floated, weightless, in mid-air in a cubicle

perhaps ten feet by fifteen and seven feet high. The thing with the red cloth on it was truly a table, fastened to what ought

to be a floor. There were chairs. There was a doorway with steps leading nowhere.

Link closed his eyes and counted ten, but the look of things remained the same when he reopened them. Before his

relaxation of the night before, such a waking would have dis-

turbed him. Now he contemplated his surroundings with calm. He was evidently not in jail. As evidently, he was not

aground anywhere. The only possible explanation was unlikely to the point of insanity, but it had to be true. He was in a

spaceship, and not a luxurious one. This particular compartment was definitely shabby. And on the evidence of no-gravity,

the ship was in free fall. It was not exactly a normal state of things to wake up to.

There came again a loud clicking, followed by another Subdued mechanical grunt. Link made a guess at the origin of the

sounds. It was most likely a pressure-reduction valve releasing air from a high-pressure tank to maintain a lower pressure

somewhere else. If Link had taken thought, his hair would have stood on end immediately. But he didn't.

The cubicle, moving sedately around him, brought one of its walk within reach of his foot. He kicked. He floated away

from the ceiling to a gentle impact on the floor. He held on, more or less, by using the palms of his hands as suction-cups—

a most unsatisfactory system—and got within reach of a table-leg. He swung himself about and shoved for the doorway.

He floated to it in slow motion, caught hold of a stair-tread, got a grip on the door frame, and oriented himself with respect

to the room,

He was in the mess room of a certainly ancient and obviously small ship of space. All was shabbiness. Where paint had not

peeled off, it stayed on in blisters. The flooring was worn through to the metal plates beneath. There were other signs of

neglect. There had been no tidying of this mess room for a long time.

He heard a faint, new, rumbling sound. It stopped, and came again. It was overhead, in the direction the stairway led to.

The rumbling came once more. It was rhythmic.

Link grasped a hand-rail and heaved himself gently upward. He arrived at a landing, and the rumbling noise was louder.

This level of the ship contained cabins for the

crew. The rumbling came from a higher level still. He went up more steps, floating as before.

He arrived at a control-room which was antiquated and grubby and of very doubtful efficiency. There were ports, which

were covered with frost.

Somebody snored above his head. That was the rumbling sound. Link lifted his eyes and saw the snorer. A small, whiskery

man scowled portentiously even in his sleep. He floated in mid-air as Link had floated, but with his knees drawn up and his

two hands beside his cheek as if resting on an imaginary pillow. And he snored.

Link reflected, and then said genially,

"Hello!"

The whiskery man snored again. Link saw something familiar about him. Yes. He'd been involved in the festivity of the

night before. Link remembered having seen him scowling ferociously from the side lines while tumult raged and firehoses

played.

"Ship ahoy!" said Link loudly.

The small man jumped, in the very middle of a snore. He choked and blinked and made astonished movements, and of

course began to turn eccentric half-circles in mid-air. In one of his turnings he saw Link. He said peevishly,

"Dammit, don't stand there starin'! Get me down! But don't turn on the gravity! Want me to break my neck?"

Link reached up and caught a foot. He brought the little man down to solidity and released him.

"Huh!" said the little man waspishly. "You're awake."

"Apparently," admitted Link. "Are you?"

The little man snorted. He aligned himself and gave a shove. He floated through the air to the control board. He caught its

corner. He looked it over and pushed a button. Ship gravity came on. There was a sudden slight jolt, and then a series of

lesser jolts, and then the fine normal feeling of gravity and weight and up and down. Things abruptly

looked more sensible. They weren't, but they looked that way. '

"I'm curious," said Link. "Have you any idea where we are?"

The whiskery man said scornfully,

"Where we are? How'd I know? That's your business!"

His air grew truculent as Link didn't grasp the idea.

"My business?"

"You're the astrogator, ain't you? You signed on last night; I had to help you hold the pen, but you signed on! Astrogator,

third officer's ticket, and you said you could astro-gate a wash bucket from Sirius Three to the Rim with nothin' but a root-

rule and a logarithm table. That's what you said! You said you'd astrogated a Norse spaceliner six hundred lightyears tail-

first to port after her overdrive unit switched poles. You said—"

Link held up his hand.

"I ... er ... I recognize the imaginative style," he said painfully. "It's mine, in my more exuberant moments. But how did that

land me . . . wherever I am?"

"You made a deal with me," said the little man, truculently. "Thistlethwaite's the name. You signed on this ship, the

Glamorgan, an' you said you were an astrogator and I made the deal on that representation. It's four years in jail, on Trent,

to sign on or act as a astrogator unless you're duly licensed."

"Morbid people, the lawmakers of Trent," said Link. "What else?"

"You don't draw wages," said the whiskery man, as truculently as before. "You're a junior partner in the business I'm

startin'. You agreed to leave all matters but astrogation to me, on penalty of forfeitin' all moneys due or accrued or to

accrue. It's a tight contract. I wrote it myself."

"I am lost in admiration," said Link politely. "But—"

"We're goin'," said Thistlethwaite sternly, "to a planet I know. Another fella and me, we landed there in a spaceboat

after the ship we was in got wrecked. We made a deal with the . . . uh . . . authorjties. We took off again in the space-boat.

It was loaded down with plenty valuable cargo! We was to go back, but my partner—he was the astrogator of the

spaceboat—he took his share of the money and started cele-bratin'! Two weeks later he jumped out a window because he

thought pink gryphs was coming out of the wall after him. That left me sole owner of the business, but strapped for cash.

I'd been celebratin' too. So I bought the Glamorgan with what I had, an' bought a cargo for her."

"A very fine ship, the Glamorgan," said Link, politely. "But I'm a little dense this morning, or evening, or whatever it may

be. How do I fit into the picture of commercial enterprise aboard this splendid ship the Glamorgan?*

The whiskery man spat, venomously.

"The ship's junk," he snapped. "I couldn't get papers for her to go anywheres but to a junk yard on Bellaire to be scrapped. I

hadda astrogator and a fella to spell me in the engine room. They believed we was going to the junk yard, but we had some

trouble with the engines layin' down, and she leaked air. Plenty! So when we got to Trent those two run off. They're liable

to two years in jail for runnin' out on a contract concernin' personal services. Hell! They didn't think we'd make Trent!

They wanted to take to the spaceboat and abandon ship halfway there! And me with all my capital tied up in it!"

Link regarded his companion uncomfortably. Thistlethwaite snapped,

"So I was stuck on Trent with no astrogator an' port-dues pilin' up. Until you came along."

"Ah!" said Link. "I came along! Riding a white horse, no doubt, and kissing my hand to the ladies. Then what?"

"I asked you if you was a astrogater, and you told me yes."

"I hate to disappoint people," said Link regretfully. "I probably wanted to brighten up your day, or evening. I tried."

"Then," said Thistlethwaite portentiously, "I told you enough about what I'm goin' after so you said it was a splendid

venture, befittin' such men as you and me. You'd join me, you said. But you wanted to fight some more policemen before

liftin' off. I'd already drug you out of a fight where the spaceport cops was usin' fire-hoses on both sides. I told you fightin'

policemen carries six months in jail, on Trent. But you wouldn't listen. Even after I told you why we had' to take off

quick."

"And that reason was—"

"Spaceport dues," snapped the little man. "On the Glamorgan! Landin'-grid fees. On the Glamorgan! I run out of money!

Besides, there was grub and some parts for the engines that'd been givin' trouble. I bought 'em and charged 'em, like a

business man does, expectin' to come back some day and pay for 'em. But the spaceport people got suspicious. They were

goin' to seize the ship tomorrow—today—and sell her if they could for the port bills and grub bills and parts bills."

"I seel" said Link. "And I probably sympathized with you."

"You said," said the little man grimly, "that it was a conspiracy against brave an' valiant souls like us two, an' you'd only

fight two more policemen—six months more on top of what you was already liable to—and then we'd defy such crass and

commercial individuals and take off into the wild blue yonder."

Link reflected. He shook his head in mild disapproval

"So what happened?"

"You fought four policemen," said his companion succinctly. "In two separate scraps, addin' a year in jail to what you'd

piled up before."

"It begins to look," said Link, "as if I may have made myself unpopular on Trent. Is there anything else I ought to know?"

"They started to use tear gas on you," the whiskery man told him, "so you set fire to a police truck. To let the flames

lift up the gas, you said. That would be some more years in jail. But I got you in the'Glamorgan—"

"And got the grid to lift us off?" When the little man shook his head, Link asked hopefully. "I got the grid to lift us off? . . .

We persuaded—"

"Nope," said Thistlethwaite. "You just took off. On emergency rockets. Off the spaceport tarmac. With no clearance.

Leavin' the oiled tarmac on fire." Link winced. The little man went on inexorably, "We hit for space at six gees

acceleration and 'near as I can make out you kept goin' at that till the first rockets burned out. And then you went down into

the mess room."

"I suppose," said Link unhappily, "that I'd worked up an appetite. Or was there some way I could pile up a few more years

to spend in jail?"

"You went to sleep," said the little man. "And I wasn't goin' to bother you!"

Link thought it over.

"No," he agreed. "I can see that you mightn't have wanted to bother me. Do you intend to turn around and go back to

Trent?"

"What for?" demanded the little man bitterly. "For jail? An' for them to sell off the Glamorgan for port dues and such?"

"There's that, of course," acknowledged Link. "But I'd rather believe you wouldn't leave a friend in distress, or jail. All

right. I don't want to go back to Trent either. I'm an out-doorsy sort of character and I wouldn't like to spend the next

eighteen years in jail."

"Twenty-two," said Thistlethwaite. "And six months."

"So," finished' Link, "I'll play along. Since I'm the astro-gator I'll try to find out where we are. Then you'll tell me where

you want to go. And after that, some evening when there's nothing special to do, you'll tell me why. Right?"

"The why," snapped the whiskery man, "is I promised

to make you so rich y'couldn't spend the interest on y'moneyl And you a junior partner!"

"Carynths?" suggested Link.

Carynths were the galaxy's latest and most fabulous status1 gems. They couldn't be synthesized—they were said to be the

result of meteoric impacts on a special peach-colored ore—and they were as beautiful as they were rare. So far they'd only

been found on Glaeth. But if a woman had a carynth ring, she was somebody. If she had a carynth bracelet, she was

Somebody. And if she had a carynth necklace, she ruled society on the planet on which she was pleased to reside. But—

"Carynths are garbage," said Thisthethwaite contemptuously, "alongside of what's waitin' for us! For each one of what I'm

tradin' for, to bring it away from where we're goin', I'll get a hundred million credits an' half the profits after that! An' I'll

have a shipload of e'm! And it's all set! Now you do your stuff and I'll check over the engines."

He headed down the stairwell. He reached the first landing below. The second. Link heard a faint click and then a

mechanical grunting noise. At the sound, the little man howled enragedly. Link jumped.

"What's the matter?" he asked anxiously.

"We're leakin' air!" roared the little man. "Bleedin' it! You musta started some places, takin' off at six gees! All the air's

pourin' out!"

His words became unintelligible, but they were definitely profane. Doors clanged shut, cutting off his voice. He was

sealing all compartments.

Link surveyed the control room of the ship. In his younger days he'd aspired to be a spaceman. He'd been a cadet in the

Merchant Space Academy on Malibu for two complete terms. Then the faculty let him go. He liked novelty and excitement

and on occasion, tumult. The faculty didn't. His grades were all right but they heaved him out. So he knew

a certain amount about astrogation. Not much, but enough to keep from having to go back to Trent.

A door closed below. The little man's voice could be heard, swearing sulfurously. He got something from somewhere and

the door clanged behind him again, cutting off his voice once more.

Link resumed his survey. There was the control board, reasonably easy to understand.. There was the computer, simple

enough for him to operate. There were reference books. A Galactic Directory for this sector. Alditeh's Practical

Astrogation. A luridly bound volume of Space-Commerce Regulations. The Directory was brand new. The others were old

and tattered volumes.

Link went carefully over the ship's log, which contained every course steered, time elapsed, and therefore distance run in

parsecs and fractions of them. He could take the Glamorgan back to the last three ports she'd visited by reversing the

recorded maneuvers. But that didn't seem enterprising.

He skimmed through the Astrogator. He'd be somewhere not too many millions of miles from the sun of the planet Trent.

He'd take a look at the Trent listing in the Directory, copy out its coordinates and proper motion, check the galactic poles

and zero galactic longitude by observation out the ports, and then get at the really tricky stuff when he learned the ship's

destination.

He threw on the heater switch so he could see out the ports and observe the sun which shone on Trent. Instantly an

infuriated bellow came up from below. i

"Turn off the heat!" raged Thistlethwaite from below. Turn it off!"

"But the ports are frosted," Link called back. "I need to see out! We need the heaters!"

"I was sittin' on one! Turn 'em off!"

A door clanged below. Link shrugged. If Thistlethwaite

had to sit on a heater, the heater shouldn't be on. Delay was indicated.

He wasn't worried. The mood of tranquility and repose he'd waked with still stayed with him. Naturally! His current

situation might have seemed disturbing to somebody else, but to a man who'd just left the planet Glaeth, with its strictly

murderous fauna and flora and climatic conditions, to be aboard a merely leaking spaceship of creaking antiquity was

restful. That it was only licensed to travel to a junk yard for scrapping seemed no cause for worry. That it was bound on a

mysterious errand instead seemed interesting. With no cares whatever, Link was charmed to find himself in a situation

where practically anything was more than likely to happen.

He thought restfully of not being on Glaeth. There were animals there which looked like rocks and acted like stones until

one got within reach of remarkably extensible hooked claws. There were trees which dripped a corrosive fluid on any

moving creature that disturbed them. There were gigantic flying things against which the only defense was concealment,

and things which tunneled underground and made traps into which anything heavier than a rabbit would drc>]5 as the

ground gave way beneath it. And there was the climate. In the area in which the best finds of carynths had been made, there

was no record of rain having ever fallen, and noon temperature in the most favorable season hovered around a hundred

forty in the shade. But it was the only world on which carynths were to be found. The carynth-prospectors who landed

there, during the most favorable season, of course, sometimes got rich. Much more often they didn't. Only forty per cent of

those set aground at the beginning of the prospecting season met the buy-boat which came for them at its close. Link had

been one of that lucky minority. Naturally he did not feel alarm on the Glamorgan. He'd almost gotten used to GlaethI So

he waited peace-

fully until Thisthlethwaite said it was all right to turn on the heaters and melt the frost off the ports.

He began to set up for astrogation. The coordinates for Trent would go into the computer, and then the coordinates for the

ship's "-destination. The computer would figure the course between them and its length in parsecs and fractions of parsecs.

One would drive on that course. One could, if it was desirable, look for possible ports of call on the way. Link took down

the Directory to set up the first figures.

He happened to notice a certain consequence of the Directory's newness. It was the only un-shabby, un-worn object on the

ship. But even it showed a grayish, well-thumbed line on the edge of certain pages which had been often referred to. The

grayishness should be a guide to the information about Trent, as the Glamorgan's latest port of call. Link opened the

grayest page, pleased with himself for his acuteness.

But Trent wasn't listed on that page. Trent wasn't even in that part of the book. The heading of this particular chapter of

listings was, "Non-Cluster Planets Between Huyla and Glaire." It described the maverick solar systems not.on regular

trade-routes and requiring long voyages from commercial spaceports if anybody was to reach them. People rarely wanted

to.

Link stared. He found signs that this had been repeatedly referred to by somebody with engine-oil on his fingers. One page

had plainly been read and re-read and re-read. The margin was darkened as if an oily thumb had held a place there while

the item was gloated over.

From any normal standpoint it was not easy to understand.

"SORD" said the Directory. There followed the galactic coordinates to three places of decimals. "Yel. sol-type approx. 1.4

sok mass, mny faculae all times, spectrum—"

The spectrum-symbols could be skipped. If one wanted to be sure that a particular sun was such-and-such, one would

take a spectrophoto and compare it with the Directory: Otherwise the spectrum was for the birds. Link labored over the

abbreviations that compilers of reference books use to make things difficult.

"3rd. pi. blved. hob. ox atm. 2/3 sea nml brine, usual icecaps cloud-systems hab. est. 1."

Then came the interesting part. In the clear language that informative books use with such reluctance, he read:

"This planet is said to have been colonized from Surheil 11 some centuries since, and may be inhabited but no spaceport is

known to exist. The last report on this planet was from a spaceyacht some two centuries ago. The yacht called down asking

permission to land and was threatened with destruction if it did. The yacht took pictures from space showing specks that

could be villages or the ruins of same, but this is doubtful. No other landings or communications are known. Any records

which might have existed on Suheil 11 were destroyed in the Economic Wars on that planet."

In the Glamorgan's control room, Link was intrigued. He went back to the abbreviations and deciphered them. Sord was a

yellow sol-type sun with a mass of 1.4 sols and many faculae. Its third planet was believed habitable. It had an oxygen

atmosphere, two-thirds of its surface was sea, the sea was normal brine and there were the usual ice caps and cloud systems

of a planet whose habitability was estimated at one.

And two centuries ago its inhabitants had threatened to smash a spaceyacht which wanted to land on it.

According to Thistlethwaite, the bill for last evening's relaxation, for Link, amounted to twenty-some years to be served in

jail. Even with some sentences running concurrently, it was preferable not to return to Trent. On the other hand-

But it didn't really need to be thought about. Thistlethwaite plainly intended' to go to Sord Three, whose inhabitants

strongly preferred to be left alone. But they seemed to have made an exception in his favor. He was so anxious to get there

and so confident of a welcome that he'd bought the Glamorgan and loaded her up with freight, and he'd taken an unholy

chance in his choice of a ship. He'd taken another in depending on Link as an astrogator. But it would be a pity to

disappoint him!

So Link carefully copied down in the log the three coordinates of Sord Three, and hunted up its proper solar motion, and

put that in the log, and then put the figures for Trent in the computer and copied the answer in the log, too. It seemed the

professional thing to do. Then he scraped away frost from the ports and got observations of the Glamorgan's current

heading, and went back to the board and adjusted that. He was just entering the last item in the log when Thistlethwaite

came in. His hands were black from the work he'd done, and somehow he gave the impression of a man who had used up

all his store of naughty words and still was unrelieved.

"Well?" asked Link pleasantly.

"We're leakin' air," said the whiskered man bitterly. "It's whistlin' out! Playin' tunes as it goes! I had to seal off the

spaceboat blister. If we need that spaceboat we'll be in a fix! When my business gets goin', I'll never use another junk ship

like this! You raised hell in that take-off!"

'It's very bad?" asked Link.

"I shut off all the compartments I couldn't seal tight," said Thistlethwaite bitterly. "And there's still some leakage in the

engine room, but I can't find it. I ain't found it so far, anyways!"

Link said,

"How's the air supply?"

"I pumped up on Trent," said the little man. If they'd known, they'd ha' charged me for that, too!"

"Can we make out for two weeks?" asked Link.

"We can make out for ten!" snapped the whiskery one. "There's only two of us an' we can seal off everything but the

control room an' the engine room an' a way between 'em. We can go ten weeks!"

"Then," said Link relievedly, "we're all right." He made final adjustments. "The engines are all right?"

He looked up pleasantly, his hand on a switch.

"With coddlin'," said Thistlethwaite. "What're you doin?" he demanded suspiciously. "I ain't give you—"

Link threw the circuit-completing switch. The universe seemed to reel. Everything appeared to turn inside out, including

Link's stomach. He had the feeling of panicky fall in a contracting spiral. The lights in the control room dimmed almost to

extinction. The whiskery man uttered a strangled howl. This was the normal experience when going into overdrive travel at

a number of times the speed of light.

Then, abruptly, everything was all right again. The vision-ports were dark, but the lights came back to full brightness. The

Glamorgan was in overdrive, hurtling through emptiness very, very much faster than theory permitted in the normal

universe. But the universe immediately around the Glamorgan was not normal. The ship was in an overdrive field, which

does not occur normally, at all.

"What the hell've you done?" raged Thistlethwaite. "Where you headed for? I didn't tell you—"

"I'm driving the ship," said Link pleasantly, "for a place called Sord Three. There ought to be some good business

prospects there. Isn't that where you want to go?"

The little man's face turned purple. He glared.

"How'd you find that out?" he demanded ferociously.

"Why, I've got friends there," said Link untruthfully.

The little man leaped for him, uttering howls of fury.

Link turned off the ship's gravity. Thistlethwaite wound up bouncing against the ceiling. He clung there, swearing. Link

kept his hand on the gravity button. At any instant he could throw the gravity back on, and as immediately off again.

'Tut, tut!" said Link reproachfully. "Such naughty words. And I thought you'd be pleased to find your junior partner

displaying energy and enthusiasm and using his brains loyally to further the magnificent business enterprise we've started!"

THE Glamorgan bored on through space. Not normal space, of course. In the ordinary sort of space between suns and

planets and solar systems generally, a ship is strictly limited to ninety-eight-point-something per cent of the speed of light,

because mass increases with speed, and inertia increases with mass. But in an overdrive field the properties of space are

modified. The effect of a magnet on iron is changed past recognition. The effect of electrostatic stress upon dielectrics is

wholly abnormal. And inertia, instead of multiplying itself with high velocity, becomes as undetectable as at zero velocity.

In fact, theory says that a ship has no velocity on an overdrive field. The speed is of the field itself. The ship is carried. It

goes along for the ride.

But there was no thinking about such abstractions on the Glamorgan. The effect of overdrive was the same as if the ship

did pierce space at many times the speed of light Obviously, light from ahead was transposed a great many

octaves upward, into something as different from light as longwave radiation is from heat. This radiation was refracted

outward from the ship by the overdrive field, and was therefore without effect upon instruments or persons. Light from

behind was left there. Light from the sides was also refracted outward and away. The Glamorgan floated at ease in a

hurtling, unsubstantial space-stress center, and to try to understand it might produce a headache, but hardly anything more

useful.

But though the Glamorgan in overdrive attained the end of speed without the need for velocity, the human relationship

between Link and Thistlethwaite was less simple. The whiskery little man was impassioned about his enterprise. Link had

guessed his highly secret destination, and Thistlethwaite was outraged by the achievement. Even when Link showed him

how Sord Three had been revealed as the objective of the voyage, Thistlethwaite wasn't mollified. He clamped his lips shut

tightly. He refused to give any further intimation about what he proposed to do when he arrived at Sord Three. Link knew

only that he'd touched ground there in a space-boat with one companion and they'd left with a valuable cargo, and now

Thistlethwaite was bound back there again, if Link could get him there.

There were times when it seemed doubtful. Then Link blamed himself for trying it. Still, Thistlethwaite had chosen the

Glamorgan on his own and had gotten as far as Trent in her. But there were times when it didn't appear that the ship would

ever get anywhere else. The log book had a plenitude of emergencies written in its pages as the Glamorgan went onward.

She leaked air. They didn't try to keep the inside pressure up to the standard 14.7 pounds. They compromised on eleven,

because they'd loose less air at the lower pressure. Even so, the fact that the Glamorgan leaked was only one of her

oddities. She also smelled. Her air system was patched and

her generators were cobbled, and at odd moments she made unrefined noises for no reason that anybody could find out.

The water pressure system sometimes worked and sometimes did not. The refrigeration unit occasionally turned on when it

shouldn't and sometimes didn't when it should. It was wise to tap the thermostat several times a day to keep frozen stores

from thawing.

The overdrive field generator was also a subject for nightmares. Link didn't understand overdrive, but he did know that a

field shouldn't be kept in existence by hand-wound outer layers on some of the coils, with wedges driven in to keep

contacts tight which ought to be free to cut off in case of emergency. But it could be said that everything about the ship was

an emergency. Link would have come to have a very great respect for Thistlethwaite because he kept such tinkered

wreckage working. But he was appalled at the idea of anybody deliberately trusting his life to it.

The thing was, he realized ultimately, that Thistlethwaite was an eccentric. The galaxy-is full of crackpots, each of whom

has mysterious secret information about illimitable wealth to be found on the non-existent outer planets of rarely visited

suns, or in the depths of the watery satellites of Cepheids. But crackpots only talk. Their ambition is to be admired as men

of mystery and vast secret knowledge. They will never try actually to find the treasures they claim to know about. If you

offer to provide a ship* and crew to pick up the riches they describe in such detail, they'll impose impossible conditions.

They don't want to risk their dreams by trying to make them come true.

But Thistlethwaite wasn't that way. He wasn't a crackpot. '.-: his description of the wealth awaiting him, Link con-?:dered

that he must be off the beam. There was no such treasure in the galaxy. But he'd been on Sord Three, and h«'d had some

money—enough to buy the Glamorgan and ber cargo—and he was trying to get back. He'd cut Link

in out of necessity, because the Glamorgan had to get off Trent when she did, or not get off at all. So Thistlethwaite

was not a crackpot. But an eccentric, that he was!

Fuming but resolute, the little man tried valiantly to make the ship hold together until his project was completed.

From the beginning four compartments besides the spaceboat blister were sealed off because they couldn't be made

airtight. A fifth compartment lost half a pound of air every hour on the hour. Thistlethwaite labored over it, daubing

extinguisher-foam on joints and cracks until he found where the foam vanished first. Then he lavishly applied

sealing-compound. This was not the act of a crackpot who only wants to be admired. It was consistent with a far-out

mentality which would run the wildest of risks to carry out a purpose. Moreover, when after days of labor he still

couldn't bring the air loss down below half a pound a day, he sealed off that compartment too. The Glamorgan had

been a tub to begin with. Now she displayed characteristics to make a reasonably patient man break down and cry.

Link offered to help in the sealing-off process. Thistlethwaite snapped at him.

"You tend to your knitting and I'll tend to mine," he said acidly. "You're so smart at workin' out things I want to keep

to myself."

"I only found out where we're going," said Link. "I didn't find out why."

*To get rich," snapped Thistlethwaite. That's why! I want to get rich! I spent my life bein' poor. Now I want to get

kowtowed to! My first partner got money and he couldn't wait to enjoy it. I've waited. I'm not telling anybody

anything! I know what I'm goin" to do. I got a talent for business. I never had a chance to use it. No capital. Now I'm

goiag to get rich and do things like I always wanted to do."

Link asked more questions and the little man turned waspishly upon him.

"That's my business, like runnin' this ship to where we're goin' is yours! You leave me be! I'm not riskin' you knowin'

what I know. I'm not takin' the chance of you figurin' you'll do better cheating me than playin' fair."

This was shrewdness, after a fashion. There are plenty of men who quite simply and naturally believe that the way to

profit in any enterprise is to double-cross their associates. The whiskery man had evidently met them. He wasn't sure

Link wasn't one of them. He kept his mouth shut.

"Eventually," said Link, "I'm going to have to come out of overdrive to check my course. Is that all right with you?"

"That's your business!" rasped Thistlethwaite. "You tend to your business and I'll tend to mine!"

He disappeared, prowling around the ship, checking the air pressure, spending long periods in the engine room and

not unfrequently coming silently and secretly up the stairway to the control room to regard Link with inveterate

suspicion.

It annoyed Link. So when he determined that he should break out of overdrive to verify his position—a dubious

business considering the limits of his knowledge—he did not notify Thistlethwaite. He simply broke out of

overdrive.

There should have been merely an instant of intolerable vertigo and of intense nausea, and then the sensation of a

spiral fall toward infinity, but nothing more. Those sensations occurred. But as they began there was also a wild,

rasping rear in the engine room. Lights dimmed. Thistlethwaite bowled with fury and flung himself down into an

inferno of Mae arcs and stinking scorched insulation. In that incredible •ightmare-like atmosphere he hit something

with a stick. He polled violently on a rope. He spun a wheel rapidly. And Ibe arcs died. The ship's ancient air system

began to struggle with the smoke and smells.

It took him two days to make repairs, during which he did

not address one syllable to Link. But Link was busy anyhow. He was taking observations and checking the process with the

Practical Astrogator as he went along. Then he used the computer to make his observations mean something. He faithfully

wrote all these exercises in the ship's log. It helped to pass the time. But when determination of the ship's position by three

different methods gave the same result, he arrived at the astonishing conclusion that the Glamorgan was actually on course.

He was composing a tribute to himself for the feat when Thistlethwaite came bristling into the control room.

"I fixed what you messed up," he said bitterly. "We can go on now. But next time you do something, don't do it till you ask

me, and I'll fix it so you can. You could've wrecked us."

Link opened his mouth to ask what could be a more complete wreck than the Glamorgan right now, but he refrained. He

arranged for Thistlethwaite to go down into the engine room. He shouted down the stairways. Thistlethwaite bellowed a

reply. Link checked the ship's heading again, glanced at the ship's chronometer, and threw the overdrive on.

Nothing happened except vertigo and nausea and the feeling of falling in a spiral fashion toward nowhere at all. The

Glamorgan was again in overdrive. The little man came in, brushing off his hands.

"That's the way," he said truculently, "to handle this ship!"

Link scribbled a memo of the instant the Glamorgan had gone into overdrive.

"In two days, four hours, thirty-three minutes and twenty seconds," he observed, "we'll want to break out again. We ought

to be somewhere near Sord, then."

"If," said Thistlethwaite suspiciously, "if you're not tryin' to put something over on me!" j

Link shrugged. He'd begun to wonder, lately, why he'd

come on this highly mysterious journey. In one sense he'd had good reason. Jail. But now he began to be restless. He wore

a stake-belt next to his skin, and in it he had certain small crystals. There were people who would murder him

enthusiastically for those crystals. There were others who would pay him very large sums for them. The trouble was that he

had no specific idea of what he wanted to do with a large sum. Small sums, yes. He could relax with them. But large

ones— He felt a need for the pleasingly unexpected. Even the exciting.

One day passed and he was definitely impatient. He was bored. He couldn't even think of anything to write in the log book.

There'd been a girl about whom he'd felt romantic, not so long ago. He tried to think sentimentally about her. He failed. He

hadn't seen her in months and she was probably married to somebody else now. The thought didn't bother him. It was

annoying that it didn't. He craved excitement and interesting happenings, and he was merely heading for a planet that

hadn't made authenticated contact with the rest of the galaxy in two hundred years, and then had promised to shoot

anybody who landed. He was only in a leaky ship whose machinery broke down frequently and might at any time burn out.

He was, in a word, bored.

The second day passed. Four hours, thirty-three minutes remained. He tried to hope for interesting events. He knew of no

reason to anticipate them. If Thistlethwaite were right, there would be only business dealings aground, and presently an

attempt to get to somewhere else in the Glamorgan, and after that-

The whiskery man went down into the engine room and bellowed that everything was set. Link sat by the control board,

leaning on his elbows, in a mood of deep skepticism. He didn't believe anything in particular was likely to happen.

Especially he didn't believe in Thistlethwaite's story of

fabulous wealth. There was nothing as valuable as Thistle-thwaite described. Such things simply didn't exist. But

since he'd come this far-Two minutes to go. One minute twenty seconds. Twenty seconds. Ten . . . five . . . four . . .

three . . . two . . . onel

He flipped the overdrive switch to off. There were the customary sensations of dizzy fall and vertigo and nausea.

Then the Glamorgan floated in normal space, and there was a sun not unreasonably far away, and all the sky was

stars. Link was even pessimistic about the identity of the sun, but a spectro-photo identified it. It was truly Sord.

There were planets. One. Two. Three. Three had ice-caps; it looked as if two-thirds of its surface was sea, and in

general it matched the Directory's description. It might . . . just possibly . . . be inhabited.

A tediously long time later the Glamorgan floated in orbit around the third planet out from its sun. Mottled land

masses whipped by below. There were seas, and more land masses.

Thistlethwaite watched in silence. There could be no communication with the ground, even if the ground was

prepared to communicate. The Glamorgan's communication-system didn't work. Link waited for the little man to

identify his destination. When it was named there would probably be trouble.

"No maps," said Thistlethwaite bitterly, on the second time around. "I asked Old Man Addison for a map but he

hardly knew what I meant. They never bothered to make 'em! But Old Man Addison's Household is near a sea. Near

a bay, with mountains not too far off."

Link was not relieved. It isn't easy to find a landmark of limited size on a large world from a ship in space that has no

maps or even a working communicator. But on the

fourth orbital circuit, clouds that had formerly hidden a certain place had moved away. Thistlethwaite pointed.

"That's it!" he said, scowling as if to cover his own doubts. "That's it! Get her down yonder!"

Link took a deep breath. Standard spaceport procedure is for a ship to call down by communicator, have coordinates

supplied from the ground, get into position, and wait. Then the landing grid reaches out its forcefields and lets the

ship down. It is neat, and comfortable, and safe. But there was no landing grid here. There was no information. And

Link had no experience, either.

He made one extra orbit to fix the indicated landing point in his mind and to try to guess at the relative speed of ship

and planetary surface. On the seventh circling of the planet, he swung the ship so it traveled stern-first and its

emergency rockets could be used as retros. The drive-engine would be useless here. Thistlethwaite stayed in the

control room to watch. He chewed agitatedly on wisps of whisker.

The ship hit atmosphere. There was a keening, howling ! sound, as if the ancient hull were protesting its own

destruction. There were thumpings and bumpings. Loose plates rattled at their rivets and remaining welds.

Something came free and battered thunderously at other hull-plates before it went crazily off to nowhere. Vibration

began. It became a thoroughly ominous quivering of all the ship. Link threw over the rocket lever, and the vibration

ceased to increase as the emergencies bellowed below. He gave them more power, and more, until the decelleration

made it difficult to stand. Then, at very long last, the vibration seemed to lessen a very little.

The ship descended into a hurricane of wind from its own motion. Unbelievable noises sounded here and there. The

hole where a plate had torn away developed an organ tone with the volume of a baby earthquake's roar.

The ship hurtled on. Far ahead there was blue sea. Nearer,

there were mountains. There was a sandy look to the surface of the soil. Clouds enveloped the ship, and she came out

below them, bellowing, and Link gave the rockets more braking power. But the ground still seemed to race past at an

intolerable speed. He tilted the ship until her rockets did not support her at all, but only served as brakes.

Then she really went down, wallowing. He fought her, learning how to land by doing it, but without even a close idea of

what it should feel like. Twice he attempted to check his descent at the cost of not checking motion toward the now-not-so-

distant shoreline. He began to hope. He concentrated on matching speed with the flowing landscape.

He made it. The ship moved almost imperceptibly with respect to such landmarks as he could see. Something vaguely

resembling a village appeared, far below, but he could not attend to it. The ship suddenly hovered, no more than five

thousand feet high. Then Link, sweating, started to ease down.

Thistlethwaite protested agitatedly,

"I saw a village! Get her down! Get her down!"

Link cut the rockets entirely; the ship began to drop like a stone, and he cut them in again and out and in.

The Glamorgan landed with a tremendous crash. It teetered back and forth, making loud grinding noises. It steadied. It

stopped.

Link mopped his forehead. Thistlethwaite said accusingly,

"But this ain't where we shoulda landed! We shoulda stopped by that village! And even that ain't the one I want!"

"This is where we did land," said Link, "and lucky we made it! You don't know how lucky!"

He went to a port to look out. The ship had landed in a sort of hollow, liberally sprinkled with boulders of various shapes

and sizes. Sandy hillocks with sparse vegetation on their slopes appeared on every hand. Despite the ship's up-

right position, Link could not see over the hills to a true horizon.

"Ill go over to that village we saw comin' down," said Thistlethwaite importantly, "an" arrange to send a message to my

friends. Then we'll get down to business. And there's never been a business like this one before in all the time since us men

stopped swappin' arrowheads! You stay here an' keep ship."

He swung the ship's one weapon, a stun gun, over his shoulder. It gave him a rakish air. He put on a hat.

"Yep. You keep ship till I come back!"

He went down the stairs. Link heard him go down all the levels until he came to the exit port in one of the ship's landing

fins. From the control room he saw Thistlethwaite stride grandly to the top of the nearest hill, look exhaustively from there,

and then march away with an air of great and confident composure. He went out of sight beyond the hillcrest.

Link went down to the exit port himself. The air in the opening was fresh and markedly pleasant to breathe. He felt that it

was about time that something interesting happened. This wasn't it. Here was only commonplace landscape, commonplace

sky, and commonplace tedium. He sat on the sill of the open exit port and waited without expectation for something

interesting to happen.

Presently he heard tiny clickings. Two small animals, very much like pigs in size and appearance, came trotting hurriedly

into view. Their hoofs had made the clicking sounds. ' They saw the ship and stopped short, staring at it. They didn't look

dangerous.

"Hi, there," said Link companionably.

The small creatures vanished instantly. They plunged

behind boulders. Link shrugged. He gazed about him. After

1 a little, he saw an eye peering at him around a boulder. It

was the eye of one of the pig-like animals. Link moved abruptly and the eye vanished.

A voice spoke, apparently from nowhere. It was scornful.

"Jumpy, huh? Scared?"

"I was startled," said Link mildly, "but I wouldn't say I was scared. Should I be?"

The voice said sardonically,

"Huh!"

There was silence again. There was stillness. A very sparse vegetation appeared to have existed where the Glamorgan

came down on her rockets. Those scattered bits of growing stuff had been burned to ash by the rocket flames, but at the

edge of the burned area some few small smouldering fragments sent threads of smoke skyward to be dissipated by wind

that came over the hilltops. On a hillcrest itself a tiny sand-devil whirled for a moment and then vanished.

The voice said abruptly and scornfully,

"You in the door there! Where'd you come from?"

Link said agreeably,

"From Trent."

"What's that?" demanded the voice, disparagingly.

"A planet—a world like this," explained Link.

The voice said,

"Huh!" There was a long pause. It said, "Why?"

Link had no idea what or who his unseen questioner might be, but the tone of the questioning was scornful. He felt that a

certain impressiveness on his own part was in order. He said,

"That is something to be disclosed only to proper authority. The purpose of my companion and myself, however, is entirely

admirable. I may say that in time to come it is probable that the anniversary of our landing will be celebrated over the

entire planet."

Having made the statement, he rather admired it. Al-

most anything could be deduced from it, yet it did not mean a thing.

There was again a silence. Then the voice said cagily,

"Celebrated by uffts?"

Here Link made a slight but natural error. The word "uffts," which was unfamiliar, sounded very much like "us," and he

took it for the latter. He said profoundly,

"I would say that that is a reasonable assumption."

Dead silence once more. It lasted for a long time. Then the same voice said sharply,

"Somebody's coming."

There came a scurrying behind the boulders. Little click-ings sounded. There were flashes of pinkish-white hide. Then the

two pig-like creatures darted back into view, galloping madly for the hillcrest over which they'd come. They vanished

beyond it. Link spoke again, but there was no reply.

For a long time silence lay over the hollow in which the Glamorgan had come to rest. Link spoke repeatedly—chattily,

seriously. The silence seemed almost ominous. He began to realize that Thistlethwaite had been gone for a long time. It

was well over an hour, now. He ought to be getting back.

He didn't come. Link was genuinely concerned when, at least another half-hour later, a remarkably improbable cavalcade

came leisurely over the hillcrest, crossed by Thistlethwaite to begin with, and the pig-like animals later. The members of

the cavalcade regarded the ship interestedly, and came on at a deliberate and unhurried pace. There were half a dozen men,

mounted on large, splay-footed animals which had to be called unicorns because from the middle of their foreheads

drooped flexible, flabby, horn-shaped appendages. The appendages looked discouraged. The facial expression of the

animals who wore them was of complete, inquiring idiocy.

That was the first impression. The second was less pleasing. The leader of the riders wore Thistlethwaite's hat—it

was too small for him—and had Thistlethwaite's stun gun slung over his shoulder. Another rider wore Thistlethwaite's shirt

and a third wore the whiskery man's- pants. A fourth had his shoes dangling as an ornament from his saddle. But of

Thistlethwaite himself there was no sign.

All the newcomers carried long spears, lances, and wore at their belts large knives in decorated scabbards half the length of

a sword.

The cavalcade came comfortably but ominously toward the Glamorgan. It came to a halt, its members regarding Link with

expressions whose exact meaning it was not easy to decide. But Thistlethwaite had marched away from the ship with the

only weapon on board, a stun rifle. The leader of this group carried it, but without any sign of familiarity with it. Link

considered that he could probably get inside the ship with the port door closed before anything drastic could happen to him.

He should, too, find out what had happened to Thistlethwaite. So he said,

"How do your do? Nice weather, isn't it?"

THERE WAS a movement among the members of the cavalcade. The leader, wearing Thistlethwaite's hat and carrying his

stun rifle, looked significantly at his followers. Then he turned to Link and spoke with a certain painful politeness. There

was no irony in it. It was manners. It was the most courteous of greetings.

"I'm pretty good, thank you, suh. And the weather's pretty good too, only we could do with a mite of rain." He paused,

and said with an elaborate stateliness, "I'm the Householder of the Household over yonder. We heard your ship come down

and we wondered about it. An' then ... uh ... somethin' happened and we come to look it over. We never seen a ship like this

before, only o'course there's the tales from old times about 'em."

His manner was one of vast dignity. He wore Thistlethwaite's hat, and his companions or followers wore everything else

that Thistlethwaite had had on in the Glamorgan. But he ignored the fact. It appeared that he obeyed strict rules of

etiquette. And of course, people who follow etiquette are bound by it even in the preliminaries to homicide. Which is

important if violence is in the air. Link took advantage of the known fact.

"It's not much of a ship," he said deprecatingly, "but such as it is I'm glad to have you see it."

The leader of the cavalcade was visibly pleased. He frowned, but he said with the same elaborate courtesy,

"My name's Harl, suh. Would you care to give me a name to call you by? I wouldn't presume for more than that."

Out of the corner of his eye Link saw that two pig-like animals had appeared not far away. They might be the same two

he'd seen before. They squatted on their haunches and watched curiously what went on as between men. He said,

"My name's Link. Link Denham, in fact. Pleased to meet you."

"The same, suhl The same!" The leader's tone became warm while remaining stately. "I take that very kindly, Link, tellin'

me your last name, too. And right off! Denham . . . Denham ... I never met none of your Household before, but I'll

remember it's a mannerly group. Would you . . $ uh . . . have anything else to say?"

Link thought it over.

"I've come a long way," he observed. "I'm not sure what to say that would be most welcome."

"Welcome!" said the man who called himself Harl. He beamed. "Now, that's right nice! Boys, we been welcomed by this

here Link and he's told us his last name and that's manners! This here gentleman ain't like that other fella! We're guestin'."

He slipped from his saddle, hung Thistlethwaite's stun gun on his saddle horn, and leaned his spear against the Glamorgan.

He held out his hand cordially to Link. Link shook it. Harl's followers similarly divested themselves of weapons. They

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THEDUPLICATORSCopyright©,1964,byMurrayLeinsterAllRightsReservedNOTRUCEWITHTEHBACopyright©,1964,byAceBooks,Inc.PrintedinU.S.A.ITOCCURREDtoLinkDenham,asamatterformildregret,thathewasabouttowakeup,andhe'dhadmuchtoosatisfactoryapre-slumbereveningtowanttodoso.Helaybetweensleepingandawake,andhefeltasplend...

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