Short Fiction quotes

With sunset, there was rain.

When Dougald Anson brought his boat in to Krakenau harbor, there was only a vast wet darkness around him.

But it didn’t matter. All the universe didn’t matter. There was only Ellen, and his own dead kin, and himself.

A man’s heart can only hold so much.

Janazik stood quietly back, watching his friend’s restless prowling. He had seen that pacing before, and he knew that some scheme would come out of it, crazy and reckless and desperate, with his own cool unhuman intelligence to temper it and make it workable.

they’re kept properly at home till time for marriage and then they know their place as mothers and houseguiders. Our boys are raised to respect the gods and the king, to fight, and to speak truth.

Death is a little thing, Flandry, it comes to everyone in his time and he cannot stay it, but honor lives forever.

“We don’t corrupt ourselves. We keep honor at home and root out disgrace with death and torture. We live our code. And that is really why we will win.”

“We don’t corrupt ourselves. We keep honor at home and root out disgrace with death and torture. We live our code. And that is really why we will win.”

Battleships help, thought Flandry.

And then, looking into the cold bright eyes: He’s a fanatic. But a hell of a smart one. And that kind makes the most dangerous enemy.

“No. But he might use a pitchfork.

Tools don’t mind dirt.

The man who wields them doesn’t even have to know the details—But let’s get back to business.” Flandry relaxed even more lazily. “Here’s a nice little bit of information which only highly placed Imperials know.

“

An oath is only a means to an end. Don’t let the means override the end.

”

“That’s right,” nodded Walton. “

The biggest mistake they ever made was to kidnap Captain Flandry. They should have played safe and kept some nice harmless cobras for pets!

”

“Of course, Scotha was especially susceptible to this kind of sabotage. Your much-vaunted honesty was your own undoing. By carefully avoiding any hint of dishonorable actions, you became completely ignorant of the techniques and the preventive measures.

Your honor was never more than a latent ability for dishonor.

All I had to do, essentially, was to point out to your key men the rewards of betrayal. If they’d been really honest, I’d have died at the first suggestion. Instead—they grabbed at the chance.

The red lips curved in a cynical smile. “Human purposes have a habit of ending this way. The mighty warrior, the scourge of the seas, ends in a foul prison cell waiting for an unimaginative death.

The old epics lied, didn’t they? Life isn’t quite the glorious adventure that fools think it to be.

”

They came out, finally, on a narrow beach under the looming western cliffs. The precipices climbed into the utter dark of night, reaching into the unseen sky. Before them lay open sea, swirling with phosphorescence. Corun drew deep lungfulls of air.

Salt and seaweed and wet wild wind⁠—sand under his feet, sky overhead, a woman beside him⁠—by the gods, it was good to be alive!

A galley was moored against a tiny pier. By the light of bobbing torches, Corun’s mariner’s eye surveyed her. She was built along the same lines as his own ship, a lean black vessel with one square sail;

“It is only Shorzon’s spell,” she said. “It affects us too, to some extent. And it makes the ship invisible to anyone within seeing range.”

Ghost ship, ghost crew, slipping over the slowly heaving waters.

There was only the foggiest outline to be seen, shadow of mast and rigging against the sky, glimpses of water through the gray smoke of the hull, blobs of darkness that were the crewmen. Sound was still clear;

“Oh, yes, oh, yes. Surely you do not think that we plain sailormen will be asked for our opinions?

No, Corun, we are only pieces on Shorzon’s board. We’ve done our part, and now he will put us back in the box.

”

The man listened to it and to the low muttering of the earth, for those at least were real and he was not at all sure whether the other things were there or not.

Even after two hundred years, he wasn’t sure.

He went on through the mist. Flowers grew up around him, great fragile laceries of shining crystalline petals that budded and bloomed and died even as he walked by.

On Tanith, thought Langdon with a quiet sort of exultation, a man drank his cup to the bottom, and there were many cups—or, if only one, it was never the same and could never be emptied.

For a man on Tanith did not grow old.

Suddenly he stiffened, and a psyche-feeder swooped low to absorb his furiously radiated nervous energy. The reaction of it eddied in his mind as a chilling fear.

“Intellectual understanding of a problem never solves it, though it may help. Eileen takes your word for these being purely natural phenomena. She’s not superstitious. It might help if she were! Because explaining the horror doesn’t lessen it to her.

Man is not a rational animal, Joseph, though he likes to pretend he is.

”

It had started a few days before, in the private office of the trader Wisby.

“I came to Mars,” said Riordan, “to get me an owlie.”

Wisby had learned the value of a poker face. He peered across the rim of his glass at the other man, estimating him.

Well, it had been a good hunt. “So long,” whispered Riordan, and squeezed the trigger.

Since the sandmouse had crawled into the barrel, the gun exploded.

Riordan heard the roar and saw the barrel peel open like a rotten banana. He wasn’t hurt, but as he staggered back from the shock Kreega lunged at him.

But there was other business first. He didn’t hate Riordan, but

Mars is a hard world.

He went back and dragged the Earthling into a cave and hid him beyond all possibility of human search parties finding him.

When he was gone, I sat smoking and trying to gather up the will to leave. There was a darkness in me. What, after all, was I doing here?

Gods, I believed I was in the right, but why is right so pitiless?

On Earth they represent the goddess of justice as blind. On Valgolia she has fangs.

When he was gone, I sat smoking and trying to gather up the will to leave. There was a darkness in me. What, after all, was I doing here? Gods, I believed I was in the right, but why is right so pitiless?

On Earth they represent the goddess of justice as blind. On Valgolia she has fangs.

Barbara came over and sat on the arm of my chair. “What’s the matter, Con?” she asked. “You look pretty grim these days.”

But only the drivers were crippled, and then the Supernova yanked the vessels to its titan flanks and held them in unbreakable gravity beams. The crews would be taken later, with narcotic gas or paralyzer beams—alive.

For the Empire needs its rebels.

I knew the uselessness of going to battle stations, so I hung behind, seeking out Barbara, whose place was with the missile computer bank. I met her and Kane in the hallway. The boy’s face was white, and there were tears running down his cheeks.

… would learn something of what we had to teach them, that all races, however divergent, must respect each other and work together, learn it with an intensity which the merely intellectual teaching of schools and propaganda could not achieve alone—or, at any rate, soon enough.

Valgolia is the great and lonely enemy, the self-appointed Devil since none of us can be angels.

It is the source of challenge and adversity such as has always driven intelligence onward and upward, in spite of itself.

Her dark head lifted in pride.

“I am Empress of the guardsmen too,” she said.

“As you like,” shrugged Alfric.

“Valkarion, the last citadel of civilization, the last hope of the dying world, to be wasted by a heathen bandit—perhaps the priests are right, Alfric of Aslak. Perhaps you should die.”

“Luigur take your damned prophecy!” he snarled.

They stood tautly facing each other in the thin chill moonlight. The wind blew and blew, whining between the empty ruins of houses, blowing the dust of their erosion along the empty street.

They stood tautly facing each other in the thin chill moonlight.

The wind blew and blew, whining between the empty ruins of houses, blowing the dust of their erosion along the empty street.

“I know your old Imperial towns,” said Alfric savagely.

He laughed again, and kissed her for a very long moment.

“You are a fool and a madwoman, and I love you for that,” he said. “Come⁠—we can still show these priests the color of steel!”

They trotted rapidly along the ways, their mail clanking. Erelong they were out of the deserted district and approaching the central forum.

he would cover her and then pass on, and out of that wedding would come the fate of the world. Cold fate, dark destiny—night and famine and death, the moons hurtling over a world sunk into final oblivion.

Well, men died, sometime or other, and all they could do about it was to meet the end bravely.

Alfric squared his shoulders and marched into the Temple.

“A big task. Too big, perhaps, for the son of an Aslakan peasant.” Alfric smiled crookedly down at Hildaborg. “ ’Tis more for you, who are born a queen. Best I continue my travels.”

“The queen,” she said firmly, “needs a king. You have come to the end of your wandering, Alfric.”

She laughed, a clear beautiful sound in the quiet morning. “You have no choice, my dear. The Sibyl grudgingly admits that the Fortieth Dynasty, ‘sons of the heathen,’ will be among the greatest. But how can you have sons without—”

She laughed, a clear beautiful sound in the quiet morning. “You have no choice, my dear. The Sibyl grudgingly admits that the Fortieth Dynasty, ‘sons of the heathen,’ will be among the greatest. But how can you have sons without—”

Alfric grinned. “I surrender,” he said. “Who am I to challenge the Fates?”

Down in the street a hengist, escaped from his owner in the rioting, whinnied his greeting to the early sun.

We’re in the same brain, you know, and we’ll have to get used to each other’s streams of consciousness. Relax, man, lie still; think over the thing which has happened to you and know it for the wonder it is.”

Man, they say, is a time-binding animal.

But only the mighty will and yearning of Vwyrdda had ever leaped across the borders of death itself, waited a million years that that which was a world might not die out of all history.

The mouth which was theirs twisted wryly in the dark.

“Guess we’ll just have to learn to love each other,” thought Laird.

The body dropped into slumber. Presently Laird’s cells were asleep, his personality faded into a shadowland of dreams. Daryesh remained awake a while longer. Sleep—waste of time—the Immortals had never been plagued by fatigue—

The soldier shrugged. “But what good did it do, really? What chance have we got? That was a good magic you had at the fight. I thought my heart was going to stop when that demon-music started.

But can you pipe your way out of hell, barbarian? Can you?

”

The Ganasthi were a silent folk. Men stole past in the gloom, noiseless save for the thin snow scrunching under their feet. Crowds eddied dumbly through the great market squares, buying and selling with a gesture or a whispered syllable.

City of half-seen ghosts⁠ ⁠… Kery felt more than half a ghost himself, shade of a madman flitting hopelessly to the citadel of the king of hell.

He found the place at last, more by blind blundering through the narrow twisting streets than anything else. Drawing himself into the shadow of a building across the way he stood looking at it, weighing his chances.

Talk was low and spiritless, and the smoke which drifted from pipes and cigarettes was bitter, cheap tobacco and dried bark.

The smell of defeat was thick in the tavern.

“May I sit here, sir? The other places are full.”

Outside was starless, lightless, infinite black.

The ship crept forward, straining her detectors, groping into the blind dark while her crew went mad.

Spaceman, it is too late. You will never find your way home again. You are dead men on a ghost ship, and you will fall forever into the Night.

Valduma stood beside Morzach for an instant, and Donovan watched her with the old sick wildness rising and clamoring in him.

You are the fairest thing which ever was between the stars, you are ice and flame and living fury, stronger and weaker than man, cruel and sweet as a child a thousand years old, and I love you. But you are not human, Valduma.

She was tall, and her grace was a lithe rippling flow, wind and fire and music made flesh, a burning glory of hair rushing past her black-caped shoulders, hands slim and beautiful, the strange clean-molded face white as polished ivory, the mouth red and laughing, …

… lithe rippling flow, wind and fire and music made flesh, a burning glory of hair rushing past her black-caped shoulders, hands slim and beautiful, the strange clean-molded face white as polished ivory, the mouth red and laughing, the eyes long and oblique and gold-flecked green.

When she spoke, it was like singing in Heaven and laughter in Hell.

Donovan looked at her, not moving.

They were haggard and dirty and bearded, clad in such ragged articles as they had been able to salvage, armed with the crudely forged weapons of a vanished age, carrying their sick and wounded on rude litters.

Ghost world, ghost army, marching through an echoing windy solitude to its unknown weird⁠—but men’s faces were still brave, and one of them was singing.

The sunburst banner of the Empire flapped above them, the one splash of color in the great murky landscape.

Ray sighed and gave up.

Martians had replaced Scotchmen in the lexicon of thrift, but Urushkidan set some kind of new record.

He sat down in the pilot chair and started the atomic generator on high level conversion. “I hope it works,” he muttered nervously. His fingers moved over the improvised control panel for the star drive. “Hang on, folks, here goes nothing.”

The stars blurred past.

The Galaxy’s conquerors looked at the splendor of open space and ate cold beans out of a can.

“I think,” said Dyann thoughtfully, “ve should go first to Varann.”

“You are tired, my little bird. Come vith me, and ve shall rest in the castle.”

How do you equip an army of barbarians still in the early Iron Age to cross four and a third light-years of space?

A preliminary question, perhaps is, Do you want to?

He went to Urushkidan and poured out his sorrows. The Martian, after an abortive attempt to steal the spaceship and sneak home, had been given a room in one of the castle towers and was covering large sheets of local parchment with equations.

This place, thought Ray, has octopuses in the belfry.

“They want to go to Jupiter and fight the Jovians,” he said.

It was the doctor’s voice, and the doctor looked nothing at all like Charon, but still Lancaster wondered if he weren’t being ferried over the river of death.

There was a thrumming all about him, and he heard a low keening of wind.

“Where are we going?” he mumbled.

Lancaster grinned shyly. “I’m not much at making speeches, and I certainly don’t like to listen to them. But I’ve learned the truth and I want to say it out loud.

The right of man to be free is the most basic one he’s got, and when he gives that up he finishes by surrendering everything else too.

You people are fighting to bring back honesty and liberty and the possibility of progress. I hope nobody here is a fanatic, because fanaticism is exactly what we’re fighting against. I say we, because from now on I’m one of you.

They had a rather wonderful evening. Afterward Fraser lay awake for a long time, not wanting to lose a state of happiness in sleep.

He considered sleep a hideous waste of time: if he lived to be ninety, he’d have spent almost thirty years unconscious.

Judy was engaged for the next couple of evenings, and Fraser himself was invited to dinner at Sworsky’s the night after that. So it wasn’t till the end of the week that he called her again.

“The name is Sworsky, not Holmes. But sure, I’ll do what I can, if you’ll promise to try and get rid of this fixation. You ought to see a head-shrinker yourself, you know.”

In vino veritas⁠—sometimes too damn much veritas.

Toward the end of the evening, Judy was talking freely, if not quite coherently. “I cared a lot for Colin,” she said. “It was pretty wonderful having him around. He’s a grand guy. Only Matt—I don’t know. Matt hasn’t got half of what Colin has;

Jorun felt a weariness rise within him. It had been like this for days now, weeks, and it was like trying to knock down a mountain.

You beat on its rocky flanks till your hands were bloody, and still the mountain stood there, sunlight on its high snowfields and in the forests that rustled up its slopes, and it did not really notice you.

You were a brief thin buzz between two long nights, but the mountain was forever.

You beat on its rocky flanks till your hands were bloody, and still the mountain stood there, sunlight on its high snowfields and in the forests that rustled up its slopes, and it did not really notice you.

You were a brief thin buzz between two long nights, but the mountain was forever.

“You haven’t thought at all,” he said with a rudeness born of exhaustion. “You’ve only reacted unthinkingly to a dead symbol. It’s not a human reaction, even, it’s a verbal reflex.”

He waved one huge gnarled hand. “Look around you, Jorun of Fulkhis. This is Earth. This is the old home of all humankind. You cannot go off and forget it.

Man cannot do so. It is in him, in his blood and bones and soul; he will carry Earth within him forever.

”

He drew a deep breath. It was pungent in his nostrils. It smelled of leaf-mould, plowed earth baking in the warmth, summery trees and gardens, a remote ocean odor of salt and kelp and fish.

He thought that no two planets ever had quite the same smell, and that none was as rich as Terra’s.

“This is a fair world,” he said slowly.

Privately, Jorun doubted it. The psychic shock of this uprooting would be bound to destroy the old traditions of the Terrans; it would not take many centuries before they were culturally assimilated by Galactic civilization.

Assimilated⁠—nice euphemism. Why not just say⁠—eaten?

They landed on the beach. It was broad and white, running in dunes from the thin, harsh, salt-streaked grass to the roar and tumble of surf. The sun was low over the watery horizon, filling the damp, blowing air with gold.

They use the cosmic energies too, but in a different way—and their way interferes with ours just as ours interferes with theirs.

Different brains, you see.

“Anyway, it was decided that the two civilizations would get along best by just staying away from each other. If they divided up the Galaxy between them, there would be no interference; it would be too far from one civilization to the other.

“I thought so. No marriage. No family. No home. No tradition.” Kormt shook, his massive head, slowly, “

I pity you Galactics!

”

“Oh, yes,” said Kormt. “You have been very nice about it.

It would have been easier, in a way, if you’d come with fire and gun and chains for us, like the barbarians did long ago. We could have understood you better then.

”

made a quarry of metal and stone for the ignorant peasants who finally huddled about it—still its empty walls and blind windows, crumbling arches and toppled pillars held a ghost of beauty and magnificence which was like a half-remembered dream.

A dream the whole race had once had.

And now we’re waking up.

A dream the whole race had once had.

And now we’re waking up.

Jorun moved silently over the ruins. Trees growing between tumbled blocks dappled them with moonlight and shadow; the marble was very white and fair against darkness. He hovered by a broken caryatid, marveling at its exquisite leaping litheness;

Well, they had as much right here as he. He repressed the emotion, and even managed a smile. After all, he would have liked to feel gay and reckless at times, but he had never been able to.

Jorun was little older than Cluthe⁠—a few centuries at most⁠—but he came of a melancholy folk; he had been born old.

Another form pursued the first. As they neared, Jorun recognized Taliuvenna’s supple outline. Those two had been teamed up for one of the African districts, but—

Well, son, he thought, now you’ve got a whole world all to yourself, to do with just as you like.

You’re the richest man who ever lived.

There was no problem in keeping alive. Enough food of all kinds was stored in the town’s freeze-vault to support a hundred men for the ten or twenty years remaining to him. But he’d want to stay busy.

He groped slowly out of the yard, toward the road. The stars were out now. Kormt looked up and thought he had never seen them so bright. Too bright; he didn’t like it.

Go away, stars, he thought. You took my people, but I’m staying here.

This is my land. He reached down to touch it, but the grass was cold and wet under his palm.

He screamed, then, and began to run. His feet clattered loud on the road; the small sound was quickly swallowed by silence, and he covered his face against the relentless blaze of the stars.

But there was no place to run to, no place at all.

But the broad quartz windows showed merely a shifting greenish-blue of seawater, and the only live fish visible were in an aquarium across from the bar.

Pacific Colony lacked the grotesque loveliness of the Florida and Cuba settlements. Here they were somehow a working city, even in their recreations.

The sensitive man paused for a moment in the foyer, sweeping the big circular room with a hurried glance. Less than half the tables were filled.

“You want an almighty Church or an almighty State or an almighty anything, a huge misty symbol which demands everything you’ve got and gives in return only a feeling of belonging.” Dalgetty’s voice was harsh. “In short, you can’t stand on your own psychic feet.

You can’t face the truth that man is a lonely creature and that his purpose must come from within himself.

”

“Now you’re using the loaded words,” said Dalgetty. “

Facts just are. There’s no use passing moral judgments on reality, the only thing you can do is try to change it.

”

His voice grew more urgent. “So we made what I think was the right choice.

History shows as conclusively as our own equations that freedom is not a ‘natural’ condition of man. It’s a metastable state at best, all too likely to collapse into tyranny.

The tyranny can be imposed from outside by the better-organized armies of a conqueror, or it can come from within—through the will of the people themselves, surrendering their rights to the father-image, the almighty leader, the absolute state.

“Will you come hold my hand while I’m recuperating?” he asked anxiously.

“I’m holding it now, you fool,” Elena answered.

Dalgetty chuckled happily. Then he went to sleep.

I’ll see about putting it through. Hm—you say it’s quite simple and cheap? Better keep your mouth shut for a while, till the application has been approved. Otherwise everybody will start making it, and you’ll have a devil of a time collecting your royalties.

A patent is only a license to sue, you know, and you can’t sue fifty million bathtub chemists.

”

“Which is pure hogwash,” answered Arch. “Egypt and Assyria had identical technologies. So did Athens and Sparta. So do America and Russia.

The means of production only determine the possible societies, and there are always many possibilities.

“I’d like to see the possibility of individualism available again to the American people. If they’re too far gone to accept it, to hell with them.”

“Oh, dear! My Russell Wright coffee cup!”

Nothing happened overnight. That was the hardest thing to believe.

By all the rules, life should have been suddenly and dramatically transformed; but instead, there were only minor changes, day by day, small incidents. Meanwhile you ate, slept, worked, paid bills, made love and conversation, as you had always done.

“You’re making a common error, dear,” said Elizabeth. “You speak of the human race.

There isn’t any. There are only individual people and groups of people, with their own conflicting interests.

”

“Oh, dry up, will you? Any system is a profit system. It has to show a profit in some terms or other, or it would just be wasted effort. And the profit has to go to individuals, not to some mythical state.

The state doesn’t eat⁠—people do.

”

Arch spent the following day in a nearly suicidal depression. Elizabeth tried to pull him out of it, failed, and went downtown after a fifth of whiskey. That helped. The hangover helped too.

It’s hard to concentrate on remorse when ten thousand red-hot devils are building an annex to Hell in your skull.

Toward evening, he was almost cheerful again. A certain case-hardening was setting in.

“

The idea⁠—what old Clausewitz would say⁠—winning wars by arming the enemy!

Sure—sure, I’m in. Gladly!”

“But it is you, my boy, who’s going to have to get us tooled up to last the transition. Can you do it?”

Fundamental changes are seldom made consciously.

Doubtless the man in the fifth-century Roman street grumbled about all these barbarian immigrants, but he did not visualize the end of an empire. The Lancashire industrialist who fired his craftsmen and installed mechanical looms was simply making a profitable investment.

The most dangerous is not the outlawed murderer, who only slays men, but the rebellious philosopher: for he destroys worlds.

Darkness and the chill glitter of stars. Bo Jonsson crouched on a whirling speck of stone and waited for the man who was coming to kill him.

There was no horizon. The flying mountain on which he stood was too small. At his back rose a cliff of jagged rock, losing its own blackness in the loom of shadows; its teeth ate raggedly across the Milky Way.

But they didn’t care, he saw that now. To them, he did not exist, and they would shine carelessly long after he was gone into night.

He had never felt so alone as now, when another man was on the asteroid with him, hunting him down.

Bo Jonsson looked at the wrench in his hand. It was long and massive, it would have been heavy on Earth, but it was hardly enough to unscrew the stars and reset the machinery of a universe gone awry. He smiled stiffly at the thought.

He wanted to find his enemy and give up, buy existence at whatever price it would command. But he couldn’t do that. Even if the other man let him do it, which was doubtful, he couldn’t. Johnny Malone was dead.

Maybe that was what had started it all⁠—the death of Johnny Malone.

There are numerous reasons for basing on the Trojan asteroids, but the main one can be given in a single word: stability. They stay put in Jupiter’s orbit, about sixty degrees ahead and behind, with only minor oscillations;

Suddenly he was back on Achilles, with riot roaring around him and Johnny Malone’s body in his arms.

No wonder they never found that Venusian. There never was any.

Bo felt a dim shock when he looked at the chronometer. Only five minutes had gone by while he stood there. Only five minutes to turn the cosmos inside out.

Bo felt a dim shock when he looked at the chronometer. Only five minutes had gone by while he stood there.

Only five minutes to turn the cosmos inside out.

Very slowly and carefully he repacked the suitcase and put it in the rack and sat down to think.

“And when he sees he’s been tricked, you think he won’t wreck those links? No. There’s no way out.”

It was as if all his life he had walked on a road which had no turnings, which led inevitably to this moment.

He made some careful calculations from the instrument readings, physical constants of the asteroid, and used another minute’s maneuvering to assume orbital velocity. Alarm lights blinked angry eyes at him, the converter was heating up. No more traveling till the links were restored.

Danton turned around again. “Then why won’t He help us now?” he cried. “Why won’t He at least save the children?”

“I said God cared,” answered Alemán quietly, “not that He will do our work for us.”

“Stow the theology, you two,” said Catherine. “We’re going to pieces in here. Can’t somebody start a song?”

“I didn’t know you could dance,” she said.

They went out together. It is not merely inorganic reactions which require a catalyst.

Radek could hear the talk and laughter well enough to catch their raucous overtones. Somebody swore as dice rattled wrong for him. Somebody else shouted coarse good wishes as his friend took a hostess upstairs.

He wondered why vice was always so cheerless when you went into a place and paid for it.

“I am going to get drunk tonight,” announced Barwell. “I am going to get so high in the stony sky you’ll need radar to find me. Then I shall raise the red flag of revolution.”

“There are a lot of lives at stake. Every minute we sit here, there are perhaps a million people dying, perhaps more; I haven’t the figures. And everyone else is dying all the time, millimeter by millimeter, we’re all born dying.

Every minute you hold back the cure for old age, you murder a million human beings.

”

Cappen sprawled on the floor and rippled fingers across his harp.

“A lovely lady full oft lies⁠—”

The troll-wife turned from him in a rage. Hildigund ladled up some broth, saying nothing, and Cappen ate it with pleasure, though it could have used more seasoning.

The troll-wife squatted by the fire and glared at them as they went by. Cappen hefted his sword and looked at her.

“I do not love you,” he said mildly, and hewed out.

She backed away, shrieking as he slashed at her. In the end, she crouched at the mouth of a tunnel, raging futilely. Cappen pricked her with his blade.

He laughed shakily.

Another score for his doubts about the overall value of truth!

The longship’s oars bit water and approached him. Indignant voices asking why he had been so long on his errand faded when his passenger was seen. And Svearek the king wept as he took his daughter back into his arms.

Cappen swayed and clutched the rail.

Three nights later he slipped away from their shore camp and turned his face southward.

The few Martians who had been to Earth had gone into ecstasies over the automation which put any service you could name on a twenty-four-hour basis. But it would be a long time before Mars had such machines. If ever.

The city roared at him.

He fumbled after his pipe. Of course, he told himself, that’s why the Embassy can’t act. I may find it advisable to go outside the law. Please, sir, where can I contact the underworld?

Matheny would have found a few spins of roulette soothing: it was always an intellectual challenge to work out the system by which the management operated a wheel. But more, he would have been among people he understood.

The frightful thing about the Earthman was the way he seemed to exist only in organized masses.

A gypsy snake oil peddler, plodding his syrtosaur wagon across Martian sands, just didn’t have a prayer against, say, the Grant, Harding & Adams Public Relations Agency.

“Con man? Oh. A slipstring.”

“A con by any other name,” said Matheny, pouring down an akvavit.

Doran squinted through cigarette smoke. “You are interesting me strangely, my friend. Say on.”

“Oh, fine. Under a different name, she’s now our finance minister.” Matheny stared out the wall, his hands twisting nervously behind his back.

“There were no lies involved. She really does have a fatal disease. So do you and I. Every day we grow older.”

“And then the Red Ankh Society. You must have seen or heard their ads. ‘What mysterious knowledge did the Old Martians possess? What was the secret wisdom of the Ancient Aliens?

“I cannot promise anything yet except that I will try. Now you finish dressing. I will be down in the bar. And I will call up this girl I know. We deserve a celebration!”

Peri was tall. Peri was slim. Peri smoldered when she walked and exploded when she stretched.

Her apartment was ivory and ebony, her sea-green dress was poured on, and the Neo-Sino mode had obviously been engineered to her personal specifications.

“Why, why … what do you mean?” croaked Matheny.

She kissed him. It was rather like being caught in a nuclear turbine with soft blades.

Matheny, said Matheny, you represent your planet.

She kissed him. It was rather like being caught in a nuclear turbine with soft blades.

Matheny, said Matheny, you represent your planet.

Matheny, said Matheny, shut up.

Matheny, said Matheny, you represent your planet.

Matheny, said Matheny, shut up.

“Have another drink,” said Peri, “while I slip into something more comfortable.”

Beyond him and his half dozen men stretched a vista of pitted rock, jutting crags, gulf-black shadows, under the glare of floodlamps. A few kilometers away, the farthest horizon ended, chopped off like a cliff.

Beyond lay the stars, crowding that night which never ends.

It grew very still while the gang waited for his word. He could listen to his own lungs and pulse, loud in the spacesuit; he could even notice its interior smell, blend of plastic and oxygen cycle chemicals, flesh and sweat.