barrier was reestablished, it would have been killed. It would have lain there for Drake to see and pick up.
It was a "pebble," not a natural life form. But did that mean it was not some kind of life form? It might have been a deliberate production of the planet’s single organism—a creature deliberately designed to look like a pebble, harmless-seeming, unsuspicious. Camouflage, in other words—a shrewd and frighteningly successful camouflage.
Had any other camouflaged creature succeeded in crossing the barrier before it was reestablished—with a suitable shape filched from the minds of the humans aboard ship by the mind-reading organism of the planet? Would it have the casual appearance of a paperweight? Of an ornamental brass-head nail in the captain’s old-fashioned chair? And how would they locate it? Could they search every part of the ship for the telltale green patches— even down to individual microbes?
And why camouflage? Did it intend to remain undetected for a time? Why? So that it might wait for the landing on Earth?
An infection after landing could not be cured by blowing up a ship. The bacteria of Earth, the molds, yeasts, and protozoa, would go first. Within a year the non-human young would be arriving by the uncountable billions.
Weiss closed his eyes and told himself it might not be such a bad thing. There would be no more disease, since no bacterium would multiply at the expense of its host, but instead would be satisfied with its fair share of what was available. There would be no more overpopulation; the hordes of man-kind would decline to adjust themselves to the food supply. There would be no more wars, no crime, no greed.
But there would be no more individuality, either.
Humanity would find security by becoming a cog in a biological machine. A man would be brother to a germ, or to a liver cell.
He stood up. He would have a talk with Captain Loring. They would send their report and blow up the ship, just as Saybrook had done.
He sat down again. Saybrook had had proof, while he had only the conjectures of a terrorized mind, rattled by the sight of two green spots on a pebble. Could he kill the two hundred men on board ship because of a feeble suspicion?
He had to think!
He was straining. Why did he have to wait? If he could only welcome those who were aboard now. Now!
Yet a cooler, more reasoning part of himself told him that he could not. The little multipliers in the darkness would betray their new status in fifteen minutes, and the keen-thinkers had them under continual observation. Even one mile from the surface of their planet would be too soon, since they might still destroy themselves and their ship out in space.
Better to wait for the main air locks to open, for the planetary air to swirl in with millions of the little multipliers. Better to greet each one of them into the brotherhood of unified life and let them swirl out again to spread the message.
Then it would be done! Another world organized, complete!
He waited. There was the dull throbbing of the engines working mightily to control the slow dropping of the ship; the shudder of contact with planetary surface, then—
He let the jubilation of the keen-thinkers sweep into reception, and his own jubilant thoughts answered them. Soon they would be able to receive as well as himself. Perhaps not these particular fragments, but the fragments that would grow out of those which were fitted for the continuation of life.
The main air locks were about to be opened—
And all thought ceased.
*
Jerry Thorn thought, Damn it, something’s wrong now.
He said to Captain Loring, "Sorry. There seems to be a power break-down. The locks won’t open."
"Are you sure, Thorn? The lights are on."
"Yes, sir. We’re investigating it now."
He tore away and joined Roger Oldenn at the air-lock wiring box. "What’s wrong?"
"Give me a chance, will you?" Oldenn’s hands were busy. Then he said, "For the love of Pete, there’s a six-inch break in the twenty-amp lead."
"What? That can’t be!"
Oldenn held up the broken wires with their clean, sharp, sawn-through ends.
Dr. Weiss joined them. He looked haggard and there was the smell of brandy on his breath.
He said shakily, "What’s the matter?"
They told him. At the bottom of the compartment, in one corner, was the missing section.
Weiss bent over. There was a black fragment on the floor of the compartment. He touched it with his finger and it smeared, leaving a sooty smudge on his finger tip. He rubbed it off absently.
There might have been something taking the place of the missing section of wire. Something that had been alive and only looked like wire, yet something that would heat, die, and carbonize in a tiny fraction of a second once the electrical circuit which controlled the air lock had been closed.
He said, "How are the bacteria?"
A crew member went to check, returned and said, "All normal, Doc."
The wires had meanwhile been spliced, the locks opened, and Dr. Weiss stepped out into the anarchic world of life that was Earth.
"Anarchy," he said, laughing a little wildly. "And it will stay that way."
The One and the Many
by Milton Lesser
Only One Question Is Eternal— What Lies Beyond the Ultimate?
There are some who tell me it is a foolish war we fight. My brother told me that, for one, back in the Sunset Country. But then, my brother is lame and good for nothing but drawing pictures of the stars. He connects them with lines, like a child’s puzzle, and so makes star-pictures. He has fish stars, archer stars, hunter stars. That, I would say, is what is foolish.
Perhaps that is what started it all. I was looking at the stars, trying to see the pictures, when I should have been minding my sentry post. They took me like a baby, like a tot not yet given to the wearing of clothing. The hand came out of the darkness and clamped over my mouth, and I ceased my struggling when I felt a sharp blade pricking at the small of my back.
At first I feared that they would slay the entire camp as it slept and I cursed my brother for his star-pictures, cursed our leader who had sent us here, twenty archers, against the Onist outpost on our country’s border. But the Onists had other ideas. They took me away. I had to admire their vitality, because all night we ran through the silent woodlands, and they seemed tireless. I could maintain their pace, of course: but I’m a Pluralist.
I could see their village from a long way off, its night fires glowing in the dark. It was only then that we slowed our pace. Soon we entered the place, a roughly circular area within a stockade, and my captors thrust me within a hut. I couldn’t do much worrying about tomorrow, not when I was so tired. I slept.
I dreamed a stupid dream about the Onist beliefs, the
