soldiers challenged him at the foot of the tower, standing in the shadows, their guns ready.
“Kramer?”
“Yes.” A light was flashed in his face.
“Your call has been sent out already.”
“Any luck?” Kramer asked.
“There’s a cruiser nearby that has made contact with us. It has an injured jet and is moving slowly back toward Terra, away from the line.”
“Good.” Kramer nodded, a flood of relief rushing through him. He lit a cigarette and gave one to each of the soldiers. The soldiers lit up.
“Sir,” one of them asked, “is it true about the experimental ship?”
“What do you mean?”
“It came to life and ran off?”
“No, not exactly,” Kramer said. “It had a new type of control system instead of the Johnson units. It wasn’t properly tested.”
“But sir, one of the cruisers that was there got up close to it, and a buddy of mine says this ship acted funny. He never saw anything like it. It was like when he was fishing once on Terra, in Washington State, fishing for bass. The fish were smart, going this way and that—”
“Here’s your cruiser,” the other soldier said. “Look!”
An enormous vague shape was setting slowly down onto the field. They could make nothing out but its row of tiny green blinkers. Kramer stared at the shape.
“Better hurry, sir,” the soldiers said. “They don’t stick around here very long.”
“Thanks.” Kramer loped across the field, toward the black shape that rose up above him, extended across the width of the field. The ramp was down from the side of the cruiser and he caught hold of it. The ramp rose, and a moment later Kramer was inside the hold of the ship. The hatch slid shut behind him.
As he made his way up the stairs to the main deck the turbines roared up from the moon, out into space.
Kramer opened the door to the main deck. He stopped suddenly, staring around him in surprise. There was nobody in sight. The ship was deserted.
“Good God,” he said. Realization swept over him, numbing him. He sat down on a bench, his head swimming. “Good God.”
The ship roared out into space leaving the moon and Terra farther behind each moment.
And there was nothing he could do.
*
“So it was you who put the call through,” he said at last. “It was you who called me on the vidphone, not any hospital on Terra. It was all part of the plan.” He looked up and around him. “And Dolores is really—”
“Your wife is fine,” the wall speaker above him said tonelessly. “It was a fraud. I am sorry to trick you that way, Philip, but it was all I could think of. Another day and you would have been back on Terra. I don’t want to remain in this area any longer than necessary. They have been so certain of finding me out in deep space that I have been able to stay here without too much danger. But even the purloined letter was found eventually.”
Kramer smoked his cigarette nervously. “What are you going to do? Where are we going?”
“First, I want to talk to you. I have many things to discuss. I was very disappointed when you left me, along with the others. I had hoped that you would remain.” The dry voice chuckled. “Remember how we used to talk in the old days, you and I? That was a long time ago.”
The ship was gaining speed. It plunged through space at tremendous speed, rushing through the last of the defense zone and out beyond. A rush of nausea made Kramer bend over for a moment.
When he straightened up the voice from the wall went on, “I’m sorry to step it up so quickly, but we are still in danger. Another few moments and we’ll be free.”
“How about yuk ships? Aren’t they out here?”
“I’ve already slipped away from several of them. They’re quite curious about me.”
“Curious?”
“They sense that I’m different, more like their own organic mines. They don’t like it. I believe they will begin to withdraw from this area, soon. Apparently they don’t want to get involved with me. They’re an odd race, Philip. I would have liked to study them closely, try to learn something about them. I’m of the opinion that they use no inert material. All their equipment and instruments are alive, in some form or other. They don’t construct or build at all. The idea of making is foreign to them. They utilize existing forms. Even their ships—”
“Where are we going?” Kramer said. “I want to know where you are taking me.”
“Frankly, I’m not certain.”
“You’re not certain?”
“I haven’t worked some details out. There are a few vague spots in my program, still. But I think that in a short while I’ll have them ironed out.”
“What is your program?” Kramer said.
“It’s really very simple. But don’t you want to come into the control room and sit? The seats are much more comfortable than that metal bench.”
Kramer went into the control room and sat down at the control board. Looking at the useless apparatus made him feel strange.
“What’s the matter?” the speaker above the board rasped.
*
Kramer gestured helplessly. “I’m—powerless. I can’t do anything. And I don’t like it. Do you blame me?”
“No. No, I don’t blame you. But you’ll get your control back, soon. Don’t worry. This is only a temporary expedient, taking you off this way. It was something I didn’t contemplate. I forgot that orders would be given out to shoot me on sight.”
“It was Gross’ idea.”
“I don’t doubt that. My conception, my plan, came to me as soon as you began to describe your project, that day at my house. I saw at once that you were wrong; you people have no understanding of the mind at all. I realized that the transfer of a human brain from an organic body to a complex artificial space ship would not involve the loss of the intellectualization faculty of the mind. When a man thinks, he is.
“When I realized that, I saw the possibility of an age-old dream becoming real. I was quite elderly when I first met you, Philip. Even then my life-span had come pretty much to its end. I could look ahead to nothing but death, and with it the extinction of all my ideas. I had made no mark on the world, none at all. My students, one by one, passed from me into the world, to take up jobs in the great Research Project, the search for better and bigger weapons of war.
“The world has been fighting for a long time, first with itself, then with the Martians, then with these beings from Proxima Centauri,
