Double Take by Richard Wilson This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read and record it by Timo Bingman. Double Take by Richard Wilson Paul Asher, 27, men's furnishings buyer, leaned back and let the cloth band be fastened across his chest, just under the armpits. He adjusted his heavy spectacles, closed his eyes for a moment, breathed deeply and was off. The semi-darkness was dispelled as he shot out of a tunnel into dazzling sunlight. The high-powered vehicle he was driving purred smoothly as it took the long, rising curve. The road climbed steadily toward the mountaintop city ahead. He looked around to satisfy himself that he was alone in the car. He wasn't. The girl was a pretty one. He'd seen her somewhere before, he thought. She was looking insolently at him, her wide red mouth in a half-smile. Her dark hair stirred in the breeze coming through the window next to her, which was open just a slit. She said, just keep going, sweetheart, as fast as you can. And she patted the oversized pocketbook that lay in her lap. He pressed down on the accelerator and the car responded with a flow of power. The countryside fell away from the road on either side. Far below he could see a river winding broadly to the far-off sea. The summer day sent its heat shimmers across the miniature landscape. The road curved again. There's was the only car he had seen since he had come out of the tunnel. But now, far ahead, he saw another. It was standing at the side of the road, next to a gate that came down in the manner of one at a railroad crossing. But he knew by its black and white diagonals and by the little sentry hut half hidden behind the other car that it marked the frontier. A man with a rifle on his shoulder stood there. He drew up to it fast, but his foot automatically eased up on the floorboard pedal until the girl spoke sharply. Right through it, sweetheart! In the rear window he saw her leaning forward, her face tense. In a moment it would be time to stop if he were going to. Paul Asher hesitated a moment. Then he too leaned forward, the band pressing into his chest. He was breathing heavily. There was an almost inaudible click. He trod on the accelerator. He had a glimpse of the guard, unslinging his rifle from his shoulder and of another man running toward the parked car as his vehicle smashed into the flimsy gate and sent it cracked and splintered to the side of the road. He fought the slight wrench of the wheel and sped on. He thought he heard a shot. Nice work! The girl said. She seemed to be appraising him as she looked at him. My name, incidentally, is Naomi. Hello! He heard himself saying as he whipped the car around a curve that hit the frontier behind a hill. You seem to know who I am. That I do, she said. Then why don't you call me by my name instead of sweetheart?  She was looking out the rear window. Now just step on the gas, because we've got company. The car that had been parked near the sentry hut was whipping into view around the curve. It was lighter than his, but it was fast too. He stepped on it. Now the road had become narrow and twisting. The grade was steep, but the surface was good. Appruptly it entered a forest. The girl said. Two more curves, then you'll see a field and a barn. Off the road and into the barn, fast. He took the curves with rubber screaming and almost without breaking sent the car bumping across the field and into the barn. It was bigger than it had seen from the outside. As he brought the car to a lurching halt, the barn door closed. Where he had expected to see stalls and milking machines and hay, he saw an expanse of metal floor and monstrous machinery. The barn door, which had been a rickety wooden slab from the outside, was a gleaming sheet of metal from the inside. It glided silently shut and left no joint or seam to show where there had been an opening. Out, said Naomi. As they left the car, a flexible metal arm snaked from one of the smooth walls, attached itself to the front bumper of the vehicle and whisked it into a cubicle which opened to receive it and closed behind it. A power-driven wheelchair sped up to them.  His expression was a sardonic scowl. You have the plans, he asked the girl. Sweetheart here has them. I don't know what you're talking about, the young man said. He knows all right, the girl said. He pretends to be innocent but that is merely his training. He has them under a sticking plaster on the small of his back. Remove your coat and shirt. Commanded the man in the wheelchair. At that moment the floor shuddered under their feet. A gong began to clang insistently and the giant machinery which had been silent throbbed into life. The man in the wheelchair whirled and was off, shouting commands to men who materialized high on the walls in cylindric turds which the visitor could only think of as battle stations. What is this place? he asked. He got no answer.  An opening appeared in the wall and she pushed him through it into a room beyond. The entranceway snapped shut behind them and when he looked he could see no door. The room also was windowless. Naomi went to a metal table and as she looked down into its surface it became a screen. Mirrored in it was the mountainous countryside they had driven through to get to the barn or what had seemed to be a barn from the outside. He looked over her shoulder. They saw as from a height. There was the light car that had chased them from the frontier. Standing near it was a man in an officer's uniform and another in civilian clothes. They were talking and gesturing. Beside the car was a tank. As they watched its gun fired and the structure they were in shuttered but they heard no sound. Lumbering up the mountain road were more tanks and a self propelled gun. One of the tanks became enveloped in smoke and flames as they watched. After a moment the smoke cleared. The tank was gone. Where it had been there was a deep crater. Gradually the figures in the drama below grew smaller. At the same time the vista widened so that they saw more and more countryside. It twisted beneath them and the horizon came giddily into view. A few moments later the curvature of the earth could be plainly seen. Everything fitted together at once. Some of the things anyway. We're in a ship, he said. Some kind of rocket ship. It's a planet plain, the girl said. We are safe now. Safe from what? he asked. What's this all about? She smiled enigmatically. Hafiz could tell you if he chose. He's the boss. The man in the wheelchair? She nodded and took out a compact. As she added lipstick to her mouth she looked him over between glances in her mirror. You don't look like the spy type if there is a type. I'm not a spy. I don't know what you're talking about. The innocent.  We'll save Hafiz some time. I'll be glad to just to prove this is all ridiculous. A case of mistaken identity. You've made a mistake, that's what you've done. He stood there hesitating. The girl gave a burst of laughter. Then she said, Alright sweetheart, I'll turn my back. She did and he pulled his shirt out of his trousers. Then he froze. Tape to the skin of his back was a flat package. Paul Asher made the decision. He bent forward feeling perspiration in the palms of his hands. There was a faint click. Quickly he ripped the adhesive from his back. There was an instant of pain as the plaster came free. He wadded up the sticky package, dropped it to the floor and kicked it under the desk. Then he took off his coat, tie and shirt. You can turn around now, he said. A more modest spy I've never seen, she said. Okay, now you turn around. As you see, he said, There are no plans, no papers. No, not now, but there is a red mark on your back. What is it? Oh, he said. Oh, that's a birthmark. She spun him around to face her. Her face was harsh. She slapped his cheek. Where is the sticking plaster? Don't trifle with me. Her eyes bored into his. He returned the gaze, then shrugged. Under the desk, he said, I tore it off and kicked it under the desk. You are sensible to confess, she said. She bent down, unwisely. Paul Asher felt the familiar tightening in his chest as he leaned forward. The click was barely heard. He raised his hand and brought the edge of it down hard on the back of her neck. She crumpled and fell to the metal floor. He noticed that a smear of her freshly applied lipstick came off on it. He pushed the unconscious body aside and fished the packet out from under the desk. He searched the room for another hiding place, but too late. A section of wall opened and herfeits the fat man in the wheelchair sped in. He wheeled past the young man, looked briefly at the unconscious girl, then whisked himself around. You'll pay for this, my friend, he said. But first we will have the plans for the way station. Where are they? I don't know anything about any plans and I don't know anything about a way station. I tried to tell the girl, it's all a crazy mistake. We will see, said herfeits. He pressed a button on the arm of his wheelchair and two bruisers appeared through the walls in the abrupt way people had of materializing here. Bruisers was the only way they could be described. They were human brutes, all muscle and malevolence. Take them, said herfeits, indicating the unconscious girl and the young man. Take them and search them for a small packet. If you do not find it, search this room. If you do not find it, still hurt the male animal. They persuade well with pain here, I understand. But do not kill them. I will be in the communications room. He sped off through a wall opening. One of the bruisers picked up the girl roughly and disappeared with her. The other grabbed the young man and hauled him off in a third direction. The young man hastily snatched up his coat shirt and tie en route. They ended up in a cell of a room about seven feet in all directions in which the bruiser stripped him, methodically went through each piece of clothing, then satisfied himself that he didn't have the packet anywhere on his body. The muscle man then raised a fist. Wait, his prospective victim said. He thought back quickly. Hafeitz didn't say you could bat me around till you searched the room too. The other spoke for the first time. You say the truth. He put his arm down. The young man watched intently as the bruiser went through the wall of the cell-like room. He dressed fast. By placing his fingers in exactly the same position as the other had done, was able to make the wall open for him. The silver metal corridor had two directions. He went to the right. After many turnings at each of which he reconnoitered carefully, he came to a passageway that was damp. Why it was damp he couldn't tell, but there in the wetness were tracks which could have been made by a wheelchair. He followed them, feeling the throb of giant engines underfoot. The wheelchair tracks abruptly made a 90 degrees turn and ended in a blank wall. Somewhere beyond it must be the communications room. He retreated and waited. In time the wall snapped open and Hafeitz sped out. The young man retreated into the maze of corridors and hoped chance would be on his side. It was. Hafeitz went the other way. The young man ran back to the wall and used his fingers on it in the combination he had learned. It opened for him. He closed it behind him and blinked at the huge instrument panel which filled almost the entire room. One of the instruments was a colour vision screen tuned into a room in which there was a mahogany desk at which was seated a man in uniform. Behind him was a map of the United States. The man in uniform was a major general in the Air Force. An aide, a Lieutenant Colonel, was leaning over the desk. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. The men's conversation was audible. Messages have been coming in from all over Europe. The Colonel was saying, here's the way it reconstructs. Our agent was en route to the rendezvous when he was intercepted by Naomi. That's the only name we have for her. She's a spy. She's worked for half a dozen countries and her present employer could be any one of them. They were spotted as they crossed the frontier between Italy and France. Their car went into a barn and we thought we had them but the barn turned out to be a spaceship in disguise. It took off. So I'm their agent, Paul Asher thought. So that's what it's all about. I'm a secret agent for the United States. But they didn't tell me anything about it. This is real, George. This is... He expected to hear a faint click and leaned forward experimentally. But nothing happened. He leaned backward. Still nothing. The Colonel was answering a question from the General. We don't know who they are, sir. They're not from Earth, obviously. And the best scientific minds still go further. They are not even from our solar system. Whoever they are, it's clear that they don't want us to build a way station in space. Those spaceships started buzzing around right after our first moon trip. The General said, This is the first time they've become really troublesome. Now that we've got the moon under control and are ready to build the way station so that we can get to Mars. That's right, sir. Said the Colonel. Progress is a wonderful thing. Said the General. Things certainly have changed since those early days of strategic bombing and guided missile experiments. Yes, sir. Said the Colonel. The young man in the communications room of the spaceship let his attention wander away from the scene back on Earth and experimented with some of the switches and controls. Trial and error led him to one which lit up a signal on the desk of the General. The General flicked it on. Yes, he said. He looked puzzled when he got no picture. Just a voice saying, Hello! Hello! Yes, he said. Hello! Speak up, man. This is your agent aboard the enemy spaceship, said the young man. Do you read me? Yes, said the General. We read you. Go ahead. I may not have much time. Get a fix on me if you can and send help. What's your position? The General was reacting well. He was alert and all business. I don't know. I've been taken prisoner, but I'm temporarily free. There isn't much time. Hafiz is bound to be back soon. He seems to be the brains of this outfit. This part of the outfit anyway. Naomi is here too, but I don't know whether she's with them or against them. Where are the plans, son? Asked the General. They're safe for the moment. I can't guarantee for how long. I'm getting the fix. The Colonel said. He was beyond the range of the young man's vision screen. I've got him. He's still within range, but accelerating fast. We can intercept if we get up a rocket soon enough. Get it up, ordered the General. Get up a squadron. Scramble the moon patrol and send out reserves from Earth at once. Right, said the Colonel. The young man was so engrossed in the makings of his rescue party that he didn't see the wall open up behind him. There was a squeak of rubber tires, and he whirled to see Hafiths in his wheelchair slamming toward him.  The young man recoiled. His back pushed against a row of control buttons. Then everything went white. Paul Asher blinked his eyes like a man, awakening from a vivid dream. The house lights went on, and the manager of the theater came on the stage. He stood in front of the blank master screen with his checkerboard pattern of smaller screens, on which the several lines of action had taken place simultaneously. Paul took off his selectorscope spectacles with the earphone attachments. Ladies and gentlemen, the manager said, I regret very much having to announce that this vicarion of the production Spies from Space was defective. Though multi-film has broken, because of the complexity of the viki process, it will be impossible to splice it without returning it to the laboratory. Asher's are at the exits with passes good for any future performance. Those of you who prefer can exchange them at the box office for a full refund of your admission price. Paul Asher unstrapped the wired canvas band from across his chest. He put the selectorscope spectacles into the pouch on the arm of the seat and walked out of the RKO vicarion into High Street, and around the corner to where his car was parked. His roommate at the communapt, McCloy, was still up when he got there, going over some projectos. Mac snapped off the screen and quickly swept the slides together and into a case. You're back early, McCloy said. The multi-film broke, Paul told him. Oh, Mac seemed abstracted, as he often did. And again, Paul wondered about this man he knew so casually and who had never confided in him about anything, especially about his government job. So I missed the ending, Paul said. I guess it was near the end anyhow. The space patrol was on the way, but the villain, that Hafiz, was just about to blast me with his gun and I don't know how I would have got out of that. I remember that. Mac said, he laughed. You must have been positive all the way through, like I was when I saw it. If you'd had any negative reactions, if you'd leaned back against the strap instead of forward, you'd have been at some other point in the multi-plot and I wouldn't have recognized that part. Want me to tell you how it ends?  Okay, there really wasn't much more. It takes so much film to provide all the plot choices that they can't make them very long. Well, Hafiz blasts me and misses. Mac went on. Or blasts you and misses to keep it in your viewpoint. When you jump back, you set off a bunch of controls that was the control room, too, not just the communications room. Well, those controls you leaned back against take the ship out of automatic pilot and send it into some wild acrobatics. And that's why Hafiz misses. Also it knocks him out of the wheelchair so he's helpless and you get his gun. Also you see that the plans are still there, right where you put them, stuck to the bottom of his wheelchair. So that was it, said Paul. Yes, said Mac.  You get a citation from the government and that's about it. Cornia, huh? What about the girl? Paul asked. Is she really a spy? Girl? What girl? Naomi, her name was. You couldn't have missed her. She was in the Vicky right at the beginning, that brunette in the fast car. But there wasn't any girl, Paul. Mac insisted. Not when I saw it. Of course there was. There had to be. The Vickies all start out the same no matter who sees them. It beats me, pal. I know I didn't see her. Maybe you dreamed up the dame. I don't think so, Paul said. But of course it's possible. He yawned. I wouldn't mind dreaming of her tonight at that. Think I'll turn in now, Mac. I've got that long trip tomorrow, you know. Up to Canada to look over a new line of Mars World Sports Jacket at the All-Planet showroom. Driving or flying? The weather prognosis is zero zero. I'll drive. Good, said Mac. Paul Asher woke up late. He had a confused recollection of a dream. Something about a beautiful brunette giving him a back rub. A look at the chrono sent the dream out of his head, and he hurried through shaving and dressing. His car was waiting for him, engine idling at the curb. He got in, tossing his briefcase and topcoat ahead of him to the far side of the front seat. His back began to itch insistently, and he rubbed it against the leather upholstery. Paul adjusted the safety belt around him and fastened it. Might as well do it now instead of having to fool around with it later. He didn't have that itch anyway. It was as if something were stuck to his skin, like a sticking plaster. The high-powered vehicle purred smoothly as it took the long rising curve. The road climbed steadily toward the mountaintop city ahead. The scene was familiar. The itching of his back spread and became a prickly feeling in the small hairs at the nape of his neck. It seemed that he was not alone in the car. He looked in the rear-view mirror, Naomi. She was looking at him insolently, her wide red mouth in a half-smile. She said, Just keep going, sweetheart, as fast as you can. End of Double Take by Richard Wilson Red and Recorded by Timo Bingman Idlebox.net Pin lighting is a hell of a way to earn a living. Underhill was furious as he closed the door behind himself. It didn't make much sense to wear a uniform and look like a soldier if people didn't appreciate what she did. He sat down in his chair, laid his head back and the headrest, and pulled the helmet down over his forehead. As he waited for the pin set to warm up, he remembered the girl in the outer corridor. She had looked at it, then looked at him scornfully. Now! That was all she had said. Yet it had cut him like a knife. What did she think he was? A fool? A loafer? A uniformed non-entity? Didn't she know that for every half hour of pin lighting he got a minimum of two months' recuperation in the hospital? By now the set was warm. He felt the squares of space around him, sensed himself at the middle of an immense grid, a cubic grid full of nothing. But in that nothingness he could sense the hollow, aching horror of space itself and could feel the terrible anxiety which his mind encountered whenever it met the faintest trace of inert dust. As he relaxed, the comforting solidity of the sun, the clockwork of the familiar planets, and the moon rang in on him. Our own solar system was as charming and as simple as an ancient cuckoo clock filled with familiar ticking and with reassuring noises. The odd little moons of Mars swung around their planet like frantic mice, yet their regularity was itself an insurance that all was well. Far above the plain of the ecliptic he could feel half a ton of dust, more or less, drifting outside the lanes of human travel. Here there was nothing to fight, nothing to challenge the mind, to tear the living soul out of a body with its roots dripping in effluvium as tangible as blood. Nothing ever moved in on this solar system. He could wear the pen set forever and be nothing more than a sort of telepathic astronomer, a man who could feel the hot, warm protection of the sun, throbbing and burning against his living mind. Woodley came in. Same old ticking world, said Underhill, nothing to report. No wonder they didn't develop the pen set until they began to plan a form. Down here with the hot sun around us it feels so good and so quiet. You can feel everything spinning and turning. It's nice and sharp and compact. It's sort of like sitting around home. Woodley grunted. He was not much given to flights of fantasy. Undeterred, Underhill went on. It must have been pretty good to have been an ancient man. I wonder why they burned up their world with war. They didn't have to plan a form. They didn't have to go out to earn their livings among the stars. They didn't have to dodge the rats or play the game. They couldn't have invented pen lighting because they didn't have any need of it. Did they, Woodley? Woodley grunted. Uh-huh. Woodley was 26 years old and due to retire in one more year he had already had a farm picked out. He had gotten through ten years of hard work pen lighting with the best of them. He had kept his sanity by not thinking very much about his job, meaning the strains of the task whenever he had to meet them and thinking nothing more about his duties until the next emergency arose. Woodley never made a point of getting popular among the partners. None of the partners liked him very much. Some of them even resented him. He was suspected of thinking ugly thoughts of the partners on occasion, but since none of the partners ever thought a complaint in articular form the other pen lighters and the chase of the instrumentality left him alone.  Happily he babbled on. What does happen to us when we plan a form? Do you think it's sort of like dying? Did you ever see anybody who had his soul pulled out? Pulling souls is just a way of talking about it, said Woodley. After all these years nobody knows whether we have souls or not. But I saw once, I saw what Dogwood looked like when he came apart. There was something funny. It looked wet and sort of sticky as if it were bleeding and it went out of him. And do you know what they did to Dogwood? They took him away, up in that part of the hospital where you and I never go, way up at the top part where the others are, where the others always have to go if they are alive after the rats of the up and out have gotten them. Woodley sat down and lit an ancient pipe. He was burning something called tobacco in it. It was a dirty sort of habit, but it made him look very dashing and adventurous. Look here, youngster, you don't have to worry about that stuff. Pen lighting is getting better all the time. The partners are getting better. I've seen them pen light two rats 46 million miles apart in one and a half milliseconds. As long as people had to try to work the pen sets themselves there was always the chance that with a minimum of 400 milliseconds for the human mind to set a pen light we wouldn't let the rats up fast enough to protect our plan of forming ships. The partners have changed all that. Once they get going they're faster than rats and they always will be. I know it's not easy letting a partner share your mind. It's not easy for them either, said Underhill. Don't worry about them, they're not human. Let them take care of themselves.  How many do you actually know of them that got grabbed by rats? Underhill looked down at his fingers which shone green and purple in the vivid light thrown by the tuned-in pen set and counted ships, the thumb for the Andromeda lost with crew and passengers, the index finger and the middle finger for release ships 43 and 56 found with their pen sets burned out and every man, woman and child on board dead or insane. The ring finger, the little finger and the thumb of the other hand were the first three battleships to be lost to the rats lost as people realized that there was something out there underneath space itself which was alive, capricious and malevolent. Planoforming was sort of funny. It felt like this. It felt like, like, like nothing much. Like the twinge of a mild electric shock like the ache of a sore tooth bitten on for the first time like a slightly painful flash of light against the eyes. Yet in that time a 40,000 ton ship lifting free above Earth disappears somehow or other into two dimensions and appeared half a light year or 50 light years off. At one moment he would be sitting in the fighting room, the pen set ready and the familiar solar system ticking around inside his head. For a second or a year he could never tell how long it really was, subjectively. The funny little flash went through him and then he was loose in the up and out, the terrible open spaces between the stars where the stars themselves felt like pimples on his telepathic mind and the planets were too far away to be sensed or read. Somewhere in this outer space a gruesome death awaited. Death and horror of a kind which man had never encountered until he reached out for interstellar space itself. Apparently the light of the suns kept the dragons away. Dragons, that was what people called them. To ordinary people there was nothing, nothing except the shiver of planafarming and the hammer blow of sudden death or the dark spastic note of lunacy descending into their minds. But to the telepaths they were dragons. In the fraction of a second between the telepath's awareness of a hostile something out in the black hollow nothingness of space and the impact of a ferocious, ruinous psychic blow against all living things within the ship, the telepaths had sensed entities, something like the dragons of ancient human lore, beasts more clever than beasts, demons more tangible than demons, hungry vortices of aliveness and hate compounded by unknown means out of the thin tenuous matter between the stars. It took a surviving ship to bring back the news, a ship in which, by sheer chance, a telepath had a light beam ready, turning it out at the innocent dust so that within the panorama of his mind the dragon dissolved into nothing at all and the other passengers themselves non-telepathic went about their way not realizing that their own immediate deaths had been averted. From then on it was easy, almost. Planet-forming ships always carried telepaths. Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pensets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind. The pensets, in turn, were electronically geared into small, dirigible, light bombs. Light did it. Light broke up the dragons, allowed the ships to reform three-dimensionally, skip, skip, skip, as they moved from star to star. The odds suddenly moved down from a hundred to one against mankind to sixty to forty and mankind's favor. This was not enough. The telepaths were trained to become ultra-sensitive, trained to become aware of the dragons in less than a millisecond. But it was found that the dragons could move a million miles in just under two milliseconds and that this was not enough for the human mind to activate the light beams. Attempts had been made to sheath the ships in light at all times. This defense were out. As mankind learned about the dragons, so too, apparently, the dragons learned about mankind. Somehow they flattened their own bulk and came in on extremely flat trajectories very quickly. Intense light was needed, light of sunlight intensity. This could be provided only by light bombs, penlighting came into existence. Penlighting consisted of the detonation of ultra-vivid miniature photonuclear bombs which converted a few ounces of a magnesium isotope into pure, visible radiance. The odds kept coming down in mankind's favor, yet ships were being lost. It became so bad that people didn't even want to find the ships because the rescuers knew what they would see. It was sad to bring back to earth 300 bodies ready for burial and 200 or 300 lunatics damaged beyond repair to be wakened and fed and cleaned and put to sleep, wakened and fed again until their lives were ended. Telepaths tried to reach into the minds of the psychotics who had been damaged by the dragons, but they found nothing there beyond vivid spouting columns of fiery terror bursting from the primordial id itself, the volcanic source of life. Then came the partners. Man and partner could do together what man could not do alone. Men had the intellect, partners at the speed. The partners rode their tiny craft no larger than footballs outside the spaceships. They planned a form with the ships. They rode beside them with their six-pound craft ready to attack. The tiny ships of the partners were swift. Each carried a dozen pen lights, bombs no bigger than thimbles. The pen lighters threw the partners, quite literally threw, by means of mind-firing relays direct at the dragons. What seemed to be dragons to the human mind appeared in the form of gigantic rats in the minds of the partners. Out in the pitiless nothingness of space, the partners' minds responded to an instinct as old as life. The partners attacked, striking with the speed faster than man's, going from attack to attack until the rats, or themselves, were destroyed. Almost all the time it was the partners who won. With the safety of the interstellar skip-skip-skip of the ships, commerce increased immensely. The population of all the colonies went up and the demand for trained partners increased. Underhill and Woodley were a part of the third generation of pen lighters, and yet to them it seemed as though their craft had endured forever. Gearing space into minds by means of the pen set, adding the partners to those minds, keying up the mind for the tension of a flight on which, all depended, this was more than human synapses could stand for long. Underhill needed his two months' rest after half an hour of fighting. Woodley needed his retirement after ten years of service. They were young, they were good, but they had limitations. So much depended on the choice of partners, so much on the sheer luck of who drew whom. The Shuffle. Father Moontree and the little girl named West entered the room. They were the other two pen lighters. The human complement of the fighting room was now complete. Father Moontree was a red-faced man of forty-five who had lived the peaceful life of a farmer until he reached his fortieth year. Only then, belatedly, did the authorities find he was telepathic, and agreed to let him late in life enter upon the career of penlighter. He did well at it, but he was fantastically old for this kind of business. Father Moontree looked at the glum Woodley and the musing Underhill. How are the youngsters today? Ready for a good fight? Father always went to fight, giggled the little girl named West.  Her giggle was high and childish. She looked like the last person in the world one would expect to find in the rough, sharp dueling of penlighting. Underhill had been amused one time when he found one of the most sluggish of the partners, coming away happy from contact with a mind of the girl named West. Usually the partners didn't care much about the human minds with which they were paired for the journey. The partners seemed to take the attitude that human minds were complex and fouled up beyond belief, anyhow. No partner ever questioned the superiority of the human mind, though very few of the partners were much impressed by that superiority. The partners liked people. They were willing to fight with them. They were even willing to die for them. But when a partner liked an individual the way, for example, that Captain Wow or the Lady May liked Underhill, the liking had nothing to do with intellect. It was a matter of temperament, of feel. Underhill knew perfectly well that Captain Wow regarded his, Underhill's, brain as silly. What Captain Wow liked was Underhill's friendly, emotional structure, the cheerfulness, and glint of wicked amusement that shot through Underhill's unconscious thought patterns and the gaiety with which Underhill faced danger. The words, the history books, the ideas, the science, Underhill could sense all that in his own mind, reflected back from Captain Wow's mind as so much rubbish. Miss West looked at Underhill. I bet you put stick'em on the stones. I did not. Underhill felt his ears grow red with embarrassment. During his novitiate he had tried to cheat in the lottery because he got particularly fond of a special partner, a lovely young mother named Myr. It was so much easier to operate with Myr and she was so affectionate toward him that he forgot pen-lighting was hard work and that he was not instructed to have a good time with his partner. They were both designed and prepared to go into deadly battle together. One cheating had been enough. They had found him out and he had been laughed at for years. Father Moontree picked up the imitation leather cup and shook the stone dice which assigned them their partners for the trip. By senior rites he took the first draw. He grimaced.  Father Moontree had once said that he burped cod liver oil for weeks after drawing that particular glutton, so strongly had the telepathic image of fish impressed itself upon his mind. Yet the glutton was a glutton for danger as well as for fish. He had killed sixty-three dragons more than any other partner in the service and was quite literally worth his weight in gold. The little girl West came next. She drew Captain Wow. When she saw who it was she smiled. I like him, she said. He's such fun to fight with. He feels so nice and cuddly in my mind. Cuddly, hell, said Woodley. I've been in his mind too. It's the most leering mind in the ship, bar none. Nasty man, said the little girl. She said it declaratively without reproach. Underhill, looking at her, shivered. He didn't see how she could take Captain Wow so calmly. Captain Wow's mind did leer her. When Captain Wow got excited in the middle of a battle confused images of dragons, deadly rats, luscious beds, the spell of fish, and the shock of space all scrambled together in his mind as he and Captain Wow, their consciousness, linked together through the pen set, became a fantastic composite of human being and Persian cat. That's the trouble with working with cats, thought Underhill. It's a pity that nothing else anywhere will serve as partner. Cats were all right once you got in touch with them telepathically. They were smart enough to meet the needs of the fight, but their motives and desires were certainly different from those of humans. They were companionable enough, as long as you thought tangible images at them, but their minds just closed up and went to sleep when you recited Shakespeare or Colegrove, or if you tried to tell them what space was. It was sort of funny realizing that the partners, who were so grim and mature out here in space, were the same cute little animals that people had used as pets for thousands of years back on Earth. He had embarrassed himself more than once while on the ground, saluting perfectly ordinary non-telepathic cats because he had forgotten for the moment that they were not partners. He picked up the cup and shook out his stone dice. He was lucky he drew the Lady May. The Lady May was the most thoughtful partner he had ever met. In her, the finely-bred pedigree mind of a Persian cat had reached one of its highest peaks of development. She was more complex than any human woman, but the complexity was all one of emotions, memory, hope, and discriminated experience, experience sorted through without benefit of words. When he had first come into contact with her mind, he was astonished at its clarity. With her he remembered her kittenhood. He remembered every mating experience she had ever had. He saw in a half-recognizable gallery all the other pen-liters with whom she had been paired for the fight. And he saw himself radiant, cheerful, and desirable. He even thought he caught the edge of a longing. A very flattering and yearning thought.  Woodley picked up the last stone. He drew what he deserved, a sullen, scared old Tomcat with none of the verve of Captain Wow. Woodley's partner was the most animal of all the cats on the ship, a low, brutish type with a dull mind. Even telepathy had not refined his character. His ears were half chewed off from the first fights in which he had engaged. He was a serviceable fighter, nothing more. Woodley grunted. Underhill glanced at him oddly. Didn't Woodley ever do anything but grunt? Father Muntree looked at the other three. You might as well get your partners now. I'll let the scanner know we're ready to go into the up and out. The deal. Underhill spun the combination lock on the lady-mazed cage. He woke her gently and took her into his arms. She humped her back, luxuriously, stretched her claws, started to purr, thought better of it, and licked him on the wrist instead. He did not have the pen set on, so their minds were closed to each other, but in the angle of her moustache and in the movement of her ears he caught some sense of gratification she experienced in finding him as her partner. He talked to her in human speech, even though speech meant nothing to a cat when the pen set was not on.  You didn't ask for this kind of fight, did you?   Human eyes and cat eyes looked across an immensity that no words could meet but which affection spanned in a single glance. Time to get in, he said. She walked dostily into her spheroid carrier. She climbed in. He saw to it that her miniature pen set rested firmly and comfortably against the base of her brain. He made sure that her claws were padded so that she could not tear herself in the excitement of battle. Softly he said to her, Ready? For answer she preened her back as much as her harness would permit and purred softly within the confines of the frame that held her. He slapped down the lid and watched the sealant ooze around the seam. For a few hours she was welded into her projectile until a workman with a short cutting arc would remove her after she had done her duty. He picked up the entire projectile and slipped it into the ejection tube. He closed the door of the tube, spun the lock, and seated himself in his chair and put his own pen set on. Once again he flung the switch. He sat in a small room, small, small, warm, warm, the bodies of the three other people moving close around him, the tangible lights in the ceiling bright and heavy against his closed eyelids. As the pen set warmed the room fell away. The other people ceased to be people with small glowing heaps of fire, embers, dark red fire, with the consciousness of life burning like old red coals in a country fireplace. As the pen set warmed a little more he felt earth just below him, felt the ship slipping away, felt the turning moon as it swung on the far side of the world, felt the planets and the hot, clear goodness of the sun which kept the dragons so far from mankind's native ground. Finally he reached complete awareness. He was telepathically alive to a range of millions of miles. He felt the dust which he had noticed earlier high above the ecliptic. With a thrill of warmth and tenderness he felt the consciousness of the Lady May pouring over into his own. Her consciousness was as gentle and clear and yet sharp to the taste of his mind as if it were scented oil. It felt relaxing and reassuring. He could sense her welcome of him. It was scarcely a thought, just a raw emotion of greeting. At last they were one again. In a tiny remote corner of his mind as tiny as the smallest toy he had ever seen in his childhood he was still aware of the room and the ship and a father moon tree picking up a telephone and speaking to a scanner captain in charge of the ship. His telepathic mind caught the idea long before his ears could frame the words. The actual sound followed the idea the way that thunder on an ocean beach follows the lightning inward from far out over the seas. The fighting room is ready, clear to plan a form, sir. The play. Underhill was always a little exasperated the way that Lady May experienced things before he did. He was braced for the quick vinegar thrill of plan a forming but he caught her report of it before his own nerves could register what happened. Earth had fallen so far away that he groped for several milliseconds before he found the sun in the upper rear right hand corner of his telepathic mind. That was a good jump, he thought. This way we'll get there in four or five skips. A few hundred miles outside the ship the Lady May thought back at him. O warm, O generous, O gigantic man, O brave, O friendly, O tender and huge partner, O wonderful with you, with you so good, good, good, warm, warm, now to fight, now to go, good with you. He knew that she was not thinking words, that his mind took the clear amiable babble of her cat intellect and translated it into images which his own thinking could record and understand. Neither one of them was absorbed in the game of mutual greetings. He searched out far beyond her range of perception to see if there was anything near the ship. It was funny how it was possible to do two things at once. He could scan space with his pen-set mind and yet at the same time catch a vagrant thought of hers, a lovely affectionate thought about a son who had had a golden face and a chest covered with soft, incredibly downy white fur. While he was still searching he caught the warning from her. Again! And so they had. The ship had moved into a second planiform. The stars were different. The sun was immeasurably far behind. Even the nearest stars were barely in contact. This was good dragon country, this open, nasty, hollow kind of space. He reached farther, faster, sensing and looking for danger, ready to fling the Lady May at danger wherever he found it. Terror in his mind, so sharp, so clear that it came through as a physical wrench. The little girl named West had found something, something immense, long, black, sharp, greedy, horrific. She flung Captain Wow at it. Underhill tried to keep his own mind clear. Watch out! he shouted telepathically at the others, trying to move the Lady May around. At one corner of the battle he felt the lustful rage of Captain Wow as the big Persian cat detonated lights while he approached the streak of dust which threatened the ship and the people within. The lights scored near misses. The dust flattened itself, changing from the shape of a stingray into the shape of a spear. Not three milliseconds had elapsed. Father Moontree was talking human words and was saying in a voice that moved like cold molasses out of a heavy jar. Captain Underhill knew that the sentence was going to be Captain move fast. The battle would be fought and finished before Father Moontree got through talking. Now, fractions of a millisecond later the Lady May was directly in line. Here was where the skill and speed of the partners came in. She could react faster than he. He could see the threat as an immense rat coming direct at her. She could fire the light bombs with a discrimination which he might miss. He was connected with her mind but he could not follow it. His consciousness absorbed the tearing wound inflicted by the alien enemy. It was like no wound on earth.  He began to writhe in his chair. Actually he had not yet had time to move a muscle when the Lady May struck back at their enemy. Five evenly spaced, photonuclear bombs blazed out across a hundred thousand miles. The pain in his mind and body vanished. He felt a moment of fierce, terrible, feral elation running through the mind of the Lady May as she finished her kill. It was always disappointing to the cats to find out that their enemies whom they'd sensed as gigantic space rats disappeared at the moment of destruction. Then he felt her hurt, the pain and the fear that swept over both of them. As the battle, quicker than the movement of an eyelid, had come and gone. In the same instant there came the sharp and acid twinge of planafarm. Once more the ship went skip. He could hear Woodley thinking at him. You don't have to bother much. This old son of a gun and I will take over for a while. Twice again the twinge, the skip. He had no idea where he was until the lights of the Caledonia spaceport were shown below. With awareness that lay almost beyond the limits of thought, he threw his mind back into rapport with the pincet, fixing the Lady May's projectile gently and neatly in its launching tube. She was half dead with fatigue, but he could feel the beat of her heart could listen to her panting and he grasped the grateful edge of a thanks reaching from her mind to his. The score. They put him in the hospital at Caledonia. The doctor was friendly but firm. You actually got touched by that dragon. That's as close a shave as I've ever seen. It's also quick that it'll be a long time before we know what happened scientifically, but I suppose you'd be ready for the insane asylum now if the contact had lasted several tenths of a millisecond longer. What kind of cat did you have out in front of you? Underhill felt the words coming out of him slowly. Words were such a lot of trouble compared with the speed and the joy of thinking, fast and sharp and clear, mind to mind, but words were all that could reach ordinary people like this doctor. His mouth moved heavily as he articulated words. Don't call our partners cats. The right thing to call them is partners. They fight for us and a team. You ought to know we call them partners, not cats. How is mine? Said the doctor contritely. We'll find out for you. Meanwhile, old man, you take it easy. There's nothing but rust that can help you. Can you make yourself sleep? Or would you like us to give you some kind of sedative? I can sleep, said Underhill. I just want to know about the Lady May. The nurse joined in. She was a little antagonistic. Don't you want to know about the other people? They're OK, said Underhill. I knew that before I came here. He stretched his arms and sighed and grinned at them. He could see they were relaxing and were beginning to treat him as a person instead of a patient. I'm all right, he said. Just let me know when I can go see my partner. A new thought struck him. He looked wildly at the doctor. They didn't send her off with a ship, did they? I'll find out right away, said the doctor. He gave Underhill a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and left the room. The nurse took Napkin off a goblet of chilled fruit juice. Underhill tried to smile at her. There seemed to be something wrong with the girl. He wished she would go away. First he had started to be friendly and now she was distant again. It's a nuisance being telepathic, he thought. You keep trying to reach even when you are not making contact. Suddenly she swung around on him.  Just as she stamped out, he burst into her mind. He saw himself a radiant hero, glad in his smooth, suede uniform, the pincet crown shining like ancient oil jewels around his head. He saw his own face, handsome and masculine, shining out of her mind. He saw himself very far away and he saw himself as she hated him. She hated him in the secrecy and she hated him because he was, she thought, proud and strange and rich, better and more beautiful than people like her.  She is a cat, he thought. That's all she is, a cat. But that was not how his mind saw her. Quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, wordless, and undemanding, where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her? End of The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cord winner Smith. Page 46 of Astounding Stories of Super Science January 1931 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Gate to Zoran by Hal K. Wells. Read by Todd Garrison. He sat in a small half-darkened booth well over in the corner, the man with the strangely glowing blue-green eyes. The booth was one of a score that circled the walls of the Mayory Hut, a popular nightclub in the San Fernando Valley some five miles over the hills from Hollywood. It was nearly midnight, half a dozen couples danced lazily in the central dancing space. The couples remained tete-a-tete in this occluded booth. In the entire room, only two men were dining alone. One was a slender gray-haired little man with the weirdly glowing eyes. The other was Blair Gordon, a highly successful young attorney of Los Angeles. Both men had the unmistakable air of waiting for someone. Blair Gordon's college days were not so far distant that he had yet lost any of the splendid physique that had made him an all-American tackle. In any physical combat with a slight gray-haired stranger, Gordon knew that he should be able to break the other in two with one hand. Yet, as he studied the stranger from behind the potted palms that screened his own booth, Gordon was amazed to find himself slowly being overcome by an emotion of dread so intense that it verged upon sheer fear. There was something indescribably alien and utterly sinister in that dimly seen figure in the corner booth. The faint eerie light that glowed in the stranger's deep-set eyes was not the lamp and flame seen in the shatoyant orbs of some night prowling jungle beast, rather. It was the blue-green glow of phosphorescent, which light that flickers and dances in the night mist above streaming tropical swamps. The stranger's face was as classically perfect in its rugged outline as out of a Roman wargot, yet those perfect features seemed utterly lifeless. In the 20-minute city had been intently watching the stranger, Gordon would have sworn that the other's face did not move by so much of the twitch of an eyelash. Then a new couple entered the Majority Hut, and Gordon promptly forgot all thought of the puzzingly alien figure in the corner. The new arrivals were a vibrant, beautiful blonde girl and a plump, salivate man in the early 40s. The girl was Leah Keith, although he had the latest screen sensation. The man was Dave Reddinger, director. A waiter seated Leah in her escort in a booth directly across the room from that of Gordon. It was a maneuver for which Gordon had tipped lavishly when he first came to the hut. A week ago, Leah Keith's engagement to Blair Gordon had been abruptly ended by a trivial little quarrel. The two volatile temperaments had fanned into flames, which apparently made reconciliation impossible. A miserably lonely week had finally ended in Gordon's present trip to the Majority Hut. He knew that Leah often came there, and he had an overwhelming longing to at least see her again, even though his pride forced him to remain unseen. Now, as he stared glumly at Leah through the palms that effectively screened his own booth, Gordon heartily regretted that he had ever come.  Then, with a sudden, tingling thrill, Gordon realized that he was not the only one in the room who was interested in Leah in her escort. Over in the half-darkened corner booth, the eerie stranger was staring at the girl with an intentness that made his weird eyes glow in the miniature pools of shimmering blue-green fire. Again, Gordon felt that vague impression of dread as though he were in the presence of something utterly alien to all human experience. Gordon turned his gaze back to Leah and caught his breath sharply in sudden amaze. The necklace about Leah's throat was beginning to glow with the same uncanny blue-green light that's shown in the stranger's eyes. Faint, yet unmistakable. The shimmering radiance pulsed from the necklace in an aura of nameless evil. And with the coming of that aura of weird, lighter throat, a strange chance was swiftly sweeping over Leah. She sat there now as rigidly motionless as some exquisite statue of ivory and jet. Gordon stared at her in stark bewilderment. He knew the history of Leah's necklace. It was merely an oddity and nothing more, a freak piece of costume jewelry made from fragments of an Arizona meteorite. Leah had worn the necklace a dozen times before, without any trace of the weird phenomena that were now occurring. Dancers again thronged to the floor to the blaring jazz of the Negro Orchestra while Gordon was still trying to force his whirling brain to a decision. He was certain that Leah was in deadly peril of some kind, yet the nature of that peril was too bizarre for his mind to imagine. Then the stranger with the glowing eyes took matters into his own hands. He left his booth and began threading his way through the dancers toward Leah. As he watched the progress of that slight great hair figure, Gordon refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. The thing was too utterly absurd, yet Gordon was positive that the strong oak floor of the dancing space was visibly swaying and creaking beneath the stranger's menacing tread. The stranger paused at Leah's booth only long enough to utter a brief, low-voiced command. Then Leah, still in the grip of that strange trance, rose obediently from her seat to accompany him. Dave Reading rose angrily to an interceptor. The stranger seemed to barely brush the irate director with his fingertips, yet Reading reeled back as though struck by a pile driver. Leah and the stranger started for the door. Reading scrambled to his feet again and hurried after them. It was then that Gordon finally shook off the stupor of utter bewilderment that had held him. Springing from his booth, he rushed after the trio. The dancers in his way delayed Gordon momentarily. Leah and the stranger were already gone when he reached the door. The narrow little entrance hallway to the hut was deserted and safe for a figure sprawled there on the floor near the outer door. It was the body of Dave Reading. Gordon shattered his e-glance briefly down at the huddled figure. A single mighty blow from some unknown weapon had crumpled the director's entire face in, like the shattered shell of a broken egg. Gordon charged out through the outer door, just as a heavy sedan came careening out of the parking lot. He had a flashing glimpse of Leah and the stranger in the front seat of the big car.  Gordon shot out from the parking lot onto the main bowl of art. A hundred yards away, the sedan was fleeing toward Hollywood. Gordon tramped hard on the accelerator, his engine snarled with the unleashed fury of a hundred horsepower. The gap between the two cars swiftly lessened. Then the stranger seemed to become aware for the first time that it was being followed. The next second, the big sedan accelerated with the hurtling speed of a flying bullet. Gordon sent his own foot nearly to the floor. The roadster jumped to 80 miles an hour, yet the sedan continued to leave it remorselessly behind. The two cars started up the northern slope of the Cahuenga Pass, the sedan nearly 200 yards ahead and gaiting all the time. Gordon wondered briefly at the other side of the pass and on into Hollywood at their present mad speed. Then, at the summit of the pass, the sedan swerved abruptly to the right and fled west along the Mulholland Highway. Gordon's tires screamed as he swerved the roadster in hot pursuit. The dark winding mountain highway was nearly deserted at that hour of the night, safer on an occasional audible bell that swerved frantically to the side of the road to dodge the roaring onslaught of the racing cars. Gordon and the stranger had the road to themselves. The stranger seemed to no longer be trying to leave his pursuer hopelessly behind. He allowed Gordon to come within 100 yards of him, but that was as near as Gordon could get in spite of the roadster's best efforts. Half a dozen times, Gordon trod savagely upon his accelerator in a desperate attempt to close the gap, but each time the sedan fled with the swift grace of a scutting phantom. Finally, Gordon had to contend himself with merely keeping his distance behind the glowing red taillight of the car ahead. It passed Laurel Canyon, and still the big sedan board onto the west. Then finally half a dozen miles beyond Laurel Canyon, the stranger abruptly left the main highway and started up a narrow private road, decrested one of the lonely hills. Gordon slowly gained in the next two miles. When the road ended in a winding gravel driveway into the grounds of what is apparently a private estate, the roadster was scarcely a dozen yards behind. The stranger's features he stood there stiffly erect in the vivid glare of the roadster's headlight were still as devoid of all expression as ever. The only things that really seemed alive in that mask of a face were the two eyes glowing eerie blue-green fire like twin entities of alien evil. Gordon wasted no time and verbal sparring, emotionally and briefly to Leah Keece rigid form in the front seat of the sedan. "'This Keece is returning to Hollywood with me,' he said currently. "'Will you let her go peacefully, or shall I?' He left the question unfinished, but his threat was obvious. "'Or shall you do what?' asked the stranger quietly. There was an oddly metallic ring and his low, even tones. His words were so precisely clipped that they suggested some origin more mechanical than human. "'Or shall I take Miss Keece with me by force?' Gordon flared angrily. "'You can try to take the lady by force if you wish. A mistakeable jeering note in the metallic tones.' The taunt was the last thing needed to unleash Gordon's volatile temper. He stepped forward and swung a hard left hook for that expressionless mask of a face, but the blow never landed. The stranger dodged with uncanny swiftness. His answering gesture seemed merely the gentlest possible push outstretched hand. Yet Gordon was sent reeling backward a full dozen steps by the terrible force and apparently gentle blow. Recovering himself, Gordon grimly returned to the attack. The stranger again flung out one hand in contemptuous gesture, which one would brush away, a tremblesome fly. But this time Gordon was more cautious. He neatly dodged the stranger's blow and then swung a vicious right squarely for his adversary's unprotected jaw. The blow smashed solidly home with all of Gordon's weight behind it. The stranger's jaw buckled and gave beneath that shattering impact. The entire face crumpled into distorted ruin. Gordon staggered back a step in sheer horror that grew some result of his blow. The stranger flung a hand up to his shattered features. When his hand came away again, the whole face came away with it. Gordon had one horror-stricken glimpse of a featureless blob of rubbery, bluish-gray flesh in which fiendish eyes of green-blue fire blazed in malignant fury. Then the stranger fumbled at his collar, ripping the linen swiftly away. Something lashed out from beneath his throat, a loathsome snake-like object slender and forked at the end. One ghastly moment as the writhing tentacle swung into line with him, Gordon saw its forked ends glow strange fire. One a vivid blue, the other a sparkling green. Then the world was abruptly blotted out for Blair Gordon. Consciousness returned to Gordon as swiftly and painlessly as it had left him. For a moment he blinked stupidly in a dazed effort to comprehend the incredible scene before him. He was seated in a chair over near the wall of a large room that was flooded with livid red light from a single globe overhead. The sight of him said Leah Keith, also staring with dazed eyes in an effort to comprehend her surroundings. Directly in front of them stood a figure of stark nightmare horror. The weirdly glowing eyes identified the figures out of the stranger at the Mayory Hut. But there every point of resemblance ceased.  Now that his disguise was completely stripped away, his slight frame was revealed as a grotesque parody of that of a human being. With arms and legs like pipe stems, a bald oval head that merged with necklace rigidity directly into a heavy-shouldered body that tapered onto an almost wasp-like slenderness at the waist. It was naked save for a glowing cloth of some metallic fabric. His bluish-gray skin had a dull, oily sheen, strangely suggested a fine, grain-flexible metal. The creature's face was hideously unlike anything human. Beneath the glowing eyes was a small, circular mouth orifice with a cluster of gill-like appendages on either side of it. Patches of lighter-colored skin on either side of the head seemed to serve as ears. From a point just under the head, the throat of a human being would have been dingled a foot-and-a-half-long tentacle whose fork-tip had sent Gordon into oblivion. Behind the creature, Gordon was dimly aware of a maze of complicated and utterly unfamiliar apparatus ranged along the opposite wall, giving the room appearance of being a laboratory of some kind. Gordon's obvious bewilderment seemed to amuse the bluish-gray monstrosity. May I introduce myself? Yes, with a mocking note in his metallic voice. I am Arlock of Zoran. I am an explorer of space, and more particularly an opener of gates. My home is upon Zoran, which is one of the eleven major planets that circle about the giant blue-white sun that your astrologers call Rizal. I am here to open the gate between your world and mine. Gordon reached a reassuring hand over the Leia. All memory of their quarrel was obliterated in the face of their present peril. He felt their slender fingers twine firmly with his. The warm contact gave them both new courage. We of Zoran need your planet and intend to take possession of it, Arlock continued. But the vast distance which separates Rizal from your solar system makes it impractical to transport any considerable number of our people here in spacecars. Though our spacecars travel with practically the speed of light, it requires over 540 years for them to cross that great void. So I was sent as a lone pioneer to your earth to do the work necessary here in order to open the gate that will enable Zoran to cross the barrier in less than a minute of your time. That gate is one through the fourth dimension. For Zoran and your planet in a four-dimensional universe we are almost touching each other in spite of the great distance separating them in a three-dimensional universe.  But we can by the use of the apparatus to open a gate pass through a thin sector of the fourth dimension and emerge in a far distant part of our three-dimensional universe. The situation of our two worlds are a lot continued. It's somewhat like that of two dots on opposite ends of a long strip of paper that is curved almost into a circle. To two-dimensional beings capable only of realizing and traveling along the two dimensions of the paper itself those dots might be many feet apart. Yet in the third dimension straight across free space might be separated by only the thousandth part of an inch. In order to take that shortcut across the third dimension the two-dimensional creatures of the paper would have only to transform a small strip of the intervening space into a two-dimensional surface like their paper. They could do this of course by the use of proper vibration creating machinery. For all things in a material universe are merely a matter of vibration. We of Zoran planned across the barrier of the fourth dimension by creating a narrow strip with vibrations powerful enough to exactly match and nullify those of the fourth dimension itself. The result will be that this narrow strip will temporarily become an area of three dimensions only. An area over which we can safely pass from our world to yours. Arlok indicated one of the pieces of apparatus along the opposite wall of the room. It was an intricate arrangement of finely wound coils with wires leading to scores of needle-like points which constantly shimmered and crackled with tiny blue-white flames. Thick cables ran to a bank of concave reflectors of some gleaming grayish material. There is the apparatus which will supply the enormous power necessary to nullify the vibrations of the fourth dimensional barrier, or Arlok explained. There is a condenser, an adapter of the cosmic force that you call the Millican rays. In Zoran a similar apparatus is already set up and finished, but the gate can only be opened by simultaneous actions That is why I was set on my long journey through space to do the necessary work here. I am now nearly finished. A very few hours more we'll see the final opening of the gate. Then the fighting hordes of Zoran can sweep through the barrier and overwhelm your planet. When the gate from Zoran to a new planet is first opened, Arlok continued, our scientists always like to have at least one pair of specimens of the new world's inhabitants sent through to them for experimental use. So tonight, while waiting for one of my final castings to cool, I improved the time by making a brief raid upon the place that you call the Mayore Hut. The lady here seemed an excellent type of your earthling women, and the meteoric iron in her necklace made a perfect focus for electric hypnosis. Her escort was too inferior a specimen to be of value to me so it killed him when he attempted to interfere. When you gave chase I lured you on until I could see whether you might be usable. You proved an excellent specimen so I merely stunned you. Very soon I shall be ready to send the two of you through the gate to our scientists in Zoran. Cold the wave of sheer horror swept over Gordon. It was impossible to doubt the stark and deadly menace promised in the plan of this grim visitor from an alien universe. A menace that loomed not only for Gordon and Leah, but for the teeming millions of a doomed and defenseless world. Let me show you Zoran, Arlok offered. Then you may be better able to understand. He turned his back carelessly upon his two captives and strode over the apparatus along the opposite wall. Gordon longed to hurl himself upon the unprotected back of the retreating Zoranian, but he knew that any attempt of that kind would be suicidal. Arlok's deadly tinnacle would strike him down before he was halfway across the room. He searched his surroundings with desperate eyes for anything that might serve as a weapon. In his pulse quickened with a sudden hope. There on a small table near Leah was the familiar bulk of a .45 caliber revolver loaded and ready for use. It was included in a miscellaneous collection of other small earthly tools and objects that Arlok had apparently collected for study. There was an excellent chance that Leah might be able to secure the gun unobserved. Gordon pressed her fingers in a swift attempt at his signaling, then jerked his head ever so slightly toward the table. A moment later the quick answering pressure of Leah's fingers told him that she had understood his message. From the corner of his eye Gordon saw Leah's other hand begin cautiously groping behind her for the revolver. Then both Gordon and Leah froze in sudden immobility as Arlok faced them again from beside an apparatus slightly reminiscent of an earthly radio set. Arlok threw a switch and a small bank of tubes glowed pale green. A yard square plate, a bluish gray metal on the wall above the apparatus glowed with milky fluorescence. It is easy to penetrate the barrier with light waves Arlok explained. That is a gate that can be readily opened from either side. It was through that we first discovered your earth. Arlok threw a rheostat on to more power. Luminous plate cleared swiftly. And there earthlings as Zoran, Arlok said proudly. Leah and Gordon gasped and sheer amazed as the glowing plate became an veritable window into another world. A world of utter and alien terror. The livid light of giant red sun placed mercifully down on the landscape from which every vestige of animal and plant life had apparently been stripped. Naked rocks and barren soil stretched illimitably to the far horizon in a vast monotony of utter desolation. Arlok twirled the knob of the adiparatus. In another scene flashed into view. In this scene great gleaming squares and cones of metal rose in towering clusters from the starkly barren land. Hordes of creatures like Arlok swarmed in and around the metal buildings. Giant machines, world countless wheels and strange tasks. From a thousand great needle-like projections on the buildings spurted shimmering sheets of crackling flame bathing the entire scene in a whirling mist of fiery vapors. Gordon realized dimly that he must be looking into one of the cities of Zoran. But every detail of the chaotic world of activity was too utterly unfamiliar to carry any real significance to his bewildered brain. He was as hopelessly overwhelmed as an African savage would be if transported suddenly into the heart of Zoran's square. Arlok again twirled the knob. The scene shifted, apparently to another planet. This world was still alive. With rich vertu and swarming millions of people strangely like those averse but it was a doomed world. The dread gate to Zoran had already been open there. Legions of bluish-gray Zoranians were attacking the planet's inhabitants and the attack of those metallic host was irresistible. The Zoranians seemed as impervious to bullets and missiles as though armor plated. The frantic defense of the beleaguered people of the doomed planet caused hardly a casualty in the Zoranian ranks. The attack of the Zoranians was hideously effective. Clouds of dense yellow fog belched from countless projectors in the hands of the bluish-gray hosts and beneath that deadly miasma all animal and plant life on the doomed planet was crumbling, dying and rotting into a liquid slime. Then even the slime was swiftly obliterated and the Zoranians were left triumphant upon a world starkly desolate. That was one of the minor planets in the swarm that make up the solar system of the sun that your astronomers call Canapus, Arlach explained. Our first task in conquering a world is to rid it of the unclean surface scum of animal and plant life. When this noxious surface mold is eliminated the planet is then ready to furnish us sustenance. Our bodies Iranians live directly upon the metallic elements of the planet itself. Our bodies are of a substance of which your scientists have never even dreamed. Deathless, invincible, living metal. Arlach again twirled the control of the apparatus and the scene was shifted back to the planet of Zoran, this time to the interior of what was apparently a vast laboratory. Here scores of Iranian scientists were working upon captives who were pathetically like human beings of Earth itself, lethal gases and deadly liquids as human scientists might experiment upon noxious pests. The details of the scene were so utterly revolting, the torches that were being inflicted so starkly horrible that Lee and Gordon sank back in their chairs sick and shaken. Arlach snapped off a switch in the green blue light and the tubes died. That last scene was the laboratory to which I will send you two presently. He said callously as he started back across the room toward them. Gordon lurched to his feet.  Then he felt Lee tugging surreptitiously at his right hand. The next moment the bulk of something cold and hard met his fingers. It was the revolver. Lee had secured it while Arlach was busy with his interdimensional televisor. Arlach was rapidly approaching them. Gordon hoped against hope that the menace of the deadly tentacle might be diverted for the fraction of a second necessary for him to get in a crippling shot. Lee assumed a divine as thought. She suddenly screamed hysterically and flung herself on the floor almost at Arlach's feet. Arlach stopped in obvious wonder and bent over Lee. Gordon took instant advantage of the Zoranians' diverted attention. He whipped the revolver from behind and fired point-blank at Arlach's unprotected head. The bullet struck squarely, but Arlach was not even staggered. A tiny spot of the bluish gray skin upon his oval skull gleamed faintly for a moment under the bullet's impact. Then, the heavy pellet of lead is thoroughly flattened as though it had struck the triple armor of a battleship dropped spent and harmless to the floor. Arlach straightened swiftly. For the moment, he seemed to have no thought of retaliating with his deadly tentacle. He merely stood there quite still with one thin arm thrown up to guard his glowing eyes. Gordon sent the remainder of the revolver's bullet crashing home as fast as his finger could press the trigger. At that murderously short range, the smashing rain of lead should have dropped a charging gorilla. But for all the effect Gordon's shots had had upon the Zeranian, his ammunition might as well have been pellets of paper. Arlach's glossy hide merely glowed momentarily in tiny patches as the bullet struck and flattened harmlessly. And that was all. His last cartridge fired. Gordon flung the empty weapon squarely at the blue monstrosity's hivvious face. Arlach made no attempt to dodge. The heavy revolver struck him high on the forehead and rebounded harmlessly to the floor. Arlach paid no more attention to the blow than a man would to the casual touch of a wind-blown feather. Gordon desperately flung himself forward upon the Zeranian one last mad effort to overwhelm him. Arlach dodged Gordon's wild blows then gently swept the earth man into the embrace of his thin arms. For one helpless moment, Gordon sensed the incredible strength and adamantine hardness of the Zeranian slender figure together with an overwhelming impression of colossal weight in that deceptively slight body. Then Arlach contemptuously flung Gordon away from him. As Gordon staggered backwards, Arlach's tentacle lashed upward and leveled upon him. Its twin lips again glowed brilliantly green and livid blue. Instantly, every muscle in Gordon's body was paralyzed. He stood there as rigid as a statue. His body completely deadened from the neck down. Beside him stood Leah, also frozen motionless in that same weird power. Earthling, you are beginning to try my patience, Arlach snapped. Can you not realize that I am utterly invincible in any combat with you? The living metal of my body weighs over 1600 pounds as you measure weight. The strength inherent in that metal is sufficient to tear a hundred of your earthmen to shreds. But I do not even have to touch you to vanquish you. The electrical content of my bodily structure is so infinitely superior to yours that with this tentacle organ of mine I can instantly short-circuit the feeble currents of your nerve impulses and bring either paralysis or death as I choose. But enough of this, Arlach broke off abruptly. My materials are now ready and it is time that I have finished my work. I shall put you out of my way for a few hours until I am ready to send you through a gate to the laboratories of Zoran. One blue fire of the tentacle's tips flamed to dazzling brightness. The paralysis of Gordon's body swept swiftly over his brain. Black oblivion engulfed him. When Gordon again recovered consciousness, he found that he was lying on the floor of what was apparently a narrow hall near the foot of a stairway. His hands were lashed tightly behind him and his feet and legs were so firmly pinioned together that he could scarcely move. Beside him lay Leah, also tightly bound, a short distance down the hall was the closed door of Arlach's work room recognizable by the thin line of red light claiming beneath it. Moonlight threw a window at the rear of the hall and made objects around Gordon faintly clear. He looked at Leah and saw tears glistening on her long lashes. Oh Blair, I was afraid you'd never waken again, the girl sobbed. I thought our fiend had killed you. Her voice broke hysterically. Steady darling, Gordon said soothingly, we simply can't give up now. You know, if that monstrosity ever opens at a cursigate of us, our entire world is doomed. There must be some way to stop him. We've got to find that way and try it, even if it seems only one forlorn chance in a million. Gordon shook his head to clear the numbness still lingering from the effect of Arlach's tentacle. The Zeranian seemed unable to produce a paralysis of any great duration with his weird natural weapon. Accordingly, he had been forced to bind his captus like two trust fouls while he had returned to his labors. Lying close together as they were, it was a comparatively easy matter for them to get their bound hands within reach of each other. But after 15 minutes of vain work, Gordon realized that any attempt of untying the ropes was useless. Arlach's prodigious strength had drawn the knot so tight that no human power could ever loosen them. Then, Gordon suddenly thought of one thing in his pockets that might help them. It was a tiny cigarette lighter of the spring trigger type. It was in his vest pocket, completely out of reach of his bound hands, but there was a way out of that difficulty. Gordon and Leah twisted and rolled their bodies like two contortionists until they succeeded in getting into such a position that Leah was able to get her teeth in the clot of the vest pocket's edge. A moment of desperate tugging and the fabric gave way. The lighter dropped from the torn pocket of the floor where Leah retrieved it. Then they twisted their bodies back to back. Leah managed to get the lighter flaming in her bound hands. Gordon groped in an effort to guide the ropes on his wrists over the tiny flickering flame. Then, there came the faint welcome odor of smoldering rope as the lighter's tiny flame bit into the bonds. Gordon bit his lips to suppress a cry of pain as the flame seared into his skin as well. The flame bit deeper into the rope. A single strand snapped. Then another strand gave away. To Gordon, the process seemed endless as the flame scorched rope and flesh alike. A long minute of lancing agony that seemed ours, then Gordon could stand no more. He tensed his muscles on one mighty agonized effort in the torture of the flame. The weakened rope gave way completely beneath that pain-maddened lunge. Gordon's hands were free. It was an easy matter now to use the lighter to finish freeing himself and Leah. They made their way swiftly back to the window at the rear of the hall. It slid silently upward. A moment later, they were out in the brilliant moonlight. Free. They made their way around to the front of the house. Behind the drawn shades of one of the front rooms, an eerie glow of red light marked the location of Arloch's work room. They heard the occasional clink of tools inside the room. This is a rainy and diligently work to complete his apparatus. They crept stealthily up to where one of the French windows of Arloch's work rooms swung slightly ajar. Through the narrow crevice, they could see Arloch's grotesque back as he labored over the complex assembly of apparatus against the wall. A heavy stone flung through the window would probably wreck that delicate mechanism completely. Yet as the two watchers knew that such a respite would be only a temporary one, as long as Arloch remained alive on this planet to build other gates to Zoran, Earth's eventual doom was certain. Complete destruction of Arloch himself was Earth's only hope of salvation. The Zoranians seemed to be nearing the end of his labors. He left the apparatus momentarily and walked over to a workbench where was a slender, rod-like tool. Donning a heavy glove to shield his left hand, he selected a small plate of bluish-gray metal and pressed a switch in the handle of the tool in his right hand. A blade of blinding white flame, seemingly as solid as a blade of metal spurred for the length of a foot from the tool's tip. Arloch began cutting the plate with the flame. The blade shearing through the heavy metal as easily as a hot knife shears through butter. The sight brought a sudden surge of exultant hope to Gordon. He swiftly drew Leah away from the window, far enough to decide that their low voice conversation could not be heard from inside the workroom. Leah, there is our one chance, he explained excitedly. That blue fiend is vulnerable and that flame tool of his is the weapon to reach his vulnerability. Did you notice how careful he was to shield his other hand with a glove before he turned the tool on? He can be hurt by that blade of flame and probably hurt badly. Leah nodded in quick understanding. If I could lure him out of the room for just a moment, you could slip into the window and get that flame tool Blair. She suggested equally. That might work, Gordon agreed reluctantly. But Leah, don't run any more risks than you absolutely have to. He picked up a small rock. Here, take this with you. Open the door into the hall and attract Arlok's attention by throwing the rock at his precious apparatus. Then, the minute he sees you, try to escape out through the hall again. He'll leave his work to follow you. When he returns to his room, I'll be in there waiting for him and I'll be waiting with a weapon that can stab through even that armor-plated hide of his. They separated. Leah to enter the house, Gordon to return to the window.  The flame tool, its switch now turned off, was still on the workbench. Gordon's heart pounded with excitement as he crouched there with his eyes fixed upon the closed hall door. The minutes seemed to drag interminably. Then, suddenly, Gordon's muscles tensed. The knob of the hall door had turned ever so slightly. Leah was at her post. The next moment, the door was flung open with a violence that sent its slamming back against the wall. The slender figure of Leah stood framed in the opening. Her dark eyes blazing as she flung one hand up to hurl her missile. Arlok whirled just as Leah threw the rock straight at the intricate gate-opening apparatus. With the speed of thought, the Zeranian flung his own body over to shield his fragile instruments. The rock thetted harmlessly against his metallic chest. Then, Arlok's tentacle flung out like a striking cobra. Its fork-tipped flaming blue and green fire as it focused upon the open door. But Leah was already gone. Gordon heard her flying footsteps as she raced down the hall. Arlok promptly sped after her in swift pursuit. As Arlok passed through the door in the hall, Gordon flung himself into the room and sped straight for the workbench. He snatched the flame tool up, then darted over the wall by the door. He was not a second too soon. The heavy tread of Arlok's return was already audible in the hall just outside. Gordon prepared to stake everything upon this one slim chance of disabling that fearful tentacle before Arlok could bring it into action. He pressed the tiny switch and the flame tool's handle just as Arlok came through the door. Arlok, startled by the glare, the flame tool's blazing blade rolled toward Gordon but too late. A thin, searing shaft of vivid flame had already struck squarely at the base of the Zoranian's tentacle. A seething spray of hissing sparks marked the place where the flame bit deeply home. Arlok screamed a ghastly metallic note of anguish like nothing human. The Zoranian's powerful hands clutched at Gordon, but he leaped lightly backward out of their leech. Then Gordon again attacked. The flame tool's shining blade licking in and out here. The seething flame swept across one of Arlok's arms and the Zoranian winced. Then the blade stabbed swiftly at Arlok's waist. Arlok half doubled as he flinched back. Gordon shifted his aim with lightning speed and sent the blade of flame lashing in one accurate, terrible stroke that caught Arlok squarely in the eyes. Again, Arlok screamed an intolerable agony as that tearing flame darkened forever in his glowing eyes. In berserker fury, the Turk or Zoranian charged blindly toward Gordon. Gordon warily dodged to one side. Arlok, sightless and with his tentacle crippled still had enough power in that mighty metallic body of his to tear a hundred earthmen to pieces. Gordon stung Arlok's shoulder with the flame and desperately leaped to one side just in time to dodge a flailing blow that made pulp of his body had it landed. Arlok went stark wild in his frenzied efforts to come to grips with his unseen adversary. Furniture crashed and splintered to kindling wood beneath his threshing feet. Even the stout walls of the room shivered and cracked as the incredible weight of Arlok's body caromed against them. Gordon circled lively around the crippled blue monstrosity like a timber wolf circling a wounded moose. He began concentrating his attack upon Arlok's left leg. Half a dozen deep slashes with the searing flame and suddenly the thin leg crumpled and broke. Arlok crashed helplessly to the floor. Gordon was now able to shift his attack to Arlok's head dodging the blindly flailing arms of the Zeranian he stabbed again and again that oval shaped skull. The searing thrust began to have their effects. Arlok's convulsive movements became slower and weaker. Gordon sent the flame stabbing in a long final thrust in an attempt to pierce through that alien metal brain. With startling suddenness the flame burned its way home to some unknown center of life force in the oval skull. There was a brief but appalling gush of bright purple flame from Arlok's eye sockets and mouth orifice. Then his twitching body stiffened. His bluish grey hide darkened with incredible swiftness to a dull black. Arlok was dead. Gordon, sickened at the grisly ending of the battle, snapped off the flame tool and turned to search for Leah. He found her already standing in the hall door alive and unheard. I escaped through the window at the end of the hall, she explained. Arlok quit following me as soon as he saw that you too were gone from where he was tied. She shuddered as she looked down at his Iranian's mangled body. I saw most of your fight with him Blair. It was terrible. Awful. But Blair, we've won. Yes. Now we'll make sure the fruits of our victory Gordon said grimly, starting over toward the gate opening apparatus with the flame tool in his hand. At very few minutes work with the sharing blade of the flame reduced to metal. Arlok, gate opener of Zoran, was dead and the gate to that grim planet was now irrevocably closed. Blair, do you feel it too? That eerie feeling of countless eyes still watching us from Zoran? There was Frank Ah and Leah's half-whispered question. You know Arlok said that they had watched us for centuries from their side of the barrier. I'm sure they're watching us now. Will they send another opener of Gates Arlok failed? Gordon took Leah into his arms. I don't know, dear, he admitted gravely. They may send another messenger but I doubt it. This world of ours has had its warning and it will heed it. The watchers on Zoran must know that in the 540 years it would take their next messenger to get here. The earth will have had more than enough time to prepare an adequate defense for even Zoran's menace. I doubt if there will ever again be an attempt made to open the gate to Zoran. End of The Gate to Zoran Recording by Todd Garrison, February 9th, 2010