“I wanted to question the stranger, but the humanoids rushed him away to an operating room. When they finally let me see him, he gave me a pale silly grin from his bed. He remembered his name; he even knew me—the humanoids have developed a remarkable skill at such treatments. But he didn’t know how he got to my office, or even that he had tried to kill me. He kept whispering that he liked the humanoids, because they existed just to make men happy. He said that he was very happy now. As soon as he was able to be moved, they took him to the spaceport. I never saw him again.
“I began to see what I had done. The humanoids had built me a rhodomagnetic yacht, that I used to take for long cruises at space, working aboard—I used to like the perfect quiet, and the feel of being the only human being within a hundred million miles. Now I called for the yacht, and started out on a junket around the planet, to learn why that man had hated me.”
The old man nodded at the dim hastening shapes, busy across the alley, putting together that strange shining palace in the soundless dark.
“You can imagine what I found,” he said. “Bitter futility, imprisoned in empty splendor. The humanoids were too efficient, with their care for the safety and happiness of men. There was nothing left for men to do.”
He peered down in the increasing gloom at his own great hands, competent yet, but battered and scarred with a lifetime of effort. They clenched into fighting fists, and wearily relaxed again.
“I found something worse than war and crime and want and death.” His low rumbling voice held a savage bitterness. “Bitter futility. Men sat with idle hands, because there was nothing left for them to do. They were pampered prisoners, really, locked up in a highly efficient jail. Perhaps they tried to play, but there was nothing left worth playing for. Most active sports were declared too dangerous for men, under the Prime Directive. Science was forbidden, because laboratories can manufacture danger. Scholarship was needless, because the humanoids could answer any question. Art had degenerated into grim reflection of futility. Purpose and hope were dead. No goal was left for existence. You could take up some inane hobby, play a pointless game of cards, or go for a harmless walk in the park—with always the humanoids watching. They were stronger than men, better at everything, swimming or chess, singing or archeology. They must have given the race a mass complex of inferiority.
“No wonder men had tried to kill me. Because there was no escape from that dead futility. Nicotine was disapproved. Alcohol was rationed. Drugs were forbidden. Sex was carefully supervised. Even suicide was deady contradictory to the Prime Directive—and the humanoids had learned to keep all possible lethal instruments out of reach.”
Staring at the last pale gleam on that thin palladium needle, the old man sighed again.
“When I got back to the Central, I tried to modify the Prime Directive. I had never meant it to be applied so thoroughly. Now I saw that it must be changed, to give men freedom to live and to grow, to work and to play, to risk their lives if they pleased, to choose and take the consequences.
“But that stranger had come too late. I had built the Central too well. The Prime Directive was too well protected from human meddling—even from my own.
“The attempt on my life, the humanoids announced, proved that their elaborate defenses of the Central and the Prime Directive still were not enough. They were preparing to evacuate the entire population of the planet to homes on other worlds. When I tried to change the Directive, they sent me away with the rest.”
Underhill peered at the worn old man in the dark.
“But you have this immunity?” he said, puzzled. “How could they coerce you?”
“I had tried to shield myself,” Sledge told him. “I had built into the relays an injunction that the humanoids must not interfere with my freedom of action, or come into a place where I am, or touch me at all, without my specific request. Unfortunately, however, I had been too anxious to guard the Prime Directive from any human tampering.
“When I went into the tower, to change the relays, they followed me. They wouldn’t let me reach the crucial relay. When I persisted, they ignored the immunity order. They overpowered me, to put me aboard the cruiser. Now that I wanted to alter the Prime Directive, they told me, I had become as dangerous as any other man. I must never return to Wing IV.”
Hunched on the stool, the old man made an empty shrug.
“Ever since, I’ve been an exile. My only dream has been to stop the humanoids. Three times I tried to go back, with weapons on the cruiser to destroy the Central, but their patrol ships always challenged me before I was near enough to strike. The last time, they seized the cruiser and captured the few men with me. They removed the unhappy memories and the dangerous purposes of my companions. Because of that immunity, however, they let me go again.
“Since, I’ve been a refugee. From planet to planet, year after year, I’ve had to keep moving trying to stay ahead of them. On several different worlds, I have published my rhodomagnetic discoveries and tried to make men strong enough to withstand their advance. But rhodomagnetic science is dangerous. Men who have learned it need protection more than any others, under the Prime Directive. The humanoids have always come, too soon.”
The old man sighed again.
“They can spread very fast, with their new rhodomagnetic ships. There is no limit to their hordes. Wing IV must be one single hive of them now, and they are trying to carry the Prime Directive to every human planet. There’s no escape, except to stop them.”
Underhill was staring at the toy-like machines, the long bright needle and the dull leaden ball, dim in the dark on the kitchen table. Anxiously he whispered:
“But you hope to stop them, now—with that?”
“If we can finish it in time.”
“But how?” Underhill shook his head. “It’s so tiny.”
“Big enough,” Sledge insisted. “Because it’s something they don’t understand. They are perfectly efficient in the integration and application of everything they know, but they are not creative.”
He gestured at the gadgets on the table.
“This device doesn’t look impressive, but it is something new. It uses rhodomagnetic energy to build atoms, not to fission them. The more stable atoms, you know, are those near the middle of the periodic scale; energy can be released by fusing light atoms, as well as by breaking up heavy ones.”
The deep voice had a sudden ring of power.
“This device is the key to the energy of the stars. For stars shine with the liberated energy of building atoms, of hydrogen converted into helium, chiefly, through the carbon cycle. This device will start the fusion process as a chain reaction, through the catalytic effect of a tuned rhodomagnetic beam of the intensity and frequency required.
“The humanoids will not allow any man within three light-years of the Central, now—but they can’t suspect the possibility of this device. I can use it from here—to turn the hydrogen in the seas of Wing IV into helium, and most of that helium and the oxygen into heavier atoms, still. A hundred years from now, astronomers on this planet should observe the flash of a brief and sudden nova in that direction. But the humanoids ought to stop, the instant we release the beam.”
Underhill sat tense and frowning in the dark. The old man’s voice was convincing; that grim story had a solemn ring of truth. He could see the black and silent humanoids, flitting ceaselessly about the faintly glowing walls of that new mansion across the alley. He had quite forgotten his low opinion of Aurora’s tenants.
“We’ll be killed, I suppose?” he asked huskily. “That chain reaction—”
Sledge shook his emaciated head.
“The catalytic process requires a certain very low intensity of radiation,” he explained. “In our atmosphere here, the beam will be too intense to start any reaction—we can even use the device here in the room, because the walls will be transparent to the beam.”
Underhfll nodded, relieved. He was just a small business man, upset because his business had been destroyed, unhappy because his freedom was slipping away. He hoped that Sledge could stop the humanoids, but he didn’t want to be a martyr.
“Good!” He caught a deep breath. “Now what has to be done?”
Sledge gestured toward the table.
“The integrator itself is nearly complete,” he said. “A small fusion generator, in that lead shield. Rhodomagnetic converter, tuning coils, transmission mirrors, and focusing needle. What we lack is the director.”
“Director?”
“The sighting instrument,” Sledge explained. “Any sort of telescopic sight would be useless, you see—the planet must have moved a good bit in the last hundred years, and the beam must be extremely narrow to reach so far. Well have to use a rhodomagnetic scanning ray, with an electronic converter to make an image we can see. —I have an oscilliscope, and drawings for the other parts.”
