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  Heshifer frowned.

  F’Sibr threw up his hands. “Then, if that fails, you can have your way. The Chaos Plan is ready. It would take only a word.”

  Heshifer thought. “How many besides the officers of the Unseen will have to be in on the plot?” he asked.

  “My aide Norm. Perhaps one or two more.”

  Heshifer looked up. “You’re sure you can depend on him?”

  “Absolutely.”

  After a pause Heshifer nodded unwillingly.

  “We have five days,” said F’Sibr.

  CHAPTER XIII

  For three days the fleet had driven across calm seas, slowly, at not a tithe of its real speed, a parade of silver hearses. For three days the death tension had mounted.

  The time had come when men began to see visions, hear faint whisperings in the air, feel the touch of currents from beyond life.

  Alone on the dress bridge, Norm stared at the sunset. The sun was an arched furnace door on the horizon, the sea a metallic expanse. Astern curved the triphibian battle line, a succession of diminishing silver teardrops, until they were lost in the dusky western blue. Ahead some of the scouts could be seen, fanned out expectantly, as if death might make a premature attack. No sound, save the slightest hiss of displaced waters.

  It seemed to Norm that his mind quested over all the sea’s brazen plain, without finding a place to rest. There was only the feeling of the grandeur of the fleet, the sense of a proudly onrushing destiny, the suggestion of supernatural wings hovering overhead—and those were the last things he wanted to feel.

  He remembered the plan for tonight, but his mind veered quickly.

  Perhaps if he sent his mind still farther…to the rim…beyond…

  M’Caslrai stood beside him, black elbows on the rail.

  Norm’s heart jumped, thumped, quieted.

  For a while they leaned side by side, watching the sea.

  “Maybe a man can find peace out there,” said M’Caslrai. “Leastways he can look for it.”

  A pause. “We’re all looking for peace, Mister Norm.”

  Another pause. Then softly, “You’ve a girl back there, you told me. What did you say she was called?”

  He repeated “Allisoun” thoughtfully after Norm. “And there’ll be a child? He will bear your name, I suppose, if a boy. Well, Man willing, he will not have to suffer what you suffer. We may hope that your sacrifice will bear fruit, that in the future the world will take the course of wisdom.”

  He turned his sorrowful tranquil eyes on Norm. “I feel very small and very troubled,” he said. “It is not easy to bow to necessity, to see the few doomed for the sake of the many.”

  Norm started to speak, mumbled an unintelligible word.

  “I’m glad I’m going with you,” said M’Caslrai.

  The moment passed, was lost with the last blinding sliver of sun. Gloom raced across the sea.

  “Tell me, Mister Norm,” M’Caslrai asked, “are you troubled?”

  Norm hesitated, shook his head.

  M’Caslrai nodded, smiled, moved away.

  For a moment Norm’s mind was numb. Then loneliness rushed in, as if he and M’Caslrai were the only two beings in the world and had parted forever.

  He felt giddy, as if the sea were suddenly tilting, as if all his intentions and beliefs were swinging on the bob of a gigantic pendulum.

  He looked along the rail to where, unapproachable now, the World Director still stared over the sea.

  It’s true, he thought. I’ve always run away from him. All my attitudes have been shaped by fear that, if I ever listened to him, he would persuade me.

  It’s unfair, something childish inside him reiterated bitterly. He has no right to come down from his pedestal and meet you face to face like an ordinary man. If only he wouldn’t, it would be so easy to be true to the others.

  But he has come down, the adult reminded. And now there are certain thoughts that you must think, even though each one sears your ego like a red-hot iron.

  He is great and wise and compassionate. You can see it in his face, hear it in every word he utters.

  He thinks only of mankind, and of what must be, if mankind is to go on.

  Whereas you and the others, even F’Sibr and Heshifer, are selfish and petty, thinking only of criticism and trouble-making and cynical jibing. You seek to sabotage the great current of history which he guides.

  You are crackpot dreamers, one more lunatic fringe trying to pretend that what is, is not. He is a realist. He is right and what he does is right.

  The world has always been a horrible place and has exacted horrible sacrifices of humanity. Sanity consists in recognizing the necessity of those sacrifices. He is the sane one.

  Faces floated before Norm in the gleaming dusk. Faces he knew. Only now F’Sibr looked like a cruel Eastern god, a paranoid who thought he could change the course of history by his personal fiat; Heshifer, a senile mischief-maker, mouth and mind a-twitch with fantastic schemes or brutal jests; J’Quilvens, a hysteric trembling on the verge of laughter or screams. Behind them, a pale-faced horde of deviants and discontents. For a moment they all leered at him, snickered. Then they wavered, faded, and were blotted out by the visage of M’Caslrai—profound-eyed, understanding, earthy but rising above it, gaunt and homely, infinitely kind.

  All Norm’s confused and often-denied religious impulses urged, “He is the One. He is Man!”

  He felt the mighty presence of the fleet, the comradeship of the millions marked and trained for death. Through the silver hulls and the dusk and the faint hiss of the waves, that comradeship tugged at and captured his heart.

  Feeling that his whole life had only been a preparation for this moment, he turned and followed the rail.

  “Sir,” he began.

  M’Caslrai’s “Yes?” was the friendliest of whispers.

  “There is a grave threat to the safety of the fleet and the success of the whole expedition.”

  M’Caslrai nodded wearily, as if he had known all along. His gaze did not leave the sea.

  Norm swallowed. He said, “Before I go on, I want your promise that those I betray will not be killed or hurt, only held where they can do no harm until it’s all over. Also, I do not want my part in this to become known.”

  M’Caslrai looked at him. “You have my promise, Mister Norm,” he said.

  Later that night all the searchbeams of the Finality flared out suddenly. For a quarter mile around the flagphib it was bright as day. For yards below the water was milky green.

  At first nothing was seen except the towering blunt muzzle of the triphibian next in line.

  Then a fine white cloud shot out from the flagphib. It vanished swiftly, but left in its wake a small, bone-white ship grappled to the dress bridge, with a number of similarly white figures swarming aboard the Finality.

  An order was shouted. The figures hesitated. Some of them turned back.

  A blue flicker of small-arms fire cut them down. The ports of the ghost ship were slammed, and in a rainstorm of blue rays it dove like a frightened fish.

  Light and explosions pursued it, sending the emerald water in great chunks.

  Rocket-tubes blasting, it shot up suddenly into the air, frantically twisting and turning.

  The big beams of the Finality caught it. The hull glowed red…white…

  Spinning out of control, it fell like a meteor. There was a great hiss as the Unseen plunged for a last time into the sea.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Late the next night Norm stood for a third time on the dress bridge. No lights betrayed the hissing triphibians. They went stealthily as murderers. And yet he sensed the mighty hulls, the millions of sleepless souls cramming them, the incalculably numerous robot barges, all converging on the dawn rendezvous.

  But they no longer awakened tho
ughts of a proud destiny. He could only think of the cylindrical cores and of the disintegratives that packed them.

  The sharp sense of reality and duty that had inspired him last night was gone. The sense of guilt that had lifted after his confessions had returned intensified. He remembered the white-hot plunge of the Unseen, the hiss of steam. His emotions were frozen, but not numbed. The night might have been black ice encasing him.

  That afternoon a sailor had jumped overboard. A watchful dinghy had recovered him, although he had done his best to drown. Later he had pleaded to be killed at once and spared the waiting for tomorrow.

  Now Norm kept seeing his frantic, babbling face.

  He wondered if he should not have insisted on being imprisoned with F’Sibr and the rest, without revealing that he was the informer.

  But he knew he could not have kept the secret in then presence, or endured their reproaches when he confessed.

  Well, at any rate, M’Caslrai had kept faith. There was something incredibly honest and noble about the man, something that still bound Norm to him by cords of awe, although in all other respects he had come to regret his action so bitterly that he dared not think about it.

  If only he could go back… But it was too late now to do anything. The kidnap ship was destroyed.

  Of course, he could make some wild effort. There were still the subordinate agents on the other ships. He could…

  But a complete paralysis of will power held him helpless. He knew, for example, that in the War Room behind him was the master switch which would disintegrate the fleet at dawn. But if it had been just at his elbow, and if a child had been pressing it down, he could have done nothing to stop it.

  Like some guilt-tortured prophet of olden times, he stared into the darkness, looking for a sign.

  CHAPTER XV

  In the utter blackness of the brig, though in the gibberish of code-speech, F’Sibr said calmly, “No, I am the one to blame, if we have to talk about blame. I stubbornly persisted when it was obvious that our whole counterprogram had failed. I clutched at the straw of the kidnap plot. And I trusted Normsi.”

  “That’s not your fault,” interjected J’Quilvens, “I was the one who introduced Normsi in the first place.”

  “Irrelevant. The point is…”

  “Two thirty,” came the toneless voice of an agent named Wavel, who possessed the best sense of time among them.

  “The point is,” F’Sibr continued, “that I trusted Normsi, even when Heshifer had doubts. It was an unforgiveable executive error.”

  “But when it comes to that, we aren’t absolutely sure that it was Normsi who betrayed us,” J’Quilvens urged doubtfully.

  “The probabilities all lie in that direction.”

  “For that matter, we cannot even be sure that the kidnap plot has failed.”

  F’Sibr did not trouble to answer. They could hear the coded whispers of the two agents conversing at the other end of the brig.

  “There must be something we can do,” said J’Quilvens.

  “Yes,” said F’Sibr. “We could have adopted the Chaos Plan four days ago. Unfortunately, my opinion carried too much weight.” He paused, as if expecting a comment from Heshifer. When none came, he continued, “True, the plan is fully prepared, but all agents are under the strictest orders to wait for word from above.”

  “But don’t you think some of them will go ahead with it, against orders, at the last minute. Unless they’ve all been unmasked too?”

  “That is unlikely. Normsi was acquainted only with those of us who are here—a fact which incidentally constitutes further evidence against him.”

  “It’s odd, in that case,” mused J’Quilvens, “that we haven’t been asked to reveal the identity of the agents on the other ships—given a taste of J’Wilobe’s persuasion. They must know there are more than us.”

  “It is odd,” agreed F’Sibr. “There was something peculiar about the whole business of our being caught—I mean, the way it was done. I sense M’Caslrai’s touch, rather than J’Wilobe’s, although it’s outside M’Caslrai’s line.”

  “Right!” Heshifer’s unexpected comment sounded as if he were following a very different line of thought, which the conversation had only chanced to intersect.

  When he said nothing more, J’Quilvens pressed, “But granting the others are free, mayn’t they go ahead with the Chaos Plan?”

  “Yes, but it won’t do any good. The fleet explosives are all keyed to the master switch aboard the Finality. Every smallest unit of the fleet, down to the dinghies, is cored with explosives which it would take hours, in some case days, to remove or unkey. At the time of detonation, the water itself will be deadly for leagues around. Everything hinged on our seizing control of the Finality and preventing the master switch from being thrown. Without that, minor successes are futile.”

  “Then there’s nothing we can do?”

  “Well…I am trying to think of something, as we all are.”

  “Of course. But you don’t think much of our chances?”

  Again F’Sibr did not reply.

  When J’Quilvens next spoke, she seemed to be trying to push back the darkness. “Then, to keep up our spirits, we have only the hope that when the next war comes, our survivors will be wiser, will forge a sounder counterprogram?”

  “No!” said F’Sibr. For once his voice was sharp, though still even and well-modulated. “We do not have that hope. It would be childish to assume so. It has become clear that the world’s insanity has reached its crisis. If we had adopted the Chaos Plan, we might have been able to make use of that crisis—the crisis a gun, the Chaos Plan a trigger. But we failed. The moment will not come again. After the crisis, the slow mental degeneration sets in. When the next war comes, our weakened organization will adopt an even more futile and unrealistic program. The war will be greater, as the often-indulged death-wish intensifies. It is to such a future that we must calmly look ahead, if we are to behave as realistic adults. Any other future is as impossible as…” He chuckled icily as he invoked Heshifer’s favorite comparison, “…as telepathy.”

  A shiver seemed to go through the darkness. It infected J’Quilvens’ voice. “And yet, you continue to speak in code? Why do you do that, if you know that everything’s hopeless?”

  “There is such a thing as honoring a lost cause.”

  This time there was no doubting the shiver. Then cutting across it, came Heshifer’s excited words.

  “We must contact Normsi!”

  The anticlimax provided by this ridiculous statement was so great that J’Quilvens had to choke back hysterical laughter.

  “We know the boy,” Heshifer sped on. “We know he’s no planted traitor. He must have been subjected to extraordinary psychological pressure—and through M’Caslrai. He’s a cyclic type. By now, surely, he’s regretting it…wavering…waiting for a push.”

  F’Sibr’s reply was ominously gentle, almost soothing. “I’ll grant you there is a chance that Norm’s behavior has followed some such course. Though in that case the probability is that he is under as close guard as ourselves and in no position to do anything even if he does have a change of heart. But…” His voice became doubly cautious “…You spoke of contacting him? I don’t quite see…”

  “Right!” replied Heshifer, so eagerly, so enthusiastically even, that you couldn’t help visualizing his grinning, grimacing face, his darting eyes. “Like you, I have been thinking—about how to contact Normsi. I have eliminated all reasonable possibilities, except one—the most unlikely. Something that we have no evidence for, although we have looked for it for decades. But since, no matter how unlikely, it is the only reasonable possibility, we must, if we are logical, employ it. Telepathy.”

  There was a pause. “Are you forgetting, ‘as impossible as telepathy’?” said F’Sibr. “We might as well try black magic.”

 
“Call it the least impossible of the impossibilities, then! Remember, telepathy may depend on the electrical potential of the nervous system. Think of how great the potential must be at a moment like this. Suppose that our receiver, Normsi, is wavering…his mind a blank. Call it anything you like! Call it my last foolish tribute to a lost cause! I, at any rate, shall try.”

  “And I,” said F’Sibr softly after a moment. He was echoed.

  Suddenly Heshifer laughed—a rich unlikely laugh.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “But I just happened to realize of whom M’Caslrai reminds me. It is astounding I never thought of it before. It explains the nature of M’Caslrai’s insanity, too. It’s not who he is, but who he thinks he is. If I’d only realized it before! What I couldn’t have done with the man! I’ve been blind as a bat…”

  “Two forty-five,” said Wavel.

  CHAPTER XVI

  J’Wilobe sat alone before the executive panel in the Flagship Security Room next to the brig. His face was more pinched than ever. His jewel-bright eyes kept looking from side to side. An hour ago he had dismissed all the guards and multiply locked the door behind them, and the doors of the two vestibules as well. He had become suspicious. True, he had always trusted the guards before, but now the universe had become a shadow world populated by slinking plotters, and he the lone sentry on the wall.

  Of course, as he logically recognized, such a situation couldn’t go on indefinitely. But he only had to hold out until dawn, and then he would be relieved forever from his crushing burdens. Unless there were another life… But that would be too horrible.

  He frowned at the massive circular door of the brig, and decided once and for all that he no longer trusted M’Caslrai. Why had M’Caslrai refused to let him eliminate these danger-mongers, at least question them? Why had he refused to tell him the reasons for their arrest when it was obviously a matter for the Secretariat of Dangers? Even the warning about a possible attack by an invisible ship hadn’t come until a few minutes before the occurrence.