Chapter II: Part 2

No one dropped in. Irene's absence gave him only a sense of relief. Basil, no doubt, was staying away because of a guilt complex. Nadine--her continued absence could be because she wasn't ready for him yet, or she truly didn't remember him and would get to him in due time, perhaps tomorrow; or maybe the Plan involved some other member of the research group. Or the destruction of the Brain? Earl shook his head at this thought. That alternative didn't fit.

And then it was four-thirty. Already Earl had reasoned out what he intended to do. Either Nadine would go into town and stay at a hotel, remain in the building as a guest of the Glassmans', or she would leave the building and make her way by some circuitous route to the spot on the hill where the "ship" had been.

Only the latter possibility interested Earl right now. He quickly slipped off his lab apron and put on a suit coat. He wished that he still had a gun, but it had been stolen with the stasis spheres. He'd have to do without it.

Leaving the building, he walked along the sidewalk until he was able to approach the hill from the other side where he wouldn't be seen from the windows.

It was ten minutes to five when he settled down to wait in the concealment of a thicket where he could command a view of the approaches from every direction, and a clear view of the slight depression in the ground where the "ship" had dropped.

There was nothing to do now but wait--and stay awake. He was acutely aware, suddenly, of his lack of sleep the night before. A warm breeze rustled the leaves around him. A small hoptoad paused to stare up at him in unblinking fixity.

Overhead in a large Maple tree a host of sparrows paused to hold a brief political convention.

And then Nadine was coming up the slope from the side away from the lab. Her chic hat dangled carelessly in her right hand, the warm breeze mussing her hair. A too normal smart-looking woman's purse was under her arm. The breeze caught her skirt, molding her graceful legs, her slim body. She was too much the picture of a normal girl idly strolling in a park.

A great nostalgia, an almost overwhelming yearning, took possession of Earl. He wanted to rush forward, let her know he was there, waiting for her.

Instead, he remained motionless, watching her approach.

She seemed to be heading straight for him. For an instant he thought she must have seen him. But her expression held no excitement or anything but half dreamy enjoyment of her surroundings.

* * * * *

Scarcely fifteen feet away she came to a stop and turned to face toward the concave depression in the ground, another fifty feet beyond her. With her free hand she reached up and patted at her hair like any normal girl would do, unconsciously.

Abruptly Earl became aware of something just beyond her. It wasn't tangible. A shimmering in the air. A slight but definite refractive quality that had not been there the moment before.

Nadine had seen it too. She walked forward a few steps.

"This is it!" Earl thought to himself. He crouched to run after her.

She took another step. She vanished, not abruptly, but as one might vanish into a bright silver but otherwise transparent fog.

In that instant Earl moved hurtling forward so that when she disappeared he was a step behind her.

Instantly the peaceful wooded scene vanished. His feet were on a smooth hard floor. Ahead of him he caught a brief glimpse of walls, of people without clothes.

Then he was falling over Nadine and trying to keep from falling on her. His arms were around her. Somehow he twisted so that when he landed she was on top, unhurt.

There was a stunned eternity when her eyes were looking into his, recognition and gladness unmasked, hope and pleading sending him some secret message, some unspoken word trembling on her lips.

But Earl had seen George Ladd even as he fell, and the never forgotten instincts developed in him during World War III were in motion, making him continue his roll so that in the next instant he was on his feet, Nadine behind him. Ladd hadn't expected this and was caught by surprise. Earl took advantage of that brief uncertainty, stepping in and bringing a short chopping right against Ladd's jaw.

Before George Ladd reached the floor, Earl was running in great strides, his eyes darting ahead in search of a place to escape.

"Wait!" Nadine called. But he didn't pause. He couldn't trust her. George Ladd had been armed with his paralysis gun. He'd been waiting for him. This had been a trap, and Nadine had led him into it.

Ahead was a doorway. He hesitated. Should he continue on down the corridor or take the doorway? He decided on the latter. It opened into a room, unoccupied at the moment. There were windows. One of them was open. Earl didn't hesitate. Beyond the window was a wide paved street. If he could get away, mingle with crowds....

No one was in sight. He sprinted along the pavement, away from the Dome which he had glimpsed over his shoulder. It was beautiful, its basic structure adorned with granite superstructures of fine workmanship. But he didn't pause to admire it. He wanted people, lots of people, to mix with and hide from pursuit.

For a hundred yards the street went through parkways. Then ahead were buildings. He reached them, racing along a canyon formed by windowless walls of buildings. He rounded a corner. The street was still deserted.

He ran on and on, turning corners when he came to them, but always heading in one general direction so as not to circle back toward the Dome.

* * * * *

Abruptly he paused. Beside him was a door in a building. He darted inside, closing the door behind him and leaning against it while he breathed in rasping gulps of air.

Ahead of him was a corridor and more doors. After a brief rest he sprinted down the hallway. If he could find a vacant room, a place to hide until he could map out some plan.

He listened at the first door. There was no sound. He tried the knob. The door opened silently under his touch. He stepped in. The room was unoccupied. Its far wall was of glass. He glanced through it. He was looking out over an enormous workshop of some kind. Row upon row of small vats were there--and people.

He was seeing his first people of this world he had plunged into. They wore no clothes. They seemed to be tending the vats, walking along the aisles, pausing here and there at a vat to touch banks of controls and watch what was in each vat.

From the hall Earl had just left came loud voices. The words were in a strange language, but the tones carried their own message. His pursuers had caught up with him. In another moment they would open the door and find him.

He looked around for a way to escape. There was a trap door in the floor. It undoubtedly led to the huge workshop. Earl lifted the door and saw a ladder. He climbed onto it, letting the trap door fall back into place as he descended.

He fully expected workers to see him and react to his presence in some way. A worker was less than ten feet away. The worker didn't pause or seem to notice him.

Silently Earl watched the man's eyes, dull and void of intelligence. They seemed only passive recorders of what there was for him to see. He was touching control knobs in front of a vat.

Earl looked into the vat and caught his breath. Floating in the tank was a human embryo. It was alive, its umbilical cord growing from a spongy mass on the floor of the tank.

Forgetting his danger, Earl grabbed the man's shoulder. "What is this?" he demanded. "Human babies growing in tanks?"

The worker waited unresisting until Earl released his grip, then continued on his routine way. He was, in every respect, a robot, doing his specialized job, his mind a complete blank to anything else. A zombie. Earl looked out over the vast baby factory and realized with numb horror that all the hundreds of people working here were the same. Walking dead, their minds capable of only one thing--doing this specialized task. And the human embryos in the tanks? Would they become walking zombies?

Over his head came the sound of the trap door opening. Earl didn't take time to look up. He ran. Down an aisle between rows of unborn humans tended by undead zombies. Up another ladder into another observation room, ignoring shouts that caught up with him. Out another door, down another hall, through another door, and into a street again.

Miles of streets, and then something recognizable. A factory with belching smokestacks. He plunged toward it recklessly, desperately hoping to find intelligent men. Men with minds. Men able to help him hide.

He found himself inside a huge plant where giant ladles were pouring molten metal into molds. There were men running the machines that controlled the pouring. They wore thick asbestos-like suits.

As Earl ran toward them he saw one of them slip and fall so that his arm went into the stream of molten metal. The man didn't cry out nor jerk away. Splattering metal cascaded on the others. There was the stench of burned flesh.

His mind numb with the shock of what he was seeing, Earl stood rooted, watching the others continue their work with expressionless faces, blank eyes. Mindless creatures, controlled like inanimate robots.

"Earl!"

He turned in the direction of the voice. He saw Nadine beckoning for him to come to her. He started toward her, then stopped. She was different from these--or was she? No, she wasn't any different. She too was an automaton. She was beckoning him to walk into another trap.

He turned to run the other way, but in that moment of indecision he had been surrounded by men like George Ladd, carrying the little paralysis guns--and they were automatons too.

He turned, searching for a way of escape, the smell of molten metal and cooked flesh strong in his nostrils. And then he felt the sting of the paralysis gun and was falling forward.

A sharp pain entered the base of his skull. He lost consciousness then with the monstrous horror of what was around him searing into his soul.

* * * * *

The next instant, it seemed, he awakened, all the horror fresh in his mind, the stinging sensation at the nape of his neck changed to a dull throbbing pain. Nadine had led him into this. But she was like the rest, a zombie unable to think for herself.

He shook his head slowly in pained bewilderment. She hadn't been that way the first time he met her. She had been--_herself. What could have created this nightmare?_

A voice somewhere sounded in deep resonant tones. "So you are awake," it said.

Earl rolled onto his side and searched for the source of the voice. There was no one in view. He was in a room whose walls and ceiling were heavy glass. He looked through the ceiling and saw the familiar maze of steel catwalks inside the dome.

Outside his glass prison a pair of video cameras were trained on him. Their lenses seemed somehow sentient, so that their motionlessness partook of the quality of a fixed stare.

"I've always wanted to meet you," the voice said, and it seemed to come from a small case atop the camera frames.

It was a dream, Earl decided. He had been hit on the head. In his delirium he had conjured up the Brain, activated and intelligent as it was designed to be in theory, possessed of a mind of its own.

"Of course," the voice went on, "I've seen film shots of you. You are the discoverer of the nerve fluid that made me possible."

Earl sat up abruptly. "Who are you? And where--"

"I am the _Cyberene_. This is the year 3042 A. D., in the old calendar. I had you brought here through what might be called a time tube from your own period. Shortly you will return through that tube to your own time--as many hours ahead from the time you left as you spend here before you go back."

Earl got to his feet slowly, watching the glistening lenses. "Now it begins to fit together," he said. "You're behind Nadine and Ladd. You say _I'm_ the discoverer of the nerve fluid. You're mistaken. It hasn't been found yet--and there are ten of us looking for it. One of the others may be the one to find it."

"History says you found it."

"And you just wanted to see me because of that?" Earl asked.

"Watch," the voice said.

The plate glass wall in front of Earl changed suddenly, to become apparently a giant window over-looking a huge sprawling city. There were buildings that reached thousands of feet into the sky, with fragile looking networks of bridges spanning the spaces among them. There were giant aircraft in the sky. In the distance was a trail of fire that might be from an inter-planetary rocket ship departing spaceward.

And abruptly the elfin city was blotted out by a blinding sun. Seconds later the blinding sun was gone, and Earl could see the city again. But now it was only the skeleton of what it had been. Its spiderweb design of bridges was torn and twisted. Many of its tall buildings were even now toppling toward the ground. Fire shot skyward in a pyrotechnic display of havoc.

* * * * *

A giant airplane appeared, heading straight toward the window through which Earl watched. It grew larger. For a brief second he looked into its control cabin and saw its pilot and co-pilot. They were human, but their faces were harsh and cruel, their eyes cold and inhuman. In the next instant they were gone.

"That is a typical scene on--the other Earth," the voice of the Cyberene explained.

The scene of the desolate city vanished. In its place appeared another scene. A city under construction. Giant building machines were placing it together, and the parts that were completed were even more beautiful than had been that other city.

Earl, from his vantage point, seemed to drop closer and drift over the scene of construction to a part that was inhabited. He saw the people below. They wore no clothes and didn't seem to mind. Each appeared to be intent on going somewhere. None of them were talking or paying any attention to one another. Their expressions were blank, their eyes vacant.

The vantage point followed one of them. Shortly the man being followed turned into an archway, up an incline, and into a large hall. He went through a door into the room filled with cell-like vats. In each transparent vat Earl saw a human embryo, alive and growing. He "followed" the man through this place to another, where children were playing with psychological toys designed to increase mechanical and scientific aptitudes.

"This, too, is a typical scene on--this Earth," the Cyberene said. The scene vanished. Once again Earl looked into the video eyes of the Brain. "They are both Earth in the year 3042," the Cyberene said, "but not the _same_ Earth. In 1980 there was a split. Earth followed two independent futures. The first, filled with wars and eternal carnage, ever more perfect weapons of destruction, developed from _one_ decision you made. The second, my world, filled with perpetual peace and happiness, developed from the alternative decision. _You_ created these two futures."

"I?" Earl said. "You must be crazy. How?"

"In the first you discovered the vital nerve fluid that makes me possible. You thought you were God. You thought you could see a future in which I would work the human race harm. You suppressed your discovery by the simple process of giving a negative lab report on the substance. In the second world--_my_ world--you did as you were supposed to do. You announced your discovery. _I_ came into being."

"You mean to say _my actions_ caused the whole planet to split into two identical worlds?"

"In effect, yes. I'll try to explain. Matter and motion are not real in the basic sense. They are properties of your mind. They are what your finite mind sees; but reality is the space-time continuity of which one instant is a cross-section. In effect, consciousness flows along the time dimension which I term the fourth dimension. But in addition there is a fifth dimension, so that these two Earths have the same space-time coordinates in four dimensions, and two different ones in the fifth. In Euclidean concepts, that other Earth is eighty-seven millionths of an inch from this, in the fifth dimension. In that Earth I did not develop. The Dome is still there, but the Brain, if it still exists, was never activated. As a result, humanity continued its violent progress through time, engaging in war after war.

"When I discovered time travel and saw all this I decided to go back and contact you before your instant of decision and get you to release the identity of the nerve fluid when you discover it _tomorrow_."

"Tomorrow?" Earl said.

"In your time."

"I see," Earl said. "Tomorrow I make the discovery. In one time stream I tell Glassman. In the other I decide not to. _What made me decide not to?_"

"You _thought_ the Brain would be bad for humanity. You were, of course, wrong."

"Was I?" Earl said.

"In that other world, wars are the normal state of things. They stem from problems that don't exist in my world. Over-population, competition in trade in things that aren't necessary to human economy, opposed political systems--all the foibles and inconsistencies of untrained and unorganized populations."

"I understand that," Earl said. "Why don't your people wear clothes?"

"Clothes are unnecessary--one of the things I eliminated in reducing the industrial economy to a minimum. Over-population? There is none. People are made in the laboratory as they are needed. Their lives are uncomplicated by animal problems such as reproduction, and artificial customs such as modesty. Their education is simplified and factual, their lives functional."

"And I made that decision all by myself?"

"Yes. That's why I have brought you here--to get you to change that decision. You see, I must change the past. I must do that in order to correct the future, make the other Earth a sane place, _dominated by a second Cyberene which is a counterpart of me_."

* * * * *

"That's what I thought," Earl said with reckless boldness. "I'm beginning to understand why I made my decision to suppress the identity of the nerve substance. _You_ did that. The things I've seen. You're just like dictators of our time. You think you're so right that everyone will naturally agree with you. I don't. I think it's more humane to let people come into the world as they will and have wars that destroy them, than to decide just how many are to be born. You need a new man in the garbage disposal plant in twenty years? Press a button and he will be born in a few months. Going to have less to do in some factory in twenty years? Keep the zombies from being born. Less trouble than killing them off later to save on the food bill."

"I was afraid you might feel that way," the Cyberene said. "I have the answer to it. Nadine Holmes. Make an accurate report tomorrow on the tests. In return I will leave her in your time--even plant directives so that she will always be a loving and devoted wife to you."

"I would prefer her as she is, naturally."

"Today her every outward manifestation was under my direct mental control. Don't you see, Earl Frye? Just before you followed her into my neatly laid trap to get you here, you watched her come up the hill, and adored every line of her, every mannerism, every play of expression. With one small corner of my mind I can _anticipate_ your wishes and fulfill them in her--"

"It wouldn't be her," Earl said shaking his head. "And even if it were, at the cost of billions of unborn generations? No."

"But you will do as I wish whether _you_ wish to or not. Why not obey me freely and get this reward, rather than nothing?

"_I can control you._" The voice ended triumphantly.

"No!" It was a shuddering protest from Earl's lips, forcing itself out against his wishes.

The throbbing ache at the base of his brain increased abruptly, slowly, to measurable beats.

"I can control your body, your conscious mind, shoving _you_ into the back recesses of thought. And when you try to come out, I can punish you--like I'm doing now."

"No!" Earl screamed, his reserve breaking down completely.

Suddenly, into his cosmos of unbearable suffering and horror, filtered a thought that created hope. Nadine had been _free_ during those first hours he had met her. She had defied George Ladd. Unsuccessfully, but she had defied him. And when they had sprawled through that doorway to the future, for a moment he had seen that same _free_ Nadine in her eyes, her expression. Or had she ever been free? The terrible throbbing pain blurred his thinking. Had she been free in the smelter where she attracted his attention while the others surrounded him? If he had run directly to her he would have escaped being surrounded. But....

Anger entered his mind like a little finger of thought. Anger at Nadine? He was surprised. Confused. Then it came to him that it was not _his_ anger. It came from outside. Alien.

From the depths of his own instincts fear welled up and became blind panic, fighting against the _something_ that was growing stronger, crowding around his soul, forcing it to retreat within itself, until Earl Frye, his awareness of being Earl Frye, of being himself, was all that remained, helpless to control or even to feel.

Through a mental fog he was aware that he had stood up, the glass cage had lifted, and he was free to go--but not _he_! His body was controlled by the Cyberene.

He was aware that he had left the dome to walk through a beautifully landscaped garden to a building he had not seen before but which he knew to be the 3042 end of the time tube. He was aware of pausing and looking back at the Dome, now a thing of incredible beauty to him, the repository of his physical vehicle, the Brain. But _not his_. The Cyberene's.

* * * * *

He entered the time tube. He stepped from it onto grassy ground. He went through the trees to the sidewalk. He returned to the lab building, to his lab, to his living quarters.

He encountered Basil. He listened to himself talk, in casual tones, normal tones. He was unable to control even his conscious thoughts. But his consciousness was a thing apart from him.

He fought the domination of the Cyberene with arms that would not move, with a tongue that would not utter his words, with a rage that would not alter his calm and pleasant expression. He fought the pain that throbbed within him. He fought to stay sane.

Slowly he began to adjust to his position. He no longer fought. He was like a passenger in a plane who watches it take off, fly great distances, and land, with no concern about the details. Having no control whatever over his body, he was free of responsibility toward its routine behavior. He became aware that pain had departed. The very thing he had fought began to interest him. There must be some definite mechanism--property of the mind--that made telepathic enslavement possible in this way. Undoubtedly Nadine was also a free focus of thought behind her enslaved surface.

She came into the lab at ten o'clock, cheerful but impersonal. He heard himself talking to her in the same way. He could see her, listen to her. Therefore, behind her impersonal eyes was the Nadine he had first met, watching him, knowing what had happened. It gave him comfort to know that. He had not lost her. She was _there_.

Knowing that, and knowing there was no way to communicate with her at present, he turned his attention to what her body and his were doing.

"The silicones haven't been explored too thoroughly yet," she was saying. "They have some disadvantages, but those can be eliminated by additions to the ion rings to serve as protective buffers. I have several of them in this tray I brought in. I'd like you to run them through the tests."

Earl's eyes focused on the tray. They paused briefly on the formula of the third one from the nearest end. Earl sensed that this was the long sought for substance. He built up its theoretical structure. He saw at once how it achieved its properties.

"I'll be back this afternoon," Nadine said. "By then you should have your lab reports ready."

Then she was gone. Earl's hands went through the motions of pouring each vial into a pump. He turned his attention away from the routine, as a traveler in a passenger plane might turn from the window to something else.

A feeling of hopelessness grew within him. How could he stop things or interfere with them when he couldn't affect a muscle?

The Cyberene had been playing with him when it tried to get him to do its bidding of his own free will. He realized that now. It would have pleased its vanity if he had.

But this was too important to it for it to trust anything other than itself.

When it was done? When the fluid was forced into the hundreds of thousands of miles of hair-like glass tubing, the billions of fine glass cells? It would never give him his freedom. It would be afraid of what he might be able to do. So it would kill him.

Unless he could prevent the Brain from being activated. And unless he were free to command his body, he could never do that.

What had the Cyberene said to him about time travel and alternate time streams? The theories weren't exactly new. They had been explored in imaginative fiction for over fifty years. No one had really thought there might be some basis in fact for the theories.

What had caused the "split" which had produced two Earths in separate time streams? The Cyberene hadn't seemed to know that detail--or if it had it had brushed over it casually so as not to make him curious about it.

_Was it events? Or was it something in the basic substratum of matter, and the events were the result? That might be an important distinction._

If it were events, then bringing the Brain to life in this time stream might eliminate the divergent streams, bringing them together as one. That, in effect, might destroy the other world of 3042 A.D. Maybe that was what the Cyberene intended.

But suppose he were able even yet to defeat the Cyberene's scheme. Then the two time streams would remain unchanged. The free world of the future would remain free. But that was not enough. He wanted to destroy both Brains. How could he accomplish that, assuming he were able to accomplish anything?

* * * * *

The logical time to do it would be in 1980--now--before the Cyberene gained control of the world and made itself impregnable. But how? And if he could figure that out, could he act if an opportunity arose?

Irene Conner came in at lunch time. "I had a wonderful time with Basil last night," she said.

"I'm glad you did," Earl heard his voice say.

Hope leaped within him. Maybe the Cyberene would make some mistake that would arouse suspicions in her. The hope died as the door to the hall opened again and Nadine came in.

"You promised to take me to lunch, Earl," she said.

"Ready," Earl heard himself say.

It was evident that the Cyberene didn't intend him to be alone with any of the others long enough for the possibility of something suspicious to arise.

They went to a small cafe several blocks from the lab building. For the benefit of anyone happening to be looking at them, they carried on small talk while they ate. Earl found himself hanging onto every word Nadine uttered, watching her every expression. He was so close to her, yet so far away. It was like standing outside a window and watching her while she seemed unaware of him.

He kept watching for the faintest flicker of expression that would show the real Nadine. Slowly, without quite realizing it, he began to pretend it _was_ Nadine. He listened to her small talk. He listened to his, and at times forgot it wasn't actually his and that he couldn't control one word of what he said.

He became happy. He let himself be aware of the flavor of the food. He laughed within himself when his vocal cords laughed. He reached out and touched Nadine's hand, thrilling to the feel of her soft skin.

She drew her hand back, a startled light in her eyes. It was gone the next instant. Once more she was impersonal, _controlled_.

The dull, throbbing pain flared to torturing intensity within him, blurring thought, _punishing_ him, forcing him behind his prison walls of gray mental fog. But through the pain, apart from it, he experienced a surge of hope. It had been _he_ who had reached out to Nadine. Not the Cyberene controlling him!

Was there still hope? At two o'clock Nadine would pick up his lab report sheets and turn them over to Glassman. Then the identity of the ideal nerve fluid would be known. It would be out of his hands even if he were in full control of his faculties.

He and Nadine rose. They were going back to the lab building. He raged against the hidden mental barriers that contained him. He fought frenziedly to influence some slight movement of his body.

He might as well have been a passenger on an ocean liner trying to change the course of the thousands of tons of steel by thought alone while standing at the rail.

His sphere of awareness grew clouded. He was raging against a mental wall that became almost tangible. He stopped fighting from sheer impotence--and the barrier retreated.

_The more I fight the more helpless I am._ That thought at once created its corollary. _The less I struggle the closer I am to control!_

That was it! He had so identified his desires with the actions of his body that for one instant he _meshed_ with it!

That, then, was the secret. The principle. But it contained within itself its own difficulty. By "wanting" to activate the Brain he could perhaps actually control some of his actions. But the instant he did something counter to the Cyberene, that control would be taken away from him, and replaced by throbbing pain.

He _had_ touched Nadine's hand though. It had been a gesture so unconscious that the Cyberene had been unaware of it until it happened.

It was the right direction.

* * * * *

The possibility of what he wanted to do filled him with a sense of defeat. It would be impossible to falsify the lab report on the nerve fluid. One false word on the card, and the Cyberene would erase it and fill the card out correctly.

He fought back the feeling of futility. He reached out, identifying himself with every sensation from his body. He was walking. He _wanted_ to walk. He was talking. He _wanted_ to say what he heard himself say.

It would go along well, and then his body would do something he didn't expect, and he would be filled with the realization that he had no control. It would be a mental stumble while his body didn't falter.

During each brief period of identifying his desires with his actions, he found his awareness of sensations expand until it was almost complete identification--complete _meshing_.

Meshing until the gears were almost strong enough to grip--for a brief second. Perhaps in time they would grip for more than a second before alarm bells rang for the Cyberene.

He was alone in his lab. He was placing the fine tubes of test substances in their respective instrument cabinets. Ordinarily he did this almost automatically. Now he watched his every move, building up interest in it, _desiring_ to do everything he did, anticipating what he would do next and wanting to do it, pretending it was he who issued the commands to his muscles.

The crucial moment was just ahead. He had stepped to the instrument case that held the key fluid. He started to write down the readings from the instruments. His fingers shook, and it was _his_ nervousness that shook them.

A "mistake" in the readings here and there would do it. Speed of ion travel: The meter said two thousand plus feet per second. His fingers wrote the two and a zero. Before he could write the second zero he tried to write the plus sign. Triumphantly he saw his fingers obey his will.

Abruptly they paused--and he was aware that a power outside his will had made them pause.

Throbbing pain surged up to full intensity, enveloping him, sickening him so that his soul was a writhing thing, unable to think or feel anything other than pain. Slowly it lessened--or was he growing better able to suffer it? Thoughts filtered in to him through gray mists clouding his mind.

He saw his hands fill out the rest of the card correctly. He was dimly aware of rushing excitedly from the lab, down the hall, shouting that he had found it.

Others were joining him as he hurried to Glassman's office and burst in, waving the card.

Glassman seized it, his eyes afire with the fulfillment of his Dream.

And it was too late. Too late now to erase the knowledge of the identity of that fluid from Glassman's mind, from the minds of the other nine scientists crowding around him, congratulating him.

It was too late.

That realization crowded out everything else. The Cyberene had won.

* * * * *

"We want to put it through every test conceivable," Glassman said. "All ten of you drop everything else and work on it. Get the speed of impulse down to the last fraction of an inch per second. Get behavior in different sized tubes. Find the least diameter of the fluid column for non-function. Everything. We want to be _sure_ before we start pumping two hundred and fifty thousand gallons of the stuff into the Brain."

Dr. Glassman's eyes were afire with the triumph of success. "The dream of my life has come true," he said. "The Brain will live! It will live forever, growing wiser than any man or any group of men. It will remake the world. Civilization. It will end wars. It will guide mankind into a garden of Eden. Utopia. It was _my_ dream for mankind."

He became aware of those watching him. The fire of fanaticism left his eyes. He relaxed, and laughed embarrassedly. "But right now congratulations are in order for Dr. Frye. He's the one who has found the substance that makes it possible."

Nadine had been standing quietly on the sidelines, almost forgotten in this moment. She came forward now and extended her hand. "Congratulations, Dr. Frye," she said.

It was for effect. Earl heard himself say, "Maybe _you_ are the one who should get the credit." He paid little attention. It was a show, an opera, and his body and hers were players reciting lines from a script.

But her hand in his was warm. He clung to the feel of it, thinking bitterly that now there was nothing else. What would become of him? He didn't care.

He sunk into a mood of utter defeat. It was all the worse, he realized, because right now, if the Cyberene had not come into the picture, if he had been left to himself, he would be deliriously happy--just as his own exterior self was seeming to be.

After a while he was back in the lab. His body was working on more elaborate experiments with the fluid. His vocal cords were humming a tune in a tone of absent-minded happiness.

He wished fervently that there were some way he could be wiped out completely. Gray walls around his awareness were not enough. Not with the unbearable suffering.

The hours passed slowly for him. He tried not to think, to remain passive. It was no use. His bitterness was too strong. His sense of defeat was too overpowering.

His eyes glanced up at the door as it opened, then down at his wrist watch. It was three minutes after five. Nadine was in the doorway.

"It's time to go Earl," she said.

Go? Where? But his body hastily putting things in order as though it knew.

They left the building together, walked along the sidewalk as though they might be headed toward some dinner rendezvous. They left the sidewalk, and then Earl knew. They were going to the entrance to the time tube. They were going back to the year 3042. Why? He should have remained. Maybe this would create suspicion. But even as he thought that, he knew it wouldn't. Everyone would think he and Nadine were at some restaurant, perhaps later at some night spot. No one would bother to check and see if he came back to his rooms.

Ahead was the clear spot with its smooth convex depression. And the shimmering refraction in the air. Side by side he and Nadine walked toward it--and were in a corridor, the woodland scene wiped out.

No unusual sensation of any kind. Stepping across a thousand years was no different than crossing the threshold of a doorway.

George Ladd was there waiting for them. "The Cyberene wants to see both of you," he said. Nothing more. No paralysis gun, no guards to keep Earl from escaping. But he couldn't escape. He couldn't move a muscle of his own volition. "Okay," he heard himself say casually.

He and Nadine left the building and went through the beautiful park to the Dome. Inside, they walked along the seemingly roofless slightly curving corridor. He went to a small red square and stood on it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nadine do the same. From above, the glass boxes were lowered over them.

_Something left him._ Without having tested the feeling, he knew that he was in full possession of himself. He could command and his body, his voice, would obey.

He turned toward the glass wall facing Nadine. He pressed against it. She was doing the same.

"Nadine!" he said, and it was a greeting, a caress.

"Earl!"

And they were drinking in one another with their eyes.

* * * * *

"Very touching," a voice said. "One would think you are in love with her, Earl Frye."

"Oh no. I--That is...." Earl stopped in amazement at the self revelation.

"Look at her," the Cyberene's voice said. "In spite of most careful conditioning starting in the lab tank in her pre-breathing stage, she feels the same way about you."

Nadine's lips were trembling with a smile. She was nodding.

Earl was irritated. "Did you bring me here just to tell me that?" he asked. "Or to torture me further?" he added bitterly.

"No. I brought you here to show you that I'm grateful. You did what I wanted done. The fact that it was done in spite of you makes no difference. It's done and can't be undone by you. You realize that?"

"To gloat. I might have known," Earl said contemptuously.

"Not that either. I want to reward you. I've thoroughly explored your mind. I know that if you give your word, you will keep it. I understand a little about your feeling on personal freedom. Now that the vital fluid is known to enough people so that nothing you can do would undo that, I'm willing to let you have Nadine. The real Nadine."

"Yes?" Earl said warily.

"Yes. All I ask in return is your promise not to try to undo anything, and to go ahead with your work without ever mentioning what has happened. Once you give your promise, I will let you and Nadine go to your time and stay there, free agents."

Earl frowned. "I don't get it," he said. "I didn't expect anything like this from you."

"You thought that after I had by-passed you and accomplished my purpose I would eliminate you?" The Cyberene laughed. "You will find that I'm a very benevolent master." The video eyes seemed to glisten with joviality.

"I still don't get it," Earl said, puzzled. "You want my word that I won't interfere with anything you do from here on in."

"Yes. After all, there is a lot to do yet before the Brain in your time stream is activated. I must--"

"So!" Earl interrupted. "According to your theory of time that you so carefully explained to me, the discovery of the vital nerve substance should have fixed up everything. It didn't."

"The Brain hasn't been activated yet in your time stream. When it has, then the future will reshape itself."

"I want to understand," Earl said. "As I understand it, some act, some _crucial_ act, must be changed from the way it happened in the past--in my future in that past. Until that crucial moment is changed from the way it happened, all the future stemming from it remains unaltered. The instant that crucial moment is changed, presto--the whole future from 1980 right down to 3042 does a mighty flip flop and _right here and now_, in that other Earth so close to this one, things will change as abruptly as the change of scene on a screen."

"That's correct."

"Then getting my lab reports correct wasn't the thing. There is still something to come, back there, that must be changed? In spite of everything up to now, you are still facing defeat? That's why you are willing to offer me so much?"

"You misunderstand my motives," the Cyberene said.

"I don't think so. You aren't dealing with a mind-slave now. You may be non-human, but you're a thinking mind. You have desires, motives for doing things, ways of doing them. In other words, you're a type. In offering me everything I want, you're out of your type--unless there's something you want that you can't get any other way. When I came in here I was licked. All I wanted was to die. Now I'm not so sure. I'm not even sure you know what you're doing. I have _hope. Do you understand that?_" Earl was trembling violently, a mixture of emotions coursing through him. "I'm going to destroy you before I'm done. You're going to take control of me again and try to prevent that. You don't know whether you can or not because _you can't go into your future_. You can't even go into the past in any detail. How do I know that? I'm a scientist. I'm trained to put two and two together and get four. If you could go anywhere in the past you could have explored every detail of my future and know now what happened."

"Perhaps I do know," the Cyberene said. "You forget I'm attempting to _change_ what happened. I have changed what happened. In the time stream the way it was originally, you discovered the right nerve fluid, and suppressed it. You faked a negative report on it. I've changed that much of the past already."

"Have you?" Earl said dully, his emotion spent. "All right then. Don't mind me. You're not going to get any promise from me no matter how much you torture me." His voice changed to cold bitterness. "I'm going to fight you to the end--and win. I don't know how, but the very fact that you haven't changed the present of that other Earth proves you haven't succeeded yet--and won't. _I'll_ win. Then I'll destroy you, and Nadine and I can be free."

But somewhere along the line the Cyberene had taken control again. Earl wasn't quite sure when his vocal cords stopped obeying his mental commands.

His body was standing quietly. He could not affect it. The gray walls were closing in around him, the pain growing. He didn't fight it. He welcomed the gray walls that clouded the channels to his conscious mind.

He sensed dimly that he and Nadine were going back the way they had come. Back to the time tube. Back to 1980, to what might be the final battle.

He was alone in his living quarters. He was aware of sleeping. Then it was morning, and he crept cautiously into his conscious mind, a hurt and wounded soul. And his conscious mind was serene and happy, unaware of his suffering as it began its day's work.

* * * * *

"Hi, Earl."

Earl looked up with a smile. "Hello, Basil. How's things going with you and Irene?"

Basil smiled wryly. "Well ... at least she's discovered that I'm a pretty fair dancer. She envies you. I guess I do too. You have all the luck."

"Nonsense! Discovering the right substance was like winning the Irish Sweepstakes."

"That's what I mean. You did nothing more than any of the rest of us. It was pure chance that the right stuff was on a tray given to you to test. But in the history books your name will get the credit--just like it took brains."

Earl shrugged. "I'm afraid all our names will be left out. Dr. Glassman will get the credit. He master-minded the whole thing. He deserves the credit, too. The rest of us are just damned good chemists. That's all. He took the risks. If it hadn't paid off, the Dome would have been known as Glassman's Folly."

"Something in that," Basil said. "By the way, what have you found out about Nadine? You two seem quite palsy walsy now."

"She's what she claims to be," Earl said.

"Is she?" Basil said, his eyes narrowing. "I think you're lying. Matter of fact, you're different than you were. What's come over you?"

"Nothing, Basil."

"Nothing, he says," Basil said mournfully to the bench he was sitting on. "What's happened to you? Have you been bought?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. Nadine came here under mysterious circumstances, to say the least. You were hot on the trail of something. You wanted me to help you follow her. I couldn't, because Irene had given me my first chance to date her. So you followed her by yourself. What happened?"

"Sure," Earl said. "She went to the best hotel in town. I called her on a house phone and asked her to have dinner with me. She did."

"Did she tell you how she happened to be only four inches high and naked when you first met her?"

Earl stared at Basil in mock astonishment. "Basil," he said softly. "Haven't you ever heard of that terrible scourge of the human race--alcohol?"

"Don't give me that!" Basil said, his nostrils flaring. "You were stone sober. I was with you for an hour while you bought those clothes and patiently gathered fashion magazines that would show a dame who didn't know the first thing about it how to put them on. I saw Nadine in this lab, being carried off by a man. I was paralyzed by a ray gun or something from a gun. So were you."

"He's right, Earl."

Both men turned toward the door. It was Nadine. She closed the door and came into the lab.

"Maybe we should take him with us, Earl," she said. "If we don't, he's going to think the worst things about us. I know we swore you to secrecy, but he could wreck everything."

"Maybe you're right," Earl said.

"Oh no," Basil said, edging toward the door. "They _did_ something to you, Earl. I'm not going to give them a chance to do the same thing to me."

"Don't be a fool," Earl said. "Let me at least explain things."

* * * * *

Nadine was edging toward the door to cut off Basil's escape. He saw this, and leaped past her to the door, pulling it open.

"Come back here and let me explain," Earl heard himself say.

"You can explain to the Secret Service," Basil said.

He shut the door on them. An impulse made him turn toward Dr. Glassman's office. He would tell him first, and if that didn't get results he would go to the S. S. boys.

He knocked on Glassman's door and pushed it open without waiting for an invitation.

"Dr. Glassman," he said quickly, "something very suspicious is going on around here. I should have told you about it sooner, but I thought Earl would be able to explain his actions, and Nadine's. Have you looked into her credentials? She isn't what she claims. I know, but I don't know how I'm going to prove it right now. She's done something to Earl. He isn't the same. They're in this together."

"Just a minute, Dr. Nelson," Glassman cut in. "Are you trying to say that Dr. Frye and Dr. Holmes are in on some mad scheme to sabotage the Brain? You must be mad. Why, Dr. Frye discovered the chemical we've spent close to a million dollars searching for!"

"I know that," Basil said doggedly, "but just the same--"

"You're out of your mind. What are you trying to do? Curry favor with me at the expense of innocent and hard working people? I've a good notion to discharge you on the spot."

"You've got to listen to--"

"Get out. I'll hear no more of it."

Basil stared at him blankly, then nodded. "All right," he said, "but you're going to have to listen later. I'm taking it to the Secret Service. They'll have to listen."

He backed out, closing the door on Glassman's angry face. When he turned to go down the hall he saw Earl and Nadine coming toward him. With them was George Ladd, his right hand in his suit coat pocket over something bulging--the paralysis gun, maybe.

Basil turned the other way and down another hall, running with a speed born of fear and determination. He knew now he had been right.

A door opened. Irene came out, almost bumping into him. "Where are you going in such a hurry, Basil?" she demanded.

"Can't explain now," he said. She stood in his way. "Come with me," he said desperately. "I'll explain on the way. Hurry."

She nodded. Together they ran down the hall and reached the side exit. Taking Irene's hand, Basil plunged away from the sidewalk through scattered trees, until they reached the parking lot. He unlocked his car with shaking fingers and told Irene to get in. He rushed around to the driver's side.

The motor caught instantly. He started with a clash of gears. In the rear view mirror he saw George Ladd running toward him. Then he reached the street--and almost immediately was slowed by heavy traffic.

Groaning under his breath, he made the best time he could. Irene watched him silently for two blocks.

"Aren't you going to tell me what it is?" she asked abruptly.

"He's after me," Basil said. "We've got to get there before he can stop me. You can listen when I tell the Secret Service about it."

Ahead was a traffic jam. Basil turned into a side street where he made better time. It was taking him forever to get there. But finally his destination was just ahead. The office building where the S. S. had its local office.

There was a parking space. Basil swerved toward it and braked to a stop. He reached past Irene and opened her door.

"Get out and run for it," he said.

The screech of tires almost drowned his voice. He looked over his shoulder. A car had pulled up beside his in the street. He saw George Ladd behind the wheel, alone.

Frantically, Basil pushed Irene out and followed her, taking her hand as they ran toward the building entrance fifteen feet away.

"We've got to make it," he said. "We've got to...."

There was no sound, no light, from the weapon George Ladd pointed at them.

Basil sprawled forward. Before he hit the sidewalk, flame burst from his hair, his clothing.

Irene stopped, forgetting her danger or not knowing it. She bent down by Basil, reaching to help him. She remained in that position for a long second while her hair and clothing burst into flames, then crumpled against him.

Horrified pedestrians drew back from the bodies, the stench of seared flesh. In the street a motor roared into life. The car with George Ladd sped away.

* * * * *