Chapter VIII

Jon Saxon couldn't have been unconscious but a fraction of a second because he didn't have time to fall. He came to himself swaying dizzily, nauseated as if with space sickness.

He opened his eyes. He was blind!

The shock left him numb. Then gradually, like a flower unfolding its petals to the light, he felt his extra-human sixth sense assume control.

He became aware of the grass and the sun and the distant hills. Everything registered in varying degrees of grayness. It wasn't grayness exactly, but the word came as near to describing the peculiar impressions that external objects were registering on his sixth sense as his vocabulary could supply.

He didn't picture his environment; he realized it. The burned circle of grass, the naked alien....

A second shock rocked Saxon to his heels. The Alien!

Tentatively, almost timidly, he examined the strange figure confronting him. The man, for man he appeared to be, stood quietly several paces, sizing up Saxon with an equal degree of caution. The analogy to two strange dogs eyeing each other belligerently, but each afraid to make the first move, was so ludicrous that Saxon chuckled although no sound issued from his lips.

He sensed his opponent relax. The fellow was big the way Saxon was big, and the same virility radiated from him like a physical force.

The impressions received via his sixth sense were gaining in vividness. Saxon had never fully appreciated its scope before.

Then with the force of a blow, Ileth's terrified thoughts penetrated sharply to his mind.

"_I must be dead! Oh God, I'm dead!_"

Saxon could perceive the girl cowering above a small pile of clothes, frightened, helpless, blind. She didn't have his extra-human sixth sense to substitute for sight. She was trembling violently, a slim-naked wraith without substance.

The little pile of clothes at her feet made it suddenly clear what had befallen Mercedes and the crew, what had happened to Ileth and himself. In some fashion, the Aliens had transmuted them into a space where their three-dimensional organs of perception no longer registered.

He moved to the girl, touched her arm.

Saxon was not conscious of a sense of contact, but a vague shock like a weak electric current ran up his arm to his brain. Ileth flinched back in terror.

Again he touched her arm, thinking, "_Ileth, am I getting through? Ileth, am I getting through?_" over and over again.

"_Yes_," came the unexpected answer. "_Yes. Yes. Is it you, Jon? We're dead, you know, Jon._"

"_No_," he thought. "_We're not dead. We've been transmuted but we're not dead._"

A command rang sharply in his disembodied mind. "_Lead the girl and follow me!_"

Saxon's attention swung back to the Alien, perceived the man threatening him with the cylinder which had blasted them into this indeterminate dimension.

"_Suppose I refuse?_" he thought.

"_I'm afraid that you underestimate the range of effect of this weapon._" The Alien brandished the cylinder again. "_Follow me._"

Saxon capitulated, touched Ileth. "_Keep in contact with me. I'll guide you._" He began to move after the stranger who was already at a distance.

He didn't know how long they walked. Time had no expression in this state. Alpha Centauri A hung always in the same spot just above the horizon. He thought of Villainowski's inverted formula--"To travel through time during a passage of space." The Little Death must be like this, if one were conscious.

He was still turning it over in his mind when he perceived the station.

The station appeared to be a cubical structure like a large plastic block, except that the matter of which it was formed wasn't matter at all. It was energy, Saxon sensed, pulsating sheets of energy that must not be visible in the normal, three-dimensional world.

The Alien stood to one side, motioned them through the shimmering walls.

Saxon was conscious of a throbbing rhythm which swept through him like the hum of a dynamo. He experienced the eerie giddiness for the second time and groped for Ileth before he blanked out.

* * * * *

This time Saxon was longer regaining consciousness. He came out from under the effects of the pulsation, feeling his flesh solid again. Air warmed and caressed his skin. He was materialized, he saw, as he leaped to his feet and opened his eyes.

He felt vaguely overwhelmed by the return of his senses. He had never before appreciated their infinite variety. The walls were yellow, lemon yellow; the floor cool and firm underfoot; the air had a faint odor of bitter almonds; and Ileth....

He said, "Open your eyes, Ileth. You'll be able to see better that way."

The girl's eyes popped open. She took one look at Saxon, then at herself. Her eyes grew rounder, her throat flamed.

She gasped, "Oh! You should have let me keep my eyes shut," and whipped her back to him.

She must have realized instantly that the view she presented was no better screened, for she sat down with a thump, saying, "Oh!" again. Then, in an embarrassed voice, "This is just like a dream I had once. Only everyone but me wore clothes in the dream, and there isn't a fig leaf between the three of us."

"The three of us?"

Saxon glanced around, discovered the Alien rummaging in one of the cabinets, from which he produced three of the gleaming kilts, tossed them each one.

"You humans," he said in an amused tone and perfect English, "have odd notions about concealing yourselves. Here."

Saxon gratefully buckled his kilt in place, examined the material. The threads were almost weightless and glowed like strands of light. With a start, he recalled where he had seen them before.

The man and the woman had been wearing kilts like these in his vision during the Little Death. Then....

His mind refused to entertain the possibility. And yet it was a piece of everything else. His inability to remember his childhood. The development of first a sixth sense at twenty-seven, then a seventh at thirty-one.

He strode abruptly to the windows and looked out.

The windows were at an elevation and gave a view of the strangest city he had ever beheld.

There were houses, at least they could be houses, spaced entirely without relation to each other and surrounded by immense park-like grounds. There were no congested areas within his range of vision. Neither was he able to discover roads or sidewalks, fences or walls anywhere.

Alpha Centauri A was still just rising, its orange twin not yet above the hills, which he could see in the distance.

He turned wonderingly back into the room.

Their guard regarded them in amusement. "Sit down," he suggested, indicating a bench.

They seated themselves.

"Ask him what they're going to do with us, Jon." Ileth nudged Saxon in the ribs.

Saxon cleared his throat.

Before he could speak, the guard smiled and said, "I haven't the faintest idea how they plan to dispose of you. Even if I did, that would be for Them to tell you." He nodded toward a closed door on their right. "They'll send for you any moment now."

"Who are 'they'?" Saxon asked.

"The Elders."

"What planet is this?"

"Vark." The guard's voice was pleasant. He smiled faintly when he talked. "The fourth planet of the sun you call Alpha Centauri A. This is the city of Ghibellena." He nodded out the windows.

"How did we get here? Teleportation?"

"Not exactly."

There was a momentary silence while the Alien observed them with that amused gleam in his eye. Then Saxon tried again. "Who are you? Why have you captured us?"

The man nodded briefly again towards the closed door. "You'll learn that in there--if They see fit to tell you."

"Where are the rest of the crew? Dead? In prison?"

"Oh, no. They've been taken to Zara."

"Zara? Where's Zara?"

"Zara is a satellite of the third planet. The one we call Tunis."

"What is that city we saw? The deserted one near the ship?"

Again the man smiled and nodded toward the door. "If They see fit to tell you."

Saxon shrugged burly shoulders. "How do you make yourselves invisible?"

Surprisingly enough the man answered.

"It's a refinement of your stellar drive, an excursion into the time field. In fact, it was discovered almost a hundred of your years ago by a Terran. A Dr. Walter."

Saxon looked disconcerted. Ileth swallowed, her eyes as round as saucers. Suddenly her hand squeezed his arm.

"The door! It's opening!"

"You may go in," said their guard. "They're ready for you."

Saxon had risen uncertainly. He looked at the door which was receding into the wall. Through the portal, he glimpsed a terrace or a balcony, roofless. Beyond and below the terrace was a yellow sea stretching to the horizon, its cadmium waves frothing against a beach of black sand.

"They're expecting you," the guard prompted.

Saxon shrugged. Taking Ileth's arm, he went through the opening. The door slid shut behind them.

* * * * *

The balcony, Saxon saw, was paved checkerboard fashion with green and yellow blocks. At the left, out of sight from the entrance, was a twenty foot table of pale green stone. Seven incredibly old men sat behind the table.

No one said anything.

Saxon took the initiative, advanced to within six feet of the pale green table. His dark gray eyes narrowed. He was vaguely conscious of a flow of thought passing among the seven old men like conversation, but its content escaped him. His jaw jutted angrily.

"Control your anger, my son," said the old man in the center. "Your thoughts should be respectful in the presence of your elders."

Saxon concealed his astonishment, asking, "Might I inquire what this mummery is all about?" He became aware again of the hidden thoughts flowing between them.

Then the old man in the center said, "I am the moderator, my son. Your mind, we have perceived, teems with questions. We have decided that from the psychological angle, certain of these questions can now be answered."

"Psychological angle?" Saxon felt confused. The deviousness of the Aliens, the maddening superiority which they assumed began to get under his skin. With an effort, he got a grip on himself, returned their curious stares.

The seven old men were wrinkled, emaciated. Once they had been big men like Saxon, but the years had wasted their flesh.

"That's better," approved the Moderator, referring to Saxon's change of tactics. "Now for your questions," and he seemed to look straight into Saxon's mind.

"Very early in our history," began the Moderator after a moment, "we learned that we advanced in the physical sciences by trial and error. A disheartening process, because only so many combinations can be tried in a single life-time...."

"What the hell has this got to do with us?" Saxon interrupted harshly.

"Patience, my son. I'm explaining the relation between our world and the third planet of Sol which you call Earth."

A little muscle began to jump in Saxon's jaw.

"Trial and error," the old man began again. "A slow heartbreaking process, and one which in its nature is inescapable. At least, so we thought until quite recently." He paused, tugged at his lower lip with thumb and forefinger.

Saxon mastered an impulse to shout, "Get to the point!"

"Recently," went on the moderator, "we tried an experiment in our biological laboratories which we hoped would speed up the trial-and-error formula.

"By exposing the germ plasm of a semi-intelligent anthropoid inhabiting the fourth planet of this system to hard radiations, we succeeded in creating a mutant, a biologic sport who's life span was only an instant of time. It matured, mated and died in an incredibly brief period.

"They were startlingly prolific as well; they multiplied like--like--" he groped for a simile--"like guinea pigs or rats.

"Furthermore, they early exhibited the most amazing ingenuity. In twenty generations they had fire; in thirty, crude implement of stone."

Saxon, unable to restrain his impatience longer, cried, "The point, man--get to the point."

The old man gave Saxon a steely look. "We recognized," he went on stiffly, "the significance of our mutation. As soon as the semi-intelligent sports developed a science, we could expect the trial and error method to be speeded up. A life-time of experiment to them was only a moment to us.

"We isolated them on the fifth planet of our sun. But it soon became apparent that they constituted a dangerous menace even that close. They were so fecund, and their ferocity was appalling. Wars broke out between various tribes. They murdered each other by the thousands."

Gradually Saxon's interest had been caught by the history of the semi-reasoning mutants whose ferocity and proliferation had constituted a menace to their creators. He glanced at Ileth, discovered her spellbound.

The Moderator's voice was growing thinner.

"Luckily," he was saying, "stellar travel was accomplished at this time. We exported several thousand of the creatures to another star system and destroyed the rest.

"The environment on the planet where we transplanted our colony of humanoids was ideal for our purpose--harsh and savage. Several species of bipeds with rudimentary intelligence already inhabited the planet, but our own culture speedily wiped them out and were happily warring among themselves...."

A suspicion began to grow in Saxon's mind. He blurted, "On what planet did you introduce this culture?"

The Moderator paused, stared Saxon coolly in the eye.

"Earth!" he said.

* * * * *

Saxon and Ileth looked at each other incredulously, unable to comprehend the significance of the Moderator's answer.

"Earth?" repeated Saxon. "I don't understand."

The Moderator wrinkled his brow, and said, "I don't know how to put it any more clearly. We transplanted our biological sports to Earth. The two sub-human races which our humanoids exterminated were the Cro-Magnards and the Neanderthalers."

Saxon's brain reeled. "Do you mean that man as we know him, homo sapiens, originated in your laboratories as--an experiment?"

He heard Ileth laugh hysterically.

"Precisely," replied the Moderator. "And I might add that the experiment has proven successful. During the last thousand years they have supplied us with hundreds of discoveries and developments. The real nature of the space-time continuum, for example.

"The creatures are inordinately clever at the physical sciences--as was to be expected from an emotionally unstable, rationalizing mammal under the pressure of such an antagonistic environment. Our own laboratories have become, for all practical purposes, unnecessary!"

Ileth was staring at the Moderator with wide horrified eyes. "I," she gasped. "I am a humanoid? I don't live but a moment? I'm prolific and savage and--and clever like a monkey? Why, you shriveled up old bag of bones, that's the most stupid pack of lies I've ever heard!"

The Moderator regarded her compassionately. "You haven't changed because I've told you the truth. Your life expectation is no shorter. It's a matter of relativity. To us our ten thousand years seems no longer than your three score and ten does to you."

"Ten thousand years?" exploded Saxon. The sum was so staggering that it was only a figure to him. "Then--" he began, but the Moderator answered before he could speak.

"No. I was not born when the experiment with the humanoids began. They were developed some twenty-five thousand years ago."

Ileth began to laugh crazily, unable to stop. In a moment she would be hysterical. Saxon shook her roughly. "Stop it!"

"I--I--I can't," she giggled. "Either he's mad or I am." Her words ended in a flood of tears.

Saxon put his arm around the girl, turned back to the Moderator. "It was done with hard radiations?"

"Yes. In the resultant mutants their metabolism had been accelerated beyond our wildest expectation. Their life cycle geared to their metabolism passed through its different phases like--like ..." again he fished in Saxon's mind for a simile. "Like a meteor. By artificially slowing down their metabolism they returned to their normal life span.

"You've been very curious about the replica of New York II which you saw when you landed."

Saxon nodded, trying to conceal a thought which had begun to take shape in the back of his mind.

"It's just that. A replica of a city built during the Atomic Age by the humanoids. Their constant implacable wars are so savage that we've found it necessary to duplicate their work here, if we hope to preserve any of it for study."

Saxon narrowed his eyes, asked, "You spoke of the menace of having such savage neighbors. Just how serious was such a threat?"

* * * * *

The Moderator smiled and glanced at his constituents. Saxon strained to grasp the thoughts flowing between them, but failed utterly.

"Admirable!" the Moderator commented suddenly. "Your reactions, my son, are leading us to hope we may turn in the most optimistic report."

Saxon stared at him as if he were crazy. Ileth's tears had subsided to a sniffle.

"Now for your question," said the Moderator and coughed again.

"The menace was real, not imaginary. We had created a monster that would be either a marvelous scientific instrument, or--the means of our destruction.

"Remember, my son, time is relative. These creatures lived, fought, loved, begat children, carried on scientific research and died, all in seventy short years. They existed at fever intensity. Their metabolism burns them up.

"Our lives are adjusted to a span of ten thousand years. We have a total population of little over a million. We are neither a war-like people, nor a highly-industrialized people.

"In one of their generations the humanoids accomplish almost as much as we do in one of ours. Think, my son, they perform in seventy years what it takes us ten thousand to do.

"If it ever came to hostilities between us we'd be doomed, overwhelmed almost before we realized what was happening."

Saxon listened in astonishment. The thought in the back of his mind kept trying to push to the fore, but he repressed it, afraid that the Aliens might see it.

"Their amazing fecundity," the Moderator was saying, "their short life spans, their ingenuity and ferocity made them a very real menace even isolated outside our stellar system. Fortunately, we also foresaw the inevitable crisis and prepared for it."

"Crisis?" Saxon echoed.

"The time when the humanoids would reach our scientific level and surpass us," said the Moderator in a grim voice. "That time has arrived!"