CHAPTER 1

HER HAIR WAS A BRILLIANT green. So was her spectacularly filled halter. So were her tight short-shorts, her lipstick, and the lacquer on her finger-and toe-nails. As she strolled into the Main of the starship, followed hesitantly by the other girl, she drove a mental probe at the black-haired, powerfully-built man seated at the instrument-banked console.

Blocked.

Then at the other, slenderer man who was rising to his feet from the pilot’s bucket seat. His guard was partially down; he was telepathing a pleasant, if somewhat reserved greeting to both newcomers.

She turned to her companion and spoke aloud. “So these are the system’s best.” The emphasis was somewhere between condescension and sneer. “Not much to choose between, I’d say ... ‘port me a tenth-piece, Clee? Heads, I take the tow-head.”

She flipped the coin dexterously. “Heads it is, Lola, so I get Jim—James James James the Ninth himself. You have the honor of pairing with Clee—or should I say His Learnedness Right the Honorable Director Doctor Cleander Simmsworth Garlock, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Science, Prime Operator, President and First Fellow of the Galaxian Society, First Fellow of the Gunther Society, Fellow of the Institute of Paraphysics, of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, of the College of Mathematics, of the Congress of Psionicists, and of all the other top-bracket brain-gangs you ever heard of? Also, for your information, his men have given him a couple of informal degrees—P.D.Q. and S.O.B.”

The big psionicist’s expression of saturnine, almost contemptuous amusement had not changed; his voice came flat and cold. “The less you say, Doctor Bellamy, the better. Obstinate, swell-headed women give me an acute rectal pain. Pitching your curves over all the vizzies in space got you aboard, but it won’t get you a thing from here on. And for your information, Doctor Bellamy, one more crack like that and I take you over my knee and blister your fanny.”

“Try it, you big, clumsy, muscle-bound gorilla!” she jeered. “That I want to see! Any time you want to get both arms broken at the elbows, just try it!”

“Now’s as good a time as any. I like your spirit, babe, but I can’t say a thing for your judgment.” He got up and started purposefully toward her, but both non-combatants came between.

“Jet back, Clee!” James protested, both hands against the heavier man’s chest. “What the hell kind of show is that to put on?” And, simultaneously:

“Belle! Shame on you! Picking a fight already, and with nobody knows how many million people looking on! You know as well as I do that we may have to spend the rest of our lives together, so act like civilized beings—please—both of you! And don’t....”

“Nobody’s watching this but us,” Garlock interrupted. “When pussy there started using her claws I cut the gun.”

“That’s what you think,” James said sharply, “but Fatso and his number one girl friend are coming in on the tight beam.”

“Oh?” Garlock whirled toward the hitherto dark and silent three-dimensional communications instrument. The face of a bossy-looking woman was already bright.

“Garlock! How dare you try to cut Chancellor Ferber off?” she demanded. Her voice was deep-pitched, blatant with authority. “Here you are, sir.”

The woman’s face shifted to one side and a man’s appeared—a face to justify in full the nickname “Fatso.”

“‘Fatso’, eh?” Chancellor Ferber snarled. Pale eyes glared from the fat face. “That costs you exactly one thousand credits, James.”

“How much will this cost me, Fatso?” Garlock asked.

“Five thousand—and, since nobody can call me that deliberately, demotion three grades and probation for three years. Make a note, Miss Foster.”

“Noted, sir.”

“Still sure we aren’t going anywhere,” Garlock said. “What a brain!”

“Sure I’m sure!” Ferber gloated. “In a couple of hours I’m going to buy your precious starship in as junk. In the meantime, whether you like it or not, I’m going to watch your expression while you push all those pretty buttons and nothing happens.”

“The trouble with you, Fatso,” Garlock said dispassionately, as he opened a drawer and took out a pair of cutting pliers, “is that all your strength is in your glands and none in your alleged brain. There are a lot of things—including a lot of tests—you know nothing about. How much will you see after I’ve cut one wire?”

“You wouldn’t dare!” the fat man shouted. “I’d fire you—blacklist you all over the sys....”

Voice and images died away and Garlock turned to the two women in the Main. He began to smile, but his mental shield did not weaken.

“You’ve got a point there, Lola,” he said, going on as though Ferber’s interruption had not occurred. “Not that I blame either Belle or myself. If anything was ever calculated to drive a man nuts, this farce was. As the only female Prime in the system, Belle should have been in automatically—she had no competition. And to anybody with three brain cells working the other place lay between you, Lola, and the other three female Ops in the age group.

“But no. Ferber and the rest of the Board—stupidity uber alles!—think all us Ops and Primes are psycho and that the ship will never even lift. So they made a Grand Circus of it. But they succeeded in one thing—with such abysmal stupidity so rampant I’m getting more and more reconciled to the idea of our not getting back—at least, for a long, long time.”

“Why, they said we had a very good chance....” Lola began.

“Yeah, and they said a lot of even bigger damn lies than that one. Have you read any of my papers?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not a mathematician.”

“Our motion will be purely at random. If it isn’t, I’ll eat this whole ship. We won’t get back until Jim and I work out something to steer us with. But they must be wondering no end, outside, what the score is, so I’m willing to call it a draw—temporarily—and let ‘em in again. How about it, Belle?”

“A draw it is—temporarily.” Neither, however, even offered to shake hands.

“Smile pretty, everybody,” Garlock said, and pressed a stud.

“... the matter? What’s the matter? Oh....” the worried voice of the System’s ace newscaster came in. “Power failure already?”

“No,” Garlock replied. “I figured we had a couple of minutes of privacy coming, if you can understand the meaning of the word. Now all four of us tell everybody who is watching or listening au revoir or good-bye, whichever it may turn out to be.” He reached for the switch.

“Wait a minute!” the newscaster demanded. “Leave it on until the last poss....” His voice broke off sharply.

“Turn it back on!” Belle ordered.

“Nix.”

“Scared?” she sneered.

“You chirped it, bird-brain. I’m scared purple. So would you be, if you had three brain cells working in that glory-hound’s head of yours. Get set, everybody, and we’ll take off.”

“Stop it, both of you!” Lola exclaimed. “Where do you want us to sit, and do we strap down?”

“You sit here; Belle at that plate beside Jim. Yes, strap down. There probably won’t be any shock, and we should land right side up, but there’s no sense in taking chances. Sure your stuff’s all aboard?”

“Yes, it’s in our rooms.”

The four secured themselves; the two men checked, for the dozenth time, their instruments. The pilot donned his scanner. The ship lifted effortlessly, noiselessly. Through the atmosphere; through and far beyond the stratosphere. It stopped.

“Ready, Clee?” James licked his lips.

“As ready as I ever will be, I guess. Shoot!”

The pilot’s right hand, forefinger outstretched, moved unenthusiastically toward a red button on his panel ... slowed ... stopped. He stared into his scanner at the Earth so far below.

“Hit it, Jim!” Garlock snapped. “Hit it, for goodness sake, before we all lose our nerve!”

James stabbed convulsively at the button, and in the very instant of contact—instantaneously; without a fractional microsecond of time-lapse—their familiar surroundings disappeared. Or, rather, and without any sensation of motion, of displacement, or of the passage of any time whatsoever, the planet beneath them was no longer their familiar Earth. The plates showed no familiar stars nor patterns of heavenly bodies. The brightly-shining...