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Title: Hunter Patrol

Author: H. Beam Piper
        John J. McGuire

Release date: June 21, 2006 [eBook #18641]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUNTER PATROL ***




Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





[Illustration]

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|                         Transcriber's Note                         |
|                                                                    |
| This etext was produced from Amazing Stories May 1959. There is no |
|    evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.    |
|                                                                    |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+


HUNTER PATROL

By H. BEAM PIPER and JOHN J. McGUIRE

     +Many men have dreamed of world peace, but none have been able to
     achieve it. If one man did have that power, could mankind afford to
     pay the price?+


At the crest of the ridge, Benson stopped for an instant, glancing first
at his wrist-watch and then back over his shoulder. It was 0539; the
barrage was due in eleven minutes, at the spot where he was now
standing. Behind, on the long northeast slope, he could see the columns
of black oil smoke rising from what had been the Pan-Soviet advance
supply dump. There was a great deal of firing going on, back there; he
wondered if the Commies had managed to corner a few of his men, after
the patrol had accomplished its mission and scattered, or if a couple of
Communist units were shooting each other up in mutual mistaken identity.
The result would be about the same in either case--reserve units would
be disorganized, and some men would have been pulled back from the front
line. His dozen-odd UN regulars and Turkish partisans had done their
best to simulate a paratroop attack in force. At least, his job was
done; now to execute that classic infantry maneuver described as, "Let's
get the hell outa here." This was his last patrol before rotation home.
He didn't want anything unfortunate to happen.

There was a little ravine to the left; the stream which had cut it in
the steep southern slope of the ridge would be dry at this time of year,
and he could make better time, and find protection in it from any chance
shots when the interdictory barrage started. He hurried toward it and
followed it down to the valley that would lead toward the front--the
thinly-held section of the Communist lines, and the UN lines beyond,
where fresh troops were waiting to jump from their holes and begin the
attack.

There was something wrong about this ravine, though. At first, it was
only a vague presentiment, growing stronger as he followed the dry gully
down to the valley below. Something he had smelled, or heard, or seen,
without conscious recognition. Then, in the dry sand where the ravine
debouched into the valley, he saw faint tank-tracks--only one pair.
There was something wrong about the vines that mantled one side of the
ravine, too....

An instant later, he was diving to the right, breaking his fall with the
butt of his auto-carbine, rolling rapidly toward the cover of a rock,
and as he did so, the thinking part of his mind recognized what was
wrong. The tank-tracks had ended against the vine-grown side of the
ravine, what he had smelled had been lubricating oil and petrol, and the
leaves on some of the vines hung upside down.

Almost at once, from behind the vines, a tank's machine guns snarled at
him, clipping the place where he had been standing, then shifting to
rage against the sheltering rock. With a sudden motor-roar, the muzzle
of a long tank-gun pushed out through the vines, and then the low body
of a tank with a red star on the turret came rumbling out of the
camouflaged bay. The machine guns kept him pinned behind the rock; the
tank swerved ever so slightly so that its wide left tread was aimed
directly at him, then picked up speed. Aren't even going to waste a
shell on me, he thought.

Futilely, he let go a clip from his carbine, trying to hit one of the
vision-slits; then rolled to one side, dropped out the clip, slapped in
another. There was a shimmering blue mist around him. If he only hadn't
used his last grenade, back there at the supply-dump....

The strange blue mist became a flickering radiance that ran through
all the colors of the spectrum and became an utter, impenetrable
blackness....

       *       *       *       *       *

There were voices in the blackness, and a softness under him, but under
his back, when he had been lying on his stomach, as though he were now
on a comfortable bed. They got me alive, he thought; now comes the
brainwashing!

He cracked one eye open imperceptibly. Lights, white and glaring, from a
ceiling far above; walls as white as the lights. Without moving his
head, he opened both eyes and shifted them from right to left. Vaguely,
he could see people and, behind them, machines so simply designed that
their functions were unguessable. He sat up and looked around groggily.
The people, their costumes--definitely not Pan-Soviet uniforms--and the
room and its machines, told him nothing. The hardness under his right
hip was a welcome surprise; they hadn't taken his pistol from him!
Feigning even more puzzlement and weakness, he clutched his knees with
his elbows and leaned his head forward on them, trying to collect his
thoughts.

"We shall have to give up, Gregory," a voice trembled with
disappointment.

"Why, Anthony?" The new voice was deeper, more aggressive.

"Look. Another typical reaction; retreat to the foetus."

Footsteps approached. Another voice, discouragement heavily weighting
each syllable: "You're right. He's like all the others. We'll have to
send him back."

"And look for no more?" The voice he recognized as Anthony faltered
between question and statement.

A babel of voices, in dispute; then, clearly, the voice Benson had come
to label as Gregory, cut in:

"I will never give up!"

He raised his head; there was something in the timbre of that voice
reminding him of his own feelings in the dark days when the UN had
everywhere been reeling back under the Pan-Soviet hammer-blows.

"Anthony!" Gregory's voice again; Benson saw the speaker; short, stocky,
gray-haired, stubborn lines about the mouth. The face of a man chasing
an illusive but not uncapturable dream.

"That means nothing." A tall thin man, too lean for the tunic-like
garment he wore, was shaking his head.

Deliberately, trying to remember his college courses in psychology, he
forced himself to accept, and to assess, what he saw as reality. He was
on a small table, like an operating table; the whole place looked like a
medical lab or a clinic. He was still in uniform; his boots had soiled
the white sheets with the dust of Armenia. He had all his equipment,
including his pistol and combat-knife; his carbine was gone, however. He
could feel the weight of his helmet on his head. The room still rocked
and swayed a little, but the faces of the people were coming into focus.

       *       *       *       *       *

He counted them, saying each number to himself: one, two, three, four,
five men; one woman. He swung his feet over the edge of the table, being
careful that it would be between him and the others when he rose, and
began inching his right hand toward his right hip, using his left hand,
on his brow, to misdirect attention.

"I would classify his actions as arising from conscious effort at
cortico-thalamic integration," the woman said, like an archaeologist who
has just found a K-ration tin at the bottom of a neolithic
kitchen-midden. She had the peculiarly young-old look of the spinster
teachers with whom Benson had worked before going to the war.

"I want to believe it, but I'm afraid to," another man for whom Benson
had no name-association said. He was portly, gray-haired,
arrogant-faced; he wore a short black jacket with a jewelled
zipper-pull, and striped trousers.

Benson cleared his throat. "Just who are you people?" he inquired. "And
just where am I?"

Anthony grabbed Gregory's hand and pumped it frantically.

"I've dreamed of the day when I could say this!" he cried.
"Congratulations, Gregory!"

       *       *       *       *       *

That touched off another bedlam, of joy, this time, instead of despair.
Benson hid his amusement at the facility with which all of them were
discovering in one another the courage, vision and stamina of true
patriots and pioneers. He let it go on for a few moments, hoping to
glean some clue. Finally, he interrupted.

"I believe I asked a couple of questions," he said, using the voice he
reserved for sergeants and second lieutenants. "I hate to break up this
mutual admiration session, but I would appreciate some answers. This
isn't anything like the situation I last remember...."

"He remembers!" Gregory exclaimed. "That confirms your first derivation
by symbolic logic, and it strengthens the validity of the second...."

The schoolteacherish woman began jabbering excitedly; she ran through
about a paragraph of what was pure gobbledegook to Benson, before the
man with the arrogant face and the jewelled zipper-pull broke in on her.

"Save that for later, Paula," he barked. "I'd be very much interested in
your theories about why memories are unimpaired when you time-jump
forward and lost when you reverse the process, but let's stick to
business. We have what we wanted; now let's use what we have."

"I never liked the way you made your money," a dark-faced, cadaverous
man said, "but when you talk, it makes sense. Let's get on with it."

Benson used the brief silence which followed to study the six. With the
exception of the two who had just spoken, there was the indefinable mark
of the fanatic upon all of them--people fanatical about different
things, united for different reasons in a single purpose. It reminded
him sharply of some teachers' committee about to beard a school-board
with an unpopular and expensive recommendation.

Anthony--the oldest of the lot, in a knee-length tunic--turned to
Gregory.

"I believe you had better...." he began.

"As to who we are, we'll explain that, partially, later. As for your
question, 'Where am I?' that will have to be rephrased. If you ask,
'When and where am I?' I can furnish a rational answer. In the temporal
dimension, you are fifty years futureward of the day of your death;
spatially, you are about eight thousand miles from the place of your
death, in what is now the World Capitol, St. Louis."

Nothing in the answer made sense but the name of the city. Benson
chuckled.

"What happened; the Cardinals conquer the world? I knew they had a good
team, but I didn't think it was that good."

"No, no," Gregory told him earnestly. "The government isn't a theocracy.
At least not yet. But if The Guide keeps on insisting that only
beautiful things are good and that he is uniquely qualified to define
beauty, watch his rule change into just that."

"I've been detecting symptoms of religious paranoia, messianic
delusions, about his public statements...." the woman began.

"Idolatry!" another member of the group, who wore a black coat fastened
to the neck, and white neck-bands, rasped. "Idolatry in deed, as well as
in spirit!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The sense of unreality, partially dispelled, began to return. Benson
dropped to the floor and stood beside the table, getting a cigarette out
of his pocket and lighting it.

"I made a joke," he said, putting his lighter away. "The fact that none
of you got it has done more to prove that I am fifty years in the future
than anything any of you could say." He went on to explain who the St.
Louis Cardinals were.

"Yes; I remember! Baseball!" Anthony exclaimed. "There is no baseball,
now. The Guide will not allow competitive sports; he says that they
foster the spirit of violence...."

The cadaverous man in the blue jacket turned to the man in the black
garment of similar cut.

"You probably know more history than any of us," he said, getting a
cigar out of his pocket and lighting it. He lighted it by rubbing the
end on the sole of his shoe. "Suppose you tell him what the score is."
He turned to Benson. "You can rely on his dates and happenings; his
interpretation's strictly capitalist, of course," he said.

Black-jacket shook his head. "You first, Gregory," he said. "Tell him
how he got here, and then I'll tell him why."

"I believe," Gregory began, "that in your period, fiction writers made
some use of the subject of time-travel. It was not, however, given
serious consideration, largely because of certain alleged paradoxes
involved, and because of an elementalistic and objectifying attitude
toward the whole subject of time. I won't go into the mathematics and
symbolic logic involved, but we have disposed of the objections; more,
we have succeeded in constructing a time-machine, if you want to call it
that. We prefer to call it a temporal-spatial displacement field
generator."

"It's really very simple," the woman called Paula interrupted. "If the
universe is expanding, time is a widening spiral; if contracting, a
diminishing spiral; if static, a uniform spiral. The possibility of
pulsation was our only worry...."

"That's no worry," Gregory reproved her. "I showed you that the rate was
too slow to have an effect on...."

"Oh, nonsense; you can measure something which exists within a
microsecond, but where is the instrument to measure a temporal pulsation
that may require years...? You haven't come to that yet."

"Be quiet, both of you!" the man with the black coat and the white bands
commanded. "While you argue about vanities, thousands are being
converted to the godlessness of The Guide, and other thousands of his
dupes are dying, unprepared to face their Maker!"

"All right, you invented a time-machine," Benson said. "In civvies, I
was only a high school chemistry teacher. I can tell a class of juniors
the difference between H_{2}O and H_{2}SO_{4}, but the theory of
time-travel is wasted on me.... Suppose you just let me ask the
questions; then I'll be sure of finding out what I don't know. For
instance, who won the war I was fighting in, before you grabbed me and
brought me here? The Commies?"

"No, the United Nations," Anthony told him. "At least, they were the
least exhausted when both sides decided to quit."

"Then what's this dictatorship.... The Guide? Extreme Rightist?"

"Walter, you'd better tell him," Gregory said.

       *       *       *       *       *

"We damn near lost the war," the man in the black jacket and striped
trousers said, "but for once, we won the peace. The Soviet Bloc was
broken up--India, China, Indonesia, Mongolia, Russia, the Ukraine, all
the Satellite States. Most of them turned into little dictatorships,
like the Latin American countries after the liberation from Spain, but
they were personal, non-ideological, generally benevolent,
dictatorships, the kind that can grow into democracies, if they're given
time."

"Capitalistic dictatorships, he means," the cadaverous man in the blue
jacket explained.

"Be quiet, Carl," Anthony told him. "Let's not confuse this with any
class-struggle stuff."

"Actually, the United Nations rules the world," Walter continued. "What
goes on in the Ukraine or Latvia or Manchuria is about analogous to what
went on under the old United States government in, let's say,
Tammany-ruled New York. But here's the catch. The UN is ruled absolutely
by one man."

"How could that happen? In my time, the UN had its functions so
subdivided and compartmented that it couldn't even run a war properly.
Our army commanders were making war by systematic disobedience."

"The charter was changed shortly after ... er, that is, after...."
Walter was fumbling for words.

"After my death." Benson finished politely. "Go on. Even with a changed
charter, how did one man get all the powers into his hands?"

"By sorcery!" black-coat-and-white-bands fairly shouted. "By the help of
his master, Satan!"

"You know, there are times when some such theory tempts me," Paula said.

"He was a big moneybags," Carl said. "He bribed his way in. See, New
York was bombed flat. Where the old UN buildings were, it's still hot.
So The Guide donated a big tract of land outside St. Louis, built these
buildings--we're in the basement of one of them, right now, if you want
a good laugh--and before long, he had the whole organization eating out
of his hand. They just voted him into power, and the world into
slavery."

Benson looked around at the others, who were nodding in varying degrees
of agreement.

"Substantially, that's it. He managed to convince everybody of his
altruism, integrity and wisdom," Walter said. "It was almost
blasphemous to say anything against him. I really don't understand how
it happened...."

"Well, what's he been doing with his power?" Benson asked. "Wise things,
or stupid ones?"

"I could be general, and say that he has deprived all of us of our
political and other liberties. It is best to be specific," Anthony said.
"Gregory?"

"My own field--dimensional physics--hasn't been interfered with much,
yet. It's different in other fields. For instance, all research in
sonics has been arbitrarily stopped. So has a great deal of work in
organic and synthetic chemistry. Psychology is a madhouse of ... what
was the old word, licentiousness? No, lysenkoism. Medicine and
surgery--well, there's a huge program of compulsory sterilization, and
another one of eugenic marriage-control. And infants who don't conform
to certain physical standards don't survive. Neither do people who have
disfiguring accidents beyond the power of plastic surgery."

       *       *       *       *       *

Paula spoke next. "My field is child welfare. Well, I'm going to show
you an audio-visual of an interesting ceremony in a Hindu village,
derived from the ancient custom of the suttee. It is the Hindu method of
conforming to The Guide's demand that only beautiful children be allowed
to grow to maturity."

The film was mercifully brief. Even in spite of the drums and gongs, and
the chanting of the crowd, Benson found out how loudly a newborn infant
can scream in a fire. The others looked as though they were going to be
sick; he doubted if he looked much better.

"Of course, we are a more practical and mechanical-minded people, here
and in Europe," Paula added, holding down her gorge by main strength.
"We have lethal-gas chambers that even Hitler would have envied."

"I am a musician," Anthony said. "A composer. If Gregory thinks that the
sciences are controlled, he should try to write even the simplest piece
of music. The extent of censorship and control over all the arts, and
especially music, is incredible." He coughed slightly. "And I have
another motive, a more selfish one. I am approaching the compulsory
retirement age; I will soon be invited to go to one of the Havens. Even
though these Havens are located in the most barren places, they are
beauty-spots, verdant beyond belief. It is of only passing interest
that, while large numbers of the aged go there yearly, their populations
remain constant, and, to judge from the quantities of supplies shipped
to them, extremely small."

       *       *       *       *       *

"They call me Samuel, in this organization," the man in the long black
coat said. "Whoever gave me that alias must have chosen it because I am
here in an effort to live up to it. Although I am ordained by no church,
I fight for all of them. The plain fact is that this man we call The
Guide is really the Antichrist!"

"Well, I haven't quite so lofty a motive, but it's good enough to make
me willing to finance this project," Walter said. "It's very simple. The
Guide won't let people make money, and if they do, he taxes it away from
them. And he has laws to prohibit inheritance; what little you can
accumulate, you can't pass on to your children."

"I put up a lot of the money, too, don't forget," Carl told him. "Or the
Union did; I'm a poor man, myself." He was smoking an excellent cigar,
for a poor man, and his clothes could have come from the same tailor as
Walter's. "Look, we got a real Union--the Union of all unions. Every
working man in North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa belongs
to it. And The Guide has us all hog-tied."

"He won't let you strike," Benson chuckled.

"That's right. And what can we do? Why, we can't even make our
closed-shop contracts stick. And as far as getting anything like a
pay-raise...."

"Good thing. Another pay-raise in some of my companies would bankrupt
them, the way The Guide has us under his thumb...." Walter began, but he
was cut off.

"Well! It seems as though this Guide has done some good, if he's made
you two realize that you're both on the same side, and that what hurts
one hurts both," Benson said. "When I shipped out for Turkey in '77,
neither Labor nor Management had learned that." He looked from one to
another of them. "The Guide must have a really good bodyguard, with all
the enemies he's made."

Gregory shook his head. "He lives virtually alone, in a very small house
on the UN Capitol grounds. In fact, except for a small police-force,
armed only with non-lethal stun-guns, your profession of arms is
non-existent."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I've been guessing what you want me to do," Benson said. "You want this
Guide bumped off. But why can't any of you do it? Or, if it's too risky,
at least somebody from your own time? Why me?"

"We can't. Everybody in the world today is conditioned against violence,
especially the taking of human life," Anthony told him.

"Now, wait a moment!" This time, he was using the voice he would have
employed in chiding a couple of Anatolian peasant partisans who were
field-stripping a machine gun the wrong way. "Those babies in that film
you showed me weren't dying of old age...."

"That is not violence," Paula said bitterly. "That is humane
beneficence. Ugly people would be unhappy, and would make others
unhappy, in a world where everybody else is beautiful."

"And all these oppressive and tyrannical laws," Benson continued. "How
does he enforce them, without violence, actual or threatened?"

Samuel started to say something about the Power of the Evil One; Paula,
ignoring him, said:

"I really don't know; he just does it. Mass hypnotism of some sort. I
know music has something to do with it, because there is always music,
everywhere. This laboratory, for instance, was secretly soundproofed; we
couldn't have worked here, otherwise."

"All right. I can see that you'd need somebody from the past, preferably
a soldier, whose conditioning has been in favor rather than against
violence. I'm not the only one you snatched, I take it?"

"No. We've been using that machine to pick up men from battlefields all
over the world and all over history," Gregory said. "Until now, none of
them could adjust.... Uggh!" He shuddered, looking even sicker than when
the film was being shown.

"He's thinking," Walter said, "about a French officer from Waterloo who
blew out his brains with a pocket-pistol on that table, and an English
archer from Agincourt who ran amok with a dagger in here, and a trooper
of the Seventh Cavalry from the Custer Massacre."

Gregory managed to overcome his revulsion. "You see, we were forced to
take our subjects largely at random with regard to individual
characteristics, mental attitudes, adaptability, et cetera." As long as
he stuck to high order abstractions, he could control himself. "Aside
from their professional lack of repugnance for violence, we took
soldiers from battlefields because we could select men facing immediate
death, whose removal from the past would not have any effect upon the
casual chain of events affecting the present."

A warning buzzer rasped in Benson's brain. He nodded, poker-faced.

"I can see that," he agreed. "You wouldn't dare do anything to change
the past. That was always one of the favorite paradoxes in time-travel
fiction.... Well, I think I have the general picture. You have a
dictator who is tyrannizing you; you want to get rid of him; you can't
kill him yourselves. I'm opposed to dictators, myself; that--and the
Selective Service law, of course--was why I was a soldier. I have no
moral or psychological taboos against killing dictators, or anybody
else. Suppose I cooperate with you; what's in it for me?"

There was a long silence. Walter and Carl looked at one another
inquiringly; the others dithered helplessly. It was Carl who answered.

"Your return to your own time and place."

"And if I don't cooperate with you?"

"Guess when and where else we could send you," Walter said.

Benson dropped his cigarette and tramped it.

"Exactly the same time and place?" he asked.

"Well, the structure of space-time demands...." Paula began.

"The spatio-temporal displacement field is capable of identifying that
spot--" Gregory pointed to a ten-foot circle in front of a bank of
sleek-cabineted, dial-studded machines "--with any set of space-time
coordinates in the universe. However, to avoid disruption of the
structure of space-time, we must return you to approximately the same
point in space-time."

Benson nodded again, this time at the confirmation of his earlier
suspicion. Well, while he was alive, he still had a chance.

"All right; tell me exactly what you want me to do."

       *       *       *       *       *

A third outbreak of bedlam, this time of relief and frantic explanation.

"Shut up, all of you!" For so thin a man, Carl had an astonishing voice.
"I worked this out, so let me tell it." He turned to Benson. "Maybe I'm
tougher than the rest of them, or maybe I'm not as deeply conditioned.
For one thing, I'm tone-deaf. Well, here's the way it is. Gregory can
set the machine to function automatically. You stand where he shows you,
press the button he shows you, and fifteen seconds later it'll take you
forward in time five seconds and about a kilometer in space, to The
Guide's office. He'll be at his desk now. You'll have forty-five seconds
to do the job, from the time the field collapses around you till it
rebuilds. Then you'll be taken back to your own time again. The whole
thing's automatic."

"Can do," Benson agreed. "How do I kill him?"

"I'm getting sick!" Paula murmured weakly. Her face was whiter than her
gown.

"Take care of her, Samuel. Both of you'd better get out of here,"
Gregory said.

"The Lord of Hosts is my strength, He will.... Uggggh!" Samuel gasped.

"Conditioning's getting him, too; we gotta be quick," Carl said. "Here.
This is what you'll use." He handed Benson a two-inch globe of black
plastic. "Take the damn thing, quick! Little button on the side; press
it, and get it out of your hand fast...." He retched. "Limited-effect
bomb; everything within two-meter circle burned to nothing; outside
that, great but not unendurable heat. Shut your eyes when you throw it.
Flash almost blinding." He dropped his cigar and turned almost green in
the face. Walter had a drink poured and handed it to him. "Uggh! Thanks,
Walter." He downed it.

"Peculiar sort of thing for a non-violent people to manufacture," Benson
said, looking at the bomb and then putting it in his jacket pocket.

"It isn't a weapon. Industrial; we use it in mining. I used plenty of
them, in Walter's iron mines."

He nodded again. "Where do I stand, now?" he asked.

"Right over here." Gregory placed him in front of a small panel with
three buttons. "Press the middle one, and step back into the small red
circle and stand perfectly still while the field builds up and
collapses. Face that way."

       *       *       *       *       *

Benson drew his pistol and checked it; magazine full, a round in the
chamber, safety on.

"Put that horrid thing out of sight!" Anthony gasped. "The ... the other
thing ... is what you want to use."

"The bomb won't be any good if some of his guards come in before the
field re-builds," Benson said.

"He has no guards. He lives absolutely alone. We told you...."

"I know you did. You probably believed it, too. I don't. And by the way,
you're sending me forward. What do you do about the fact that a
time-jump seems to make me pass out?"

"Here. Before you press the button, swallow it." Gregory gave him a
small blue pill.

"Well, I guess that's all there is," Gregory continued. "I hope...." His
face twitched, and he dropped to the floor with a thud. Carl and Walter
came forward, dragged him away from the machine.

"Conditioning got him. Getting me, too," Walter said. "Hurry up, man!"

Benson swallowed the pill, pressed the button and stepped back into the
red circle, drawing his pistol and snapping off the safety. The blue
mist closed in on him.

       *       *       *       *       *

This time, however, it did not thicken into blackness. It became
luminous, brightening to a dazzle and dimming again to a colored mist,
and then it cleared, while Benson stood at raise pistol, as though on a
target range. He was facing a big desk at twenty feet, across a
thick-piled blue rug. There was a man seated at the desk, a white-haired
man with a mustache and a small beard, who wore a loose coat of some
glossy plum-brown fabric, and a vividly blue neck-scarf.

The pistol centered on the v-shaped blue under his chin. Deliberately,
Benson squeezed, recovered from the recoil, aimed, fired, recovered,
aimed, fired. Five seconds gone. The old man slumped across the desk,
his arms extended. Better make a good job of it, six, seven, eight
seconds; he stepped forward to the edge of the desk, call that fifteen
seconds, and put the muzzle to the top of the man's head, firing again
and snapping on the safety. There had been something familiar about The
Guide's face, but it was too late to check on that, now. There wasn't
any face left; not even much head.

A box, on the desk, caught Benson's eye, a cardboard box with an
envelope, stamped _Top Secret! For the Guide Only!_ taped to it. He
holstered his pistol and caught that up, stuffing it into his pocket, in
obedience to an instinct to grab anything that looked like intelligence
matter while in the enemy's country. Then he stepped back to the spot
where the field had deposited him. He had ten seconds to spare; somebody
was banging on a door when the blue mist began to gather around him.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was crouching, the spherical plastic object in his right hand, his
thumb over the button, when the field collapsed. Sure enough, right in
front of him, so close that he could smell the very heat of it, was the
big tank with the red star on its turret. He cursed the sextet of
sanctimonious double-crossers eight thousand miles and fifty years away
in space-time. The machine guns had stopped--probably because they
couldn't be depressed far enough to aim at him, now; that was a
notorious fault of some of the newer Pan-Soviet tanks--and he rocked
back on his heels, pressed the button, and heaved, closing his eyes. As
the thing left his fingers, he knew that he had thrown too hard. His
muscles, accustomed to the heavier cast-iron grenades of his experience,
had betrayed him. For a moment, he was closer to despair than at any
other time in the whole phantasmagoric adventure. Then he was hit, with
physical violence, by a wave of almost solid heat. It didn't smell like
the heat of the tank's engines; it smelled like molten metal, with
undertones of burned flesh. Immediately, there was a multiple explosion
that threw him flat, as the tank's ammunition went up. There were no
screams. It was too fast for that. He opened his eyes.

The turret and top armor of the tank had vanished. The two massive
treads had been toppled over, one to either side. The body had collapsed
between them, and it was running sticky trickles of molten metal. He
blinked, rubbed his eyes on the back of his hand, and looked again. Of
all the many blasted and burned-out tanks, Soviet and UN, that he had
seen, this was the most completely wrecked thing in his experience. And
he'd done that with one grenade....

       *       *       *       *       *

At that moment, there was a sudden rushing overhead, and an instant
later the barrage began falling beyond the crest of the ridge. He looked
at his watch, blinked, and looked again. That barrage was due at 0550;
according to the watch, it was 0726. He was sure that, ten minutes ago,
when he had looked at it, up there at the head of the ravine, it had
been twenty minutes to six. He puzzled about that for a moment, and
decided that he must have caught the stem on something and pulled it
out, and then twisted it a little, setting the watch ahead. Then,
somehow, the stem had gotten pushed back in, starting it at the new
setting. That was a pretty far-fetched explanation, but it was the only
one he could think of.

But about this tank, now. He was positive that he could remember
throwing a grenade.... Yet he'd used his last grenade back there at the
supply dump. He saw his carbine, and picked it up. That silly blackout
he'd had, for a second, there; he must have dropped it. Action was open,
empty magazine on the ground where he'd dropped it. He wondered,
stupidly, if one of his bullets couldn't have gone down the muzzle of
the tank's gun and exploded the shell in the chamber.... Oh, the hell
with it! The tank might have been hit by a premature shot from the
barrage which was raging against the far slope of the ridge. He reset
his watch by guess and looked down the valley. The big attack would be
starting any minute, now, and there would be fleeing Commies coming up
the valley ahead of the UN advance. He'd better get himself placed
before they started coming in on him.

He stopped thinking about the mystery of the blown-up tank, a solution
to which seemed to dance maddeningly just out of his mental reach, and
found himself a place among the rocks to wait. Down the valley he could
hear everything from pistols to mortars going off, and shouting in three
or four racial intonations. After a while, fugitive Communists began
coming, many of them without their equipment, stumbling in their haste
and looking back over their shoulders. Most of them avoided the mouth
of the ravine and hurried by to the left or right, but one little clump,
eight or ten, came up the dry stream-bed, and stopped a hundred and
fifty yards from his hiding-place to make a stand. They were Hindus,
with outsize helmets over their turbans. Two of them came ahead,
carrying a machine gun, followed by a third with a flame-thrower; the
others retreated more slowly, firing their rifles to delay pursuit.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cuddling the stock of his carbine to his cheek, he divided a ten-shot
burst between the two machine-gunners, then, as a matter of principle,
he shot the man with the flame-thrower. He had a dislike for
flame-throwers; he killed every enemy he found with one. The others
dropped their rifles and raised their hands, screaming: "Hey, Joe! Hey,
Joe! You no shoot, me no shoot!"

A dozen men in UN battledress came up and took them prisoner. Benson
shouted to them, and then rose and came down to join them. They were
British--Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, advertising the fact by
inconspicuous bits of tartan on their uniforms. The subaltern in command
looked at him and nodded.

"Captain Benson? We were warned to be on watch for your patrol," he
said. "Any of the rest of you lads get out?"

Benson shrugged. "We split up after the attack. You may run into a
couple of them. Some are locals and don't speak very good English. I've
got to get back to Division, myself; what's the best way?"

"Down that way. You'll overtake a couple of our walking wounded. If you
don't mind going slowly, they'll show you the way to advance dressing
station, and you can hitch a ride on an ambulance from there."

Benson nodded. Off on the left, there was a flurry of small-arms fire,
ending in yells of "Hey, Joe! Hey, Joe!"--the World War IV version of
"Kamarad"!

       *       *       *       *       *

His company was a non-T/O outfit; he came directly under Division
command and didn't have to bother reporting to any regimental or brigade
commanders. He walked for an hour with half a dozen lightly wounded
Scots, rode for another hour on a big cat-truck loaded with casualties
of six regiments and four races, and finally reached Division Rear,
where both the Division and Corps commanders took time to compliment him
on the part his last hunter patrol had played in the now complete
breakthrough. His replacement, an equine-faced Spaniard with an imposing
display of fruit-salad, was there, too; he solemnly took off the
bracelet a refugee Caucasian goldsmith had made for his predecessor's
predecessor and gave it to the new commander of what had formerly been
Benson's Butchers. As he had expected, there was also another medal
waiting for him.

A medical check at Task Force Center got him a warning; his last patrol
had brought him dangerously close to the edge of combat fatigue.
Remembering the incidents of the tank and the unaccountably fast watch,
and the mysterious box and envelope which he had found in his coat
pocket, he agreed, saying nothing about the questions that were puzzling
him. The Psychological Department was never too busy to refuse another
case; they hunted patients gleefully, each psych-shark seeking in every
one proof of his own particular theories. It was with relief that he
watched them fill out the red tag which gave him a priority on jet
transports for home.

Ankara to Alexandria, Alexandria to Dakar, Dakar to Belém, Belém to the
shattered skyline of New York, the "hurry-and-wait" procedures at Fort
Carlisle, and, after the usual separation promotion, Major Fred Benson,
late of Benson's Butchers, was back at teaching high school juniors the
difference between H_{2}O and H_{2}SO_{4}.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were two high schools in the city: McKinley High, on the east
side, and Dwight Eisenhower High, on the west. A few blocks from
McKinley was the Tulip Tavern, where the Eisenhower teachers came in the
late afternoons; the McKinley faculty crossed town to do their
after-school drinking on the west side. When Benson entered the Tulip
Tavern, on a warm September afternoon, he found Bill Myers, the school
psychologist, at one of the tables, smoking his pipe, checking over a
stack of aptitude test forms, and drinking beer. He got a highball at
the bar and carried it over to Bill's table.

"Oh, hi, Fred." The psychologist separated the finished from the
unfinished work with a sheet of yellow paper and crammed the whole
business into his brief case. "I was hoping somebody'd show up...."

Benson lit a cigarette, sipped his highball. They talked at
random--school-talk; the progress of the war, now in its twelfth year;
personal reminiscences, of the Turkish Theater where Benson had served,
and the Madras Beachhead, where Myers had been.

"Bring home any souvenirs?" Myers asked.

"Not much. Couple of pistols, couple of knives, some pictures. I don't
remember what all; haven't gotten around to unpacking them, yet.... I
have a sixth of rye and some beer, at my rooms. Let's go around and see
what I did bring home."

They finished their drinks and went out.

"What the devil's that?" Myers said, pointing to the cardboard box with
the envelope taped to it, when Benson lifted it out of the gray-green
locker.

"Bill, I don't know," Benson said. "I found it in the pocket of my coat,
on my way back from my last hunter patrol.... I've never told anybody
about this, before."

"That's the damnedest story I've ever heard, and in my racket you hear
some honeys," Myers said, when he had finished. "You couldn't have
picked that thing up in some other way, deliberately forgotten the
circumstances, and fabricated this story about the tank and the grenade
and the discrepancy in your watch subconsciously as an explanation?"

"My subconscious is a better liar than that," Benson replied. "It
would have cobbled up some kind of a story that would stand up. This
business...."

"Top Secret! For the Guide Only!" Myers frowned. "That isn't one of our
marks, and if it were Soviet, it'd be tri-lingual, Russian, Hindi and
Chinese."

"Well, let's see what's in it. I want this thing cleared up. I've been
having some of the nastiest dreams, lately...."

"Well, be careful; it may be booby-trapped," Myers said urgently.

"Don't worry; I will."

He used a knife to slice the envelope open without untaping it from the
box, and exposed five sheets of typewritten onion-skin paper. There was
no letterhead, no salutation or address-line. Just a mass of chemical
formulae, and a concise report on tests. It seemed to be a report on an
improved syrup for a carbonated soft-drink. There were a few cryptic
cautionary references to heightened physico-psychological effects.

The box was opened with the same caution, but it proved as innocent of
dangers as the envelope. It contained only a half-liter bottle,
wax-sealed, containing a dark reddish-brown syrup.

"There's a lot of this stuff I don't dig," Benson said, tapping the
sheets of onion-skin. "I don't even scratch the surface of this
rigamarole about The Guide. I'm going to get to work on this sample in
the lab, at school, though. Maybe we have something, here."

       *       *       *       *       *

At eight-thirty the next evening, after four and a half hours work, he
stopped to check what he had found out.

The school's X-ray, an excellent one, had given him a complete picture
of the molecular structure of the syrup. There were a couple of
long-chain molecules that he could only believe after two
re-examinations and a careful check of the machine, but with the help of
the notes he could deduce how they had been put together. They would be
the Ingredient Alpha and Ingredient Beta referred to in the notes.

The components of the syrup were all simple and easily procurable with
these two exceptions, as were the basic components from which these were
made.

The mechanical guinea-pig demonstrated that the syrup contained nothing
harmful to human tissue.

Of course, there were the warnings about heightened psycho-physiological
effects....

He stuck a poison-label on the bottle, locked it up, and went home. The
next day, he and Bill Myers got a bottle of carbonated water and mixed
themselves a couple of drinks of it. It was delicious--sweet, dry, tart,
sour, all of these in alternating waves of pleasure.

"We do have something, Bill," he said. "We have something that's going
to give our income-tax experts headaches."

"You have," Myers corrected. "Where do you start fitting me into it?"

"We're a good team, Bill. I'm a chemist, but I don't know a thing about
people. You're a psychologist. A real one; not one of these night-school
boys. A juvenile psychologist, too. And what age-group spends the most
money in this country for soft-drinks?"

Knowing the names of the syrup's ingredients, and what their molecular
structure was like, was only the beginning. Gallon after gallon of the
School Board's chemicals went down the laboratory sink; Fred Benson and
Bill Myers almost lived in the fourth floor lab. Once or twice there
were head-shaking warnings from the principal about the dangers of
over-work. The watchmen, at all hours, would hear the occasional
twanging of Benson's guitar in the laboratory, and know that he had come
to a dead end on something and was trying to think. Football season came
and went; basketball season; the inevitable riot between McKinley and
Eisenhower rooters; the Spring concerts. The term-end exams were only a
month away when Benson and Myers finally did it, and stood solemnly,
each with a beaker in either hand and took alternate sips of the
original and the drink mixed from the syrup they had made.

"Not a bit of difference, Fred," Myers said. "We have it!"

Benson picked up the guitar and began plunking on it.

"Hey!" Myers exclaimed. "Have you been finding time to take lessons on
that thing? I never heard you play as well as that!"

       *       *       *       *       *

They decided to go into business in St. Louis. It was centrally located,
and, being behind more concentric circles of radar and counter-rocket
defenses, it was in better shape than any other city in the country and
most likely to stay that way. Getting started wasn't hard; the first
banker who tasted the new drink-named Evri-Flave, at Myers'
suggestion--couldn't dig up the necessary money fast enough. Evri-Flave
hit the market with a bang and became an instant success; soon the
rainbow-tinted vending machines were everywhere, dispensing the
slender, slightly flattened bottles and devouring quarters voraciously.
In spite of high taxes and the difficulties of doing business in a
consumers' economy upon which a war-time economy had been superimposed,
both Myers and Benson were rapidly becoming wealthy. The gregarious
Myers installed himself in a luxurious apartment in the city; Benson
bought a large tract of land down the river toward Carondelet and
started building a home and landscaping the grounds.

The dreams began bothering him again, now that the urgency of getting
Evri-Flave, Inc., started had eased. They were not dreams of the men he
had killed in battle, or, except for one about a huge, hot-smelling tank
with a red star on the turret, about the war. Generally, they were about
a strange, beautiful, office-room, in which a young man in uniform
killed an older man in a plum-brown coat and a vivid blue neck-scarf.
Sometimes Benson identified himself with the killer; sometimes with the
old man who was killed.

He talked to Myers about these dreams, but beyond generalities about
delayed effects of combat fatigue and vague advice to relax, the
psychologist, now head of Sales & Promotion of Evri-Flave, Inc., could
give him no help.

The war ended three years after the new company was launched. There was
a momentary faltering of the economy, and then the work of
reconstruction was crying hungrily for all the labor and capital that
had been idled by the end of destruction, and more. There was a new
flood-tide of prosperity, and Evri-Flave rode the crest. The estate at
Carondelet was finished--a beautiful place, surrounded with gardens,
fragrant with flowers, full of the songs of birds and soft music from
concealed record-players. It made him forget the ugliness of the war,
and kept the dreams from returning so frequently. All the world ought to
be like that, he thought; beautiful and quiet and peaceful. People
surrounded with such beauty couldn't think about war.

All the world could be like that, if only....

       *       *       *       *       *

The UN chose St. Louis for its new headquarters--many of its offices had
been moved there after the second and most destructive bombing of New
York--and when the city by the Mississippi began growing into a real
World Capital, the flow of money into it almost squared overnight.
Benson began to take an active part in politics in the new World
Sovereignty party. He did not, however, allow his political activities
to distract him from the work of expanding the company to which he owed
his wealth and position. There were always things to worry about.

"I don't know," Myers said to him, one evening, as they sat over a
bottle of rye in the psychologist's apartment. "I could make almost as
much money practicing as a psychiatrist, these days. The whole world
seems to be going pure, unadulterated nuts! That affair in Munich, for
instance."

"Yes." Benson grimaced as he thought of the affair in Munich--a
Wagnerian concert which had terminated in an insane orgy of mass
suicide. "Just a week after we started our free-sample campaign in South
Germany, too...."

He stopped short, downing his drink and coughing over it.

"Bill! You remember those sheets of onion-skin in that envelope?"

"The foundation of our fortunes; I wonder where you really did get
that.... Fred!" His eyes widened in horror. "That caution about
'heightened psycho-physiological effects,' that we were never able
to understand!"

Benson nodded grimly. "And think of all the crazy cases of
mass-hysteria--that baseball-game riot in Baltimore; the time everybody
started tearing off each others' clothes in Milwaukee; the sex-orgy in
New Orleans. And the sharp uptrend in individual psycho-neurotic and
psychotic behavior. All in connection with music, too, and all after
Evri-Flave got on the market."

"We'll have to stop it; pull Evri-Flave off the market," Myers said. "We
can't be responsible for letting this go on."

"We can't stop, either. There's at least a two months' supply out in the
hands of jobbers and distributors over whom we have no control. And we
have all these contractual obligations, to buy the entire output of the
companies that make the syrup for us; if we stop buying, they can sell
it in competition with us, as long as they don't infringe our
trade-name. And we can't prevent pirating. You know how easily we were
able to duplicate that sample I brought back from Turkey. Why, our legal
department's kept busy all the time prosecuting unlicensed manufacturers
as it is."

"We've got to do something, Fred!" There was almost a whiff of hysteria
in Myers' voice.

"We will. We'll start, first thing tomorrow, on a series of tests--just
you and I, like the old times at Eisenhower High. First, we want to
be sure that Evri-Flave really is responsible. It'd be a hell of a
thing if we started a public panic against our own product for nothing.
And then...."

       *       *       *       *       *

It took just two weeks, in a soundproofed and guarded laboratory on
Benson's Carondelet estate, to convict their delicious drink of
responsibility for that Munich State Opera House Horror and everything
else. Reports from confidential investigators in Munich confirmed this.
It had, of course, been impossible to interview the two thousand men
and women who had turned the Opera House into a pyre for their own
immolation, but none of the tiny minority who had kept their sanity and
saved their lives had tasted Evri-Flave.

       *       *       *       *       *

It took another month to find out exactly how the stuff affected the
human nervous system, and they almost wrecked their own nervous systems
in the process. The real villain, they discovered, was the
incredible-looking long-chain compound alluded to in the original notes
as Ingredient Beta; its principal physiological effect was to greatly
increase the sensitivity of the aural nerves. Not only was the hearing
range widened--after consuming thirty CC of Beta, they could hear the
sound of an ultrasonic dog-whistle quite plainly--but the very quality
of all audible sounds was curiously enhanced and altered. Myers, the
psychologist, who was also well grounded in neurology, explained how the
chemical produced this effect; it meant about as much to Benson as some
of his chemistry did to Bill Myers. There was also a secondary, purely
psychological, effect. Certain musical chords had definite effects on
the emotions of the hearer, and the subject, beside being directly
influenced by the music, was rendered extremely open to verbal
suggestions accompanied by a suitable musical background.

Benson transferred the final results of this stage of the research to
the black notebook and burned the scratch-sheets.

"That's how it happened, then," he said. "The Munich thing was the
result of all that Götterdämmerung music. There was a band at the
baseball park in Baltimore. The New Orleans Orgy started while a local
radio station was broadcasting some of this new dance-music. Look, these
tone-clusters, here, have a definite sex-excitation effect. This series
of six chords, which occur in some of the Wagnerian stuff; effect, a
combined feeling of godlike isolation and despair. And these consecutive
fifths--a sense of danger, anger, combativeness. You know, we could work
out a whole range of emotional stimuli to fit the effects of Ingredient
Beta...."

"We don't want to," Myers said. "We want to work out a substitute for
Beta that will keep the flavor of the drink without the
psycho-physiological effects."

"Yes, sure. I have some of the boys at the plant lab working on that.
Gave them a lot of syrup without Beta, and told them to work out cheap
additives to restore the regular Evri-Flave taste; told them it was an
effort to find a cheap substitute for an expensive ingredient. But look,
Bill. You and I both see, for instance, that a powerful world-wide
supra-national sovereignty is the only guarantee of world peace. If we
could use something like this to help overcome antiquated verbal
prejudices and nationalistic emotional attachments...."

"No!" Myers said. "I won't ever consent to anything like that, Fred! Not
even in a cause like world peace; use a thing like this for a good,
almost holy, cause now, and tomorrow we, or those who would come after
us, would be using it to create a tyranny. You know what year this is,
Bill?"

"Why, 1984," Benson said.

"Yes. You remember that old political novel of Orwell's, written about
forty years ago? Well, that's a picture of the kind of world you'd have,
eventually, no matter what kind of a world you started out to make.
Fred, don't ever think of using this stuff for a purpose like that. If
you try it, I'll fight you with every resource I have."

There was a fanatical, almost murderous, look in Bill Myers' eyes.
Benson put the notebook in his pocket, then laughed and threw up his
hands.

"Hey, Joe! Hey, Joe!" he cried. "You're right, of course, Bill. We can't
even trust the UN with a thing like this. It makes the H-bomb look like
a stone hatchet.... Well, I'll call Grant, at the plant lab, and see how
his boys are coming along with the substitute; as soon as we get it, we
can put out a confidential letter to all our distributors and
syrup-manufacturers...."

       *       *       *       *       *

He walked alone in the garden at Carondelet, watching the color fade out
of the sky and the twilight seep in among the clipped yews. All the
world could be like this garden, a place of peace and beauty and quiet,
if only.... All the world _would_ be a beautiful and peaceful garden, in
his own lifetime! He had the means of making it so!

Three weeks later, he murdered his friend and partner, Bill Myers. It
was a suicide; nobody but Fred Benson knew that he had taken fifty CC of
pure Ingredient Beta in a couple of cocktails while listening to the
queer phonograph record that he had played half an hour before blowing
his brains out.

The decision had cost Benson a battle with his conscience from which he
had emerged the sole survivor. The conscience was buried along with Bill
Myers, and all that remained was a purpose.

Evri-Flave stayed on the market unaltered. The night before the national
election, the World Sovereignty party distributed thousands of gallons
of Evri-Flave; their speakers, on every radio and television network,
were backgrounded by soft music. The next day, when the vote was
counted, it was found that the American Nationalists had carried a few
backwoods precincts in the Rockies and the Southern Appalachians and one
county in Alaska, where there had been no distribution of Evri-Flave.

The dreams came back more often, now that Bill Myers was gone. Benson
was only beginning to realize what a large fact in his life the
companionship of the young psychologist had been. Well, a world of peace
and beauty was an omelet worth the breaking of many eggs....

He purchased another great tract of land near the city, and donated it
to the UN for their new headquarters buildings; the same architects and
landscapists who had created the estate at Carondelet were put to work
on it. In the middle of what was to become World City, they erected a
small home for Fred Benson. Benson was often invited to address the
delegates to the UN; always, there was soft piped-in music behind his
words. He saw to it that Evri-Flave was available free to all UN
personnel. The Senate of the United States elected him as perpetual
U. S. delegate-in-chief to the UN; not long after, the Security Council
elected him their perpetual chairman.

In keeping with his new dignities, and to ameliorate his youthful
appearance, he grew a mustache and, eventually, a small beard. The black
notebook in which he kept the records of his experiments was always with
him; page after page was filled with notes. Experiments in sonics, like
the one which had produced the ultrasonic stun-gun which rendered lethal
weapons unnecessary for police and defense purposes, or the new musical
combinations with which he was able to play upon every emotion and
instinct.

But he still dreamed, the same recurring dream of the young soldier and
the old man in the office. By now, he was consistently identifying
himself with the latter. He took to carrying one of the thick-barrelled
stun-pistols always, now. Alone, he practiced constantly with it,
drawing, breaking soap-bubbles with the concentrated sound-waves it
projected. It was silly, perhaps, but it helped him in his dreams. Now,
the old man with whom he identified himself would draw a stun-pistol,
occasionally, to defend himself.

The years drained one by one through the hour-glass of Time. Year after
year, the world grew more peaceful, more beautiful. There were no more
incidents like the mass-suicide of Munich or the mass-perversions of New
Orleans; the playing and even the composing of music was strictly
controlled--no dangerous notes or chords could be played in a world
drenched with Ingredient Beta. Steadily the idea grew that peace and
beauty were supremely good, that violence and ugliness were supremely
evil. Even competitive sports which simulated violence; even children
born ugly and misshapen....

       *       *       *       *       *

He finished the breakfast which he had prepared for himself--he trusted
no food that another had touched--and knotted the vivid blue scarf about
his neck before slipping into the loose coat of glossy plum-brown, then
checked the stun-pistol and pocketed the black notebook, its
plastileather cover glossy from long use. He stood in front of the
mirror, brushing his beard, now snow-white. Two years, now, and he would
be eighty--had he been anyone but The Guide, he would have long ago
retired to the absolute peace and repose of one of the Elders' Havens.
Peace and repose, however, were not for The Guide; it would take another
twenty years to finish his task of remaking the world, and he would need
every day of it that his medical staff could borrow or steal for him. He
made an eye-baffling practice draw with the stun-pistol, then holstered
it and started down the spiral stairway to the office below.

There was the usual mass of papers on his desk. A corps of secretaries
had screened out everything but what required his own personal and
immediate attention, but the business of guiding a world could only be
reduced to a certain point. On top was the digest of the world's news
for the past twenty-four hours, and below that was the agenda for the
afternoon's meeting of the Council. He laid both in front of him,
reading over the former and occasionally making a note on the latter.
Once his glance strayed to the cardboard box in front of him, with the
envelope taped to it--the latest improvement on the Evri-Flave syrup,
with the report from his own chemists, all conditioned to obedience,
loyalty and secrecy. If they thought he was going to try that damned
stuff on himself....

There was a sudden gleam of light in the middle of the room, in front of
his desk. No, a mist, through which a blue light seemed to shine. The
stun-pistol was in his hand--his instinctive reaction to anything
unusual--and pointed into the shining mist when it vanished and a man
appeared in front of him; a man in the baggy green combat-uniform that
he himself had worn fifty years before; a man with a heavy automatic
pistol in his hand. The gun was pointed directly at him.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Guide aimed quickly and pressed the trigger of the ultrasonic
stunner. The pistol dropped soundlessly on the thick-piled rug; the man
in uniform slumped in an inert heap. The Guide sprang to his feet and
rounded the desk, crossing to and bending over the intruder. Why, this
was the dream that had plagued him through the years. But it was ending
differently. The young man--his face was startlingly familiar,
somehow--was not killing the old man. Those years of practice with the
stun-pistol....

He stooped and picked the automatic up. The young man was unconscious,
and The Guide had his pistol, now. He slipped the automatic into his
pocket and straightened beside his inert would-be slayer.

A shimmering globe of blue mist appeared around them, brightened to a
dazzle, and dimmed again to a colored mist before it vanished, and when
it cleared away, he was standing beside the man in uniform, in the sandy
bed of a dry stream at the mouth of a little ravine, and directly in
front of him, looming above him, was a thing that had not been seen in
the world for close to half a century--a big, hot-smelling tank with a
red star on its turret.

He might have screamed--the din of its treads and engines deafened
him--and, in panic, he turned and ran, his old legs racing, his old
heart pumping madly. The noise of the tank increased as machine guns
joined the uproar. He felt the first bullet strike him, just above the
hips--no pain; just a tremendous impact. He might have felt the second
bullet, too, as the ground tilted and rushed up at his face. Then he was
diving into a tunnel of blackness that had no end....

       *       *       *       *       *

Captain Fred Benson, of Benson's Butchers, had been jerked back into
consciousness when the field began to build around him. He was
struggling to rise, fumbling the grenade out of his pocket, when it
collapsed. Sure enough, right in front of him, so close that he could
smell the very heat of it, was the big tank with the red star on its
turret. He cursed the sextet of sanctimonious double-crossers eight
thousand miles and fifty years away in space-time. The machine guns had
stopped--probably because they couldn't be depressed far enough to aim
at him, now; that was a notorious fault of some of the newer Pan-Soviet
tanks. He had the bomb out of his pocket, when the machine guns began
firing again, this time at something on his left. Wondering what had
created the diversion, he rocked back on his heels, pressed the button,
and heaved, closing his eyes. As the thing left his fingers, he knew
that he had thrown too hard. His muscles, accustomed to the heavier
cast-iron grenades, had betrayed him. For a moment, he was closer to
despair than at any other time in the whole phantasmagoric adventure.
Then he was hit, with physical force, by a wave of almost solid heat. It
didn't smell like the heat of the tank's engines; it smelled like molten
metal, with undertones of burned flesh. Immediately, there was a
multiple explosion that threw him flat, as the tank's ammunition went
up. There were no screams. It was too fast for that. He opened his eyes.

The turret and top armor of the tank had vanished. The two massive
treads had been toppled over, one to either side. The body had collapsed
between them, and it was running sticky trickles of molten metal. He
blinked, rubbed his eyes on the back of his hand, and looked again. Of
all the many blasted and burned-out tanks, Soviet and UN, that he had
seen, this was the most completely wrecked thing in his experience. And
he'd done that with one grenade....

Remembering the curious manner in which, at the last, the tank had begun
firing at something to the side, he looked around, to see the crumpled
body in the pale violet-gray trousers and the plum-brown coat. Finding
his carbine and reloading it, he went over to the dead man, turning the
body over. He was an old man, with a white mustache and a small white
beard--why, if the mustache were smaller and there were no beard, he
would pass for Benson's own father, who had died in 1962. The clothes
weren't Turkish or Armenian or Persian, or anything one would expect in
this country.

The old man had a pistol in his coat pocket, and Benson pulled it out
and looked at it, then did a double-take and grabbed for his own
holster, to find it empty. The pistol was his own 9.5 Colt automatic. He
looked at the dead man, with the white beard and the vivid blue
neck-scarf, and he was sure that he had never seen him before. He'd had
that pistol when he'd come down the ravine....

There was another pistol under the dead man's coat, in a
shoulder-holster; a queer thing with a thick round barrel, like an old
percussion pepper-box, and a diaphragm instead of a muzzle. Probably
projected ultrasonic waves. He holstered his own Colt and pocketed the
unknown weapon. There was a black plastileather-bound notebook. It was
full of notes. Chemical formulae, yes, and some stuff on sonics; that
tied in with the queer pistol. He pocketed that. He'd look both over,
when he had time and privacy, two scarce commodities in the Army....

       *       *       *       *       *

At that moment, there was a sudden rushing overhead, and an instant
later, the barrage began falling beyond the crest of the ridge. He
looked at his watch, blinked, and looked again. That barrage was due at
0550; according to his watch, it was 0726. That was another mystery, to
go with the question of who the dead man was, where he had come from,
and how he'd gotten hold of Benson's pistol. Yes, and how that tank had
gotten blown up. Benson was sure he had used his last grenade back at
the supply-dump.

The hell with it; he'd worry about all that later. The attack was due
any minute, now, and there would be fleeing Commies coming up the valley
ahead, of the UN advance. He'd better get himself placed before they
started coming in on him.

He stopped thinking about the multiple mystery, a solution to which
seemed to dance maddeningly just out of his mental reach, and found
himself a place among the rocks to wait, and while he waited, he looked
over the plastileather-bound notebook. In civil life, he had been a
high school chemistry teacher, but the stuff in this book was utterly
new to him. Some of it he could understand readily enough; the rest of
it he could dig out for himself. Stuff about some kind of a carbonated
soft-drink, and about a couple of unbelievable-looking long-chain
molecules....

After a while, fugitive Communists began coming up the valley to make
their stand.

Benson put away the notebook, picked up his carbine, and cuddled the
stock to his cheek....


THE END

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                              |
|                      Transcriber's Note                      |
|                                                              |
| Bold text was surrounded by '+' symbols.                     |
|                                                              |
| One "onionskin" was converted to "onion-skin" to conform     |
| with the majority usage in the text.                         |
|                                                              |
| "rebuilds" and "re-builds" were left alone as there was no   |
| predominant usage                                            |
|                                                              |
| The following typos were corrected:                          |
|                                                              |
| benificence  beneficence                                     |
| lethel       lethal                                          |
| "See         See                                             |
| tyranical    tyrannical                                      |
|                                                              |
| Subscripts                                                   |
|                                                              |
| Water was shown as H_{2}O, and                               |
| Sulfuric acid   as H_{2}SO_{4}                               |
|                                                              |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+








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