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====== The Stars, My Brothers ====== 
====== by Edmond Hamilton ======
<html>
<div class="titl"><div class="bk1">
<p class="illo">Illustrated by FINLAY</p>
</div></div>

<div class="tease"><p>He was afraid&mdash;not of the present or the future,
but of the past. He was afraid of the thing
tagged Reed Kieran, that stiff blind voiceless
thing wheeling its slow orbit around the Moon,
companion to dead worlds and silent space.</p></div>

<h3>1.</h3>

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Something</span> tiny went wrong,
but no one ever knew whether
it was in an electric relay or in
the brain of the pilot.</p>

<p>The pilot was Lieutenant
Charles Wandek, UNRC, home
address: 1677 Anstey Avenue, Detroit.
He did not survive the
crash of his ferry into Wheel
Five. Neither did his three passengers,
a young French astrophysicist,
an East Indian expert
on magnetic fields, and a forty-year-old
man from Philadelphia
who was coming out to replace a
pump technician.</p>

<p>Someone else who did not survive
was Reed Kieran, the only
man in Wheel Five itself to lose
his life. Kieran, who was thirty-six
years old, was an accredited
scientist-employee of UNRC.
Home address: 815 Elm Street,
Midland Springs, Ohio.</p>

<p>Kieran, despite the fact that he
was a confirmed bachelor, was in
Wheel Five because of a woman.
But the woman who had sent him
there was no beautiful lost love.
Her name was Gertrude Lemmiken;
she was nineteen years old
and overweight, with a fat, stupid
face. She suffered from head-colds,
and sniffed constantly in
the Ohio college classroom where
Kieran taught Physics Two.</p>

<p>One March morning, Kieran
could bear it no longer. He told
himself, "If she sniffs this morning,
I'm through. I'll resign and
join the UNRC."</p>

<p>Gertrude sniffed. Six months
later, having finished his training
for the United Nations Reconnaissance
Corps, Kieran
shipped out for a term of duty in
UNRC Space Laboratory Number
5, known more familiarly as
Wheel Five.</p>

<p>Wheel Five circled the Moon.
There was an elaborate base on
the surface of the Moon in this
year 1981. There were laboratories
and observatories there, too.
But it had been found that the
alternating fortnights of boiling
heat and near-absolute-zero cold
on the lunar surface could play
havoc with the delicate instruments
used in certain researches.
Hence Wheel Five had been built
and was staffed by research men
who were rotated at regular
eight-month intervals.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Kieran</span> loved it, from the
first. He thought that that
was because of the sheer beauty
of it, the gaunt, silver deaths-head
of the Moon forever turning
beneath, the still and solemn
glory of the undimmed stars, the
filamentaries stretched across the
distant star-clusters like shining
veils, the quietness, the peace.</p>

<p>But Kieran had a certain intellectual
honesty, and after a while
he admitted to himself that
neither the beauty nor the romance
of it was what made this
life so attractive to him. It was
the fact that he was far away
from Earth. He did not even have
to look at Earth, for nearly all
geophysical research was taken
care of by Wheels Two and Three
that circled the mother planet.
He was almost completely divorced
from all Earth's problems
and people.</p>

<p>Kieran liked people, but had
never felt that he understood
them. What seemed important to
them, all the drives of ordinary
day-to-day existence, had never
seemed very important to him.
He had felt that there must be
something wrong with him,
something lacking, for it seemed
to him that people everywhere
committed the most outlandish
follies, believed in the most incredible
things, were swayed by
pure herd-instinct into the most
harmful courses of behavior.
They could not all be wrong, he
thought, so he must be wrong&mdash;and
it had worried him. He had
taken partial refuge in pure science,
but the study and then the
teaching of astrophysics had not
been the refuge that Wheel Five
was. He would be sorry to leave
the Wheel when his time was up.</p>

<p>And he was sorry, when the
day came. The others of the staff
were already out in the docking
lock in the rim, waiting to greet
the replacements from the ferry.
Kieran, hating to leave, lagged
behind. Then, realizing it would
be churlish not to meet this
young Frenchman who was replacing
him, he hurried along the
corridor in the big spoke when he
saw the ferry coming in.</p>

<p>He was two-thirds of the way
along the spoke to the rim when
it happened. There was a tremendous
crash that flung him violently
from his feet. He felt a
coldness, instant and terrible.</p>

<p>He was dying.</p>

<p>He was dead.</p>

<p>The ferry had been coming in
on a perfectly normal approach
when the tiny something went
wrong, in the ship or in the judgment
of the pilot. Its drive-rockets
suddenly blasted on full,
it heeled over sharply, it smashed
through the big starboard spoke
like a knife through butter.</p>

<p>Wheel Five staggered, rocked,
and floundered. The automatic
safety bulkheads had all closed,
and the big spoke&mdash;Section T2&mdash;was
the only section to blow its
air, and Kieran was the only man
caught in it. The alarms went off,
and while the wreckage of the
ferry, with three dead men in it,
was still drifting close by, everyone
in the Wheel was in his pressure-suit
and emergency measures
were in full force.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Within</span> thirty minutes it became
evident that the Wheel
was going to survive this accident.
It was edging slowly out of
orbit from the impetus of the
blow, and in the present weakened
state of the construction its
small corrective rockets could not
be used to stop the drift. But Meloni,
the UNRC captain commanding,
had got first reports
from his damage-control teams,
and it did not look too bad. He
fired off peremptory demands for
the repair materials he would
need, and was assured by UNRC
headquarters at Mexico City that
the ferries would be loaded and
on their way as soon as possible.</p>

<p>Meloni was just beginning to
relax a little when a young officer
brought up a minor but
vexing problem. Lieutenant Vinson
had headed the small party
sent out to recover the bodies of
the four dead men. In their pressure-suits
they had been pawing
through the tangled wreckage
for some time, and young Vinson
was tired when he made his report.</p>

<p>"We have all four alongside,
sir. The three men in the ferry
were pretty badly mangled in the
crash. Kieran wasn't physically
wounded, but died from space-asphyxiation."</p>

<p>The captain stared at him.
"Alongside? Why didn't you
bring them in? They'll go back in
one of the ferries to Earth for
burial."</p>

<p>"But&mdash;" Vinson started to protest.</p>

<p>Meloni interrupted sharply.
"You need to learn a few things
about morale, Lieutenant. You
think it's going to do morale here
any good to have four dead men
floating alongside where everyone
can see them? Fetch them in
and store them in one of the
holds."</p>

<p>Vinson, sweating and unhappy
now, had visions of a black mark
on his record, and determined to
make his point.</p>

<p>"But about Kieran, sir&mdash;he
was only frozen. Suppose there
was a chance to bring him back?"</p>

<p>"Bring him back? What the
devil are you talking about?"</p>

<p>Vinson said, "I read they're
trying to find some way of restoring
a man that gets space-frozen.
Some scientists down at
Delhi University. If they succeeded,
and if we had Kieran still
intact in space&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Oh, hell, that's just a scientific
pipe-dream, they'll never
find a way to do that," Meloni
said. "It's all just theory."</p>

<p>"Yes, sir," said Vinson, hanging
his head.</p>

<p>"We've got trouble enough
here without you bringing up
ideas like this," the captain continued
angrily. "Get out of here."</p>

<p>Vinson was now completely
crushed. "Yes, sir. I'll bring the
bodies in."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> went out. Meloni stared at
the door, and began to think.
A commanding officer had to be
careful, or he could get skinned
alive. If, by some remote chance,
this Delhi idea ever succeeded,
he, Meloni, would be in for it for
having Kieran buried. He strode
to the door and flung it open,
mentally cursing the young snotty
who had had to bring this up.</p>

<p>"Vinson!" he shouted.</p>

<p>The lieutenant turned back,
startled. "Yes, sir?"</p>

<p>"Hold Kieran's body outside.
I'll check on this with Mexico
City."</p>

<p>"Yes, sir."</p>

<p>Still angry, Meloni shot a message
to Personnel at Mexico City.
That done, he forgot about it.
The buck had been passed, let the
boys sitting on their backsides
down on Earth handle it.</p>

<p>Colonel Hausman, second in
command of Personnel Division
of UNRC, was the man to whom
Meloni's message went. He snorted
loudly when he read it. And
later, when he went in to report
to Garces, the brigadier commanding
the Division, he took
the message with him.</p>

<p>"Meloni must be pretty badly
rattled by the crash," he said.
"Look at this."</p>

<p>Garces read the message, then
looked up. "Anything to this?
The Delhi experiments, I mean?"</p>

<p>Hausman had taken care to
brief himself on that point and
was able to answer emphatically.</p>

<p>"Damned little. Those chaps in
Delhi have been playing around
freezing insects and thawing
them out, and they think the
process might be developed someday
to where it could revive frozen
spacemen. It's an iffy idea. I'll
burn Meloni's backside off for
bringing it up at a time like
this."</p>

<p>Garces, after a moment, shook
his head. "No, wait. Let me think
about this."</p>

<p>He looked speculatively out of
the window for a few moments.
Then he said,</p>

<p>"Message Meloni that this one
chap's body&mdash;what's his name,
Kieran?&mdash;is to be preserved in
space against a chance of future
revival."</p>

<p>Hausman nearly blotted his
copybook by exclaiming, "For
God's sake&mdash;" He choked that
down in time and said, "But it
could be centuries before a revival
process is perfected, if it
ever is."</p>

<p>Garces nodded. "I know. But
you're missing a psychological
point that could be valuable to
UNRC. This Kieran has relatives,
doesn't he?"</p>

<p>Hausman nodded. "A widowed
mother and a sister. His father's
been dead a long time. No wife
or children."</p>

<p>Garces said, "If we tell them
he's dead, frozen in space and
then buried, it's all over with.
Won't those people feel a lot better
if we tell them that he's <i>apparently</i>
dead, but might be
brought back when a revival-technique
is perfected in the future?"</p>

<p>"I suppose they'd feel better
about it," Hausman conceded.
"But I don't see&mdash;"</p>

<p>Garces shrugged. "Simple.
We're only really beginning in
space, you know. As we go on,
UNRC is going to lose a number
of men, space-struck just like
Kieran. A howl will go up about
our casualty lists, it always does.
But if we can say that they're
only frozen until such time as revival
technique is achieved, everyone
will feel better about it."</p>

<p>"I suppose public relations are
important&mdash;" Hausman began to
say, and Garces nodded quickly.</p>

<p>"They are. See that this is
done, when you go up to confer
with Meloni. Make sure that it
gets onto the video networks, I
want everyone to see it."</p>

<p>Later, with many cameras and
millions of people watching,
Kieran's body, in a pressure-suit,
was ceremoniously taken to a selected
position where it would
orbit the Moon. All suggestions
of the funerary were carefully
avoided. The space-struck man&mdash;nobody
at all referred to him as
"dead"&mdash;would remain in this
position until a revival process
was perfected.</p>

<p>"Until forever," thought Hausman,
watching sourly. "I suppose
Garces is right. But they'll have a
whole graveyard here, as time
goes on."</p>

<p>As time went on, they did.</p>

<h3>2.</h3>

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">In his</span> dreams, a soft voice
whispered.</p>

<p>He did not know what it was
telling him, except that it was
important. He was hardly aware
of its coming, the times it came.
There would be the quiet murmuring,
and something in him
seemed to hear and understand,
and then the murmur faded away
and there was nothing but the
dreams again.</p>

<p>But were they dreams? Nothing
had form or meaning. Light,
darkness, sound, pain and not-pain,
flowed over him. Flowed
over&mdash;who? Who was he? He did
not even know that. He did not
care.</p>

<p>But he came to care, the question
vaguely nagged him. He
should try to remember. There
was more than dreams and the
whispering voice. There was&mdash;what?
If he had one real thing to
cling to, to put his feet on and
climb back from&mdash; One thing like
his name.</p>

<p>He had no name. He was no
one. Sleep and forget it. Sleep
and dream and listen&mdash;</p>

<p>"Kieran."</p>

<p>It went across his brain like a
shattering bolt of lightning, that
word. He did not know what the
word was or what it meant but it
found an echo somewhere and his
brain screamed it.</p>

<p>"Kieran!"</p>

<p>Not his brain alone, his voice
was gasping it, harshly and
croakingly, his lungs seeming on
fire as they expelled the word.</p>

<p>He was shaking. He had a
body that could shake, that could
feel pain, that was feeling pain
now. He tried to move, to break
the nightmare, to get back again
to the vague dreams, and the
soothing whisper.</p>

<p>He moved. His limbs thrashed
leadenly, his chest heaved and
panted, his eyes opened.</p>

<p>He lay in a narrow bunk in a
very small metal room.</p>

<p>He looked slowly around. He
did not know this place. The
gleaming white metal of walls
and ceiling was unfamiliar.
There was a slight, persistent
tingling vibration in everything
that was unfamiliar, too.</p>

<p>He was not in Wheel Five. He
had seen every cell in it and none
of them were like this. Also,
there lacked the persistent susurrant
sound of the ventilation
pumps. Where&mdash;</p>

<p><i>You're in a ship, Kieran. A
starship.</i></p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Something</span> back in his mind
told him that. But of course
it was ridiculous, a quirk of the
imagination. There weren't any
starships.</p>

<p><i>You're all right, Kieran.
You're in a starship, and you're
all right.</i></p>

<p>The emphatic assurance came
from somewhere back in his
brain and it was comforting. He
didn't feel very good, he felt
dopey and sore, but there was no
use worrying about it when he
knew for sure he was all right&mdash;</p>

<p>The hell he was all right! He
was in someplace new, someplace
strange, and he felt half sick and
he was not all right at all. Instead
of lying here on his back
listening to comforting lies from
his imagination, he should get
up, find out what was going on,
what had happened.</p>

<p>Of a sudden, memory began to
clear. What <i>had</i> happened?
Something, a crash, a terrible
coldness&mdash;</p>

<p>Kieran began to shiver. He had
been in Section T2, on his way to
the lock, and suddenly the floor
had risen under him and Wheel
Five had seemed to crash into
pieces around him. The cold, the
pain&mdash;</p>

<p><i>You're in a starship. You're
all right.</i></p>

<p>For God's sake why did his
mind keep telling him things like
that, things he believed? For if
he did not believe them he would
be in a panic, not knowing where
he was, how he had come here.
There was panic in his mind but
there was a barrier against it,
the barrier of the soothing reassurances
that came from he knew
not where.</p>

<p>He tried to sit up. It was useless,
he was too weak. He lay,
breathing heavily. He felt that
he should be hysterical with fear
but somehow he was not, that
barrier in his mind prevented it.</p>

<p>He had decided to try shouting
when a door in the side of the little
room slid open and a man
came in.</p>

<p>He came over and looked down
at Kieran. He was a young man,
sandy-haired, with a compact,
chunky figure and a flat, hard
face. His eyes were blue and intense,
and they gave Kieran the
feeling that this man was a
wound-up spring. He looked
down and said,</p>

<p>"How do you feel, Kieran?"</p>

<p>Kieran looked up at him. He
asked, "Am I in a starship?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>"But there aren't any starships."</p>

<p>"There are. You're in one."
The sandy-haired man added,
"My name is Vaillant."</p>

<p><i>It's true, what he says</i>, murmured
the something in Kieran's
mind.</p>

<p>"Where&mdash;how&mdash;" Kieran began.</p>

<p>Vaillant interrupted his stammering
question. "As to where,
we're quite a way from Earth,
heading right now in the general
direction of Altair. As to how&mdash;"
He paused, looking keenly down
at Kieran. "Don't you know
how?"</p>

<p><i>Of course I know. I was frozen,
and now I have been awakened
and time has gone by&mdash;</i></p>

<p>Vaillant, looking searchingly
down at his face, showed a trace
of relief. "You do know, don't
you? For a moment I was afraid
it hadn't worked."</p>

<p>He sat down on the edge of the
bunk.</p>

<p>"How long?" asked Kieran.</p>

<p>Vaillant answered as casually
as though it was the most ordinary
question in the world. "A
bit over a century."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">It was</span> wonderful, thought
Kieran, how he could take a
statement like that without getting
excited. It was almost as
though he'd known it all the
time.</p>

<p>"How&mdash;" he began, when there
was an interruption.</p>

<p>Something buzzed thinly in the
pocket of Vaillant's shirt. He
took out a thin three-inch disk of
metal and said sharply into it,</p>

<p>"Yes?"</p>

<p>A tiny voice squawked from the
disk. It was too far from Kieran
for him to understand what it
was saying but it had a note of
excitement, almost of panic, in it.</p>

<p>Something changed, hardened,
in Vaillant's flat face. He said, "I
expected it. I'll be right there.
You know what to do."</p>

<p>He did something to the disk
and spoke into it again. "Paula,
take over here."</p>

<p>He stood up. Kieran looked up
at him, feeling numb and stupid.
"I'd like to know some things."</p>

<p>"Later," said Vaillant. "We've
got troubles. Stay where you
are."</p>

<p>He went rapidly out of the
room. Kieran looked after him,
wondering. Troubles&mdash;troubles
in a starship? And a century had
passed&mdash;</p>

<p>He suddenly felt an emotion
that shook his nerves and tightened
his guts. It was beginning
to hit him now. He sat up in the
bunk and swung his legs out of it
and tried to stand but could not,
he was too weak. All he could do
was to sit there, shaking.</p>

<p>His mind could not take it in.
It seemed only minutes ago that
he had been walking along the
corridor in Wheel Five. It seemed
that Wheel Five must exist, that
the Earth, the people, the time he
knew, must still be somewhere
out there. This could be some
kind of a joke, or some kind of
psychological experiment. That
was it&mdash;the space-medicine boys
were always making way-out experiments
to find out how men
would bear up in unusual conditions,
and this must be one of
them&mdash;</p>

<p>A woman came into the room.
She was a dark woman who
might have been thirty years old,
and who wore a white shirt and
slacks. She would, he thought,
have been good-looking if she
had not looked so tired and so
edgy.</p>

<p>She came over and looked down
at him and said to him,</p>

<p>"Don't try to get up yet.
You'll feel better very soon."</p>

<p>Her voice was a slightly husky
one. It was utterly familiar to
Kieran, and yet he had never
seen this woman before. Then it
came to him.</p>

<p>"You were the one who talked
to me," he said, looking up at her.
"In the dreams, I mean."</p>

<p>She nodded. "I'm Paula Ray
and I'm a psychologist. You had
to be psychologically prepared
for your awakening."</p>

<p>"Prepared?"</p>

<p>The woman explained patiently.
"Hypnopedic technique&mdash;establishing
facts in the subconscious
of a sleeping patient. Otherwise,
it would be too terrific a
shock for you when you awakened.
That was proved when they
first tried reviving space-struck
men, forty or fifty years ago."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> comfortable conviction
that this was all a fake, an experiment
of some kind, began to
drain out of Kieran. But if it was
true&mdash;</p>

<p>He asked, with some difficulty,
"You say that they found out
how to revive space-frozen men,
that long ago?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>"Yet it took forty or fifty years
to get around to reviving me?"</p>

<p>The woman sighed. "You have
a misconception. The process of
revival was perfected that long
ago. But it has been used only
immediately after a wreck or disaster.
Men or women in the old
space-cemeteries have not been
revived."</p>

<p>"Why not?" he asked carefully.</p>

<p>"Unsatisfactory results," she
said. "They could not adjust psychologically
to changed conditions.
They usually became unbalanced.
Some suicides and a
number of cases of extreme
schizophrenia resulted. It was
decided that it was no kindness
to the older space-struck cases to
bring them back."</p>

<p>"But you brought me back?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>"Why?"</p>

<p>"There were good reasons."
She was, clearly, evading that
question. She went on quickly.
"The psychological shock of
awakening would have been devastating,
if you were not prepared.
So, while you were still
under sedation, I used the hypnopedic
method on you. Your unconscious
was aware of the main
facts of the situation before you
awoke, and that cushioned the
shock."</p>

<p>Kieran thought of himself, lying
frozen and dead in a graveyard
that was space, bodies drifting
in orbit, circling slowly
around each other as the years
passed, in a macabre sarabande&mdash; A
deep shiver shook him.</p>

<p>"Because all space-struck victims
were in pressure-suits, dehydration
was not the problem it
could have been," Paula was saying.
"But it's still a highly delicate
process&mdash;"</p>

<p>He looked at her and interrupted
roughly. "What reasons?"
And when she stared
blankly, he added, "You said
there were good reasons why you
picked me for revival. What reasons?"</p>

<p>Her face became tight and
alert. "You were the oldest victim,
in point of date. That was
one of the determining factors&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Look," said Kieran. "I'm not
a child, nor yet a savage. You can
drop the patronizing professional
jargon and answer my question."</p>

<p>Her voice became hard and
brittle. "You're new to this environment.
You wouldn't understand
if I told you."</p>

<p>"Try me."</p>

<p>"All right," she answered. "We
need you, as a symbol, in a political
struggle we're waging against
the Sakae."</p>

<p>"The Sakae?"</p>

<p>"I told you that you couldn't
understand yet," she answered
impatiently, turning away. "You
can't expect me to fill you in on a
whole world that's new to you, in
five minutes."</p>

<p>She started toward the door.
"Oh, no," said Kieran. "You're
not going yet."</p>

<p>He slid out of the bunk. He
felt weak and shaky but resentment
energized his flaccid muscles.
He took a step toward her.</p>

<p>The lights suddenly went dim,
and a bull-throated roar sounded
from somewhere, an appalling
sound of raw power. The slight
tingling that Kieran had felt in
the metal fabric around him
abruptly became a vibration so
deep and powerful that it dizzied
him and he had to grab the
stanchion of the bunk to keep
from falling.</p>

<p>Alarm had flashed into the
woman's face. Next moment,
from some hidden speaker in the
wall, a male voice yelled sharply,</p>

<p>"Overtaken&mdash;prepare for extreme
evasion&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Get back into the bunk," she
told Kieran.</p>

<p>"What is it?"</p>

<p>"It may be," she said with a
certain faint viciousness, "that
you're about to die a second
time."</p>

<h3>3.</h3>

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> lights dimmed to semi-darkness,
and the deep vibration grew worse.
Kieran clutched the woman's arm.</p>

<p>"What's happening?"</p>

<p>"Damn it, let me go!" she said.</p>

<p>The exclamation was so wholly
familiar in its human angriness
that Kieran almost liked her, for
the first time. But he continued
to hold onto her, although he did
not feel that with his present
weakness he could hold her long.</p>

<p>"I've a right to know," he said.</p>

<p>"All right, perhaps you have,"
said Paula. "We&mdash;our group&mdash;are
operating against authority.
We've broken laws, in going
to Earth and reviving you. And
now authority is catching up to
us."</p>

<p>"Another ship? Is there going
to be a fight?"</p>

<p>"A fight?" She stared at him,
and shock and then faint repulsion
showed in her face. "But of
course, you come from the old time
of wars, you would think that&mdash;"</p>

<p>Kieran got the impression that
what he had said had made her
look at him with the same feelings
he would have had when he
looked at a decent, worthy savage
who happened to be a cannibal.</p>

<p>"I always felt that bringing
you back was a mistake," she
said, with a sharpness in her
voice. "Let me go."</p>

<p>She wrenched away from him
and before he could stop her she
had got to the door and slid it
open. He woke up in time to lurch
after her and he got his shoulder
into the door-opening before she
could slide it shut.</p>

<p>"Oh, very well, since you insist
I'm not going to worry about
you," she said rapidly, and
turned and hurried away.</p>

<p>Kieran wanted to follow her
but his knees were buckling under
him. He hung to the side of
the door-opening. He felt angry,
and anger was all that kept him
from falling over. He would not
faint, he told himself. He was not
a child, and would not be treated
like one&mdash;</p>

<p>He got his head outside the
door. There was a long and very
narrow corridor out there, blank
metal with a few closed doors
along it. One door, away down
toward the end of the corridor,
was just sliding shut.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> started down the corridor,
steadying himself with his
hand against the smooth wall.
Before he had gone more than a
few steps, the anger that pushed
him began to ebb away. Of a sudden,
the mountainous and incredible
fact of his being here, in
this place, this time, this ship,
came down on him like an avalanche
from which the hypnopedic
pre-conditioning would
no longer protect him.</p>

<p><i>I am touching a starship, I am
in a starship, I, Reed Kieran of
Midland Springs, Ohio. I ought
to be back there, teaching my
classes, stopping at Hartnett's
Drug Store for a soft drink on
the way home, but I am here in a
ship fleeing through the stars ...</i></p>

<p>His head was spinning and he
was afraid that he was going to
go out again. He found himself
at the door and slid it open and
fell rather than walked inside.
He heard a startled voice.</p>

<p>This was a bigger room. There
was a table whose top was translucent
and which showed a bewildering
mass of fleeting symbols
in bright light, ever changing.
There was a screen on one
wall of the room and that showed
nothing, a blank, dark surface.</p>

<p>Vaillant and Paula Ray and a
tall, tough-looking man of middle
age were around the table and
had looked up, surprised.</p>

<p>Vaillant's face flashed irritation.
"Paula, you were supposed
to keep him in his cabin!"</p>

<p>"I didn't think he was strong
enough to follow," she said.</p>

<p>"I'm not," said Kieran, and
pitched over.</p>

<p>The tall middle-aged man
reached and caught him before
he hit the floor, and eased him
into a chair.</p>

<p>He heard, as though from a
great distance, Vaillant's voice
saying irritatedly, "Let Paula
take care of him, Webber. Look
at this&mdash;we're going to cross another
rift&mdash;"</p>

<p>There were a few minutes then
when everything was very jumbled
up in Kieran's mind. The
woman was talking to him. She
was telling him that they had
prepared him physically, as well
as psychologically, for the shock
of revival, and that he would be
quite all right but had to take
things more slowly.</p>

<p>He heard her voice but paid little
attention. He sat in the chair
and blankly watched the two men
who hung over the table and its
flow of brilliant symbols. Vaillant
seemed to tighten up more
and more as the moments passed,
and there was still about him the
look of a coiled spring but now
the spring seemed to be wound to
the breaking-point. Webber, the
tall man with the tough face,
watched the fleeting symbols and
his face was stony.</p>

<p>"Here we go," he muttered,
and both he and Vaillant looked
up at the blank black screen on
the wall.</p>

<p>Kieran looked too. There was
nothing. Then, in an instant, the
blackness vanished from the
screen and it framed a vista of
such cosmic, stunning splendor
that Kieran could not grasp it.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Stars</span> blazed like high fires
across the screen, loops and
chains and shining clots of them.
This was not too different from
the way they had looked from
Wheel Five. But what was different
was that the starry firmament
was partly blotted out by
vast rifted ramparts of blackness,
ebon cliffs that went up to
infinity. Kieran had seen astronomical
photographs like this
and knew what the blackness
was.</p>

<p>Dust. A dust so fine that its
percentage of particles in space
would be a vacuum, on Earth.
But, here where it extended over
parsecs of space, it formed a barrier
to light. There was a narrow
rift here between the titan cliffs
of darkness and he&mdash;the ship he
was in&mdash;was fleeing across that
rift.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> screen abruptly went black
again. Kieran remained sitting
and staring at it. That incredible
fleeting vision had finally
impressed the utter reality of
all this upon his mind. They, this
ship, were far from Earth&mdash;very
far, in one of the dust-clouds in
which they were trying to lose
pursuers. This was real.</p>

<p>"&mdash;will have got another fix on
us as we crossed, for sure," Vaillant
was saying, in a bitter voice.
"They'll have the net out for us&mdash;the
pattern will be shaping
now and we can't slip through
it."</p>

<p>"We can't," said Webber. "The
ship can't. But the flitter can,
with luck."</p>

<p>They both looked at Kieran.
"He's the important one," Webber
said. "If a couple of us could
get him through&mdash;"</p>

<p>"No," said Paula. "We couldn't.
As soon as they caught the
ship and found the flitter gone,
they'd be after him."</p>

<p>"Not to Sako," said Webber.
"They'd never figure that we'd
take him to Sako."</p>

<p>"Do I have a word in this?"
asked Kieran, between his teeth.</p>

<p>"What?" asked Vaillant.</p>

<p>"This. The hell with you all.
I'll go no place with you or for
you."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> got a savage satisfaction
from saying it, he was tired
of sitting there like a booby
while they discussed him, but he
did not get the reaction from
them he had expected. The two
men merely continued to look
thoughtfully at him. The woman
sighed,</p>

<p>"You see? There wasn't time
enough to explain it to him. It's
natural for him to react with
hostility."</p>

<p>"Put him out, and take him
along," said Webber.</p>

<p>"No," said Paula sharply. "If
he goes out right now he's liable
to stay out. I won't answer for
it."</p>

<p>"Meanwhile," said Vaillant
with an edge to his voice, "the
pattern is forming up. Have you
any suggestions, Paula?"</p>

<p>She nodded. "This."</p>

<p>She suddenly squeezed something
under Kieran's nose, a
small thing that she had produced
from her pocket without
his noticing it, in his angry preoccupation
with the two men. He
smelled a sweet, refreshing odor
and he struck her arm away.</p>

<p>"Oh, no, you're not giving me
any more dopes&mdash;" Then he
stopped, for suddenly it all
seemed wryly humorous to him.
"A bunch of bloody incompetents,"
he said, and laughed.
"This is the one thing I would
never have dreamed&mdash;that a man
could sleep, and wake up in a
starship, and find the starship
manned by blunderers."</p>

<p>"Euphoric," said Paula, to the
two men.</p>

<p>"At that," said Webber sourly,
"there may be something in what
he says about us."</p>

<p>Vaillant turned on him and
said fiercely, "If that's what you
think&mdash;" Then he controlled himself
and said tightly, "Quarrelling's
no good. We're in a box
but we can maybe still put it over
if we get this man to Sako. Webber,
you and Paula take him in
the flitter."</p>

<p>Kieran rose to his feet. "Fine,"
he said gaily. "Let us go in the
flitter, whatever that is. I am already
bored with starships."</p>

<p>He felt good, very good. He
felt a little drunk, not enough to
impede his mental processes but
enough to give him a fine devil-may-care
indifference to what
happened next. So it was only the
spray Paula had given him&mdash;it
still made his body feel better
and removed his shock and worry
and made everything seem suddenly
rather amusing.</p>

<p>"Let us to Sako in the flitter,"
he said. "After all, I'm living on
velvet, I might as well see the
whole show. I'm sure that Sako,
wherever it is, will be just as full
of human folly as Earth was."</p>

<p>"He's euphoric," Paula said
again, but her face was stricken.</p>

<p>"Of all the people in that space-cemetery,
we had to pick one who
thinks like that," said Vaillant,
with a sort of restrained fury.</p>

<p>"You said yourself that the
oldest one would be the best,"
said Webber. "Sako will change
him."</p>

<p>Kieran walked down the corridor
with Webber and Paula and
he laughed as he walked. They
had brought him back from nothingness
without his consent, violating
the privacy of death or
near-death, and now something
that he had just said had bitterly
disappointed them.</p>

<p>"Come along," he said buoyantly
to the two. "Let us not lag.
Once aboard the flitter and the
girl is mine."</p>

<p>"Oh for God's sake shut up,"
said Webber.</p>

<h3>4.</h3>

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">It was</span> ridiculous to be flying
the stars with a bad hangover,
but Kieran had one. His head
ached dully, he had an unpleasant
metallic taste in his mouth,
and his former ebullience had
given way to a dull depression.
He looked sourly around.</p>

<p>He sat in a confined little metal
coop of a cabin, hardly
enough in which to stand erect.
Paula Ray, in a chair a few feet
away was sleeping, her head on
her breast. Webber sat forward,
in what appeared to be a pilot-chair
with a number of crowded
control banks in front of it. He
was not doing anything to the
controls. He looked as though he
might be sleeping, too.</p>

<p>That was all&mdash;a tiny metal
room, blank metal walls, silence.
They were, presumably, flying
between the stars at incredible
speeds but there was nothing to
show it. There were no screens
such as the one he had seen in
the ship, to show by artful scanning
devices what vista of suns
and darknesses lay outside.</p>

<p>"A flitter," Webber had informed
him, "just doesn't have
room for the complicated apparatus
that such scanners require.
Seeing is a luxury you dispense
with in a flitter. We'll see when
we get to Sako."</p>

<p>After a moment he had added,
"If we get to Sako."</p>

<p>Kieran had merely laughed
then, and had promptly gone to
sleep. When he had awakened, it
had been with the euphoria all
gone and with his present hangover.</p>

<p>"At least," he told himself, "I
can truthfully say that this one
wasn't my fault. That blasted
spray&mdash;"</p>

<p>He looked resentfully at the
sleeping woman in the chair.
Then he reached and roughly
shook her shoulder.</p>

<p>She opened her eyes and
looked at him, first sleepily and
then with resentment.</p>

<p>"You had no right to wake me
up," she said.</p>

<p>Then, before Kieran could retort,
she seemed to realize the
monumental irony of what she
had just said, and she burst into
laughter.</p>

<p>"I'm sorry," she said. "Go
ahead and say it. I had no right
to wake <i>you</i> up."</p>

<p>"Let's come back to that," said
Kieran after a moment. "Why
did you?"</p>

<p>Paula looked at him ruefully.
"What I need now is a ten-volume
history of the last century,
and time enough for you to read
it. But since we don't have either&mdash;"
She broke off, then after a
pause asked, "Your date was
1981, wasn't it? It and your
name were on the tag of your
pressure-suit."</p>

<p>"That's right."</p>

<p>"Well, then. Back in 1981, it
was expected that men would
spread out to the stars, wasn't
it?"</p>

<p>Kieran nodded. "As soon as
they had a workable high-speed
drive. Several drives were being
experimented with even then."</p>

<p>"One of them&mdash;the Flournoy
principle&mdash;was finally made
workable," she said. She
frowned. "I'm trying to give you
this briefly and I keep straying
into details."</p>

<p>"Just tell me why you woke
me up."</p>

<p>"I'm <i>trying</i> to tell you." She
asked candidly, "Were you always
so damned hateful or did
the revivification process do this
to you?"</p>

<p>Kieran grinned. "All right. Go
ahead."</p>

<hr />

<p><span class="cpq">"T</span><span class="dcap">hings</span> happened pretty
much as people foresaw back
in 1981," she said. "The drive
was perfected. The ships went
out to the nearer stars. They
found worlds. They established
colonies from the overflowing
population of Earth. They found
human indigenous races on a
few worlds, all of them at a rather
low technical level, and they
taught them.</p>

<p>"There was a determination
from the beginning to make it
one universe. No separate nationalistic
groups, no chance of
wars. The governing council was
set up at Altair Two. Every
world was represented. There
are twenty-nine of them, now.
It's expected to go on like that,
till there are twenty-nine hundred
starworlds represented
there, twenty-nine thousand&mdash;any
number. But&mdash;"</p>

<p>Kieran had been listening
closely. "But what? What upset
this particular utopia?"</p>

<p>"Sako."</p>

<p>"This world we're going to?"</p>

<p>"Yes," she said soberly. "Men
found something different about
this world when they reached it.
It had people&mdash;human people&mdash;on
it, very low in the scale of
civilization."</p>

<p>"Well, what was the problem?
Couldn't you start teaching them
as you had others?"</p>

<p>She shook her head. "It would
take a long while. But that wasn't
the real problem. It was&mdash; You
see, there's another race on
Sako beside the human ones, and
it's a fairly civilized race. The
Sakae. The trouble is&mdash;the Sakae
aren't human."</p>

<p>Kieran stared at her. "So
what? If they're intelligent&mdash;"</p>

<p>"You talk as though it was the
simplest thing in the world," she
flashed.</p>

<p>"Isn't it? If your Sakae are
intelligent and the humans of
Sako aren't, then the Sakae have
the rights on that world, don't
they?"</p>

<p>She looked at him, not saying
anything, and again she had
that stricken look of one who
has tried and failed. Then from
up forward, without turning,
Webber spoke.</p>

<p>"What do you think now of
Vaillant's fine idea, Paula?"</p>

<p>"It can still work," she said,
but there was no conviction in
her voice.</p>

<p>"If you don't mind," said
Kieran, with an edge to his voice,
"I'd still like to know what this
Sako business has to do with reviving
me."</p>

<hr />

<p><span class="cpq">"T</span><span class="dcap">he</span> Sakae rule the humans on
that world," Paula answered.
"There are some of us who don't
believe they should. In the Council,
we're known as the Humanity
Party, because we believe
that humans should not be ruled
by non-humans."</p>

<p>Again, Kieran was distracted
from his immediate question&mdash;this
time by the phrase "Non-human".</p>

<p>"These Sakae&mdash;what are they
like?"</p>

<p>"They're not monsters, if
that's what you're thinking of,"
Paula said. "They're bipeds&mdash;lizardoid
rather than humanoid&mdash;and
are a fairly intelligent and
law-abiding lot."</p>

<p>"If they're all that, and higher
in development than the humans,
why shouldn't they rule
their own world?" demanded
Kieran.</p>

<p>Webber uttered a sardonic
laugh. Without turning he
asked, "Shall I change course
and go to Altair?"</p>

<p>"No!" she said. Her eyes
flashed at Kieran and she spoke
almost breathlessly. "You're
very sure about things you just
heard about, aren't you? You
know what's right and you know
what's wrong, even though you've
only been in this time, this
universe, for a few hours!"</p>

<p>Kieran looked at her closely.
He thought he was beginning to
get a glimmer of the shape of
things now.</p>

<p>"You&mdash;all you who woke me
up illegally&mdash;you belong to this
Humanity Party, don't you?
You did it for some reason connected
with that?"</p>

<p>"Yes," she answered defiantly.
"We need a symbol in this political
struggle. We thought that
one of the oldtime space pioneers,
one of the humans who
began the conquest of the stars,
would be it. We&mdash;"</p>

<p>Kieran interrupted. "I think I
get it. It was really considerate
of you. You drag a man back
from what amounts to death, for
a party rally. 'Oldtime space hero
condemns non-humans'&mdash;it
would go something like that,
wouldn't it?"</p>

<p>"Listen&mdash;," she began.</p>

<p>"Listen, hell," he said. He was
hot with rage, shaking with it.
"I am glad to say that you could
not possibly have picked a worse
symbol than me. I have no more
use for the idea of the innate
sacred superiority of one species
over another than I had for that
of one kind of man over another."</p>

<p>Her face changed. From an
angry woman, she suddenly became
a professional psychologist,
coolly observing reactions.</p>

<p>"It's not the political question
you really resent," she said.
"You've wakened to a strange
world and you're afraid of it, in
spite of all the pre-awakening
preparation we gave your subconscious.
You're afraid, and so
you're angry."</p>

<p>Kieran got a grip on himself.
He shrugged. "What you say
may be true. But it doesn't
change the way I feel. I will not
help you one damned bit."</p>

<p>Webber got up from his seat
and came back toward them, his
tall form stooping. He looked at
Kieran and then at the woman.</p>

<p>"We have to settle this right
now," he said. "We're getting
near enough to Sako to go out of
drive. Are we going to land or
aren't we?"</p>

<p>"Yes," said Paula steadily.
"We're landing."</p>

<p>Webber glanced again at
Kieran's face. "But if that's the
way he feels&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Go ahead and land," she said.</p>

<h3>5.</h3>

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">It was</span> nothing like landing in
a rocket. First there was the
business referred to as "going
out of drive". Paula made Kieran
strap in and she said, "You may
find this unpleasant, but just sit
tight. It doesn't last long."
Kieran sat stiff and glowering,
prepared for anything and determined
not to show it no matter
how he felt. Then Webber did
something to the control board
and the universe fell apart.
Kieran's stomach came up and
stuck in his throat. He was falling&mdash;up?
Down? Sideways? He
didn't know, but whichever it
was not all the parts of him were
falling at the same rate, or perhaps
it was not all in the same
direction, he didn't know that
either, but it was an exceptionally
hideous feeling. He opened his
mouth to protest, and all of a
sudden he was sitting normally
in the chair in the normal cabin
and screaming at the top of his
lungs.</p>

<p>He shut up.</p>

<p>Paula said, "I told you it
would be unpleasant."</p>

<p>"So you did," said Kieran. He
sat, sweating. His hands and
feet were cold.</p>

<p>Now for the first time he became
aware of motion. The flitter
seemed to hurtle forward at
comet-like speed. Kieran knew
that this was merely an ironic
little joke, because now they
were proceeding at something in
the range of normal velocity,
whereas before their speed had
been quite beyond his comprehension.
But he could comprehend
this. He could feel it. They
were going like a bat out of hell,
and somewhere ahead of them
was a planet, and he was closed
in, blind, a mouse in a nose-cone.
His insides writhed with helplessness
and the imminence of a
crash. He wanted very much to
start screaming again, but Paula
was watching him.</p>

<p>In a few moments that desire
became academic. A whistling
shriek began faintly outside the
hull and built swiftly to a point
where nothing could have been
heard above it. Atmosphere. And
somewhere under the blind wall
of the flitter a rock-hard world-face
reeling and rushing, leaping
to meet them&mdash;</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> flitter slowed. It seemed to
hang motionless, quivering
faintly. Then it dropped. Express
elevator in the world's tallest
building, top to bottom&mdash;only
the elevator is a bubble and
the wind is tossing it from side
to side as it drops and there is no
bottom.</p>

<p>They hung again, bounding
lightly on the unseen wind.</p>

<p>Then down.</p>

<p>And hang again.</p>

<p>And down.</p>

<p>Paula said suddenly, "Webber.
Webber, I think he's dying." She
began to unstrap.</p>

<p>Kieran said faintly, "Am I
turning green?"</p>

<p>She looked at him, frowning.
"Yes."</p>

<p>"A simple old malady. I'm seasick.
Tell Webber to quit playing
humming-bird and put this
thing down."</p>

<p>Paula made an impatient gesture
and tightened her belt
again.</p>

<p>Hang and drop. Once more,
twice more. A little rocking
bounce, a light thump, motion
ceased. Webber turned a series
of switches. Silence.</p>

<p>Kieran said, "Air?"</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Webber</span> opened a hatch in
the side of the cabin. Light
poured in. It had to be sunlight,
Kieran knew, but it was a queer
color, a sort of tawny orange
that carried a pleasantly burning
heat. He got loose with
Paula helping him and tottered
to the hatch. The air smelled of
clean sun-warmed dust and some
kind of vegetation. Kieran
climbed out of the flitter, practically
throwing himself out in
his haste. He wanted solid
ground under him, he didn't care
whose or where.</p>

<p>And as his boots thumped
onto the red-ochre sand, it occurred
to him that it had been
a very long time since he had
had solid ground underfoot. A
very long time indeed&mdash;</p>

<p>His insides knotted up again,
and this time it was not seasickness
but fear, and he was
cold all through again in spite
of the hot new sun.</p>

<p>He was afraid, not of the present,
nor of the future, but of the
past. He was afraid of the thing
tagged Reed Kieran, the stiff
blind voiceless thing wheeling
its slow orbit around the Moon,
companion to dead worlds and
dead space, brother to the cold
and the dark.</p>

<p>He began to tremble.</p>

<p>Paula shook him. She was
talking but he couldn't hear her.
He could only hear the rush of
eternal darkness past his ears,
the thin squeak of his shadow
brushing across the stars. Webber's
face was somewhere above
him, looking angry and disgusted.
He was talking to Paula,
shaking his head. They were far
away. Kieran was losing them,
drifting away from them on the
black tide. Then suddenly there
was something like an explosion,
a crimson flare across the black,
a burst of heat against the cold.
Shocked and wild, the physical
part of him clawed back to reality.</p>

<p>Something hurt him, something
threatened him. He put his
hand to his cheek and it came
away red.</p>

<p>Paula and Webber were yanking
at him, trying to get him to
move.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">A stone</span> whizzed past his
head. It struck the side of
the flitter with a sharp clack,
and fell. Kieran's nervous relays
finally connected. He jumped for
the open hatch. Automatically he
pushed Paula ahead of him, trying
to shield her, and she gave
him an odd startled look. Webber
was already inside. More
stones rattled around and one
grazed Kieran's thigh. It hurt.
His cheek was bleeding freely.
He rolled inside the flitter and
turned to look back out the
hatch. He was mad.</p>

<p>"Who's doing it?" he demanded.</p>

<p>Paula pointed. At first Kieran
was distracted by the strangeness
of the landscape. The flitter
crouched in a vastness of red-ochre
sand laced with some low-growing
plant that shone like
metallic gold in the sunlight.
The sand receded in tilted
planes lifting gradually to a
range of mountains on the right,
and dropping gradually to infinity
on the left. Directly in front
of the flitter and quite literally a
stone's throw away was the beginning
of a thick belt of trees
that grew beside a river, apparently
quite a wide one though he
could not see much but a tawny
sparkling of water. The course
of the river could be traced clear
back to the mountains by the
winding line of woods that followed
its bed. The trees themselves
were not like any Kieran
had seen before. There seemed to
be several varieties, all grotesque
in shape and exotic in color.
There were even some green
ones, with long sharp leaves that
looked like spearheads.</p>

<p>Exotic or not, they made perfectly
adequate cover. Stones
came whistling out of the woods,
but Kieran could not see anything
where Paula was pointing
but an occasional shaking of
foliage.</p>

<p>"Sakae?" he asked.</p>

<p>Webber snorted. "You'll know
it when the Sakae find us. They
don't throw stones."</p>

<p>"These are the humans,"
Paula said. There was an indulgent
softness in her voice that
irritated Kieran.</p>

<p>"I thought they were our dear
little friends," he said.</p>

<p>"You frightened them."</p>

<p>"<i>I</i> frightened them?"</p>

<p>"They've seen the flitter before.
But they're extremely alert
to modes of behavior, and they
knew you weren't acting right.
They thought you were sick."</p>

<p>"So they tried to kill me. Nice
fellows."</p>

<p>"Self-preservation," Webber
said. "They can't afford the luxury
of too much kindness."</p>

<p>"They're very kind among
themselves," Paula said defensively.
To Kieran she added, "I
doubt if they were trying to kill
you. They just wanted to drive
you away."</p>

<p>"Oh, well," said Kieran, "in
that case I wouldn't dream of
disappointing them. Let's go."</p>

<p>Paula glared at him and turned
to Webber. "Talk to them."</p>

<p>"I hope there's time," Webber
grunted, glancing at the sky.
"We're sitting ducks here. Keep
your patient quiet&mdash;any more of
that moaning and flopping and
we're sunk."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> picked up a large plastic
container and moved closer
to the door.</p>

<p>Paula looked at Kieran's cheek.
"Let me fix that."</p>

<p>"Don't bother," he said. At
this moment he hoped the Sakae,
whoever and whatever they
were, would come along and
clap these two into some suitable
place for the rest of their lives.</p>

<p>Webber began to "talk".</p>

<p>Kieran stared at him, fascinated.
He had expected words&mdash;primitive
words, perhaps resembling
the click-speech of Earth's
stone-age survivals, but words
of some sort. Webber hooted. It
was a soft reassuring sound, repeated
over and over, but it was
not a word. The rattle of stones
diminished, then stopped. Webber
continued to make his hooting
call. Presently it was answered.
Webber turned and nodded
at Paula, smiling. He
reached into the plastic container
and drew forth a handful of
brownish objects that smelled to
Kieran like dried fruit. Webber
tossed these out onto the sand.
Now he made a different sound,
a grunting and whuffling. There
was a silence. Webber made the
sound again.</p>

<p>On the third try the people
came out of the woods.</p>

<p>In all there were perhaps
twenty-five of them. They came
slowly and furtively, moving a
step or two at a time, then halting
and peering, prepared to run.
The able-bodied men came first,
with one in the lead, a fine-looking
chap in early middle age who
was apparently the chief. The
women, the old men, and the
children followed, trickling
gradually out of the shadow of
the trees but remaining where
they could disappear in a flash
if alarmed. They were all perfectly
naked, tall and slender
and large-eyed, their muscles
strung for speed and agility
rather than massive strength.
Their bodies gleamed a light
bronze color in the sun, and
Kieran noticed that the men
were beardless and smooth-skinned.
Both men and women
had long hair, ranging in color
from black to tawny, and very
clean and glistening. They were
a beautiful people, as deer are a
beautiful people, graceful, innocent,
and wild. The men came to
the dried fruits which had been
scattered for them. They picked
them up and sniffed them, bit
them, then began to eat, repeating
the grunt-and-whuffle call.
The women and children and old
men decided everything was safe
and joined them. Webber tossed
out more fruit, and then got out
himself, carrying the plastic box.</p>

<hr />

<p><span class="cpq">"W</span><span class="dcap">hat</span> does he do next?"
whispered Kieran to Paula.
"Scratch their ears? I used to
tame squirrels this way when I
was a kid."</p>

<p>"Shut up," she warned him.
Webber beckoned and she
nudged him to move out of the
flitter. "Slow and careful."</p>

<p>Kieran slid out of the flitter.
Big glistening eyes swung to
watch him. The eating stopped.
Some of the little ones scuttled
for the trees. Kieran froze. Webber
hooted and whuffled some
more and the tension relaxed.
Kieran approached the group
with Paula. There was suddenly
no truth in what he was doing.
He was an actor in a bad scene,
mingling with impossible characters
in an improbable setting.
Webber making ridiculous noises
and tossing his dried fruit
around like a caricature of somebody
sowing, Paula with her
brisk professionalism all dissolved
in misty-eyed fondness,
himself an alien in this time and
place, and these perfectly normal-appearing
people behaving
like orang-utans with their fur
shaved off. He started to laugh
and then thought better of it.
Once started, he might not be
able to stop.</p>

<p>"Let them get used to you,"
said Webber softly.</p>

<p>Paula obviously had been here
before. She had begun to make
noises too, a modified hooting
more like a pigeon's call. Kieran
just stood still. The people
moved in around them, sniffing,
touching. There was no conversation,
no laughing or giggling
even among the little girls. A
particularly beautiful young
woman stood just behind the
chief, watching the strangers
with big yellow cat-eyes. Kieran
took her to be the man's daughter.
He smiled at her. She continued
to stare, deadpan and
blank-eyed, with no answering
flicker of a smile. It was as
though she had never seen one
before. Kieran shivered. All this
silence and unresponsiveness became
eerie.</p>

<p>"I'm happy to tell you," he
murmured to Paula, "that I
don't think much of your little
pets?"</p>

<p>She could not allow herself to
be sharply angry. She only said,
in a whisper, "They are not pets,
they are not animals. They&mdash;"</p>

<p>She broke off. Something had
come over the naked people. Every
head had lifted, every eye
had turned away from the strangers.
They were listening. Even
the littlest ones were still.</p>

<p>Kieran could not hear anything
except the wind in the
trees.</p>

<p>"What&mdash;?" he started to ask.</p>

<p>Webber made an imperative
gesture for silence. The tableau
held for a brief second longer.
Then the brown-haired man who
seemed to be the leader made a
short harsh noise. The people
turned and vanished into the
trees.</p>

<p>"The Sakae," Webber said.
"Get out of sight." He ran toward
the flitter. Paula grabbed
Kieran's sleeve and pushed him
toward the trees.</p>

<p>"What's going on?" he demanded
as he ran.</p>

<p>"Their ears are better than
ours. There's a patrol ship coming,
I think."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> shadows took them in, orange-and-gold-splashed
shadows
under strange trees. Kieran
looked back. Webber had
been inside the flitter. Now he
tumbled out of the hatch and ran
toward them. Behind him the
hatch closed and the flitter
stirred and then took off all by
itself, humming.</p>

<p>"They'll follow it for a while,"
Webber panted. "It may give us
a chance to get away." He and
Paula started after the running
people.</p>

<p>Kieran balked. "I don't know
why I'm running away from anybody."</p>

<p>Webber pulled out a snub-nosed
instrument that looked
enough like a gun to be very convincing.
He pointed it at Kieran's
middle.</p>

<p>"Reason one," he said. "If the
Sakae catch Paula and me here
we're in very big trouble. Reason
two&mdash;this is a closed area, and
you're with us, so <i>you</i> will be in
very big trouble." He looked
coldly at Kieran. "The first reason
is the one that interests me
most."</p>

<p>Kieran shrugged. "Well, now
I know." He ran.</p>

<p>Only then did he hear the low
heavy thrumming in the sky.</p>

<h3>6.</h3>

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> sound came rumbling
very swiftly toward them. It
was a completely different sound
from the humming of the flitter,
and it seemed to Kieran to hold
a note of menace. He stopped in
a small clearing where he might
see up through the trees. He
wanted a look at this ship or flier
or whatever it was that had been
built and was flown by non-humans.</p>

<p>But Webber shoved him
roughly on into a clump of squat
trees that were the color of sherry
wine, with flat thick leaves.</p>

<p>"Don't move," he said.</p>

<p>Paula was hugging a tree beside
him. She nodded to him to
do as Webber said.</p>

<p>"They have very powerful
scanners." She pointed with her
chin. "Look. They've learned."</p>

<p>The harsh warning barks of
the men sounded faintly, then
were hushed. Nothing moved,
except by the natural motion
of the wind. The people crouched
among the trees, so still that
Kieran would not have seen them
if he had not known they were
there.</p>

<p>The patrol craft roared past,
cranking up speed as it went.
Webber grinned. "They'll be a
couple of hours at least, overhauling
and examining the flitter.
By that time it'll be dark,
and by morning we'll be in the
mountains."</p>

<p>The people were already moving.
They headed upstream, going
at a steady, shuffling trot.
Three of the women, Kieran noticed,
had babies in their arms.
The older children ran beside
their mothers. Two of the men
and several of the women were
white-haired. They ran also.</p>

<p>"Do you like to see them run?"
asked Paula, with a sharp note
of passion in her voice. "Does it
look good to you?"</p>

<p>"No," said Kieran, frowning.
He looked in the direction in
which the sound of the patrol
craft was vanishing.</p>

<p>"Move along," Webber said.
"They'll leave us far enough behind
as it is."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Kieran</span> followed the naked
people through the woods,
beside the tawny river. Paula
and Webber jogged beside him.
The shadows were long now,
reaching out across the water.</p>

<p>Paula kept glancing at him
anxiously, as though to detect
any sign of weakness on his
part. "You're doing fine," she
said. "You should. Your body
was brought back to normal
strength and tone, before you
ever were awakened."</p>

<p>"They'll slow down when it's
dark, anyway," said Webber.</p>

<p>The old people and the little
children ran strongly.</p>

<p>"Is their village there?"
Kieran asked, indicating the distant
mountains.</p>

<p>"They don't live in villages,"
Paula said. "But the mountains
are safer. More places to hide."</p>

<p>"You said this was a closed
area. What is it, a hunting preserve?"</p>

<p>"The Sakae don't hunt them
any more."</p>

<p>"But they used to?"</p>

<p>"Well," Webber said, "a long
time ago. Not for food, the Sakae
are vegetarians, but&mdash;"</p>

<p>"But," said Paula, "they were
the dominant race, and the people
were simply beasts of the
field. When they competed for
land and food the people were
hunted down or driven out." She
swung an expressive hand toward
the landscape beyond the
trees. "Why do you think they
live in this desert, scraping a
miserable existence along the
watercourses? It's land the
Sakae didn't want. Now, of
course, they have no objection to
setting it aside as a sort of game
preserve. The humans are protected,
the Sakae tell us. They're
living their natural life in their
natural environment, and when
we demand that a program be&mdash;"</p>

<p>She was out of breath and had
to stop, panting. Webber finished
for her.</p>

<p>"We want them taught, lifted
out of this naked savagery. The
Sakae say it's impossible."</p>

<p>"Is it true?" asked Kieran.</p>

<p>"No," said Paula fiercely. "It's
a matter of pride. They want to
keep their dominance, so they
simply won't admit that the people
are anything more than animals,
and they won't give them
a chance to be anything more."</p>

<p>There was no more talking
after that, but even so the three
outlanders grew more and more
winded and the people gained on
them. The sun went down in a
blaze of blood-orange light that
tinted the trees in even more
impossible colors and set the
river briefly on fire. Then night
came, and just after the darkness
shut down the patrol craft
returned, beating up along the
winding river bed. Kieran froze
under the black trees and the
hair lifted on his skin. For the
first time he felt like a hunted
thing. For the first time he felt
a personal anger.</p>

<p>The patrol craft drummed
away and vanished. "They won't
come back until daylight," Webber
said.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> handed out little flat packets
of concentrated food
from his pockets. They munched
as they walked. Nobody said
anything. The wind, which had
dropped at sundown, picked up
from a different quarter and began
to blow again. It got cold.
After a while they caught up
with the people, who had stopped
to rest and eat. The babies and
old people for whom Kieran had
felt a worried pity were in much
better shape than he. He drank
from the river and then sat
down. Paula and Webber sat beside
him, on the ground. The
wind blew hard from the desert,
dry and chill. The trees thrashed
overhead. Against the pale glimmer
of the water Kieran could
see naked bodies moving along
the river's edge, wading, bending,
grubbing in the mud. Apparently
they found things, for
he could see that they were eating.
Somewhere close by other
people were stripping fruit or
nuts from the trees. A man
picked up a stone and pounded
something with a cracking
noise, then dropped the stone
again. They moved easily in the
dark, as though they were used
to it. Kieran recognized the leader's
yellow-eyed daughter, her
beautiful slender height outlined
against the pale-gleaming water.
She stood up to her ankles in the
soft mud, holding something
tight in her two hands, eating.</p>

<p>The sweat dried on Kieran. He
began to shiver.</p>

<p>"You're sure that patrol ship
won't come back?" he asked.</p>

<p>"Not until they can see what
they're looking for."</p>

<p>"Then I guess it's safe." He
began to scramble around, feeling
for dried sticks.</p>

<p>"What are you doing?"</p>

<p>"Getting some firewood."</p>

<p>"No." Paula was beside him in
an instant, her hand on his arm,
"No, you mustn't do that."</p>

<p>"But Webber said&mdash;"</p>

<p>"It isn't the patrol ship,
Kieran. It's the people. They&mdash;"</p>

<p>"They what?"</p>

<p>"I told you they were low on
the social scale. This is one of
the basic things they have to be
taught. Right now they still regard
fire as a danger, something
to run from."</p>

<p>"I see," Kieran said, and let
the kindling fall. "Very well, if
I can't have a fire, I'll have you.
Your body will warm me." He
pulled her into his arms.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">She</span> gasped, more in astonishment,
he thought, than
alarm. "What are you talking
about?"</p>

<p>"That's a line from an old
movie. From a number of old
movies, in fact. Not bad, eh?"</p>

<p>He held her tight. She was
definitely female. After a moment
he pushed her away.</p>

<p>"That was a mistake. I want
to be able to go on disliking you
without any qualifying considerations."</p>

<p>She laughed, a curiously flat
little sound. "Was everybody
crazy in your day?" she asked.
And then, "Reed&mdash;"</p>

<p>It was the first time she had
used his given name. "What?"</p>

<p>"When they threw the stones,
and we got back into the flitter,
you pushed me ahead of you.
You were guarding me. Why?"</p>

<p>He stared at her, or rather at
the pale blur of her standing
close to him. "Well, it's always
been sort of the custom for the
men to&mdash; But now that I think
of it, Webber didn't bother."</p>

<p>"No," said Paula. "Back in
your day women were still taking
advantage of the dual standard&mdash;demanding
complete equality
with men but clinging to their
special status. We've got beyond
that."</p>

<p>"Do you like it? Beyond, I
mean."</p>

<p>"Yes," she said. "It was good
of you to do that, but&mdash;"</p>

<p>Webber said, "They're moving
again. Come on."</p>

<p>The people walked this time,
strung out in a long line between
the trees and the water, where
the light was a little better and
the way more open. The three
outlanders tagged behind, clumsy
in their boots and clothing.
The long hair of the people blew
in the wind and their bare feet
padded softly, light and swift.</p>

<p>Kieran looked up at the sky.
The trees obscured much of it so
that all he could see was some
scattered stars overhead. But he
thought that somewhere a moon
was rising.</p>

<p>He asked Paula and she said,
"Wait. You'll see."</p>

<p>Night and the river rolled behind
them. The moonlight became
brighter, but it was not at
all like the moonlight Kieran remembered
from long ago and
far away. That had had a cold
tranquility to it, but this light
was neither cold nor tranquil. It
seemed somehow to shift color,
too, which made it even less adequate
for seeing than the white
moonlight he was used to. Sometimes
as it filtered through the
trees it seemed, ice-green, and
again it was reddish or amber,
or blue.</p>

<p>They came to a place where
the river made a wide bend and
they cut across it, clear of the
trees. Paula touched Kieran's
arm and pointed. "Look."</p>

<p>Kieran looked, and then he
stopped still. The light was not
moonlight, and its source was
not a moon. It was a globular
cluster of stars, hung in the sky
like a swarm of fiery bees, a
burning and pulsing of many
colors, diamond-white and gold,
green and crimson, peacock blue
and smoky umber. Kieran
stared, and beside him Paula
murmured, "I've been on a lot of
planets, but none of them have
anything like this."</p>

<p>The people moved swiftly on,
paying no attention at all to the
sky.</p>

<p>Reluctantly Kieran followed
them into the obscuring woods.
He kept looking at the open sky
above the river, waiting for the
cluster to rise high so he could
see it.</p>

<p>It was some time after this,
but before the cluster rose clear
of the trees, that Kieran got the
feeling that something, or someone,
was following them.</p>

<h3>7.</h3>

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> had stopped to catch his
breath and shake an accumulation
of sand out of his
boots. He was leaning against a
tree with his back to the wind,
which meant that he was facing
their back-trail, and he thought
he saw a shadow move where
there was nothing to cast a shadow.
He straightened up with the
little trip-hammers of alarm
beating all over him, but he
could see nothing more. He
thought he might have been
mistaken. Just the same, he ran
to catch up with the others.</p>

<p>The people were moving steadily.
Kieran knew that their
senses were far keener than his,
and they were obviously not
aware of any danger other than
the basic one of the Sakae. He
decided that he must have been
seeing things.</p>

<p>But an uneasiness persisted.
He dropped behind again, this
time on purpose, after they had
passed a clearing. He stayed hidden
behind a tree-trunk and
watched. The cluster-light was
bright now but very confusing
to the eye. He heard a rustling
that he did not think was wind,
and he thought that something
started to cross the clearing and
then stopped, as though it had
caught his scent.</p>

<p>Then he thought that he heard
rustlings at both sides of the
clearing, stealthy sounds of
stalking that closed in toward
him. Only the wind, he told himself,
but again he turned to run.
This time he met Paula, coming
back to look for him.</p>

<p>"Reed, are you all right?" she
asked. He caught her arm and
pulled her around and made her
run. "What is it? What's the
matter?"</p>

<p>"I don't know." He hurried
with her until he could see Webber
ahead, and beyond him the
bare backs and blowing hair of
the people. "Listen," he said,
"are there any predators here?"</p>

<p>"Yes," Paula said, and Webber
turned sharply around.</p>

<p>"Have you seen something?"</p>

<p>"I don't know. I thought I did.
I'm not sure."</p>

<p>"Where?"</p>

<p>"Behind us."</p>

<p>Webber made the harsh barking
danger call, and the people
stopped. Webber stood looking
back the way they had come. The
women caught the children and
the men fell back to where Webber
stood. They looked and listened,
sniffing the air. Kieran
listened too, but now he did not
hear any rustlings except the
high thrashing of the branches.
Nothing stirred visibly and the
wind would carry away any
warning scent.</p>

<p>The men turned away. The
people moved on again. Webber
shrugged.</p>

<p>"You must have been mistaken,
Kieran."</p>

<p>"Maybe. Or maybe they just
can't think beyond the elementary.
If they don't smell it, it isn't
there. If something is after us
it's coming up-wind, the way any
hunting animal works. A couple
of the men ought to circle around
and&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Come on," said Webber wearily.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">They</span> followed the people beside
the river. The cluster
was high now, a hive of suns reflected
in the flowing water, a
kaleidoscopic rippling of colors.</p>

<p>Now the women were carrying
the smaller children. The ones
too large to be carried were lagging
behind a little. So were the
aged. Not much, yet. Kieran,
conscious that he was weaker
than the weakest of these, looked
ahead at the dim bulk of the
mountains and thought that
they ought to be able to make it.
He was not at all sure that he
would.</p>

<p>The river made another bend.
The trail lay across the bend,
clear of the trees. It was a wide
bend, perhaps two miles across
the neck. Ahead, where the trail
joined the river again, there was
a rocky hill. Something about
the outlines of the hill seemed
wrong to Kieran, but it was too
far away to be sure of anything.
Overhead the cluster burned
gloriously. The people set out
across the sand.</p>

<p>Webber looked back. "You
see?" he said. "Nothing."</p>

<p>They went on. Kieran was beginning
to feel very tired now,
all the artificial strength that
had been pumped into him before
his awakening was running
out. Webber and Paula walked
with their heads down, striding
determinedly but without joy.</p>

<p>"What do you think now?" she
asked Kieran. "Is this any way
for humans to live?"</p>

<p>The ragged line of women and
children moved ahead of them,
with the men in the lead. It was
not natural, Kieran thought, for
children to be able to travel so
far, and then he remembered
that the young of non-predacious
species have to be strong and
fleet at an early age.</p>

<p>Suddenly one of the women
made a harsh, shrill cry.</p>

<p>Kieran looked where she was
looking, off to the left, to the
river and the curving line of
trees. A large black shadow
slipped across the sand. He
looked behind him. There were
other shadows, coming with long
easy bounds out of the trees, fanning
out in a shallow crescent.
They reminded Kieran of some
animal he had once seen in a zoo,
a partly catlike, partly doglike
beast, a cheetah he thought it
had been called, only the cheetah
was spotted like a leopard
and these creatures were black,
with stiff, upstanding ears. They
bayed, and the coursing began.</p>

<p>"Nothing," said Kieran bitterly.
"I count seven."</p>

<p>Webber said, "My God, I&mdash;"</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> people ran. They tried to
break back to the river and
the trees that could be climbed
to safety, but the hunters turned
them. Then they fled blindly forward,
toward the hill. They ran
with all their strength, making
no sound. Kieran and Webber
ran with them, with Paula between
them. Webber seemed absolutely
appalled.</p>

<p>"Where's that gun you had?"
Kieran panted.</p>

<p>"It's not a gun, only a short-range
shocker," he said. "It
wouldn't stop these things. Look
at them!"</p>

<p>They bounded, sporting
around them, howling with a
sound like laughter. They were
as large as leopards and their
eyes glowed in the cluster-light.
They seemed to be enjoying
themselves, as though hunting
was the most delightful game in
the world. One of them ran up
to within two feet of Kieran and
snapped at him with its great
jaws, dodging agilely when he
raised his arm. They drove the
people, faster and faster. At first
the men had formed around the
women and children. But the
formation began to disintegrate
as the weaker ones dropped behind,
and no attempt was made
to keep it. Panic was stronger
than instinct now. Kieran looked
ahead. "If we can make it to that
hill&mdash;"</p>

<div class="figright">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:e:edmond-hamilton-the-stars-my-brothers-002.png" width="331" height="500" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Paula screamed and he stumbled
over a child, a girl about
five, crawling on her hands and
knees. He picked her up. She bit
and thrashed and tore at him,
her bare little body hard as
whalebone and slippery with
sweat. He could not hold onto
her. She kicked herself free of
his hands and rushed wildly out
of reach, and one of the black
hunters pounced in and bore her
away, shrieking thinly like a
fledgling bird in the jaws of a
cat.</p>

<p>"Oh my God," said Paula, and
covered her head with her arms,
trying to shut out sight and
sound. He caught her and said
harshly, "Don't faint, because I
can't carry you." The child's
mother, whichever of the women
it might have been, did not look
back.</p>

<p>An old woman who strayed
aside was pulled down and
dragged off, and then one of the
white-haired men. The hill was
closer. Kieran saw now what
was wrong with it. Part of it was
a building. He was too tired and
too sick to be interested, except
as it offered a refuge. He spoke
to Webber, with great difficulty
because he was winded. And then
he realized that Webber wasn't
there.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Webber</span> had stumbled and
fallen. He had started to get
up, but the hunters were on him.
He was on his hands and knees
facing them, screaming at them
to get away from him. He had,
obviously, had little or no experience
with raw violence. Kieran
ran back to him, with Paula
close behind.</p>

<p>"Use your gun!" he yelled. He
was afraid of the black hunters,
but he was full of rage and the
rage outweighed the fear. He
yelled at them, cursing them. He
hurled sand into their eyes, and
one that was creeping up on
Webber from the side he kicked.
The creature drew off a little, not
frightened but surprised. They
were not used to this sort of
thing from humans. "Your
gun!" Kieran roared again, and
Webber pulled the snub-nosed
thing out of his pocket. He stood
up and said unsteadily, "I told
you, it's not a gun. It won't kill
anything. I don't think&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Use it," said Kieran. "And
get moving again. Slowly."</p>

<p>They started to move, and
then across the sky a great iron
voice spoke like thunder. "Lie
down," it said, "please. Lie down
flat."</p>

<p>Kieran turned his head, startled.
From the direction of the
building on the hill a vehicle was
speeding toward them.</p>

<p>"The Sakae," said Webber
with what was almost a sob of
relief. "Lie down."</p>

<p>As he did so, Kieran saw a
pale flash shoot out from the
vehicle and knock over a hunter
still hanging on the flanks of
the fleeing people. He hugged
the sand. Something went whining
and whistling over him,
there was a thunk and a screech.
It was repeated, and then the
iron voice spoke again.</p>

<p>"You may get up now. Please
remain where you are." The vehicle
was much closer. They
were bathed in sudden light. The
voice said, "Mr. Webber, you are
holding a weapon. Please drop
it."</p>

<p>"It's only a little shocker,"
Webber said, plaintively. He
dropped it.</p>

<p>The vehicle had wide tracks
that threw up clouds of sand. It
came clanking to a halt. Kieran,
shading his eyes, thought he distinguished
two creatures inside,
a driver and a passenger.</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> passenger emerged,
climbing with some difficulty
over the steep step of the track,
his tail rattling down behind him
like a length of thick cable. Once
on the ground he became quite
agile, moving with a sort of oddly
graceful prance on his powerful
legs. He approached, his attention
centered on Kieran. But
he observed the amenities, placing
one delicate hand on his
breast and making a slight bow.</p>

<p>"Doctor Ray." His muzzle,
shaped something like a duck's
bill, nevertheless formed Paula's
name tolerably well. "And you,
I think, are Mr. Kieran."</p>

<p>Kieran said, "Yes." The star-cluster
blazed overhead. The
dead beasts lay behind him, the
people with their flying hair had
run on beyond his sight. He had
been dead for a hundred years
and now he was alive again. Now
he was standing on alien soil,
facing an alien form of life, communicating
with it, and he was
so dog-tired and every sensory
nerve was so thoroughly flayed
that he had nothing left to react
with. He simply looked at the
Saka as he might have looked at
a fence-post, and said, "Yes."</p>

<p>The Saka made his formal little
bow again. "I am Bregg." He
shook his head. "I'm glad I was
able to reach you in time. You
people don't seem to have any
notion of the amount of trouble
you make for us&mdash;"</p>

<p>Paula, who had not spoken
since the child was carried off,
suddenly screamed at Bregg,
"Murderer!"</p>

<p>She sprang at him, striking
him in blind hysteria.</p>

<h3>8.</h3>

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Bregg</span> sighed. He caught
Paula in those fine small
hands that seemed to have amazing
strength and held her, at
arm's length. "Doctor Ray," he
said. He shook her. "Doctor
Ray." She stopped screaming. "I
don't wish to administer a sedative
because then you will say
that I drugged you. But I will if
I must."</p>

<p>Kieran said, "I'll keep her
quiet."</p>

<p>He took her from Bregg. She
collapsed against him and began
to cry. "Murderers," she whispered.
"That little girl, those old
people&mdash;"</p>

<p>Webber said, "You could exterminate
those beasts. You
don't have to let them hunt the
people like that. It's&mdash;it's&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Unhuman is the word you
want," said Bregg. His voice was
exceedingly weary. "Please get
into the car."</p>

<p>They climbed in. The car
churned around and sped back
toward the building. Paula shivered,
and Kieran held her in his
arms. Webber said after a moment
or two, "How did you happen
to be here, Bregg?"</p>

<p>"When we caught the flitter
and found it empty, it was obvious
that you were with the people,
and it became imperative to
find you before you came to
harm. I remembered that the
trail ran close by this old outpost
building, so I had the patrol ship
drop us here with an emergency
vehicle."</p>

<p>Kieran said, "You knew the
people were coming this way?"</p>

<p>"Of course." Bregg sounded
surprised. "They migrate every
year at the beginning of the dry
season. How do you suppose
Webber found them so easily?"</p>

<p>Kieran looked at Webber. He
asked, "Then they weren't running
from the Sakae?"</p>

<p>"Of course they were," Paula
said. "You saw them yourself,
cowering under the trees when
the ship went over."</p>

<p>"The patrol ships frighten
them," Bregg said. "Sometimes
to the point of stampeding them,
which is why we use them only
in emergencies. The people do
not connect the ships with us."</p>

<p>"That," said Paula flatly, "is
a lie."</p>

<p>Bregg sighed. "Enthusiasts
always believe what they want to
believe. Come and see for yourself."</p>

<p>She straightened up. "What
have you done to them?"</p>

<p>"We've caught them in a
trap," said Bregg, "and we are
presently going to stick needles
into them&mdash;a procedure necessitated
by your presence, Doctor
Ray. They're highly susceptible
to imported viruses, as you
should remember&mdash;one of your
little parties of do-gooders succeeded
in wiping out a whole
band of them not too many years
ago. So&mdash;inoculations and quarantine."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Lights</span> had blazed up in the
area near the building. The
car sped toward them.</p>

<p>Kieran said slowly, "Why
don't you just exterminate the
hunters and have done with
them?"</p>

<p>"In your day, Mr. Kieran&mdash;yes,
I've heard all about you&mdash;in
your day, did you on Earth exterminate
the predators so that
their natural prey might live
more happily?"</p>

<p>Bregg's long muzzle and sloping
skull were profiled against
the lights.</p>

<p>"No," said Kieran, "we didn't.
But in that case, they were all
animals."</p>

<p>"Exactly," said Bregg. "No,
wait, Doctor Ray. Spare me the
lecture. I can give you a much
better reason than that, one even
you can't quarrel with. It's a
matter of ecology. The number
of humans destroyed by these
predators annually is negligible
but they do themselves destroy
an enormous number of small
creatures with which the humans
compete for their food. If
we exterminated the hunters the
small animals would multiply so
rapidly that the humans would
starve to death."</p>

<p>The car stopped beside the
hill, at the edge of the lighted
area. A sort of makeshift corral
of wire fencing had been set up,
with wide wings to funnel the
people into the enclosure, where
a gate was shut on them. Two
Sakae were mounting guard as
the party from the car approached
the corral. Inside the
fence Kieran could see the people,
flopped around in positions
of exhaustion. They did not seem
to be afraid now. A few of them
were drinking from a supply of
water provided for them. There
was food scattered for them on
the ground.</p>

<p>Bregg said something in his
own language to one of the
guards, who looked surprised
and questioned him, then departed,
springing strongly on
his powerful legs. "Wait," said
Bregg.</p>

<p>They waited, and in a moment
or two the guard came back leading
one of the black hunting
beasts on a chain. It was a female,
somewhat smaller than the
ones Kieran had fought with,
and having a slash of white on
the throat and chest. She howled
and sprang up on Bregg, butting
her great head into his shoulder,
wriggling with delight. He
petted her, talking to her, and
she laughed doglike and licked
his cheek.</p>

<p>"They domesticate well," he
said. "We've had a tame breed
for centuries."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He</span> moved a little closer to the
corral, holding tight to the
animal's chain. Suddenly she became
aware of the people. Instantly
the good-natured pet
turned into a snarling fury.
She reared on her hind legs and
screamed, and inside the corral
the people roused up. They were
not frightened now. They spat
and chattered, clawing up sand
and pebbles and bits of food to
throw through the fence. Bregg
handed the chain to the guard,
who hauled the animal away by
main force.</p>

<p>Paula said coldly, "If your
point was that the people are not
kind to animals, my answer is
that you can hardly blame them."</p>

<p>"A year ago," Bregg said,
"some of the people got hold of
her two young ones. They were
torn to pieces before they could
be saved, and she saw it. I can't
blame her, either."</p>

<p>He went on to the gate and
opened it and went inside. The
people drew back from him. They
spat at him, too, and pelted him
with food and pebbles. He spoke
to them, sternly, in the tone of
one speaking to unruly dogs, and
he spoke words, in his own
tongue. The people began to
shuffle about uneasily. They
stopped throwing things. He
stood waiting.</p>

<p>The yellow-eyed girl came sidling
forward and rubbed herself
against his thigh, head,
shoulder and flank. He reached
down and stroked her, and she
whimpered with pleasure and
arched her back.</p>

<p>"Oh, for God's sake," said
Kieran, "let's get out of here."</p>

<hr />

<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Later</span>, they sat wearily on
fallen blocks of cement inside
a dusty, shadowy room of
the old building. Only a hand-lamp
dispelled the gloom, and
the wind whispered coldly, and
Bregg walked to and fro in his
curious prance as he talked.</p>

<p>"It will be a little while before
the necessary medical team can
be picked up and brought here,"
he said. "We shall have to wait."</p>

<p>"And then?" asked Kieran.</p>

<p>"First to&mdash;" Bregg used a
word that undoubtedly named a
city of the Sakae but that meant
nothing to Kieran, "&mdash;and then
to Altair Two. This, of course, is
a council matter."</p>

<p>He stopped and looked with
bright, shrewd eyes at Kieran.
"You are quite the sensation already,
Mr. Kieran. The whole
community of starworlds is already
aware of the illegal resuscitation
of one of the pioneer
spacemen, and of course there is
great interest." He paused.
"You, yourself, have done nothing
unlawful. You cannot very
well be sent back to sleep, and
undoubtedly the council will
want to hear you. I am curious
as to what you will say."</p>

<p>"About Sako?" said Kieran.
"About&mdash;them?" He made a gesture
toward a window through
which the wind brought the
sound of stirring, of the gruntings
and whufflings of the corralled
people.</p>

<p>"Yes. About them."</p>

<p>"I'll tell you how I feel,"
Kieran said flatly. He saw Paula
and Webber lean forward in the
shadows. "I'm a human man.
The people out there may be savage,
low as the beasts, good for
nothing the way they are&mdash;but
they're human. You Sakae may
be intelligent, civilized, reasonable,
but you're not human.
When I see you ordering them
around like beasts, I want to
kill you. That's how I feel."</p>

<p>Bregg did not change his bearing,
but he made a small sound
that was almost a sigh.</p>

<p>"Yes," he said. "I feared it
would be so. A man of your
times&mdash;a man from a world
where humans were all-dominant&mdash;would
feel that way." He
turned and looked at Paula and
Webber. "It appears that your
scheme, to this extent, was successful."</p>

<p>"No, I wouldn't say that," said
Kieran.</p>

<p>Paula stood up. "But you just
told us how you feel&mdash;"</p>

<p>"And it's the truth," said
Kieran. "But there's something
else." He looked thoughtfully at
her. "It was a good idea. It was
bound to work&mdash;a man of my
time was bound to feel just this
way you wanted him to feel, and
would go away from here crying
your party slogans and believing
them. But you overlooked something&mdash;"</p>

<p>He paused, looking out the
window into the sky, at the faint
vari-colored radiance of the cluster.</p>

<hr />

<p><span class="cpq">"Y</span><span class="dcap">ou</span> overlooked the fact that
when you awoke me, I would
no longer be a man of my own
time&mdash;or of any time. I was in
darkness for a hundred years&mdash;with
the stars my brothers, and
no man touching me. Maybe that
chills a man's feelings, maybe
something deep in his mind lives
and has time to think. I've told
you how I feel, yes. But I haven't
told you what I think&mdash;"</p>

<p>He stopped again, then said,
"The people out there in the corral
have my form, and my instinctive
loyalty is to them. But
instinct isn't enough. It would
have kept us in the mud of Earth
forever, if it could. Reason took
us out to the wider universe. Instinct
tells me that those out
there are my people. Reason tells
me that you&mdash;" he looked at
Bregg, "&mdash;who are abhorrent to
me, who would make my skin
creep if I touched you, you who
go by reason&mdash;that you are my
real people. Instinct made a hell
of Earth for millennia&mdash;I say
we ought to leave it behind us
there in the mud and not let it
make a hell of the stars. For you'll
run into this same problem over
and over again as you go out into
the wider universe, and the old
parochial human loyalties must be
altered, to solve it."</p>

<p>He looked at Paula and said,
"I'm sorry, but if anyone asks
me, that is what I'll say."</p>

<p>"I'm sorry, too," she said,
rage and dejection ringing in
her voice. "Sorry we woke you. I
hope I never see you again."</p>

<p>Kieran shrugged. "After all,
you did wake me. You're responsible
for me. Here I am,
facing a whole new universe,
and I'll need you." He went over
and patted her shoulder.</p>

<p>"Damn you," she said. But she
did not move away from him.</p>

<p class="theend">THE END</p>

<div class="figtran">
<a href="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:e:edmond-hamilton-the-stars-my-brothers-003-2.jpg"><img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:e:edmond-hamilton-the-stars-my-brothers-003-1.jpg" width="142" height="200" alt="" title="" /></a>
<b><big>Transcriber's Note:</big></b><br /><br />
This etext was produced from <i>Amazing Stories Fact and Science Fiction</i> May
1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.</div>

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