The Narrow Land

All the other victims, who had similarly restrained their rage and sense of obligation to their fellow-men? No, Ditmar was simply a human being, as weak and selfish as any other, and his sins were those of commission rather than those of omission, which characterized the others.

Mario wandered on, peering in apartment, chamber and hall. A blonde girl, young and sweet as an Appalachian gilly-flower, swam nude in Alien's long green-glass pool, then sat on the edge amid a cloud of silver bubbles. Mario cursed the lascivious responses of Ebery's body, passed on. Nowhere did he see Thane Paren.

He returned to the reception hall. The party was breaking up, with Mervyn Alien bowing his guests out, men and women flushed with his food and drink, all cordial, all promising themselves to renew the acquaintance on a later, less conspicuous occasion.

Mario watched till the last had left-the last but one, this an incredibly tall, thin old man, dressed like a fop in pearl-gray and white. His wrists were like corn-stalks, his head was all skull. He leaned across Mervyn Alien's shoulder, a roguish perfumed old dandy, waxed, rouged, pomaded.

Now Alien made a polite inquiry, and the old man nodded, beamed. Alien ushered him into a small side room, an office painted dark gray and green.

The old man sat down, wrote a check. Alien dropped it into the telescreen slot, and the two waited, making small talk. The old man seemed to be pressing for information, while Alien gracefully brushed him aside. The television flickered, flashed an acknowledgment from the bank. Alien rose to his feet. The old man arose. Alien took a deep breath; they stepped into the herbarium. The old man took three steps, tottered. Alien caught him deftly, laid him on a concealed rubber-tired couch, wheeled him forward, out into the laboratory where Ja

Now Mario watched with the most careful of eyes, and into a socket in his goggles he plugged another cord leading to a camera in his pouch. Everything he saw would be recorded permanently.

There was little to see. Alien wheeled Ja

Alien seated himself, lit a cigarette, yawned. Five minutes passed. The balcony rose, the golasma cellules swung on an axis, the balcony lowered. Another five minutes passed. The balcony raised. Alien stepped forward, threw off the switches.

Alien gave each body an injection from the same hypodermic, rolled the couches into an adjoining room, departed without a backward glance.

Toward the swimming pool, thought Mario. Let him go!

At nine o'clock in Tanagra Square, a cab dropped off a feeble lackluster old man, tall and thin as a slat, who immediately sought a bench.

Mario waited till the old man showed signs of awareness, watched the dawning alarm, the frenzied examination of emaciated hands, the realization of fifty stolen years. Mario approached, led the old man to a cab, took him to his apartment. The morning was a terrible one.

Ja

"Hello, Slade," said Mario. "There's a job I want done tonight."

Slade looked at him with a steady wary eye. "Does it get me in trouble?"

"No."

"What's the job?"

"This man you've been watching for me, Roland Mario, do you know where to find him?"

"He's at the Persian Terrace having breakfast with the girl he spent the night with. Her name is Laura Lingtza; she's a dancer at the Vedanta Epic Theater."

"Never mind about that. Get a piece of paper, copy what I'm going to dictate."

"Go ahead, I'm ready."

"Meet me at eleven p.m. at the Cambodian Pillar, lobby of Paradise I

Mario waited a moment till Slade looked up from his writing. "Type that out," he said. "Hand it to Roland Mario at about nine-thirty tonight"

CHAPTER X

New Bodies for Old

Restlessly Mario paced the floor, pudgy hands clasped behind his back. Tonight would see the fruit of a year's racking toil with brain and imagination. Tonight, with luck, he would shed the hateful identity of Ralston Ebery. He thought of Louis Correaos. Poor Louis, and Mario shook his head. What would happen to Louis' Airfarer? And Letya Arnold? Would he go back out into Tanagra Square to lurk and hiss as Ralston Ebery sauntered pompously past?

He called the Aetherian Block, got put through to Louis Correaos. "How's everything, Louis?"

"Going great We're all tooled up, be producing next week **

"How's Arnold?"

Correaos screwed up his face. "Ebery, you'll think I'm as crazy as Arnold. But he can fly faster than light," "What?"

"Last Thursday night he wandered into the office. He acted mysterious, told me to follow him. I went. He took me up to his observatory-just a window at the sky where he's got a little proton magniscope. He focused it, told me to look. I looked, saw a disk-a dull dark disk about as large as a full moon. 'Pluto,' said Arnold. 'In about ten minutes, there'll be a little white flash on the left-hand side.'

"How do you know?"

"I set off a flare a little over six hours ago. The light should be reaching there about now."

"I gave him a queer look, but I kept my eye glued on the image, and sure enough-there it was, a little spatter of white light "Now watch,' he says, 'there'll be a red one.' And he's right. There's a red light." Correaos shook his big sandy head. "Ebery, I'm convinced. He's got me believing him."

Mario said in a toneless voice, "Put him on, Louis, if you can find him."

After a minute or so Letya Arnold's peaked face peered out of the screen. Mario said leadenly, "Is this true, Arnold? That you're flying faster than light?"

Arnold said peevishly, "Of course it's true, why shouldn't it be true?"

"How did you do it?"

"Just hooked a couple of electron-pushers on to one of your high-altitude aircars. Nothing else. I just turned on the juice. The hook-up breaks blazing fury out of the universe. There's no acceleration, no momentum, nothing. Just speed, speed, speed, speed. Puts the stars within a few days' run, I've always told you, and you said I was crazy." His face wrenched, gall burnt at his tongue. "I'll never see them, Ebery, and you're to blame. I'm a dead man. I saw Pluto, I wrote my name on the ice, and that's how I'll be known."

He vanished from the screen. Correaos returned. "He's a goner," said Correaos gruffly. "He had a hemorrhage last night. There'll be just one more-his last."

Mario said in a far voice, 'Take care of him, Louis. Because tomorrow I'm afraid maybe things will be different."

"What do you mean-different?"

"Ralston Ebery's disposition might suffer a relapse."

"God forbid."

Mario broke the co

Mario called a bellboy. "See that young man in the tan jacket by the Cambodian Pillar?"

"Yes, sir."

"Give him this note."

"Yes, sir."

Ralston Ebery had put loose flesh on Mario's body. Pouches hung under the eyes, the mouth was loose, wet. Mario sweated in a sudden heat of pure anger. The swine, debauching a sound body, unused to the filth Ebery's brain would invent!