The Goblin Reservation

“I did not,” said Maxwell.

“Can you explain what happened?”

“I can only guess. I had thought that perhaps my wave pattern was diverted, perhaps intercepted and diverted. At first I thought there had been transmitter error, but that seems impossible. The transmitters have been in use for hundreds of years. All the bugs should have been ironed out of them by now.”

“You mean that you were kidnapped?”

“If you want to put it that way.”

“And still will tell me nothing?”

“I have explained there’s not much to tell.”

“Could this planet have anything to do with the Wheelers?”

Maxwell shook his head “I couldn’t say for sure, but I don’t believe it did. Certainly there were none of them around. There was no indication they had anything to do with it.”

“Professor Maxwell, have you ever seen a Wheeler?”

“Once. Several years ago. One of them spent a month or two at Time. I caught sight of it one day.”

“So you would know a Wheeler, if you saw one?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Maxwell.

“I see you started out for one of the planets in the Coonskin system.”

“There was the rumor of a dragon,” Maxwell told him. “Not substantiated. In fact, the evidence was quite sketchy. But I decided it might be worth investigating…”

Drayton cocked an eyebrow. “A dragon?” he demanded.

“I suppose,” said Maxwell, “that it may be hard for someone outside my field to grasp the importance of a dragon. But the fact of the matter is that there is no scrap of evidence to suggest such a creature at any time existed. This despite the fact that the dragon legend is solidly embedded in the folklore of the Earth and some of the other planets. Fairies, goblins, trolls, banshees-we have all of these, in the actual flesh, but no trace of a dragon. The fu

He stopped, feeling a little silly. What could this stolid policeman who sat across the desk care about the dragon legend?

“I’m sorry, Inspector,” he said. “I let my enthusiasm for a favorite subject run away with me.”

“I have heard it said that the dragon legend might have risen from ancestral memories of the dinosaur.”

“I have heard it, too,” said Maxwell, “but it seems impossible. The dinosaurs were extinct long before mankind had evolved.”

“Then the Little Folk…”

“Possibly,” said Maxwell, “but it seems unlikely. I know the Little Folk and have talked with them about it. They are ancient, certainly much more ancient than we humans, but there is no indication they go back that far. Or if they do, they have no memory of it. And I would think that their legends and folk tales would easily carry over some millions of years. They are extremely long-lived, not quite immortal, but almost, and in a situation such as that, mouth-to-mouth tradition would be most persistent.”

Drayton gestured, brushing away the dragons and the Little Folk.

“You started for the Coonskin,” he said, “and you didn’t get there.”

“That is right. There was this other planet. A roofed-in, crystal planet.”

“ Crystal?”

“Some sort of stone. Quartz, perhaps. Although I can’t be sure. It could be metal. There was some metal there.”

Drayton asked smoothly. “You wouldn’t have known, when you started out, that you’d wind up on this planet?”

“If it’s collusion you have in mind,” said Maxwell, “you’re very far afield. I was quite surprised. But it seems you aren’t. You were waiting here for me.”

“Not particularly surprised,” said Drayton. “It has happened twice before.”

“Then you probably know about the planet.”

“Nothing about it,” said Drayton. “Simply that there’s a planet out there somewhere, operating an unregistered transmitter and receiver, and communicating by an unlisted signal. When the operator here at Wisconsin Station picked up their signal for transmittal, he signaled them to wait, that the receivers all were busy. Then got in touch with me.”

“The other two?”

“Both of them right here. Both tabbed for Wisconsin Station.”

“But if they got back…”

“That’s the thing,” said Drayton. “They didn’t. Oh, I guess you could say they did, but we couldn’t talk with them. The wave pattern turned out faulty. They were put back together wrong. They were all messed up. Both of them were aliens, but so tangled up we had a hard time learning who they might have been. We’re still not positive.”

“Dead?”

“Dead? Certainly. A rather frightful business. You’re a lucky man.”

Maxwell, with some difficulty, suppressed a shudder. “Yes, I suppose I am,” he said.

“You’d think,” said Drayton, “that anyone who messed around with matter transmission would make sure they knew how it was done. There’s no telling how many they may have picked up who came out wrong in their receiving station.”

“But you would know,” Maxwell pointed out. “You’d know if there had been any losses. A station would report back immediately if a traveler failed to arrive on schedule.”

“That’s the fu

“But I started out for Coonskin. Surely they reported…”

Then he stopped as the thought struck him straight between the eyes.

Drayton nodded slowly. “I thought you would catch on. Peter Maxwell got to the Coonskin system and came back to Earth almost a month ago.”

“There must be some mistake,” Maxwell protested weakly.

For it was unthinkable that there should be two of him, that another Peter Maxwell, identical in all details, existed on the Earth.

“No mistake,” said Drayton. “Not the way we have it figured. This other planet doesn’t divert the pattern. What it does is copy it.”

“Then there could be two of me! There could be…”

“Not any more,” said Drayton. “You’re the only one. About a week after he returned, there was an accident. Peter Maxwell’s dead.”

Around the corner from the tiny room where he’d met with Drayton, Maxwell found a vacant row of seats and sat down in one of them, rather carefully, placing his single piece of luggage on the floor beside him.

It was incredible, he told himself. Incredible that there should have been two Pete Maxwells and now one of those Maxwells dead. Incredible that the crystal planet could have had equipment that would reach out and copy a wave pattern traveling faster than the speed of light-much faster than the speed of light, for at no point in the galaxy so far linked by the matter transmitters was there any noticeable lag between the time of transmittal and arrival. Diversion-yes, perhaps there could be diversion, a reaching out and a snatching of the pattern, but the task of copying such a pattern would be something else entirely.

Two incredibles, he thought. Two things that should not have happened. Although if one of them had happened, the other surely followed. If the pattern had been copied, there would, quite necessarily, have been two of him, the one who went to the Coonskin system and the other who’d gone to the crystal planet. But if this other Peter Maxwell had really gone to Coonskin, he should still be there or only now returning. He had pla

He found that his hands were shaking and, ashamed of this, he clasped them hard together and held them in his lap.

He couldn’t go to pieces, he told himself. No matter what might be facing him, he had to see it through. And there was no evidence, no solid evidence. All that he had was what a member of Security had told him and he couldn’t count on that. It could be no more than a clumsy piece of police trickery designed to shake him into talking. Although it could have happened. It just could have happened!