Slan

"Two girls and a boy. What a grand and tremendous accident. If I were not a cold-blooded rationalist, the exact lightness of what has happened would make me a blubber-nig worshiper at the shrine of metaphysics. Two girls to reproduce their kind, and one boy to mate with them. I'll have to train them to the idea.

"June 2, 2071," began the machine. But Joa

"A damn fool journalist wrote an article about the children today. The ignoramus stated that I had used a machine on their mother, whereas I didn't even know the woman till after the children were born. I'll have to persuade the parents to retreat to some remote part of the world. Anything could happen where there are human beings – superstitious, emotional asses."

Joa

"Their seventeenth birthday. The girls thoroughly accept the idea of mating with their brother. Morality, after all, is a matter of training. I want this mating to take place, even though I found those other youngsters last year. I mink it unwise to wait till these latter grow up. We can start crossbreeding later."

It was August 18, 2090, that produced: "Each of the girls had triplets. Wonderful. At this rate of reproduction, the period when chance can destroy them will soon be reduced to an actuarial minimum. Despite the fact that others of their kind are turning up here and there, I am continually impressing on the children that their descendants will be the future rulers of the world..."

Back in her office, Joa

She broke off abruptly: "The best entrance to the palace for your purpose is located in the statuary section, two miles inside the grounds, constantly under brilliant lights, and directly under the guns of the first line of heavy fortifications. Also, machine-gun emplacements and tank patrols control the first two miles."

"What about my gun? Would I be allowed to have it on Earth?"

"No. The plan of transferring the men resembling you includes their disarmament."

He was aware of her questioning gaze on him, and his lean face twisted into a frown.

"What kind of a man is Kier Gray, according to your records?"

"Enormously capable, for a human being. Our secret X-rays definitely show him as human, if that's what you're thinking."

"At that time I did think about that, but your words verify Kathleen Layton's experience."

"We've got off the track," Joa

He shook his head, smiling humorlessly. "When the stakes are great, risks must match them. Naturally, I shall go alone. You" – he gazed at her somberly – "will have the great trust of locating the cave where my ship is, and getting the machine through to Earth before June 10th. Corliss, also, will have to be released. And now, please call Ingraham in."

Chapter Eighteen

The river seemed wider than when Cross had last seen it Uneasily, he stared across the quarter mile of swirling waters. In the swift current were patches of darkness and light, reflections from the ever-changing wonder-fire of the palace. There was late spring snow in the concealing brush where he removed his clothing, and it tingled coldly against his bare feet when he stood at last stripped for his task.

He held his mind almost blank. Then came the ironic realization that one naked man against the world was a sorry symbol of the atomic energy he controlled. He'd had so many weapons and not used them when he could. And now this ring on his finger, with its tiny atomic generator, and its pitiful two-foot effective range – this was the only product of his years of effort that he dared to take with him into the fortress.

Trees on the opposite bank made shadows half across the river. The darkness streaked the ugly swell of racing water, which carried him half a mile downstream before his backstrokes finally brought him to the shelter of the shallows.

He lay there, his mind reco

One man never knew what struck him. The other jerked around, his long thin face strained and ghastly in the flicker of light that peered through the foliage. But there was no stopping, no evading the blow that caught his jaw and smashed him to the ground. In fifteen minutes of crystalless hypnotism, they were under control. Fifteen minutes! Eight an hour! He smiled ironically. That certainly precluded any possibility of hypnotically overpowering the palace with its ten thousand or so men. He must have key men.

He brought the two prisoners back to consciousness and gave them his orders. Silently they took their portable machine guns and fell in behind him. They knew every inch of the ground. They knew when the tank patrols rolled by in their night rounds. There were no better soldiers in the human army than these palace guards. In two hours there were a dozen trained fighters slipping along like shadows, working in a silent, swift co-ordination that needed only an occasional soft-spoken command.

In three more hours, he had altogether seventeen men, a colonel, a captain and three lieutenants. And ahead was the long cordon of exquisite statuary, sparkling fountains and blazing lights that marked at once his goal and the end of the first simple operation.

The first hint of the coming dawn misted the eastern sky as Cross lay with his little army in the shadows of shrubbery and stared across the quarter mile of brilliantly lighted area. He could see the dark line of woods on the other side, where the fortifications were hidden.

"Unfortunately," the colonel whispered, "there is no chance of tricking them. The jurisdiction of this unit ends right here. It is forbidden to cross to any one of the dozen fortified rings without a pass, and even a pass can be used only in the daytime."

Cross frowned. There were precautions here beyond his expectations, and he saw that their strictness was of recent enactment. The slan attack on his valley, though no one believed the wild peasant tales about the size of the ships involved or suspected they were spaceships, had produced tension and alertness that might defeat him now.

"Captain!"

"Yes?" The tall officer slid up beside him.

"Captain, you look the most like me. You will, therefore, exchange your uniform for my clothes and then you, all of you, will return to your regular stations."

He watched them slip off: and vanish into the darkness. Then he stood up with the stiff carriage of the captain, and stalked into the light. Ten feet, twenty, thirty... He could see the fountain he wanted, a glittering shape with its sparkling streams of water. But there was too much artificial light, there were too many minds around, a confusion of vibrations that must be interfering with the one thought wave his mind was reaching for, if the damned thing was still there after all these hundreds of years. If it weren't there, God help him!

Forty feet, fifty, sixty... and then to his tense brain came a whisper, the tiniest of tiny mind vibrations.

"To any slan who penetrates this far – there is a secret passage into the palace. The five-flower design on the white fountain due north is a combination knob that operates on a secret door by radio. The combination is..."