1

He was the only passenger for Kimon and those aboard the ship lionized him because he was going there.

To land him at his destination the ship went two light-years out of its way, an inconvenience for which his passage money, much as it had seemed to him when he'd paid it back on Earth, did not compensate by half.

But the captain did not grumble. It was, he told Selden Bishop, an honor to carry a passenger for Kimon.

The businessmen aboard sought him out and bought him drinks and lunches and talked expansively of the markets opening up in the new-found solar systems.

But despite all their expansive talk, they looked at Bishop with half-veiled envy in their eyes and they said to him: "The man who cracks this Kimon situation is the one who'll have it big."

One by one, each of them contrived to corner him for private conversations and the talk, after the first drink, always turned to billions if he ever needed backing.

Billions - while he sat there with less than twenty credits in his pocket, living in terror against the day when he might have to buy a round of drinks. For he wasn't certain that his twenty credits would stretch to a round of drinks.

The dowagers towed him off and tried to mother him; the young things lured him off and did not try to mother him. And everywhere he went, he heard the whisper behind the half-raised hand:

"To Kimon!" said the whispers. "My dear, you know what it takes to go to Kimon! An IQ rating that's positively fabulous and years and years of study and an examination that not one in a thousand passes."

2

Kimon was a galactic El Dorado, a never-never land, the country at the rainbow's foot. There were few who did not dream of going there, and there were many who aspired, but those who were chosen were a very small percentage of those who tried to make the grade and failed.

Kimon had been reached - either discovered or contacted would be the wrong word to use - more than a hundred years before by a crippled spaceship out of Earth which landed on the planet, lost and unable to go farther.

To this day no one knew for sure exactly what had happened, but it is known that in the end the crew destroyed the ship and settled down on Kimon and had written letters home saying they were staying.

Perhaps the delivery of those letters, more than anything else, convinced the authorities of Earth that Kimon was the kind of place the letters said it was - although later on there was other evidence which weighed as heavily in the balance.

There was, quite naturally, no mail service between Kimon and Earth, but the letters were delivered, and in a most fantastic, although when you think about it, a most logical way. They were rolled into a bundle and placed in a sort of tube, like the pneumatic tubes that are used in industry for interdepartmental communication and the tube was delivered, quite neatly, on the desk of the World Postal Chief in London. Not on the desk of a subordinate, mind you, but on the desk of the chief himself. The tube had not been there when he went to lunch; it was there when he came back, and so far as could be determined, despite a quite elaborate investigation, no one had been seen to place it there.

In time, still convinced that there had been some sort of hoax played, the postal service delivered the letters to the addressees by special messengers who in their more regular employment were operatives of the World Investigative Bureau.

The addressees were unanimous in their belief the letters were genuine, for in most cases the handwriting was recognized and in every letter there were certain matters in the context which seemed to prove that they were bona fide.

So each of the addressees wrote a letter in reply and these were inserted in the tube in which the original letters had arrived and the tube was placed meticulously in the same spot where it had been found on the desk of the postal chief.

Then everyone watched and nothing happened for quite some time, but suddenly the tube was gone and no one had seen it go - it had been there one moment and not there the next.

There remained one question and that one soon was answered. In the matter of a week or two the tube reappeared again, just before the end of office hours. The postal chief had been working away, not paying much attention to what was going on, and suddenly he saw that the tube had come back again.

Once again it held letters and this time the letters were crammed with sheafs of hundred-credit notes, a gift from the marooned spacemen to their relatives, although it should be noted immediately that the spacemen themselves probably did not consider that they were marooned.

The letters acknowledged the receipt of the replies that had been sent from Earth and told more about the planet Kimon and its inhabitants.

And each letter carefully explained how come they had hundred-credit notes on Kimon. The notes as they stood, the letters said, were simply counterfeits, made from bills the spacemen had in their pockets, although when Earth's fiscal experts and the Bureau of Investigation men had a look at them there was no way in which you could tell them from the real thing.

But, the letters said, the Kimonian government wished to make right the matter of the counterfeiting. To back the currency the Kimonians, within the next short while, would place on deposit with the World Bank materials not only equivalent to their value, but enough additional to set up a balance against which more notes could be issued.

There was, the letters explained, no money as such on Kimon, but since Kimon was desirous of employing the men from Earth, there must be some way to pay them, so if it was all right with the World Bank and everyone else concerned...

The World Bank did a lot of hemming and hawing and talked about profound fiscal matters and deep economic principles, but all this talk dissolved to nothing when in the matter of a day or two several tons of carefully shielded uranium and a couple of bushels of diamonds were deposited, during the afternoon coffee hour, beside the desk of the bank's president.

With evidence of this sort, there was not much that Earth could do except accept the fact that the planet Kimon was a going concern, that the Earthmen who had landed there were going to stay, and to take the entire situation at face value.

The Kimonians, the letters said, were humanoid and had parapsychic powers and had built a culture which was miles ahead of Earth or any other planet so far discovered in the galaxy.

Earth furbished up a ship, hand-picked a corps of its most persuasive diplomats, loaded down the hold with expensive gifts, and sent the whole business out to Kimon.

Within minutes after landing, the diplomats had been quite undiplomatically booted off the planet. Kimon, it appeared, had no desire to ally itself with a second-rate, barbaric planet. When it wished to establish diplomatic relations it would say so. Earth people might come to Kimon if they wished and settle there, but not just any Earth person. To come to Kimon, the individual would have to possess not only a certain minimum IQ, but must also have an impressive scholastic record.

And that was the way it was left.

You did not go to Kimon simply because you wished to go there; you worked to go to Kimon.

First of all, you had to have the specified IQ rating and that ruled out ninety-nine percent or better of Earth's population. Once you had passed the IQ test, you settled down to grueling years of study, and at the end of the years of study you wrote an examination and, once again, most of the aspirants were ruled out. Not more than one in a thousand who took the examinations passed.

Year after year, Earth men and women dribbled out to Kimon, settled there, prospered, wrote their letters home.

Of those who went out, none came back. Once you had lived on Kimon, you could not bear the thought of going back to Earth.

And yet, in all those years, the sum of knowledge concerning Kimon, its inhabitants and its culture, was very slight indeed. What knowledge there was, the only knowledge that there was, was compiled from the letters delivered meticulously once each week to the desk of the postal chief in London.

The letters spoke of wages and salaries a hundred times the wage and salary that was paid on Earth, of magnificent business opportunities, of the Kimonian culture and the Kimonians themselves, but in no detail, of culture or of business or any other factor, were the letters too specific.

And perhaps the recipients of the letters did not mind too much the lack of specific information, for almost every letter carried with it a sheaf of notes, all crisp and new, and very very legal, backed by tons of uranium, bushels of diamonds, stacked bars of gold and other similar knickknacks deposited from time to time beside the desk of the World Bank's president.

It became, in time, the ambition of every family on the Earth to send at least one relative to Kimon, for a relative on Kimon virtually spelled an assured and sufficient income for the rest of the clan for life.

Naturally the legend of Kimon grew. Much that was said about it was untrue, of course. Kimon, the letters protested, did not have streets paved with solid gold, since there were no streets. Nor did Kimonian damsels wear gowns of diamond-dust - the damsels of Kimon wore not much of anything.

But to those whose understanding went beyond streets of gold and gowns of diamonds, it was well understood that in Kimon lay possibilities vastly greater than either gold or diamonds. For here was a planet with a culture far in advance of Earth, a people who had schooled themselves or had naturally developed parapsychic powers. On Kimon one could learn the techniques that would revolutionize galactic industry and communications; on Kimon one might discover philosophy that would set mankind overnight on a new and better - and more profitable? - path.

The legend grew, interpreted by each according to his intellect and his way of thought, and grew and grew and grew...

Earth's government was very helpful to those who wished to go to Kimon, for government as well as individuals, could appreciate the opportunities for the revolution of industry and the evolution of human thought. But since there had been no invitation to grant diplomatic recognition, Earth's government sat and waited, scheming, doing all it could to settle as many of its people on Kimon as was possible. But only the best, for even the densest bureaucrat recognized that on Kimon Earth must put its best foot forward.

Why the Kimonians allowed Earth to send its people was a mystery for which there was no answer. But apparently Earth was the only other planet in the galaxy which had been allowed to send its people. The Earthmen and the Kimonians, of course, both were humanoid, but this was not an adequate answer, either, for they were not the only humanoids in the galaxy. For its own comfort, Earth assumed that a certain common understanding, a similar outlook, a certain parallel evolutionary trend - with Earth a bit behind, of course - between Earth and Kimon might account for Kimon's qualified hospitality.

But be that as it may, Kimon was a galactic El Dorado, a never-never land, a planet to get ahead, the place to spend your life, the country at the rainbow's end.

3

Selden Bishop stood in the parklike area, where the gig had landed him, for Kimon had no spaceports, as it likewise failed in having many other things.

He stood, surrounded by his luggage, and watched the gig drive spaceward to rendezvous with the liner's orbit.

When he could see the gig no longer, he sat down on one of his bags and waited.

The park was faintly Earthlike, but the similarity was only in the abstract, for in each particular there was a subtle difference that said this was an alien planet. The trees were too slim and the flowers just a shade too loud and the grass was off a shade or two from the grass you saw on Earth. The birds, if they were birds, were more lizardlike than the birds of Earth and their feathers were put on wrong and weren't quite the color one associated with plumage. The breeze had a faint perfume upon it that was no perfume of Earth, but an alien odor that smelled like a color looked and Bishop tried to decide, but couldn't, which color it might be.

Sitting on his bag, in the middle of the park, he tried to drum up a little enthusiasm, tried to whistle up some triumph that he finally was on Kimon, but the best that he could achieve was a thankfulness that he'd made it with the twenty still intact.

He would need a little cash to get along on until he could find a job. But, he told himself, he shouldn't have to wait too long before he found a job. The thing, of course, was not to take the first one offered him, but to shop around a little and find the one for which he was best fitted. And that, he knew, might take a little time.

Thinking of it, he wished that he had more than a twenty. He should have allowed himself a bigger margin, but that would have meant something less than the best luggage he could buy and perhaps not enough of it, off-the-rack suits instead of tailored, and all other things accordingly.

It was, he told himself, important that he make the best impression, and sitting there and thinking it over, he couldn't bring himself to regret the money he had spent to make a good impression.

Maybe he should have asked Morley for a loan. Morley would have given him anything he asked and he could have paid it back as soon as he got a job. But he had hated to ask, for to ask, he now admitted, would have detracted from his newfound importance as a man who had been selected to make the trip to Kimon. Everyone, even Morley, looked up to a man who was set to blast for Kimon, and you couldn't go around asking for a loan or for other favors.

He remembered the last visit he had with Morley, and looking back at it now, he saw that while Morley was his friend, that last visit had a flavor, more or less, of a diplomatic job that Morley had to carry out.

Morley had gone far and was going farther in the diplomatic service. He looked like a diplomat and he talked like one and he had a better grasp, old heads at the department said, of Sector Nineteen politics and economics than any of the other younger men. He wore a clipped mustache that had a frankly cultivated look and his hair was always quite in place and his body, when he walked, was like a panther walking.

They had sat in Morley's digs and had been all comfortable and friendly and then Morley had gotten up and paced up and down the room with his panther walk.

"We've been friends for a long, long time," said Morley. "We've been in lots of scrapes together."

And the two of them had smiled, remembering some of the scrapes they had been in together.

"When I heard you were going out to Kimon," Morley said, "I was pleased about it naturally. I'd be pleased at anything that came your way. But I was pleased, as well, for another reason. I told myself here finally was a man who could do a job and find out what we want."

"What do you want?" Bishop had asked and, as he remembered it, he had asked it as if he might be asking whether Morley wanted Scotch or bourbon. Although, come to think of it, he never would have asked that particular question, for all the young men in the Alien Relations section religiously drank Scotch. But, anyhow, he asked it casually, although he sensed that there was nothing casual at all about the situation.

He could smell the scent of cloak and dagger and he caught a sudden glimpse of huge official worry and for an instant he was a little cold and scared.

"There must be some way to crack that planet," Morley had told him, "but we haven't found it yet. So far as the Kimonians are concerned, none of the rest of us, none of the other planets, officially exist. There's not a single planet accorded diplomatic status. On Kimon there is not a single official representative of any other people. They don't seem to trade with anyone, and yet they must trade with someone, for no planet, no culture, can exist in complete self-sufficiency. They must have diplomatic relations somewhere, with someone. There must be some reason, beyond the obvious one that we are an inferior culture, why they do not recognize Earth. For even in the more barbaric days of Earth there was official recognition of many governments and peoples who were cultural inferiors to the recognizing nation."

"You want me to find out all this?"

"No," said Morley. "Not all that. All we want are clues. Somewhere there is the clue that we are looking for, the hint that will tell us what the actual situation is. All we need is the opening wedge - the foot in the door. Give us that and we will do the rest."

"There have been others," Bishop told him. "Thousands of others. I'm not the only one who ever went to Kimon."

"For the last fifty years or more," said Morley, "the section has talked to all the others, before they went out, exactly as I'm talking to you now."

"And you've gotten nothing?"

"Nothing," said Morley. "Or almost nothing. Or nothing, anyhow, that counted or made any sense."

"They failed - "

"They failed," Morley told him, "because once on Kimon they forgot about Earth... well, not forgot about it, that's not entirely it. But they lost all allegiance to it. They were Kimon-blinded."

"You believe that?"

"I don't know," said Morley. "It's the best explanation that we have. The trouble is that we talk to them only once. None of them come back. We can write letters to them, certainly. We can try to jog them - indirectly, of course. But we can't ask them outright."

"Censorship?"

"Not censorship," said Morley, "although they may have that, too; but mostly telepathy. The Kimonians would know if we tried to impress anything too forcibly upon their minds. And we can't take the chance of a single thought undoing all the work that we have done."

"But you're telling me."

"You'll forget it," Morley said. "You will have several weeks in which you can forget it - push it to the back of your mind. But not entirely - not entirely."

"I understand," Bishop had told him.

"Don't get me wrong," said Morley. "It's nothing sinister. You're not to look for that. It may be just a simple thing. The way we comb our hair. There's some reason - perhaps many little ones. And we must know those reasons."

Morley had switched it off as quickly as he had begun it, had poured another round of drinks, had sat down again and talked of their school days and of the girls they'd known and of weekends in the country.

It had been, all in all, a very pleasant evening.

But that had been weeks ago, and since then he'd scarcely remembered it and now here he was on Kimon, sitting on one of his bags in the middle of a park, waiting for a welcoming Kimonian to show up.

All the time that he'd been waiting, he had been prepared for the Kimonian's arrival. He knew what a Kimonian looked like and he should not have been surprised.

But when the native came, he was.

For the native was six-foot ten, and almost a godlike being, a sculptured humanoid who was, astonishingly, much more human than he had thought to find.

One moment he had sat alone in the little parklike glade and the next the native was standing at his side.

Bishop came to his feet and the Kimonian said, "We are glad you are here. Welcome to Kimon, sir."

The native's inflection was as precise and beautiful as his sculptured body.

"Thank you," Bishop said, and knew immediately that the two words were inadequate and that his voice was slurred and halting compared with the native's voice. And, looking at the Kimonian, he had the feeling that by comparison, he cut a rumpled, seedy figure.

He reached into his pocket for his papers and his fingers were all thumbs, so that he fumbled for them and finally dug them out - dug is the word exactly - and handed them to the waiting being.

The Kimonian flicked them - that was it, flicked them - then he said "Mr. Selden Bishop. Very glad to know you. Your IQ rating, 160, is very satisfactory. Your examination showing, if I may say so, is extraordinary. Recommendations good. Clearance from Earth in order. And I see you made good time. Very glad to have you."

"But - " said Bishop. Then he clamped his mouth shut tight. He couldn't tell this being he'd merely flicked the pages and could not possibly have read them. For, obviously, he had.

"You had a pleasant flight, Mr. Bishop?"

"A most pleasant one," said Bishop and was filled with sudden pride that he could answer so easily and urbanely.

"Your luggage," said the native, "is in splendid taste."

"Why, thank you - " then was filled with rage. What right had this person to patronize his luggage!

But the native did not appear to notice.

"You wish to go to the hotel?"

"If you please," said Bishop, speaking very tightly, holding himself in check.

"Please allow me," said the native.

Bishop blurred for just a second - a definite sense of blurring - as if the universe had gone swiftly out of focus, then he was standing, not in the parklike glade, but in a one-man-sized alcove off a hotel lobby, with his bags stacked neatly beside him.

4

He had missed the triumph before, sitting in the glade, waiting for the native, after the gig had left him, but now it struck him, a heady, drunken triumph that surged through his body and rose in his throat to choke him.

This was Kimon! He finally was on Kimon! After all the years of study, he finally was here - the fabulous place he'd worked for many years to reach.

A high IQ, they'd said behind their half-raised hands - a high IQ and many years of study, and a stiff examination that not more than one in every thousand passed.

He stood in the alcove, with the sense of hiding there, to give himself a moment in which to regain his breath at the splendor of what had finally come to pass, to gain the moment in would take for the unreasoning triumph to have its way with him and go.

For the triumph was something that must not be allowed to pass. It was something that he must not show. It was a personal thing and as something personal it must be hidden deep.

He might be one of a thousand back on Earth, but here he stood on no more than equal footing with the ones who had come before him. Perhaps not quite on equal footing, for they would know the ropes and he had yet to learn them.

He watched them in the lobby - the lucky and the fabulous ones who had preceded him, the glittering company he had dreamed about during all the weary years - the company that he presently would join, the ones of Earth who were adjudged fit to go to Kimon.

For only the best must go - the best and smartest and the quickest. Earth must put her best foot forward for how otherwise would Earth ever persuade Kimon that she was a sister planet?

At first the people in the lobby had been no more than a crowd, a crowd that shone and twinkled, but with that curious lack of personality which goes with a crowd. But now, as he watched, the crowd dissolved into individuals and he saw them, not as a group, but as the men and women he presently would know.

He did not see the bell captain until the native stood in front of him, and the bell captain, if anything, was taller and more handsome than the man who'd met him in the glade.

"Good evening, sir," the captain said. "Welcome to the Ritz."

Bishop stared. "The Ritz? Oh, yes, I had forgotten. This place is the Ritz."

"We're glad to have you with us," said the captain. "We hope your stay will prove to be a long one."

"Certainly," said Bishop. "That is, I hope so, too."

"We had been notified," the captain said, "that you were arriving, Mr. Bishop. We took the liberty of reserving rooms for you. I trust they will be satisfactory."

"I am sure they will be," Bishop said.

As if anything on Kimon could be unsatisfactory!

"Perhaps you will want to dress," the captain said. "There still is time for dinner."

"Oh, certainly," said Bishop. "Most assuredly I will."

And wished he had not said it.

"We'll send up the bags," the captain said. "No need to register. That is taken care of. If you'll permit me, sir."

5

The rooms were satisfactory.

There were three of them.

Sitting in a chair, Bishop wondered how he'd ever pay for them.

Remembering the lonely twenty credits, he was seized with a momentary panic.

He'd have to get a job sooner than he planned, for the twenty credits wouldn't go too far with a layout like this one. Although he supposed if he asked for credit it would be given him.

But he recoiled from the idea of asking for credit, of being forced to admit that he was short of cash. So far he'd done everything correctly. He'd arrived aboard a liner and not a battered trader; his luggage - what had the native said? - it was in splendid taste; his wardrobe was all that could be expected; and he hoped that he'd not communicated to anyone the panic and dismay he'd felt at the luxury of the suite.

He got up from the chair and prowled about the room. There was no carpeting, for the floor itself was soft and yielding and you left momentary tracks as you walked, but they puffed back and smoothed out almost immediately.

He walked over to a window and stood looking out of it. Evening had fallen and the landscape was covered with a dusty blue - and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, but rolling countryside. There were no roads that he could see and no lights that would have told of other habitations.

Perhaps, he thought, I'm on the wrong side of the building. On the other side there might be streets and roads and homes and shops.

He turned back to the room and looked at it - the Earthlike furniture so quietly elegant that it almost shouted, the beautiful, veined marble fireplace, the shelves of books, the shine of old wood, the matchless paintings hanging on the wall, and the great cabinet that filled almost one end of the room.

He wondered what the cabinet might be. It was a beautiful thing, with an antique look about it and it had a polish - not of wax, but of human hands and time.

He walked toward it.

The cabinet said: "Drink, sir?"

"I don't mind if I do," said Bishop, then stopped stock-still, realizing that the cabinet had spoken and he had answered it.

A panel opened in the cabinet and the drink was there.

"Music?" asked the cabinet.

"If you please," said Bishop.

"Type?"

"Type? Oh, I see. Something gay, but maybe just a little sadness, too. Like the blue hour of twilight spreading over Paris. Who was it used that phrase? One of the old writers. Fitzgerald. I'm sure it was Fitzgerald."

The music told about the blue hour stealing over that city far away on Earth and there was soft April and distant girlish laughter and the shine of the pavement in slanting rain.

"Is there anything else you wish, sir?" asked the cabinet.

"Nothing at the moment."

"Very well, sir. You will have an hour to get dressed for dinner."

He left the room, sipping his drink as he went - and the drink had a certain touch to it.

He went into the bedroom and tested the bed and it was satisfactorily soft. He examined the dresser and the full-length glass and peeked into the bathroom and saw that it was equipped with an automatic shaver and massager, that it had a shower and tub, an exercising machine and a number of other gadgets that he couldn't place.

And the third room.

It was almost bare by the standards of the other two. In the center of it stood a chair with great flat arms and on each of the arms many rows of buttons.

He approached the chair cautiously, wondering what it was - what kind of trap it was. Although that was foolish, for there were no traps on Kimon. This was Kimon, the land of opportunity, where a man might make a fortune and live in luxury and rub shoulders with an intelligence and a culture that was the best yet found in the galaxy.

He bent down over the wide arms of the chair and found that each of the buttons was labeled. They were labeledHistory,Poetry,Drama,Sculpture,Literature,Painting,Astronomy,Philosophy,Physics,Religions and many other things. And there were several that were labeled with words he'd never seen and had no meaning to him.

He stood in the room and looked around at its starkness and saw for the first time that it had no windows, but was just a sort of box - a theater, he decided, or a lecture room. You sat in the chair and pressed a certain button and -

But there was no time for that. An hour to dress for dinner, the cabinet had said, and some of that hour was already gone.

The luggage was in the bedroom and he opened the bag that held his dinner clothes. The jacket was badly wrinkled.

He stood with it in his hands, staring at it. Maybe the wrinkles would hang out. Maybe -

But he knew they wouldn't.

The music stopped and the cabinet asked: "Is there something that you wish, sir?"

"Can you press a dinner jacket?"

"Surely, sir, I can."

"How soon?"

"Five minutes," said the cabinet. "Give me the trousers, too."

6

The bell rang and he went to the door.

A man stood just outside.

"Good evening," said the man. "My name is Montague, but they call me Monty."

"Won't you come in, Monty?"

Monty came in and surveyed the room.

"Nice place," he said.

Bishop nodded. "I didn't ask for anything at all. They just gave it to me."

"Clever, these Kimonians," said Monty. "Very clever, yes."

"My name is Selden Bishop."

"Just come in?" asked Monty.

"An hour or so ago."

"All dewed up with what a great place Kimon is."

"I know nothing about it," Bishop told him. "I studied it, of course."

"I know," said Monty, looking at him slantwise. "Just being neighborly. New victim and all that, you know."

Bishop smiled because he didn't quite know what else to do.

"What's your line?" asked Monty.

"Business," said Bishop. "Administration's what I'm aiming at."

"Well, then," Monty said, "I guess that lets you out. You wouldn't be interested."

"In what?"

"In football. Or baseball. Or cricket. Not the athletic type."

"Never had the time."

"Too bad," Monty said. "You have the build for it."

The cabinet asked: "Would the gentleman like a drink?"

"If you please," said Monty.

"And another one for you, sir?"

"If you please," said Bishop.

"Go in and get dressed," said Monty. "I'll sit down and wait."

"Your jacket and trousers, sir," said the cabinet.

A door swung open and there they were, cleaned and pressed.

"I didn't know," said Bishop, "that you went in for sports out here."

"Oh, we don't," said Monty. "This is a business venture."

"Business venture?"

"Certainly. Give the Kimonians something to bet on. They might go for it. For a while at least. You see, they can't bet - "

"I don't see why not - "

"Well, consider for a moment. They have no sports at all, you know. Wouldn't be possible. Telepathy. They'd know three moves ahead what their opponents were about to do. Telekinesis. They could move a piece or a ball or what-have-you without touching a finger to it. They - "

"I think I see," said Bishop.

"So we plan to get up some teams and put on exhibition matches. Drum up as much enthusiasm as we can. They'll come out in droves to see it. Pay admission. Place bets. We, of course, will play the bookies and rake off our commissions. It will be a good thing while it lasts."

"It won't last, of course."

Monty gave Bishop a long look.

"You catch on fast," he said. "You'll get along."

"Drinks, gentlemen," the cabinet said.

Bishop got the drinks, gave one of them to his visitor.

"You better let me put you down," said Monty. "Might as well rake in what you can. You don't need to know too much about it."

"All right," Bishop told him, agreeably. "Go ahead and put me down."

"You haven't got much money," Monty said.

"How did you know that?"

"You're scared about this room," said Monty.

"Telepathy?" asked Bishop.

"You pick it up," said Monty. "Just the fringes of it. You'll never be as good as they are. Never. But you pick things up from time to time - a sort of sense that seeps into you. After you've been here long enough."

"I had hoped that no one noticed."

"A lot of them will notice, Bishop. Can't help but notice, the way you're broadcasting. But don't let it worry you. We all are friends. Banded against the common enemy, you might say. If you need a loan - "

"Not yet," said Bishop. "I'll let you know."

"Me," said Monty. "Me or anyone. We all are friends. We got to be."

"Thanks."

"Not at all. Now you go ahead and dress. I'll sit and wait for you. I'll bear you down with me. Everyone's waiting to meet you."

"That's good to know," said Bishop. "I felt quite a stranger."

"Oh, my, no," said Monty. "No need to. Not many come, you know. They'll all want to know of Earth."

He rolled the glass between his fingers.

"How about Earth?" he asked.

"How about - "

"Yes, it still is there, of course. How is it getting on? What's the news?"

7

He had not seen the hotel before. He had caught a confused glimpse of it from the alcove off the lobby with his luggage stacked beside him, before the bell captain had showed up and whisked him to his rooms.

But now he saw that it was a strangely substantial fairyland, with fountains and hidden fountain music, with the spidery tracery of rainbows serving as groins and arches, with shimmery columns of glass that caught and reflected and duplicated many times the entire construction of the lobby so that one was at once caught up in the illusion that here was a place that went on and on forever and at the same time you could cordon off a section of it in one's mind as an intimate corner for a group of friends.

It was illusion and substantiality, beauty and a sense of home - it was, Bishop suspected, all things to all men and what you wished to make it. A place of utter magic that divorced one from the world and the crudities of the world, with a gaiety that was not brittle and a sentimentality that stopped short of being cheap, and that transmitted a sense of well-being and of self-importance from the very fact of being a part of such a place.

There was no such place on Earth, there could be no such place on Earth, for Bishop suspected that something more than human planning, more than human architectural skill had gone into its building. You walked in an enchantment and you talked with magic and you felt the sparkle and the shine of the place live within your brain.

"It gets you," Monty said. "I always watch the faces of the newcomers when they first walk in it."

"It wears off after a time," said Bishop, not believing it.

Monty shook his head. "My friend, it does not wear off. It doesn't surprise you quite so much, but it stays with you all the time. A human does not live long enough for a place like this to wear thin and commonplace."

He had eaten dinner in the dining room which was old and solemn, with an ancient other-worldness and a hushed, tiptoe atmosphere, with Kimonian waiters at your elbow, ready to recommend a certain dish or a vintage as one that you should try.

Monty had coffee while he ate and there had been others who had come drifting past to stop a moment and welcome him and ask him of Earth, always using a studied casualness, always with a hunger in their eyes that belied the casualness.

"They make you feel at home," said Monty, "and they mean it. They are glad when a new one comes."

He did feel at home - more at home than he had ever felt in his life before, as if already he was beginning to fit in. He had not expected to fit in so quickly and he was slightly astonished at it - for here were all the people he had dreamed of being with, and he finally was with them. You could feel the magnetic force of them, the personal magnetism that had made them great, great enough to be Kimon-worthy, and looking at them, he wondered which of them he would get to know, which would be his friends.

He was relieved when he found that he was not expected to pay for his dinner or his drinks, but simply sign a chit, and once he'd caught onto that, everything seemed brighter, for the dinner of itself would hake taken quite a hole out of the twenty nestling in his pocket.

With dinner over and with Monty gone somewhere into the crowd, he found himself in the bar, sitting on a stool and nursing a drink that the Kimonian bartender had recommended as being something special.

The girl came out of nowhere and floated up to the stool beside him, and she said:

"What's that you're drinking, friend?"

"I don't know," said Bishop. He made a thumb toward the man behind the bar. "Ask him to make you one."

The bartender heard and got busy with the bottles and the shaker.

"You're fresh from Earth," said the girl.

" Fresh is the word," said Bishop.

"It's not so bad," she said. "That is, if you don't think about it."

"I won't think about it," Bishop promised. "I won't think of anything."

"Of course, you do get used to it," she said. "After a while, you don't mind the faint amusement. You think, what the hell, let them laugh all they want to so long as I have it good. But the day will come - "

"What are you talking about?" asked Bishop. "Here's your drink. Dip your muzzle into that and - "

"The day will come when we are old to them, when we don't amuse them any longer. When we become passй. We can't keep thinking up new tricks. Take my painting, for example - "

"See here," said Bishop, "you're talking way above my head."

"See me a week from now," she said. "The name's Maxine. Just ask to see Maxine. A week from now, we can talk together. So long, Buster."

She floated off the stool and suddenly was gone.

She hadn't touched her drink.

8

He went up to his rooms and stood for a long time at a window, staring out into the featureless landscape lighted by a moon.

Wonder thundered in his brain, the wonder and the newness and the many questions, the breathlessness of finally being here, of slowly coming to a full realization of the fact that he was here, that he was one of that glittering, fabulous company he had dreamed about for years.

The long grim years peeled off him, the years of books and study, the years of determined driving, the hungry, anxious, grueling years when he had lived a monkish life, mortifying body and soul to drive his intellect.

The years fell off and he felt the newness of himself as well as the newness of the scene. A cleanness and a newness and the sudden glory.

The cabinet finally spoke to him.

"Why don't you try the live-it, sir?"

Bishop swung sharply around.

"You mean - "

"The third room," said the cabinet. "You'll find it most amusing."

"The live-it!"

"That's right," said the cabinet. "You pick it and you live it."

Which sounded like something out of the Alice books.

"It's safe," said the cabinet. "It's perfectly safe. You can come back any time you wish."

"Thank you," Bishop said.

He went into the room and sat down in the chair and studied the buttons on the arms.

History?

Might as well, he told himself. He knew a bit of history. He'd been interested in it and taken several courses and did a lot of supplemental reading.

He punched the History button.

A panel in the wall before the chair lit up and a face appeared - the face of a Kimonian, the bronzed and golden face, the classic beauty of the race.

Aren't any of them homely? Bishop wondered. None of them ugly or crippled, like the rest of humanity?

"What type of history, sir?" the face in the screen asked him.

"Type?"

"Galactic, Kimonian, Earth - almost any place you wish."

"Earth, please," said Bishop.

"Specifications?"

"England," said Bishop. "October 14, 1066. A place called Senlac."

And he was there.

He was no longer in the room with its single chair and its four bare walls, but he stood upon a hill in sunny autumn weather with the gold and red of trees and the blueness of the haze and the shouts of men.

He stood rooted in the grass that blew upon the hillside and saw that the grass had turned to hay with its age and sunshine - and out beyond the grass and hill, grouped down on the plain, was a ragged line of horsemen, with the sun upon their helmets and flashing on their shields, with the leopard banners curling in the wind.

It was October 14th and it was Saturday and on the hill stood Harold's hosts behind their locked shield wall and before the sun had set new forces would have been put in motion to shape the course of empire.

Taillefer, he thought. Taillefer will ride in the fore of William's charge, singing the Chanson de Roland and wheeling his sword into the air so that it became a wheel of fire to lead the others on.

The Normans charged and there was no Taillefer. There was no one who wheeled his sword into the air, there was no singing. There was merely shouting and the hoarse crying of men riding to their death.

The horsemen were charging directly at him and he wheeled and tried to run, but he could not outrun them and they were upon him. He saw the flash of polished hoofs and the cruel steel of the shoes upon the hoofs, the glinting lance point, the swaying, jouncing scabbard, the red and green and yellow of the cloaks, the dullness of the armor, the open roaring mouths of men - and they were upon him. And passing through him and over him as if he were not there.

He stopped stock-still, heart hammering in his chest, and, as if from somewhere far off, he felt the wind of the charging horses that were running all around him.

Up the hill there were hoarse cries of "Ut! UT!" and the high, sharp ring of steel. Dust was rising all around him and somewhere off to the left a dying horse was screaming. Out of the dust a man came running down the hill. He staggered and fell and got up and ran again and Bishop could see that blood poured out of the ripped armor and washed down across the metal, spraying the dead, sere grass as he ran down the hill.

The horses came back again, some of them riderless, running with their necks outstretched, with the reins flying in the wind, with foam dashing from their mouths.

One man sagged in the saddle and fell off, but his foot caught in the stirrup and his horse, shying, dragged him sidewise.

Up on top of the hill the Saxon square was cheering and through the settling dust he saw the heap of bodies that lay outside the shield wall.

Let me out of here! Bishop was screaming to himself. How do I get out of here! Let me out -

He was out, back in the room again, with its single chair and the four blank walls.

He sat there quietly and he thought:

There was no Taillefer.

No one who rode and sang and tossed the sword in the air.