ill-power.
     The nanny swayed. The Wall opened just a little way. Yar Alt waited for
the  right  moment and hurled his stiletto  through the gap. It  pierced the
roundhead woman in the throat. Her eyes went blank and the Wall divided.
     Yar Alt jumped over the fallen nanny. He tugged the stiletto out of her
throat and started racing down the corridor. After a few strides he suddenly
realised that he had not retrieved his  pistol from Mother Lua. He was about
to go  back, but changed his mind, hurrying to catch  up with  Ave  Mar  and
Mada. The traitress who had led the evildoer towards the Central Console had
already received her deserts!
     Yar Alt ran along the underground passage  and the lighting went on  as
he approached and went out again behind him.
     The  Wall  directly before the palace barred  his  way  once again, but
opened as soon as he glanced at the spiral.
     He was now in the palace. The monastery building, reconstructed for the
Dictator,  still  bore  the features  of  the  old architecture. Low vaulted
ceilings, slit windows from floor to ceiling.
     The  rooms  were sumptuously decorated for  ceremonial  assemblies that
were no longer held for fear that the Dictator might be assassinated.
     Yar Alt knew how to get through to Mada's chambers. Subtle taste and  a
woman's hand had completely transformed the austere cells and oratories. Yar
Alt burst  into one that had been decorated with pale blue fabric and silver
cords, and it was there that he found Ave and Mada.
     Mada was doing her hair. Beside herself with fury, she turned round and
stamped her foot.
     "How dare you burst in on me, you despicable robot of the Guard?"
     Yar Alt showered Mada with threats.
     "Silence, you boor!" exploded the furious  Ave Mar, drawing  himself up
to his full height.
     Mada shielded him with her body.
     "Get  out of  here,  you filthy robot! You're not worth  a hair  of  my
husband's head!"
     "Husband?"  Yar  Alt  bellowed  with offensive laughter. "They  are  no
longer alive, the unscrupulous witnesses of your ignominious ceremony  under
cover  of  which  the  enemies  of  the  Superiors planned to  wipe out  our
continent!"
     "Blood on your hands and slander on  your  tongue-that is all you stand
for! What can you know of goodness, love and nobility?"
     Yar Alt pushed Mada roughly out of  the way and hurled himself with his
stiletto  on the unarmed Ave. The  other fended him off  with a kick. As  he
fell, Alt seized hold of Mada and tried to stab her.
     Ave  Mar gripped  his arm and twisted it so that  the  weapon  tore Yar
Alt's own tunic.
     Yar Alt was an experienced fighter. Ave Mar was an experienced athlete.
They locked in combat, rolling about the ancient oratory and leaving a trail
of bloodstains on the carpet.
     Mada stared transfixed and could not tell whose blood it was. Ave Mar's
face was smeared all over with it.
     Yar Alt stabbed Ave several times, but could not draw his hand far back
enough for the  fatal blow. Ave Mar sprang to his feet, seized a heavy chair
and hurled it at his opponent. The other tried to dodge it, but a leg caught
him on the head  and he fell onto the floor. He nevertheless managed to draw
back the stiletto, taking aim for a throw at Mada.
     Ave Mar struck Yar  Alt  on the  temple. His enemy was flung backwards,
but  threw out his legs  and locked them round  Ave's ankles. Turning with a
jerk, he threw Ave to the floor, then, getting up onto his knees, raised the
stiletto. Ave knocked the weapon out of his hand.
     Two shots rang out in succession. Mother  Lua crawled through the door,
a  pistol dancing  in her hand. Yar Alt reached  for his stiletto  again  to
finish Ave off.
     Mada rushed to Lua,  snatched  the weapon  out of her  failing hand and
pressed  the firing  button. Yar Alt  jerked  convulsively, slumped, and lay
still.
     "He loaded it with  poisoned  bullets  himself," gasped Mother Lua. "My
dear, what will become of you?.."
     Ave Mar rose to his feet and, breathing heavily, looked in amazement at
the body  of his adversary  and at the unperturbed  Mada.  But  she suddenly
threw the pistol aside with revulsion.
     "Blood! Blood!" she said in despair. "Now there can only be death. They
will tear you to pieces, my husband. No one  will believe  it was  I who did
this."
     Ave Mar himself couldn't believe it as he stared in bewilderment at his
bloodstained hands.

     Chapter Six

        NO HAPPINESS IN THIS WORLD

     Mada  Jupi  was,  of  course,  a  pampered  child. Her every  wish  was
fulfilled, she was glorified and bowed down to. But she had nevertheless not
become  spoiled  and  capricious,  or incapable  of doing anything  but give
orders. Mother  Lua, who  preserved the  wisdom of the  people,  had managed
after the death of Mada's mother to inspire the girl with the  idea of equal
rights for  all  Faetians, whatever  their  outward appearance.  Restrained,
always  calm.  Mother  Lua had  the rare  talent of  the story-teller and an
innate  gift  of  influencing the minds  of others. In another  country,  at
another time. Mother Lua would have been the pride of the people; but on the
barbarian continent of Power-mania's Superiors she was only a nanny-true, of
the Dictator's daughter. She had always held up the girl's own mother as  an
example, convincing her that the daughter should follow suit.
     Mada grew up resembling her mother, but  she also took after her father
to some  extent.  Perhaps  in  her ability  to love and  hate  to  extremes.
Consequently, the meeting with Ave swept her right off her feet. She fell in
love, and a soft tenderness  was  combined  with ruthless determination, and
bewilderment with irrepressible daring. She had shot Yar Alt as if he were a
mad beast, yet she was dismayed at the sight of his body.
     The nanny  was dying.  Mada kneeled in  front of her, listening as  she
whispered something almost inaudible.
     "Nanny is  talking about her son. And  she  says  that Yar Alt murdered
Kutsi."
     "Where? How?"
     But  Mother Lua could not say any more. Her strength had ebbed away. No
efforts on Mada's part were of any avail, neither the kiss of life nor heart
massage. The nanny's  eyes closed and her body  stretched out  The hand that
Mada had been holding began to turn cold. There was no pulse any more.
     "It's the end," said Mada, and she burst into tears.
     Ave now saw his companion  as a weak and helpless girl.  Like a  child,
she shook her nurse, kissed her cold hands and tried to wake her up.
     Finally she turned her tear-stained face to Ave.
     "My nanny  is dead.  She was so kind and clever! And we are  finished."
And she glanced at Yar Alt's contorted body. "Just think! He was my cousin."
     "Maybe we should try and help him!"
     Mada shuddered.
     "The bullets were poisoned. I don't know how my poor nanny came  by his
pistol." She began sobbing again.
     Ave decided  that  he must do something. He lifted up the dead Alt, who
had stiffened in his last convulsions, and  carried him into a corner of the
room behind the curtains.
     Mada stood up determinedly and threw her head back.
     "It's no use. The  Guards will  be here soon, and  then my father." She
picked Alt's pistol up off  the floor. "Forgive me for taking charge  of our
last step.  There is no need to  fire a bullet. One scratch is enough. Death
will be instant. We shall hold hands  with  a bullet in our palms.  We shall
leave this world in which there is no happiness for us."
     Ave looked  into her  face: determination  in her  was  struggling with
despair.
     Mada took the last round out of the pistol. The  bullet was silvery and
its sharp prickles were brown where the poisonous coating had been applied.
     Ave resolutely gripped Mada's hand.
     "No! Faetians don't give in so easily. We can still  renounce life, but
happiness... No!"
     "There is no happiness in this world," replied Mada.
     "Show  me  the way  into the garden," said  Ave  masterfully, "and then
through the Blood Door."
     "You think we can flee  somewhere? Dawn is near, the last  in our life.
Can you hear the birds  singing?  I  shall  follow you  because you  are  my
husband.  But  we shall take the prickly bullet with us.  It  will be a safe
protection for us."
     "Lead the way," urged Ave.
     Mada looked at  him  curiously. Until  now, she had thought herself the
stronger.
     They carried Lua's body to a couch and Mada spread over it a  pale blue
coverlet from her bed. Then she showed Ave a low door  leading into a narrow
passage that ended in a steep ladder.
     Just before dawn,  the garden had  changed  completely. A silvery cloud
had  filled the avenues,  hiding the bushes  and  tree-trunks from  view. It
seemed to Ave  that he and Mada  were walking into another  world above  the
clouds. He clasped her slender hand more tightly.
     The quivering mist at their feet seemed treacherous, weightless and yet
dense. It was as if there might be water under it  one  moment and an  abyss
the next.
     Mada stepped fearlessly into the  swirling mist and  took Ave with her.
The obedient Blood Door opened in front of her.
     A  dense mist had enveloped the ruins of the old shrine under the Dread
Wall. As they walked  breast-high through the cloud that lay on  the stones,
Ave and Mada seemed to be fording a river of foam.
     Mada knew the way. They came surprisingly soon to the black building of
the Temple of Eternity. Ave thought that the unfortunate Kutsi must have led
them  the  long  way round. Poor wretch! It cost Ave  an effort  to restrain
himself; he did  not even  allow himself a sigh,  but he felt sorry  for the
man.
     Ave despised his  own habitual changes of mood. But now he was firm and
knew what had to be done. That was why he was taking Mada to Um Sat.
     The Elder was astounded when he saw the  newly-weds on the threshold of
his cell once again.
     He gave Mada a seat  in an armchair opposite the table at  which he had
spent the whole night. Ave stood beside Mada.
     "What's happened? Can I help you in any way?"
     "There  is no happiness in this world," cried Ave. "But  in your  power
there is another world!"
     The Elder raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
     "There is another world in space," explained Ave, and he told the Elder
all about what had happened.
     Um Sat became thoughtful.
     "So I must accept Yar Jupi's conditions and, in my turn, demand that he
send  his daughter to  Terr? Doesn't that seem incredible? To take refuge in
space?"
     "But  that would mean salvation  not  only for me and Ave,"  intervened
Mada. "It would be the fulfilment of a dream: to help the Faetians,  to find
them a new  world. Nanny and Mother were thinking about it. Not only Ave and
I, but  all of  us could be  happy there. It's not  just for myself that I'm
ready to fly to Terr. That's what I'm going to tell my father."
     Mada understood global problems in no way more deeply than Um Sat.
     "What duties as an astronaut can Mada carry out?" asked Um Sat sternly.
     "I  am a Sister of Health.  We are needed everywhere. And not  only for
the children."
     "That's true," agreed Um Sat. "Ave Mar, you will stay here,  no  one is
going  to look for  your  secretary.  Mada must go to  her chambers and lock
herself in. Ave, see your young wife as far  as the Dread Wall.  It's a good
thing that you both look  on the  trip to Terr as an exploit, not just as an
escape."


     After their departure, the Elder sat for a while in reflection. Then he
summoned several sages  of  learning  who had arrived  for the session. They
filled his cell. Many of them were  roundheads, but there were  longfaces as
well. As they came in, each  touched his right eyebrow with  his left  hand.
When the  cell was packed  full, Um Sat asked if he should fly from Faena on
the eve of possible  events  for  which, in the name of Justice, the toilers
and their friends had been preparing for so many cycles.
     After all, he was an  adherent of the struggle  against the proprietors
on both continents, although he had not fully fathomed its depths.
     Those present decided unanimously that Um Sat, the  personification and
pride of learning on Faena, should go into space to find the continents that
the Faetians needed. Many of them considered  that in  this  way  they would
best safeguard the life of  the great Elder, but no one said anything  about
it to him.
     Um Sat threw  his  hands apart. He must submit to the general decision.
He had now received the right to  act.  When Ave returned, Um Sat called the
Dictator's secretary over the closed TV. The screen lit  up and the slits of
the secretary box glittered on it.
     "Dictator Jupi,  most  illustrious  of  the  illustrious,  consents  to
receive  the  honorary longface Um Sat  and is  sending an  escort for him,"
announced the box, which had been programmed to  speak in the old style. The
screen went blank.
     "What?"  whispered  Ave Mar. "Go into  the Lair? Doesn't this mean that
Yar Jupi wants to take a hostage?"
     The Elder smiled sadly.
     "The risk is not so great."
     An officer of the  Blood  Guard soon appeared in  the cell. Ave's blood
froze. Before him stood the living Yar Alt.
     The caller bowed  to the  Elder,  glanced  casually  at  Ave  and  said
pompously:
     "The greatest of the great,  the Dictator Yar Jupi, gave you the right,
honorary long-face, to enter his presence. I have been sent to escort you to
the palace."
     Ave Mar  had  the impression that even the Blood Guard officer's  voice
was the same as  Alt's. Had he  really come back from the dead? Perhaps  the
paralysis caused  by the bullet had  only been temporary. But why didn't  he
rush at Ave the way he had done in Mada's room?
     The  officer of  the Blood Guard merely glanced indifferently  again at
Ave Mar and bowed to him.
     "In the name of the most illustrious Dictator, I bear apologies  to the
honoured guest."
     As soon as the officer of the Blood Guard and Um Sat had gone  out, Ave
Mar rushed to the door of the cell.  To his amazement, it was unlocked. Only
then did Ave  Mar realise  that the  officer's  face had been innocent of  a
scar.


     Dictator Yar  Jupi was waiting  impatiently for Um  Sat  Omnipotent  by
grace of the Blood Council, capable in favour of  the proprietors of sending
millions  of Faetians to their death and ready to  unleash  a disintegration
war  at any moment, he was powerless to safeguard the one life that was  the
most dear to him.
     Yar Jupi was a complicated person. He understood extremely well whom he
was serving and  how. After losing his wife in his time, he had come to hate
the roundheads from whom she had  contracted  a fatal disease  while nursing
them. This hatred had finally found expression in a barefaced doctrine which
it was impossible to believe, but which proved convenient to the proprietors
from  the Blood Council. Now, at the height of power, when he was ostensibly
leading the life of an ascetic in voluntary seclusion, love for his daughter
had become the only ray of light to Yar  Jupi. Everything else was darkness:
fear  for his own life, terror  of a war which he was nevertheless preparing
himself, terror also of the toilers and of his own masters who were ready to
get rid of him.
     The thing that mattered to  him most now was Mada's safety. She was the
only one he would want to save from among the millions of doomed.
     But how?
     And so, in fulfilment of the complex plan that had  occurred to him, he
had appeared  unexpectedly during a session of Peaceful Space in the  Temple
of Eternity. And now Um Sat was due to arrive.
     The officer of the Blood Guard, Yar  Alt's brother, handed Um Sat  over
to two security robots which led the sage of learning through low-ceilinged,
sumptuously furnished halls.
     Urn Sat glanced out of the corner of his eye at his unwieldy bodyguards
or escorts with their cubic heads and hooked, scaly manipulators.
     In one of  the rooms, a box with glittering  slits in it, just like the
one  that  the  Dictator  used,  said  with  programmed  floweriness  in the
impeccable ancient manner:
     "Urn Sat, honorary longface, may pass through the door in front of him,
on  the other side of which there awaits  him the most blissful meeting with
the greatest of the great,  the most  brilliant of the  brilliant, Yar Jupi,
Dictator of the continent of the Superiors."
     The door opened of its own  accord,  the  robot  security  guards  fell
behind and Urn Sat went into the grim, empty dungeon with the grey walls.
     Yar  Jupi,  bearded,  hook-nosed, with  a  shaven  skull and upslanting
eyebrows, rushed to meet the visitor, riveting him with a piercing, half-mad
stare.
     "Does Urn Sat realise what honour  and trust has been afforded him?" he
shouted.
     "Yes,  so  be it,"  sighed the  Elder.  "Though  I be  unworthy of such
honour, I may be trusted."
     "I am going to talk as Superior to Superior, the  more so since you are
famous for your mind," said the Dictator more calmly this time.
     According to  the  ritual, the guest was  supposed  to reply  that  his
brains  were below comparison with the  divine and  enlightened intellect of
Yar Jupi, but Um Sat calmly said:
     "I shall  converse with the  Dictator Yar Jupi as  an Elder of learning
with a politician, striving to understand and be understood."
     Yar Jupi  started, his nose twitched and his  face  was  distorted by a
nervous grimace. He looked sideways at  a niche under the window. There were
wonderful flowers standing in it. Their tender, dark-blue corollas  with the
golden sprinkling of the finest stars, each with  up  to six  petals, looked
down, dangling on bowed stems.
     This was a miracle, bred by the nurserymen on the orders of Yar Jupi, a
passionate  lover of  flowers. But it  was  not  their evening  beauty  that
attracted  him. The  submissive  horticulturalists  had managed to  breed  a
vegetable  miracle,  or  rather  monster,  which  exuded an aroma  that  was
poisonous, however  gentle it might seem.  Any  Faetian  who  inhaled it was
stricken down with a fatal disease.  More than once,  rare  visitors to this
study,  excessively  independent-minded  comrades-in-arms, received  by  the
Dictator   with   unexpected  warmth,   sometimes   even  a   few   of   his
over-discontented masters, the big proprietors, had been privileged to sniff
the greatest of all treasures. On  returning home,  they  had died in  agony
without suspecting why.
     Needless  to  say,  a  reliable  ventilation  system  was  sucking  the
dangerous scent out of the room.
     "Well?" asked the Dictator nervously.
     "After thinking it  over all night, I have decided to accept your offer
and lead the expedition to the planet Terr."
     Yar Jupi started and sighed with relief.
     "Urn Sat,  having become an honorary longface, you confirm your wisdom.
I shall glorify this on both continents. However, yesterday in the Temple of
Eternity, I had in mind one stipulation which you will have to observe."
     "I  also  wanted  to  add  a  condition  to  my  consent  to  head  the
expedition."
     "I can't bear it when conditions are imposed on me," said the Dictator,
raising his voice slightly.
     "It  is  rather  the  first practical  step  to complementing the space
crew."
     "I shall  complement the space crew with longfaces, the  most worthy of
the worthy."
     "Perhaps Dictator Yar Jupi will remember yesterday's promise to include
any of the longfaces in the crew."
     "I confirm that, even if it means my daughter."
     "The daughter  of Dictator Yar Jupi?" Dm Sat was  truly  astonished. It
had never even entered his head that  the Dictator himself  would talk about
her first.
     "Do you dare to regard my daughter as ballast on the flight when she is
a Sister of Health?" said Yar Jupi, raising his voice.
     Both men  fell  silent,  studying each  other.  No matter how clever he
might be, it had never occurred to Urn Sat  that the Dictator had thought of
saving  his daughter from the horrors of a disintegration war by sending her
on a space expedition; and however cunning and crafty  Yar Jupi might be, he
could not have presumed that  Dm Sat  had  come  to  him solely in  order to
obtain his consent to his daughter's flight to Terr.
     "So  you don't  want her to fly?" demanded Yar  Jupi ominously. "You're
worried about  her?  I  appreciate that Would you care to  go over  to those
flowers?  They  are  beautiful, are they not? Have you  ever seen the  like?
Savour their aroma!.."
     "I  have  never  seen  anything  more  beautiful than  the daughter  of
Dictator  Yar  Jupi.  Have no doubt that  she will be the fairest  flower on
Terr..."
     "Then we  shall  leave  those  blossoms in peace," interrupted Yar Jupi
curtly.

     Chapter Seven

        THE FORGOTTEN HUMP

     The body  of Kutsi Merc was lying in  a damp underground passage behind
blank walls with a spiral ornament.
     The casing  of the  artificial hump had been pierced  and the  air  was
entering it, slowly destroying the safety fuse.
     No one on Faena, however, had an  inkling  of this danger on the day of
the ceremonial farewell to the astronauts leaving for the planet Terr.
     The expedition consisted of three Culturals and three Superiors, one of
the latter being Mada Jupi.
     For the toilers in the fields and  workshops of Powermania, the  day of
the send-off was declared a public holiday so that the Faetians could go out
on the road  all the way as far as Cape Farewell, as the Dictator  had named
part of  the  Great Beach near the cosmodrome. This  was the  usual point of
departure for  all space probes, and also for the ships of the Superiors who
were maintaining contact with Space Station  Deimo. The proprietors hoped to
gain considerable profits from the possible colonisation of the  planets and
were not parsimonious with their out lays.
     Mada  and Ave  could not escape  the feeling that they  would soon find
themselves  being pursued. They were riding in the same steam-car as Dm  Sat
The old scientist was pensive and sad.
     The young members of the expedition kept either looking back over their
shoulders or looking intently  at the Faetians who flashed past, standing on
either  side of the road  and throwing flowers under the wheels of the  car.
There  were roundheads and longfaces among  them. They stood closely  packed
side  by side,  as if  there were  no  distinction  between them.  For  many
Faetians, a  joint expedition of the two continents to a planet was a symbol
of peace and inspired them with the hope that it might be possible  not only
to come  to terms  on  Faena and  avoid a war,  so  but to send  part of the
population to other planets.
     Many Faetians had come out onto the road with their children.
     The Faetian  landworkers were conspicuous with their dark suntan. Those
who  toiled   in  the  workshop  buildings   had   earthy  complexions.  But
particularly noticeable were the Faetians from the deep mines. The coal-dust
had so  ingrained itself into their pores that their skin seemed dark, as if
they were of another race and were neither longfaces nor roundheads.
     Mada  had  withdrawn   wholly  into  herself,  depressed  by  what  was
happening. Like a  true Faetess, she evaluated everything through the images
near to her. She  hardly remembered her own mother, but her nanny was to her
a symbol of  everything  that  she  was  leaving behind on Faena.  She  felt
troubled because happiness  lay ahead of her, whereas here... She  shut  her
eyes tight.
     When  she  opened  them again, she saw  that the  road  had reached the
ocean. She looked at Ave, and her expression spoke volumes.
     Ave had  been thinking all the time about the Faetians  standing by the
roadside. Tomorrow they would return  to  workshops filled with the noise of
lathes and  the  reek  of oil. They  would take up their stations by  moving
belts  conveying  the frames of  machines in the process  of  stage-by-stage
assembly, and  they would  stay there with no hope of  Justice, compulsorily
and joylessly toiling to the end of their hopeless days.
     Ave Mar knew  that  on his  shoulders lay  the  responsibility  for the
outcome  of the space flight  and how much  it  meant to all these  deprived
people.
     Millions of  these Faetians were  also  dreaming of happiness  and  the
right to  have children, whatever shape their  heads might be.  The means of
annihilation alone must no longer be  taken  from the civilised world. Faena
could not exist like that!
     Um  Sat was thinking sadly about the same thing. He was reflecting that
the  laws  governing  life  of  the  whole  community of  the Faetians  must
evidently be understood like the laws  of nature.  The most serious mistake,
apart from  the  discovery and promulgation of the  means  of disintegrating
matter, was  that, having lived until  old age,  he did not understand those
laws. Why, for  example, were the Faetian toilers creating with their  hands
not only what was needed to all for life, but also that which was capable of
cutting that life off? Why did these crowds now seeing them off tolerate the
power of a  maniac  who had made war  his  goal  in  life? Yar  Jupi had now
conceived  the idea of making a grand gesture,  of sending out an expedition
to  look  for new "space continents". But how  would the settlers  live  out
there?  According  to  the  former laws  of Faena, taking injustice  and the
threat of  wars into  space?  No, true  wisdom  was in seeking not only  new
planets to inhabit, for which  even Yar Jupi was  prepared, but new laws  by
which to live  that would scare  the daylight  out of  him. Only why had the
half-crazed Dictator let his daughter go out into space so easily? It was no
picnic, after all!..
     As he compared  one  detail with another,  the  old  sage  of  learning
suddenly  came  to the  frightening  conclusion that the  Dictator  might be
trying to save his daughter from an imminent disintegration war on Faena.
     He looked  in a  different light  at the  crowds  of Faetians who  were
seeing him off. Would he ever see them again?
     Mada pressed Ave's hand and looked round eloquently. Ave understood her
fears...
     Her alarm was not unfounded... Much had  indeed  been discovered in the
Dictator's palace.
     Grom Alt,  the  brother of the dead Yar Alt, had stumbled on the trail.
This was the Grom Alt who had escorted Um Sat to the Dictator.
     The  officer  of  the Blood Guard noticed  a dark streak  on the  floor
running  from the  Blood Door to Mada Jupi's chambers,  to  the  underground
passage. Grom Alt was of  too  humble a rank to use the "blood" passage. But
he decided  that at all costs he  must check what that stain was. He scraped
up a sample of the dried substance and hurried to the laboratory.
     His hands shook when, in secret from the others so as  not to share his
discovery with anyone, he established the composition of the  test, a method
taught  to Blood Guard officers while at school,  where skilful use was made
of foreign science.
     He was so  agitated that his  hair became damp, although it was  almost
standing on end. He had established that the stain on the floor was blood!
     He hesitated to report his discovery  to the Dictator, especially since
Mada  had  shown  up  and  had  seen her  father.  True, she  had  not  been
accompanied by her nanny as usual. If something had happened, she could have
told the Dictator herself. But after his meeting with her, Yar Jupi had been
aloofly solemn. He  had  proclaimed a  historical decision that had left the
whole palace and after that  the whole continent dumbfounded, then delirious
with  joy. The whole leadership had choked with effusions in which they  had
pointed out to the ordinary people that the Wisest of the Wise  was also the
most Fearless of the Valiant, prepared even to  risk  his beloved daughter's
life for  the welfare of  the Faetians, thinking of their distant future and
also of universal progress and of peace between the continents.
     The  obsequious  joy  in  the  Dictator's  palace  impeded  Grom  Alt's
investigation. Everyone he met  could  talk about nothing except the exploit
of Yar Jupi and his daughter.
     In such  an atmosphere, it  was  positively dangerous to draw  anyone's
attention  to a bloodstain  that could cast a shadow on  Mada,  who had been
pronounced heroine  of  the day. Grom  Alt found  it particularly suspicious
that  Mada had not left  the Blood Door  to her chambers open  and  that her
nanny had still failed to show up.
     He decided  to consult his brother, even if it meant sharing the honour
of the possible discovery with him. But Yar Alt had disappeared.
     It  could be that Yar Jupi had sent his trusted Supreme Officer on some
mission, as often before.
     Grom  Alt  decided to act at  his  own risk. While Mada,  amid sobs and
compliments, was being seen to the  cosmodrome,  Grom  Alt, who had remained
behind on duty, went to the girl's chambers. The Blood  Door was locked, but
not by  automatic  machines this time.  All he needed was  the skeleton  key
which he had been  taught to use  in the Blood Guard  school.  Grom Alt went
cautiously into the pale-blue room.
     He not only found the body of Mada's nanny lying on the couch, but that
of his own brother.
     A poisoned bullet!
     Yar  Alt's pistol was lying nearby. Such a weapon could  only have been
carried by the Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard.
     Grom  Alt  examined the weapon. There were no bullets left  in it.  His
brother was not the kind of Faetian to  have had only one round left in  the
magazine and to have used it on himself. On whom had the others been used?
     With  mixed  feelings  of  regret and  disgust, Grom  Alt looked at his
brother's cold  body. They had never been good friends in his lifetime.  Yar
Alt had forever oppressed his  younger brother. And now there he was,  lying
dead at  Grom Alt's feet, thereby giving him a foothold on the next rung  of
the career ladder.
     Grom Alt was so pleased with his comparison of the corpse to a rung  on
the  ladder that he could not withhold himself and set his foot on the body,
but promptly jerked  it away again and hurried  out  of the nauseating  room
into the garden, then straight to the Dictator.
     It  was not easy getting through to Yar Jupi, in spite  of the shocking
news that Grom Alt was bringing him.
     The  impartial secretary box would understand nothing. Feelings did not
exist for it, and the security robots and the door automatic machines of the
Dictator's study were controlled solely by that brainless box.
     To tell the truth to the box would mean a refusal for sure, because the
stupid machine would promptly  record in its memory all the circumstances of
the  affair  and  send it  for investigation  to  the officers  of  Criminal
Investigation, who hated  the  officers of the  Blood Guard. They would risk
reporting  the  incident to  the  Dictator only  after the  findings of  the
Criminal Investigation  officers  who, of course, would squeeze Grom Alt out
of the picture.
     That was why Grom Alt decided to lie to  the secretary box, inventing a
version according to which he had a most important message for the Dictator;
it had been given to him by Mada Jupi in person on the way to Cape Farewell.
After all, she was his cousin!
     "You  may give me the gist of the beautiful Mada's words," jabbered the
box, which  was packed full with electronic  circuits.  "The Greatest of the
Great will study it when he checks my daily entries."
     "I  have nothing to  tell you, meritorious guardian  of  memory. I must
deliver a certain object to the  Greatest of the Great, the most Illustrious
of the Illustrious. If  you, as a guardian of memory, could take this object
to the Greatest of the Great, I would be at peace."
     The confounded box resisted for a long time, but gave way in the end.
     The  secretary box impartially reported to the Dictator  that Grom Alt,
officer of the Blood Guard, begged to be received without use of the screen.
     The  Dictator was very  busy.  He had held a  conference of the  higher
military ranks who,  of course, were not admitted to his presence but simply
attended  on  the  monitor  screens  in  his  office.  On  the  eve  of  the
disintegration war, no  one had  access to Yar Jupi. He  feared  his masters
from the Blood Council perhaps more than his subordinates.
     The conference ended at last.
     "Officer of  the Blood Guard Grom Alt," creaked the secretary box, "you
may pass through the  door to  genuflect before the most Illustrious of  the
Illustrious."
     The agitated Grom Alt went  into the Dictator's unprepossessing office,
afraid to  raise  his head and look at  the face of the man who had invented
the Doctrine of Hatred.  Like  his brother, he  aped the Dictator's external
appearance in every way.
     According  to  the  ritual,  Grom Alt genuflected and, staring  at  the
floor, told in a  trembling voice about the trail of blood  leading into the
beautiful Mada's chambers and about the bodies he had found in there.
     "Despicable robot of the guard! What are you drivelling about?"
     "May your wrath descend on the foul murderers  who plotted evil against
you  and your incomparable daughter, and whose traces I was able to uncover.
I grieve  over  my brother's  fate and am happy that your  daughter did  not
become a victim of the villainous conspiracy."
     "Conspiracy?" roared the Dictator, and he quivered from head to foot.
     He  stood  with clenched  fists  and glared  with crazed  eyes  at  the
terrified officer, who did not know what was going to happen next.
     Yar  Jupi  only   reflected  for  a  moment.  The   discovery  of  this
over-zealous officer of the Blood Guard could upset all his calculations and
force him to cancel the orders he had only just given to his military men.
     Yar Jupi roared with laughter.
     "So  that's  how  it  is,  is  it?"  shouted  the  Dictator through his
laughter. "You bring me news of the infinite grief of the Faetians who could
not bear to part with my incomparable Mada?"
     "I meant something altogether different"
     "Brainless insect! Answer my questions!"
     "I am in fear and trembling."
     "Why did my Supreme Officer Yar Alt die?"
     "He was poisoned by a bullet."
     "Who had such bullets, apart from him?"
     "No one."
     "Then is it  not clear to you, insect, that, enamoured of the beautiful
Mada, the Supreme Officer committed  suicide in her  room as  a mark of  his
hopeless yearning for her?"
     "But the nanny's body..."
     "Was she  not attached to  her  mistress?  Did  not  the  low  creature
understand that with the departure  of her mistress to another  planet,  she
would become an  ordinary roundhead, insignificant  and despised, as is only
right?"
     "What? She  took her own life?" Grom  Alt was  dumbfounded, remembering
the wound in Lua's throat and  shaking with fear at the thought that he  had
displeased the Dictator.
     Yes, he certainly had displeased the Dictator. Yar Jupi was  not at all
disposed to  ascertain why  only  two had been killed  when  at  any  moment
hundreds of  millions of Faetians could perish.  The more so that this could
hold up the space expedition that was meant to save Mada's life.
     "However,  this  stripling from the Blood  Guard  will hardly keep  his
mouth shut," thought Yar Jupi.
     The Dictator gently raised the terror-stricken officer off his knees.
     "My good sentinel Grom  Alt! You have every justification for replacing
your suicide brother. Thank  fate that true Faetians are the slaves of their
feelings.  If you should ever fall in love with a beautiful Faetess  and she
does  not reciprocate your feelings, behave as did your  elder  brother. But
allow me, as  one  who  is  proud of  a daughter capable  of  inspiring such
powerful  emotions, to thank you for your faithful service and for  bringing
me news that has made my  heart rejoice. I shall show you the treasure of my
flower collection,  which is  unrivalled  on  Faena.  These  blooms  are  as
beautiful as the Faetesses of our dreams. Savour their aroma."
     Grom Alt obediently went to the niche where he could see the incredibly
beautiful blossoms,  dark-blue as the sky before evening and glittering with
the gold spangles of new-lit stars.
     "How do  you  like that perfume,  my trusty sentinel?" asked Yar  Jupi,
turning away.
     "I  have never breathed anything more  enchanting. I feel  an  uncommon
lightness all over my body. I feel like flying."
     "Perhaps  you  will indeed fly  one  day,  as  the incomparable Mada is
flying at this moment. If she  discovers a life-supporting planet, then many
longfaces  will  fly  there  to  turn  new  continents  into  lands  of  the
Superiors."
     "Those words must be engraved on eternal stone. Each thought in here is
like a disintegration explosion; it flashes and it casts down."
     "The scent of the flowers is undoubtedly calling forth your  eloquence.
Order yourself the tunic of a Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard."
     A blissful Grom Alt, who had never expected such a turn of events, flew
out of the Dictator's office as if on wings.
     If the  secretary box had somehow  been  able to fathom the feelings of
living Faetians, it would have noticed Grom Alt's unusual state of mind. But
the  box was only a  machine and  merely noted how much time the visitor had
spent with the Dictator. Very little...
     And it took very little  time for Grom Alt to feel ill. He collapsed in
the Blood Guard barracks and died in dreadful agony.
     In  the meantime, the automatic secretary began compiling  a  report on
the  state  of  the  armed  forces  after the preparations announced by  the
Dictator  for a  disintegration  war.  But  Yar Jupi  switched off the power
supply to the pestilential box in a fury. He had been watching on the screen
the last moments  of the expedition's lift-off for Terr, mentally seeing off
his daughter. With his whole  being  he  suffered the parting  with her  and
squeezed his temples between the palms of his hands until it hurt.
     He had  seen Mada, with a strange look on  her face, run her eyes round
the  cosmodrome  before she  entered the lift-cage, her  gaze resting on the
ocean  with its white  bands of  foam  on the  crests of the waves.  She was
followed by a Faetian, evidently one from the other continent.
     For a moment, Yar Jupi was troubled at seeing a curly-haired half-breed
so close  to his daughter, but then  he remembered that she  would  at least
stay  alive. He sighed heavily.  He  had  a feeling that he had stepped on a
steep  and slippery surface. He could  not  keep his footing.  And below him
yawned an abyss.
     Ave Mar and Mada  were  looking through the barred lift-cage. The ocean
was expanding and the horizon seemed to be lifting up the clouds. Ave turned
round and saw on the  opposite side  another ocean, a  living  one of massed
Faetian heads with their faces  upturned to the  rocket.  As if to symbolise
Faena's overpopulation, they were jammed incredibly close together. A sudden
spasm of yearning clutched at  Ave's throat. Would he  ever come back again?
But he looked at Mada.  They had chosen this course themselves,  and  let it
not be  only  the  course  of their  own  happiness. Ave  still  had  little
understanding of the true forces driving Faena into war. He only wished with
all  his  heart that  the mysterious planet  Terr  would prove suitable  for
settlement by Faetians and that the danger of a disintegration war  would be
over and done with forever. Ave again remembered Kutsi Merc, who had brought
him here, brought him and Mada together and had, in fact, given his life for
their happiness. May his bones rest in peace...
     Kutsi Merc's  bullet-riddled hump had not been taken  to its goal,  but
the delayed-action fuse, decaying under the action of the air, was measuring
out the last moments of peace on the planet Faena.

     End of Part One


        PART TWO

     Explosion

     Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike, beat them down!
     Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!
     W. Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet

     Chapter One

        THE LITTLE WORLD

     There was uproar on Space Station Deimo.
     Station engineer Tycho Veg, handsome, prematurely grey-haired, slow and
pensive,  was looking in disapproval at the bustle that  had just begun. But
it was not in  conformity with his mild nature to interfere  in anything: he
gave way