God, he thought, how I wish we could go back to Alpha Centaurus. If only…

But there was no use thinking about that.

Ben Tallchief, the ship’s maintenance man, said, “I can’t believe that we made up Specktowsky’s theology by ourselves. It seemed so real. So—airtight.”

Belsnor said, “The computer did most of it; of course it’s airtight.”

“But the basic idea was ours,” Tony Dunkelwelt said. He had fixed his attention on Captain Belsnor. “You killed me in that one,” he said.

“We hate one another,” Belsnor said. “I hate you; you hate me. Or at least we did before the Delmak-O episode.” Turning to Wade Frazer he said, “Maybe you’re right; I don’t feel so irritated now.” Gloomily, he said, “But it’ll come back, give or take a week or so.”

“Do we really hate one another that much?” Sue Smart asked.

“Yes,” Wade Frazer said.

Ignatz Thugg and Dr. Babble helped elderly Mrs. Rockingham to her feet. “Oh dear,” she gasped, her withered and ancient face red, “that was just simply dreadful! What a terrible, terrible place; I hope we never go there again.” Coming over, she plucked at Captain Belsnor’s sleeve. “We won’t have to live through that again, will we? I do think, in all honesty, that life aboard the ship is far preferable to that wicked, uncivilized little place.”

“We won’t be going back to Delmak-O,” Belsnor said.

“Thank heavens,” Mrs. Rockingham seated herself; again Thugg and Dr. Babble assisted her. “Thank you,” she said to them. “How kind of you. Could I have some coffee, Mr. Morley?”

“‘Coffee’?” he echoed and then he remembered; he was the ship’s cook. All the precious food supplies, including coffee, tea and milk, were in his possession. “I’ll start a pot going,” he told them all.

In the kitchen he spooned heaping tablespoonfuls of good black ground coffee into the top of the pot. He noticed, then, as he had noticed many times before, that their store of coffee had begun to run low. In another few months, they would be out entirely.

But this is a time at which coffee is needed, he decided, and continued to spoon the coffee into the pot. We are all shaken up, he realized. As never before.

His wife Mary entered the galley. “What was the Building?”

“The Building.” He filled the coffee pot with reprocessed water. “That was the Boeing plant on Proxima 10. Where the ship was built. Where we boarded it, remember? We were sixteen months at Boeing, getting trained, testing the ship, getting everything aboard and straightened out. Getting Persus 9 spaceworthy.”

Mary shivered and said, “Those men in black leather uniforms.”

“I don’t know,” Seth Morley said.

Ned Russell, the ship’s M.P., entered the galley. “I can tell you what they were. The black leather guards were indications of our attempt to break it up and start again—they were directed by the thoughts of those who had ‘died.’”

“You would know,” Mary said shortly.

“Easy,” Seth Morley said, putting his arm around her shoulder. From the start, many of them had not gotten along well with Russell. Which, considering his job, could have been anticipated.

“Someday, Russell,” Mary said, “you’re going to try to take over the ship… take it away from Captain Belsnor.”

“No,” Russell said mildly. “All I’m interested in is keeping the peace. That’s why I was sent here; that’s what I intend to do. Whether anyone else wants me to or not.”

“I wish to God,” Seth Morley said, “that there was really an Intercessor.” He still had trouble believing that they had made up Specktowsky’s theology. “At Tekel Upharsin,” he said, “when the Walker-on-Earth came to me, it was so real. Even now it seems real. I can’t shake it off.”

“That’s why we created it,” Russell pointed out. “Because we wanted it; because we didn’t have it and needed to have it. Now we’re back to reality, Morley; once again we have to face things as they are. It doesn’t feel too good, does it?”

“No,” Seth Morley said.

Russell said, “Do you wish you were back on Delmak-O?”

After a pause he said, “Yes.”

“So do I,” Mary said, at last.

“I’m afraid,” Russell said, “that I have to agree with you. As bad as it was, as bad as we acted… at least there was hope. And back here on the ship—” He made a convulsive, savage, slashing motion. “No hope. Nothing! Until we grow old like Mrs. Rockingham and die.”

“Mrs. Rockingham is lucky,” Mary said bitterly. “Very lucky,” Russell said, and his face became swollen with impotence and bleak anger. And suffering.

16

After dinner that “night” they gathered in the ship’s control cabin. The time had come to plot out another polyencephalic world. To make it function it had to be a joint projection from all of them; otherwise, as in the final stages of the Delmak-O world, it would rapidly disintegrate.

In fifteen years they had become very skilled.

Especially Tony Dunkelwelt. Of his eighteen years, almost all had been spent aboard Persus 9. For him, the procession of polyencephalic worlds had become a normal way of life.

Captain Belsnor said, “We didn’t do so bad, in a way; we got rid of almost two weeks.”

“What about an aquatic world this time?” Maggie Walsh said. “We could be dolphin-like mammals living in warm seas.”

“We did that,” Russell said. “About eight months ago. Don’t you remember it? Let’s see… yes; we called it Aquasoma 3 and we stayed there three months of real time. A very successful world, I would say, and one of the most durable. Of course, back then we were less hostile.”

Seth Morley said, “Excuse me.” He rose and walked from the ship’s cabin into the narrow passageway.

There he stood, alone, rubbing his shoulder. A purely psychosomatic pain remained in it, a memory of Delmak-O which he would probably carry for a week. And that’s all, he thought, that we have left of that particular world. Just a pain, a rapidly-fading memory.

How about a world, he thought, in which we lie good and dead, buried in our coffins? That’s what we really want.

There had been no suicides aboard the ship for the last four years. Their population had become stabilized, at least temporarily.

Until Mrs. Rockingham dies, he said to himself.

I wish I could go with her, he thought. How long, really, can we keep on? Not much longer. Thugg’s wits are scrambled; so are Frazer’s and Babble’s. And me, too, he thought. Maybe I’m gradually breaking down, too. Wade Frazer is right; the murders on Delmak-O show how much derangement and hostility exists in all of us.

In that case, he thought suddenly, each escape world will be more feral… Russell is right. It is a pattern.

He thought, We will miss Roberta Rockingham when she dies; of us, she is the most benign and stable.

Because, he realized, she knows she is soon going to die.

Our only comfort. Death.

I could open vents here and there, he realized, and our atmosphere would be gone. Sucked out into the void. And then, more or less painlessly, we could all die. In one single, brief instant.

He placed his hand on the emergency release-lock of a nearby hatch vent. All I have to do, he said to himself, is move this thing counterclockwise.

He stood there, holding onto the release-lock, but doing nothing. What he intended to do had made him frozen, as if time had stopped. And everything around him looked twodimensional.

A figure, coming down the corridor from the rear of the ship, approached him. Bearded, with flowing, pale robes. A man, youthful and erect, with a pure, shining face.

“Walker,” Seth Morley said.

“No,” the figure said. “I am not the Walker-on-Earth. I am the Intercessor.”

“But we invented you! We and T.E.N.C.H. 889B.” The Intercessor said, “I am here to take you away. Where would you like to go, Seth Morley? What would you like to be?”