V

For a time Tozzo and Fermeti and Gilly stood in silence. And then Tozzo said in a carefully controlled voice, “You know what’s going to happen to him, of course. Polpol will pick him up and mono-express him to Nachbaren Slager. Because of his appearance. He may even be there already.”

Fermeti sprinted at once for the nearest vidphone. “I’m going to contact the authorities at Nachbaren Slager. I’ll talk to Potter; we can trust him, I think.”

Presently Major Potter’s heavy, dark features formed on the vidscreen. “Oh, hello, Fermeti. You want more convicts, do you?” He chuckled. “You use them up even faster than we do.”

Behind Potter, Fermeti caught a glimpse of the open recreation area of the giant internment camp. Criminals, both political and nonpol, could be seen roaming about, stretching their legs, some of them playing dull, pointless games which, he knew, went on and on, sometimes for months, each time they were out of their work-cells.

“What we want,” Fermeti said, “is to prevent an individual being brought to you at all.” He described Poul Anderson. “If he’s monoed there, call me at once. And don’t harm him. You understand? We want him back safe.”

“Sure,” Potter said easily. “Just a minute; I’ll have a scan put on our new admissions.” He touched a button to his right and a 315—R computer came on; Fermeti heard its low hum. Potter touched buttons and then said, “This’ll pick him out if he’s monoed here. Our admissions-circuit is prepared to reject him.”

“No sign yet?” Fermeti asked tensely.

“Nope,” Potter said, and purposefully yawned.

Fermeti broke the connection.

“Now what?” Tozzo said. “We could possibly trace him by means of a Ganymedean sniffer-sponge.” They were a repellent life form, though; if one managed to find its quarry it fastened at once to its blood system leech-wise. “Or do it mechanically,” he added. “With a detec beam. We have a print of Anderson’s EEG pattern, don’t we? But that would really bring in the polpol.” The detec beam by law belonged only to the polpol; after all, it was the artifact which had, at last, tracked down Gutman himself.

Fermeti said bluntly, “I’m for broadcasting a planet-wide Type II alert. That’ll activate the citizenry, the average informer. They’ll know there’s an automatic reward for any Type II found.”

“But he could be manhandled that way,” Gilly pointed out. “By a mob. Let’s think this through.”

After a pause Tozzo said, “How about trying it from a purely cerebral standpoint? If you had been transported from the mid twentieth century to our continuum, what would you want to do? Where would you go?”

Quietly, Fermeti said, “To the nearest spaceport, of course. To buy a ticket to Mars or the outplanets—routine in our age but utterly out of the question at mid twentieth century.” They looked at one another.

“But Anderson doesn’t know where the spaceport is,” Gilly said. “It’ll take him valuable time to orient himself. We can go there directly by express subsurface mono.”

A moment later the three Bureau of Emigration men were on their way. “A fascinating situation,” Gilly said, as they rode along, jiggling up and down, facing one another in the monorail first-class compartment. “We totally misjudged the mid twentieth century mind; it should be a lesson to us. Once we’ve regained possession of Anderson we should make further inquiries. For instance, the Poltergeist Effect. What was their interpretation of it? And table-tapping—did they recognize it for what it was? Or did they merely consign it to the realm of the so-called ‘occult’ and let it go at that?”

“Anderson may hold the clue to these questions and many others,” Fermeti said. “But our central problem remains the same. We must induce him to complete the mass-restoration formula in precise mathematical terms, rather than vague, poetic allusions.”

Thoughtfully, Tozzo said, “He’s a brilliant man, that Anderson. Look at the ease by which he eluded us.”

“Yes,” Fermeti agreed. “We mustn’t underestimate him. We did that, and it’s rebounded.” His face was grim.

Hurrying up the almost-deserted sidestreet, Poul Anderson wondered why the woman had regarded him as sick. And the mention of children had set off the clerk in the store, too. Was birth illegal now? Or was it regarded as sex had been once, as something too private to speak of in public?

In any case, he realized, if I plan to stay here I’ve got to shave my head. And, if possible, acquire different clothing.

There must be barbershops. And, he thought, the coins in my pockets; they’re probably worth a lot to collectors.

He glanced about, hopefully. But all he saw were tall, luminous plastic and metal buildings which made up the city, structures in which incomprehensible transactions took place. They were as alien to him as—

Alien, he thought, and the word lodged chokingly in his mind. Because something had oozed from a doorway ahead of him. And now his way was blocked—deliberately, it seemed—by a slime mold, dark yellow in color, as large as a human being, palpitating visibly on the sidewalk. After a pause the slime mold undulated toward at him at a regular, slow rate. A human evolutionary development? Poul Anderson wondered, recoiling from it. Good Lord … and then he realized what he was seeing.

This era had space travel. He was seeing a creature from another planet.

“Um,” Poul said, to the enormous mass of slime mold, “can I bother you a second to ask a question?”

The slime mold ceased to undulate forward. And in Poul’s brain a thought formed which was not his own. “I catch your query. In answer: I arrived yesterday from Callisto. But I also catch a number of unusual and highly interesting thoughts in addition… you are a time traveler from the past.” The tone of the creature’s emanations was one of considerate, polite amusement—and interest.

“Yes,” Poul said. “From 1954.”

“And you wish to find a barbershop, a library and a school. All at once, in the precious time remaining before they capture you.” The slime mold seemed solicitous. “What can I do to help you? I could absorb you, but it would be a permanent symbiosis, and you would not like that. You are thinking of your wife and child. Allow me to inform you as to the problem regarding your unfortunate mention of children. Terrans of this period are experiencing a mandatory moratorium on childbirth, because of the almost infinite sporting of the previous decades. There was a war, you see. Between Gutman’s fanatical followers and the more liberal legions of General McKinley. The latter won.”

Poul said, “Where should I go? I’m confused.” His head throbbed and he felt tired. Too much had happened. Just a short while ago he had been standing with Tony Boucher in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, drinking and chatting… and now this. Facing this great slime mold from Callisto. It was difficult—to say the least—to make such an adjustment.

The slime mold was transmitting to him. “I am accepted here while you, their ancestor, are regarded as odd. Ironic. To me, you look quite like them, except for your curly brown hair and of course your silly clothing.” The creature from Callisto pondered. “My friend, the polpol are the political police, and they search for deviants, followers of the defeated Gutman, who are terrorists now, and hated. Many of these followers are drawn from the potentially criminal classes. That is, the non-conformists, the so-called introves. Individuals who set their own subjective value-system up in place of the objective system in vogue. It is a matter of life and death to the Terrans, since Gutman almost won.”

“I’m going to hide,” Poul decided.

“But where? You can’t really. Not unless you wish to go underground and join the Gutmanites, the criminal class of bomb-throwers… and you won’t want to do that. Let us stroll together, and if anyone challenges you, I will say you’re my servant. You have manual extensors and I have not. And I have, by a quirk, decided to dress you oddly and to have you retain your head-hair. The responsibility then becomes mine. It is actually not unusual for higher out-world organisms to employ Terran help.”