"Aaaaagggrrrh!" roared the pachynert.

6

"Tom, are you all right?"

Mishkin blinked. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

Mishkin giggled: that was a very funny remark.

"What's so funny?"

"You're funny. I can't even see you, and that's funny."

"Drink this."

"What is it?"

"Nothing. Just drink it."

"Drink nothing and you turn into nothing!" Mishkin roared. With a supreme effort he opened his eyes. He couldn't see anything. He forced himself to see things. Now what?

What was the rule? Yes! Reality is achieved by the indefinite enumeration of objects.

Therefore: bed table, fluorescent light, incandescent light, stove, chest, bookcase, typewriter, window, tiles, glass, bottle of milk, coffee mug, guitar, ice bucket, friend, garbage bag… et cetera.

"I have achieved reality," Mishkin said, with quiet pride. "I'm going to be all right now."

"What is reality?"

"One of the many possible illusions."

Mishkin burst into tears. He had wanted an exclusive reality. This was terrible, this was worse than before. Now anything…

" This can't be happening," he thought. But there was the pachynert, like a dubious proof of its own reality, coming at him in an extremely plausible whirlwind of claws and teeth. Mishkin accepted the gambit. He threw himself to one side and the beast swept past him.

"Shoot!" Mishkin screamed, getting into the spirit of the thing.

"I am not supposed to kill herbivorous animals," the robot said. But there was little conviction in his voice.

The pachynert had wheeled around and was coming again, drooling. Mishkin jumped to the right, then to the left. The pachynert followed like his shadow. The massive jaws opened. Mishkin closed his eyes.

He felt a burst of heat on his face. He heard a snarl, a grunt, and the sound of something heavy falling.

He opened his eyes. The robot had finally brought himself to fire and had dropped the beast neatly at Mishkin's feet.

"Herbivorous," Mishkin said, bitterly.

"There is such a thing as behavioural mimicry, you know. In actual cases the imitative behaviour is carried to the point of living like the model predator, even to the point of eating flesh; which, to a herbivore, is both repugnant and indigestible."

"Do you believe any of that?"

"No," the robot said, miserably. "But I don't understand how that creature could have been left out of my memory files. This planet was under continual survey for ten years before a cache was established here. Nothing the size of that beast could have escaped the probes. It is no exaggeration to say that, dangerwise, Darbis IV is as well known as Earth itself."

"Wait a minute," Mishkin said. "What planet did you say this was?"

"Darbis IV, the planet for which I was programmed."

"This is not Darbis IV," Mishkin said. He felt sick, dull, doomed. "This planet is called Harmonia. They sent you to the wrong planet."

7

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The robot chuckled — an insincere sound. "I'm afraid you're in a bit of a funk.

Temporary aphasic hysteria is my diagnosis, though God knows, I'm no doctor. The strain, I suppose…"

Mishkin shook his head. "Figure it out for yourself. You've been wrong several times about the dangers here. Grossly wrong. Impossibly wrong."

"It isodd," the robot said. "I can't think of a ready explanation."

"I can. They've been screwing up the shipments ever since they established this cache.

They simply screwed up on you. You were supposed to go to Darbis IV. But they sent you to Harmonia."

"I'm thinking," said the robot.

"Do that," Mishkin said.

"I have thought," the robot said. "We SPER robots are noted for the speed of our synaptic responses."

"Bully for you," Mishkin said. "What conclusion have you reached?"

"I think that, weighing all the available evidence, your hypothesis is the most apparently probable. I do indeed seem to have been dispatched to the wrong planet. And that, of course, presents us with a definite problem."

"And that means we have to do some hard thinking."

"Most assuredly. But let me point out that a creature of unknown disposition and appetites is presently approaching us."

Mishkin nodded absently. Events were moving along too fast, and he needed a plan.

To save his life he had to think, even if it cost him his life.

The robot was programmed for Darbis IV. Mishkin was programmed for Earth. And here they both were on Harmonia like two blind men in a boiler room. The most reasonable course of action for Mishkin was to go back to the cache. There he could relay the information to Earth and wait until either a replacement part or a replacement robot, or both, were shipped to Harmonia. That, however, could take months, or even years.

And the part he wanted was only a few miles away.

Still, turning back was the safest course of action.

But then Mishkin thought of the conquistadors in the New World, cutting their way through endless jungle, meeting the unknown and subduing it. Was he so much less a man than they? Had the unknown changed in any fundamental way since the Phoenicians took their ships beyond the Pillars of Hercules?

He would never be able to face himself if he turned back now and acknowledged himself less of a man than Hanno, Cortez, Pizarro, and all of the other nuts.

On the other hand, if he went on and failed he would have no self to acknowledge.

What he really wanted to do, he decided, was to go on and succeed but not if it meant getting killed.

All in all, it was an interesting problem and one that a man might fruitfully contemplate for quite some time. A few weeks' thought might well bring him the correct answer and spare him untold…

"The creature is approaching rather rapidly," the robot said.

"Well? Shoot it."

"Maybe it's harmless."

"Let's shoot first and think about all of that later."

"Shooting is not an appropriate response to all dangerous situations," the robot said.

"It is on Earth."

"It's not on Darbis IV," the robot said. "There, immobility is a much safer stratagem."

"The question is," Mishkin said, "whether this place is more like Earth or like Darbis."

"If we knew that," the robot said, "we'd really know something."

The new menace appeared to be a worm some twenty feet long, coloured orange, with black bands around each of its segments. The worm had five heads arranged in a cluster at one end. Each head had a single multifaceted eye and a deep, toothless, moist green mouth.

"Anything that big has got to be dangerous," Mishkin said.

"Not on Darbis," the robot told him. "There, the bigger they come, the nicer they are. It's the little bastards you have to watch out for."

"What do you suggest we do now?" Mishkin asked.

"Beats the hell out of me," the robot said.

The worm came to within ten feet of them. The mouths opened.

"Shoot!" Mishkin said.

The robot raised his blasters and fired directly at the worm's uplifted thorax. Several of the worm's heads blinked and looked annoyed. No other change could be observed.