"And I accepted them," he said to Oop. "I accepted them-on faith, perhaps. It was either that or reject them and be left there, standing all alone upon that crystal plain. A man of a century ago, perhaps, would not have accepted them. He would have been inclined to sweep them out of his mind as pure imagination. But I had spent too many hours with Ghost to gag at the thought of ghosts. I had worked too long with supernatural phenomena to quibble at the idea of creatures and of circumstances beyond the human pale.

"And the strange thing about it, the comforting thing about it, is that they sensed that I accepted them."

"And that is it?" asked Oop. "A planet full of ghosts?"

Maxwell nodded, "Perhaps that's one way of looking at it: But let me ask you-what really is a ghost?"

"A spook," said Oop. "A spirit."

"But what do you mean by spook? Define a spirit for me."

"I know," said Oop regretfully. "I was being a bit facetious and there was no excuse for it. We don't know what a ghost is. Even Ghost doesn't know exactly what he is. He simply knows that he exists-and if anyone should know, he should. He has mulled over it a lot. He's thought about it deeply. He has communed with fellow ghosts and there is no evidence. So you fall back upon the supernatural..."

"Which is not understood," said Maxwell.

"A mutation of some sort," suggested Oop.

"Collins thought so," said Maxwell. "But he stood alone. I know I didn't agree with him, but that was before I was on the crystal planet. Now I'm not so sure. What happens when a race reaches an end, when, as a race, it has passed through childhood and middle age and now has reached old age? A race dying as a man does, dying of old age. What does it do, then? It could die, of course.. That's what one would expect of it. But suppose there was a reason that it couldn't die, suppose it had to hang on, had to stay alive for some overriding reason, that it could not allow itself to die?

"If ghostliness really is a mutation," said Oop, "if they knew it was a mutation, if they were so far advanced they could control mutation-"

He stopped and looked at Maxwell. "You think that's what might have happened?"

"I think it might," said Maxwell. "I am beginning to think very much it might."

Oop handed across the fruit jar. "You need a drink," he said. "And when you're through with it, I'll have one, myself."

Maxwell took the jar, holding it, not drinking right away. Oop reached out to the stack of wood, lifted a chunk in one massive fist and threw it on the fire. A spray of sparks gushed up the chimney. Outside the night wind moaned along the eaves.

Maxwell lifted the jar and drank. The splash of liquid ran down his gullet like a torrent of lava. He choked, wishing that he could drink the stuff, just once, without choking on it. He handed the jar back to Oop. Oop lifted it, then took it down again without drinking. He squinted across its rim at Maxwell.

"You said something to live for. Some reason that they couldn't die-that they had to keep on existing, any way they could."

"That's right," said Maxwell. "Information. Knowledge. A planet crammed with knowledge. A storehouse of knowledge- and I would doubt that a tenth of it duplicates our own. The rest of it is new, unknown. Some of it material we have never dreamed of. Knowledge that we may not ferret out short of a million years, if we ever ferret it. It is stored, electronically I suppose-arranging atoms in such a manner that each atom carries a bit of information. Stored in metal sheets, like the pages of a book, stacked in great heaps and piles and each layer of atoms-yes, they are arranged in layers- carries separate information. You read the first layer and then go down to the second layer. Again, like pages in a book, each layer of atoms a page, one stacked atop the other. Each sheet of metal-don't ask me, I can't even guess, how many layers of atoms in each metal sheet. Hundreds of thousands, I would suspect."

Oop lifted the jar hastily, took a tremendous gulp, part of the liquor spraying out across his woolly chest. He let out his breath in a lusty belch.

"They can't abandon this knowledge," said Maxwell.

"They have to pass it on to someone who can use it. They have to stay alive, somehow, until they pass it on. And that, for the love of God, is where I come in. They commissioned me to sell it for them."

"Sell it for them! A bunch of ghosts, hanging on by their very toenails! What would they want? What's the price they ask?"

Maxwell put up his hand and wiped his forehead, which had sprouted a sudden mist of sweat. "I don't know," he said.

"Don't know? How can you sell a thing if you don't know what it's worth, if you don't have an asking price?" "They said they would tell me later. They said to get someone interested and they'd get word to me on what the price would be."

"That," said Oop, disgusted, "is a hell of a way to make a business deal."

"Yes, I know," said Maxwell.

"You have no hint of price?"

"Not the faintest. I tried to explain to them and they couldn't understand, maybe they refused to understand. And since then I have gone over it and over it and there's no way I can know. It all boils down, of course, to what a gang like that might want. And for the life of me, I can't think of a thing they'd want."

"Well," said Oop, "they picked the right place to make their sales pitch. How do you plan to go about it?"

"I'll go up and talk to Arnold."

"You pick them tough," said Oop.

"Look, I have to talk with Arnold and to no one else. This can't go up through channels. There can't a word of it leak out. On the surface, it sounds harebrained. If the communications media or the gossip-mongers got hold of it, the university wouldn't dare to touch it. If it were known and they did consider it and the deal fell through- and, believe me, working in the dark, as I have to work, the deal could well fall through- there'd be just one loud guffaw all the way from here clear out to the Rim. It would be Arnold's neck and my neck and..."

"Pete, Arnold is nothing but a big stuffed shirt. You know that as well as I do. He's an administrator. He's running the business end of this university. I don't care if he has the title of president or not, he's just the manager. He doesn't give a damn about the academic end of it. He won't stick out his neck for three planets full of knowledge."

"The president of the university has to be an administrator... ."

"If it could have come at any other time," mourned Oop, "you might have had a chance. But as it stands right now, Arnold is walking on a crate of eggs. Moving the administration from New York to this jerkwater campus."

"A campus," put in Maxwell, "with a great liberal tradition and-"

"University politics," declared Oop, "doesn't care about liberal traditions or any other kind of traditions."

"I suppose not," said Maxwell, "but Arnold's the man I have to see: I could wish it were someone else. I have no admiration for the man, but he's the one I have to work with."

"You could have turned it down."

"The job of negotiator? No, I couldn't, Oop. No man could have. They'd have had to find someone else and they might get someone who'd bungle it. Not that I'm sure I won't bungle it, but at least I'll try. And it's not only for us, it's for them as well."

"You got to like these people?"

"I'm not sure just how much I liked them. Admired them, maybe. Felt sorry for them, maybe. They're doing what they can. They hunted for so long to find someone they could pass the knowledge on to."

"Pass it on? You said it was for sale."

"Only because there is something that they want or need. I wish I could figure out what it is. It would make everything easier for everyone concerned."

"Minor question-you talked with them. How did you go about it?"