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then what?” Houston wanted to know. “What happens in the long run?”

      “In a way,” said Reinhardt, “your friend Sager was right. The Controllers will eventually become the rulers of Earth. But not by force or trickery. We must just bide our time. More and more of us are being born all the time; the Normals are becoming fewer and fewer. Within a century, we will outnumber them—we will be the Normals, not they.

      “But they’ll never know what’s going on. The last Normal will die without ever knowing that he is in a world of telepaths.

      “By the time that comes about, we’ll no longer need the Penal Cluster, since Controllers will be born into a world where there is no fear of non-telepaths.”

      “I wonder,” Houston mused, “I wonder how this ability came about. Why is the human race acquiring telepathy so suddenly?”

      Reinhardt shrugged. “I can give you many explanations—atomic radiation, cosmic rays, natural evolution. But none of them really explains it. They just make it easier to live with.

      “I think something similar must have happened a few hundred thousand years ago, when Cro-Magnon man, our own ancestors, first developed true intelligence instead of the pseudo-intelligence, the highly developed instincts, of the Neanderthals and other para-men.

      “Within a relatively short time, the para-men had died out, leaving the Cro-Magnon, with his true intelligence, to rule Earth.”

      Reinhardt stood up. “Why is it happening? We don’t know. Maybe we never will know, any more than we know why Man developed intelligence.” He shrugged. “Perhaps the only explanation we’ll ever have is to call it the Will of God and let it go at that.”

      “Maybe that’s the best explanation, after all,” Houston said.

      “Perhaps. Who knows?” Reinhardt crushed his cigarette out in a tray. “I’ll go now, and let you get some rest. And don’t worry; I’ll have you notified as soon as Dorrine starts to come out of it.”

      “Thanks—Chief,” Houston said as Reinhardt left the room.

      David Houston lay back in his bed and closed his eyes.

      For the first time in his life, he felt completely at peace—with himself, and with the Universe.

      DESPOILERS OF THE GOLDEN EMPIRE (1959)

      I

      In the seven centuries that had elapsed since the Second Empire had been founded on the shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor. The First Empire had conquered most of the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength; it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue had gained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branches and sectors of the First Empire had begun to use it against one another.

      The Second Empire was politically unlike the First; it tried to balance a centralized government against the autonomic governments of the various sectors, and had almost succeeded in doing so.

      But, no matter how governed, there are certain essentials which are needed by any governmental organization.

      Without power, neither Civilization nor the Empire could hold itself together, and His Universal Majesty, the Emperor Carl, well knew it. And power was linked solidly to one element, one metal, without which Civilization would collapse as surely as if it had been blasted out of existence. Without the power metal, no ship could move or even be built; without it, industry would come to a standstill.

      In ancient times, even as far back as the early Greek and Roman civilizations, the metal had been known, but it had been used, for the most part, as decoration and in the manufacture of jewelry. Later, it had been coined as money.

      It had always been relatively rare, but now, weight for weight, atom for atom, it was the most valuable element on Earth. Indeed, the most valuable in the known universe.

      The metal was Element Number Seventy-nine—gold.

      To the collective mind of the Empire, gold was the prime object in any kind of mining exploration. The idea of drilling for petroleum, even if it had been readily available, or of mining coal or uranium would have been dismissed as impracticable and even worse than useless.

      Throughout the Empire, research laboratories worked tirelessly at the problem of transmuting commoner elements into Gold-197, but thus far none of the processes was commercially feasible. There was still, after thousands of years, only one way to get the power metal: extract it from the ground.

      So it was that, across the great gulf between the worlds, ship after ship moved in search of the metal that would hold the far-flung colonies of the Empire together. Every adventurer who could manage to get aboard was glad to be cooped up on a ship during the long months it took to cross the empty expanses, was glad to endure the hardships on alien terrain, on the chance that his efforts might pay off a thousand or ten thousand fold.

      Of these men, a mere handful were successful, and of these one or two stand well above the rest. And for sheer determination, drive, and courage, for the will to push on toward his goal, no matter what the odds, a certain Commander Frank had them all beat.

      II

      Before you can get a picture of the commander—that is, as far as his personality goes—you have to get a picture of the man physically.

      He was enough taller than the average man to make him stand out in a crowd, and he had broad shoulders and a narrow waist to match. He wasn’t heavy; his was the hard, tough, wirelike strength of a steel cable. The planes of his tanned face showed that he feared neither exposure to the elements nor exposure to violence; it was seamed with fine wrinkles and the thin white lines that betray scar tissue. His mouth was heavy-lipped, but firm, and the lines around it showed that it was unused to smiling. The commander could laugh, and often did—a sort of roaring explosion that burst forth suddenly whenever something struck him as particularly uproarious. But he seldom just smiled; Commander Frank rarely went halfway in anything.

      His eyes, like his hair, were a deep brown—almost black, and they were set well back beneath heavy brows that tended to frown most of the time.

      Primarily, he was a military man. He had no particular flair for science, and, although he had a firm and deep-seated grasp of the essential philosophy of the Universal Assembly, he had no inclination towards the kind of life necessarily led by those who would become higher officers of the Assembly. It was enough that the Assembly was behind him; it was enough to know that he was a member of the only race in the known universe which had a working knowledge of the essential, basic Truth of the Cosmos. With a weapon like that, even an ordinary soldier had little to fear, and Commander Frank was far from being an ordinary soldier.

      He had spent nearly forty of his sixty years of life as an explorer-soldier for the Emperor, and during that time he’d kept his eyes open for opportunity. Every time his ship had landed, he’d watched and listened and collected data. And now he knew.

      If his data were correct—and he was certain that they were—he had found his strike. All he needed was the men to take it.

      III

      The expedition had been poorly outfitted and undermanned from the beginning. The commander had been short of money at the outset, having spent almost all he could raise on his own, plus nearly everything he could beg or borrow, on his first two probing expeditions, neither of which had shown any real profit.

      But they had shown promise; the alien population of the target which the commander had selected as his personal claim wore gold as ornaments, but didn’t seem to think it was much above copper in value, and hadn’t even progressed to the point of using it as coinage. From the second probing expedition, he had brought back two of the odd-looking aliens and enough gold to show that there must be more where that came from.

      The old, hopeful statement, “There’s gold in them thar hills,” should have brought the commander more backing than he got, considering

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