LITMIR.BIZ

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you given it the problem?”

      “Not yet. I decided to confer with the high priest. What shall I request of the demon, sir?”

      “Give it all the data you can,” Somers said. “Fuel, oxygen, water, food—that sort of thing. Then tell it we want to return to Earth. Alive,” he added.

      “It’ll love that,” Watkins said. “It’ll get such pleasure out of rejecting our problem as unsolvable. Or better yet—insufficient data. In that way, it can hint that a solution is possible, but just outside our reach. It can keep us hoping.”

      Somers and Rajcik followed him to the cargo hold. The computer, activated now, hummed softly. Lights flashed swiftly over its panels, blue and white and red.

      Watkins punched buttons and turned dials for fifteen minutes, then moved back.

      “Watch for the red light on top,” he said. “That means the problem is rejected.”

      “Don’t say it,” Rajcik warned quickly.

      Watkins laughed. “Superstitious little fellow, aren’t you?”

      “But not incompetent,” Rajcik said, smiling.

      “Can’t you two quit it?” Somers demanded, and both men turned startedly to face him.

      “Behold!” Rajcik said. “The sleeper has awakened.”

      “After a fashion,” said Watkins, snickering.

      Somers suddenly felt that if death or rescue did not come quickly, they would kill each other, or drive each other crazy.

      “Look!” Rajcik said.

      A LIGHT on the computer’s panel was flashing green.

      “Must be a mistake,” said Watkins. “Green means the problem is solvable within the conditions set down.”

      “Solvable!” Rajcik said.

      “But it’s impossible,” Watkins argued. “It’s fooling us, leading us on—”

      “Don’t be superstitious,” Rajcik mocked. “How soon do we get the solution?”

      “It’s coming now.” Watkins pointed to a paper tape inching out of a slot in the machine’s face. “But there must be something wrong!”

      They watched as, millimeter by millimeter, the tape crept out. The computer hummed, its lights flashing green. Then the hum stopped. The green lights blazed once more and faded.

      “What happened?” Rajcik wanted to know.

      “It’s finished,” Watkins said.

      “Pick it up! Read it!”

      “You read it. You won’t get me to play its game.”

      Rajcik laughed nervously and rubbed his hands together, but didn’t move. Both men turned to Somers.

      “Captain, it’s your responsibility.”

      “Go ahead, Captain!”

      Somers looked with loathing at his engineer and navigator. His responsibility, everything was his responsibility. Would they never leave him alone?

      He went up to the machine, pulled the tape free, read it with slow deliberation.

      “What does it say, sir?” Rajcik asked.

      “Is it—possible?” Watkins urged.

      “Oh, yes,” Somers said. “It’s possible.” He laughed and looked around at the hot, smelly, low-ceilinged little room with its locked doors and windows.

      “What is it?” Rajcik shouted.

      SOMERS said, “You figured a few thousand years to return to the Solar System, Rajcik? Well, the computer agrees with you. Twenty-three hundred years, to be precise. Therefore, it has given us a suitable longevity serum.”

      “Twenty-three hundred years,” Rajcik mumbled. “I suppose we hibernate or something of the sort.”

      “Not at all,” Somers said calmly. “As a matter of fact, this serum does away quite nicely with the need for sleep. We stay awake and watch each other.”

      The three men looked at one another and at the sickeningly familiar room smelling of metal and perspiration, its sealed doors and windows that stared at an unchanging spectacle of stars.

      Watkins said, “Yes, that’s the sort of thing it would do.”

Dead World, by Jack Douglas

      ... although the most recent star to die, RNAC 89778 in the distant Menelaus galaxy (common name, Menelaus XII), had eight inhabited planets, only some one thousand people of the fifth planet escaped and survived as a result of a computer error which miscalculated the exact time by two years. Due to basic psycho-philo maladjustments the refugees of Menelaus XII-5 are classified as anti-social-types-B-6 and must be considered unstable. All anti-social-types-B-6 are barred from responsible positions in United Galaxies by order of the Inter-Galactic Council.

      —Short History of The United Galaxies

      YUAN SALTARIO started it. He was serving in my Company and he was one of them. A Menelaus XII-5 “unstable,” and don’t ever call that damned little planet by its number if you meet one of them. They call it Nova-Maurania. But you won’t meet one of them. Or maybe you will, maybe they did make it. I like to think they did.

      There were a lot of them in the Companies in 3078. Restless men. The Companies were the logical place for them. We’re still classified anti-social-B-6, too. Every year it’s harder to get recruits, but we still have to be careful who we take in. We took Yuan Saltario. There was something about him from the very start.

      “Why do you want to join a Free Company?” He was a short, humanoid type with deep black eyes and a thin, lipless mouth that never smiled.

      “I’m an anti-social. I like to fight. I want to fight.”

      “A misfit joining the misfits? A grudge against the Council? It’s not good enough, mister, we live on the Council. Try again.”

      Saltario’s black eyes stared without a flicker. “You’re Red Stone, Commander of the Red Company. You hate the Council and I hate the Council. You’re the ...” Saltario stopped.

      I said, “The Traitor of the Glorious War of Survival. You can say it, Saltario.”

      The lipless mouth was rigid. “I don’t think of it that way. I think of a man with personal integrity,” Saltario said.

      I suppose I should have seen it then, the rock he carried deep inside him. It might have saved thirty thousand good men. But I was thinking of myself. Commander Red Stone of the Red Company, Earthmen. Only we’re not all Earthmen now, every year there are fewer recruits, and it won’t be long before we die out and the Council will have the last laugh. Old Red Stone, the Traitor of the War of Survival, the little finger of my left hand still missing and telling the Universe I was a very old soldier of the outlawed Free Companies hanging onto life on a rocky planet of the distant Salaman galaxy. Back at the old stand because United Galaxies still need us. In a way it’s a big joke. Two years after Rajay-Ben and I had a bellyfull of the Glorious War of Survival and they chased us all the way out here, they turned right around and made the peace. A joke on me, but sometimes I like to think that our runout was the thing that made them think and make peace. When you’ve been a soldier for thirty-five years you like to win battles, but you like to feel you helped bring peace, too.

      I said, “Personal integrity. That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So you like personal integrity? All right, Saltario, are you sure you know what you’re getting into? We’re 60 million light years from Galaxy Center, 10 million from the nearest United Galaxy city. We’ve got no comforts, no future, nothing to do but fight. A woman in her right mind

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