A thought slid through his mind, and he caught it, frantically, a straw in the wind. Reflection. He couldn’t see anything but the reflection. How many walls? He couldn’t count. He couldn’t be sure. But he had to get out of that room, he had to get out! He closed his eyes, closing out some of the brilliant light, bringing the piercing screams still closer to his mind. Slowly, painfully, he backed up to the wall of the room, keeping his eyes tightly closed, refusing to follow his actions in the mirrors, groping behind him with his good arm, seeking over the smooth surface—

  A crack. Follow it. Smoothness—then metal. A knob! With a cry that was half a sob of relief he twisted the knob, felt the wall give, slipped outside onto rough, uneven ground with his eyes still closed, and slammed the door behind him. He stood panting as the grinding and the screams peeled away like a cloak, leaving him in absolute, almost palpable silence.

  There was light. He opened his eyes, then closed them again with a swift gasp, his mind rocking with shock and fear. Cautiously he opened them a slit, peering down, fighting back the terrible, age-old fear, and then slammed them shut again in a rush of vertigo.

  He was standing on the top of a thousand-foot pinnacle!

  Instantly he fell down flat, gripping the smooth edges of rock with a desperate grip. The section of flat rock on which he stood was the size of a coffin, six feet long and three wide. Above him was a cool, blue sky with fleecy white clouds. But on all sides, inches from where he stood, was a sheer, cruel, breathtaking drop to the pounding sea below.

  A shadow passed over him, and he glanced up, tense, fearful. High above he saw huge black wings, a long, naked red neck, cruel talons, black and shiny, and a hooked beak that glinted in the sunlight. A bird such as he had never seen before, sweeping down toward him, then away, making huge circles in the bright blue sky. A bird far larger than he, with evil little button-eyes that stared down at him, unblinking—he sobbed, clinging for dear life to the rock, watching the bird circling lower and lower. Why? Why didn’t they stop this torture? Why didn’t they stop it, bring him back?

  He sensed that the end was near—his strength was failing, his will was failing. Little streamers of hopelessness and despair were nibbling at his brain, despair of holding out much longer, despair that was almost overpowering the fear of death which had sustained him so long. The bird was so low he could hear the hungry flap of its wings as the steel-tipped talons scraped nearer and nearer to his shoulders. He peered over the edge of the precipice, seeking some kind of descent, some toe hold, finding none. He had to get down, he could never fight the creature. He blinked down at the blue water so far below. To climb down would be imbecility. He could feel the shredded end of his arm, loose in the cloth of his sleeve. With only one arm to hold on with, he couldn’t hope to fight off the bird, even if there were a way to climb down.

  A steely talon ripped his shirt as the bird skimmed by, sending a stab of pain through him, crystallizing his mad idea into action. Such a sheer drop above the water could mean a sheer drop below its level. An impossible choice, but there was nothing else to do. Taking a gasp of air he edged to the rim of the drop, gathered his strength, and threw himself off into space—and pure hope.

  The water struck with a horrible impact, driving the wind from him, but he fought desperately toward the surface with his good arm, waiting for release, his mind begging that they would now be satisfied, that now they would stop, bring him back, not make him take any more. Finally he broke surface, and then, quite abruptly, felt solid ground under his feet. Glancing back, he saw that the pinnacle was gone, and the sky had turned a horrid orange-yellow color. Panting, his strength spent, he staggered up on the shore.

  But the shore wasn’t right. With a burst of anger he saw the fearful, distorted shore line upon which he stood, the sand under his feet writhing and alive as little wisps of it rose about his ankles, twisting them, as if to throw him down to his knees. Stars were blinking up at him from the ground, and great boulders of black granite scudded through the sky, whizzing past his ears like huge, unearthly cannon balls. The world was changing, turning and twisting into impossible shapes and contortions, and he smelled the dank, sharp odor of chlorine in the pungent air.

  With a scream of rage he threw himself onto the writhing sand, pounding his fist against it in helpless fury, screaming out again and again. He couldn’t stand it any longer, this was the end, he couldn’t fight any more— They’d have to bring him back now, they’d have to stop—

  A horrible thought split into his mind, bringing him to his knees abruptly. His eyes were wide, hollow-rimmed as he stared unseeing at the impossibly distorted landscape. Fear struck into him, deep, hollow fear that screamed out in his mind, a desolate, empty fear. Carefully he reviewed his ordeal, everything he had thought, and seen, and felt. For so long, he had been running, fighting—enough to satisfy any test, as much as he was humanly capable of fighting. To test his reactions, conscious and unconscious, his resourcefulness in the face of danger, his ingenuity, his resiliency, his fight, his drive, his spirit—they couldn’t ask for more. Yet they still hadn’t brought him back. Surely, if any human being had ever proved himself capable of surviving the fearful alienness of the stars and the worlds around the stars, he had proved himself.

  But they hadn’t brought him back—

  The thought came again, strongly, growing into horrible certainty. He shuddered, a huge sob breaking from his lips. He knew, he was sure. He had been waiting, hoping, fighting until he had satisfied them and they would stop. But now he saw the picture, from a different angle, with terrible clarity.

  They weren’t going to stop. They were never going to stop subjecting him to these horrors. No matter how much he took, no matter how long he kept going, they would never stop.

  He had been fighting for a lost cause, fighting to satisfy the insatiable. And he could keep fighting, and running, and fighting, until he toppled over dead.

  Anger broke through the despair, blinding anger, anger that tore at his heart and twisted his mouth into a snarl of rage. He had been bilked, fooled, sold down the river. He was just another experiment, a test case, to see how much a live danger-trained spaceman could stand, to be run to death on a treadmill like a helpless, mindless guinea pig—

  For the greater good of humanity, they had said. He spat on the sand. He didn’t care about humanity any more. To enable men to go to the stars! Bother the stars! He was a man, he’d fought a grueling battle,, he’d faced death in the most horrible forms his own mind could conceive. He wasn’t going to die, not in the face of the worst that Connover and Schiml and their psych-training crews could throw at him!

  He leaned back on the sand, red anger tearing through his veins. It was his own mind he was fighting, these things had come from his own mind, directed by Schiml’s probing needles, stimulated by tiny electrical charges, horribly real, but coming from his own mind nevertheless. They could kill him, oh yes, he never lost sight of that fact.

  But he could kill them, too.

  He saw the huge rock coming at quite a distance. It was black, and jagged, like a monstrous chunk of coal, speeding straight for his head, careening through the air like some idiotic missile from hell. With bitter anger Robert Cox stood up, facing the approaching boulder, fixing his mind in a single, tight channel, and screamed “Stop!” with all the strength he had left.

  And the boulder faltered in mid-flight, and slowed, and vanished in a puff of blue light.

  Cox turned to face the shifting, junglelike shore line, his muscles frozen, great veins standing out in his neck. It’s not true, his mind screamed to him, you can wake yourself up, they won’t help you, but you can do it yourself, you can make it all go away, you yourself can control this mind of yours—

  And then, like the mists of a dream, the world began fading away around him, twisting like wraiths in the thin, pungent air, changing, turning, changing again, as the last of his strength crept out of his beaten body, and his mind sank with the swirling world into a haze of unconsciousness. And the last thing he saw before blackout was a girl’s sweet face, tearful and loving, hovering close to his, calling his name—

  He was awake quite suddenly. Slowly, he stared around the bright, cheerful hospital room. His bed was by a window, and he looked out at the cool morning sun beaming down on the busy city below. Far below he could see the spreading buildings and grounds of the Hoffman Medical Center, like a green oasis in the teeming city. And far in the distance he saw the gleaming silver needlepoints of the starships that he knew were waiting for him.

  He turned his face toward the tall, gaunt man in white by his bedside. “Paul,” he said softly, “I came through.”

  “You came through.” The doctor smiled happily, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “But I had to terminate the test all by myself. You couldn’t have stopped it for me.”

  Schiml nodded gravely. “That was the last step you had to take, the really critical step of the whole test. I couldn’t have told the others about it, of course. They’d never have let me start the test if they had known. Connover wouldn’t even stick with the part that he’d agreed upon. But without that last step, the test would have been worthless. Can you see that?”

  Cox nodded slowly. “I had to rise above the physical reaction level, somehow, I had to force myself—”

  “There’s no way for us to know what you’ll find, out there, when you go.” Schiml said slowly. “All we knew was what the others found, and what it did to them. They couldn’t survive what they found. But we knew that training in reactive, fight-or-flight level of response to danger wouldn’t be good enough, either. You would have to have razor-sharp reactions plus full rational powers, even at the very end of your physical rope. We had to know that you had that—” He reached over to inspect Cox’s bandaged head for a moment, his fingers infinitely gentle. “If the horrors you faced had been fakes, to be turned off when the going got tough, you wouldn’t have been driven to that last ebb of resourcefulness that will save you—when you go to the stars. That was the final jump, the one the others didn’t realize—that you had to discover, finally: That we weren’t going to help you; that if you were to be saved, ultimately, ithad to depend on you and you alone. You see, when you go where the other starmen went, no one will be with you to help. It’ll be you and you alone. But whatever alien worlds you find, you’ll have a strange sort of guardian angel to help you.”

  “The training—”

  “That’s right. Training on an unconscious level, of course, but there in your mind nevertheless, a sharpening of your senses, of your analytical powers—an overwhelmingly acute fight-or-flight sense to protect you, no matter what nightmares you run into.”

  Cox nodded. “I know. What you called it, at the beginning of training—a sort of brother, hidden, but always there. And this testing was the final step, to see if I could survive such nightmares.”

  “And you’ll take it with you to the stars, the nightmare knowledge and experience. It’s hidden deep in your mind, but it’ll be there when you need it. You’ll be the next man to go—you and your nightmare brother.”

  Cox stared out the window for a long moment. “Mary’s all right?” he asked softly.

  “She’s waiting to see you.”

  Robert Cox sat up slowly, his mind clear in the remembrance of the ordeal he had been through— a hideous ordeal. Terrible, but necessary, so that when he came back, he would not be as the others had been. So that men could go to the stars with safety, and come back with safety.

  Slowly he remembered his anger. He gripped the doctor’s hand, squeezed it tightly. “Thanks, Paul,” he said. “If I come back—”

  “You mean, when you come back,” said Dr. Schiml, grinning. “When you come back, we’ll all have a beer together. That’s what we’ll do.”

  PRoblem

  by

  Alan E. Nourse

  The letter came down the slot too early that morning to be the regular mail run. Pete Greenwood eyed the New Philly photocancel with a dreadful premonition. The letter said:

  PETER: Can you come East chop-chop, urgent? Grdznth problem getting to be a PRoblem, need expert icebox salesman to get gators out of hair fast. Yes? Math boys hot on this, citizens not so hot. Please come. TOMMY

  Pete tossed the letter down the gulper with a sigh. He had lost a bet to himself because it had come three days later than he expected, but it had come all the same, just as it always did when Tommy Heinz got himself into a hole.

  Not that he didn't like Tommy. Tommy was a good PR-man, as PR-men go. He just didn't know his own depth. PRoblem in a beady Grdznth eye! What Tommy needed right now was a Bazooka Battalion, not a PR-man. Pete settled back in the Eastbound Rocketjet with a sigh of resignation.

  He was just dozing off when the fat lady up the aisle let out a scream. A huge reptilian head had materialized out of nowhere and was hanging in air, peering about uncertainly. A scaly green body followed, four feet away, complete with long razor talons, heavy hind legs, and a whiplash tail with a needle at the end. For a moment the creature floated upside down, legs thrashing. Then the head and body joined, executed a horizontal pirouette, and settled gently to the floor like an eight-foot circus balloon.

  Two rows down a small boy let out a muffled howl and tried to bury himself in his mother's coat collar. An indignant wail arose from the fat lady. Someone behind Pete groaned aloud and quickly retired behind a newspaper.

  The creature coughed apologetically. "Terribly sorry," he said in a coarse rumble. "So difficult to control, you know. Terribly sorry… ." His voice trailed off as he lumbered down the aisle toward the empty seat next to Pete.

  The fat lady gasped, and an angry murmur ran up and down the cabin. "Sit down," Pete said to the creature. "Relax. Cheerful reception these days, eh?"

  "You don't mind?" said the creature.

  "Not at all." Pete tossed his briefcase on the floor. At a distance the huge beast had looked like a nightmare combination of large alligator and small tyrannosaurus. Now, at close range Pete could see that the "scales" were actually tiny wrinkles of satiny green fur. He knew, of course, that the Grdznth were mammals—"docile, peace-loving mammals," Tommy's PR-blasts had declared emphatically—but with one of them sitting about a foot away Pete had to fight down a wave of horror and revulsion.

  The creature was most incredibly ugly. Great yellow pouches hung down below flat reptilian eyes, and a double row of long curved teeth glittered sharply. In spite of himself Pete gripped the seat as the Grdznth breathed at him wetly through damp nostrils.

  "Misgauged?" said Pete.

  The Grdznth nodded sadly. "It's horrible of me, but I just can't help it. I always misgauge. Last time it was the chancel of St. John's Cathedral. I nearly stampeded morning prayer—" He paused to catch his breath. "What an effort. The energy barrier, you know. Frightfully hard to make the jump." He broke off sharply, staring out the window. "Dear me! Are we going east?"

  "I'm afraid so, friend."

  "Oh, dear. I wanted Florida."

  "Well, you seem to have drifted through into the wrong airplane," said Pete. "Why Florida?"

  The Grdznth looked at him reproachfully. "The Wives, of course. The climate is so much better, and they mustn't be disturbed, you know."

  "Of course," said Pete. "In their condition. I'd forgotten."

  "And I'm told that things have been somewhat unpleasant in the East just now," said the Grdznth.

  Pete thought of Tommy, red-faced and frantic, beating off hordes of indignant citizens. "So I hear," he said. "How many more of you are coming through?"

  "Oh, not many, not many at all. Only the Wives—half a million or so—and their spouses, of course." The creature clicked his talons nervously. "We haven't much more time, you know. Only a few more weeks, a few months at the most. If we couldn't have stopped over here, I just don't know what we'd have done."

  "Think nothing of it," said Pete indulgently. "It's been great having you."

  The passengers within earshot stiffened, glaring at Pete. The fat lady was whispering indignantly to her seat companion. Junior had half emerged from his mother's collar; he was busy sticking out his tongue at the Grdznth.

  The creature shifted uneasily. "Really, I think—perhaps Florida would be better."

  "Going to try it again right now? Don't rush off," said Pete.

  "Oh, I don't mean to rush. It's been lovely, but—" Already the Grdznth was beginning to fade out.

  "Try four miles down and a thousand miles southeast," said Pete.

  The creature gave him a toothy smile, nodded once, and grew more indistinct. In another five seconds the seat was quite empty. Pete leaned back, grinning to himself as the angry rumble rose around him like a wave. He was a Public Relations man to the core—but right now he was off duty. He chuckled to himself, and the passengers avoided him like the plague all the way to New Philly.

  But as he walked down the gangway to hail a cab, he wasn't smiling so much. He was wondering just how high Tommy was hanging him, this time.

  The lobby of the Public Relations Bureau was swarming like an upturned anthill when Pete disembarked from the taxi. He could almost smell the desperate tension of the place. He fought his way past scurrying clerks and preoccupied poll-takers toward the executive elevators in the rear.

  On the newly finished seventeenth floor, he found Tommy Heinz pacing the corridor like an expectant young father. Tommy had lost weight since Pete had last seen him. His ruddy face was paler, his hair thin and ragged as though chunks had been torn out from time to time. He saw Pete step off the elevator, and ran forward with open arms. "I thought you'd never get here!" he groaned. "When you didn't call, I was afraid you'd let me down."