Suddenly the great tree bent over and lashed out against both animals. It transfixed them with its thorns, which the
watchers now saw were both needle-pointed and barbed. It ripped at them with its long branches, which were in fact
highly lethal spears. The broad leaves, equipped with sucking discs, wrapped themselves around the hopelessly
impaled victims. The long, slender twigs or tendrils, each of which now had an eye at its extremity, waved about at a
safe distance.
After absorbing all of the two gladiators that was absorbable, the tree resumed its former position, motionless in
all its strange, outlandish beauty.
Dorothy licked her lips, which were almost as white as her face. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she remarked,
conversationally.
“No you aren’t.” Seaton tightened his arm. “Chin up, ace.”
“Okay, chief. Maybe not-this time.” Color began to reappear on her cheeks. “But Dick, will you please blow up that
horrible tree? It wouldn’t be so bad if it were ugly, like the rest of the things, but it’s so beautiful!”
“I sure will. I think we’d better get out of here. This is no place to start a copper mine, even if there’s any copper
here, which there probably isn’t. . . . It is X, DuQuesne, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Ninety-nine plus per cent, at least.”
“That reminds me.” Seaton turned to DuQuesne, band outstretched. “You squared it, Blackie. Say the word the war’s
all off.”
DuQuesne ignored the hand. “Not on my side,” he said evenly. “I act as one of the party as long as I’m with you.
When we get back, however, I still intend to take both of you out of circulation.” He went to his room.
“Well, I’ll be a . . . ” Seaton bit off a word. “He ain’t a man-he’s a cold-blooded fish!”
“He’s a machine–a robot,” Margaret declared. “I always thought so, and now I know it!”
“We’ll pull his cork when we get back,” Seaton said. “He asked for it-we’ll give him both barrels!”
Crane went to the board, and soon they were approaching another planet, which was surrounded by a dense fog.
Descending slowly, they found it to be a mass of boiling hot steam and rank vapor, under enormous pressure.
The next planet looked barren and dead. Its atmosphere was clear, but of a peculiar yellowish-green color. Analysis
showed over ninety per cent chlorine. No life of any Earthly type could exist naturally upon such a world and a
search for copper, even in space-suits, would be extremely difficult if not impossible.
“Well,” Seaton said, as they were once more in space, “We’ve got copper enough to visit quite a few more solar
systems if we have to. But there’s a nice, hopeful-looking planet right over there. It may be the one we’re looking
for.”
Arriving in the belt of atmosphere, they tested it as before and found it satisfactory.
They descended rapidly, over a large city set in the middle of a vast, level, beautifully planted plain. As they
watched, the city vanished and became a mountain summit, with valleys falling away on all sides as far as the eye
could reach.
“Huh! I never saw a mirage like that before!” Seaton exclaimed. “But we’ll land, if we finally have to swim!” The ship
landed gently upon the summit, its occupants more than half expecting the mountain to disappear beneath them.
Nothing happened, however, and the five clustered in the lock, wondering whether or not to disembark. They could
see no sign of life; but each felt the presence of a vast, invisible something.
Suddenly a man materialized in the air before them; a man identical with Seaton in every detail, down to the smudge
of grease under one eye and the exact design of his Hawaiian sport shirt.
“Hello, folks,” he said, in Seaton’s tone and style. “S’prised that I know your language-huh, you would be. Don’t even
understand telepathy, or the ether, or the relationship between time and space. Not even the fourth dimension.”
Changing instantaneously from Seaton’s form to Dorothy’s, the stranger went on without a break. “Electrons and
neutrons and things-nothing here, either.”
The form became DuQuesne’s. “Ah, a freer type, but blind, dull, stupid; another nothing. As Martin Crane; the same.
As Peggy, still the same, as was of course to be expected. Since you are all nothings in essence, of a race so low in
the scale that it will be millions of years before it will rise even above death and death’s clumsy attendant
necessity, sex, it is of course necessary for me to make of you nothings in fact; to dematerialize you.”
In Seaton’s form the being stared at Seaton, who felt his senses reel under the impact of an awful, if insubstantial,
blow. Seaton fought back with all his mind and remained standing.
“What’s this?” the stranger exclaimed in surprise. “This is the first time in millions of cycles that mere matter,
which is only a manifestation of mind, has refused to obey a mind of power. There’s something screwy
somewhere.” He switched to Crane’s shape.
“Ah, I am not a perfect reproduction-there is some subtle difference. The external form is the same; the internal
structure likewise. The molecules of substance are arranged properly, as are the atoms in the molecules. The
electrons, neutrons, protons, positrons, neutrinos, mesons … nothing amiss on that level. On the third level . . .”
“Let’s go!” Seaton exclaimed, drawing Dorothy backward and reaching for the airlock switch. “This
dematerialization stuff may be pie for him, but believe me, it’s none of my dish.”
“No, no!” the stranger remonstrated. “You really must stay and be dematerialized-alive or dead.”
He drew his pistol. Being in Crane’s form, he drew slowly, as Crane did; and Seaton’s Mark I shell struck him
before the pistol cleared his pocket. The pseudo-body was votalized; but, just to make sure, Crane fired a Mark V
into the ground through the last open chink of the closing lock.
Seaton leaped to the board. As he did so, a creature materialized in the air in front of him-and crashed to the floor
as he threw on the power. It was a frightful thing-outrageous teeth, long claws, and an automatic pistol held in a
human hand. Forced flat by the fierce acceleration, it was unable to lift either itself or the weapon.
“We take one trick!” Seaton blazed. “Stick to matter and I’ll run along with you ’til my ankles catch fire!”
“That is a childish defiance. It speaks well for your courage, but not for your intelligence,” the animal said, and
vanished.
A moment later Seaton’s hair stood on end as a pistol appeared upon his board, clamped to it by hands of steel. The
slide jerked; the trigger moved; the hammer came down. However; there was no explosion, but merely a click.
Seaton, paralyzed by the rapid succession of stunning events, was surprised to find himself still alive.
“Oh,.I was almost sure it wouldn’t explode,” the gunbarrel said, chattily, in a harsh, metallic voice. “You see, I
haven’t derived the formula of your sub-nuclear structure yet, hence I could not make an actual explosive. By the
use of crude force I could kill you in any one of many different ways. . . .”
“Name one!” Seaton snapped.
“Two, if you like. I could materialize as five masses of metal directly over your heads, and fall. I could, by a
sufficient concentration of effort, materialize a sun in your immediate path. Either method would succeed, would
it not?”
“I … I guess it would,” Seaton admitted, grudgingly. “But such crude work is distasteful in the extreme, and is never,
under any conditions, mandatory. Furthermore, you are not quite the complete nothings that my first rough analysis
seemed to indicate. In particular, the DuQuesne of you has the rudiments of a quality which, while it cannot be
called mental ability, may in time develop into a quality which may just possibly make him assimilable into the
purely intellectual stratum.
“Furthermore, you have given me a notable and entirely unexpected amount of exercise and enjoyment and can be
made to give me more-much more-as follows: I will spend the next sixty of your minutes at work upon that
formula-your subnuclear structure. Its derivation is comparatively simple, requiring only the solution of ninety-
seven simultaneous differential equations and an integration in ninety-seven dimensions. If you can interfere with
my computations sufficiently to prevent me from deriving that formula within the stipulated period of time you
may return to your fellow nothings exactly as you now are. The first minute begins when the sweep-hand of your
chronometer touches zero; that is . . . now.”
Seaton cut the power to one gravity and sat up, eyes closed tight and frowning in the intensity of his mental effort.
“You can’t do it, you immaterial lug!” he thought, savagely. “There are too many variables. No mind, however
inhuman, can handle more than ninety-one differentials at once . . . you’re wrong; that’s theta, not epsilon. . . . It’s X,