by Wyman Guin
Mary knew she had to get out of there or Mrs. Harris
would eventually recognize her. If she left the room quietly,
Mrs. Harris would not question her unless she recognized
her. It was no use trying to guess how Susan would walk.
Mary stood and went towards the door, glad that it turned
her back to Mrs. Harris. It seemed to her that she could feel
the teacher's eyes stabbing through her back.
But she walked safely from the room. She dashed down' the
school corridor and out into the street. So great was her fear
of what she was doing that her hypoalter's world actually
seemed like a different one.
It was a long way for Mary to walk across town, and
when she rang the bell, Conrad Manz was already home from
work. He smiled at her and she loved him at once.
"Well, what do you want, young lady?" he asked.
Mary couldn't answer him. She just smiled back.
"What's your name, eh?"
Mary went right on smiling, but suddenly he blurred in front
of her.
"Here, here! There's nothing to cry about. Come on in
and let's see if we can help you. Clara! We have a visitor, a
very sentimental visitor."
Mary let him put his big arm around her shoulder and
draw her, crying, into the apartment. Then she saw Clara
swimming before her, looking like her mother, but. . . no, not
at all like her mother.
"Now, see here, chicken, what is it you've come for?"
Conrad asked when her crying stopped.
Mary had to stare hard at the floor to be able to say it.
"I want to live with you."
Clara was twisting and untwisting a handkerchief. "But,
child, we have already had our first baby appointed to us.
He'll be with us next shift, and after that I have to bear a
baby for someone else to keep. We wouldn't be allowed to
take care of you."
"I thought maybe I was your real child." Mary said it help-
lessly, knowing in advance what the answer would be.
"Darling," Clara soothed, "children don't live with their nat-
ural parents. It's neither practical nor civilized. I have had a
child conceived and born on my shift, and this baby is my
exchange, so you see that you are much too old to be my
conception. Whoever your natural parents may be, it is just
something on record with the Medicorps Genetic Division and
isn't important."
"But you're a special case," Mary pressed. "I thought be-
cause it was a special arrangement that you were my real
pareats." She looked up and she saw that Clara had turned
white.
And now Conrad Manz was agitated, too. "What do you
mean, we're a special case?" He was staring hard at her.
"Because..." And now for the first time Mary realized
how special this case was, how sensitive they would be
about it.
He grasped her by the shoulders and turned her so she
faced his unblinking eyes. "I said, what do you mean, we're
a special case? Clara, what in thirty heads does this kid
mean?"
His grip hurt her and she began to cry again. She broke
away. "You're the hypoalters of my appointed father and
mother. I thought maybe when it was like that, I might be
your real child. . . and you might want me. I don't want to
be where I am. I want somebody. . ."
Clara was calm now, her sudden fear gone. "But, darling,
if you're unhappy where you are, only the Medicorps can re-
appoint you. Besides, maybe your appointed parents are just
having some personal problems right now. Maybe if you tried
to understand them, you would see that they really love
you."
Conrad's face showed that he did not understand. He spoke
with a stiff, quiet voice and without taking his eyes from
Mary. "What are you doing here? My own hyperalter's kid
in my house, throwing it up to me that I'm married to his
wife's hypoalter!"
They did not feel the earth move, as she fearfully did.
They sat there, staring at her, as though they might sit for-
ever while she backed away, out of the apartment, and
ran into her collapsing world.
Conrad Manz's rest day fell the day after Bill Walden's kid
showed up at his apartment. It was ten days since that
strait jacket of a conference on Santa Fe had lost him a chance
to blast off a rocket racer. This time, on the practical knowl-
edge that emergency business conferences were seldom called
after lunch, Conrad had placed his reservation for a racer in
the afternoon. The visit from Mary Walden had upset him
every time he thought of it. Since it was his rest day, he had
no intention of thinking about it and Conrad's scrupulously
drugged mind was capable of just that.
So now, in the lavish coolness of the lounge at the Rocket
Club, Conrad sipped his drink contentedly and made no con-
tribution to the gloomy conversation going on around him.
"Look at it this way," the melancholy face of Alberts, a
pilot from England, morosely emphasized his tone. "It takes
about 10,000 economic units to jack a forty-ton ship up to
satellite level and snap it around the course six times. That's
just practice for us. On the other hand, an intellectual fellow
who spends his spare time at a microfilm library doesn't use
up 1,000 units in a year. In fact, his spare-time activity may
turn up as units gained. The Economic Board doesn't
argue that all pastime should be gainful. They just say rocket
racing wastes more economic units than most pilots make on
their work days. I tell you the day is almost here when
they ban the rockets."
"That's just it," another pilot put in. "There was a time
when you could show that rocket races were necessary for
better spaceship design. Design has gone way beyond that.
From their point of view we just bum up units as fast
as other people create them. And it's no use trying to argue
for the television shows. The Board can prove people would
rather see a jet-skiing meet at a cost of about one-hundredth
that of a rocket race."
Conrad Manz grinned into his drink. He had been aware
for several minutes that pert little Angela, Alberts' soft-eyed,
husky-voiced wife, was trying to catch his eye. But stranded
as she was in the buzzing traffic of rockets, she was trying to
hail the wrong rescuer. He had about fifteen minutes till the
ramp boys would have a ship ready for him. Much as he
liked Angela, he wasn't going to miss that race.
Still, he let his grin broaden and, looking up at her, he
lied maliciously by nodding. She interpreted this signal as he
knew she would. Well, at least he would afford her a grace-
ful exit from the boring conversation.
He got up and went over and took her hand. Her full lips
parted a little and she kissed him on the mouth.
Conrad turned to Alberts and interrupted him. "Angela and
I would like to spend a little time together. Do you mind?"
Alberts was annoyed at having his train of thought broken
and rather snapped out the usual courtesy. "Of course not.
I'm glad for both of you."
Conrad looked the group over with a bland stare. "Have
you lads ever tried jet-skiing? There's more genuine excite-
ment in ten minutes of it than an hour of rocket racing. Per-
sonally, I don't care if the Board does ban the rockets soon.
I'll just hop out to the Rocky Mountains on rest days."
Conrad knew perfectly well that if he had made this asser-
tion before asking Alberts for his wife, the man would have
found some excuse to have her remain. All the faces present
displayed the aficionado's disdain for one who has just dem-
onstrated he doesn't belong. What the strait-jacket did they
think they weresome ancient order of noblemen?
Conrad took Angela's yielding arm and led her serenely
away before Alberts could think of anything to detain her.
On the way out of the lounge, she stroked his arm with
frank admiration. "I'm so glad you were agreeable. Honestly,
Harold could talk rockets till I died."
Conrad bent and kissed her. "Angela, I'm sorry, but this
isn't going to be what you think. I have a ship to take off in
just a few minutes."
She flared and dug into his arm now. "Oh, Conrad
Manz! You . . . you made me believe . . "'
He laughed and grabbed her wrists. "Now, now. I'm neg-
lecting you to fly a rocket, not just to talk about them. I
won't let you die."
At last she could not suppress her husky musical laugh. "I
found that out the last time you and I were together. Clara
and I had a drink the other day at the Citizens' Club. I don't
often use dirty language, but I told Clara she must be keep-
ing you in a strait-jacket at home."
Conrad frowned, wishing she hadn't brought up the sub-
ject. It worried him off and on that something was wrong
with Clara, something even worse than that awful dreaming
business ten days ago. For several shifts now she had been
cold, nor was it just a temporary lack of interest in himself,
for she was also cold to the men of their acquaintance of
whom she was usually quite fond. As for himself, he had had
to depend on casual contacts such as Angela. Not that they
weren't pleasant, but a man and wife were supposed to main-
tain a healthy love life between themselves, and it usually
meant trouble with the Medicorps when this broke down.
Angela glanced at him. "I didn't think Clara laughed well
at my remark. Is something wrong between you?"
"Oh, no," he declared hastily. "Clara is sometimes that
way. . . doesn't catch a joke right off."
A page boy approached them where they stood in the
rotunda and advised Conrad that his ship was ready.
"Honestly, Angela, I'll make it up, I promise."
"I know you will, darling. And at least I'm grateful you
saved me from all those rocket jets in there." Angela raised
her lips for a kiss and afterwards, as she pushed him towards
the door, her slightly vacant face smiled at him.
Out on the ramp, Conrad found another pilot ready to
take off. They made two wagersfirst to reach the racing
course, and winner in a six-lap heat around the six-hundred-
mile hexagonal course.
They fired together and Conrad blasted his ship up on a
thunderous column of flame that squeezed him into his seat.
He was good at this and he knew he would win the lift to
the course. On the course, though, if his opponent was any
good at all, Conrad would probably lose, because he enjoyed
slamming the ship around the course in his wasteful, swash-
buckling style much more than merely winning the heat.
Conrad kept his drive on till the last possible second and
then shot out his nose jets. The ship shuddered up through
another hundred miles and came to a lolling halt near the
starting buoys. The other pilot gasped when Conrad shouted
at him over the intership, "The winner by all thirty heads!"
It was generally assumed that a race up to the course con-
sisted of cutting all jets when you had enough lift, and using
the nose brakes only to correct any overshot. "What did you
do, just keep your power on and flip the ship around?" The
other racer coasted up to Conrad's level and steadied with a
brief forward burst.
They got the automatic signal from the starting buoy and
went for the first turn, nose and nose, about half a mile
apart. Conrad lost 5,000 yards on the first turn by shoving
his power too hard against the starboard steering jets.
It made a pretty picture when a racer hammered its way
around a turn that way with a fan of outside jets holding it in
place. The other fellow made his turns cleanly, using mostly
the driving jets for steering. But that didn't look like much
to those who happened to flip on their television while this
little heat was in progress. On every turn, Conrad lost a little
in space, but not in the eye of the automatic televisor on the
buoy marking the turn. As usual, he cut closer to the buoys
than regulations allowed, to give the folks a show.
Without the slightest regret, Conrad lost the heat by a full
two sides of the hexagon. He congratulated his opponent and
watched the fellow let his ship down carefully towards earth
on its tail jets. For a while Conrad lolled his ship around
near the starting buoy and its probably watching eye, flipping
through a series of complicated manoeuvres with the steering
jets.
Conrad did not like the grim countenance of outer space.
The lifeless, gem-like blaze of cloud upon cloud of stars in
the perspectiveless black repelled him. He liked rocket rac-
ing only because of the neat timing necessary, and possibly
because the knowledge that he indulged in it scared poor old
Bill Walden half to death.
Today the bleak aspect of the Galaxy harried his mind
back upon its own problems. A particularly nasty associa-
tion of Clara with Bill Walden and his snivelling kid kept
dogging Conrad's mind and, as soon as stunting had exhaust-
ed his excess of fuel, he turned the ship to earth and sent it
in with a short, spectacular burst.
Now that he stopped to consider it, Clara's strange be-
haviour had begun at about the same time that Bill Walden
started cheating on the shifts. That kid Mary must have
known something was going on, or she would not have done
such a disgusting thing as to come to their apartment.
Conrad had let the rocket fall nose-down, until now it was
screaming into the upper ionosphere. With no time to spare,
be swivelled the ship on its guiding jets and opened the
drive blast at the uprushing earth. He had just completed
this wrenching manoeuvre when two appalling things happened
together.
Conrad suddenly knew, whether as a momentary leak from
Bill's mind to his, or as a rapid calculation of his own, that
Bill Walden and Clara shared a secret. At the same mo-
ment, something tore throu
gh his mind like fingers of chill
wind. With seven gravities mashing him into the bucket-
seat, he grunted curses past thin-stretched lips.
"Great blue psychiatrists! What in thirty strait-jackets is
that three-headed fool trying to do, kill us both?"
Conrad just managed to raise his leaden hand and set the
plummeting racer for automatic pilot before Bill Walden
forced him out of the shift. In his last moment of conscious-
ness, and in the shock of his overwhelming shame, Conrad
felt the bitter irony that he could not cut the power and kill
Bffl Walden.
When Bill Walden became conscious of the thunderous
clamour of the braking ship and the awful weight of deceler-
ation into which he had shifted, the core of him froze. He
was so terrified that he could not have thought of reshifting
even had there been time.
His head rolled on the pad in spite of its weight, and he
saw the earth coming at him like a monstrous swatter aimed
at a fly. Between his fright and the inhuman gravity, he lost
consciousness without ever seeing on the control panel the
red warning that saved him: Automatic Pilot.
The ship settled itself on the ramp in a mushroom of fire.
Bill regained awareness several seconds later. He was too
shaken to do anything but sit there for a long time.
When at last he felt capable of moving, he struggled with
the door till he found how to open it, and climbed down to
the still hot ramp he had landed on. It was at least a mile to
the Rocket Club across the barren flat of the field, and he
set out on foot. Shortly, however, a truck came speeding
across to him.
The driver leaned out. "Hey, Conrad, what's the matter?
Why didn't you pull the ship over to the hangars?"
With Conrad's make-up on. Bill felt he could probably
get by. "Controls aren't working," he offered noncommittally.
At the club, a place he had never been to before in his
life. Bill found an unused helicopter and started it with his
wrist band. He flew the machine into town to the landing
station nearest his home.
He was doomed, he knew. Conrad certainly would report
him for this. He had not intended to force the shift so
early or so violently. Perhaps he had not intended to force
it at all this time. But there was something in him more
powerful than himself... a need to break the shift and be
with Clara that now acted almost independently of him and
