The Mu Conspiracy

By R . Arlan Young

When the Neutral Zone separating Unavaaris from the Tark Empire was upgraded with state-of-the-art Axolan mines, it was promised that Tark technology would not be able to surpass that of the mines for hundreds of years. This ushered in an era of peace and security that had never before been seen in the jaalm. Because of this, the people were prompted to demand that the government dissolve the military, ban all lethal weapons, and severely restrict intelligence-gathering by the government through stiff right-to-privacy laws. However, not long after the new laws were passed, a rogue group within the police force took it upon themselves to maintain the old - world intelligence - gathering protocols against the probability that hostilities would eventually resume. Now 200 years later an unsanctioned covert operation within the Tark Empire, has uncovered a startlingly concerning situation that has so far gone undetected: the Tark people are no longer in control of their own jaalm. Sometime over recent months, a vicious race of beings has come out of the void of intergalactic space and has descended upon the Tark Empire, seizing control of the government and subjugating the Tark people with an iron hand. They are looking for something. And someone in the government of Unavaaris knows what that something is. It is feared, from the new intelligence out of the Tark Empire, that the aliens might move their operation out of Tark space and into Unavaaris, only now the technology of the Axolan mines will not be able to hold back the onrushing tide. Unavaaris is going to need a military to meet this new threat, and it is going to need it now. Enter secret agent Marc Keslin, who is just coming off probation when he stumbles onto evidence of such treachery within the government that he is compelled to conduct his own investigation, putting him on a dangerous course, navigating the mysterious waters of the Mu conspiracy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781641389723

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The Mu Conspiracy

R Arlan Young

Copyright © 2018 R Arlan Young

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64138-971-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64138-972-3 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

*     *     *

When the ancient city of Nachitlan was discovered a few years ago high in the Peruvian Andes, it was the beginning of a great adventure for mankind on this planet, for along with the unlocking of the incredible secrets of that most unusual city came irrefutable proof that we on Earth are not alone in the universe. That the city had been host to a group of extraterrestrials is now accepted as fact. The evidence of this, discovered in a hidden chamber beneath the city’s main temple, was overwhelming. According to subsequent investigation, the aliens apparently coexisted with the Peruvian natives for nearly one hundred and ninety-three years until they suddenly vanished, leaving everything behind and intact. The value of the treasure lying in that chamber is immeasurable. The wealth of knowledge represented there has only begun to be tapped and will continue to be the source of fantastic revelation for years to come.

The story of the discovery of Nachitlan by the Austrian archaeologists Gregor Hurtzburge and Rudolf Reinig and the subsequent finding of the secret room a year later would be a fascinating story in its own right. My purpose here, however, lies with a certain portion of what was found there which I regard as being of extraordinary interest.

In the center of the city was a temple that rose a hundred and fifty feet from the ground to the top of the peak of the pyramid-like roof. Far beneath the floor of that temple was a room. It was immediately evident upon entering the room for the first time that its design and construction did not coincide with the architecture and building techniques of the city above, thus suggesting two distinct sets of architects. This in itself was not unusual, for all over the world, evidence has been found of a later civilization building over the ruins of an earlier one. In this case, however, the vault beneath the city boasted a technology far in advance of anything possessed by the natives at that time. In fact, the technology behind the construction of that chamber outdistances even our current scientific understanding.

The objects and markings found in the room were clearly alien to any of the cultures of this planet, past and present, and, therefore, the social structure of these beings was not rooted in any familiar terrestrial criteria. But the laws of nature have always been universal throughout the cosmos, which meant that the aliens’ science would be the same as ours; only the terminology would be different. So it was along those lines that the investigation proceeded, and after months of futile puzzling over the vault and its contents by the best scientific minds of the modern world, a break finally came when a scientist accidentally stumbled across a piece of physical evidence that proved to be the clue to unraveling the mystery of the hidden chamber.

The walls of the vault were lined with sealed compartments filled with shiny black discs upon which, it was discovered months later, was recorded information concerning the operation of that outpost. Shortly thereafter, it was determined that some of the objects placed about the chamber were devices into which the black discs were to be inserted for playback. When a disc was inserted, it activated the device, which transformed the walls of the chamber into a holographic panorama with sound emanating from every direction. It was like being transported to various places on Earth without moving from the room. Even the aromas and fragrances, as well as odors and stenches, were present to compliment the experience.

The next problem was an obvious one—the translation of the recorded sounds and graphics. Again, months were required working with computers to unlock the secrets of the language barrier. From that point on, the project settled into a highly organized investigation and painstaking translation of the records in the vault. Even with the aid of computers, it took years.

The first two years of concentrated effort resulted in a compilation of the alien alphabet, leading to a rudimentary understanding of their vocabulary, and soon useful translations began to take shape as the whole world impatiently waited. Though the translations went slowly, all of the visual material was viewed in a matter of weeks. Surprisingly, and most disappointingly, the revelation most eagerly awaited by the scientific investigators, and indeed the whole world, failed to materialize. Nowhere in all of the recorded material of the vault did there appear an image of the alien himself. No hint of his place of origin was in evidence in any of the visual portions of the recordings. The fact that all of the collected data present in that chamber dealt exclusively with Earth was explained by the eventual determination that the alien presence at Nachitlan was a research outpost for the purpose of gathering information about Earth and its inhabitants. Evidence of that fact was found in the other devices in the room. They turned out to be monitoring equipment for the recording of weather, seismic, astronomical, biological, and anthropological data.

Slowly, the translations began to reveal a view of Earth as seen through the eyes of extraterrestrial scientists. Their detached perception, uninfluenced by our own priorities and values, is giving us a most interesting and humbling look at ourselves. The methods used by the aliens for gathering scientific data must have been far superior to our current methods, for a major portion of the black discs contained a complete and detailed history of Earth, from its formation right up through the period during which Nachitlan existed. Supplemental to this was a thorough scientific account of the creation of our solar system. This record itself was enough to make Nachitlan the most important discovery in the history of archeology. But there was more.

One day investigators happened upon a black disc that was different from the others. Its playback was untranslatable. It contained no visual component, and the audio component was total gibberish. The only conclusion scientists were able to reach was that the disc had been somehow imprinted with a security lock. The implication was more than the curious mind could withstand. Solving the lock code and translating the disc became an obsession with the specialists on the project—to the point where work on all other translations came to a standstill. They began to suspect, indeed to expect, that the disc harbored some revelation of cosmic proportions—and they were not disappointed.

There had been found a set of black discs that were segregated from the others. On these were recorded the daily logs that covered the entire 193-year stay of the aliens on Earth. The mysterious security disc was eventually found to contain entries spanning several months that had been removed from the daily log and classified top secret. The period of time covered by this disc occurred about five years previous to the outpost’s abandonment and concerned a most amazing discovery that was made by alien spacecraft patrolling the solar system.

It is now known that it was common practice for the aliens to periodically send research vessels out into the solar system on regular data-gathering missions. It was one of these vessels that detected an object approaching from without the system, its projected path of drift intersecting the solar plane somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. The research vessel intercepted the object as it reached the plane and discovered that it was a derelict spacecraft of unknown origin. According to the report on the security disc, it was impossible to determine the age of the ship or how long it had been drifting in space, and there was only incidental evidence of intelligent life forms ever having been present there. The ship’s power source had long since given out, but soon the aliens fed power from their own sources into the ship’s circuitry and began to unravel the mystery therein.

It was as if the aliens had discovered a Nachitlan of their own. From the memory banks of the derelict ship was extracted a detailed account of a great war that had taken place in the distant past—perhaps millions of years. Here was a portrait of civilizations long having passed out of existence. A story told of a desperate struggle, the significance of which reaches through the millions of years to touch the lives of those of us living in today’s universe.

What effect this discovery had upon the aliens or their mission here was not revealed in the daily logs. It can only be left to conjecture whether or not what they found on the derelict spacecraft was in any way connected with their sudden departure from Earth.

The original recording from the derelict ship, which describes a history of the great war, has not as yet been found. Perhaps the aliens took it with them when they left.

The black disc, however, contained a copy of the original as well as a translation made by the aliens. The latter has now been translated into German and English. As of this writing, the language of the original recording has not been broken.Many articles and books have been and will continue to be written, dealing with the find at Nachitlan; there is so much to be told. Of the wealth of material available from what has so far been translated, I chose a portion of the account found in the recordings on the derelict ship to focus upon in this book. The entire war was apparently quite long, lasting nearly a hundred years according to researchers’ calculations. Therefore, I will restrict my story to the early days of the conflict which saw the largest and most desperate battle of the entire war.

First, it will be necessary to lay some groundwork before the telling of the story begins. The initial point concerns the physical characteristics of the people who built and sent the derelict vessel out into space. They called themselves Surds. Unlike the logs of the alien outpost in Peru, the recordings from the derelict ship included a detailed description of the Surds themselves. These descriptions revealed the Surds to be strikingly similar physically to us. However, closer examination gave evidence of the fact that there existed a few slight variations, such as two thumbs on each hand as well as two large toes per foot; larger ears, which possessed a wider range of frequency sensitivity; a smaller cranial cavity suggesting a smaller brain yet, at the same time, producing an intelligence level on par with our own; and certain internal physiological differences that are not important to describe here.

But most importantly, the Surds possessed split (pancaked) tongues, thus enabling them to create vocal sounds totally alien to our ears. The majority of the unusual sounds comprising the spoken language of the Surds are impossible for the terrestrial tongue to reproduce, therefore precluding any useful spelling of their words since the alphabets of the civilizations of Earth do not provide for these strange new sounds. An overlay study of the original recording to the alien translation is being conducted as of this writing. The computers will have to be reprogrammed, but researchers are confident that, eventually, we will be able to translate the Surdish language directly into any of the terrestrial tongues without any trouble. For my purpose, I was forced to work entirely from the alien translation and was thus bound by the limitations therein.

In an attempt to present the people of that lost time as close to the way they really were as possible, I did extensive research into who they were and how they lived and why they lived the way they did. I then began writing my book. After months of struggling with my work, I realized that there were two things wrong with it. First, I was in way over my head. The social and cultural complexities of these ancient races were much too involved for someone like me to tackle with my limited expertise. Second, my attempt to subject the reader to a crash course in alien anthropology was leading away from my basic purpose—to simply tell a story. I decided to leave the anthropological and sociological studies of the alien civilizations to the experts.

Rather, it would be my intent to include in this narrative just enough of the cultural and social characteristics of these people so as to provide the reader with a sufficient sense and feel for the alien nature of those whom this book is about. It is my opinion that it is better to free the reader of the distractions and confusions that too many abstract names and references, concepts, customs, and rituals would create. Of those that can be translated, most are incomprehensible and not recognizable as contributing to the emotional impact that this astonishing account carries within it.

In order to accomplish this, I had no choice but to take certain liberties with the original text recorded in the log. These liberties I will try to explain so that credibility will not suffer during the reading of the story.

Since the Surdish language is completely inadaptable to our vocal capabilities, the question of using any of their words to add color to the storytelling is quite academic. Therefore, in cases where alien words would be preferable, I had to draw from the translation found in the vault at Nachitlan. Even these words proved difficult when it came to terrestrial phonetic spellings, so in many cases, I listened to the alien pronunciation and then tried to construct a word that closely resembled what I had heard. With few exceptions, this seemed to work reasonably well. Where it did not work, I made up words of my own.

Colloquial, vernacular, and expletive words and phrases were, as might be expected, unique to the alien language. Since, in any culture, these particular verbalizations evolve through an ongoing series of abstract mutations, if used as strictly translated, they would seem strange and, in many cases, even quite humorous. It is these kinds of undesirable distractions that I wish to avoid in the interest of preserving the integrity and credibility of the story. Therefore, I simply used familiar terrestrial terms in their place.

Also, units of measure (such as time, distance, weight, volume, etc.), if presented in the alien system, would have meant nothing to the reader. It would create total confusion, leaving the reader without a proper conception of dimension and scope and would necessitate constant mental conversion—which, again, would be an unwanted distraction. Thus, as before, I substituted the more familiar terrestrial system (the only exception being the nuul, which equals one million miles).

The same solution was employed in the case of nomenclature with regard to levels of rank and authority as found in military and civilian applications. After much consideration, I elected not to use the Surdish terms, reasoning that it would very likely prove difficult to remember them all and result in disruption of the continuity of the narrative. Once more, I used familiar terms that the reader can feel comfortable with.

Though I have attempted to make the reading of this book as free of distractions as possible, there are, nevertheless, a goodly number of unfamiliar words simulating alien pronunciation contained herein. I anticipated some difficulty in the reader’s being able to retain by memory the definitions and identifications of all the new words introduced in this writing. Therefore, a glossary is provided at the back of this book.

The jaalm (which, loosely translated, means territory or nation) known as Unavaaris evolved into being through many centuries of lesser jaalms expanding and bumping into one another, resulting in periods of strife and conflict followed by eventual unification into a single jaalm. Then through more expanding, bumping, conflict, joining with other jaalms and so on until the process was halted with the bumping of borders with the unyielding Tark Empire. By that time, however, Unavaaris sprawled from the hub of the galaxy out along the galactic spiral arm some twenty-six thousand light-years before abutting its gargantuan neighbor.

The Surds, who were comprised of an estimated thirteen hundred independently evolved races, were basically a peace-loving people with little interest in macropolitical ideologies. Their primary concerns were more locally oriented, and the politics of the greater Unavaaris were merely a curiosity—and that was the way they wanted to keep it. The Surds enjoyed a highly successful democratic form of government. Many hundreds of years of trial and error had elevated this democracy to what was considered by most to be near perfection, yet it was not invulnerable, as we shall see later on.

Religions, for the most part, had given way to the convictions of scientific truths. If one could say that a deity existed for the Surds, it must be likened to what we terrestrials refer to as Mother Nature. In fact, the word nature is often mentioned with regard to the life force of the universe in a fashion as to satisfy the human need for a dominating parent/power figure. Aside from the numerous isolated splinter groups who clung to old world religious beliefs, Surds were ruled by the laws of nature. They considered themselves to be enlightened, having crawled at last from the darkness of fear and superstition. Let it be noted that it is not my intent here to either support or denounce this philosophy, but merely to tell it like it was.

Finally, at various points in this narrative, the reader may begin to recognize certain similarities between the universe of the aliens and our own—things familiar beyond those created by liberties taken with the literal translation. Was this merely coincidence? That question I shall not attempt to delve into, for I judge myself unqualified to engage in such speculation. Rather, I choose to leave that for others.

What follows is a faithful account of the first days of the Great War to decide the fate of the entire universe as it occurs in this dimensional plane of existence.

Note: The word mµ, as translated from the language of the Nachitlan aliens, so closely resembles the Greek letter µ that I took the liberty of using that letter. The similarity is something I deem to be not significant and therefore purely coincidental.

R. Arlan Young

*     *     *

Prologue

*     *     *

You will not find a single sound living in outer space. That is because, in space, there is no medium in which a sound can express itself. But space is not empty. On the contrary, it is brimming full. Light exists everywhere. Light from an infinite number of sources all come together to put on a spectacular cosmic show, a sparkling, throbbing, breathing mixture of colors and textures and shapes and intensities—a supreme painting by a supreme artist.

But perhaps more importantly, space is an endless ocean of energy with ripples and fields of varying concentrations where displaced by things of various masses and with waves of gravity expanding, bumping into each other, twisting and warping space into an endless illusion. Outer space is an upside-down place where mere mortal minds can be confused and tormented beyond endurance. Here is an environment that is beautiful and hostile, beckoning yet forbidding, life-giving, and at the same time, deadly.

When nature decided to create man, it was first necessary to create an environment in which man could survive. It naturally felt that its most precious and ambitious creation deserved its best creative genius in designing that environment. Thus, man awakened throughout the universe to find himself on worlds unprecedented in beauty and splendor—island paradises in an endless sea of hostility, floating refuges where man could live and grow and worry not about the uninhabitable void that surrounded him.

But nature, in its ambition, gave man an inquisitive mind, a thirst for knowledge and new experience. Thus, it was that interest died when a mystery was solved, and having solved the mystery of paradise, man looked to the mystery of the stars and went out to meet it.

Grayg Lehmkot read through the first few pages of A History of Man in Space just for the sake of occupying his mind during the long hours of this flight. Many light years lay between him and the safety of the Neutral Zone, and though his ship raced at maximum velocity, it would still require several hours to cover the distance.

Owing to the fact that the ship he had stolen was not meant for interstellar flight, this journey was going to be difficult at best. The ship was a close-combat vessel—quick, light, highly maneuverable and small. The cockpit was so tiny and so tightly packed with instruments and controls (as well as a couple of sophisticated computer packages of his own that he had plugged into the ship’s systems) and he was so alone in the emptiness of space that it was like being buried alive.

But he must not think of that now. He had to keep his mind off the unpleasant aspects of the trip. Among other things, he was desperately trying to hold at bay the dreaded claustrophobia, which constantly threatened to consume him. Also, he must not dwell upon the other dangers of his situation; otherwise, the anxiety and the fear might cause him to go insane. He was committed to a course of action, and all he could do now was wait for as long as it took to reach a conclusion. So he read on, losing himself in the text and letting the hours slide painlessly by.

The book was a collector’s item. Printed on real paper with a genuine leather binding, it was considered valuable by those who appreciated old-civilization artifacts, and he was one who did. Though the book itself was not old—in fact, the subject matter was a modern chronology of man’s technical evolution—it was produced as a faithful reproduction of ancient publishing methods. It was something he treasured. Usually, it gave him pleasure to read it. It was so different from contemporary printed material; everything nowadays was recorded on iodonic chips, which were plugged into portable projectors and read from display screens. But the printed word was steadily being replaced by the spoken word, with supplemental corresponding visuals being optional. Reading was already considered a nonessential skill by most institutions of higher learning and was taught only as an elective course. This, Lehmkot believed, was a big mistake, but progress, historically, had a habit of marching over the likes of him.

Lehmkot always had a reputation among his peers for being cultured, and he was known as the Scholar at flight school, where he attracted the attention of one of the flight instructors who himself had a reputation of another sort. Instructor Keslin had taken a special interest in Lehmkot because of his above-average intelligence level and because of where his sympathies lay, politically speaking. At great risk to himself, Marc Keslin had given Lehmkot special additional training, which was not sanctioned by the Korum of Unavaaris, and a strong bond of friendship developed between the two men. As a result of the training and some connections Keslin had, Lehmkot was recruited into a secret intelligence-gathering group that was also not sanctioned by the Korum of Unavaaris. It was exactly what he had wanted, and now here he was on the most dangerous mission of his short career, the future of which hung precariously in the balance.

He turned back to the inside of the front cover of the book, where there was a handwritten note. It read:

Hope you enjoy this book. I did. Maybe we can discuss it over a drink someday. MK.

Lehmkot read the scrawled message and smiled. He missed Keslin. He would have to look him up when he got back.

As the hours crawled by and the Neutral Zone drew nearer, he found it increasingly difficult to keep his attention fixed upon the book. He would force himself to read the words, but their meanings would elude him. He realized that he was completing whole pages without any idea as to what he had just read. He anxiously glanced at the instrument readouts—all was well so far. He knew they were out there somewhere, looking for him, and if they were to catch him before he reached the Neutral Zone, there would be absolutely no escape.

They were not Tarks—that he knew for certain. Who they were and where they came from remained a mystery to him, but one thing about them he had learned very quickly—they were more frightening and infinitely more vicious than any of the Tark races. They were alien to the Tark Empire, but Lehmkot had gotten the impression, from his brief encounter with them, that they had a firm grip on the affairs of the Tark people, even to the point of dictating government policies.

This information alone was worth risking everything to get back to his own Korum, but it was only a little something extra he acquired during the execution of his primary mission, which was to secure a device called a Llynctaar from its hiding place deep within the Tark Empire. Undercover as a member of the first Surdish delegation to travel to the Tark Empire in more than two hundred years, he spent months ferreting out the location of the planet where the Llynctaar was buried and then arranging transportation into the forbidden zone, where no Surd was allowed to travel. Why this restriction was being imposed became clear to Lehmkot when he arrived on the planet Malnalok, where the device was supposedly hidden, for it was there that he discovered the aliens and that they, too, sought the Llynctaar.

Locating and digging up the Llynctaar without being discovered by the aliens or the Tarks was a nightmare. Just thinking about the near disasters of those few days made him shudder. His escape from the fortress near the Surdish legation in a stolen spacecraft was as close to death as he had ever come. Up till then, it had all been an exciting game, but now the excitement had been scared out of him. He was running for his life.

During his first weeks in the Tark Empire, he had discreetly familiarized himself with the various classes of military spacecraft and the hardware that comprised the Tark Empire’s war machine. This was not an easy task since all information regarding weapons of any kind was restricted and all military bases were off limits to unauthorized personnel—Tarks included. But since he had not really expected free access to those things, he was not disappointed. As difficult as the job was, he still managed to penetrate code 1 computers, extract and record secret information concerning the construction and operation of the Tarks’ weaponry systems, and from that, was able to learn the operation of spacecraft navigational computers and flight controls. He was always a quick study in such things.

He had had the foresight to write a navigational program for evasive maneuvers and record it on a NAV chip—which he carried with him at all times—in the event that it should be necessary for him to leave the Tark Empire hastily and avoiding proper channels. He also constructed a systems analyzer monitor with voice-synthesized output, which he could plug into a ship’s main computer. This would give him easy access to the ship’s data banks, literally allowing him to communicate vocally with the ship. Both the chip and the SAM device were now functioning, and his escape was in the hands of the evasion program.

He had written the program before he knew of the existence of the aliens, and it was based upon predictions of a Tark-motivated pursuit strategy. As it turned out, however, his pursuers were the aliens and not the Tarks. He had no idea how successful his escape would be now. His apprehension turned to anxiety as the hours went by. He knew he was good; he had graduated at the top of his class at the academy. In fact, he had set new standards of achievement there, and there was the special tutoring Marc Keslin had given him in the art of covert operations. But he did not like this unknown factor that these mysterious aliens presented. It made him very nervous.

Come on, think about something else! he said out loud. There was a knot in the pit of his stomach, and it was slowly tightening. He had to relax and get his mind off his situation. He looked through the clearplate and fixed his attention upon the myriad of colors that filled the space through which his ship was speeding. It gave the appearance of huge rainbows, twisting and curling around one another, seemingly alive yet unmoving in the void. This was the effect of plus-light speed.

The masses of brilliant colors, the sweeping curves of these contorted rainbows evidenced the existence of a multitude of energy fields that filled space to its farthest limits—a visual mutation created by plus-light speeds, which pushed the varying frequencies through the wavelength of visible light. It was all very beautiful but quite useless for visual navigational purposes. For a while, he was able to lose himself in the depths of a bright-orange band that looped around from the right and crossed his path, providing a blank canvass for his imagination to paint nostalgic scenes of his childhood. In this manner, he passed some of the torturous minutes of the flight, but alas, his fears would not leave him in peace.

Eventually, the confusion of color began to get on his nerves, so he switched on the star chart. He decided to plot his position visually and compare it with the NAVcom—just to check his accuracy. The colors faded out and were replaced by countless pinpoints of light, which the NAVcom projected on to the clearplate as a graphic representation of the actual positions of the stars. They just hung there in the blackness, beautiful and motionless. Even at plus-light speeds, the distances between him and the nearest stars were so great that any sensation of motion was nonexistent. This had a tendency to magnify the feeling of isolation, and a chill slithered down Lehmkot’s spine as he gazed out into the depths of loneliness.

He busied himself with calculating his position. He found the navigational references and took fixes on them manually, and then worked out his exact location using his wrist calculator. He then keyed it into the NAVcom for comparison. He smiled—only twenty decimers off. He flattered himself by refusing to concede that the mistake, tiny as it was, belonged to him. After all, the NAVcom in that ship was designed by Tarks. How good could it be?

The kronomer said that there were another six and a half hours to kill before he’d reach the Neutral Zone. He could have made the trip in less time had it not been for the hours lost in conducting the evasive maneuvers, but he would have to trade time for safety. On the other hand, what if they anticipated his strategy and were there, waiting for him to arrive? No! He had to believe that his plan would succeed. He mustn’t think negatively.

Dammit! You’re doing it again! he shouted. Now think of something else! He switched off the star chart and tried once again to lose his thoughts in the maze of swirling colors. He began wondering if it would be possible to develop a method of visual navigation in plus-light space—some way that had been overlooked before. He tried hard to concentrate on the question, mulling it over in his mind, searching all the back streets and alleyways of the problem. A couple of times, he thought he had the solution then realized that there was an obvious reason why it would not work. He was too keyed up, and it caused him to be easily prone to frustration. It was silly, anyway, to seriously expect to find, in a matter of moments, the solution to a problem which others who were eminently more qualified than he was had been pondering over for hundreds of years.

The hours dragged by. Lehmkot tried again to read his book, but it was no good. It seemed he would never arrive at the Neutral Zone, and he was beginning to think that the aliens would surely be there to stop him. The more he thought about it, in fact, the more certain he became. It had been so long since his escape from the fortress that they had had plenty of time to figure out his move and to prepare a countermove. Maybe these beings were not as easily fooled as the Tarks were. Maybe he wasn’t as good as he thought.

His confidence was waning, and that was not good. But the truth was the truth, and there would be no advantage in refusing to face it. He had staked too much on an arrogant assessment of his capabilities, and it could very well be the end of him. He was sweating, and as he brought his hand up to wipe his face, he saw that it was shaking.

It’s tough out here in the trenches, he said to himself. His words fell like lead in the confines of the tiny cockpit. He began to imagine what it would be like to die, but these were not idle musings like so many times before. Now he was preparing himself for the eventuality.

He suddenly became aware of a very strong desire to get out—out of the ship and out of his situation. A claustrophobic-like panic swept over him, and he fought to keep from