"
     "Horsemen from nowhere? But that's what you thought up," I recalled.
     "Yes, but who multiplied it?"
     Special correspondent of "Izvestia" Lysovsky, returning from Mirny, was
the author of an article dealing with the rose "clouds" that was taken up by
all the newspapers  of the world. That's what he called  them: horsemen from
nowhere. Tolya was the real inventor, though. He  was the one who yelled out
"horsemen, really, horsemen". "Where  from?"  someone asked. "I  don't know,
from nowhere." Then  Lysovsky repeated it aloud: "Horsemen from nowhere. Not
bad for a headline."
     Tolya and I looked at each other. That's exactly the way it had been.



        Chapter X. THE PHANTOM AIRCRAFT



     What  actually  happened?  Our  jet  liner was in  flight from  the ice
aerodrome of Mirny to the shores of South Africa.
     Below us were white wisps of  cloud like a field of snow near a railway
station:  locomotive soot sprinkled about on  fresh  snow. The clouds  moved
apart occasionally and windows would open up displaying the steel surface of
the ocean far below.
     All of  us  who had gotten used to one another during  the  winter were
gathered in  the  cabin-  geologists,  pilots,  glaciologists,  astronomers,
aerologists. Our guests were only a few newspaper reporters, but it was soon
quite forgotten that  they were guests and they gradually  dissolved into  a
homogeneous  mass of Antarctic workers of yesterday. The talk turned  to the
rose clouds, of course, but not seriously, in a bantering  manner with jokes
and wisecracks most of the time. The usual excited cabin conversations  of a
home-returning trip.
     All  of  a sudden  some rose-coloured "boomerangs" appeared out  of the
clouds, jumping in and out  like horsemen in the  steppe. That was when  the
"horsemen" phrase came up, though they naturally had been compared with most
anything because  they  were  constantly  changing  shape,  which  they  did
instantaneously  and for reasons that we  could not fathom. That is  exactly
what  happened  this time  too.  Six or seven  of  them,  I  don't  remember
precisely,  rose  up in front  of  us, spread out  in  the  form  of crimson
pancakes and  enveloped the plane in an impenetrable crimson cocoon.  To the
credit of our pilot, it must be said, he did not falter but continued to fly
as if nothing had happened: if it's got to be a cocoon, then let it be one!
     An ominous  silence set in in the cabin. Everyone expected something to
happen, glanced from one  to the other, and feared to speak at all.  The red
fog seeped through the walls.  Nobody could figure out how that could be. It
would  seem that no  material barriers existed, or that it was  nonmaterial,
illusory,  existing only in one's imagination. But it soon filled the  cabin
and only strange crimson spots  revealed the passengers in front or  behind.
"Do you know  what this's all about," I heard the voice of Lysovsky from the
other  side  of the aisle.  "You  don't  happen  to feel  as if someone were
looking into your brain and  going  right  through you, do you?" That was my
question  in  reply to his question.  He was  silent  for a  moment probably
trying to figure  out  whether I  was  going mad  from fear,  and then added
hesitatingly:  "Nn-o,  I don't  think so." Then somebody next to  him  said:
"It's just a  fog, that's all." I didn't think so either. What was happening
in the plane didn't at all resemble the sensations in the tractor and in the
tent. In the former case somebody or something peered deep inside me, probed
imperceptibly  in  my body as if determining the arrangement  and number  of
particles that make up my bioessence, in this way reproducing a model of me;
in  the latter case, the process had stopped half way, as if the creator  of
the model knew that my model had already been made. I was now surrounded  by
a fog, crimson-like, just as opaque as  turbid water in a jar,  neither cold
nor warm and totally imperceptible, for it did not smart my eyes nor  tickle
the nose.  It coursed round  me and did not  even appear  to touch the skin,
then  it  gradually  melted or  floated away.  I  soon  began  to see hands,
clothes, the seats and people sitting  in  them nearby. Then I heard a voice
from behind:
     "How  long did that take? Did you notice?"  "No, I  didn't look  at  my
watch,  I  don't know." Neither  did  I know,  it might have  been  three or
perhaps ten minutes.
     This  was when we  saw something still  more  bizarre. Squint, pressing
your eyes  strongly  on  the  lids,  and objects will appear  to double  up,
producing, as  it were, a  copy that floats  away  out of the field of view.
That  is what happened to all the things in the aircraft,  everything in our
field of  view.  Not hazily, but very clearly, I saw-later I  found out that
everyone  saw the same thing-a  duplicate of our cabin  and all its contents
gradually separate itself-the floor, the windows, seats and  passengers.  It
rose half a meter and then floated off.  I saw myself, Tolya and his guitar,
Lysovsky, and I  noticed Lysovsky trying to  grab his reproduction  that was
floating away. All he  got  was the air. I saw the outside of the cabin, not
the inside; I saw the outer wall go right through the real wall, followed by
the wing that slipped  through us  like an  enormous shadow of the aircraft.
Then all this vanished from view as if it  had evaporated in the air. Yet it
did not vanish and it did not evaporate. We rushed to the windows and saw an
identical copy of our plane flying alongside, absolutely identical, just off
the  production  line, but  it  was  no illusory  machine  because  Lysovsky
collected his wits fast enough to take a photograph, which was published and
definitely showed the  new plane  to  be a duplicate of our liner taken at a
distance of 10 metres.
     Unfortunately,  what happened later was not photographed. Lysovsky  ran
out  of film  and I was late in getting to  my camera, which had been stowed
away.  This  was the  aerial  wonder  that was enacted before  our  eyes:  a
familiar crimson  cocoon  enveloped the  duplicate plane, elongated, growing
dark red, then violet and then  melted away. Nothing  remained-no plane,  no
cocoon. Only the whitish wisps of cloud floating below us as before.
     The chief pilot stepped  out of  the pilot's cabin a few minutes  later
and  asked  shyly:  "Perhaps someone can  explain what  occurred just  now."
Nobody  volunteered, he  waited a  moment and then added, with  an  ironical
sting: "That's scientists for you. Wonders, miracles-but we're told miracles
just don't happen." Someone put in: "I  guess they  do." Everybody  laughed.
Then Lysovsky turned to Zernov: "Perhaps Comrade Zernov has an explanation?"
"I'm  no god or  oracle,"  Zernov replied  gruffly. "The 'clouds' produced a
duplicate plane, that you all saw. I  don't know  any more than you do about
the how and why  of it all." "Am I to write that?" asked Lysovsky. "Sure, go
ahead and write it," Zernov cut him off and fell silent.
     He brought up the subject once  more, after we  landed in Karachi, when
we had  both forced our way through the  crowds of newsmen  that had come to
meet us: our radio operator  had sent a radiogram  about  the event from the
plane. While newsmen with cameras attacked the crew of our plane, Zernov and
I slipped  through  to the  cafe for a bite and a drink. I recall asking him
something,  but he did  not answer. Later, as if answering anxious  thoughts
and not me, he said:
     "That's a totally  different method of model-building, the procedure is
quite different."
     "You speaking about the 'horsemen'?"  I asked. "That word would stick,"
he smiled ironically. "Everywhere, both here and in the West too, I imagine.
You'll  see. Yet  the duplication  procedure was absolutely unlike  anything
ever," he added deep in thought.
     I didn't get it: "The plane, you mean?"  "Don't think  so. The airplane
was  probably   duplicated   in  full.  And  in  the  same   manner.   First
nonmaterially, illusorily, and  then materially- that  is  the entire atomic
structure  with exactitude. People are handled differently:  only the  outer
form, the shell, the function of the passenger. What does a passenger do? He
sits in his seat,  looks out the window, drinks juice and turns the pages of
a  book.  I  hardly  think the  psychic workings of  the human  beings  were
reproduced in all their complexity. Of  course that is not necessary anyway.
What was needed was a living, acting model of  the  aircraft with living and
acting passengers. That's only a surmise naturally."
     "But  what's the  idea  of  destroying the model?"  "Why are duplicates
eliminated?" was Zernov's counter query.  "Remember the farewell of my twin?
I still can't get it out of my mind."
     He fell  silent and stopped answering my questions. It was only when we
left the restaurant and were  passing by Lysovsky  surrounded by  at least a
dozen foreign newspaper men that Zernov smiled and said:
     "He's sure to serve up some 'horsemen' for them. It'll get  around, you
just  wait. They'll have the Apocalypse  and  pale horsemen and  black  ones
carrying  death.  Oh, there'll be everything. You know your  Bible? Well, if
you don't, read it and compare when the time comes."
     His prediction came true  in every detail.  I nearly jumped out  of bed
when, together with telegrams about  the appearance of rose utfuds in Alaska
and in the Hymalayas, Dyachuk read me a translation of an article by Admiral
Thompson from a New York paper. Even the terminology that Zernov had laughed
at coincided fully with that of the Admiral.
     Wrote  the Admiral: "Somebody  gave them a catchy name, the 'horsemen',
but, whoever  it was,  failed to  hit the  bull's  eye.  They  are no simple
horsemen,  they  are horsemen  of  the  Apocalypse,  This  is no  accidental
comparison. Recall the words of the prophet:
     ".. .and I looked,  and behold a  pale horse; and his name  that sat on
him  was  Death, and Hell followed  with him. And power was given  into them
over the fourth part of the earth, to kill  with sword, and with hunger, and
with death...."
     Fellow Americans  will  have  to excuse  me  if  I  resort more  to the
terminology  of a Catholic Church Cardinal than  to  that of a retired  navy
man. But I'm  compelled  to, for humanity is meeting  these uninvited guests
with  much too  much complacency."  The Admiral was  not  interested to know
where they came from, Sirius or Alpha Centauri. Neither was he worried about
the terrestrial ice that was being carried off into outer space. What he was
afraid of  were  the duplicates.  Even  back  in Mirny he  had  doubts about
whether  the duplicates or real human beings were being  destroyed. Now this
same idea was expressed aggressively and with assurance:
     "... the duplicates and humans would appear to be completely identical.
The same exterior, the  same  memory and the same thinking  process. But who
will prove to me that  the identity  of thinking has no  limits beyond which
begin subservience  to the  will of the creators."  The more  I listened the
more astonished  I was  at the author's  fanatical bias: he  even rejected a
neutral study  and  observation and  demanded a most energetic attack on the
visitors to expel them with all the means at our disposal. The article ended
with  a  completely  bizarre supposition:  "If  I suddenly  betray myself by
recanting what I have  just  written, then I  am the duplicate  and I myself
have been substituted. Then you can hang me on the first street lantern."
     It was not  only the meaning that was remarkable, but the very tone  of
the article. Those given to believing sensational news items might indeed be
thoroughly frightened  by this apparently sensible but definitely prejudiced
man.  What  is  more, it might be  utilized  for  very  unseemly purposes by
unscrupulous people in politics and in science. It is  to the credit  of the
Admiral  that he did not seek their support and  did  not borrow any weapons
from the arsenal of anticommunism.
     When I explained my reasoning to Tolya, he said:
     "The  Admiral's  article  is  only  a  special problem. Something quite
different  arises,  if  you  ask  me.  Up  till  now,  when   scientists  or
science-fiction writers touched on the probability of encounters  with other
intelligence in outer space, they were interested in the problem of friendly
or hostile attitudes of such intelligence towards terrestrial humans. But it
never entered anyone's mind to ponder the  possibility of a hostile attitude
of  humans towards  such intelligence.  Yet that is precisely  the  problem.
Switch on your transistor at night  and you'll  go crazy. The whole world is
excited,  it's   on  every  wavelength.  The   Pope,  ministers,   senators,
astrologers-they're  all working  the  waves.  Flying  saucers  are nothing.
Parliaments are being questioned."
     That  was  something  to  think about indeed. Tolya  occasionally  said
sensible things.



        Chapter XI. THEY SEE, HEAR AND SENSE



     The  problem that  Tolya had  brought  up  was discussed  at  a special
session  of the Academy  of Sciences, I was present as the person who filmed
the  space visitors. A  lot  was said, but  probably  the most  talked-about
subject was the nature of the  phenomenon and  its peculiarities. This again
launched me into the orbit of rose "clouds".
     I arrived at the meeting about an hour  before time so as  to check the
projector, the screen and the sound. The film now had an  accompanying text.
In the conference hall I found the stenographer Irene Fateyeva, who had been
spoken  of as the future secretary of a special commission to  be  set up by
the session. I was  also  warned that  she was a cobra, a  polyglot  and  an
I-know-it-all  type.  You  can  ask her what  would  happen if you  dipped a
solution of potassium chloride on an exposed brain  and she'll give  you the
answer, so they  say. Or you can  ask about the fourth  state of  matter, or
what  topology  does, and she has answers. But I didn't ask about  anything.
All I needed was to look at her once, and I believed it.
     She  had  on   a  dark  blue  sweater  with  a  very  strict   abstract
ornamentation, and her hair was done in  a  tightly bound bun, though it was
not  at  all  the  fashion  of the  19th  century.  She wore  dark,  narrow,
rectangular frameless eyeglasses. The eyes that peered from behind them were
clever, attentive,  demanding. True, I didn't  see the eyes when I came  in:
she was writing in a notebook and did not lift her head.
     I coughed.
     "Don't cough, Anokhin, and don't stand in  the middle of the room," she
said  without lifting her head,  "I know you,  I know all about  you, so  we
don't have to get  acquainted formally. Sit down some  place and wait a  few
minutes till I get this synopsis finished."
     "What's a synopsis?" I asked.
     "Don't try to be more ignorant than you  already are. You don't have to
know the synopsis of the session, since you weren't invited."
     "To what?" I asked again.
     "To the Council of Ministers. We showed your film there yesterday."
     I knew about  that  but didn't  say anything.  The  rectangular glasses
turned in my direction. I thought she would be prettier without spectacles.
     She removed her glasses.
     "Now's when I'm beginning to believe in telepathy," I said.
     She rose. She was really tall, like a basketball player.
     "So you've  come to  check up on the apparatus, Anokhin, the tension of
the screen and the volume control for sound? That's all been done."
     "Listen, what's topology any way?" I asked.
     The eyes behind the  glasses  did  not have time to  reduce me to ashes
because some  of  the conferees had come in.  No one was going to be late to
the  show.  The quorum was  there  in  a quarter of  an hour.  There was  no
preamble. The chairman asked Zernov whether  there would  be an introductory
word? "What for?" was the  question in reply. Then the lights went  out  and
the blue sky of the Antarctic came on the screen and a crimson bell began to
swell up.
     This time I did not need to  give  the commentary because it  had  been
recorded.  Unlike the showing at Mirny that  was watched in a tense silence,
this meeting  more resembled a group of friends watching TV. Time and  again
remarks came right on the heels of the announcer, some humorous, others only
comprehensible to the initiated of the  particular science; at other  times,
they were  like the piercing  thrusts of a fencer. Then  again, light banter
came in.  I remembered a bit. When the crimson flower swallowed my duplicate
together with the tracked vehicle, somebody's gay bass voice exclaimed:
     "Who claims man as the crown of creation, raise your hand!"
     There was laughter. The same voice continued:
     "Bear  in  mind one  undebatable  thing: no model-building  system  can
construct a model of a structure that is more complicated than itself."
     When the edge of the flower turned up and frothed, I heard:
     "Foam,  isn't  it? What  are the  components? Gas?  Liquid? What's  the
foam-forming substance?"
     "Are you sure that that is foam?"
     "I'm not sure of anything."
     "Maybe it's plasma at low temperature?"
     "Plasma's a gas, so what would contain it?"
     "A magnetic trap. A magnetic field can generate the needed walls."
     "Nonsense,   colleague.   Why  doesn't  a   dispersed   aphemeral   gas
disintegrate or drift  away under the action of  a field?  The point is that
it's  not a forceless field in the sense that it  does not strive to  change
its form."
     "How do you think clouds of interstellar gas form magnetic fields?"
     Another voice in the dark said:
     "The field pressure is variable. Hence the variability of form."
     "The form, yes, but the colour?"
     I was sorry I  had not brought along a tape recorder. But then the hall
was silent for  a few  moments:  the screen  displayed another giant  flower
eating up  an  aircraft, and a violet snake-like  tentacle  was tackling the
senseless model of  Martin. It was still pulsating above the snow when, from
the dark, a voice called out:
     "I have a question  to ask the authors of the plasm hypothesis.  So you
think both the airplane and the man burnt up in the gas jet, in the magnetic
trap?"
     Laughter from in front. Again I regretted forgetting the tape-recorder.
"Fire" was being exchanged again.
     "Mystical, if you ask me. Improbable."
     "No mysticism is needed to  recognize a possibility as improbable.  All
you need is mathematics."
     "Paradox. And yours?"
     "Mathematics  is what we need  here more  than physics. A mathematician
would do more."
     "Just what do you picture him doing?"
     "He doesn't need any samples, just more pictures. And what will he see?
Geometric  figures  distorted  in  all  manner of ways, no  tearing  and  no
folding. Strictly problems in topology."
     "Excuse me,  but who's going to solve the problem of the composition of
the rose-coloured bio-mass?"
     "So you consider it a mass?"
     "I cannot, on the basis of these coloured pictures, consider it to be a
thinking organism."
     "Processing of information is obvious."
     "Processing of information does not yet make it a synonym of thinking."
     This  tit-for-tat continued. The  hall  got really excited when the ice
symphony came on-clouds sawing, huge bars of ice rising in the blue sky.
     "Look at them  stretch, will you!  A kilometre-long  pancake out  of  a
three-metre cloudlet."
     "That's not a pancake, it's a knife."
     "I don't get it."
     "Why?  Only  one gram  of  substance  in  a  colloidal  dispersed state
possesses a vast surface area."
     "So it's a substance?"
     "It's hard  to make a  definite statement.  What kind of  data have we?
What do they say about the biosystem? How does it react  to the environment?
Only via a field? And what controls it?"
     "And to that  the  question of where  it gets  its power. Where does it
store the energy? What kind of transformers ensure conversion?"
     "Then there's the ..."
     That was the end of  the film, no more commentary, the  lights  went up
and there was  total silence, the  light seeming  to  call for the customary
cautiousness in  judgements. The chairman,  Academician  Osovets, caught the
mood immediately:
     "This is not a symposium, comrades, and not a meeting of academicians,"
he  reminded them  in calm  tones.  "We  who  are gathered here  represent a
special committee  set  up by the  Government  with the  following aims:  to
determine  the nature of the  rose 'clouds', their purpose in coming to  the
earth,  the aggressiveness  or friendliness  of  their  intentions,  and  to
contact  them  in some  way  if they turn out to  be  intelligent,  thinking
creatures. However, what we have seen does not yet permit us to  come to any
definite conclusions or decisions."
     "Why?" came a voice  from  the hall, a  familiar bass voice. "How about
the  film? The  first  conclusion  is  that  it  is  an  excellent piece  of
scientific  filming. Invaluable material to start the work. And also a first
decision: show the film here and in the West."
     All this, I must admit, was very pleasant to hear. And just as pleasant
was the Chairman's reply:
     "The film was appraised in like manner by the Government as well. And a
similar  resolution  has already  been  passed. Colleague Anokhin  has  been
included  in the working group of our  committee. Still  and  all, the  film
fails  to  answer many  of our  questions: whence, from what  corner  of the
universe did these  creatures come,  what forms  of life are they  (they can
hardly be protein-based), what  is their physico-chemical structure, and are
they  living  beings,  intelligent  creatures  or  bio-robots with  specific
programmes of action? Many more questions might be asked,  some of them will
not get answers. Now, at least. But we can conjecture and construct  certain
working  hypotheses,  and  publish  them,  and  not only in  the  scientific
journals-in  all  countries of the world people want  to know about the rose
'clouds'  not  from  fortune-tellers  but  in the form of  solid  scientific
information,  at  least  within the limits of what we  already  know and can
safely conjecture. We  could, say,  speak  of the possibilities of  contact,
about changes  in the terrestrial climate associated with  the  loss of ice,
and,  what is most important, we might find counter-arguments to the idea of
the  aggressive nature of this  as  yet unknown civilization in the form  of
facts and proof of its loyalty to human civilization."
     "Incidentally,"  began a  scientist sitting next  to Zernov, "one thing
might  be added to  what has  been said in the press.  There is very  little
deuterium in ordinary water, but ice and melted snow contain a still smaller
percentage, which means they are biologically more active. It is also a fact
that   water  acted  upon  by  a  magnetic  field  changes  its  fundamental
physico-chemical  properties. Now terrestrial  glaciers represent water that
has already been subjected to the earth's magnetic  field. It might possibly
be-who knows -that this will shed some light on the aims of the new-comers."
     "Actually,  I'm  interested  more  in their  other  aim,  though  I'm a
glaciologist," Zernov remarked.  "Why  they  construct models of  everything
they see  is understandable; such specimens would be useful in the study  of
terrestrial life. But why do they destroy them?"
     "I'll risk an  explanation,"  Osovets let his eyes stray over the hall.
Like  a lecturer who  is asked  a question, he did not answer  Zernov alone.
"Suppose that they carry with them not a  model but only the notation of its
structure. And to obtain such, let  us say it is required to break the model
down, to decompose it  into its molecular constituents, perhaps even down to
the atomic level. They do not wish to  harm human beings and destroy them or
the creatures they construct. Hence the synthesis and subsequent elimination
(after a trial) of the model."
     "That  makes them friends and  not  aggressors,  doesn't  it?"  someone
asked.
     "Yes,  that's what  I think,"  the Academician  answered with  caution.
"We'll just have to live and see."
     There were  a lot of questions, some I understood, others I forgot. But
one of Irene's questions posed to Zernov I did remember.
     "Professor,  you said  that they  construct  models of all things. That
they see. Where are their eyes? How do they see?"
     The answer came not from Zernov but from a physicist next to him.
     "Eyes are not obligatory," he explained. "They can reproduce any object
via photography. Say, create a light-sensitive  surface just as  they create
any field, and then focus light on it reflected from the object. That's all.
Of  course, that is only one  of a number of possible suppositions. We might
presume an acoustic 'tuning' of a similar kind and an  analogous 'tuning' to
odours."
     "I  am convinced  that they see everything, hear  and sense  all things
much   better   than  we   do,"   said  Zernov   with   a  strange  kind  of
ceremonious-ness.
     This time nobody even  smiled. Zernov's  remark appeared to  sum up all
that had been  seen and heard,  and revealed  to all present the  tremendous
significance of what had to be thought over and comprehended.



        Chapter XII. MARTIN'S LETTER



     After Tolya had left I remained standing at  the window,  my eyes glued
to the snowed-over asphalt  driveway that connected my entrance door to  the
gates at the street.  I was  hoping that Irene might come. Theoretically she
could have,  not out  of any tenderness  of  heart,  naturally,  but  simply
because otherwise she could not give me any news or instructions since I had
no  telephone.  We  were now connected  by  a  range  of  business.  She was
secretary  of  this special  committee and I was an expert with a variety of
duties from press attache to projectionist. Then  we had a  joint assignment
to go to Paris  to an international meeting of scientists devoted  to  those
same rose  "clouds"-that impenetrable phenomenon the whole world was talking
about.  Academician Osovets was head of the delegation and Zernov and I were
going as witnesses of the fact, while Irene  was in the  more modest, though
probably even more important role of  secretary-translator with a  knowledge
of   six  languages.  Also  in  the  delegation  was  Rogovin,  world-famous
physicist-the bass voice that had so intrigued  me  during our first showing
of the film. The  assignment was getting under way, all  the  documents were
ready and only a few days  were left before our departure. There were oodles
of  things to do, all the more so since Zernov had left for Leningrad to see
his family and would be back any day now.
     But, honestly, that was  not  the reason I  wanted to see  Irene. I had
simply  grown lonely for her during my week of confinement. I wanted to hear
her  sharp ironical thrusts, even see her dark rectangular glasses that took
away some portion of her charm and femininity. I was openly drawn to her-was
it  friendship  or infatuation,  or  perhaps a vague,  almost  imperceptible
something that attracts  one  person  to another and is so acutely felt when
that person is absent. "Do you like her?" I asked myself. "Very much." "What
is it,  love?" "Don't  know." Sometimes  I have difficulty  with her  and at
times she makes me mad.  At some point the attraction turns  into repulsion,
and one wants  to say something  to hurt.  That  may  be because we  are  so
different.
     Then  the  difference sharpens to a razor-edge: as she has  put it,  my
education  is a  salad made up of Kafka, Hemingway and Bradbury; my reply to
that is that  hers is a minced pie  out of last year's "Technology  for  the
Youth" magazine. Then  again I'd just as soon compare her to a dried fish or
the Laputan experts. Her response  to that  is that she condescends to place
me with the lower primates. Still  and  all, we  have some things in common.
Then we seem to be gay and excited when together.
     This  is  a  strange, amusing friendship that was struck up just  after
that memorable film showing at the  Academy of Sciences. I continued sitting
in  the  corner until all the  big  and little  scientists had left and  the
lights were  out. I picked up all the parts and pieces of my equipment,  put
them into a bag and sat down again.
     Irene looked at me, without speaking, through her dark glasses.
     "You're not a duplicate by any chance?" she asked.
     "I certainly am," I agreed. "How did you guess?"
     "By the actions  of normal  human beings. A  normal person, not  loaded
down with a higher education, would long ago have left,  without waiting for
the meeting  to come to an  end. Now  here  you are, sitting, listening,-why
don't you get a move on?"
     "I'm studying terrestrial life," I said importantly. "We duplicates are
self-programmed systems  that vary the programme as we go along depending on
the subject, on whether it is worth studying."
     "You mean me, I'm the subject?"
     "Astounding guess work on your part."
     "The session is over. Consider that you've completed the study."
     "That's right, now I'll order a model of you with certain corrections."
     "Without glasses?"
     "That's  not  all.  Without   stuck-up   superiority   and  priest-like
magnificence. Just an  ordinary girl with your wit and face that I'd like to
invite to the movies or for a walk."
     I hoisted my bag and went to the exit.
     "I like movies and walks," she added after me.
     I turned round.
     Then the next day  I returned all spruced up like a diplomatic attache.
She was typing something. I said hello and sat down at her desk.
     "What do you want?" she asked.
     "Looking for work."
     "Haven't they assigned you to us yet?"
     "They're doing it."
     "You have to go through personnel ..."
     "Personnel  for  me  is nothing," I dismissed  the matter  curtly. "I'm
interested in the day-before-yesterday's minutes."
     "What for? You wouldn't understand anything in them any way?"
     "For one thing, the resolutions passed by the meeting," I  continued in
a  highfalutin  manner, paying no  attention to her thrusts, "insomuch as we
have information  that four expeditions are being outfitted  for the Arctic,
the Caucasus, Greenland and the Himalayas."
     "Five," she corrected me. "The fifth is the Fedchenko glacier."
     "I'd choose Greenland," I remarked rather by the way.
     Then she laughed, as  if dealing with a member of the school chess team
who is asking for a match with the world champion. I felt lost, of a sudden.
     "And where to?"
     "Nowhere."
     I missed the point.
     "Why? Every expedition needs a cameraman."
     "I don't like to disappoint you, Yuri, but we don't need one." There'll
be scientists  and technicians  of a  number of specialized institutes.  The
NIKFI for  instance. And don't look at me with those kind ram's  eyes.  Note
that I  didn't  say 'stupid'  eyes.  I simply  ask you:  can you operate  an
introscope?  No. Can  you photo from behind a  wall of  opaqueness,  say  in
infrared rays?  No. Can you convert the invisible  into the visible with the
aid  of an electronic-acoustic transducer? No, again. I  can read it on your
carefully shaven face. So you didn't have to shave, after all."
     "All  right, but how about ordinary camera work?" I still couldn't make
it out. "Just common filmus vulgaris?"
     "For filmus vulgaris all one needs is  a kid's camera. That's not  done
any more. More important is to get an image in opaque media, from  outside a
cloud cover. For example, what happens to a model inside the crimson tube?"
     I  was  silent.  For  an  ordinary  cameraman,  that  was  differential
calculus.
     "So you see, Yuri," she laughed. "You can't do anything. You don't know
the Kirlian method, do you?"
     I had never even heard of it.
     "Incidentally,   it   permits   distinguishing  the  living   from  the
nonliving."
     "I can do that without a camera."
     But she had already taken up the pose of lecturer.
     "On  film,   living   tissue  is  seen   surrounded  by  a  transparent
halo-discharges  of high-frequency currents. The more  intensive  the  vital
activities, the brighter the halo."
     "It's living tissue if it's  naked," I said angrily and got up. "Forget
about  personnel. I  don't  have  anything  to do  in that department.  Here
either."
     She laughed, but this time differently: gaily and kindly.
     "Sit down, Yuri, and don't be down-hearted, we'll go together."
     "Where to?" I was still boiling. "Moscow suburbs?"
     "No, to Paris."
     I didn't believe  that sly little devil of a girl till I saw the actual
paper  for our assignment to  the Paris conference.  And  now, here,  I  was
waiting for the same devil, waiting for the angel, and chewing match  sticks
with impatience. And I would just miss  her when I went over to the desk for
cigarettes. She  phoned  when I was already making plans to throw the  whole
thing over.
     "Jesus," I exclaimed, "finally!"
     She tossed me her raincoat and danced into the room.
     "Have you become a believer?"
     "From  this minute I believe  in the angel who  brings forgiveness from
heaven. When's it going to be? Don't keep me waiting."
     "The day  after tomorrow. Zernov returns tomorrow.  The next morning we
take off. The tickets have been ordered. By  the way, how  did  we get  to a
first-name basis so quickly?"
     Just instinctively. That's not what's worrying you."
     She thought for a moment.
     "That's true. They're  already  in the Arctic, you see what I mean. The
captain of the 'Dobrynya' icebreaker, Captain Shchetinnikov,  just back from
Archangel came over to the committee. He says that the vast area of the Kara
Sea and the  ocean north of  Franz-Joseph Land is  all  free  from ice. From
Pulkovo Observatory the  report  is that ice satellites orbit over the North
Pole several times a day."
     "And the committee rejects filming," I added disappointed.  "Now's just
the time to photograph."
     "Amateurs have  been  doing that.  We'll  soon be  getting cartloads of
film. That's not the important thing."
     "What is important?"
     "Contact."
     I whistled.
     "Don't whistle.  Attempts  at contact have already  been  made,  though
without success it seems.  But  English and Dutch scientists have proposed a
programme of contacts. All the  materials are in the hands of  Osovets. Then
there's  this Thompson group  that'll have to be dealt with at the congress.
The  American delegation is  actually divided, the majority  do not  support
Thompson, but there  are some that are in with him.  Not very solidly, true,
but they'll be hard nuts  to crack in  Paris. That's what's important,  see?
Wait a minute."  Laughing, she  grabbed her  raincoat and  pulled  from  the
pocket a bulky package covered over with foreign stamps. "I forgot about the
most important thing of all; here's a letter for you from the United States.
You're getting to be famous."
     "From Martin," I said, looking at the address.
     A strange address, to say the least:
     "Yuri Anokhin.  First observer of  the phenomenon  of the  rose clouds.
Committee for Fighting Visitors from Space, Moscow, USSR."
     "Committee  for  fighting  ..."  Irene  laughed.  "Some  programme  for
contacts. He's a Thompsonite, all right."
     "Here, I'll read it."
     Martin wrote that he had returned from the  Antarctic expedition to his
airbase near Sand City, in the southwest of the United States. On Thompson's
suggestion, he was immediately assigned to a voluntary society set up by the
Admiral for combating  the  cosmic visitors. Martin was not surprised at his
assignment.  Thompson had told him about it in  the plane  on the  way home.
Neither  was he surprised at the position he  was  offered. When the Admiral
learned that in  college Martin had published  items in student journals, he
named his press  agent. "I have  a  feeling that the old man doesn't believe
me, he thinks I'm a double, something like a fifth columnist and so he wants
to keep me close by him to see and  check for  himself. That's  why I didn't
tell him what happened to  me on the  way to our  airbase in  Sand City. But
I've got to  tell somebody, and  there's nobody but you. You're the only one
who can disentangle  this crazy house I've gotten into.  You and I know what
happened at the South Pole; here things seem to be dressed up differently."
     The letter was typed, over ten single-spaced pages.  "My first  article
is not  for the  press, only for you,"  he wrote. "You'll  see for  yourself
whether I'm fit to be a newspaper man." I went through a couple of pages and
nearly jumped.
     "Read it," I said  to  Irene, handing her the pages as I finished them.
"It looks like we're in a hot spot."


        Chapter XIII. NEW STYLE WESTERN



     Here's what Martin wrote:
     The sun had just  risen over the horizon  when I went out the gates  of
the airbase. I was in a hurry, with only 24 hours of time off, and it was at
least an hour's drive to Sand City. I waved gaily to the sleepy watchman, my
ancient two-seater  jerked forward  and I  went sailing along  the  asphalt.
Something rattled  in the back of the car, then a knock, the cylinders  were
banging- this was a real piece of junk  all right. "About time to get  a new
one,"  I thought to myself, "eight years is much too much. But  you get into
the habit, and Mary likes it too".
     That's  where I was going, to see Mary in  Sand City and spend the last
free  day  I  had  with  her before leaving for New  York  to report to  the
Admiral. The boys at the airbase introduced me to Mary the  first  day after
my  return from  Mac-Murdo. She was new at this bar,  nothing spectacular, a
girl  like  any other girl, in a starched white uniform and Elizabeth Taylor
hairdo- they all copy film  stars at the bar. There was something about  her
that attracted me from the very start, and  so every evening off I'd go over
to see  her. I even wrote Mom that I had a nice girl, and  all that  sort of
thing. You know.
     This trip I had made up my  mind  finally and was thinking  over how to
tell her. No use holding things  up, that's the  way I felt. But things were
held up,  after all.  Some  guy was  out there on the  highway, I honked the
horn, but instead of moving away he jumped about and almost landed under the
car. So I slammed down the brakes and got out:
     "Hey,  what's wrong,  can't you  see a car when it's right in front  of
you?"
     He looked at  me, then  at the sky and slowly  got to his feet, beating
the dust out of his old jeans.
     "There's something a lot worse than cars that's frightening people." He
came over to me and asked. "Going into town?"
     I nodded and he got in, just as wild-looking as before. Terribly scared
is what  I figured,  with droplets of sweat all over his forehead, with dark
damp circles around the armpits of his shirt.
     "How come you're out training so early?" I asked.
     "Much worse," he repeated putting  his hand into his pocket. Along with
his handkerchief, a 1952 Barky Jones fell out onto the seat.
     I whistled in surprise: "What's this a pursuit?"
     I was now sorry  that I had got mixed up with him. I don't like highway
encounters of that nature.
     "Crazy,"  he said  without anger.  "It's not mine, the boss's: I'm just
watching the herd at Viniccio's ranch."
     "Cowboy?"
     "No,"  he  replied  screwing up his  face and wiping  the sweat off his
forehead. "I can't even ride a horse. But I need money for college."
     I smiled  to  myself: 'escaping gangster  turns  into  vacation-working
student'.
     "My name's Mitchell Casey," he said.
     I told him my  name, hoping not without vanity that because it had been
in the papers since meeting  the dragons at MacMurdo he  might recognize it,
but  I  was mistaken.  He hadn't been reading the papers or listening to the
radio, had never heard of me,  nor of the rose clouds:  "Maybe this is a war
or men from Mars have landed, it's about the same, I don't know."
     "There's no war yet," I said. "It might be Martians all right, though."
     I told him briefly about the rose clouds. But I never expected my story
to produce the reaction that it did. He grabbed for the door as if he wanted
to jump out on the  spot, but then  he opened  his mouth and with  trembling
lips asked:
     "From the sky?"
     I nodded.
     "Long rose-coloured cucumbers. Like