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  "Yeah."

  "The closely packed civilizations of the galaxy have reversed that trend in recent centuries. Studies seem

  to prove that the race there is shrinking, while here on Texas, people get taller and taller and healthier and healthier. Back on Earth, before the blink drive, there was a halfhearted effort to limit breeding, but that effort ended when an endless supply of worlds was opened up by the drive. Settlement was rapid and indiscriminate. Planetary conditions were sometimes unfavorable. Microorganisms on the new worlds opened up a whole new pack of ills in the form of disease and parasitic debilities. Food was sometimes inadequate. Although Empire medical science is probably more developed than ours, they waste a lot of time and materials treating people who were born defective. Indiscriminate breeding, unlimited, fills worlds with people who were slightly disadvantaged at birth. You're going to find that you're a man among children as far as physical strength is concerned. Oh, they're not all midgets, but you'll stand out in a crowd. They'll notice you and they'll ask questions. When you say you're the result of selective breeding, they'll call you a murderer and other things, but you can say that no living thing was killed because of you, that you were scanned when you were a mere union of egg and sperm and found to be normal, that's all. You can say that there's no abortion, except therapeutic, lifesaving emergency abortion, on this planet, and you'll be telling the truth. Defective cell-sperm unions simply are not allowed to become attached to the wall of the uterus."

  "They mess with me," Lex said, "I'll tell them where they can go."

  "Don't go in with that attitude, boy," she said. Lex bristled at being called boy with half of her thigh staring at him. "You don't have to take any shit off them, but don't look for trouble. We're doing our best to prepare you to answer their questions in a way which won't unduly antagonize them, which will make things easier for you. You try to fight all of them and you'll never come back."

  "Well," Lex said, cooling off. He thought about it. It made sense. Not even a Texican could take on the whole Empire single-handed. He listened with respect as she continued to talk about a number of things. He tried to remember all of it, but his mind was elsewhere. They were alone in the house. She was a beautiful woman.

  At midday they ordered from the cook robot and ate, still talking, on the balcony overlooking the wide expanse of the ranch. The conversation was informal, in a light vein. He was telling her about his impressions of the Empire, as he'd seen it on Polaris Two. When she began to ask questions about Empire women, he blushed and became tongue-tied. But he got out a little bit about their manner of dressing and, surprisingly, about how they seemed to think and feel that sex was just a plaything. Talking about sex with a pretty girl did things to him and he fell silent.

  "You've had no opportunity to go courting, have you?" she asked, looking at him with dark brown eyes full of sympathy.

  "Too young," Lex said.

  "I'm so sorry you'll miss that. It's one of the most exciting times in life."

  "Yeah," he said. "I guess you're married, huh?"

  "Yes." She looked off into the distance. The sky was full of white clouds with thunderheads forming to the north. It would rain. "At least I was."

  He waited, quiet, not even chewing the bite he had in his mouth. After a long time she said, "He was killed, you know."

  "No, I didn't know," Lex said. "Gee, I'm sorry."

  "They were looking for metallic deposits in the shallows off the east coast. He was in a diver at three thousand feet when the undersea quake came. They say he probably lived for hours there under the tons of mud and rock which fell on the machine."

  Lex couldn't swallow. His throat was dry. He coughed and tried to think of words. She tossed her hair and smiled. "Well, let's not talk about that. I imagine you'll find a girl, out there in the Empire."

  Lex thought of Gwyn and felt visceral twinges.

  "And she'll make you forget all about Texas girls."

  He shook his head. "I'll remember you," he said, surprised at his boldness. "I'll think of you and remember how Texas girls are big enough to be an armful, how they laugh, how they have that twinkle—' felt a huge lividness of face, a lump closed his throat. He turned away.

  "You're very sweet," she said, and her smile would have melted a mile cube of polar ice.

  In looking back, he would never remember how it was that he knew. But he knew. Inside, seated side by side on a wide, comfortable couch, he knew that if he had the nerve to kiss her she would not object. He did and she didn't.

  "Damn, I'm sorry," he said, when their lips parted.

  "Don't be."

  He wasn't, really. The second kiss was longer.

  "It isn't bad," she said, "because I want it too, you see? I want you to remember. I want you to think of me as Texas, all Texas girls, and the sky and the winds and all of it."

  In a way it was bad, not evil bad, but bad for him, because, in her arms, feeling the natural slickness, the strength of her, the pushing and yearning and answering and a gale of pure emotion, he knew what he was going to miss. It was no disrespect when he thought of the girl in his school, the one with the short, curly hair of desert tan who smiled athim and let him kiss her,once , behind the trees in the park. He thought of how he'd determined then that he'd go looking for her when the time came, pit himself against the others who would be vying for her, win her. In his arms the teacher became that girl, all Texas girls, the girl he'd never court, the girl he'd never win, and it was a bittersweet victory when, together, they rode the tail of a comet down, down, down and then up to heights which, even with Gwyn, he'd never reached.

  And because it was so beautiful, he lingered, close, joined, dampened by exertion and nature, and put his head down into the hollow of her shoulder and wept like a baby because, even if he didn't have to go out into the Empire, even if he could stay, it would never again be the same for him, because she was older and would choose again, a man of her own age, her own sort, not a seventeen-year-old boy not yet ready to go courting. She understood and didn't laugh at him because he cried and when he said, "Don't tell. Not ever. Not anyone," she kissed him atop his tousled head and soothed him.

  "No, no, never."

  He watched her as she dressed and felt a sense of the most devastating loss as she was, gradually,

  systematically, covered, hidden from his eyes. He kissed her once more.

  "Emily?"

  "Yes, darling?"

  "Thanks."

  "You don't have to say that."

  "Not for, well, not for—" He swallowed, suddenly shy, now that she was fully clothed. "I mean for letting me cry on your shoulder."

  "You cried because it was beautiful," she said.

  Well, that wasn't all of it, but he was grateful to her for saying it.

  "I hope you never lose the ability to cry over beauty," she told him. "Remember it, even when things are rough. Remember how it was so beautiful and how it made you feel so full you had to cry. It wasn't unmanly. Didn't you ever feel your eyes mist over at a particularly brilliant sunset, or when the bloodflowers are blooming on the plains?"

  "I know what you mean," he said.

  "And Lex?"

  "Ummmm?"

  "Don't ever come to think you did something wrong here today. Don't ever blame yourself. We did it together. We did it because we needed each other. I needed you as much as you needed me. For a moment, we were one. That makes it something special. Don't ever let it become dirty. Promise?"

  "You don't even have to ask."

  And then it was more information being force-fed into his reeling brain and a string of other professional people talking, drawing out ideas, telling him what they wanted to know about the Empire when he came back. He didn't see Emily Lancing again, but he had a mind picture of her to carry with him as he went to the huge, noisy, crowded spaceport outside of Dallas City to watch the ships being collected and laden with frozen meacr meat. He'd never seen so many Texican ships in one place at one time. He gues
sed that the entire fleet was gathered there and his questions proved him to be not far from right. Outside of a thin line of patrol ships guarding the approaches to the planet, lest a stray galaxy ship come wandering in, the meat fleet represented all the spaceworthy hulls on Texas.

  Day and night the sounds of alteration came to him as workers pressed into service from all over the planet installed freezers, ripped out bulkheads, carefully preserving any salvageable metals, prepared the fleet for the trip into the periphery.

  Once he went to the slaughterhouse and saw the countless meacrs being herded into chutes and this, too, was another first, because he'd never seen death in such wholesale lots before. He was saddened. He had, of course, killed a meacr himself now and then and he was no stranger to hunting for meat, but to see thousands of the pleasant, mild little animals being pushed to slaughter made him a bit mad at the Empire for being so hungry and set him to wishing that Texas didn't need Empire metals. But necessity was necessity and he left the slaughterhouse with a sick feeling to load his few belongings aboard the flagship and settle into his cabin to get the feel of it.

  Billy Bob and a half dozen studs from his school came out, the night before lift-off, to wish him well. He sot frightfully drunk and he was carried bodily into his cabin and woke up the next morning in space with a lead as big as old Zed himself.

  The last thing he remembered about Texas, and that only dimly, was his father standing over his bunk looking as if he'd been in a dust storm, his eyes red.

  "You're not a boy anymore, Lex," Murichon had said. "Remember that. And remember that you're doing this for Texas and Zed."

  Chapter Four

  In relation to the total cube of the space occupied by the galaxy, matter makes up a small part of the total. Far out in the rim there are multiples of cubic parsecs of space which contain less than nothing, it seems, for empty space can be more than nothing, and the vast spaces between the hard, bright stars become an enormous black hole. Evenly distributed, the entire mass of the galaxy would place matter equaling one tenth of the mass of old Sol, the sun of Earth, in each cubic parsec, and that's one hell of a big emptiness.

  Texicans were on a first-name basis with bigness. It was a part of their heritage. In their folklore were stories about the original Texicans back on Earth: These two Texicans were out walking and came to a bridge over a river. Needing to relieve themselves, they halted, unzipped their flies and proceeded. "Damn," said the first Texican, "that water is cold."

  "Sure is," said the second Texican, "and deep, too, with rocks on the bottom."

  Big planet, big space. Seen edge on, the galaxy is not as idealized as in the ancient photographic imitations which showed a neat disc with a bulging center made out of millions of suns, but is more ragged, messier. There is a definite disc and a definite core and spewing out from the shape, spread into parsecs of intergalactic space and allied to the galaxy only by gravitational attraction, are clusters and isolated, lost suns and out there, in the darkness, in empty space, safe from the casual explorer, Texas and its sun, old Zed, swims the darkness, orbiting the galaxy in something like 8 X 1046years, a period of time which can have no meaning to anyone, not even a Texican with his sense of bigness.

  A mote in nothing. A brightness which, to be seen from the inhabited worlds of the Empire, needs to be discovered accidentally with the most powerful of telescopes. Yet, big as it was, the world was insignificant in relation to the occupied worlds of the Empire segment of the galaxy.

  It was necessary to enter the periphery by a circumspect route, for Empire ships with sophisticated instruments were waiting, stationed on the outskirts, all systems alert, searching for the first blinking signal sent ahead by the Texican meat fleet.

  Thus, Admiral Crockett Reds sent the fleet into Cassiopeian space, after a long, boring detour, in single file, spaced seconds apart. To emerge into Empire pace from the Cassiopeian line was the purpose, for the multitude of Cassiopeian ships would furnish a confusing background for Texican movement and add tothe mystery of Texas by showing the Empireites that a fleet could be moved through the territory of the Empire's enemy with impunity.

  Using the immediate double-blink technique, made possible by the use of a double-charge generator developed by the Blink Space Works, New Austin, the Texican fleet, blinking in one at a time, spent milliseconds in real space, just long enough, as the instruments of the Cassiopeians registered the momentary presence of ship after ship, to send the Cassiopeian fleets into Red Emergency Status and cause a flurry of movement along the Empire-Cassiopeian line.

  Forming in columns abreast in Empire space, the fleet moved, Darlenes activated and ready, to a rendezvous with a single Empire Vandy, where contact was made and instructions given.

  The transfer was made in emptiness, between the scattered stars, a long, tedious process of lock and empty, one Texas ship at a time becoming vulnerable by locking with an Empire freighter, the others ringed, at varying distances, on battle alert. As each Texas ship was emptied of frozen meat, it locked with a second Empire freighter to take on ingots of pure metals, then blinked, alone, into the emptiness. At no time was the number of Empire ships present allowed to approach the total number of Texican ships lying in wait to be unloaded.

  Not every Texas ship was followed, but an unlucky few had to take evasive action, blinking in and out of Cassiopeian space to lose the Empire scouts and Vandys and, once, a freighter disguised as a Texican.

  Then it was over. The flagship, laden, as were the others, with frozen meat, locked with a pitted Empire freighter and Lex watched, suited and ready, as the cargo disappeared through the lock tunnel into the Empire hull. Only one transfer was remaining. A sleek Middleguard cruiser approached, locks clanked. Lex stood aside and let the Lady Gwyn, bulky in her L.S.A., cross the flexible floor of the tunnel first. He shook hands with the unloading crew, thanked the Admiral, who was suited and present to say his goodbyes, held his shoulders back and left Texas behind with a sadness which was almost physical.

  Into an Empire which stretched out in a long oval from the old Earth, extending eight thousand parsecs toward the core, skirting it, pushing into opposite side stars for another four thousand parsecs until it ended, bounded there by the opposite extent of the Cassiopeian dictatorships, the oval sweeping out the periphery to extend into extra-galactic space and isolated clusters of semi-autonomous nations and groupings of worlds, man having spread far, far in six hundred years, flyingthe wings of the blink generator through the cold void between stars, charting, building complicated patterns of starways along which blinked the commerce of Empire, millions of starships, billions of people all paying homage to a man who sat his throne in the heights of Galaxy City atop the old Earth's highest mountain.

  It was to be discovered by Lexington Burns, Gunner Basic, Emperor's Battle Fleet, that Empire was an accomplishment not to be despised, but admiration, however grudging, was last in line behind more immediate concerns.

  "Lexington Burns, of the Planet Texas, you stand accused—"

  The judge, wizened, stern-faced, his voice strident in Lex's ears, speaking fast, words lost in the swiftness, around him the packed room with the vivid colors, the scant coverings, the foppish, foolish, modish clothing of Empire in contrast to his space blues. The judge robed in purple. Beside Lex, coming to his chest, a young attorney.

  "Answer direct questions as briefly as possible. Don't volunteer anything. Say sir to the judge."

  The training planet, marginal life zone, cold, cold as space itself, metal huts atop the ice and struggling through deep drifts thinking ofher . Emily. Home. All that was Texas was embodied in a mental picture of

  dark hair and flashing eyes and soft, soft arms and—

  He was, of course, singled out. At first they tried to break him with physical strain. However, although he was unused to the cold, the snow, the eternal ice, he was a Texican and when he carried home an instructor on his broad shoulders, after a march which was supposed to drop him, panti
ng and whining, into the snow to be picked up by the ski-mounted meat wagon, they gave up on that.

  "Shit-eater, give me the table of organization." Face close to Lex's, the instructor almost as tall, breath issuing in freezing clouds from behind the cold mask.

  "Sir. The Emperor, the Emperor's Prime Minister, the Joint Admirals of the Emperor's fleet, the—" Endless rote, crammed into his head at late night sessions, punishment tours in the library and that slow growth of the grudging realization that the organization of the Empire was a wonder on the order of a variable star.

  "Shit-eater, give me the prime purpose of the Emperor's Battle Fleet."

  "Sir, to preserve the status quo, to protect the citizens of the Empire and the citizens' property, to extend the glory of the Emperor into the galaxy."

  It was a stern, rigorous life with food which, at first, made his stomach protest the lack of juicy meacr steaks and fruit and green vegetables fresh from the rich, black dirt of Texas. Bulk pills to fill the void in his stomach, synthetic protein, tasteless, glutinous, eaten in haste with back straight and shoulders back, one hand held daintily on his lap. Endless harassment.

  "Texas, you're latrine orderly. Hit it."

  "Texas, you're disposal detail. Hit it." The wastes of the training camp open to freeze solid and be transported to dumps with the ski-car bumping and the waste sloshing until it solidified.

  Instants of deep satisfaction. In hand-to-hand combat, a burly instructor, Lex's height, a big man for an Empireite. "I don't want to hurt you, shit-eater, so when you feel force, give."

  Standing, resisting, driven to it. Straining muscles and a sudden move which sent the instructor cold mask first into a crusted drift to come up with hate in his eyes and hands dealing blows which, if landed, would have maimed, and Lex dancing, always just out of reach, until, in self-defense, he had to level the man to stand over him, chest heaving, as a silence hung over the parade ground and trainees stood fearfully at attention waiting for a lightning bolt to strike down the man who had dared best an instructor.,