"_Go back!_" I heard the machine say through its projected angel,for Henry had entered the cave.

"My God!" I heard him say. "Who's that?"

"Get Doc!" I said. "Hurry! I'll explain later. It's a matter oflife! Climb back to where your communicator will work, and tell himit's Dawson's Plague--a bad local bug! Hurry!"

"I'm on my way," he said and was.

"There _is_ a doctor?" she asked.

"Yes. Only about two hours away. Don't worry....I still don'tsee how anyone could have gotten you up here to the top of thismountain, let alone a load of machines."

"We're on the big mountain--the forty-miler?"

"Yes."

"How did _you_ get up?" she asked.

"I climbed it."

"You really climbed Purgatorio? On the outside?"

"Purgatorio? That's what you call it? Yes, I climbed it, thatway."

"We didn't think it could be done."

"How else might one arrive at its top?"

"It's hollow inside," she said. "There are great caves andmassive passages. It's easy to fly up the inside on a pressurized jutcar. In fact, it was an amusement ride. Two and a half dollars perperson. An hour and a half each way. A dollar to rent a pressurizedsuit and take an hour's walk around the top. Nice way to spend anafternoon. Beautiful view...?" She gasped deeply.

"I don't feel so good," she said. "Have you any water?"

"Yes," I said, and I gave her all I had.

As she sipped it, I prayed that Doc had the necessary serum orelse would be able to send her back to ice and sleep until it could begotten. I prayed that he would make good time, for two hours seemedlong when measured against her thirst and the red of her flesh.

"My fever is coming again," she said. "Talk to me, Whitey,please....Tell me things. Keep me with you till he comes. I don'twant my mind to turn back upon what has happened...."

"What would you like me to tell you about, Linda?"

"Tell me why you did it. Tell me what it was like, to climb amountain like this one. Why?"

I turned my mind back upon what had happened.

"There is a certain madness involved," I said, "a certain envy ofgreat and powerful natural forces, that some men have. Each mountainis a deity, you know. Each is an immortal power. If you makesacrifices upon its slopes, a mountain may grant you a certain grace,and for a time you will share this power. Perhaps that is why theycall me...."

Her hand rested in mine. I hoped that through it whatever power Imight contain would hold all of her with me for as long as everpossible.

"I remember the first time that I saw Purgatory, Linda," I toldher. "I looked at it and I was sick. I wondered, where did itlead...?"

(Stars.

Oh let there be.

This once to end with.

Please.)

"Stars?"

Back on Earth, my old philosophy prof--possibly because he'd misplacedhis lecture notes--came into the classroom one day and scrutinized hissixteen victims for the space of half a minute. Satisfied then, thata sufficiently profound tone had been established, he asked:

"What is a man?"

He had known exactly what he was doing. He'd had an hour and ahalf to kill, and eleven of the sixteen were coeds (nine of them inliberal arts, and the other two stuck with an Area Requirement).

One of the other two, who was in the pre-med program, proceeded toprovide a strict biological classification.

The prof (McNitt was his name, I suddenly recall) nodded then, andasked:

"Is that all?"

And there was his hour and a half.

I learned that Man is a Reasoning Animal, Man is the One WhoLaughs, Man is greater than beasts but less than angels, Man is theone who watches himself watching himself doing things he knows areabsurd (this from a Comparative Lit gal), Man is theculture-transmitting animal, Man is the spirit which aspires, affirms,loves, the one who uses tools, buries his dead, devises religions, andthe one who tries to define himself. (That last from Paul Schwartz,my roommate--which I thought pretty good, on the spur of the moment.Wonder whatever became of Paul?)

Anyhow, to most of these I say "perhaps" or "partly, but--" or justplain "crap!" I still think mine was the best, because I had a chanceto try it out, on Tierra del Cygnus, Land of the Swan...

I'd said, "Man is the sum total of everything he has done, wishesto do or not to do, and wishes he hadn't done, or hadn't."

Stop and think about it for a minute. It's purposely as generalas the others, but it's got room in it for the biology and thelaughing and the aspiring, as well as the culture-transmitting, thelove, and the room full of mirrors, and the defining. I even left thedoor open for religion, you'll note. But it's limiting, too. Evermet an oyster to whom the final phrases apply?

Tierra del Cygnus, Land of the Swan--delightful name.

Delightful place too, for quite awhile...

It was there that I saw Man's definitions, one by one, wiped fromoff the big blackboard, until only mine was left.

...My radio had been playing more static than usual. That's all.

For several hours there was no other indication of what was tocome.

My hundred-thirty eyes had watched Betty all morning, on thatclear, cool spring day with the sun pouring down its honey andlightning upon the amber fields, flowing through the streets, invadingwestern store-fronts, drying curbstones, and washing the olive andumber buds that speared the skin of the trees there by the roadway;and the light that wrung the blue from the flag before Town Hall madeorange mirrors out of windows, chased purple and violet patches acrossthe shoulders of Saint Stephen's Range, some thirty miles distant, andcame down upon the forest at its feet like some supernatural madmanwith a million buckets of paint--each of a different shade of green,yellow, orange, blue and red--to daub with miles-wide brushes at itsheaving sea of growth.

Mornings the sky is cobalt, midday is turquoise, and sunset isemeralds and rubies, hard and flashing. It was halfway between cobaltand seamist at 1100 hours, when I watched Betty with my hundred-thirtyeyes and saw nothing to indicate what was about to be. There was onlythat persistent piece of static, accompanying the piano and stringswithin my portable.

It's funny how the mind personifies, engenders. Ships are alwayswomen: You say, "She's a good old tub," or, "She's a fast, toughnumber, this one," slapping a bulwark and feeling the aura offemininity that clings to the vessel's curves; or, conversely, "He's abastard to start, that Sam!" as you kick the auxiliary engine to aninland transport-vehicle; and hurricanes are always women, and moons,and seas. Cities, though, are different. Generally, they're neuter.Nobody calls New York or San Francisco "he" or "she". Usually, citiesare just "it".

Sometimes, however, they do come to take on the attributes of sex.Usually, this is in the case of small cities near to theMediterranean, back on Earth. Perhaps this is because of thesex-ridden nouns of the languages which prevail in that vicinity, inwhich case it tells us more about the inhabitants than it does aboutthe habitations. But I feel that it goes deeper than that.

Betty was Beta Station for less than ten years. After two decadesshe was Betty officially, by act of Town Council. Why? Well, I feltat the time (ninety-some years ago), and still feel, that it wasbecause she was what she was--a place of rest and repair, ofsurface-cooked meals and of new voices, new faces, of landscapes,weather, and natural light again, after that long haul through the bignight, with its casting away of so much. She is not home, she isseldom destination, but she is like unto both. When you come uponlight and warmth and music after darkness and cold and silence, it isWoman. The oldtime Mediterranean sailor must have felt it when hefirst spied port at the end of a voyage. _I_ felt it when I first sawBeta Station-Betty-and the second time I saw her, also.