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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Always a Qurono, by Jim Harmon.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Always a Qurono, by Jim Harmon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Always a Qurono
+
+Author: Jim Harmon
+
+Release Date: April 2, 2016 [EBook #51623]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALWAYS A QURONO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+  <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="387" height="500" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+<h1>Always A Qurono</h1>
+
+<p>By JIM HARMON</p>
+
+<p>Illustrated by RITTER</p>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
+Galaxy Magazine August 1962.<br />
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="ph3"><i>You too can be a Qurono. All you need do is<br />
+geoplanct. All you need know is when to stop!</i></p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p>Barnhart sauntered right into the middle of them. He covertly watched
+the crew close in around him and he never twitched an eyelash.
+<i>Officers must never panic</i>, he reminded himself, and manipulated the
+morning sighting on the nearest sun through the Fitzgerald lens. It was
+exactly 900:25:30, Galactic Time.</p>
+
+<p>He jotted the reading in, satisfied. The warm breath tickling the back
+of his neck was unnerving. If he showed fear and grabbed a blaster
+from the locker he could probably control them, but he was devastingly
+aware that a captain must never show fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Barnhart," Simmons, the mate, drawled politely, "do you still
+plan on making the jump at 900 thirty?"</p>
+
+<p>The captain removed his eyeglasses and polished the lenses.</p>
+
+<p>"Simmons," he said in comforting, confiding tones, "you are well aware
+that regulations clearly state that a spaceship that phases in on
+a star in major trans-spot activity is required to re-phase within
+twenty-four hours to avoid being caught in turbulence."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," Simmons said. "But, as I have stated before, it is my
+belief that regulation means that a ship should phase to avoid the
+<i>possibility</i> of being caught in an energy storm. We landed right in
+the middle of one. As you are aware, sir, if we phase now there is an
+excellent chance we will warp right into the sun!"</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart shook his lean, bronze head wearily. "Simmons, the Admiralty
+has gone through this thousands of times. Obviously they know our
+danger is greater by staying where we are. Why, Ignatz 6Y out there may
+<i>nova</i>! We'll have to take our chances."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir." Simmons thrust his pale, blue-veined jaw at him, his light
+eyes Nordicly cold below a blond cropping. "The storm spots are dying
+down. We aren't phasing yet."</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart drew himself up and looked down at the mate. Behind Simmons,
+York moved closer. The captain was suddenly aware of York's low
+forehead and muscular, free-swinging arms. It was probably sheer bias,
+but he had frequently entertained the idea that Englishmen were closer
+to our apelike ancestor than most people ... the way they ran around
+painted blue when everybody was civilly wearing clothes and all.
+Obviously York was incapable of thinking for himself and was willing to
+do anything Simmons commanded him to do.</p>
+
+<p>It became transparent to Barnhart that they were going to mutiny to
+avoid following their duty as clearly outlined in regulations. Judging
+from York's twitching knuckles, they were going to resist by strangling
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart wondered if this was the time to show fear and unlock a weapon
+to defend himself.</p>
+
+<p>York clamped onto him before he could decide on the proper
+interpretation of the regulations and just as his mind settled on the
+irresolvable question: If a captain must never show fear, why was he
+given the key to a hand weapons locker to use when in fear of his life?</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Barnhart gazed around the purple clearing with clouded eyes. He
+trembled in near traumatic shock. It was almost too much to bear.</p>
+
+<p>Regulations clearly stated that no officer was to be <i>marooned</i> on a .9
+Earth-type planet at fourteen-forty Galactic Time, early evening local.</p>
+
+<p>Or (he brushed at his forehead) he was damned certain they at least
+strongly <i>implied</i> it.</p>
+
+<p>But fear was such a foreign element to his daily routine he discarded
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The scene took him back to his boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>He sorted out the survival supplies, lifting even the portable nuclear
+generator effortlessly under the .67 gravity, and remembered how he
+used to go camping regularly every month when he was a Boy Scout. He
+had been a bookish child, too obsessed with reading, they told him.
+So he had put himself on a regular schedule for play. Still, it never
+seemed to make people like him much better. After he established his
+routine he didn't try to change it&mdash;he probably couldn't make things
+better and he certainly couldn't stand them any worse.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart paused in his labors and stripped off his soaked uniform
+shirt, deciding to break out his fatigues. As the wet sleeve turned
+wrong side out he noticed his wristwatch showed fifteen hundred hours.</p>
+
+<p>As usual he fetched his toothbrush from the personals kit and started
+to scrub his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>This was when he saw his first qurono in the act of geoplancting.</p>
+
+<p>It was a deeply disturbing experience.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Barnhart and the lank, slick-bodied alien ignored each other every
+morning while the marooned captain had his coffee and the native
+chronoped; each afternoon while Barnhart laid down for a nap and the
+other xenogutted; and of course before retiring while Barnhart brushed
+his teeth and the alien did his regular stint of geoplancting.</p>
+
+<p>The captain sat about arranging living quarters on the planet. The
+crew of the <i>Quincey</i> had provided him with every necessity except
+communications gear. Still he was confident he would find a way back
+and see that Simmons and the rest got the punishment clearly called for
+in Regulation C-79, Clause II.</p>
+
+<p>This driving need to have the regulation obeyed was as close as he
+could get to anger.</p>
+
+<p>His lot was a rough and primitive one, but he sat down to doing
+the best with things that he could. Using the nuclear reactor, he
+synthesized a crude seven-room cottage. He employed an unorthodox
+three-story architecture. This gave him a kind of observation tower
+from which he could watch to see if the natives started to get
+restless. Traditionally, this would be a bad sign.</p>
+
+<p>Humming to himself, he was idly adding some rococo work around the
+front door when thirteen-hundred-thirty came up and he stopped for his
+nap. At the edge of the now somewhat larger clearing the alien was
+xenogutting in the indigo shadows of a drooping bush-tree. Since he
+hadn't furnished the house yet, Barnhart stretched out on the grass.
+Suddenly he sat upright and shot a glance at the alien. Could this sort
+of thing be regarded as restless activity?</p>
+
+<p>He was safe so long as the aliens maintained their regular routine but
+if they started to deviate from it he was in trouble.</p>
+
+<p>He tossed around on the velvet blades for some minutes.</p>
+
+<p>He got to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>The nap would have to be by-passed. As much as he resented the
+intrusion on his regular routine he would have to find some other
+natives. He had to know if all the aliens on the planet xenogutted each
+afternoon as he was having his nap.</p>
+
+<p>The thought crossed his mind that he might not wake up some afternoon
+if his presence was causing the aliens to deviate dangerously from
+their norm.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The most unnerving thing about the village was that there were exactly
+ten houses and precisely one hundred inhabitants. Each house was 33.3
+feet on a side. The surfaces were hand-hewn planking or flat-sided
+logs. There were four openings: each opposing two were alternately one
+foot and an alarming ten feet high. Barnhart couldn't see the roof. The
+buildings appeared square, so he supposed the houses were 33.3 feet
+tall.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the single packed, violet-earthed street facing up the
+road was a large sign of some unidentifiable metal bearing the legend
+in standard Galactic:</p>
+
+<p class="ph3">THIS IS A VILLAGE OF QURONOS</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart received the information unenthusiastically. He had never
+before encountered the term. The sign might as well have told him the
+place was a town of jabberwockies.</p>
+
+<p>The single scarlet sun with its corona of spectrum frost was drawing
+low on the forest-covered horizon. Barnhart, dry of mouth and sore of
+foot, had not encountered yet a single one of the hundred inhabitants.
+He had missed his nap and his dinner, and now (he ran his tongue over
+his thick-feeling teeth) he was about to miss his nightly brushing of
+his teeth. He had taken only a minimum survival kit with him&mdash;which did
+not include a smaller personals kit.</p>
+
+<p>His wristwatch, still on good, reliable ship's time, recorded nearly
+fifteen hundred hours straight up. His body chemistry was still
+operating on the Captain's Shift, whereby he spent part of the time
+with both the day and night shifts. It was nearly time for him to go
+to bed. Fortunately it was almost night on the planet.</p>
+
+<p>He was searching out his portable force field projector from some loose
+coins and keys when the one hundred quronos came out of their houses
+and began geoplancting.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="ph4"><i>Fifth Day Marooned</i></p>
+
+<p class="ph41"><i>The Journal of<br />
+Captain T. P. Barnhart,<br />
+Late of the U.G.S. Quincey</i></p>
+
+<p>It becomes apparent that I may never leave alive this planet whose
+name and co-ordinates have been kept from me. By reason, justice and
+regulations, the men who put me here must pay (see formal attached
+warrant against First Mate O. D. Simmons and the remainder of my
+crew). For this reason and in the interest of science I am beginning
+this journal, to which I hope to continue contributing from time to
+time, barring sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>At this writing I am in a village of ten houses identified as a
+settlement of quronos. These tall, hairless humanoids have performed
+an intricate series of indescribable actions since I first encountered
+them. My problem, as is apparent, is to decide whether these actions
+constitute their normal daily routine or whether I have instigated
+this series of actions.</p>
+
+<p>If the latter is the case: where will it all end?</p>
+
+<p class="ph4"><i>1700: Fifth day</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Barnhart was not used to being ignored.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly not a part of his normal routine. Often in his life
+he had been scorned and ridiculed. Later, when he earned a captaincy
+in the exploration service, the men around him had to at least make a
+show of respect and paying attention to him. Being ignored was a new
+experience for him. While it was a strange thing to say of an explorer,
+Barnhart didn't particularly like new experiences ... or rather he only
+liked the same kind of new experiences.</p>
+
+<p>He kicked the wine-colored soil in red-faced impotence the first few
+dozen times quronos went silently past him on the way to gather fruit
+from the forest, or hew logs to keep the buildings in repairs (which
+seemed to be a constant occupation.)</p>
+
+<p>However, when the twenty-fifth alien shouldered past him the morning
+after he first discovered the village, Barnhart caught him by the
+shoulder, swung him half around and slugged him off his feet with a
+stabbing right cross.</p>
+
+<p>The alien shook his head foggily a few times and slowly climbed to his
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart bit at his under lip. That hadn't been a wise thing to do at
+all. He should know that unorthodox moves like that led only to certain
+disaster. He fumbled for his force-field projector, and with a flush
+of adrenalin discovered he had lost it.</p>
+
+<p>Now, he thought, the alien will signal the rest of them. And they, all
+one hundred of them (now does that include the one I first saw in the
+clearing or not?) they will converge on me and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The qurono marched off into the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone was still ignoring Barnhart.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Barnhart munched on a steak sandwich listlessly and watched the aliens
+through the faint haze of the force field.</p>
+
+<p>He had found the projector half stamped into the earth and he was
+testing it. But even a test was foolish. None of them was close enough
+to him to harm him with so much as a communicable disease. He might as
+well quit roughing it and get back to the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>In the last few days he had had time to think. He took up his journal.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="ph4"><i>Eighth Day</i></p>
+
+<p>I can only suppose that these actions of the aliens represent some
+kind of religious ritual. Again I am presented with the problem of
+whether these rituals are a part of their normal, daily life, or are
+they a special series instigated by my presence?</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday I observed two of the quronos repairing one of the village
+houses. The native lumber seems to be ill-suited to construction
+purposes. Several times I have noticed logs tearing themselves free
+and crawling back into the virgin forest. Due to the instability of
+their building materials the aliens are constantly having to repair
+their houses.</p>
+
+<p>In watching the two quronos at work I observed something highly
+significant.</p>
+
+<p>The humanoids worked smoothly as a team, splitting and planing down
+the reluctant logs with double-bladed axes. Then, putting the lumber
+in place, they fastened it down with triangular wooden pegs. They
+pounded these pegs home awkwardly with the flat side of the axes.</p>
+
+<p>The axes are crude and obviously indigenous to the culture.</p>
+
+<p>I view this with considerable alarm.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously any culture that can produce an axe is capable of inventing
+the hammer.</p>
+
+<p>The quronos are not using their hammers in front of me. I am producing
+a change in their routine.</p>
+
+<p>Where will it end?</p>
+
+<p>What are they saving their hammers for?</p>
+
+<p class="ph4"><i>800: Eighth Day</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+  <img src="images/illus.jpg" width="345" height="500" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p>Barnhart had written that just before dawn, but as usual the aliens had
+continued to ignore him. For all he knew the ritual might go on for
+years&mdash;before they used their hammers. Or whatever they were planning.</p>
+
+<p>It was drawing near time for his nap, but he felt completely wide awake
+even inside the safety of the force field. His throat hurt and the
+backs of his legs ached with the waiting, the waiting for the natives
+to come out and begin xenogutting.</p>
+
+<p>He wiped his hands together and forced a smile. Why should he worry
+what the natives did? He was completely safe. He could live out his
+life in immutable security.</p>
+
+<p>But this wasn't his world. No part of it was his ... or at least only
+the part he had brought with him. Sanity lay in holding to what was
+left of his own world. But sanity didn't always mean survival.</p>
+
+<p>What if he could make the quronos' world his own?</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart wiped at the tiny stings against his face and his fingertips
+came away moist with beads of perspiration.</p>
+
+<p>The aliens began marching out of the houses, in twos from the ten-foot
+doors, singly from the foot-square openings of every other facing wall.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't his world of fire-works-streaked Ohio summers and bold green
+hills, this planet cowled with nun-like secrecy, looking acrid, tasting
+violet and transmitting a beauty and confusion only a trio of physical
+scientists could solve.</p>
+
+<p>But there was only one thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart let down his force field and went out.</p>
+
+<p>The human body wasn't well-adapted for it but Barnhart did his best to
+join the quronos in xenogutting.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the cry welled up.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Master.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart stood up and faced the aliens, deeply disturbed.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>He was even more disturbed when, later, he wrote again in his journal:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="ph4"><i>Ninth day</i></p>
+
+<p>"Qurono," I have learned from the Leader, is a term referring to a
+particular type of sub-human android. The synthetic process used
+in manufacturing these men does not allow them to develop beyond a
+certain point&mdash;a built-in safety factor of their creators, I can
+only suppose. Thus they were given the concept of the axe and have
+retained it, but they were able only to devise the idea of using the
+axe to hammer things with and are not capable of thinking of a special
+hammering tool.</p>
+
+<p>With almost complete lack of creative ability they are bound to
+the same routine, to which they adhere with an almost religious
+fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>Since last night I have been treated as virtually a god. I have been
+given one of their buildings entirely for my own use.</p>
+
+<p>I find this turn of events absolutely surprising. I intend to discuss
+this with the Leader today. (Note to any ethnologist who may see these
+papers: Since all quronos are built to the same standards none is
+superior to another. But, recognizing the need for one director, each
+of the one hundred has an alternate term as Leader.)</p>
+
+<p class="ph4"><i>900: Ninth day</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Despite the upsetting turn of events Barnhart decided he was more
+comfortable in his familiar role of command.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at his wristwatch and was surprised to note that he had
+overslept. The time for both breakfast and chronopting was past. He
+made himself ready and left the building.</p>
+
+<p>The alien was waiting just outside the door. He looked as if he hadn't
+moved all night. Yet, Barnhart thought, he seemed a trifle shorter.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the Leader?" Barnhart asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I am the Leader. But you are the Master."</p>
+
+<p>As an officer of a close-confines spaceship that sounded a little
+stuffy even to Barnhart. The fellow <i>still</i> looked shorter. Maybe they
+had changed Leaders the way he had been told the night before. Or
+maybe quronos shrank when left out in the night air.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go someplace where we can sit down. And, incidentally, just call
+me 'sir' or 'captain.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart nodded. He had been expecting: Yes, Master, I will call you
+'captain.'</p>
+
+<p>But the alien didn't move. He finally decided that the Leader thought
+they could sit on the ground where they were standing.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart squatted.</p>
+
+<p>The Leader squatted.</p>
+
+<p>Before they could speak a muffled explosion vibrated the ground and
+Barnhart caught a fleeting glimpse of an unstable chemical rocket
+tearing jerkily into the maroon sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Celebration for my arrival?" Barnhart asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so. We are putting the un-needed ones in status."</p>
+
+<p>He decided to let that ride for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, why didn't you recognize me before I joined you in
+your&mdash;ritual, Leader?"</p>
+
+<p>The alien tilted his head. "What was there to recognize? We thought you
+were some new variety of animal. Before you xenogutted how were we to
+know you were rational life?"</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart nodded. "But how did you so cleverly deduce that I was your
+Master?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are one hundred of us. You were the one hundred and first. You
+had to be the Master returned."</p>
+
+<p>The Master had been some friendly lifeform in the Federation,
+obviously. Otherwise the qurono androids wouldn't speak Galactic.
+Barnhart nibbled on his under lip.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to find out how much you still know after the Master has been
+away so long," the captain said. "Tell me, how do you communicate with
+the Master?"</p>
+
+<p>"What for?" The Leader began to look at Barnhart oddly.</p>
+
+<p>"For anything. Where's the sub-space radio?"</p>
+
+<p>The direct approach produced a rather ironic expression on the qurono's
+narrow face but no answer. But if there was a radio on the planet
+Barnhart meant to find it. Spacemen forced to abandon their craft
+were required to report to the nearest Federation base as quickly as
+possible. Besides, he meant to see that Simmons and his Anglo stooge
+and all the others paid for their mutiny. But, he decided, perhaps he
+had better not press the matter at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>Another rocket punctuated the moment of silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me to your launching area," Barnhart said.</p>
+
+<p>The android stood up and walked. But he walked at Barnhart's side,
+forcing the captain to catch his stride a half-step to let the alien
+lead him. He wasn't sure if it was a mark of respect not to get ahead
+of the Master or an attempt to see if he knew where the launching site
+was located. The quronos were limited, but just <i>how</i> limited Barnhart
+was beginning to wonder.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>They rounded the clump of drooping lavender trees and Barnhart saw the
+eight men laying on the ground in the transparent casings. Not men, but
+quronos, he corrected himself; in a molded clear membrane of some sort.</p>
+
+<p>"They are in status," the Leader explained, answering the captain's
+unasked question.</p>
+
+<p>"This is how you keep your population at one hundred," Barnhart thought
+aloud, removing his glasses to rest his eyes and to get a better look
+at the bodies. Despite regulations he could still see better without
+his spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>"It is how you arranged it, Master. But as you know we are now ninety
+and one."</p>
+
+<p>The captain put his glasses back on. "I'll test you. Why are you now
+ninety and one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally," the Leader said emotionlessly, "you required a whole
+shelter unit to yourself. We had to dispose of the ten who previously
+had the unit."</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart swallowed. "Couldn't you think of anything less drastic? Next
+time just build a new unit."</p>
+
+<p>"But master," the alien protested, "it takes a great deal of work to
+construct our units. Our lumber escapes so badly no matter how often
+we beat it into submission. Our work capacity is limited, as you are
+aware. Is it really desirable to overwork us so much?"</p>
+
+<p>The captain was a little shocked. Was this humorless, methodical
+android really protesting a command from his Master? "How do you
+suppose the ten you are putting in status feel about it?" he managed.</p>
+
+<p>"They would doubtlessly prefer not to be overworked. Our fatigue
+channels can only stand so much."</p>
+
+<p>But it wasn't the work, Barnhart suddenly knew. It was the idea that
+there could be <i>eleven</i> houses, instead of ten. The concept of only
+ninety quronos and a master must be only slightly less hideous to them.
+They couldn't really be so overjoyed to see him.</p>
+
+<p>A third rocket jarred off, rising unsteadily but surely in the low
+gravity. It was a fairly primitive device&mdash;evidently all they retained
+from the original model supplied them by the Master.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart looked at the figures on the ground. Only seven.</p>
+
+<p>"The ones in status go into the rockets!" Barnhart gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"And circle in the proper orbits," the Leader agreed.</p>
+
+<p>This time he saw the quronos lifting a stiff form and taking it to the
+crude rocket. It looked entirely too much like a human body. Barnhart
+looked away.</p>
+
+<p>But at the edge of his peripheral vision he saw the quronos halt and
+stand up their fellow in status. He glanced at his wrist. Fifteen
+hundred hours. The aliens began geoplancting.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart ran his tongue over his teeth, noting that they needed
+brushing. He came to himself with a start.</p>
+
+<p>Of course. He had almost forgot.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart faced the others and joined them in geoplancting.</p>
+
+<p>A hideous cry built from one plateau of fury to another.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He's no better than us!</i>" the Leader screamed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="ph4"><i>Ninth day</i></p>
+
+<p>I have made a serious mistake.</p>
+
+<p>While it was necessary for me to conform to the quronos' ritual to
+get myself recognized, I should not have continued to adhere to it.
+Apparently by these creatures' warped reasoning I established myself
+as a reasoning creature by first joining them in their routine; but
+when I continued to act in accord with them I proved myself no better
+than they are. As Master I am supposed to be superior and above their
+mundane routine.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment they are milling belligerently outside my force-field
+screen. As I look into their stupid, imaginationless faces I can only
+think that somewhere in the past they were invented by some unorthodox
+Terran scientist, probably of English descent. They&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Wait.</p>
+
+<p>The force field. It's wavering. It must have been damaged when it got
+tramped underfoot. They are going to get in to me. It&mdash;</p></div>
+
+<p>Barnhart watched them prepare the rocket that would blast him into
+an orbit circling the planet. He could see and even hear the sound
+that vibrated through the thin membrane in which he was encased, but
+he could not move a nerve-end. Fortunately his eyes were focused on
+infinity, so he could see everything at least blurrily.</p>
+
+<p>The Leader, who seemed to have grown a few inches, wasted no time. He
+gave the orders and the quronos lifted him into the rocket. The hatch
+closed down on the indigo day and he was alone.</p>
+
+<p>The blast of takeoff almost deafened him but he didn't feel the
+jar&mdash;only because, he realized, he could feel nothing.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks later the centrifugal force of the spinning rocket finally
+nudged the latch and the hatch swung open. Barnhart was exposed to
+naked fire-bright blackness itself.</p>
+
+<p>After a day or two he stopped worrying about that, as he had stopped
+fretting about breathing.</p>
+
+<p>He grew accustomed to the regular turn around the planet every fourteen
+hours. For two out of every three seconds he faced out into space and
+that was always changing. Yet, all poetry aside, the change was always
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't have to worry about keeping on a schedule. He kept on one
+automatically.</p>
+
+<p>And he didn't like it.</p>
+
+<p>So he kept retreating further and further from it....</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"We couldn't leave him there!"</p>
+
+<p>What? Who? Barnhart thought along with at least seven other
+double-yous. He returned to himself and found that he was standing in
+the airlock of a spaceship, faced by his first mate Simmons and his
+stooge York.</p>
+
+<p>"We couldn't leave him there," Simmons repeated with feeling. "That
+would be the nastiest kind of murder. We might maroon him. But none of
+us are killers."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not the punishment we will get for the mutiny," York complained.
+"It's having to go back to his old routine. That time-schedule mind of
+his was derailing mine. He was driving the whole crew cockeyed. Even if
+he wasn't going to kill us all by the rule book, I think we would have
+had to maroon him just to get rid of him."</p>
+
+<p>Simmons fingered a thin-bladed tool knife. "I wonder how he got up
+there in that rocket and in this transparent shroud? I'm sure he's
+alive, but this is the most unorthodox Susp-An I've ever seen. Almost
+makes you believe in destiny, the way we lost our coordinate settings
+and had to back-track&mdash;and then found him out there. ("I'll bet he
+jimmied the calculator," York grouched.) You know, York, it's almost as
+if the world down there marooned him right back at us."</p>
+
+<p>The first mate inserted the knife blade. The membrane withered and
+Barnhart lived.</p>
+
+<p>"Now the arrest," York murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you muttering about, York?" Captain Barnhart demanded. "What
+are we standing around here for? You can't expect me to waste a whole
+afternoon on inspection. We have to get back on schedule." He looked
+to his wrist. "Fifteen hundred hours."</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't <i>remember</i>," York said behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"He remembers the same old routine," Simmons said. "Here we go again."</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart didn't say anything. In the close confines of a spaceship
+there was bound to be a certain degree of informality.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped inside his cabin at the end of the corridor and did what he
+always did at fifteen hundred hours.</p>
+
+<p>York and the first mate were deeply disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>Barnhart looked out at them sharply. "Well, spacemen, I run a taut ship
+here. I expect everyone to hit the mark. Adhere to the line. Follow my
+example. Snap to it!"</p>
+
+<p>Simmons looked at York and his shoulders sagged. They couldn't go
+through the whole thing again, the marooning, the rescue, then this.
+That routine would drive them crazy.</p>
+
+<p>Even this was preferable.</p>
+
+<p>They joined Barnhart in geoplancting.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Always a Qurono, by Jim Harmon
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Always a Qurono, by Jim Harmon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
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+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Always a Qurono
+
+Author: Jim Harmon
+
+Release Date: April 2, 2016 [EBook #51623]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALWAYS A QURONO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            Always A Qurono
+
+                             By JIM HARMON
+
+                         Illustrated by RITTER
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+                     Galaxy Magazine August 1962.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+
+
+              You too can be a Qurono. All you need do is
+             geoplanct. All you need know is when to stop!
+
+
+Barnhart sauntered right into the middle of them. He covertly watched
+the crew close in around him and he never twitched an eyelash.
+_Officers must never panic_, he reminded himself, and manipulated the
+morning sighting on the nearest sun through the Fitzgerald lens. It was
+exactly 900:25:30, Galactic Time.
+
+He jotted the reading in, satisfied. The warm breath tickling the back
+of his neck was unnerving. If he showed fear and grabbed a blaster
+from the locker he could probably control them, but he was devastingly
+aware that a captain must never show fear.
+
+"Captain Barnhart," Simmons, the mate, drawled politely, "do you still
+plan on making the jump at 900 thirty?"
+
+The captain removed his eyeglasses and polished the lenses.
+
+"Simmons," he said in comforting, confiding tones, "you are well aware
+that regulations clearly state that a spaceship that phases in on
+a star in major trans-spot activity is required to re-phase within
+twenty-four hours to avoid being caught in turbulence."
+
+"Yes, sir," Simmons said. "But, as I have stated before, it is my
+belief that regulation means that a ship should phase to avoid the
+_possibility_ of being caught in an energy storm. We landed right in
+the middle of one. As you are aware, sir, if we phase now there is an
+excellent chance we will warp right into the sun!"
+
+Barnhart shook his lean, bronze head wearily. "Simmons, the Admiralty
+has gone through this thousands of times. Obviously they know our
+danger is greater by staying where we are. Why, Ignatz 6Y out there may
+_nova_! We'll have to take our chances."
+
+"No, sir." Simmons thrust his pale, blue-veined jaw at him, his light
+eyes Nordicly cold below a blond cropping. "The storm spots are dying
+down. We aren't phasing yet."
+
+Barnhart drew himself up and looked down at the mate. Behind Simmons,
+York moved closer. The captain was suddenly aware of York's low
+forehead and muscular, free-swinging arms. It was probably sheer bias,
+but he had frequently entertained the idea that Englishmen were closer
+to our apelike ancestor than most people ... the way they ran around
+painted blue when everybody was civilly wearing clothes and all.
+Obviously York was incapable of thinking for himself and was willing to
+do anything Simmons commanded him to do.
+
+It became transparent to Barnhart that they were going to mutiny to
+avoid following their duty as clearly outlined in regulations. Judging
+from York's twitching knuckles, they were going to resist by strangling
+him.
+
+Barnhart wondered if this was the time to show fear and unlock a weapon
+to defend himself.
+
+York clamped onto him before he could decide on the proper
+interpretation of the regulations and just as his mind settled on the
+irresolvable question: If a captain must never show fear, why was he
+given the key to a hand weapons locker to use when in fear of his life?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Barnhart gazed around the purple clearing with clouded eyes. He
+trembled in near traumatic shock. It was almost too much to bear.
+
+Regulations clearly stated that no officer was to be _marooned_ on a .9
+Earth-type planet at fourteen-forty Galactic Time, early evening local.
+
+Or (he brushed at his forehead) he was damned certain they at least
+strongly _implied_ it.
+
+But fear was such a foreign element to his daily routine he discarded
+it.
+
+The scene took him back to his boyhood.
+
+He sorted out the survival supplies, lifting even the portable nuclear
+generator effortlessly under the .67 gravity, and remembered how he
+used to go camping regularly every month when he was a Boy Scout. He
+had been a bookish child, too obsessed with reading, they told him.
+So he had put himself on a regular schedule for play. Still, it never
+seemed to make people like him much better. After he established his
+routine he didn't try to change it--he probably couldn't make things
+better and he certainly couldn't stand them any worse.
+
+Barnhart paused in his labors and stripped off his soaked uniform
+shirt, deciding to break out his fatigues. As the wet sleeve turned
+wrong side out he noticed his wristwatch showed fifteen hundred hours.
+
+As usual he fetched his toothbrush from the personals kit and started
+to scrub his teeth.
+
+This was when he saw his first qurono in the act of geoplancting.
+
+It was a deeply disturbing experience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Barnhart and the lank, slick-bodied alien ignored each other every
+morning while the marooned captain had his coffee and the native
+chronoped; each afternoon while Barnhart laid down for a nap and the
+other xenogutted; and of course before retiring while Barnhart brushed
+his teeth and the alien did his regular stint of geoplancting.
+
+The captain sat about arranging living quarters on the planet. The
+crew of the _Quincey_ had provided him with every necessity except
+communications gear. Still he was confident he would find a way back
+and see that Simmons and the rest got the punishment clearly called for
+in Regulation C-79, Clause II.
+
+This driving need to have the regulation obeyed was as close as he
+could get to anger.
+
+His lot was a rough and primitive one, but he sat down to doing
+the best with things that he could. Using the nuclear reactor, he
+synthesized a crude seven-room cottage. He employed an unorthodox
+three-story architecture. This gave him a kind of observation tower
+from which he could watch to see if the natives started to get
+restless. Traditionally, this would be a bad sign.
+
+Humming to himself, he was idly adding some rococo work around the
+front door when thirteen-hundred-thirty came up and he stopped for his
+nap. At the edge of the now somewhat larger clearing the alien was
+xenogutting in the indigo shadows of a drooping bush-tree. Since he
+hadn't furnished the house yet, Barnhart stretched out on the grass.
+Suddenly he sat upright and shot a glance at the alien. Could this sort
+of thing be regarded as restless activity?
+
+He was safe so long as the aliens maintained their regular routine but
+if they started to deviate from it he was in trouble.
+
+He tossed around on the velvet blades for some minutes.
+
+He got to his feet.
+
+The nap would have to be by-passed. As much as he resented the
+intrusion on his regular routine he would have to find some other
+natives. He had to know if all the aliens on the planet xenogutted each
+afternoon as he was having his nap.
+
+The thought crossed his mind that he might not wake up some afternoon
+if his presence was causing the aliens to deviate dangerously from
+their norm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most unnerving thing about the village was that there were exactly
+ten houses and precisely one hundred inhabitants. Each house was 33.3
+feet on a side. The surfaces were hand-hewn planking or flat-sided
+logs. There were four openings: each opposing two were alternately one
+foot and an alarming ten feet high. Barnhart couldn't see the roof. The
+buildings appeared square, so he supposed the houses were 33.3 feet
+tall.
+
+At the end of the single packed, violet-earthed street facing up the
+road was a large sign of some unidentifiable metal bearing the legend
+in standard Galactic:
+
+    THIS IS A VILLAGE OF QURONOS
+
+Barnhart received the information unenthusiastically. He had never
+before encountered the term. The sign might as well have told him the
+place was a town of jabberwockies.
+
+The single scarlet sun with its corona of spectrum frost was drawing
+low on the forest-covered horizon. Barnhart, dry of mouth and sore of
+foot, had not encountered yet a single one of the hundred inhabitants.
+He had missed his nap and his dinner, and now (he ran his tongue over
+his thick-feeling teeth) he was about to miss his nightly brushing of
+his teeth. He had taken only a minimum survival kit with him--which did
+not include a smaller personals kit.
+
+His wristwatch, still on good, reliable ship's time, recorded nearly
+fifteen hundred hours straight up. His body chemistry was still
+operating on the Captain's Shift, whereby he spent part of the time
+with both the day and night shifts. It was nearly time for him to go
+to bed. Fortunately it was almost night on the planet.
+
+He was searching out his portable force field projector from some loose
+coins and keys when the one hundred quronos came out of their houses
+and began geoplancting.
+
+    _Fifth Day Marooned_
+
+    _The Journal of
+    Captain T. P. Barnhart,
+    Late of the U.G.S. Quincey_
+
+    It becomes apparent that I may never leave alive this planet whose
+    name and co-ordinates have been kept from me. By reason, justice
+    and regulations, the men who put me here must pay (see formal
+    attached warrant against First Mate O. D. Simmons and the remainder
+    of my crew). For this reason and in the interest of science I am
+    beginning this journal, to which I hope to continue contributing
+    from time to time, barring sudden death.
+
+    At this writing I am in a village of ten houses identified as a
+    settlement of quronos. These tall, hairless humanoids have
+    performed an intricate series of indescribable actions since I
+    first encountered them. My problem, as is apparent, is to decide
+    whether these actions constitute their normal daily routine or
+    whether I have instigated this series of actions.
+
+    If the latter is the case: where will it all end?
+
+    _1700: Fifth day_
+
+Barnhart was not used to being ignored.
+
+It was certainly not a part of his normal routine. Often in his life
+he had been scorned and ridiculed. Later, when he earned a captaincy
+in the exploration service, the men around him had to at least make a
+show of respect and paying attention to him. Being ignored was a new
+experience for him. While it was a strange thing to say of an explorer,
+Barnhart didn't particularly like new experiences ... or rather he only
+liked the same kind of new experiences.
+
+He kicked the wine-colored soil in red-faced impotence the first few
+dozen times quronos went silently past him on the way to gather fruit
+from the forest, or hew logs to keep the buildings in repairs (which
+seemed to be a constant occupation.)
+
+However, when the twenty-fifth alien shouldered past him the morning
+after he first discovered the village, Barnhart caught him by the
+shoulder, swung him half around and slugged him off his feet with a
+stabbing right cross.
+
+The alien shook his head foggily a few times and slowly climbed to his
+feet.
+
+Barnhart bit at his under lip. That hadn't been a wise thing to do at
+all. He should know that unorthodox moves like that led only to certain
+disaster. He fumbled for his force-field projector, and with a flush
+of adrenalin discovered he had lost it.
+
+Now, he thought, the alien will signal the rest of them. And they, all
+one hundred of them (now does that include the one I first saw in the
+clearing or not?) they will converge on me and--
+
+The qurono marched off into the forest.
+
+Everyone was still ignoring Barnhart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Barnhart munched on a steak sandwich listlessly and watched the aliens
+through the faint haze of the force field.
+
+He had found the projector half stamped into the earth and he was
+testing it. But even a test was foolish. None of them was close enough
+to him to harm him with so much as a communicable disease. He might as
+well quit roughing it and get back to the cottage.
+
+In the last few days he had had time to think. He took up his journal.
+
+    _Eighth Day_
+
+    I can only suppose that these actions of the aliens represent some
+    kind of religious ritual. Again I am presented with the problem of
+    whether these rituals are a part of their normal, daily life, or
+    are they a special series instigated by my presence?
+
+    Yesterday I observed two of the quronos repairing one of the
+    village houses. The native lumber seems to be ill-suited to
+    construction purposes. Several times I have noticed logs tearing
+    themselves free and crawling back into the virgin forest. Due to
+    the instability of their building materials the aliens are
+    constantly having to repair their houses.
+
+    In watching the two quronos at work I observed something highly
+    significant.
+
+    The humanoids worked smoothly as a team, splitting and planing down
+    the reluctant logs with double-bladed axes. Then, putting the
+    lumber in place, they fastened it down with triangular wooden pegs.
+    They pounded these pegs home awkwardly with the flat side of the
+    axes.
+
+    The axes are crude and obviously indigenous to the culture.
+
+    I view this with considerable alarm.
+
+    Obviously any culture that can produce an axe is capable of
+    inventing the hammer.
+
+    The quronos are not using their hammers in front of me. I am
+    producing a change in their routine.
+
+    Where will it end?
+
+    What are they saving their hammers for?
+
+    _800: Eighth Day_
+
+Barnhart had written that just before dawn, but as usual the aliens had
+continued to ignore him. For all he knew the ritual might go on for
+years--before they used their hammers. Or whatever they were planning.
+
+It was drawing near time for his nap, but he felt completely wide awake
+even inside the safety of the force field. His throat hurt and the
+backs of his legs ached with the waiting, the waiting for the natives
+to come out and begin xenogutting.
+
+He wiped his hands together and forced a smile. Why should he worry
+what the natives did? He was completely safe. He could live out his
+life in immutable security.
+
+But this wasn't his world. No part of it was his ... or at least only
+the part he had brought with him. Sanity lay in holding to what was
+left of his own world. But sanity didn't always mean survival.
+
+What if he could make the quronos' world his own?
+
+Barnhart wiped at the tiny stings against his face and his fingertips
+came away moist with beads of perspiration.
+
+The aliens began marching out of the houses, in twos from the ten-foot
+doors, singly from the foot-square openings of every other facing wall.
+
+It wasn't his world of fire-works-streaked Ohio summers and bold green
+hills, this planet cowled with nun-like secrecy, looking acrid, tasting
+violet and transmitting a beauty and confusion only a trio of physical
+scientists could solve.
+
+But there was only one thing to do.
+
+Barnhart let down his force field and went out.
+
+The human body wasn't well-adapted for it but Barnhart did his best to
+join the quronos in xenogutting.
+
+Instantly the cry welled up.
+
+"_Master._"
+
+Barnhart stood up and faced the aliens, deeply disturbed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was even more disturbed when, later, he wrote again in his journal:
+
+    _Ninth day_
+
+    "Qurono," I have learned from the Leader, is a term referring to a
+    particular type of sub-human android. The synthetic process used
+    in manufacturing these men does not allow them to develop beyond a
+    certain point--a built-in safety factor of their creators, I can
+    only suppose. Thus they were given the concept of the axe and have
+    retained it, but they were able only to devise the idea of using
+    the axe to hammer things with and are not capable of thinking of a
+    special hammering tool.
+
+    With almost complete lack of creative ability they are bound to
+    the same routine, to which they adhere with an almost religious
+    fanaticism.
+
+    Since last night I have been treated as virtually a god. I have
+    been given one of their buildings entirely for my own use.
+
+    I find this turn of events absolutely surprising. I intend to
+    discuss this with the Leader today. (Note to any ethnologist who
+    may see these papers: Since all quronos are built to the same
+    standards none is superior to another. But, recognizing the need
+    for one director, each of the one hundred has an alternate term
+    as Leader.)
+
+    _900: Ninth day_
+
+Despite the upsetting turn of events Barnhart decided he was more
+comfortable in his familiar role of command.
+
+He glanced at his wristwatch and was surprised to note that he had
+overslept. The time for both breakfast and chronopting was past. He
+made himself ready and left the building.
+
+The alien was waiting just outside the door. He looked as if he hadn't
+moved all night. Yet, Barnhart thought, he seemed a trifle shorter.
+
+"Are you the Leader?" Barnhart asked.
+
+"I am the Leader. But you are the Master."
+
+As an officer of a close-confines spaceship that sounded a little
+stuffy even to Barnhart. The fellow _still_ looked shorter. Maybe they
+had changed Leaders the way he had been told the night before. Or
+maybe quronos shrank when left out in the night air.
+
+"Let's go someplace where we can sit down. And, incidentally, just call
+me 'sir' or 'captain.'"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Barnhart nodded. He had been expecting: Yes, Master, I will call you
+'captain.'
+
+But the alien didn't move. He finally decided that the Leader thought
+they could sit on the ground where they were standing.
+
+Barnhart squatted.
+
+The Leader squatted.
+
+Before they could speak a muffled explosion vibrated the ground and
+Barnhart caught a fleeting glimpse of an unstable chemical rocket
+tearing jerkily into the maroon sky.
+
+"Celebration for my arrival?" Barnhart asked.
+
+"Perhaps so. We are putting the un-needed ones in status."
+
+He decided to let that ride for the moment.
+
+"Tell me, why didn't you recognize me before I joined you in
+your--ritual, Leader?"
+
+The alien tilted his head. "What was there to recognize? We thought you
+were some new variety of animal. Before you xenogutted how were we to
+know you were rational life?"
+
+Barnhart nodded. "But how did you so cleverly deduce that I was your
+Master?"
+
+"There are one hundred of us. You were the one hundred and first. You
+had to be the Master returned."
+
+The Master had been some friendly lifeform in the Federation,
+obviously. Otherwise the qurono androids wouldn't speak Galactic.
+Barnhart nibbled on his under lip.
+
+"I want to find out how much you still know after the Master has been
+away so long," the captain said. "Tell me, how do you communicate with
+the Master?"
+
+"What for?" The Leader began to look at Barnhart oddly.
+
+"For anything. Where's the sub-space radio?"
+
+The direct approach produced a rather ironic expression on the qurono's
+narrow face but no answer. But if there was a radio on the planet
+Barnhart meant to find it. Spacemen forced to abandon their craft
+were required to report to the nearest Federation base as quickly as
+possible. Besides, he meant to see that Simmons and his Anglo stooge
+and all the others paid for their mutiny. But, he decided, perhaps he
+had better not press the matter at the moment.
+
+Another rocket punctuated the moment of silence.
+
+"Take me to your launching area," Barnhart said.
+
+The android stood up and walked. But he walked at Barnhart's side,
+forcing the captain to catch his stride a half-step to let the alien
+lead him. He wasn't sure if it was a mark of respect not to get ahead
+of the Master or an attempt to see if he knew where the launching site
+was located. The quronos were limited, but just _how_ limited Barnhart
+was beginning to wonder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They rounded the clump of drooping lavender trees and Barnhart saw the
+eight men laying on the ground in the transparent casings. Not men, but
+quronos, he corrected himself; in a molded clear membrane of some sort.
+
+"They are in status," the Leader explained, answering the captain's
+unasked question.
+
+"This is how you keep your population at one hundred," Barnhart thought
+aloud, removing his glasses to rest his eyes and to get a better look
+at the bodies. Despite regulations he could still see better without
+his spectacles.
+
+"It is how you arranged it, Master. But as you know we are now ninety
+and one."
+
+The captain put his glasses back on. "I'll test you. Why are you now
+ninety and one?"
+
+"Naturally," the Leader said emotionlessly, "you required a whole
+shelter unit to yourself. We had to dispose of the ten who previously
+had the unit."
+
+Barnhart swallowed. "Couldn't you think of anything less drastic? Next
+time just build a new unit."
+
+"But master," the alien protested, "it takes a great deal of work to
+construct our units. Our lumber escapes so badly no matter how often
+we beat it into submission. Our work capacity is limited, as you are
+aware. Is it really desirable to overwork us so much?"
+
+The captain was a little shocked. Was this humorless, methodical
+android really protesting a command from his Master? "How do you
+suppose the ten you are putting in status feel about it?" he managed.
+
+"They would doubtlessly prefer not to be overworked. Our fatigue
+channels can only stand so much."
+
+But it wasn't the work, Barnhart suddenly knew. It was the idea that
+there could be _eleven_ houses, instead of ten. The concept of only
+ninety quronos and a master must be only slightly less hideous to them.
+They couldn't really be so overjoyed to see him.
+
+A third rocket jarred off, rising unsteadily but surely in the low
+gravity. It was a fairly primitive device--evidently all they retained
+from the original model supplied them by the Master.
+
+Barnhart looked at the figures on the ground. Only seven.
+
+"The ones in status go into the rockets!" Barnhart gasped.
+
+"And circle in the proper orbits," the Leader agreed.
+
+This time he saw the quronos lifting a stiff form and taking it to the
+crude rocket. It looked entirely too much like a human body. Barnhart
+looked away.
+
+But at the edge of his peripheral vision he saw the quronos halt and
+stand up their fellow in status. He glanced at his wrist. Fifteen
+hundred hours. The aliens began geoplancting.
+
+Barnhart ran his tongue over his teeth, noting that they needed
+brushing. He came to himself with a start.
+
+Of course. He had almost forgot.
+
+Barnhart faced the others and joined them in geoplancting.
+
+A hideous cry built from one plateau of fury to another.
+
+"_He's no better than us!_" the Leader screamed.
+
+    _Ninth day_
+
+    I have made a serious mistake.
+
+    While it was necessary for me to conform to the quronos' ritual to
+    get myself recognized, I should not have continued to adhere to it.
+    Apparently by these creatures' warped reasoning I established
+    myself as a reasoning creature by first joining them in their
+    routine; but when I continued to act in accord with them I proved
+    myself no better than they are. As Master I am supposed to be
+    superior and above their mundane routine.
+
+    At the moment they are milling belligerently outside my force-field
+    screen. As I look into their stupid, imaginationless faces I can
+    only think that somewhere in the past they were invented by some
+    unorthodox Terran scientist, probably of English descent. They--
+
+    Wait.
+
+    The force field. It's wavering. It must have been damaged when it
+    got  tramped underfoot. They are going to get in to me. It--
+
+Barnhart watched them prepare the rocket that would blast him into
+an orbit circling the planet. He could see and even hear the sound
+that vibrated through the thin membrane in which he was encased, but
+he could not move a nerve-end. Fortunately his eyes were focused on
+infinity, so he could see everything at least blurrily.
+
+The Leader, who seemed to have grown a few inches, wasted no time. He
+gave the orders and the quronos lifted him into the rocket. The hatch
+closed down on the indigo day and he was alone.
+
+The blast of takeoff almost deafened him but he didn't feel the
+jar--only because, he realized, he could feel nothing.
+
+A few weeks later the centrifugal force of the spinning rocket finally
+nudged the latch and the hatch swung open. Barnhart was exposed to
+naked fire-bright blackness itself.
+
+After a day or two he stopped worrying about that, as he had stopped
+fretting about breathing.
+
+He grew accustomed to the regular turn around the planet every fourteen
+hours. For two out of every three seconds he faced out into space and
+that was always changing. Yet, all poetry aside, the change was always
+the same.
+
+He didn't have to worry about keeping on a schedule. He kept on one
+automatically.
+
+And he didn't like it.
+
+So he kept retreating further and further from it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"We couldn't leave him there!"
+
+What? Who? Barnhart thought along with at least seven other
+double-yous. He returned to himself and found that he was standing in
+the airlock of a spaceship, faced by his first mate Simmons and his
+stooge York.
+
+"We couldn't leave him there," Simmons repeated with feeling. "That
+would be the nastiest kind of murder. We might maroon him. But none of
+us are killers."
+
+"It's not the punishment we will get for the mutiny," York complained.
+"It's having to go back to his old routine. That time-schedule mind of
+his was derailing mine. He was driving the whole crew cockeyed. Even if
+he wasn't going to kill us all by the rule book, I think we would have
+had to maroon him just to get rid of him."
+
+Simmons fingered a thin-bladed tool knife. "I wonder how he got up
+there in that rocket and in this transparent shroud? I'm sure he's
+alive, but this is the most unorthodox Susp-An I've ever seen. Almost
+makes you believe in destiny, the way we lost our coordinate settings
+and had to back-track--and then found him out there. ("I'll bet he
+jimmied the calculator," York grouched.) You know, York, it's almost as
+if the world down there marooned him right back at us."
+
+The first mate inserted the knife blade. The membrane withered and
+Barnhart lived.
+
+"Now the arrest," York murmured.
+
+"What are you muttering about, York?" Captain Barnhart demanded. "What
+are we standing around here for? You can't expect me to waste a whole
+afternoon on inspection. We have to get back on schedule." He looked
+to his wrist. "Fifteen hundred hours."
+
+"He doesn't _remember_," York said behind him.
+
+"He remembers the same old routine," Simmons said. "Here we go again."
+
+Barnhart didn't say anything. In the close confines of a spaceship
+there was bound to be a certain degree of informality.
+
+He stepped inside his cabin at the end of the corridor and did what he
+always did at fifteen hundred hours.
+
+York and the first mate were deeply disturbed.
+
+Barnhart looked out at them sharply. "Well, spacemen, I run a taut ship
+here. I expect everyone to hit the mark. Adhere to the line. Follow my
+example. Snap to it!"
+
+Simmons looked at York and his shoulders sagged. They couldn't go
+through the whole thing again, the marooning, the rescue, then this.
+That routine would drive them crazy.
+
+Even this was preferable.
+
+They joined Barnhart in geoplancting.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Always a Qurono, by Jim Harmon
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALWAYS A QURONO ***
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