Arcturus Times Three

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE Beyond that, the resemblance to man ceased. The creatures he saw were clothed in satiny uniforms, yet something about the material told him it would hold up under heavy stress. Wherever their actual bodies showed—head and hands, mostly, though a man of apparently lesser rank was bared to the waist, working on a machine set against one wall—they were covered with short (or cropped) white down. Jerry could detect on the heads no sign of ears or nose, but in the midst of the furry expanse of face, tiny green-glinting beads of jet were eyes, and a thin, wide blue-gray slit further down was the mouth. The hands, he noted with interest, were furred even within the palms. Or so he thought until one of the creatures, idly flexing a hand, showed Jerry that the fingers bent on double joints in either direction. There were no nails as such, but each digit on those deceptively soft-looking hands terminated in a tapering cone of some hard black material, as shiny as the eyes in those coconut-frosted faces. Jerry once more had cause to regret the impossibility of Contact within a mind of an intelligent creature. Intelligence equated with impenetrability, so far as Contact went. You could learn of an intelligent race only so much as their words and gestures and behavior cared to let you know. Jerry knew he was in a sea-region, but whether over it, on it, or under it—No. The room, so far as he could see, was windowless. It could mean that the vehicle was carrying its own atmosphere, in order to keep the riders alive, whether the outside surface of the ship were within inimical gases or liquids, or the deadly nothingness between planets. Then again, he might simply be within a fortress, or below sea-level in a ship. Jerry gave it up, and concentrated on himself, and his barred container. The cage was as high as one-fourth the height of any of the men before it, so Jerry reckoned his own size as about one-sixth. If they were all six-footers, then he must be about rabbit-sized. He glanced down his body and saw hard gray scales over a curving belly, with a pair of hind feet that seemed to be all phalanges and no metatarsals. From "heel" to foot-tip, Jerry had three long, hard-looking black spikes. "Something like a swan's foot with the webbing removed," he mused. A look at his forepaws before his face showed him three similar phalanges, though only two-thirds the length of the hind ones, and having in addition a sort of stubby rudimentary thumb. His forearms were scaly, too, and possessed a wicked spur of the same black material jutting downward from the elbow. Happily, three sides of his cage were polished metal walls, so he was able to get an inkling of his facial characteristics in the warped uncertain mirror of the surfaces. He saw startled-looking eyes, round as quarters, with red irises that dilated greatly with each tilt of his head toward the shadowy rear of the cage, and narrowed the orifice about the pupil to a pinprick when he turned near the front. He seemed to be noseless, also. When he tried to sniff, nothing happened. The attempt made his head feel stuffed up, but he knew that the feeling was only inside his mind, and not an actual sensation. Jerry looked at his mouth. It was just a wide slit in his round, earless head—no, not earless; there were auricular holes under a flange of gray scale—just a wide slit with a glint of sharp-pointed bright orange teeth. "Well," he thought, "I'm at least a carnivore, possibly an omnivore, with teeth like that. The light in this room is apparently not intolerable to those fur-faces out there. So—if the slight shooting pains in my head plus the shutting of the irises when I face into the room are any criteria—I must be a nocturnal beast of some kind. Eyes like this would be blinded by sunlight." He decided he was, in the ecology of the fur-faces, something along the lines of a raccoon, even if his flesh were scaly as a pangolin's. "Maybe I'm a pet," he hoped. "But there's something about the atmosphere of this room—" Something rustled and clacked against the wall of his cage. Jerry withdrew his control a fraction to let the host's mind tell him what it might be. The mind of his host was atingle with antagonism. Yet, as Jerry heard a similar movement somewhere off to the far side, the mind of his host grew suddenly tender and excited. Jerry re-assumed control, having the information he needed. His cage was one of at least three, possibly many more, housing animals like the one enhosting him. The nearby cage contained an animal of his own sex, the other contained an animal of the opposite sex, possibly a mate. Whether male or female, Jerry had no idea. He had in any Contact—barring a procreative arrangement beyond the simple bisexual—a fifty-fifty chance of being male. The worm had been self-generating, the unicornate lion-thing had been male. What Jerry's present sex was, he had no idea. Even on Earth, scaly creatures tended to baffle all but the experts as to sex. Jerry inspected the mind of his host for a few moments, but could find out only that it yearned for that other one in the other cage. The intensity of the yearning gave no clue if the urge were man-for-woman, woman-for-man, mother-for-child, child-for-parent or—it was barely possible—friend for friend. Jerry decided to ignore the yearning by taking full control of the host once more. He took stock of his circumstances. Here he was, a nocturnal carnivore, caged with many of his own kind in a vehicle moving through space or water. He was not just there for the ride, that was certain. Being delivered somewhere? No, the room beyond the bars looked little like a storage hold. Of course, these fur-faces might have alien ideas about the way a storage hold should look. Still, they seemed to be bosses of some kind. There was no mistaking the dressy look of their uniforms. A high-ranking officer might go into a storage hold, but it would be for an inspection only, and these creatures were busily doing something in the center of the room. There were three of them, discounting the bare-to-the-waist man working on that odd-looking machine. They stood by some waist-high object—two with their backs to Jerry, one in profile—very intently absorbed in something on that surface. Jerry twisted his head about, but could make out no relevant details on that surface. "They could be studying a map laid out on a table," he pondered, curiously. "Or maybe they are shooting dice at a crap table, or—" Further conjecture was suddenly, and horribly, obviated. The man at the wall straightened up from his labors and announced something, unintelligible to Jerry (the voice was an unbroken hum that rose and fell in pitch, unarticulated into consonants or vowels), which undoubtedly meant, "She's all fixed." The fur-face in profile turned with quick attention and stepped to the machine. He pulled from its slot a thing like the cable-supported arm of a small crane terminating in a cone-shaped flexible surface, and arranged it over the thing on the table which his movement to the machine had exposed to Jerry's gaze. The thing on the table was the face of another of the white-furred men, and Jerry suddenly knew that this was an operating room. These men were doctors, involved in surgery. The machine, so hastily repaired, was some sort of anesthetizing gadget. They'd had to wait for it before proceeding. All this information Jerry worked out with only a small part of his mind; the majority of his concentration was focused upon the other thing he'd seen upon the table, strapped wide-eyed into position beside the patient. It had scales, sharp orange teeth, and might have been a rabbit-sized cross between a raccoon and a pangolin, and the wide eyes were tightly irised into discs of coppery red, with no visible pupils, under the light that overhung the operating table. "What the hell is going on here?" Jerry thought, with dismay. "Surgery? In the same room with cages full of animals? What about sanitation? What about infection? The doctors are maskless. The room is only passably clean—certainly not scoured with green soap, alcohol or live steam. And that repairman is standing beside the table scratching his stomach!" Bewildered, yet drawn to watch with morbid fascination, Jerry ignored the pain that staring into the room brought to his eyes, and gave full attention to the proceedings. They were—from a raccoon/pangolin's viewpoint—pretty ghastly. The men, muttering to each other as medics the universe over must while engaged in surgery, started snipping and plucking and sawing and clamping with lackadaisical facility upon the two bodies strapped to the table. One medic concentrated upon the man, the other upon the animal, while the anesthetist merely held the cone lightly upon the patient's face, and glanced now and then at dials upon the machine proper, as if for reassurance, or possibly to show that they were efficient and well-trained. They did not trouble to anesthetize the animal. As they shifted about in their work, Jerry got a better look at the patient. All along his chest and belly, the white fur was gone. From the edges of the empty region, Jerry could see that the fur had been scorched away. The surviving fur in the periphery was stunted and slightly carbonized. The "flesh" beneath that exposed region was smooth, excepting a few blistered spots near the center. It resembled thin, flexible green plastic, of the sort that seems to be translucent, but is actually transparent, the darkness of the color tending to make it seem opaque unless light could be placed directly behind it. Into this surface went the scalpels and clamps and pins of the medics, until they had a triangular flap lying back to expose the organs within. Jerry, well-versed in all the metabolisms available to the scientists of Earth, was completely baffled by this one. None of the internal organs was fastened to anything. The abdominal hollow of the creature was filled with a clear lemon-colored liquid. The organs just floated within the liquid. They were, Jerry noticed with amazement, not even juxtaposed with any sort of permanence. Even as the medic reached for them, they bobbed and moved about each other in the yellow fluid, as impermanent of locale as apples in a rainbarrel. Then Jerry had it. "They're colloidal!" he gasped within his mind. "A tough, flexible outer shell! The whole thing hollow from cranium to fingertip to toe, containing a liquid that acts as reagent, catalyst, suspensor and electrolyte for the mineral crystals, cell globules and chemical coagulates. These fur-faced creatures are nothing more than ambulant, intelligent hunks of protein! The whole setup's there. The lemon-colored fluid is the dispersion medium, and those 'organs' they're lifting out are the disperse-phase. But ... what do they need the raccoon/pangolin for?" His fellow-creature, hissing in agony, was already a glittering, almost formless thing under the grisly tools of the medic standing over it. It was, Jerry realized, being laid belly-open with no more regard than is given a lobster's tail-muscle by the gourmet with his tiny three-pronged fork. Jerry could only watch and wonder and wait to see the use to which the animal would be put. He had not long to wait. Once laid open, the animal's internal fluid, a pale gray solution, was sucked out into a bulb-headed tube, much as a housewife gets the turkey-drippings from under the bird for basting. The fluid was dribbled into a row of transparent jars with calibrated sides, some getting more, some getting less. Then a drop of liquid—a brown liquid for this one, a red for that one, and so on—was added to each. While Jerry gazed at the scene, fighting the headache that began to grow with the brightness of the lights over the operating table, the medic captured each jar and gave it a sharp, practiced shake. And then the whole picture was clear to Jerry. "Crystal-clear," he said, with bitter humor. For that was the answer. The fur-faces were colloidal, the raccoon/pangolins were crystalloid. Whatever fluid lay within the bellies of the animals, it was a super-saturate, needing but the right chemical additive before coming out of its liquid state to form the right crystals. In each jar, almost instantly after shaking, bright crystals had begun to form within the liquid. Within but a few moments, the jars were being uncapped and the medics, with neat little tongs, were lifting the crystals from the solutions and placing them within the abdominal cavity of their anesthetized patient. The flap was fastened down into place with a gadget that seemed to work on the principle of a soldering iron. As it slid along the angled edges of the incision the sides met and fused, leaving only a tiny ridge to attest to the fact of the operation. One of the medics nodded to the bare-to-the-waist creature still standing by. The man shoved over a wheeled cart, slipped the patient onto it and wheeled him out of the room through an archway barely within Jerry's field of vision. Jerry's main concern, however, was for the fate of the crystalloid creature, lying so still upon the table. One of the medics undid the straps across the body, lifted it by a hind leg and shoved it through a hinged metal flap against the wall, then stabbed a button.... A red flare went off beyond the still oscillating metal flap, and Jerry had all the information he needed. A nice little incinerator, for hollowed-out corpses. "I wonder," Jerry thought dismally, "how long my forty minutes will take in this Contact!" His headache was growing worse, and it wasn't just from the lights. At that moment, a sudden lurch sent him crashing against the wall of the cage. A clamor of alarm bells began throughout the vessel. One of the medics yelled something, and threw a switch against the wall opposite that housing the anesthetizing machine. A panel slid away, revealing a large mosaic of close-packed little spheroids. As the medic twisted a dial at the base of this arrangement, some of the spheroids began to flicker whitely, while others remained dark. Then Jerry recognized it for what it was. A form of television screen, composed of individual lights instead of phosphorescing dots activated by magnetically guided electrons from a cathode. The effect was the same. A picture, sharply etched by the alternation and varying intensities of the bulbs, appeared on the mosaic-screen. Across the dream-like surging of the black-gray-and-white heavy seas in the foreground, Jerry made out an armada of strange-looking vessels coming across the ocean toward wherever the pickup camera lay. Unlike Earth-vessels, they tapered inward as the sides of the vessels rose from the waters, then were abruptly truncated near what would have been a peak by a railinged area that was the deck. "Unless I'm much mistaken," thought Jerry, grimly, "I am on a ship which—be it alone or one of many in a convoy—is about to be attacked by those vessels out there." A second later he knew he was right. From the approaching fleet there had come no sign of armament, no flash or flame or belch of smoke or blaze of ray, but the room he was in jolted violently, then canted crazily for a sick moment before righting itself. The alarm bells grew louder in their metallic clangor. Footsteps pounded down the corridor. The bare-to-the-waist man or another like him—Jerry could not distinguish between the creatures—came into the room shouting something. The surgeons shouted back and then the man raced out again. Another jolt made the room tremble, but this time it felt different, as though the room were built to take that sort of stress. Jerry recognized that his ship was in the process of firing back, with whatever strange weapons these fur-faces employed. Even as he reasoned this out, one of the enemy vessels on the screen shuddered, split into almost-matching halves and plunged beneath the waves amid much flame and confusion. The medics were not watching. One of them had moved out of Jerry's view and now stepped back into it, carrying the wriggling form of one of the animals from the cages. As Jerry watched, the animal, its orange teeth snapping vainly at those hard black fingertips on the medic's white-furred hands, was lashed to the table in the gray-smeared spot where its predecessor had perished. Then the bare-chested man was coming back into the room, wheeling a man on a cart. This one was missing fur from an arm and part of the chest area. Jerry was able to confirm his earlier theory that the hollowness of the creatures was extended throughout the flexible green body-sheaths. "Sonics," thought Jerry, all at once. "They're using sonic rays on each other. A good dose of heavy infravibration could ruin a collodial creature! The loss of the fur through subsonic friction is only a side-effect. The main damage is the breakdown of those colloid organs when the beam focuses on a man." That would explain the way the other ship had simply sundered. Artificially induced metal-fatigue, by the application of controlled vibration. "Damn," thought Jerry, "this is dangerous !" Other alien vessels were visible now on that granulated "screen," heading away from the camera. At least Jerry's ship was not alone in the face of that armada. His ship was one of at least a dozen—with more, possibly, outside the pickup range of the camera—involved on his side of the battle. Some of them shattered silently apart and boiled into the churning waters with a violence so great that Jerry could "feel" the sound with his eyes. Apparently the medics, while anxious about the course of the fray, did not want their surgical endeavors bothered with the actual noise of the battle. Or perhaps the technology which had evolved this type of TV screen had never stumbled upon the familiar-to-Earth methods of transmitting sound by electromagnetic radiation. "How long can forty minutes last ?" Jerry wondered in growing concern. By his own time-sense, warped by the lifespan of his host, he felt he'd been present in that room well over an hour. And still he was captive to the environment of the scaly crystalloid raccoon/pangolin creature, and doubly imperiled of survival. Even if "his" side took the lead in the struggle, many fur-faces would need this treatment—which destroyed one of his species with each operation. Jerry did not know whether or not the animals were chosen in any special order. But his mind told him that even were his host the last so chosen, his odds for survival were dwindling fast. Assuming the wall against which his cage was stacked with the others were the same size as the wall opposite his cage—and symmetrical construction of rooms seemed a strong likelihood—then, judging by his cage-size, the maximum number of cages that could be so stacked was six high and four across, or twenty-four cages. Figuring one animal per cage, that left some twenty-one animals ahead of him. Possibly—barely possibly—this tier of cages might not be against a wall. It might be the forefront of hundreds of rows of similar stacked cages. But no medic hurrying to save a life would walk to Row #2 when Row #1 was still undepleted. "So if I just sit here," he thought, gloomily, "I'm bound to end up alongside a fur-face on that table. My life gone so that his may survive. 'It is a far, far better thing I do' and so on, but I don't know as I'm ready to lay down my life for a fur-face without even being given the choice , damn it! Let's figure a way out of this mess!" The ship went whooomp , suddenly. The room gave a crazy tilt again before—rather sluggishly, Jerry noted with alarm—righting itself. At the same moment the TV screen blanked out. "Well, there goes the camera," he thought, his insides feeling oddly cold and upset. "That may mean that if I don't die on the operating table, I may well be forced to succumb to a watery grave. Damn! When will those forty minutes be up ?" He was jerked from his thoughts by the appearance of a huge white-furred hand fumbling with the catch on his cage. Hard, pointed black fingertips reached in through the opened door for him. Jerry snapped and clacked his teeth upon them in vain, as he was carried toward the strap-sided concavity beside a new fur-scorched patient on the operating table. "Use your head!" he screamed at himself. "These fur-faces aren't expecting an intelligent attack from a lab-animal! The other crystalloid creatures have the paltry instinctive self-preservation mechanism to bite at the objects gripping them, those impervious black fingertips. But you know better, right?" And with that thought, Jerry tilted his head just a bit further forward, and let his orange fangs crackle through the thin chitinous green "flesh" beneath the stiff white fur on the alien's wrist.... Yellow dispersion-medium spurted with a satisfactory gush from the scalloped gap in the alien's forearm. Jerry landed nimbly on his hind feet on the metal floor as the shrieking medic dashed to a confrere for whatever first aid is given when a colloidal creature's liquid contents are spilling out. While a minor part of his mind wondered idly if they'd employ a tourniquet or just a cork, the rest of his mind concentrated on directing those fore-paw-and-foot phalanges to carry him swiftly up the face of the stacked cages. There were twenty-four of them, all right, against the wall. He perched precariously on the top, in the cage-roof-to-ceiling space that was too small for another layer of the same. As the fur-face medic fiddled around with the wrist of the man Jerry had bitten (it was the raccoon/pangolin medic, of course), the anesthetist dragged a small stool over to the base of the stacked cages and began climbing up after him. "Oh, hell," thought Jerry, cowering weakly against the wall. "If I had a piece of chalk or a charcoal stick I could write something. Or draw a picture, maybe, on the ceiling. Then they'd know I was intelligent, and—They'd probably use me anyhow. The middle of a battle is no time for writing learned scientific papers about new zoological 'finds.'" Those black fingertips were coming for him, too carefully for a repeat wrist-crunching performance. If he were taken this time the bearer would handle with care. Jerry skittered and scrabbled for the corner near the wall, hoping to engage the anesthetist in a game of you-climb-up-at- this -point-and-I-run-back-to- that -point. But the fur-face had too long a reach to make it practical. As Jerry cowered helplessly, those black fingertips gripped him about the throat with strangling force. It apparently made no difference if he died on the top of the cages or under the scalpel. He could only fend feebly with his paws at the creature as he was lifted down to the table and set into the concavity, dizzy and sick. "White lightning?" he begged. "Come on, white lightning! Please, test, be over. How long can forty minutes last ?" Then the room gave a horrible shudder and all the lights went out. Jerry, not yet strapped in place, heard the cries of the medics, and then the terrifying sound of rushing seas in the invisible corridor as the room canted swiftly onto its side. This time it did not right itself. A thick, falling-elevator feeling bunched up inside Jerry. He knew that the warship was plunging beneath the heaving surge outside. He scrambled about on the floor—no, it was the wall now—almost brained by the crashing bulk of the operating table. He kept jumping futilely upward, hoping somehow to escape to the corridor and get outside the ship before all that water got inside this room. Then icy tons of fluid crashed down upon him, flattening him against the wall beneath his feet. The cries of the medics were suddenly gurgles, then a brief, faintly heard sound of bubbling. Jerry, trying to swim against the swirling pressures of the flood that now lifted him from against the wall and spun him end over end, could hold his breath no longer. In despair, he felt his jaws widen and take in the chill liquid in which he was whirled. It went in without gagging him, and did not come out. Not through his mouth, at any rate. It came out through long slots just in front of those auricular vents in his head. Gills! Jerry was an amphibian. Webbing, hitherto folded away, appeared on his feet. "I'll be damned," he sighed, with weary relief. Then he paddled determinedly about in the utter blackness until he found a cage lying on its side, the door sprung open. Jerry got inside, closed the door until it caught as well as its broken catch would allow and settled himself for a nice wait. "At least I won't have to worry about getting gobbled by a natural underwater enemy," he figured. He had to wait another subjective hour before the silent flash of white lightning lifted him out of his third, and last, Contact on Arcturus Beta. VII "All right, sir?" asked Peters, removing the bulky helmet with care. Jerry sat up and nodded, blinking his eyes as he adjusted to his body once more. He was hard-pressed not to start testing his own joints and lungs and limbs for knowledge, and had to forcibly remind himself that this frail shell was his "normal" body. Now to await the technician's analysis of the data. Jerry, waving off Peters' hand, outstretched in automatic offer of assistance, sat up wearily on the edge of the couch. After a deep breath he got to his feet. Within the ship, the data-analyzer clattered busily. "Some hot coffee, sir?" asked Peters, helpfully. Jerry was annoyed at the effort it cost him just to talk. "That will go nicely, Captain," he managed. The technician leaned out the airlock door, his homely face split in a grin. "No problem with the aliens, sir," he said to Peters. "Amiability indeterminate, but their basic weapon is infrasonics. They're built like hard bubbles, sure suckers for bayonets or bullets. I don't think, with sonic-shields, we'll have much trouble with them." Peters, in the process of pouring Jerry's coffee, shrugged. "Well, we're not here to make trouble, either. The roborocket reported that the aliens live either at sea or at least always in coastal regions. They shouldn't object to our starting a settlement this far inland." "And," said Jerry, suddenly, as he took the coffee and sipped at the hot brown liquid, "I suppose those worm-creatures and the horned lions are to be eliminated?" The technician dropped his eyes. "We can't have new colonists getting pulled into those burrows, or impaled on those horns, sir." He handed the report, translated by the machine into readable English, to Peters. The pilot scanned the sheets, and nodded. "Seems easy enough," he said agreeably. "Those jellyfish-things, and the flying apes are similar to species encountered before. They'll respond to simple gunfire. Removal of the worm-things will be automatic, once their source of sustenance is destroyed." Jerry continued to sip his coffee and made no comment. "As for the lion-things," Peters continued, "I doubt we'll have to attack them directly, since their digestive mechanism calls for sulphur from those pits. When we cap off the pits, or dry them up, to clear the air for the incoming colonial wave, that should starve them out within a week." "Less than that," Jerry remarked emotionlessly. "Being hungry they'll eat, regardless. Then, unable to go on to the next step in the process—the ingestion of the sulphur—they'll die of food-poisoning. Simple, neat and efficient." Peters smiled and gripped Jerry's hand with his own. "We have you to thank for the information, sir," he said, in obvious admiration. "At least we know we won't have to fight the intelligent aliens. We'll have the central regions; they'll have the coasts and seas." "And—" Jerry pointedly withdrew his strong fingers from the pilot's hand—"what happens when Mankind decides to spread out? When the colony grows awhile, it's bound to want some of the coastal regions. Then what?" Peters looked uncomfortable, then said, "I don't think that's likely to happen, sir. Not for some time, at any rate." "But it will happen," said Jerry, somberly. "It always happens. Earthmen meet new races, arbitrate a hit, sign pacts and move in. Then, when they're settled pretty well, they ask the other race to move out. It's almost a truism, Captain, that Earth can't comprehend anyone but an Earthman having any rights to survival." The tight-lipped technician exchanged a look with Peters, then ducked back inside the ship. Adverse commentary about a Space Zoologist was dangerous. But no one had yet been broken in rank or discharged for a facial expression. "Well, sir, you're entitled to your opinion, of course," said Peters, wishing he had the moral courage to duck inside after the technician and avoid conversing with Norcriss. The job was done; why not forget it? Jerry, sensing the other man's discomfort, dropped the topic, and contented himself with sitting there in the increasing darkness, sipping his coffee. After a minute or two, Peters gratefully mumbled his excuses and went into the ship. Jerry sighed, finished his coffee, then began to walk toward the edge of the clearing, to watch the stars glow more brightly than they could in the interference of the ship's lights illuminating the camp. When he reached the rim of the wooded area, he stopped, then lay on his back in the cool grass and watched the night sky, his thoughts rueful ones and his inner amusement ironic. People always were puzzled about how a Space Zoologist could stand being a creature other than a human being. And Space Zoologists always were puzzled about how a human being could stand being part of that conquering race called man. The twinkling stars distracted Jerry. Lying there watching them, he wondered to which of their planets he would be sent next, and to what dangers he might—in his new bodies—be subjected. Neither he nor any of his fellow zoologists had any real apprehensions about death in an alien body. Fear of death, yes. That was normal enough, and inescapable in any creature. But he had no fear of perishing as a crawling thing, or multilegged thing, or soaring winged thing. To Jerry Norcriss—indeed, to any Space Zoologist—to die like a man was a dubious honor at best. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARCTURUS TIMES THREE *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. 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