Part 2

"Sympathy gag," Bill's lips formed for Molly's benefit. "If we don't watch our step from now on, this guy can sell us anything."

To the Intelligence he said cautiously, "Now maybe you're getting to the point. What's your product? What are you trying to sell?"

"Product? Sell?" Then the Voice swelled up. "The UNIVERSE! That is my product, that is what you shall buy--or be destroyed!

"Now listen well. I shall not be able to repeat. When I die--" the Voice dwelt on the words with an exquisite sadness that would have wrenched the heart of anybody but a hardened salesman "--the universe will have come to that state you know as the heat-death.

"No motion--and no source of motion! For eons I have brooded on this sadness. And now I have discovered YOU!

"You, matter, shall resurrect the universe."

Is was lying still, Bill's strong fingers rubbing her absently behind the fluffy ears. Something churned abruptly in Bill's stomach.

_Resurrection. Turn back the universe, and give me yesterday...._ He paled. Atom bombs, space fleets bristling with men for slaughter and weapons for slaughtering. Poverty. Misery. Kids in tenements without lawns.

"What do you mean by resurrection, Voice?" The question came from the very bottom of Bill. "Would the old universe come back? Our planet Earth? The other planets?"

"Yes, yes! I would arrange it. A matrix sheeted four-dimensionally about the universe--which is myself. A matrix through which all re-created motion would pass. Your Earth would be remade--"

"With all human emotions," said Bill casually.

"Exactly! You shall aid in resurrecting the universe. I have had your answer!" Delirious joy flamed through the Voice's being. "Now I shall tell you how the marvellous occurrence can be brought about!"

Molly was looking at Bill with tears in her eyes.

"Don't you want it, Bill?" she whispered. "The way it was? Some of it was beautiful."

"Some of it," said Bill grimly. "You--and Is--and Was--are the only beautiful things I ever got out of it. But let him talk."

* * * * *

The Voice was already talking at a furious, excited pace. Bill would wait until the time-machine carried them to the very end of entropy. To the heat-death of the universe where all particles were in a state of absolute rest.

"Do you not see it? It is only necessary to recreate motion. Start the process over again. How? You have atom-powered motors aboard your ship. The jets of your ship will spew out what are, in comparison with the particles of my composition, solid particles. Gamma rays. Gravitons. Protons. Electrons. Neutrons.

"When you have exhausted your fuel, you will convert more in your matter-converter. You will strip the ship, if necessary. Everything must go to supply the necessary energy of motion.

"Motion," went on the Voice deliriously. "The universe will once again surge with the motion you have created. Around the loosed particles atoms and molecules will form. They will grow--eventually, as you speed through time, turn into hot suns, flaming nebulae. Planets will be born as the billions of years pass. One of them will be Earth! And Earth will again result in life. Your kind of life. And your kind of life will be master of all other life.

"And of course," the Intelligence added as an apologetic afterthought, "it will result in myself."

Bill sat up, mouth falling open. "So that's it!" he yelled. He gaped at Molly. "_That's_ what he's been beating around the bush for. To bring about his own resurrection after he dies!"

He burst out laughing. "So you want the same cycle to start all over again, Voice. Because, you, as _theta_, as the life-force, will be born again, and eventually will come to full resurrection as the universe again dies.

"Reincarnation!

"But I'm not sold, see? Get a better sales argument. Molly and I are happy here. We can spend our whole lives on this spaceship and get along famously."

The Voice moaned like an animal in pain. Indeed, its energy of life, whatever that was, seemed to be fading.

"Dying," said the Voice hollowly. "I am dying. To know that one's self will exist no more, not even in a future life. And it would be so easy for you!"

A note of cunning, like an old man hatching schemes to outwit hard youth.

"Matter, I would tell you how to repair your time-mechanism so that you could control your forward flight."

"No sale!" snapped Bill.

"You could stop at whatever point on the newly created Earth you chose. Think of it! I offer you variety, when there might well be monotony!"

"We'll get along," said Bill wearily. "You haven't even got your foot in the door."

Molly tugged imploringly at his arm. "Bill, you might really like it better in the long run. I wish--"

The Voice roared in with new energy, now that it was being backed up.

"Yes!" it roared. "Your mate--your mate--ah!"

Silence, seething with unuttered thought, as if that dying mind were skittering about the ship, exploring, discovering great wonders with its strange senses. The feeling of privacy being invaded was so strong with Bill that he broke loose.

"No!" he yelled. "And that's final. GET OUT OF HERE!"

But then the Voice started laughing. Crotchety, giggly laughter. Then it spoke again, with unholy cunning.

"Matter," it whispered mockingly, "you _shall_ buy my product, to use your own lower-level method of communicating. For, matter, what are you going to do for green grass on this spaceship? For trees? For Sunday schools? For bones buried in soft loam to be dug up later? For big ice cream cones and long runs in the woods after rabbits? For the thrill of snow on your paws and football games and Boy Scout hikes and the sheer joy of howling at the Moon at night?"

"Huh?"

"Matter," said the Voice cunningly, "your mate is going to have pups!"

Bill darted an amazed glance at Molly. Molly's was looking back at him just as amazedly.

"I'm not, Bill," she said. "I know I'm not. He's crazy. He doesn't know what he's--"

Then she clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with sudden hysterical amusement. "Don't you get it, Bill," she choked. "He's mixed up. Is is going to have the pups!"

* * * * *

Bill got it. Suddenly everything clicked into place. The sheer insanity of it. The senility of it. And the utter beauty of it! He began to grin, the grin turned into a laugh, the laugh into something that was momentarily hysterical. Then he quieted.

"Molly," he said, "put Was down."

Molly dropped the dog. Was departed the room in a flash.

"The Intelligence can't hear us now," Bill explained.

Then he stood over Molly, gently clasping her shoulders in his big hands, and shaking her a little, with affection.

"Sweet Molly," he said wryly. "You really want the world back, don't you? But Molly, it's no good, it's no good the way it was. We can't have it that way again.

"But we can have a different order of things. And I'll stake my life that it'll be a better way.

"The Intelligence tipped us off, of course, when he said _you_ were going to have the pups. But, actually, _the Intelligence isn't talking to us_!"

Molly nodded gravely. "I know, Bill. That's the way it seems, doesn't it? Our thoughts are going through the dogs' heads."

"Yeah." Bill was almost musing to himself. "He's talking to the dogs--and thinks the dogs are talking back to him. He's old, Molly. He's crotchety and self-centered and probably senile. I doubt if he can really see us--only sense us--"

From somewhere the Voice was coming in, querulous, demanding communication, but with fright dominant in its thought-tones. Molly and Bill paid no attention.

"The Intelligence made an easy mistake, for him. After all, in this ship are two sets of beings. Both with four legs. Both wearing clothes--those things you made for Is and Was." He grimaced amusedly. "And remember how he complained that our thought-voices seemed like growls and whines?

"Well, he's mixed up. He's mistaken the dogs for the intelligences aboard this ship. His conception of material life is some weird combination of human and dog characteristics--but mostly dog.

"Therefore he's offered to arrange this matrix-thing he talks about so that dogs will evolve on the new Earth as the dominant, mastering life-form.

"How about it, Molly? Should we throw the universe to the dogs?"

Molly gave him one pointed look, then she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. "I always want what you want, Bill," she said tenderly. "I always do, somehow." Then she went aft, coaxed Was out from wherever he was, and came back with him licking her ear. The communication beam was in operation again.

"I cannot hear you," the Voice moaned weakly. "To lose contact, after I dissipate my life energy and go even nearer to death--"

Bill slipped his arm around Molly's waist. "We're here, Voice," he said gently. "You set up the matrix, the way you planned.

"You've made a deal."

The second thing to know about a salesman? He's a fall guy for a good sales talk.