Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 296: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The engines hummed, warming up. Fists and feet battered on the valve. The sickness made him retch. O...Joana, If this kills you— He threw the main-drive switch. Acceleration jammed him back as the gig leaped free. Staring out the ports, he saw fire blossom in space as the great guns of Vwyrdda opened up. My glass was empty. | signalled for a refill and sat wondering just how much of the yam one could believe. “I’ve read the histories,” | said slowly. “Il do know that some mysterious catastrophe annihilated the massed fleet of Janya and turned the balance of the war. Sol speared in and won inside of a year. And you mean that you did it?” “In a way. Or Daryesh id. We were acting as one personality, you know. He was a thoroughgoing realist, and the moment he saw his defeat he switched wholeheartedly to the other side.” “But—Lord, man! Why’ve we never heard anything about this? You mean you never told anyone, never rebuilt any of those machines, never did anything?” Laird’s dark, worn face twisted in a bleak smile. “Certainly. This civilization isn’t ready for such things. Even Vwyrdda wasn't, and it'll take us millions of years to reach their stage. Besides, it was part of the bargain.” “Bargain?” “Just as certainly. Daryesh and | still had to live together, you know. Life under suspicion of mutual trickery, never trusting your own brain, would have been intolerable. We reached an agreement during that long voyage back to Sol, and used Vwyrddan methods of autohypnosis to assure that it could not be broken.” He looked somberly out at the lunar night. “That’s why | said the genie in the bottle killed me. Inevitably, the two CORniclooo SS CO