create anything you want? Just anything?"

"All right, sister," Glaudot said a little angrily. He did not like being made fun of, for he lacked the capacity to laugh at himself. "Just how much of a fool do you think I am?"

"Why, I don't know," Robin replied. "How much of a fool are you?"

Glaudot glared at her. Purcell was going to be one mad captain when he was told of Chandler's death, but men had died on expeditions before and it really wasn't Glaudot's fault. At any rate he had established contact with somebody of obvious importance among the natives, and Purcell would appreciate that.

"Never mind," Glaudot said.

"Tell me about being a spaceman. Do you really fly among the stars?"

"Well, yes," Glaudot said, "although it isn't really flying."

"And do you create new stars as you go along?"

There she went again with her talk of creation, as if creating things out of nothing was the commonest occurrence in the world. Glaudot stood up. "All right, sister. Show me."

"Why, show you what?"

"Create something."

"You mean," Robin said, disappointed, "you actually can't?"

"Just go ahead and create something."

Robin shrugged. "What would you like?"

Glaudot thought for a moment. "A piano!" he said suddenly. "How about a piano?" It was complicated enough, he thought. "And while you're at it, how about telling me how come everyone speaks English—or tries to speak English around here?"

Robin frowned. "Is there some other way of speaking?"

Glaudot also frowned. That line of thought wouldn't get him anywhere. "O.K.," he said. "One piano coming up?"

"All right," Robin said.

Glaudot blinked. The pretty girl hadn't moved. She hadn't even changed her facial expression. But a parlor grand piano stood on the rock before them.

"Well, I'll be damned," Glaudot said. "What else can you create?"

"We made all the natives here. We made the green and crimson. We made this whole Wild Country. We made some of the animals too."

"Like—the piano? Out of nothing?"

"Is there another way?"

Glaudot said, "You better come back to the ship with me. Captain'll like to see you."

Tashtu shook his head. "The Lady Robin awaits the Lord."

Glaudot looked at Robin. "Who's that?"

"Charlie. He's just my friend. I—I don't think I have to wait for him. I've always been more interested in reading about spacemen than he has. I'll go with you now if you want."

Tashtu looked unhappy. "Lord Charlie, he say—"

"Well, you wait right here, Tashtu, and tell Charlie where I've gone. What could be simpler? I'll be all right, don't worry about me."

"Lord Charlie, he say watch you."

"And I say I'm going with the spaceman to his spaceship."

Tashtu bowed. "The Lady has spoken," he said, and watched Robin descend the rocky rampart and walk back with Glaudot toward the far distant glint of metal which was this spaceship they were talking about.

"So you can create just anything," Glaudot said.

"I guess so."

A goddess, he thought. A beautiful goddess who ...

Suddenly he stared at her. Who could make him the most powerful man in the galaxy.

"This spaceship of yours—" she began.

"Wait. Wait a minute. If you can create anything, how's about re-creating Chandler?"

"Chand-ler? What is Chand-ler?"

"The boy back there. The one your braves killed."

Robin said: "If you wish," and Glaudot held his breath. The power over life and death, he thought....

He looked down and saw Chandler's spacesuited body there, the two arrows protruding from his chest. He shook his head. "Not dead," he said. "What good is he to anybody dead?"

Robin nodded. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just hadn't thought before of bringing people back to life. It ... why it seems ..."

"What's the matter?"

"I wouldn't really be bringing him back, you know. It would be a copy, just a copy."

"But a perfect copy?"

"I think so."

"Then if it's just a copy it shouldn't bother you at all, should it?"

"Well ..." Robin said doubtfully.

"Go ahead. Show me you can do it."

Glaudot gaped. Another figure sat alongside Chandler's corpse, Chandler's second corpse. The other figure got up. It was Chandler.

"Look out!" the new Chandler cried. "Look out—Indians!"

"Just take it easy," Glaudot told him. Glaudot's face was very white, his eyes big and round and staring.

Chandler looked down at the body on the rocks. His knees buckled and Glaudot caught him, stopping him from falling. Chandler tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come. He stared with horrified fascination at the body, which was an exact copy of himself—or a copy of the dead man from whom the new living man was copied.

"May we go to your spaceship now?" Robin asked Glaudot politely. "I have always wished to see a spaceship."

Here was power, Glaudot thought. Incredible power. All the power to control worlds, to carve worlds from primordial slime, almost, for yourself. Here was far more power than any man in the galaxy had ever been offered. Was it his, Glaudot's?

It wouldn't be if he brought the beautiful girl to the spaceship and Purcell. For Captain Purcell, a devoted servant of the galactic civilization which he was attempting to spread to the outworlds, would think in terms of what good the discovery of this girl could bring to all humanity. But if Glaudot kept her to himself ...

And then another thought almost stunned him. Why merely the girl? She'd mentioned a friend, hadn't she? Perhaps it was something in the atmosphere of this strange world, in the very air you breathed. Perhaps anyone could do it, could create out of nothing—Glaudot included.

"You want to go to the spaceship?" he asked.

"Yes. Oh, yes."

"Then teach me the secret of creation."

"Of making things, you mean? Why, there isn't any secret. Should there be any secret? You merely—create."

"Show me," said Glaudot.

A table appeared, and savory dishes of food.

"Magician!" cried Chandler.

A great roan stallion, bridled but without a saddle, materialized. Robin swung up on its broad back and used her bare knees for balance and control. The stallion cantered off.

"Wait!" cried Glaudot. "Please wait."

The stallion cantered back and Robin alighted. The stallion began to graze on a patch of grass which suddenly appeared on the naked rock. The stallion seemed quite content.

"You mean," the new Chandler asked in an awed voice, "she just made these things? The food. The table. The horse ..."

"Yes," said Glaudot. He concentrated his will on creating a single flower in the new field of grass. He concentrated his whole being.

But nothing happened.

He glared almost angrily at Robin, as if it were her fault. "I don't have the power you have," he said.

She nodded. "Only Charlie and me." She looked at the roan stallion. "Beauty, isn't he? I'll present him to Charlie." She turned to Glaudot. "Now take me to the ship."

"We ought to get started back there, Mr. Glaudot," Chandler said.

"Yes? Why?"

"But—but I don't have to tell you why! This girl is one of the most important discoveries that has ever been made. The ability to create material things ... out of nothing...."

"Show me your planet," Glaudot told Robin, ignoring the younger man. "We can talk about the spaceship later. You see, I'm an explorer and it's my job to explore new worlds." He spoke slowly, simply, as he would speak to a child. Somehow, although the girl was not a child and was quite the most astonishingly beautiful girl he had ever seen, he thought that was the right approach.

"Now wait a minute, Mr. Glaudot," Chandler protested. "We both know it's our duty to bring her to Captain Purcell."

"Maybe you think it's your duty," Glaudot told the younger man. "I don't think it's mine. And before you run off to the