Jackpot

took my hand in his and tugged for me to come. There were just two things to do?either snatch my hand away or go. I went.

I didn't stop to get it figured out, but there were several factors that helped make up my mind. First off, the creature seemed to be friendly and intelligent. And Hutch and all the others were there, just behind me. And over and above all, you don't get too far with aliens if you act stand-offish. So I went.

We walked into the silo and behind me I heard the tramping feet of the others and it was a sound that was good to hear.

I didn't waste any time wondering where the creature might have come from. I admitted to myself, as I walked along, that I had been half-expecting something just like this. The silo was so big that it could hold many things, even people or creatures we could not know about. After all, we'd explored only one small corner of the first floor of it. The creature, I figured, must have come from somewhere on the upper floors as soon as he learned about us. It might have taken quite a while, one way or another, for the news to reach him.

He led me up three ramps to the fourth floor of the building and went down a corridor for a little way, then went into a room.

It was not a large room. It held just one machine, but this one was a double model; it had two bucket seats and two helmets.

There was another creature in the room.

The first one led me over to the machine and motioned for me to take one of the seats.

I stood there for a while, watching Hutch and Pancake and Frost and all the others crowd into the place and line up against the wall. Frost said: 'A couple of you boys better stay outside and watch the corridor.'

Hutch asked me: 'You going to sit down in that contraption, Captain?'

'Why not?' I said. 'They seem to be all right. There's more of us than them. They don't mean us any harm.'

'It's taking a chance,' said Hutch.

'Since when have we stopped taking chances?'

The creature I had met outside had sat down in one of the seats, so I made a few adjustments in the other. While I was doing this, the second creature went to a file and got out two sticks, but these sticks were transparent instead of being black.

He lifted off the helmets and inserted the two sticks. Then he fitted one of the helmets on his fellow- creature's head and held out the other to me.

I sat down and let him put it on and suddenly I was squatting on the floor across a sort of big coffee-table from the gent I had met outside.

'Now we can talk,' said the creature, 'which we couldn't do before.'

I wasn't scared or flustered. It seemed just as natural as if it had been Hutch across the table.

'There will be a record made of everything we say,' said the creature. 'When we are finished, you will get one copy and I will get the other for our files. You might call it a pact or a contract or whatever term seems to be most applicable.'

'I'm not much at contracts,' I told him. 'There's too much legal flypaper tied up with most of them.'

'An agreement, then,' the creature suggested. 'A gentlemen's agreement.'

'Good enough,' I said. Agreements are convenient things. You can break them any time you want. Especially gentlemen's agreements.

'I suppose you have figured out what this place is,' he said.

'Well, not for sure,' I replied. 'Library is the closest that we have come.'

'It's a university, a galactic university. We specialize in extension or home-study courses.'

I'm afraid I gulped a bit. 'Why, that's just fine.'

'Our courses are open to all who wish to take them. There are no entrance fees and there is no tuition. Neither are there any scholastic requirements for enrollment. You yourself can see how difficult it would be to set up such requirements in a galaxy where there are many races of varying viewpoints and abilities.'

'You bet I can.'

'The courses are free to all who can make use of them,' he said. 'We do expect, of course, that they make proper use of them and that they display some diligence in study.'

'You mean anyone at all can enroll?' I asked. 'And it don't cost anything?'

After the first disappointment, I was beginning to see the possibilities. With bona fide university educations for the taking, it would be possible to set up one of the sweetest rackets that anyone could ask for.

'There's one restriction,' the creature explained. 'We cannot, obviously, concern ourselves with individuals. The paperwork would get completely out of hand. We enroll cultures. You, as a representative of your culture?what is it you call yourselves?'

'The human race, originally of the planet Earth, now covering some half million cubic light-years. I'd have to see your chart…'

'That's not necessary at the moment. We would be quite happy to accept your application for the entrance of the human race.'

It took the wind out of me for a minute. I wasn't any representative of the human race. And if I could be, I wouldn't. This was my deal, not the human race's. But I couldn't let him know that, of course. He wouldn't have done business with me.

'Now not so fast,' I pleaded. 'There's a question or two I'd like to have you answer. What kind of courses do you offer? What kind of electives do you have?'

'First there is the basic course,' the creature said. 'It is more or less a familiarization course, a sort of orientation. It includes those subjects which we believe can be of the most use to the race in question. It is, quite naturally, tailored specifically for each student culture. After that, there is a wide field of electives, hundreds of thousands of them.'

'How about final exams and tests and things like that?' I wanted to know.

'Oh, surely,' said the creature. 'Such tests are conducted every?tell me about your time system.'

I told him the best I could and he seemed to understand.

'I'd say', he finally said, 'that about every thousand years of your time would come fairly close. It is a long- range programme and to conduct tests any oftener would put some strain upon our resources and might be of little value.'

That decided me. What happened a thousand years from now was no concern of mine.

I asked a few more questions to throw him off the track?just in case he might have been suspicious?about the history of the university and such.

I still can't believe it. It's hard to conceive of any race working a million years to set up a university aimed at the eventual education of an entire galaxy, travelling to all the planets to assemble data, compiling the records of countless cultures, correlating and classifying and sorting out that mass of information to set up the study courses. It was just too big for a man to grasp. For a while, he had me reeling on the ropes and faintly starry-eyed about the whole affair. But then I managed to snap back to normal.

'All right, Professor,' I said, 'you can sign us up. What am I supposed to do?'

'Not a thing,' he said. 'The recording of our discussion will supply the data. We'll outline the course of basic study and you then may take such electives as you wish.'

'If we can't haul it all in one trip, we can come back again?' I asked.

'Oh, definitely. I anticipate you may wish to send a fleet to carry all you need. We'll supply sufficient machines and as many copies of the study recordings as you think you will need.'

'It'll take a lot,' I said bluntly, figuring I'd start high and haggle my way down. 'An awful lot.'

'I am aware of that,' he told me. 'Education for an entire culture is no simple matter. But we are geared for it.'

So there we had it?all legal and airtight. We could get anything we wanted and as much as we wanted and we'd have a right to it. No one could say we stole it. Not even Doc could say that.

The creature explained to me the system of notation they used on the recording cylinders and how the courses would be boxed and numbered so they could be used in context. He promised to supply me with recordings of the electives so I could pick out what we wanted.

He was real happy about finding another customer and he proudly told me of all the others that they had and