"I think so," Lynne replied. "How did you know?"
"I felt it--until just lately," said Lao. "Most of us are somewhat
telepathic on Mars. In moments of emotional stress especially."
"I'm not sure what's happened," Lynne told her. "They were trying to
get him to record the shape of the invaders on a grid."
Lao's already pale face turned ashy-white. She whispered, "I _knew_ it!
They've used the necro-recorder on him."
"What is it?" Lynne inquired.
"It's a Martian device--supposed to get impressions from the minds of
dying men. It was used in the early days when we had more crime." There
was sudden listlessness in her manner.
Lynne read her thoughts all too plainly. Lao Mei-O'Connell was stunned
with grief. No one, it seemed, had ever survived treatment with this
machine--survived to sanity at any rate. So Revere was dead--or as good
as dead.
Lynne looked blankly at the Eurasian woman, utterly unable to think
under the sudden shock of her words. And then, out of nowhere, came the
fragment of a thought. _Don't give up the space-ship, Lynne--tell Lao
I'm not completely batty yet._
It was Revere--unquestionably. Lynne tried to get him again but the
blank wall was back. Only now, for some reason, it didn't seem so
terrifying. She looked at Lao, who said, "You got something just now,
Lynne. Was it...?"
Lynne nodded. "It was Revere. He--he asked me to tell you he's
okay--not completely batty yet was the way he put it."
For a moment doubt blanked Lao's face. Then she smiled and looked on
the verge of passing out herself. She said, "I might not have believed
you, Lynne. But that phrase--it's--well, it's the way he would have
said it."
"It was Revere," Lynne repeated. She looked at the chronometer above
the door of the room, realized it was getting late. "I've barely got
time to eat dinner," she said. "I don't want to miss my shift."
"No, you don't," the other told her. "There might be a message."
"Why not share it with me?" Lynne offered. "I could use some company."
Lao shook her head regretfully. "I've got a million things to do here,"
she said. Then, with the ghost of a smile lighting her exotic features,
"Besides, I'd be afraid it might be bad news."
"I'll send you a message via the ground-communicator the second I learn
anything," Lynne told her. Then the two women went in to dine at the
head table. They were two islands of preoccupation amid the rough
good-humored gaiety of the room. It was Saturday night at Barkutburg
and there was going to be a dance.
Lynne found herself wondering at the morals of her new companions. They
certainly didn't seem backward about sex--and the planet-wide dislike
of privacy seemed to extend into even their most intimate personal
relationships. Yet when Lynne thought about Janet Downes and certain
other young men and women of the supposedly more civilized home planet,
she decided the Martians were probably the nicer. At any rate they
lived their emotional lives right out in the open.
For the first time since her first few days on the red planet she
felt alone as she stepped off the uplift and entered her listening
and message-post, high in the crystal tower. There was something
frightening about sitting alone in this ruined building with the wind
making its night sounds through the flying buttresses about her and
what appeared like the whole of Mars stretched out in panorama before
her.
It had looked desolate enough in the daylight. Now, with the stars
blazing an enigmatic backdrop, it looked dark--and twice as desolate.
Lynne found herself wondering what strange and fearsome caravans,
what hideous battles and frightful plagues, had passed within view
of her post. She seemed to see again the strange capering figures of
the murals and bas-reliefs, and of the vision-grid she had viewed
telepathically that afternoon in the distant hospital room at New
Samarkand.
She told herself she was getting the jams, sent a tune-up message
through to Cathayville. Though the telepathic operator should have
been on duty there was no response. She reached out further to locate
Revere, could not get to him, found Rolf. He told her, _Lay off, you_
marlet, _Lynne. You nearly jammed the works this afternoon._
_How is Revere?_ She was insistent.
_In coma--and hereafter use the proper channels, Lynne. You're supposed
to key all messages for New Samarkand through Cathayville._
_Cathayville fails to answer_, she informed him.
_Cease sending at once! Cease sending at once, Lynne. If Cathayville is
out it means.... Cease sending at once!_
_What does if mean?_ Lynne was unused to Martian directness, unused to
taking peremptory orders, especially from a man. She had no intention
of obeying before she was good and ready and....
Suddenly they were there, all around her. Thanks to having viewed the
murals and the scene on the visual-grid that afternoon she was able to
get some idea of their nature--or what had been their nature before
a dying globe had driven them to seek the refuge of pure thought and
feeling-forms.
First one of them came fluttering into the room, like some giant
invisible moth, then came another and another and another until she
lost count. They were gay for some reason and nibbled at her mind like
moths nibbling at wool in a closet.
Worse, now that she had allowed them into her brain she was unable to
drive them out. They darted away, amused, just beyond the reach of
her questing probe. Then they came back, doing their strange dances
and whispering outrageous suggestions. Alien or not they had definite
erotic appeal, that awakened in Lynne responses she had never before
suspected she possessed.
_What kind of creature_ am _I?_ she thought hysterically after
a particularly ingenious lascivious mental embrace. And then,
from some hidden source, she drew the strength to fight. She
concentrated as never before in her life--even while working with the
group-machine--and little by little began to win the battle with the
aliens.
_You'll regret it--just let us have the loan of your body and we'll
show you joys you have never dreamt of._ The thoughts pounded at her
head with frail persistent powdery punches, that promised to win
through sheer weight of numbers what they lacked in power.
But Lynne forced herself to think of kindly prosaic Mother Weedon.
At once, seizing upon her thought, the invaders suggested all sorts
of indecent sports for that mature lady. And the very idea of Mother
Weedon indulging in such pursuits was so absurd that Lynne was unable
to resist laughing out loud.
At once the creatures were gone. They were unable to stand the brain
waves of ridicule. Lynne wondered about it. For the moment she felt
carried aloft on a wave of high excitement at her victory. She tried to
code through a message to Rolf Marcein through the proper Cathayville
channel.
Cathayville had been attacked earlier in the evening and for awhile the
telepath on duty had been forced to keep his mind resolutely shut, lest
he fall prey to the enemy. Repulsed, they had moved on to Barkutburg
and Lynne. She gave the message for relay, received information to the
effect that Rolf Marcein's current whereabouts were unknown and that he
was maintaining a closed mind to all messages and was therefore not to
be reached.
Lynne felt terribly alone at this message and the invaders chose that
moment, while her mind was still open, to return in greater force.
This time Lynne found herself in actual pain. Their promise was no
longer mere physical pleasure--although their abandonment of bodies had
unquestionably led them to overstress the joys of the flesh. Now they
promised pain unless Lynne were to give way to them, the sort of pain,
a thousand times magnified, that she had felt sympathetically while
Revere was enduring similar attack.
She tried to concentrate on Mother Weedon but the creatures were not to
be fooled twice by the same ruse. This time it was their laughter that
hurt. Lynne cast about wildly for help from any telepath within mental
reach, lest she actually surrender body and mind to their control. She
even tried to reach Lao Mei-O'Connell but the Eurasian woman was not
telepathic enough to respond to the appeal.
Then, as she was about to give up, support reached her. Revere was
sending to her, helping her to steady herself. She could sense his
complete exhaustion, felt concern for him even while she accepted
gratefully his mental powers of assistance. Only such a relationship
as theirs, she realised, could cope with the blanketing torment of the
invaders.
He was telling her something, that Rolf and the others had compiled
some sort of error that afternoon from the vision-grid. The thought
ran, _They think they know what the creatures are now but they
don't. Even I don't. My images were mixed. They are not the dominant
near-human species we thought but something else...._
Slowly his thoughts faded once more, unable to hold out against the
fatigue that was plaguing him. But his hopeless message of defeat had
sprung a fresh thought-train in Lynne's mind, one that so occupied
her attention she was able to hold the invaders at bay almost without
effort.
She recalled the murals--the near-human looking dominants and
their pets with the disgusting dual bodies and vile games and
many-faceted eyes. She thought back to what Revere had just said via
thought-waves--_They are not the dominant near-human species we thought
but something else...._
She saw once more, in clear memory-vision, the telepathic picture that
had come to her of Rolf and Revere and the visual-grid. No wonder the
pictures had looked foggy and full of "ghosts." In his mind's eye,
limited by the fixed belief of Mars that only the dominant species
could have survived in invisible form, Revere had tried to project
these near-humans onto the screen.
Inwardly, subconsciously, he had known better. The dominant species had
_not_ survived--on Mars at any rate. It was the horrid little creatures
with the multi-faceted eyes and the capuchin-like heads and the dual
bodies that had managed to shed their corporate existence and still
maintain life of a sort. The masters had gone--the beasts remained....
Lynne felt a wave of delight at her discovery, realised it was more a
result of her not having been inhibited by the traditions of Martian
conditioning than through any genius of her own. For an instant she let
down the bars of her mind--and the invaders, hovering unseen about
her in the tower-room, came swarming in for their third and fiercest
attack. They knew she had guessed their nature, were determined to
prevent Lynne from making the discovery clear to other humans. For they
too were telepathic.