This time they actually knocked Lynne to the floor of the tower-room.
It was greater torment than she had ever endured in her life. Somehow
she could sense the pattern behind its intensity, even while she was in
the grip of a mental confusion that seemed to be burning out the very
fibers of her brain.
This was the showdown, the decisive battle. Her being imported to
Mars had been a step in the duel between the invisible aliens and the
Communications Integration of the red planet, headed by Rolf Marcein
and his telepaths and other department workers.
Unless the aliens were stopped and stopped now there would be no
holding them. Earthfolk on Mars were becoming increasingly telepathic
and telepaths were the prey of the invisible foes. Lynne _knew_
somehow, from the thoughts of the aliens, that they had been growing
steadily in strength since the arrival of the Earthmen on their planet,
that after a creepingly slow revival for decades they had finally
snow-balled to sufficient power to make open attacks upon human brains
laid bare for telepathic communication. They longed to renew the lost
pleasures of the flesh through possession of human bodies.
Rolf and the scientists had learned something that afternoon from
Lynne's twin, something about the nature and life-form of the attackers
that had hitherto been concealed from them. They were moving to the
attack themselves--and it was of vital import to them that Lynne should
now get through with the message that would reveal this true nature.
She tried desperately to reach Rolf--and when this effort failed to
think of Mother Weedon or even plump Tony Willis engaged in amorous
sports--but the keynote of the alien attack had been altered from
suggestion of sensation to outright mental attack. Instead of bribery
or blackmail through pain, she was being given sledgehammer treatment.
But she _had_ to get her message through. Without her knowledge of the
nature of the aliens Rolf would use faulty weapons against them, would
lose precious time, time that might prove decisive for the survival of
Earthmen on Mars.
Despairing, knowing she could not hold out much longer against the
attack with her mind open, Lynne summoned reserve powers she did not
know she possessed and swept the planet's surface with her thoughts,
seeking Rolf. Her love for him, her fear for Revere's ultimate fate,
her affection for her new comrades--all combined to help her make a
final superhuman effort.
Yet for awhile it seemed that even this despairing try was destined
to defeat. The floor was beginning to swim before her eyes when at
last she reached Rolf, got him, lost him, got him again. With darkness
closing about her she poured out her information, her theory, her
surmises.
Faintly at last she felt Rolf's Crehut! _The multiple bodies on the
visual screen we thought were ghosts--of course they're the survivors,
rather than the near-humans! Thanks million, honey, we'll know what to
do now. Hold on out there--help is on its way._
But Lynne could hold out no longer. She felt the invisible attackers
come pouring through her weakened mental barriers--her last remembered
vision was of the floor rising rapidly to strike her. She turned her
face away just before it hit.
Lynne became aware of a lifting from her brain, of a cessation of pain
that she had never actually felt. She opened her eyes, discovered she
was still lying on the floor of the tower-room. But she was no longer
surrounded by terror.
The patched portion of the wall had been smashed through and beyond it
hovered the well-lighted outlines of a small aircraft. With her in the
room was Rolf Marcein--and he was sweeping the apparently empty air
about him with an odd-looking weapon. No flash or beam came from its
squat muzzle but briefly, all around her, Lynne was aware of alien
anguish, alien drainage, alien flight.
"That should do it for awhile, honey," he told her, helping her to her
unsteady feet. "_Crehut!_ What a show those blasted _marlets_ put on
this time. They tried to knock out the whole system simultaneously.
Check the other stations, will you, honey?"
Automatically she did it. Cathayville came in clearly, as did New Walla
Walla and Zuleika. Save for a few stations on the other side of the
planet the communications network was clear once again. Lynne informed
Rolf of the fact.
"Good," he said, pulling a skinless cigarette from his pocket and
letting it ignite itself. "I guess we're solid now. The _purt_ of it
is they almost got us, before you could find out enough about them to
knock them out for awhile."
"What sort of gun is that?" Lynne asked him. He had called her honey,
he had saved her life, but so casually had he done it that she still
felt definite constraint between them.
"We had to put it together in a hurry, once we got your message," he
told her, patting it fondly. He held it up so that she could examine
it better, added, "It isn't really a gun at all. We've been using the
damned things for space and planet-ship external repairs for years
now--you know how their outer skins pile up positive electricity...."
"I don't," she said. "Tell me." He shook his head, put an arm around
her, scowled at her fiercely. "How come I managed to acquire such an
ignoramus?" he asked rhetorically. "I'm not going to explain it all now
but space-ships _do_ pick up positive charges on their outer hulls and
this thing is an anion gun that attracts and discharges negative juice.
"Our unseen visitors with the gone bodies are mostly positive
electricity in their present form, honey," he went on. "This blaster of
ours gives them a negative charge that wipes them right out." Rolf put
an arm about her, led her unprotesting to the hovering vehicle outside.
"I imagine they're beginning to wonder what in _purt's_ been going on,
down below."
But before he pressed the buttons that lowered the hovering pinnace to
the planet's surface he drew her into the circle of his arms, kissed
her, then said, "If you hadn't given us the clue to what these horrors
were we'd never have had sense enough to know what to do. We couldn't
conceive of the dominant species turning into this kind of force. But
their pets, with the multiple bodies...."
Lynne and Lao Mei-O'Connell and most of the rest of the citizens of
Barkutburg listened attentively while Rolf told them the full story.
The trouble, it seemed, was caused by the fact that the Earthmen had
brought electricity back to Mars.
"These creatures were forced to discard their corporeal bodies to
survive on a planet as dead as this one," he went on. "Their food is
electricity and they'd been existing on a starvation diet for thousands
of years, until _we_ got here."
"It's strange they never tried space-travel," said Lynne.
"I don't believe their philosophy admitted to such a materialistic
solution," Rolf replied. "They must have progressed like _farb_ in the
spiritual direction to be able to discard their bodies at all. Probably
couldn't manage it both ways."
"That makes sense, Rolf." Lao nodded, looked at Rolf with an appeal she
could not put into words.
He understood, told her, "Your Revere is going to be right as _purt_. I
know what you must have thought when Lynne gave you the message she got
about what we were doing to him. I tried to conceal it for that reason
but this young lady is too _farbly_ strong telepathically to shut her
out. I'm sorry I had to make him suffer but he understood. And I wasn't
going to damage him permanently.
"We--that is, some of Tony Willis' bright young men, have managed to
improve the necro-recorder so that it is no longer destructive of the
mind of the usee. They'd been working on it against time--and against
just such a situation as arose recently, when we were finally able to
get Revere off duty for a bit."
"Thanks." Lao Mei-O'Connell said the word gratefully.
"It's been rough on you," Rolf told her, "but nothing like as rough as
if our little friends got control of all the telepaths."
"What did they feed on that made them strong?" Lynne asked.
"Electricity," said Rolf. "Just because we couldn't make it work in
open circuits doesn't mean we haven't tried. They got enough from our
efforts partly to restore themselves--from such efforts and the leakage
of our closed circuits. They were always sopping it up.
"But we didn't even know what they looked like, though we had our
suspicions. They figured to be survivors of the dominant species on the
planet before it dried up--but Revere's test this afternoon gave us
our first doubts. We were still up a tree when Lynne got her message
through. That _did_ it!
"But it was touch and go. I grabbed a space-ship to get to Lynne,
then took a pinnace. If we hadn't managed to get the anion guns ready
tonight I think we'd have been licked for all our knowledge. Now we've
got _them_ licked. They can still raid our electricity once in awhile,
but it's going to cost them."
That was about it. Lynne got up and went outside in the chill Martian
night to smoke a skinless cigarette. A little while later Rolf came out
and joined her. He slipped an arm around her again, hugged her, said,
"_Purt_, isn't it?"
"I guess so." The constraint she felt in his presence was strong upon
her. And she had been through a little too much too quickly. She said,
"What about Revere?"
"He'll be back on the job in a little while," he said. "From what he
told me before he went under this afternoon he wants to mate up with
Lao Mei-O'Connell."
"That'll be fine," said Lynne, feeling suddenly very lonely. "But what
happens to me?"
"One _zwirchy_ guess!" he said, bringing his other arm into play.
"But if you drive off the aliens, why are you going to need telepaths?"
She felt robbed of a fascinating new career before it was even begun.
"Don't you believe it," he told her. "Telepathy is going to be the
keystone of the entire Martian culture. Now that we shan't have to
confine people like you and Revere and me to communications we can
use them a thousand other ways. Think of what telepathy will mean in
education, in therapy, in sheer honesty and understanding!
"Besides...." He looked thoughtfully at the star-studded sky. "Man
isn't always going to be limited to two puny planets. We've still to
get a settlement working on Venus. And out there somewhere are the
moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Think of how easy it will make the task if
we have telepaths ready-made!"