Billy nodded. "The rest of Terra and Sol must be excited. Wait--I must
order Lane and Downing to stop."
The planetoid loomed larger and larger, and Downing crowded Lane
closer. On approaching courses, it was becoming evident that the
conjunction of courses would occur simultaneously with their arrival
at the huge meteor. And yet Downing was the better off, for if he and
Lane kept their courses doggedly true, Lane's ship would hit the meteor
first. The carom, of course, would drive the flaming remnants of Cliff
Lane's craft upward into Stellor Downing's ship, with the resulting
injury to the latter.
Downing jacked up the magnification of his course-scanner with a twitch
of his free hand. A rounded knoll of rock covered the scanner plate,
and the cross-hairs that marked Stellor's course were just above and
just to the left of the top of the knoll. A full-power shot with the
dymodine in the right place--
And the caroming ship would deflect sidewise instead of straight up!
Stellor Downing trained the dymodine projector until the tiny circle
in the course-scanner was still farther to the left of the top of the
knoll than his ship's course.
The course-scanner in Cliff Lane's ship told him that he was heading
for the knoll of rock. It would be a slicing blow, with Cliff's ship
bounding up into Downing's craft. That much he knew.
Unless he did something.
He could drive up into Downing's ship right now. But that would be
no solution as to whom was the better man. That would get Terra two
corpses, but finely divided ones.
He could swerve.
And give Stellor Downing the right to say that he, Cliff Lane, had been
bluffed?
Now if he were Stellor--?
Cliff Lane's dymodine sight was centered on the cross-hair of the
scanner. He trained it slightly to the right and down, and then he
touched the trigger.
* * * * *
Both dymodines blasted at once. Both beams raved out from positions
one above the other, and both beams hit the knoll of rock in slightly
different places. The splatter of energy from the coruscation ahead
blinded both men, and set up shock-interference in the scanners.
A gout of flaming gas burst from the hit.
And within a few milliseconds of the hit, Cliff Lane arrived, with
Stellor Downing almost on top of him.
* * * * *
Downing's ship hit the gout of flaming gas, and the velocity of ship
was high. It deflected upward slightly, bending the spine of the little
fleeter, rending a few plates, and dazing the Martian.
Lane's ship hit the flaming gas--which was almost homogenous where Lane
passed through. The Venusite's nose plates dinged in slightly from the
metal-to-gas impact. Right into the hit went Cliff Lane.
And out through the scar on the far side went the Venusite, roaring off
in a halo of gases from the explosion.
They snapped radio sets.
"Well?" grinned Cliff saucily.
"Wise, aren't you?" grunted Downing.
"Try it again," advised Cliff. "I'm still spaceworthy."
"I'm buckled, but still capable," snorted Downing. "I'll be around--"
The ringing of the emergency alarm interrupted them. Thompson's voice
came through. "Stop--at once!"
"Why?" asked Lane insolently.
"Don't even answer," scorned Downing.
"Stop, you fools. Stop--or Patricia Kennebec may die!"
Downing and Lane came around in tight arcs. As one they met on
adjoining courses and raced like madmen for Thompson's command. They
magnetted their ships beside the spacelock, breached it with the
outside controls, and entered. They sent the door to Thompson's cabin
slamming back against the wall and strode in.
"What's all this about Pat Kennebec?"
Thompson smiled. "It was about the only way I could stop that
foolishness."
"Look, Billy, you've been interfering--"
"Don't be an idiot, Lane. Frankly I'm sick and tired of that schoolboy
bickering of yours. As far as I'm concerned you can both go out and
kill one another. But this is bigger than I am and it should be bigger
than you are. Your job isn't through. We thought it was, but it is not.
You, in fact, are just beginning."
"Quit talking in riddles and tell us what goes on."
"That machine restricted mental energy. It has been restricting mental
ability for this entire sector of the Galaxy for twenty thousand years.
It has been destroyed. But until the minds of Solarians are excited
by a shock wave of mental energy, they will not have the use of their
intellects fully and freely. You two are mental and psychological
opposites, and the shock excitation of your minds in mental contact
will excite the minds of all men." He turned to Toralen Ki and said:
"I'm puzzled. There was sufficient mental conflict between you and the
Loard-vogh to give me my release. Why hasn't it taken care of these two
wildmen?"
"You mean the re-radiation from your mind operating on theirs as their
radiation will free the minds of the rest?"
"Right. Why?"
"Lack of sympathetic tuning," explained Toralen Ki. "Your mind is
unlike mine, and unlike the Loard-vogh known as Kregar, the one we
fought and killed. Yet since you were at the focal point of the mental
strife, your mind, untuned as it was, was excited by sheer brute force,
so to speak. Selectivity could not keep out such sheer power. But
selectivity would and did prevent re-radiation of the mental energy.
You, therefore, have been freed, but no one else."
"Too bad," said Thompson critically. "It might have shoved some sense
into their thick skulls."
"Hey!" exploded Lane. "He's talking to the Little Guy."
"How come, Billy?"
"You mean talking to him? Well, I was given mental release by a bit of
a battle between Toralen Ki, here, and one of the Loard-vogh who was
trying to control my mind."
"Give us more. You sound like a synopsis."
Thompson explained.
"Well, but how can you speak with him?"
Billy turned and asked Toralen Ki.
"You're surprised? Just as Lane and Downing will become mental twins,
you, Billy Thompson, have gained twinship with my mind. Also that of
Kregar, the dead Loard-vogh."
Billy smiled. "Simple enough," he explained to the pair. "After your
minds are given release, you'll be able to understand him, too."
Thompson did not explain the twinship idea. Co-operation was one thing
to explain, but the concept of accepting one another's personality
would have to be given to them by someone who outranked them. Let them
wonder--or even better, let them remain in ignorance, on the basis that
what they did not know wouldn't harm Terra.
Toralen Ki shook his tiny head and looked puzzled, as well as
shamefaced. "I didn't expect this," he said. "The concept of mental
struggle between myself and another never occurred to me."
"It saved my neck," grinned Billy.
"And the collective necks of most of the Galaxy. And it is just as
well that we didn't energize them, too. The main release for the solar
sector must come when they go into the change. Had they gone into the
change out here, in Sscantoo, the mental radiation would not have been
strong enough to trigger the minds of your fellows near Sol."
Thompson nodded and turned to Lane and Downing. "You two are going to
have something to fight--but against, not over. That's been a private
fight of yours for years. If you'd like to continue it, you'd better
knock off the battle long enough to stop the Loard-vogh cold. Then you
can resume personal hostilities and be damned."
"What about this Sscantoo?" asked Lane.
"They have some stuff that'll come in handy in fighting the
Loard-vogh," nodded Thompson. "But we're not running off half-cocked.
We're heading back to Sol right now, to make plans."