"Yes, sir--I mean no, sir. No, I mean yes, but ..." Tuly paused, licking
her lips in that peculiarly human-female gesture of uncertainty.
"Well, what _do_ you mean? It either is or isn't. Or is that necessarily
so?"
"Not exactly, sir. That is, it started as peyondix. But it became something
else. Not even the most powerful of the old Masters--nobody--ever did or
ever could _possibly_ generate such a force as that. Or handle it so fast."
"Well, with seven of the best minds of Terra and a ..."
"Chip-chop the chit-chat!" Karns said, harshly. "What I want to know is
whether I was having a nightmare. Can there _possibly_ be a race such as
I thought I saw? So utterly savage--ruthless--merciless! So devoid of
every human trace and so hell-bent determined on the extermination of
every other race in the Galaxy? God damn it, it simply doesn't make
sense!"
* * * * *
Eyes went from eyes to eyes to eyes.
All had seen the same indescribably horrible, abysmally atrocious,
things. Qualities and quantities and urges and drives that no words in
any language could even begin to portray.
"It doesn't seem to, but there it is." Teddy Blake shook her head
hopelessly.
Big Bill Karns, hands still shaking, lit a cigarette before he spoke
again. "Well, I've never been a proponent of genocide. But it's my
considered opinion that the Stretts are one race the galaxy can get
along without."
"A hell of a lot better without," Poynter said, and all agreed.
"The point is, what can we do about it?" Kincaid asked. "The first
thing, I would say, is to see whether we can do this--whatever it
is--without Tuly's help. Shall we try it? Although I, for one, don't
feel like doing it right away."
"Not I, either." Beverly Bell held up her right hand, which was shaking
uncontrollably. "I feel as though I'd been bucking waves, wind and tide
for forty-eight straight hours without food, water or touch. Maybe in
about a week I'll be ready for another try at it. But today--not a
chance!"
"Okay. Scat, all of you," Hilton ordered. "Take the rest of the day off
and rest up. Put on your thought-screens and don't take them off for a
second from now on. Those Stretts are tough hombres."
Sandra was the last to leave. "And you, boss?" she asked pointedly.
"I've got some thinking to do."
"I'll stay and help you think?"
"Not yet." He shook his head, frowned and then grinned. "You see, chick,
I don't even know yet what it is I'm going to have to think about."
"A bit unclear, but I know what you mean--I think. Luck, chief."
* * * * *
In their subterranean sanctum turn on distant Strett, two of the deepest
thinkers of that horribly unhuman race were in coldly intent conference
via thought.
"My mind has been plundered, Ynos," First Lord Thinker Zoyar radiated,
harshly. "Despite the extremely high reactivity of my shield some
information--I do not know how much--was taken. The operator was one of
the humans of that ship."
"I, too, felt a plucking at my mind. But those humans could not
peyondire, First Lord."
"Be logical, fool! At that contact, in the matter of which you erred in
not following up continuously, they succeeded in concealing their real
abilities from you."
"That could be the truth. Our ancestors erred, then, in recording that
all those weak and timid humans had been slain. These offenders are
probably their descendants, returning to reclaim their former world."
"The probability must be evaluated and considered. Was it or was it not
through human aid that the Omans destroyed most of our task-force?"
"Highly probable, but impossible of evaluation with the data now
available."
"Obtain more data at once. That point must be and shall be fully
evaluated and fully considered. This entire situation is intolerable. It
must be abated."
"True, First Lord. But every operator and operation is now tightly
screened. Oh, if I could only go out there myself ..."
"Hold, fool! Your thought is completely disloyal and un-Strettly."
"True, oh First Lord Thinker Zoyar. I will forthwith remove my unworthy
self from this plane of existence."
"You will not! I hereby abolish that custom. Our numbers are too few by
far. Too many have failed to adapt. Also, as Second Thinker, your death
at this time would be slightly detrimental to certain matters now in
work. I will myself, however, slay the unfit. To that end repeat The
Words under my peyondiring."
"I am a Strett. I will devote my every iota of mental and of physical
strength to forwarding the Great Plan. I am, and will remain, a Strett."
"You do believe in The Words."
* * * * *
"Of course I believe in them! I _know_ that in a few more hundreds of
thousands of years we will be rid of material bodies and will become
invincible and invulnerable. Then comes the Conquest of the Galaxy ...
and then the Conquest of the Universe!"
"No more, then, on your life, of this weak and cowardly repining! Now,
what of your constructive thinking?"
"Programming must be such as to obviate time-lag. We must evaluate the
factors already mentioned and many others, such as the reactivation of
the spacecraft which was thought to have been destroyed so long ago.
After having considered all these evaluations, I will construct a Minor
Plan to destroy these Omans, whom we have permitted to exist on
sufferance, and with them that shipload of despicably interloping
humans."
"That is well." Zoyar's mind seethed with a malevolent ferocity starkly
impossible for any human mind to grasp. "And to that end?"
"To that end we must intensify still more our program of procuring data.
We must revise our mechs in the light of our every technological advance
during the many thousands of cycles since the last such revision was
made. Our every instrument of power, of offense and of defense, must be
brought up to the theoretical ultimate of capability."
"And as to the Great Brain?"
"I have been able to think of nothing, First Lord, to add to the
undertakings you have already set forth."
"It was not expected that you would. Now: is it your final thought that
these interlopers are in fact the descendants of those despised humans
of so long ago?"
"It is."
"It is also mine. I return, then, to my work upon the Brain. You will
take whatever measures are necessary. Use every artifice of intellect
and of ingenuity and our every resource. But abate this intolerable
nuisance, and soon."
"It shall be done, First Lord."
* * * * *
The Second Thinker issued orders. Frenzied, round-the-clock activity
ensued. Hundreds of mechs operated upon the brains of hundreds of
others, who in turn operated upon the operators.
Then, all those brains charged with the technological advances of many
thousands of years, the combined hundreds went unrestingly to work.
Thousands of work-mechs were built and put to work at the construction
of larger and more powerful space-craft.
As has been implied, those battle-skeletons of the Stretts were
controlled by their own built-in mechanical brains, which were
programmed for only the simplest of battle maneuvers. Anything at all
out of the ordinary had to be handled by remote control, by the
specialist-mechs at their two-miles-long control board.
This was now to be changed. Programming was to be made so complete that
almost any situation could be handled by the warship or the missile
itself--instantly.
The Stretts _knew_ that they were the most powerful, the most highly
advanced race in the universe. Their science was the highest in the
universe. Hence, with every operating unit brought up to the full
possibilities of that science, that would be more than enough. Period.
This work, while it required much time, was very much simpler than the
task which the First Thinker had laid out for himself on the giant
computer-plus which the Stretts called "The Great Brain." In stating his
project, First Lord Zoyar had said:
"Assignment: To construct a machine that will have the following
abilities: One, to contain and retain all knowledge and information fed
into it, however great the amount. Two, to feed itself additional
information by peyondiring all planets, wherever situate, bearing
intelligent life. Three, to call up instantly any and all items of
information pertaining to any problem we may give it. Four, to combine
and recombine any number of items required to form new concepts. Five,
to formulate theories, test them and draw conclusions helpful to us in
any matter in work."
It will have been noticed that these specifications vary in one
important respect from those of the Eniacs and Univacs of Earth. Since
we of Earth can not peyondire, we do not expect that ability from our
computers.
The Stretts could, and did.
* * * * *
When Sandra came back into the office at five o'clock she found Hilton
still sitting there, in almost exactly the same position.
"Come out of it, Jarve!" She snapped a finger. "That much of _that_ is
just simply too damned much."
"You're so right, child." He got up, stretched, and by main strength
shrugged off his foul mood. "But we're up against something that is
really a something, and I don't mean perchance."
"How well I know it." She put an arm around him, gave him a quick, hard
hug. "But after all, you don't have to solve it this evening, you know."
"No, thank God."
"So why don't you and Temple have supper with me? Or better yet, why
don't all eight of us have supper together in that bachelors' paradise
of yours and Bill's?"
"That'd be fun."
And it was.
Nor did it take a week for Beverly Bell to recover from the Ordeal of
Eight. On the following evening, she herself suggested that the team
should take another shot at that utterly fantastic _terra incognita_ of
the multiple mind, jolting though it had been.
"But are you sure you can take it again so soon?" Hilton asked.
"Sure. I'm like that famous gangster's moll, you know, who bruised easy
but healed quick. And I want to know about it as much as anyone else
does."
They could do it this time without any help from Tuly. The linkage
fairly snapped together and shrank instantaneously to a point. Hilton
thought of Terra and there it was; full size, yet occupying only one
infinitesimal section of a dimensionless point. The multi-mind visited
relatives of all eight, but could not make intelligible contact. If
asleep, it caused pleasant dreams; if awake, pleasant thoughts of the
loved one so far away in space; but that was all. It visited mediums, in
trance and otherwise--many of whom, not surprisingly now, were
genuine--with whom it held lucid conversations. Even in linkage,
however, the multi-mind knew that none of the mediums would be believed,
even if they all told, simultaneously, exactly the same story. The
multi-mind weakened suddenly and Hilton snapped it back to Ardry.
Beverly was almost in collapse. The other girls were white, shaken and
trembling. Hilton himself, strong and rugged as he was, felt as though
he had done two weeks of hard labor on a rock-pile. He glanced
questioningly at Larry.
"Point six three eight seconds, sir," the Omans said, holding up a
millisecond timer.
"How do you explain _that_?" Karns demanded.
"I'm afraid it means that without Oman backing we're out of luck."
* * * * *
Hilton had other ideas, but he did not voice any of them until the
following day, when he was rested and had Larry alone.
"So carbon-based brains can't take it. One second of that stuff would
have killed all eight of us. Why? The Masters had the same kind of
brains we have."
"I don't know, sir. It's something completely new. No Master, or group
of Masters, ever generated such a force as that. I can scarcely believe
such power possible, even though I have felt it twice. It may be that
over the generations your individual powers, never united or controlled,
have developed so strength that no human can handle them in fusion."
"And none of us ever knew anything about any of them. I've been doing a
lot of thinking. The Masters had qualities and abilities now unknown to
any of us. How come? You Omans--and the Stretts, too--think we're
descendants of the Masters. Maybe we are. You think they came originally
from Arth--Earth or Terra--to Ardu. That'd account for our legends of
Mu, Atlantis and so on. Since Ardu was within peyondix range of Strett,
the Stretts attacked it. They killed all the Masters, they thought, and
made the planet uninhabitable for any kind of life, even their own. But
one shipload of Masters escaped and came here to Ardry--far beyond
peyondix range. They stayed here for a long time. Then, for some reason
or other--which may be someplace in their records--they left here, fully
intending to come back. Do any of you Omans know why they left? Or where
they went?"
"No, sir. We can read only the simplest of the Masters' records. They
arranged our brains that way, sir."
"I know. They're the type. However, I suspect now that your thinking is
reversed. Let's turn it around. Say the Masters didn't come from Terra,
but from some other planet. Say that they left here because they were
dying out. They were, weren't they?"
"Yes, sir. Their numbers became fewer and fewer each century."
"I was sure of it. They were committing race suicide by letting you
Omans do everything they themselves should have been doing. Finally they
saw the truth. In a desperate effort to save their race they pulled out,
leaving you here. Probably they intended to come back when they had bred
enough guts back into themselves to set you Omans down where you
belong...."
"But _they_ were always the Masters, sir!"
"They were not! They were hopelessly enslaved. Think it over. Anyway,
say they went _to_ Terra from here. That still accounts for the legends
and so on. However, they were too far gone to make a recovery, and yet
they had enough fixity of purpose _not_ to manufacture any of you Omans
there. So their descendants went a long way down the scale before they
began to work back up. Does that make sense to you?"
* * * * *
"It explains many things, sir. It can very well be the truth."
"Okay. However it was, we're here, and facing a condition that isn't
funny. While we were teamed up I learned a lot, but not nearly enough.
Am I right in thinking that I now don't need the other seven at
all--that my cells are fully charged and I can go it alone?"
"Probably, sir, but ..."
"I'm coming to that. Every time I do it--up to maximum performance, of
course--it comes easier and faster and hits harder. So next time, or
maybe the fourth or fifth time, it'll kill me. And the other seven, too,
if they're along."
"I'm not sure, sir, but I think so."
"Nice. Very, _very_ nice." Hilton got up, shoved both hands into his
pockets, and prowled about the room. "But can't the damned stuff be
controlled? Choked--throttled down--damped--muzzled, some way or other?"
"We do not know of any way, sir. The Masters were always working toward
more power, not less."
"That makes sense. The more power the better, as long as you can handle
it. But I can't handle this. And neither can the team. So how about
organizing another team, one that hasn't got quite so much whammo?
Enough punch to do the job, but not enough to backfire that way?"
"It is highly improbable that such a team is possible, sir." If an Oman
could be acutely embarrassed, Larry was. "That is, sir ... I should tell
you, sir ..."
"You certainly should. You've been stalling all along, and now you're
stalled. Spill it."
"Yes, sir. The Tuly begged me not to mention it, but I must. When it
organized your team it had no idea of what it was really going to
do...."
"Let's talk the same language, shall we? Say 'he' and 'she.' Not 'it.'"
"She thought she was setting up the peyondix, the same as all of us
Omans have. But after she formed in your mind the peyondix matrix, your
mind went on of itself to form a something else; a thing we can not
understand. That was why she was so extremely ... I think 'frightened'
might be your term."
"I knew something was biting her. Why?"
"Because it very nearly killed you. You perhaps have not considered the
effect upon us all if any Oman, however unintentionally, should kill a
Master?"
"No, I hadn't ... I see. So she won't play with fire any more, and none
of the rest of you can?"
"Yes, sir. Nothing could force her to. If she could be so coerced we
would destroy her brain before she could act. That brain, as you know,
is imperfect, or she could not have done what she did. It should have
been destroyed long since."
"Don't _ever_ act on that assumption, Larry." Hilton thought for
minutes. "Simple peyondix, such as yours, is not enough to read the
Masters' records. If I'd had three brain cells working I'd've tried them
then. I wonder if I _could_ read them?"
"You have all the old Masters' powers and more. But you must not
assemble them again, sir. It would mean death."
"But I've got to _know_.... I've _got_ to know! Anyway, a thousandth of
a second would be enough. I don't think that'd hurt me very much."
* * * * *
He concentrated--read a few feet of top-secret braided wire--and came
back to consciousness in the sickbay of the _Perseus_, with two doctors
working on him; Hastings, the top Navy medico, and Flandres, the
surgeon.
"What the hell happened to you?" Flandres demanded. "Were you trying to
kill yourself?"
"And if so, how?" Hastings wanted to know.
"No, I was trying not to," Hilton said, weakly, "and I guess I didn't
much more than succeed."
"That was just about the closest shave I ever saw a man come through.
Whatever it was, don't do it again."
"I won't," he promised, feelingly.
When they let him out of the hospital, four days later, he called in
Larry and Tuly.
"The next time would be the last time. So there won't be any," he told
them. "But just how sure are you that some other of our boys or girls
may not have just enough of whatever it takes to do the job? Enough
oompa, but not too much?"
"Since we, too, are on strange ground the probability is vanishingly
small. We have been making inquiries, however, and scanning. You were
selected from all the minds of Terra as the one having the widest
vision, the greatest scope, the most comprehensive grasp. The ablest at
synthesis and correlation and so on."
"That's printing it in big letters, but that was more or less what they
were after."
"Hence the probability approaches unity that any more such ignorant
meddling as this obnoxious Tuly did well result almost certainly in
failure and death. Therefore we can not and will not meddle again."
* * * * *
"You've got a point there.... So what I am is some kind of a freak.
Maybe a kind of super-Master and maybe something altogether different.
Maybe duplicable in a less lethal fashion, and maybe not. Veree
helpful--I don't think. But I don't want to kill anybody, either ...
especially if it wouldn't do any good. But we've got to do _something_!"
Hilton scowled in thought for minutes. "But an Oman brain could take it.
As you told us, Tuly, 'The brain of the Larry is very, very tough.'"
"In a way, sir. Except that the Masters were very careful to make it
physically impossible for any Oman to go very far along that line. It
was only their oversight of my one imperfect brain that enabled me,
alone of us all, to do that wrong."
"Stop thinking it was wrong, Tuly. I'm mighty glad you did. But I wasn't
thinking of any regular Oman brain...." Hilton's voice petered out.
"I see, sir. Yes, we can, by using your brain as Guide, reproduce it in
an Oman body. You would then have the powers and most of the qualities
of both ..."
"No, you don't see, because I've got my screen on. Which I will now take
off--" he suited action to word--"since the whole planet's screened and
I have nothing to hide from you. Teddy Blake and I both thought of that,
but we'll consider it only as the ultimately last resort. We don't want
to live a million years. And we want our race to keep on developing. But
you folks can replace carbon-based molecules with silicon-based ones
just as easily as, and a hell of a lot faster than, mineral water
petrifies wood. What can you do along the line of rebuilding me that
way? And if you can do any such conversion, what would happen? Would I
live at all? And if so, how long? How would I live? What would I live
on? All that kind of stuff."
"Shortly before they left, two of the Masters did some work on that very
thing. Tuly and I converted them, sir."
"Fine--or is it? How did it work out?"
"Perfectly, sir ... except that they destroyed themselves. It was
thought that they wearied of existence."
"I don't wonder. Well, if it comes to that, I can do the same. You _can_
convert me, then."
"Yes, sir. But before we do it we must do enough preliminary work to be
sure that you will not be harmed in any way. Also, there will be many
more changes involved than simple substitution."
"Of course. I realize that. Just see what you can do, please, and let me
know."
"We will, sir, and thank you very much."