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Title: The white rain came

Author: Jr. Merwin Sam

Illustrator: Mel Hunter

Release date: February 27, 2026 [eBook #78055]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: King-Size Publications, Inc, 1955

Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE RAIN CAME ***




                          The White Rain Came

         by Jacques Jean Ferrat [Pseudonym of Sam Merwin, Jr.]


 _Do you remember Jacques Jean Ferrat’s_ NIGHTMARE TOWER _? We’re sure
 you do if we had the privilege of numbering you among our earliest
 readers, for the story appeared in the very first issue of_ FANTASTIC
 UNIVERSE, _and its swift, unusual plot and brilliant characterization
 were so astonishingly vital as to make it quite unforgettable. Since
 then demands for a sequel have been so insistent that when Mr. Ferrat
 walked into our office with this exciting lead novelette in his
 briefcase our joy was unconfined._

 =There was need on Mars for folly half sublime and a man’s delight in
 recklessness. But a woman’s steadfast gifts were needed more.=




Had Lynne Fenlay been less proud, she would have wept, openly and
unashamedly. Standing before the altar, directly in back of her twin,
Revere Fenlay, and his bride, Lao Mei-O’Connell, she felt acutely
homesick for Earth. Intellectually, of course, she understood and
accepted the need for multiple marriages on Mars. But she could not
evade a sense of emotional outrage at the assembly-line method of
marriage which circumstances had made mandatory on the alien planet
that was now her home.

The marrying officer, who trebled in brass as a circuit judge and
an electronics expert on the thinly settled Red Planet, wore only a
shabby-looking, round-cornered apron. Although it bore the twin-worlds
insignia, emblem of his high office, it was tucked with a careless lack
of dignity into the top of his wellworn clout, and everyone could see
that one of the tie-strings was missing.

A bald-headed little man with an incipient paunch and knobby knees,
he intoned the brief ceremony from rote, never glancing either at the
book in his right hand, or at the faces of the four couples standing
directly in front of him.

“...and to be mutually faithful during the period of enforced
separation, to work honorably for one another and for the planet upon
their reunion, to provide a home for the sons and daughters of their
union. For these purposes, by the virtue of the power embodied in
my....”

He mumbled on, running the words together in his haste to conclude
the ceremony which would unite the four couples from far Barkutburg,
and enable him to get on with the marriages from New Walla Walla,
Cathayville, Zuleika and the other major settlements of Mars. A few
kilometers away, a spaceship was waiting to take the brides of the Red
Planet home to Earth to bear their children--a function which was not
possible of fulfillment in the light gravity of Mars.

All of the brides were pregnant. In tacit accordance with the dictates
of expediency in frontier settlements all through man’s history on
Earth and, more lately, on Mars, a marriage was not a marriage until
offspring were on the way. When a couple decided to mate, it was only
necessary for them to sign a register and share quarters as provisional
husband and wife. The arrangement would remain in force as long as it
gave satisfaction to both parties. If it failed divorce became merely a
matter of signing another registry.

But once a child had been conceived, casualness vanished, for the
bringing of Martian children back to Mars was a major factor in the
effort to populate the planet. Such children were its hope, its future,
against the time when man should have conquered his new environment,
and child-bearing no longer necessitated a hasty return to Earth.

For the rest, Mars was populated by expert technicians, officials and
the halves of genetically induced identical twins--of which Lynne and
Revere Fenlay were unusually gifted examples. The purpose of this plan
was to give the new planet Earth’s hereditary best without stripping
the home planet of its most promising young folk. One twin, conditioned
for Earth, stayed at home--the other, carefully trained from infancy to
endure and triumph over the hardships of life on the Red Planet, went
to Mars.

Lynne was one of the few Earth-trained twins ever sent to Mars to
join her brother. Her telepathic genius, of a range and sensitivity
almost unknown on the home planet, with its dense atmosphere and other
inhibiting factors, had been urgently needed in a desperate crisis
when the telepathic lateral communications of Mars had been threatened
with destruction by strange electronically-revivified survivals of the
original Martians. She had been needed, and once the crisis had been
conquered, she had stayed on to aid in new telepathic research. She had
stayed on, and now--she was rebellious and homesick.

There was a gaunt, stripped-down, machine-shop look to the great hall.
In New Samarkand, the planetary capital where the ceremonies were
being conducted, the established ritual never varied. The marrying
officer stood on a low platform, and at his back rose a portable altar
surmounted by the symbol of universal faith. This consisted of a
cross for Christianity, in a circle representing the “wheel of life”
religions, and outside its circumference smaller crosses with their
ends bent at right angles to represent the symbol of still older faiths.

It had been battered by constant usage, and one of the tips was rudely
broken off. Recalling the symbolic beauty of the ritual that still
enhanced marriage ceremonies on Earth, and contrasting it with the
crude matter-of-factness of Martian multiple weddings Lynne wished, and
not for the first time, that she had not permitted Rolf Marcein to talk
her into coming to Mars.

She cast a quick sidelong glance at Rolf. He stood almost directly
behind the second bride, a lean, sun-bronzed figure towering over
the other guests, a sensually suggestive smile on his lips which was
anything but reassuring. He winked as he returned her glance. Even less
reassuring was her certain knowledge that Rolf was drunk. The monthly,
multiple marriages on Mars accompanied as they were by the prospects of
incipient parentage and immediate long separation, had degenerated into
one big farewell carnival.

This one, as far as Lynne was concerned, had begun three Martian days
earlier when the settlers of the Barkutburg station--the residence of
Lao, Revere and, until recently, of Lynne--had thrown a thirty-six hour
wingding for the departing bride. Lynne had attended, of course, out of
devotion to her twin and his wife. But since her neuro-emotional makeup
was too fine-tuned to enable her to enjoy alcohol in quantity, she had
been something of a spectre at the feast.

The journey to New Samarkand had been a brief interlude between binges,
followed by another revel on the eve of the official wedding. This
time, Rolf had been on hand and, under his prompting, Lynne had taken a
little too much and was suffering the inevitable after-effects. Rolf,
apparently, was just getting up a full head of steam. She wondered if
the travesty of a ceremony was ever going to end.

“... and so I now pronounce you men and wives,” the marrying officer
finally finished. Ushers hastily escorted the couples and their
attendants to a vestry, where the record books were signed, while
another group of brides, grooms and attendants, came forward to be
joined in wedlock.

_Ceremony_, Lynne thought, _by courtesy only_. Travesty would have been
a far more accurate term. She glanced at Rolf again as he signed his
name with a flourish in the book, wondering what _her_ wedding would
be like--if she ever married. At the moment, the idea was thoroughly
repugnant to her.

“Come on, _vinral_,” said Rolf, using the Martian term of endearment
as he gathered her in with his huge left hand. “Sign here--and then
over here, in this book. _Crehut_, I thought old Bretinslov would never
finish that blah-blah of his.”

Signing dutifully, Lynne said, “That blah-blah, as you call it,
legalizes the serious vows of a marriage ceremony.” It seemed a little
incredible to her that she should find herself defending a ritual which
she had decried mentally only moments before. But Rolf’s attitude
somehow infuriated her.

Rolf, whose eyes seemed pinker and foggier than usual, ran his tongue
between his teeth and said, “Come on, _vinral_, my mouth is drier than
desert dust. Let’s get over to the reception room and kiss the brides
and get a drink. They’re serving some of the new champagne-lichenwasser
the bio lab has synthesized, to its everlasting credit and glory.”

Lynne, unable to adjust herself to the recklessly riotous spirit of
Mars on a binge, said, “Rolf, dear, don’t you think you’ve had enough?
After all, there’s a limit to--”

“Enough?” Rolf interrupted her, with an incredulous grimace. “Lynne,
this party’s just getting started. After we see off the brides, we’re
going to settle down to some real drinking.” So saying, he pinched her,
hard, where men have pinched women since time immemorial.

To her horror, she found herself on the verge of tears. She was glad
she could cover her weakness by struggling with an outward display of
assurance into the aluminum-fabric coverall that was uniform protection
against the chill Martian outdoors, and the oxy-respirator worn for
occasional revivifying whiffs against the thinness of the atmosphere.

She sat on somebody’s lap, securely wedged with the others into a
land-runner for the half-kilometer trip to the reception hall. Around
her, Rolf and the rest, joined in the rousing, ribald first chorus of
_The Farmer’s Martian Daughter_, making her head ring with a volume of
sound which was almost unbearable inside such a confined space. At that
moment, she hated them all.

Nor was her dislike merely a matter of personal pique. She had felt the
malaise for some time, felt it so gradually, so far below the level of
her conscious mind, that she had been unaware of its creeping progress.
Like the _ping_ of an antique radar, a subconscious thought from the
mind of her twin, Revere Fenlay, registered. He was thinking of his
bride, Lao Mei-O’Connell, and his thought ran, _I’m glad she’s going to
be away from Mars for the next ten months. There’s bound to be trouble
and I don’t want her in danger--especially while she’s carrying our
child._

Lynne stifled an impulse to probe Revere’s mind with a telepathic
inquiry as to the nature of the danger. She decided there would be
time for that after Lao Fenlay and the other brides of the season were
safely on their way to the home planet. But with awareness of Revere’s
awareness, Lynne realized that some of her unhappiness was rooted not
in homesickness but in unaccepted telepathic fears of her own--fears
whose nature she could not pin down.

She probed Rolf’s mind carelessly and received a wholeheartedly
carnal picture of Rolf and herself that caused her to drop that line
of inquiry instantly. She was not in the mood for--what did he call
it?--such _ferkab_ canoodling. At the moment she hated the man--and not
the least of her hatred’s causes lay in the very inevitability of her
ultimate surrender to him. The _marlet_.

_Watch your language, you_ ZWIRCHY VINRAL, came his answering thought.
Lynne sealed her mind as tightly as her lips the rest of the way to the
reception hall.

Here, beneath a girdered ceiling adorned with the stunted evergreens
grown by Earthmen on Mars, a table had been set up for the marriage
parties of each city, according to tradition. Accustomed to the
fabricated foods of Earth, Lynne was astonished at the lavish display
of barbecued boar, Marsapples and other delicacies, including plump
forty-pound capon-turkeys, the pride of the husbandry labs.

She told herself she was not hungry. But she ate notwithstanding--while
Rolf and the other men went right on drinking. Thanks to the small,
closely interrelated population of the Red Planet, there was much
intermingling of the groups, and Lynne, to her surprise, found herself
facing a grinning, strapping, dark-skinned girl who said, “Welcome,
Lynne Fenlay. Try some of the food at our table.”

It was the young animal husbandry girl--Joanna Wheatley--who had shared
a cabin with her on the spaceship during the journey from Earth the
year before. Joanna seemed to have entered into the festivities with
all the vitality of her youth and her uninhibited mixture of Caucasian,
Oriental and Hamitic blood strains. But when Lynne asked her how her
work was going, Joanna’s face fell.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “We must irrigate to support any sort
of animal life, and irrigation is draining the moisture from the
atmosphere table faster than we can create it. But you must know the
problem, Lynne. It’s the _farbish_ curse of all Mars.”

“I know,” said Lynne, trying to encourage the girl. “But one of these
days we’ll have it licked and, if I know farmers, you’ll all be
complaining because too much rain is spoiling the crops.”

Joanna failed to smile. She said, “I’d give my right arm for that
day to come tomorrow. If we hadn’t been able to install a transmuter
to feed a small pond recently, our cattle would be dead. And our
farm--Woomera Station--has the most fertile soil on Mars. Right next
door, it’s so radioactive we’ve had to fence it off.”

“Radioactive?” said Lynne, wondering why she hadn’t heard of such a
deposit.

“Maybe that’s not the exact word,” said Joanna. “_Crehut_, I’m no
geologist--I’m in husbandry. But it has remarkable health-giving
qualities--and some deadly ones as well. Still, it’s not solving the
moisture problem for us.”

“You really feel it’s serious?” asked Lynne, sensing the deep concern
in the girl’s mind, the fright.

“Unless some new factor can be found that will increase moisture, it
will defeat us,” said Joanna solemnly. Then, actually shaking herself
out of her despondency, the dark girl went on, “But this is not the
time for care. My best friend has just married and will soon be off for
Earth to have her baby. You come and see our farm as soon as you can,
will you, Lynne? I think you’d be interested.”

“I know I shall be,” Lynne said, pressing the girl’s hand. “As soon as
I can.”

She joined Joanna in a toast to her friend and groom, then brought the
girl to the Barkutburg table to meet Revere, Lao Mei-O’Connell and Rolf.

Rolf leered at Joanna and said, “I’ll be out to see you the first time
Lynne’s not looking.”

And Joanna threw back her head and laughed, revealing twin rows of
flashing white teeth.

Lynne knew the amorously mocking banter was harmless enough in
itself. Rolf worked tirelessly, conscientiously for months on end,
and surely he had a right to make love lightly with his eyes. But
her Earth indoctrination would not permit her to approve of such
uninhibited revelry as was the custom on Mars when the bars were let
down. She thought of Rolf’s thousand women subordinates in his post as
Communications Coordinator, and wondered how many of them....

_Watch yourself_, VINRAL, came his mocking thought.

Lynne felt herself blush. She turned away and took a beaker of
lichenwasser and downed it quickly. But it didn’t intoxicate her--it
merely increased her physical discomfort and spiritual irritation.
She said farewell to Revere’s bride, elected leader of the Barkutburg
center, and then, when the others took off, roistering, for the
spaceport, she stayed behind in the cloakroom. Though it was what she
wanted, her wretchedness was not lessened by the fact that apparently
no one missed her. Especially Rolf....

She decided to return to Nampura Depot alone, to reassure her ego by
being of some practical use to somebody. It was, she thought miserably,
beginning to look as if the only real happiness and fulfillment she was
ever to achieve lay in her work alone. The growth of her telepathic
talent had been responsible for the breakup not only of her engagement
to a young man on Earth, but for the loss of her job as coordinating
member of one of the highly specialized human brain-teams that,
operating in conjunction with electronic computers, solved the more
difficult and intricate material and mechanical problems of the mother
planet.

It had been her job, as coordinator, to obtain problem solutions that
humanized and made realistic the sometimes over-abstruse answers that
emanated from the machines, in response to the data fed into them by
her human teammates. As her telepathic talent improved, her answers had
become too perfect, which meant she had fallen into rapport with the
computer rather than the human elements of the team--a psychological
maladroitness which had led to her dismissal. It was a desperate need
for telepaths on Mars that had brought her to the Red Planet.

Climbing aboard one of the bi-hourly transports for Nampura Depot,
Lynne faced the fact that her entire life, up to her transfer to
Mars, had been planned and lived with the single aim of enabling her
to adjust to the manners and mores of a densely populated, highly
civilized, almost effete Earth. On Mars, with its vast open spaces and
freewheeling pioneer anarchy and virility, she was a misfit.

As the transport jetted upward through the paper-thin atmosphere,
soaring above the miracle medley of towering, lacy, ancient Martian
ruins and rough, utilitarian Earthman-built structures alongside the
old canal, Lynne wondered unhappily what she was going to do about Rolf.

She adored his every pore, his every muscle, but whether she could
long endure the strain of living with him in Martian wedlock was
something else again. There was a wild, undisciplined streak in Rolf
that violated her ultra-civilized Earth-bred restraint. It could be
exciting--marriage to Rolf--but it would be distasteful, too.

Lynne opened her mind to exchange thoughts with him when another, more
powerful, more urgent message reached her from the teleteam on duty at
Nampura Depot. Its combination of two telepathic minds in unison was
overpowering. It said, _we’re in touch, we’ve finally found it, we’re
about to make contact--_

Then came a brain-wrenching flash, and--nothing at all.




                                   II


Something had happened at Nampura Depot and the resultant confusion was
frightening. Lynne tried vainly to sort out the welter of disorganized
and often completely unintelligible thoughts that radiated from the
recently set-up telepathic laboratory of Mars. The team on duty--plump,
delicate Rana Spinelli and lanky, awkward Juan Olsen--had been stricken
from some mysterious source. Juan was dead, Rana mentally erased by
whatever had happened. That much a suddenly depersonalized Lynne Fenlay
clearly understood.

But the rest was telepathic bedlam. “..._simply working on Problem
Outpost ... and I had a date after dinner with Juan ... as if he’d
been mashed flat ... can’t understand how it happened ... Rana’s not
breathing ... yes, but she’s in coma--almost catatonic ... after
lunch, she told me she and Juan were going to try ... and Rolf Marcein
would be at the weddings ... Fenlay, too, and his sister ... we’ve got
to_....”

The Nampura Depot transport hit an atmospheric dead spot and the
messages faded out. In her anxiety to join her fellow-telepaths and
help them in whatever emergency had arisen, Lynne’s malaise, her
revulsion toward Rolf in his cups, vanished. She was needed--and that
was all that mattered at the moment.

The transport moved swiftly toward the reddish sun, enlarged almost
to Earth-size as it sank toward the western horizon. Below, the
red-and-green desolation that was most of Mars seemed to stretch
endlessly toward the horizon. A vast ruined city, running parallel for
twenty-seven miles with the left bank of one of the great dry canals,
lifted its filigree spires above the purple dusk to trace patterns of
breathtaking beauty in the sunset. This was Mars, a vast mausoleum
stirring faintly with new raw life breathed into it by the colonists
from Earth.

Moving uneasily in her seat as she smoked a cigarette of excellent
canalside leaf, Lynne felt her homesickness vanish. This was the real
world, the real job--restoring to life a long-dead world. Compared
to it the constricted existence of overcrowded, static Earth seemed
artificial, even a trifle inhuman.

She was glad Rolf had let himself go at the weddings. At least he had
had more to drink and had concealed it better than anyone else at the
ceremony. If you lived as hard as Rolf and the other Martians lived--as
they had to live to make headway against the cruel remorseless
environment--you had a right to get drunk on occasion, she told herself
vehemently. Colafizzes were for children, or the puling neurotics
of Earth. Lynne slipped a coin into the dispenser-slot by her seat,
and drank the cup of lichenwasser she received in return. This time,
she felt no discomfort--the Martian distillation sang its happy song
through her veins.

_Mars_, she thought, silently toasting the Red Planet, _you may have
destroyed your own species, but you won’t destroy us!_

Sobering a little, Lynne considered the fact that Mars had not totally
destroyed all native forms of existence. Outside of the lichens
and other flora, there were still the ugly czanworms that burrowed
ceaselessly beneath the planet’s arid surface and were the despair of
cable layers.

And there had been the disembodied descendants of the aboriginal
subject species which, revivified by the Earthmen’s use of the
electricity upon which they thrived, had for decades made open-circuit
electronic communication impossible, and had then sought possession of
the telepaths with which the colonists had supplanted mechanical means
of talking over long distances around the Red Planet’s surface.

Might there not be still other life-forms, unseeable, unapproachable
by Earthmen, surviving on Mars? That was one of the problems Nampura
Depot T-teams were trying to solve. Had Spinelli-Olsen found something
to their sorrow? Had they left records? Probably not. Lynne cursed the
competitive instinct that flourished on Mars and, at times, made the
cooperative sharing of knowledge so difficult.

Yes, there were problems. She recalled, somberly, what Joanna had told
her about the necessity of improving irrigation methods if domestic
animal life was to be maintained and developed. There were the black,
short-tusked boars, of course--fiftieth-generation descendants of pigs
imported by Earthmen, who had, as always, adapted themselves to their
environment and run wild.

But you couldn’t live on pork alone. Lynne looked into the sunset
and, by its soft light, at the endless aridity around her. Until the
atmosphere was re-thickened--it would take many decades and a miracle
of human accomplishment through slow mechanical processes--there could
be no rain on Mars. And until there was rain there could be no regular
plant-growth cycle with its symbiotic animal relationships.

If the miniscule amount of animal husbandry on Mars used up the
atmosphere too rapidly, the entire Earth settlement project, which
already numbered almost a million human beings, would be imperilled.
You couldn’t feed a million men and women on what could be brought from
the home planet in space cargo vessels. But how could you get rain
when there was no moisture in the atmosphere, almost no atmosphere to
moisten?

It was, Lynne decided, the most frighteningly disheartening of vicious
cycles.

The ship came out of the atmospheric dead spot and the fear and
confusion of Nampura Depot encroached alarmingly on Lynne’s thoughts
again. So difficult was it to follow the babel of minds that she gave
up and waited impatiently while the transport described its slow
downward parabola to come to rest, in the violet dusk, on the flare-lit
airfield of the Depot. She thanked the captain for his courtesy and
hopped a supply truck to the Depot proper.

As the newest of official structures built by Earthmen on Mars,
the Depot represented the most advanced attempts to develop an
architectural blend between terrestrial utilitarianism and the eclectic
delicacy of ancient Martian building wizardry. In daylight, it looked
to Lynne like a Quonset hut with flying buttresses. She was grateful
for the darkness, as the supply truck rolled up to its service gate.

Tony Willis, the non-telepathic, stout, bespectacled communications
wizard who served as Depot Seneschal, greeted Lynne with a hug and
a “_Crehut_, I’m glad you’re here, angel. Something pretty ugly has
happened. Where’s Rolf?”

“Something happened to him, too--he got drunk at the weddings,” said
Lynne, stepping out of her coverall. “But I’d like to know just how
serious the situation here is, Tony. I got some pretty mixed-up flashes
on the transport. Am I right in believing that poor Juan is dead--and
Rana still unconscious.”

“Total blackout,” said Willis grimly, escorting her to the cubicle that
served as his office, a windowless, brightly-lighted room decorated
with the wiry, brown-skinned maidens that passed as pinup girls on
Mars. Seated behind a desk across from her, he said, “You know I’m a
mess on this TP stuff. But Juan and Rana were on to something. They’ve
been thick as the proverbial thieves, waiting for you and Rolf to get
away so they could do some experimenting on their own. Then, about
an hour ago--” He looked at her, and his lips tightened--“Juan was
flattened as if a ’dozer had passed over him and Rana was blasted
against the wall of the Rec Room and hasn’t come out of it since.”

“An explosion?” Lynne asked swiftly, anxiously.

Tony Willis shook his sandy head. “Not the way you think,” he told her.
“Oh, there was an explosion, all right. It blew the Rec Room all to
hell and gone. _But it had no mechanical origin!_”

Somehow, in his grimness, tubby Tony looked gaunt. Lynne probed his
mind swiftly, and got a vivid picture of the shattered room, of Rana
lying crumpled at the foot of a wall, and--she shuddered and clenched
her fists tightly as the vision became almost unendurable. She asked,
“Any records, Tony?”

He shrugged his shoulders in despair, and thrust a folder toward her.
It contained a single sheet of paper on which Rana had drawn a crude
self-portrait, depicting her face in caricature, with her tongue out
and her eyes crossed. Beneath it she had scrawled, _This is what you
get for snooping._

Silently cursing the Hindu-Italian girl’s immaturity, Lynne sat
frowning, elbows on Tony’s desk, trying to recall what she could of
Problem Outpost and the role of the Spinelli-Olsen team in the project.
The concept of telepathy actually bringing physical destruction was so
shocking that she found it kept impinging on her thoughts, and she was
forced to make three false starts before she began to make any sort of
orderly progress on the problem.

Nampura Depot was primarily a research unit. When the abolishment of
the electrophagic aborigines released Martian telepaths from their
jobs as planetary communicators, Rolf and other top-level Martian
authorities had decided to set up the Depot to enable TP workers to
develop their gifts, individually and collectively, in an effort to
discover new and advanced uses for their talents.

Thanks to her work as a brain-team coordinator on Earth, Lynne had
become almost indispensable to the project. For part of her education
had entailed a thorough grounding in the theory of relays and relay
hookup alignments which was the basis of all computer-work on the
mother planet. Every computer was a relay of calculators, aligned
according to their nature in relation to the problem which was to
be solved. It was the same with the human teams, or relays, which
supplemented and complemented the work of the computers on Earth.

On Mars, where heavy and complex computer machinery was as rare as it
was unneeded, Lynne’s training and knowledge had proved invaluable.
As Rolf had told her, shortly after the project was commenced, “Sure,
we’re all bright enough here. We _farbly_ well have to be. But you have
the teamwork integration picture imbedded in that _zwirchy_ little head
of yours. You can put two and two together and get ninety.”

The trouble was, she had been putting two and two together by testing
first this pair, then that, in every conceivable combination of
telepathic teamwork, and she had been getting precisely nowhere.

For a while, it had seemed exciting to be able, working in proper
tandem, to receive and probe minds on Earth, some forty million miles
away. But when Lynne discovered that many of her teams were amusing
themselves by tapping the pleasure-houses for their own ribald
entertainment, she had asked Rolf to put a stop to that branch of the
project--although she suspected the ban was far from totally effective.

She had, gradually, come to type telepaths much as blood donors had
once been typed on the mother planet. There were three basic types of
telepaths: A--those who could _receive_ mental messages as delivered
from all directions and distances, B--those who could not only
_receive_ but grade the thoughts that came to them directionally and
tune in or out selected thought waves as they chose, and, C--those who
were capable of _projecting_ their own thoughts and impulses into the
minds of others and possessed as well the capabilities of groups A and
B.

A types were almost a norm on Mars, Lynne had learned. In the
sympathetic environment of the Red Planet, latent telepathy was at
least faintly active in eight out of ten Earthfolk, The B’s were less
common--only about three in a thousand Martians could _tune_ the
messages their minds received. And only one in a hundred thousand was a
C type.

All in all, there were two hundred and seventeen telepaths at the
Depot--two hundred and sixteen now that Juan Olsen was dead--and the
variations among them was what complicated the problem. Curiously
enough, the A’s could receive from the greatest distances, even
though they couldn’t tune the messages unaided. But a B, linked with
an A, could tune in from a further distance than a B working alone.
Similarly, a C lined up with an A, could broadcast almost infinitely.
On record was one contact with a spaceship far out beyond Pluto’s orbit.

But human contacts were not the main purpose of the Depot. What the
investigators were seeking was contact with alien life-forms, either
on, or beyond Mars. If telepaths had been able to make contact with
the aborigines that had so nearly destroyed them, it seemed reasonable
to suppose that they should be able to make contact with other alien
intellects.

Apparently, judging by what had happened, they had done so. But what
monstrous life-form had they contacted--and where was it located?

For more than a Martian month, Lynne had been aware of a
force--strangely stimulating--lurking just beyond range of her probing.
She had, on two occasions, felt a sudden surge of power while working
with Revere or one of the others, a power that flared up and faded
quickly, leaving irritation in its wake.

There had been a restlessness in the Depot atmosphere, a restlessness
that had shown itself in such lapses as poor Rana’s childish drawing in
the folio. Other C types had reverted now and then to basic nature--to
ill-temper, to ridiculous practical jokes, to fits of melancholy, even
to overindulgence in lichenwasser.

“Angel, how about a drink? You’ve been sitting in a brown study for
two hours now--and the color scheme of this room is baby-blue.” It was
Tony, bless him, bringing her out of it.

Involuntarily Lynne began to shake her head in refusal, telling
herself that Tony had chosen a very poor time to urge indulgence in
lichenwasser. Then it occurred to her that her recent primness might
have had something to do with the mysterious restlessness that seemed
to be affecting all the members of the Depot.

She said, “All right, Tony,” and drained the plastic tumbler. With the
warmth of the drink she felt a soaring triumph. She was sure now that
she had solved the problem of what was happening to the personalities
of Nampura Depot. They _were_ in contact with some alien intellect, or
mind, or personal force that reduced their complex human impulses to a
few basic impulses and to basic impulse fulfillment.

She said, “Tony, have you noticed anything peculiar going on around the
Depot the last few weeks?”

He thought it over, then nodded. “Two or three times I considered
inveigling you into the supply room and making violent love to you,
Lynne. I’ve had the impulse ever since I first met you at the New
Samarkand Spaceport. But, _Crehut_, it was never like this.”

“Give me another,” said Lynne, holding out her tumbler. “I forgive
you for your candor. We should have kept behavior charts on everybody
here, instead of just on the experiments. You’d better get psycho
on it tomorrow, Tony. I’ve a feeling we’re in contact with that
alien mind-force we’ve been looking for, and that it’s making like a
psychological poltergeist.”

“It’s just barely possible.” Tony looked thoughtful behind his
spectacles. Then he said, “But if you’re right, and if Juan and Rana
actually found it, _it can kill_.”

Lynne looked somberly at the lichenwasser in her plastic tumbler. Then
she said, “Yes, it can kill,” and drained it.




                                  III


Lynne and Tony Willis were still discussing the problem when a somewhat
haggard Rolf Marcein came in. Characteristically, he gave them no more
than a perfunctory personal greeting. “I hopped the first transport
after I got the flash, Tony. Lynne, what have you managed to find out
about this ghastly mess?”

“Nothing for the record yet,” Lynne told him, admiring and detesting
simultaneously Rolf’s ability to dismiss all other relationships when a
work problem arose. “But I’ve got a pattern of sorts.”

“All right. Let’s hear it.”

She went on to tell him, as concisely as she could, what she had
figured out since her arrival. Rolf listened attentively, without
comment, until she had finished. Then he frowned.

“Tony, tell operations to set up the necro-recorder with the new
psycho-muffler attached,” he said quietly. “We’re going to have to
probe Rana’s mind while she’s still in shock. Otherwise, some of these
Navajos will be trying their own _farbish_ experiments--and we may have
a lot more corpses to worry about, or something even worse.”

“Sure you feel up to it, chief?” Tony asked as he flipped a switch on
his desk, preparatory to giving the orders.

Rolf grunted and rubbed a hand across his brow. Lynne offered him a
tumbler of lichenwasser, but he shuddered and turned away from her.
“You _marlet!_” he said rudely. “Can’t you be serious for once?”

Lynne repressed a smile. She had not had a hangover since one school
holiday, when she had consumed an entire bottle of crême de menthe
alone in a hotel room on Earth--but thanks to their telepathic rapport
she knew how Rolf felt. Furthermore, in view of her discovery, she
understood what had happened to make him so boisterously uninhibited of
late, just as she understood her own increased primness. Both of them
had been in telepathic relay contact with the mysterious new entity
that had caused the restlessness at Nampura Depot and, ultimately, had
killed Juan Olsen.

Although Lynne had been in spasmodic telepathic touch with her twin
brother, Revere, when the necro-recorder was used on him, shortly after
her arrival on Mars, it was the first time she had been present at an
actual demonstration of the dangerous instrument that had, until the
psycho-muffler was discovered, either killed or driven permanently
insane the persons on whom it had been employed.

Its original purpose had been to present visualization, as on an
old-fashioned colored television screen, of the thoughts of a man or
woman about to die--to reveal them and make it possible to record them.
In bygone years it had been a police-force stand-by, one of the miracle
gadgets that had all but wiped out crime on Earth and Mars.

She sat in a chair against a wall of the infirmary operating room,
while the unconscious Indo-Italian was wheeled in on an operating
wagon, her dusky face ash-white above the cloth that covered the
pronounced curves of her tiny body. She watched while Rolf, abetted by
the Depot practitioner, deftly applied the electrodes behind the girl’s
ears, just over the sensitive mastoid areas, and then went to the
grid-screen tuner and said to the practitioner, “Ready, Hambri?”

“Ready, Rolf,” said the practitioner quietly. “Try to tune fast. This
girl is in a dangerous state of shock and we don’t want to expose her
to any needless added risks.”

“We don’t want to--but we have to,” said Rolf grimly. Watching him,
Lynne felt her fingernails dig into the palms of her hands. She was in
perfect telepathic rapport with him and understood the tension, the
very real emotional concern and sense of responsibility toward the
girl that underlay his ruthlessness. And she knew she had never before
understood or loved him so deeply and well.

Almost before she had savored the thought, the grid-screen was flashing
a kaleidoscope of wild color. Purples, deep reds, turquoise blues,
ivory, yellows, rolled aimlessly around the screen, superseding one
another in erratic sequence. Rolf cursed and worked with the tuner but
only the vaguest shapes emerged. Lynne felt herself grow taut.

Then, suddenly, she was in touch not only with Rolf but with the buried
thoughts in the unconscious girl’s mind, as released through the
necro-recorder. Inexplicably, she understood the machine itself. She
flashed a _steady the horizontal--give the vertical another turn_, and
was rewarded when Rolf flashed her a silent _thanks_, VINRAL in return.
Quickly he obeyed her thought-order and the screen flickered to clarity.

There were the two of them--Rana and Juan Olsen, sitting side by side,
working in telepathic tandem in the blasted Rec Room. She felt the
urgent excitement that had gripped them course through her. The room
faded and again there was confusion--but this time it was in Rana’s
and Juan’s thoughts, rather than in the machine. There were pictures
of love-making, of birth, of pain, of spiritual worship of a God that
blurred between a celestial image and that of an eight-armed Hindu God.
It was amazing, Lynne thought vagrantly, how the supposedly long-buried
religious symbols survived, leaving a technically enlightened humanity
chained to the creations of its own early priesthoods. She felt a surge
of such primitive belief herself.

They were in touch with something, through the mind of the unconscious
girl, but what? Lynne glanced at Rolf, and saw that beads of sweat were
studding his brow as he pondered the visual-grid. Then, suddenly, they
were following the trail of a skyrocket through space--a rocket that
sped endlessly out against the dusty brilliance of the Milky Way to a
spot on a suddenly expanding globe, whose sky was blazoned with the
bulk of a monstrous cloudy planet, like an immense bladder that filled
the very heavens themselves.

Lynne was about to cry out with fear when she saw the immense red
lozenge high up on the curve of the huge world and heard herself cry
aloud, “_Jupiter!_ It comes from one of the moons of Jupiter!”

“Callisto,” said Rolf. The screen went blank and he flicked it off.
Moments later, the girl was wheeled from the room by an anxious
orderly, with the practitioner in watchful attendance. Rolf put the
necro-recorder on _rerun_ and played it back. When it was finished,
he turned to Lynne and said, “_Vinral_, think you can be packed in an
hour? We’re going out there and run this down.”

Lynne was horrified. She cried, “But, Rolf, darling--we can’t go to
Callisto. All traffic to the Jovian moons is strictly under Earth
Interplanetary Administration. They aren’t open to other traffic yet.”

“_Ferkab_ the E.I.A.,” said Rolf rudely. His dark eyes blazed as they
glared at her. “We’re going out there. At any rate, _I_ am. If you
think I’m going to sit around and wait while a lot of red tape is
unwound and maybe some more of us get killed, you’re full of _purt_.”
Lynne’s own reaction told the story. Even by coming in second-hand
contact with the alien mind, they were reverting to their inner
natures. She had turned into the convention-bound Earthwoman while
Rolf, more than ever, was the determinedly reckless authority-hating
man of Mars. But even awareness of the cause of their behavior was of
little help. She forced herself to say, “Very well, Rolf, I’ll go to
Callisto with you, but not until we’re provisionally married.”

Rolf said, “_Crehut, vinral_, how simple can you get? I’ve got news for
you. We were married this afternoon at the weddings, when I had you
sign the second book. Remember?” And, when she stared at him, stunned,
“What did you think we were doing--playing moon-snaffle?”

Lynne felt as if she had been turned into some gelatinous substance,
and dipped in a quickfreeze. She could barely manage to telepathize,
much less speak. She thought, _And I suppose you think that makes
everything intimately uninhibited between us?_

He was still playing the insensitive goon as he flashed back, _Well, it
certainly makes everything legal_.

Lynne’s chill melted in the sudden heat of her anger. She sent a
bludgeoning stream of fierce thoughts at him, attacking his crude
concept of marriage, the travesty of the entire Martian mating system,
the antique crudity of the accompanying drunken parties, overwhelming
his desperate efforts to temper her wrath.

It was a great fight while it lasted--but it didn’t last long. Rolf
simply lifted Lynne off her feet with one arm, pinioning her while he
sealed her mouth with the other.

“Okay--but shut up, little wife,” he said, “or I’ll take off on my own.
And you wouldn’t want that--remember, I can read your mind as easily as
you can read mine.” He deliberately broadcast a detailed vision of what
he intended to do to her once they were alone in the privacy of the
spaceship.

Lynne flashed back a vision of what she intended to do to him if he
tried anything of the sort and, moments later, they were glaring
at each other in a sort of uneasy armed truce. Lynne found herself
seething with a hatred she had never believed herself capable of
feeling toward any living creature.

Then, silently, she prepared herself for the journey ahead. Mostly, it
was a matter of arranging for records to be kept properly during her
absence. There was nothing to pack--not for an interplanetary journey
in a two-man triple-drive.

As she stepped uneasily aboard, she saw that Rolf had been deceiving
her with his thoughts of a sybaritic interior. Instead of the pneumatic
couches with cushions and soft carpets, instead even of the limited
creature comforts of the big liner that had brought her to Mars, Lynne
found herself in a tiny, cluttered cabin, surrounded by an incredible
complex of instrument boards and machinery.

Frightened, she protested, “But what if something happens to you, Rolf?
How am I supposed to run all this mixed-up machinery?”

“Use your woman’s intuition,” he growled at her. “And keep the monkey
wrench away from my ear.” But his thoughts revealed reassuring pictures
of IBM hookups working smoothly and automatically, with the gauges and
other indicators and buttons, merely for emergency use.

She sent him a silent okay, then said, horrified, “What’s that?”

“That,” came Rolf’s answering thought, “is the plumbing.”

Thus, he confirmed her worst fears. _It_ was amazingly, appallingly
open, occupying as it did almost the center of the floor. Her thought
was one of horror--_I couldn’t possibly. It’s too undignified._

To which Rolf, busily preparing for takeoff, flashed back, _So what,
you little prig? We’re married aren’t we?_

_In name only_, she replied. _That was a real_ MARLET _trick. Wait till
we get back! I’ll have it wiped off the books._

“Meanwhile,” he reminded her aloud, “it’s a long way to Callisto--and
back. You’re caught fair and square, _vinral_, so why not enjoy it?” He
had the further ill-grace to laugh in her face as words failed her and
she sank down with a despairing sob.

Minutes later, they were off on their unauthorized trip--and Lynne
forgot her anger and outrage at Rolf’s casual male high-handedness long
enough to feel terror as her Earth-conditioning reasserted itself. This
was no space-liner she had embarked in, no interplanetary hotel with
its staff of experts and countless safety devices.

This was a two-place interplanetary spanner; a sort of hot-rod, a tiny
non-seagoing submarine that was little more than an atomic power plant
with operating instruments and a tiny cockpit stuck on top of it. She
felt right out among the stars, even though vision-screens showing
television pictures of their surroundings were the only instruments
through which she could see out.

By the chronometer high on the instrument board, it took them
exactly nine days, eleven hours and twenty-six minutes to cover the
360,000,000-odd miles between Mars and Callisto, but to Lynne the
journey seemed to last a tedious forever. And, from the thoughts that
occasionally leaked through Rolf’s tight guard, she gathered it seemed
even longer to him. She wanted him to suffer and she made him suffer.

It became a sort of game. She would appear to relent for a while, and
listen to him quite seriously. Then, when he would take her outer
friendliness for encouragement, she would pull the switch and freeze
him colder than Callisto itself. On the seventh day out, she found
herself thinking, _I never knew I could be such a heel. I guess love
can turn any girl into a witch at times._

Rolf’s quick answering thought, _Let’s face it, Lynne, you mean all
the time, don’t you?_ served only to stiffen her wavering resolve to
make him pay through his aquiline nose for this second trick he had
pulled on her. Of course she intended to marry him--but not by any such
drunken, underhanded ruse as he had used on her. Nor did she intend to
let him get away with it. _The marlet!_

His snicker at her thoughts did little to improve her temper.

Then Jupiter loomed up, increasingly, ominously, in the bow vision
screen and, faced with the problem of tracking Callisto and making
a landing in the proper location, Rolf forgot his outraged ego and
concentrated on bringing the tiny spaceship in safely. Lynne, who
admired his rough-hewn efficiency, watched him in adoration, some of
which must have seeped through to warm his frozen id.

Once Rolf said, “A good thing this entity or whatever it is we’re
following seems to be located almost on top of the Earth Interplanetary
Administration outpost. This is supposed to be a frozen hellhole.” He
added a silent, _You should feel right at home there, enchilada_, and
anger once more reigned voiceless but supreme in the little ship.

But the terrifying splendor of Jupiter, seen from such close range,
caused them again to forget their puny problems. Its sulphurous yellow
cloud envelope was almost blindingly bright until, mercifully, they
skirted its twilight edge and emerged into shadow, lit only by the
large inner moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, the last two of
them larger than the planet Mercury. A dazzling spectacle.

Then the frozen sweeps of Callisto were flattening out beneath them,
its frozen air lying in great white drifts in the Moonlike chasms
between the jagged peaks that splintered the horizon on every hand.
It was, Lynne thought, the most desolate sight she had ever seen. She
turned away, shuddering, from the screen, only to be recalled by an
urgent thought-summons from Rolf.

They were over one of the satellite’s few comparatively level surface
areas--and approximately in its center was an unmistakable Earthmen’s
camp--or what had been an Earthmen’s camp! It looked as if it had
been flattened out by a tremendous blow with the heel of some giant
hand. Only a pair of spaceships, sheltered behind a natural craggy
embankment, seemed to have survived intact. And on the frozen air
of the planet, close alongside the desolation, the letters SOS were
spelled out with empty fuel tins.

“Looks as though maybe I followed the right hunch coming out here after
all--with or without E.I.A. authorization,” said Rolf.

Lynne said nothing--she was too scared to talk.




                                   IV


Rolf turned, tight-lipped, from the communicator panel and said,
“_Crehut_, a video white-out. They’re either cripped or dead!”

Lynne said, “What are you going to do?” In the confusion of bringing
the ship in, she was unable to sort out the mental messages she was
receiving. But she got a wild impression of thoughts and emotions,
transcending anything human. It was like being inside some immeasurably
vast, utterly lunatic cathedral.

“I’m going to land right beside those other ships--if I don’t go crazy
first,” said Rolf. He had to speak aloud, just as Lynne did, because in
the turmoil of telepathic disturbance it was impossible to select and
tune personal thoughts.

It was a rocky landing, since the apparently level ground proved to
be dangerously uneven as they settled down upon it. But although the
ship rocked in heart-stopping fashion, he finally got it steady on
its pintels and mopped sweat from his brow. For a long moment, he sat
before the control panel, letting the strain leave him.

With the thrum of the engines silent, Lynne became aware of another
steady pulse of power--unheard, for its pitch was far too great for
human eardrums. Her mind seemed to burst with visions of the planets,
of the stars, of distant nebulae and galaxies, interspersed with
unheard paeans of indescribably magnificent music, of concepts of such
surpassing beauty, of such dread and terror and love and ugliness and
sheer passion that, inevitably, Lynne found herself recalling Mr. Mole,
in Kenneth Grahame’s archaic but still-loved _Wind in the Willows_,
when that little animal heard the magic Pipes of Pan and found their
song beyond his limited ken.

“I must be mad,” she told Rolf.

He said, “You and I both, _vinral_. But if we both get it, we must be
sane. What in _purt_ do you suppose it is?”

Lynne tried to put it into words. “It’s like--like--It’s far beyond
anything we’ve ever encountered.”

Rolf got up and told her, “Come on--let’s find out what’s going on.
This is like being caught inside an old-fashioned circus calliope going
full blast.”

He crossed the tiny cabin, almost floating in the light gravity of the
satellite, opened a locker and got a couple of heavy-duty space-suits.
It was the first time Lynne had seen such an outfit save in vidar
entertainments and, by the time Rolf had locked her into it, she felt
like a cross between an Egyptian mummy and a deep-sea diver of several
centuries before. It was hot and her nose itched and there was no way
to scratch it. But the heavy composition of the suit mercifully blacked
out some of the radiant alien messages that had been overwhelming her
thoughts.

They rode lightly to the surface on the external elevator, and Lynne’s
impression of appalling desolation was reinforced when she looked at
the scenery about her from ground-level. Callisto was a nightmare moon
for anyone conditioned to the inner planets. The great curving bulk of
Jupiter was shadowed but light reflected from its large inner moons
made its appalling, ominous immensity all too evident. It looked as if
it were going to fall on her and crush her to death.

A couple of heavy-space-suited figures emerged from one of the two
big ships a half-kilometer away and slowly descended on an exterior
elevator. Rolf, speaking into his suit-mike, said, “Hello there--are
you from Earth?”

Lynne staggered under the force of a mental blow that threatened to
black her out as Rolf spoke. From the plain beyond the shelter of the
rock revetment behind which they had landed, came a sudden lavender
flash, followed by a rolling roar. The two space-suited figures
beckoned to them and she found herself running clumsily toward them.
Moments later, they were being taken aboard the larger ship.

Inside, in the compression chamber, suits were removed and a
coarse-haired, pale-faced, young-old man said, “Welcome to headache
satellite. I’m Lieutenant Patrick Suzuki, commandant pro tem of what’s
left to Callisto Mission. Who are you?”

Rolf explained, adding “I must add that we are unauthorized.”

The lieutenant swore amiably, and added, “Never mind the red tape.
Thank the gods of my ancestors you’re here.” He went on to explain
that they were completely cut off from communication with the outside.
“If we put on any circuit, we draw another blast. One more and the
revetment may go and bury us. We can’t leave, we can’t send for help.
We wouldn’t dare let anyone else land if we could get to them.”

“What’s the cause of your trouble?” Lynne asked him, glancing around
her at the unshaven faces and informal attire of the Earthmen in the
big ship’s wardroom, to which they had adjourned after removing their
heavy space-suits.

She received impressions of boredom, of controlled fright, of lust
toward herself. For the moment, the overpowering entity, whatever it
was, was not blanketing all thought, though the pulse of its power
never ceased.

Suzuki told them. Callisto had been placed under strict E.I.A.
restriction because of the discovery upon that satellite, by geologists
of the first expedition to reach her, of a rare new element whose
properties promised to outdo any of the radioactives.

“It’s right out there,” he added, gesturing toward the plain. “Right on
the surface. We didn’t want to risk an interplanetary rush. So E.I.A.
sealed off the satellite and sent Callisto Mission out to make further
study and begin test mining operations.”

Listening to him, Lynne wondered why so many otherwise human and
reasonably slangy young officials fell into the jabberwocky jargon
of government reports once they began discussing their business. It
was, she decided, drilled into them during their schooling, a sort of
illiterate but precise articulateness.

The element lay over most of the plain, an area of seven square
kilometers, much of it right on the surface. It was, Suzuki said, “of a
sort of opalescent yellow, soft to the touch despite the cold here. It
looked like all we’d have to do was inaugurate operations, take samples
and return to home base.”

Proceeding methodically under the leadership of Wing Officer Arthur
Mitropoulos, Callisto Mission had set up camp on the plane, right over
the mine it intended to open. On the “morning” operations were to
begin, Suzuki and the maintenance crew had been alerted to stand by to
relay messages to base from the ships. Then had come the blast--utterly
destroying camp and machinery and all the men in it.

“We tried to send an S.O.S.,” he concluded, “and were blasted again.
Three more times it happened. So we put out the fuel cans and sat
tight. Frankly, we’re stumped. We don’t know what to do next.”

Within the metal skin of the ship, Lynne and Rolf could exchange
telepathic messages, but it would be impossible to send one out through
space with enough power to reach Mars or any possible rescue ship that
might be winging its way toward Callisto. Lynne thought, _What about
our suits? They didn’t feel like metal._

Rolf’s reply came, _Good_ ZWIRCHY _girl! Maybe we can do it._

When they explained their plan to Suzuki, he shook his head in wonder
and said, “I’ve heard of Martian telepathy but I never thought I’d be
using it. Do you think it’s safe?”

Rolf said, “We’re following up a telepathic disaster on Mars, induced
by this super-monster you’ve found. But as long as we don’t beam our
thoughts on it, I think we’ll be all right. Besides, operating in
relay, it’s not likely to get both of us.”

_You hope_, Lynne telepathed and received a mental image of fingers
firmly crossed.

A half-hour later, she and Rolf stood again on the frozen atmosphere of
the big satellite. Again Lynne’s nose itched infuriatingly, but this
time she soon forgot her discomfort and she and Rolf linked minds and
began sending to Nampura Depot. Around them, the appalling crescendo of
unearthly thoughts and dreams rolled disturbingly, making concentration
next to impossible.

They tried and failed, then tried again--and again. And, finally, they
got _Nampura Depot, Mars, Fenlay. Who are you?_

_Callisto Mission calling, Marcein and Fenlay. Hello Revere._

They were through--and without being blasted. Rolf gave Lynne’s
telepathic twin brother the message, stating the conditions on the
satellite and asking that rescue ships stand clear until the situation
was remedied. He concluded with, _Relay to E.I.A. Headquarters. And
stand by for further messages._

Signing off, Revere sent a, _Luck, Lynne--and Rolf. We’ll be here,
standing by. Over and out._

They went back to Suzuki’s ship, lest further message sending
cause another blast. There, Lynne telepathed Rolf, _Did you feel
it--something else, something not alien?_

CREHUT, _now that you mention
it._ Rolf turned to Suzuki, said, “Did any of your power instruments
survive the blast, Lieutenant?”

Suzuki looked at one of his technicians, a bearded, copper-skinned man
called MacDougald. Macdougald scratched his head and said, “I don’t see
how--unless the Sodium generator escaped. They buried it pretty deep.
And they must have had it on. And once it’s on, nothing but a flip of
the switch will turn it off for centuries.”

“Why do you ask?” Suzuki wanted to know.

Rolf and Lynne exchanged quick thoughts and Rolf said, “Because both
of us received an impression that this element--this alien force--is
suffering an unbearable irritation, which is amplified whenever any
sort of power is turned on nearby. It’s--well, it reminds us of some
sort of vegetable poisoning that can be stepped up to agony.”

“We’ve got plenty of vegetable poisoning on Callisto, unlikely as it
sounds,” said Suzuki. “The verdant stuff is latent all over the place.
Goldberg nearly died of it.” He nodded toward a red-headed man whose
forearms were swathed in plastibands. “The heat of our operations
restored some of the stuff to virulence.”

“Preventive shots no good?” Lynne asked sympathetically. Goldberg said,
“They worked for the others, but not for me. It’s the worst itch I’ve
ever had.” He winced.

Rolf brought the conversation back on the beam. He said, “This element
you’ve discovered is definitely superhuman mentally and emotionally.
And it can and does kill when irritated. The picture we get is that
here on Callisto it’s been left exposed on the surface and is sensitive
to certain irritations. If your Sodium generator is an irritation, it’s
got to be turned off before any of us can leave or any relief ship can
land safely. Let me see a plan of the generator.”

_What do you mean--here on Callisto?_ Lynne telepathed. _Do you think
it exists anywhere else?_

_I don’t know--and don’t bother me_, was the reply, as Rolf bent over
the blueprint MacDougald produced from a cupboard. He scanned it,
scowling, then flashed a picture to Lynne, showing the generator, where
it was buried, where the switch was that alone could turn it off.
_Lynne, do you feel strong enough to try it?_ he asked silently.

Lynne knew what he meant. On Earth, with its dense atmosphere and
metallic atmosphere vapors telepathy was almost unknown. On Mars, where
the air was thinner and purer, it flourished but other telekinetic
powers were weak and incapable of being controlled. Here on Callisto,
with no atmosphere save what was frozen solid underfoot, there was
just a chance.... Perhaps, if they worked together, they could exert
sufficient psychic power to turn the switch and put the super-entity
out of its misery.

_Why doesn’t it turn the_ FARBISH _thing off itself?_ Lynne telepathed.

_Did you ever hear of any creature, however advanced, removing an alien
object from its own brain?_ was the quick response. And somehow Lynne
knew Rolf was right. It was going to be up to them.

_We’ll have to keep cover behind the revetment_, she replied, _in case
we fumble at first and our friend starts blasting again._

Rolf asked that they be left alone in the compression chamber for a
bit. And there they practiced on small objects--a stencil-recorder, a
gravity-weight, a set of earphones. It was the hardest kind of work
but, even within the metal shell of the ship, they were able at first,
by linking up in the tightest of combinations and willing as one, to
move aimlessly, then to attain control over the objects and move them
about at will, even to lift them briefly from the deck.

Exhausted, they rested, sitting close together on the floor of the
chamber, their backs against the wall. And Rolf said, “We’ve got to do
a lot better before we can risk a real trial. If we’re wrong--or if we
make a mistake....” He let it hang there.

Lynne nodded. Like him, she was too mentally exhausted for telepathy.
She said, “I wish I weren’t telepathic. I wish nobody were telepathic.
Then none of this would have happened.”

He nodded and told her, “I suppose Columbus wished he’d never tried
to cross the Atlantic when his men threatened mutiny. I suppose Henry
Condon felt the same way when his spaceship broke down on the first
trip to the Moon. I _know_ we’ve all felt that way at times on Mars
when things looked bad. But feeling that way isn’t going to save those
poor devils upstairs. And it won’t get us off Callisto.”

“I know,” she said with an attempt at a smile. “Let’s go on up and tell
them we’re making progress.”

As Rolf helped Lynne to her feet, he said, “Actually, you know, we’ve
done amazingly well.”

Lynne lost track of time as she and Rolf slept and practiced, slept
and practiced, sheltered from the wrath of the strange entity beyond
the rock revetment by the metal skin of the E.I.A. ship. At times,
especially when she was tired or distracted, it seemed as if they were
never going to master telekinesis at a distance. Staying in the ship,
they were sorely limited. But they dared not test outside lest their
efforts add to the entity’s irritation and cause it to strike back with
renewed fury.

They did not even dare risk another message to Mars.

Finally, when Lynne found herself able to move objects about in the
control cabin, abetted by Rolf’s mind-power, she said, “Well, what do
you think?”

Rolf nodded and directed a thought at her. _It’s got to be after our
next rest period_, VINRAL. _We can’t just sit here forever._

       *       *       *       *       *

Upstairs, in the cabin, they worked out final plans with Suzuki. He and
Goldberg and half the crew were to stay put, while MacDougald and the
rest of the E.I.A. survivors were to move to the other expeditionary
ship.

“That way,” Rolf suggested, “your chances of getting one ship back will
be doubled in case something goes wrong.”

“Got you,” said Suzuki matter-of-factly. “Here, have some of the
panktosteak. Cook’s outdone himself on the sauce.”

The atmosphere as they ate what might be their their final meal
together was almost gay. After the long period of inactive
confinement, the E.I.A. men were welcoming the prospect of a change
of condition--even if the change were death. Reading their thoughts,
Lynne felt proud to be a human. She had never quite believed in heroes
before--they had seemed buried so far back in a pre-scientific human
past--yet here she was, with a whole group of them.

Rolf’s thought reached her. _You’re not doing so badly yourself_,
VINRAL--and she turned her face toward the wall as her cheeks grew hot.

To her surprise, she slept, and dreamt she was back on Earth, working
at the brain-station with her teammates. And then Rolf was awakening
her and, after a silent handshake with Suzuki, she was clambering into
a heavy space-suit once more. Then, again, she and Rolf were treading
on frozen atmosphere, the two of them alone this time, moving slowly
along the base of the jagged revetment until they were a good kilometer
away from the other ships. Again Lynne’s nose itched unbearably, and
this time the itching seemed to be spreading, to include other parts of
her body. She had to force herself to ignore it completely.

_Good girl!_ Rolf approved her effort. _Here, I think we’ve gone far
enough. Here goes...._

They stood clear of the gaunt rock wall, against the chance of falling
fragments, and Lynne looked at the twin tall spires of the E.I.A. ships
and at the shorter, stubbier vessel, a half-kilometer beyond them. Then
they put their minds as one on the Sodium generator, lying beneath the
surface of the plain amid the flattened E.I.A. sheds.

They concentrated with all of their newly-awakened telekinetic power
on the switch a few centimeters to the left of the main control panel.
And they thought fiercely. Lynne could feel a gathering storm of alien
irritation. Thoughts of cathedrals were replaced by hideous concepts of
suns exploding into novae, of planets burning to ash.

Then Lynne felt the switch move slightly under the force of the mental
shaft she and Rolf were directing upon it. Instantly, she almost
blacked out under the countering wave of black anguish that threatened
to blanket her thoughts. She wavered, felt for Rolf’s mind, found it.
She drew strength from it, felt it push with hers against the switch,
felt the switch move further, further, then all the way to _off_--just
as a tremendous blast of leviathan outrage knocked her flat on the
frozen atmosphere while the rim of the revetment above was seared and
shattered by an appalling blast of purple power.

Then the mental pressure was gone, and the pulsing retreated to a soft
throb that was almost a purr. There was no gratitude. The entity,
whatever it was, had far outgrown such puerile emotion. But the
physical turmoil its reaction had created was far from over.

Even as Lynne watched, the rock revetment crumbled from the force of
the blow it had received. She felt mounting horror as huge pieces
of rock broke off in a mounting torrent that fell without sound in
the airless void about them. She saw one of the E.I.A. ships struck
and sent toppling on its side, the other’s nose shattered by a grey,
wedgelike piece of stone.

Then she and Rolf were tumbling, leaping toward the ships. It was a
time of terror, though the source of the terror was under control once
more. Frantically, they tugged at the rocks about the toppled ship,
seeking to clear the emergency doorway. _Poor Suzuki! Poor Goldberg!_
she thought and Rolf’s thoughts seconded hers.

“Here--let us use the instruments.” The voice came through the
earphones, not her mind. Shaken, she looked around to see a trio of
space-suited figures behind her, carrying odd-looking instruments. It
was MacDougald and the crew of the other E.I.A. ship.

A half-hour, Mars-time, and they had cut their way into the toppled
ship. Lynne had to fight against being physically sick inside her
spacesuit at what they found. Suzuki and his four-man crew were dead.
The ship had been splintered as she fell and their bodies had burst in
the airlessness.

When the mess had been cleaned up and they were back at the other
E.I.A. ship, MacDougald revealed his Gaelic practicality when he told
them, “You did a good job--you licked it. I’m sorry about Suzuki, but
he knew what the odds were. We all do. I had one of the men look at
your little ship and she’s all right. You’d better be getting the lady
back to Mars, Mr. Marcein.”

“But what about you? This ship of yours is in no shape to take off,”
Rolf protested.

“Thanks to you, help is on the way,” said MacDougald. Then, eyeing
Lynne keenly, “You’d better get the lady off Callisto.”




                                   V


It had never occured to Lynne, in her wildest imaginings during the
trip out to Callisto, that the little spaceship which had brought them,
with its cramped cockpit and utterly inside plumbing, would feel like
home. But once she and Rolf were in it together, on their way back
to Mars, she curled up beside him in the warmth of the tiny cabin,
grateful for the artificial gravity, feeling utterly relaxed, and
basked in the warmth of his thoughts toward her.

_Still sore at me_, VINRAL_?_ he telepathed.

_Of course not, you_ FARBISH _idiot_, she replied silently.

He turned her around on the narrow, curving couch, so that she was
facing him, in his arms, with her face close to his. She thought, _My
husband! Maybe there are more important things than a ceremony._

_You’re so right, my_ VINRAL, came his answering thought. And then,
as a flicker of concern crossed his powerful features, _You’re not
seriously ill, are you_, VINRAL_?_

MARLET, she reproved him fondly, _I never felt better in my life. Just
being alive--and off Callisto!_

_But your face--your arms--they’re all broken out!_

She looked at her arms and it was so. Blisters--ugly, yellowish
blisters--seemed to be rising on her skin even as she watched. She felt
a thrill of panic that made her shudder. And then, as if waiting for a
signal, the itching began. It started on her face, flowed through her
arms, through her body, her legs, her feet.

_Goldberg’s poisoning! You poor_ ZWIRCHY VINRAL_!_ His thought was
clear and alarmed. Somewhere, somehow, on the frozen satellite, she had
picked up the virulent vegetable poison. As she stripped and let Rolf
daub her all over with antiseptic that gave only momentary and partial
relief, an ancient song kept running through her head, a centuries-old
lilt that went, _A fine romance, with no kisses--a fine romance, my
dear, this is...._ And then she thought, _Poor Goldberg, poor Suzuki,
poor...._

Thereafter, until a day before they landed back at Nampura Depot, Lynne
was too sick to remember much of anything. The blisters broke and, with
them, the fever that had made her delirious. But when they came away
they took patches of skin with them, leaving her too miserable to move.
Nor was her misery lessened by recollection that it was she who had
spoiled the honeymoon on the outward voyage through injured vanity at
her provisional husband’s high-handed behavior. As if, when you loved a
man, it made any difference _how_ you got married....

Contact with the infinite, with the immensity of the alien intellect,
had considerably widened her vision--even while Goldberg’s poisoning
had severely limited her sphere of physical action.

Revere came to visit her in the infirmary, which she shared with
a convalescent Rana, and told her, telepathically, _You know, you
and Rolf are both up for E.I.A. gonging. Officially, you violated a
security regulation, but since you saved what was left of Callisto
Mission, they’re going to slip you a citation under the table._

_At the moment, I couldn’t care less_, Lynne replied. _What do you hear
from Lei on Earth?_

Revere’s bride, she learned, was doing fabulously well and a
successful, uninduced twin birth was prophesied by the doctors. Lynne
felt a flash of pride for both of them, as well as a flash of envy. By
the time she and Rolf got around to having babies, she surmised, they’d
both be candidates for the geriatrics bureau. Discouraging thought. But
she kept it from Revere. He was too happy for sadness.

When he had gone, she shared a skinless gasper with the tiny
dark-skinned Rana and asked her about the fatal experiment that had
put her into coma. After all, the necro-recorder could only take down
thoughts over a very limited period of its subject’s mental activity.

Rana told her, talking aloud, since she was still forbidden to
overuse her telepathic qualities. She said, “I know now it was wrong,
of course, but we were filled with the excitement of discovery. I
don’t understand why you and Rolf went to Callisto. We beamed our
relay-thinking right here on Mars, somewhere in the Syrtis Major
prairie, near Woomera Station. At first it was like being in some
incredible temple. It was vast and awe-inspiring and--Lynne, I can’t
really describe it.”

“I know,” said Lynne. “What turned it sour?”

“That,” said the dark girl, “is what I don’t understand. We were
receiving wonderful stuff--sort of soul-healing. But when Juan flicked
on the recorder to take it down it vanished.”

Lynne probed the girl’s thoughts and found she was holding nothing
back. She was heartsick at the tragic result, for her companion, of an
experiment for which she felt herself responsible. Lynne lay back and
did some thinking while the dark girl slept and had reached a number of
conclusions by the time Rolf appeared that afternoon.

He, it seemed, had been terribly busy since their return to the Red
Planet. All sorts of crises had come or were coming to a head. There
had been a localized reappearance of the disembodied aborigines that
had for so long threatened all communications on Mars--and a campaign
had had to be organized to exterminate them.

There had been a squabble over efficiency credits between the
communications crews of New Walla Walla and Cathayville which had had
to be settled. Earth Interplanetary Authority was anxious for Rolf and
Lynne to visit their Rio de Janeiro Headquarters as soon as possible
to discuss the ramifications of the Callisto incident. And the problem
of decreasing moisture in the Martian atmosphere table was becoming
critical.

_Which is why I have not been able to stay here at your side_, VINRAL,
he told Lynne silently. _And now, I must leave you again._

_Oh, Rolf!_ Lynne was desolate. _I have so much to tell you. I think
I’m beginning to understand a little about our--entity._

_Hold it_, VINRAL, was the reply. _Right now, I haven’t even the_
FARBISH _time to give it a thought. It will keep till I get back from
New Samarkand. I’ve got to address a council meeting there tonight._

And he was gone. Resentfully, Lynne thought she might as well have
gotten herself married to the legendary old-fashioned country general
practitioner of nineteenth century America. She eyed her messed-up face
in a hand mirror and wondered when, if ever, she was going to look like
herself again. Goldberg’s poison! Poor Goldberg....

The next day, with Rolf still in New Samarkand, she had the
practitioner patch her up and, with the aid of makeup, managed to
present a passable front to the world. She had made up her mind to
get busy. According to Rana, there might be an entity in the New
Woomera district, and New Woomera Station was where Lynne’s one-time
cabin-mate, Joanna, had her home. And Joanna had invited Lynne to pay
her a visit at the weddings. Lynne managed to get the use of a somewhat
battered runabout and took off from the Depot, shortly before noon.

Mars might be considered a small planet, she thought as she sped
low over its level plains and prairies, but it was a planet of vast
distances. Without oceans, it actually had a far greater land surface
than Earth. And its lack of real mountains added to the illusion of
vastness. It was, she thought, like flying over an ocean of land.
Woomera Station, when she sighted it, looked like a small oblate bit of
green and yellow, around a cluster of red-and-white farm structures,
stuck like a postage stamp in the middle of an immense envelope.

Yet, as she walked from the landing field, she realized as never
before what an imposing plant it was. Here were hundreds of hectares
of hydroponic greenhouses, some five square kilometers in all of lush
grassland for cattle raising, interspersed with long stretches of
barns, barracks and storehouses. Here, wonder of wonders on Mars, was
even a small pond where the pigs, long-staple mutton and musk-oxen
could drink. Truly a man-made oasis, in the midst of desolation.

The pond was Joanna’s special pride and joy. “We just got our atomic
transmuter three months ago,” she said, “and already it is turning the
sand into drinking water for the cattle. Maybe someday, we shall all
have swimming pools on Mars, quite as wonderful as those in Joberg or
Rio on Earth.”

Lynne said, “It’s pretty expensive, isn’t it? And aren’t you afraid
that the water may be radioactive and poisonous?”

The girl’s face fell. She said, “I guess it _is_ expensive. But it’s
better than draining the atmosphere of moisture. And in time, our
scientists will learn to cut the cost drastically.”

Lynne read the sternly suppressed lack of assurance in the girl’s
mind. She had pinned her hopes on the transmuter, which was in truth a
remarkable invention for turning dry mineral matter into water. But,
as an ex-brain team coordinator, Lynne saw clearly that the expense
must outstrip any real benefit which might accrue, except in special
isolated instances. She kept her conclusion to herself, however,
and said, “I’m awfully glad you asked me to visit you, Joanna. I’m
tremendously impressed.”

Joanna got a two-place tracto-scooter and took Lynne on a tour of the
entire project. She admired the plump hogs and flocks of turkeys, the
long-staple sheep and the small, furry musk-oxen, imported to endure
the arctic cold of the Martian winters. She admired the artificial
drinking pond, where the animals clustered to slake their thirst.
Finally she asked, “How do you shield the transmuter?”

Joanna waved toward the northeastern corner of the station. “The
transmuter has its own shield on three sides,” she explained. “We
keep the open side facing away from the station. There are some odd
sort of radioactive deposits out that way but our chief figures a
bit more radiation isn’t going to hurt anything. Come on, I’ll show
you the out-of-bounds markers. The whole area--about fifty square
kilometers--is fenced off. A few years ago, a couple of prospectors
went in there to dig. They were never seen again.”

“Let’s go,” said Lynne a trifle grimly. A distant thrumming inside
her head grew more intense as they neared the northeast corner of the
grazing grounds. She opened her mind a little--and was once more in an
unearthly cathedral, full of dread and love and clamor.

“Let’s go back, Joanna,” she said tightly. Her nerves were singing
like guitar strings and it seemed impossible the black girl shouldn’t
feel it too. But Joanna’s dark face remained amiably impassive. At the
Station proper, Lynne said, “I’d like to talk to your chief.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Ultimately, to get him to turn off the transmuter, Lynne had to
communicate with Rolf and New Samarkand, and tell him that she had
discovered another deposit of the super-entity on Mars. In the end it
was Agriculture Boss Radchev who ordered the disconnection. The worst
of it was, she could not explain her reasons to Joanna and the Station
chief in terms they were capable of understanding.

All the chief said was, “You know, without the pool, the Station will
perish. We are no longer allowed to draw the water we need from the
atmosphere.”

“You keep that transmuter on much longer, and the whole Station will be
wiped out--just as Callisto Project was wiped out,” Lynne warned. “I’m
not trying to wreck you. I’m trying to save your lives.”

“I wish I’d never asked you to come here!” Joanna cried passionately.
“Why couldn’t you have left us alone?”

Relations remained strained until Rolf and Radchev, a swarthy giant
with an unexpected, and quite startling shock of corn-white hair,
arrived on the scene. A gingerly magnetic-tracer investigation was
conducted over the suspected area until the eroded entrance of the
narrow mine-shaft the prospectors had sunk was located. Then Rolf and
a couple of Station hands, leaving all electronic gadgets turned off,
approached via tracto-scooter and went down the shaft. When they got
back, Rolf nodded.

“It’s sunk a lot deeper under the ground surface here,” he said. “I’m
becoming convinced there’s at least one of them on every stable planet
and satellite. In some frightening, inexplicable fashion, they’re
interrelated--which is why we got sent tracking off to Callisto.”

Radchev said, “You think there’s one on Earth then?”

Rolf nodded. “Probably buried far underground. The more eroded the
area, the closer they lie to the surface. On Callisto, the creature was
actually exposed. Here, it’s buried just under the subsoil.”

“Then why hasn’t one been found on Luna?” Radchev asked. “I thought
Earth’s moon was completely charted for mineral elements.”

Rolf hesitated, but Lynne came up with the answer. “I think it’s
because the creature needs the gaseous elements of an atmosphere to
survive. The atmosphere is thick on Earth, thin here. On Callisto it
lies frozen on the ground. But it’s there. The Moon has none--just as
Deimos and Phobos have none. We know it doesn’t exist on them.”

“I think you’re right,” said Rolf, his face grim. “Somehow, this
mysterious entity has to breathe. I have a hunch that otherwise
it’s nothing more than a sort of super-brain, which has long since
surrendered all other physical properties.”

“Then,” said Redchev, puzzled, “why is it we haven’t stumbled across a
single one of the creatures. This one must have--”

“It has probably been here forever by our measure of time,” Lynne
interrupted eagerly. “Can’t you see, Mr. Radchev, that it hasn’t been
discovered sooner because non-telepathic human mental processes were
too far below its reception or broadcast level to make contact with it?”

The Agriculture boss shook his massive head. “That won’t do, I’m
afraid,” he said. “The coincidence is too steep. Don’t you think
it remarkable to put it mildly that, almost to the moment when
you discover your new life-form telepathically the non-telepathic
E.I.A. should have stumbled into it on Callisto? I tell you--I’m not
convinced.”

“But you will be!” Lynne persisted. “We know it can be irritated by
human physical and mental contact under some conditions, and that
when the irritation is sufficient, it strikes back at its tormentor.
Think of the unexplained blasts and disasters that have killed men and
destroyed their works all through known history. Isn’t it possible,
even probable, that some of those disasters were caused by our new
friend under the stimulation of physical irritation?”

Radchev rumbled like an incipient Krakatoa, then subsided to a
querulous, “But if this is so, how are we going to combat it?”

And Rolf and Lynne, thinking in concert, spoke in unison, “We aren’t
going to try to combat it. We’re going to put it to use.”




                                   VI


Rolf flew back to Nampura Depot with Lynne in the runabout but they
were unable to enjoy their brief respite alone together. In the
first place, Lynne was still too severely bruised from her bout with
Goldberg’s poison to endure an embrace--and in the second, they were
too preoccupied with her discovery of the entity and its possible
consequences for even the lighter aspects of love-making.

_Think we’ll ever make it_, VINRAL_?_ Rolf projected wryly as the
runabout settled down on the fluorescent-lit landing field.

_You just wait till I get over this_, Lynne replied.

Then they were in the restored Rec Room, with its translucent walls
and recorder and amplification devices and other aids to telepathic
relay extension. Revere joined them there, as did Rana, for a long and
intensive conference. After all, along with Lynne and Rolf they had had
closer contact with the entity than any of the other telepaths in the
depot. It was Lynne who summed the problem up for them, speaking aloud
for the benefit of the recorder.

“What do we know about E-for-Entity and its properties?” she began
quietly. “In the first place, since we have discovered that E exists
and have made contact with it, Problem Outpost must be considered a
success. It was set up to establish contact with life-forms hitherto
unreached by mechanical means of communication. And certainly, we have
learned enough to feel certain E is a life-form.”

She paused to marshal her thoughts, then went on with, “Admitting that
E exists and is a form of life, what do we know of its properties? We
know that E exists on both Mars and Callisto and, by inference, on
other planets and satellites throughout the universe. We know that its
various units are in constant intercommunication with one another and
that while it has taken a mineral form, it is highly sentient both
mentally and physically.

“We know that it has a definite effect upon humans who attain even
remote contact with it through the mind. It has an inhibiting effect
upon the control centers of the human mind, causing the man or woman
in contact with it to lose self restraint and become in some ways
childish. If E effects non-telepaths in a similar way, we have no clear
record to prove it. But, in view of human behavior throughout history,
there is every reason to suspect that such effects can be ascribed to
it.

“We know that E is sensitive to mental suggestion, beamed its way,
especially when such suggestion is stepped up by electronic or atomic
machines. We know that its sensitivity increases in direct ratio with
its physical exposure to such impulses and stimuli. And we know that
while E, in effect, seems to be some sort of super-brain in mineral
form, it is highly sensitive to physical disturbance, such as attempts
to dig into its substance.”

She paused again, received encouraging thoughts from the others, and
continued. “We know further that when E is irritated beyond endurance,
it can and does strike back. To our knowledge, since the inauguration
of Problem Outpost, it has killed one telepath, rendered another
unconscious, and frustrated all efforts to mine its substance on
both Callisto and Mars. It is probable that this killing is neither
aggressive nor malicious--that it is rather like an elephant, stepping
on an annoying insect.”

She hesitated, said, “Well, from here on in, I think we’ll do better
off the record. We’re flying by the seat of our clouts.”

“_Crehut_, Lynne,” said her twin brother. “Now that we’ve uncovered
this interplanetary monster, what are we going to do about it? I know,
I’m receiving you--so you’re going to put it to work. But how do you
propose to go about harnessing something we know almost nothing about?”

Rolf said, “Don’t be a _czanworm_, Revere. What do we actually know
about electricity? Nothing. Yet men have harnessed and used electricity
for centuries. If they hadn’t, we’d still be Earthbound. In E, we have
the greatest potential power-source in history. Are we going to sit
around and call it out of bounds, merely because a few of us have been
killed, or may be killed, in the process?”

“Yes,” said Rana in her small voice. “But what are we going to do with
it? All my impressions were of mighty ideas and themes.”

“E is an entity of ideas,” said Rolf. “In a way it is like a
transmission cable--carrying thousands, perhaps millions, perhaps even
more messages both ways from itself to its fellows on other planets
and moons. It has the power to put its concepts to the test of reality
should such a trifling idea appeal to it--which it probably won’t. It
is on far too high a plane to care about concrete application.”

“And just how are we going to get it to care?” Revere Fenlay lit a
skinless gasper and blew a nervous-looking smoke ring.

Lynne said, “Revere, we know one thing--it is suggestible as well as
suggesting. Given the elements of an atmosphere to exist in, it lives.
We know it is suggestible because, when we irritate it sufficiently, it
strikes back. We can make it feel our thoughts and our muscles and our
machines, however trivially, however remotely.”

“Rather destructively, I fear,” said her twin looking doubtful.

“All right,” said Lynne. “So all we can arouse is destructive force but
it is a response and a predictable one. Once Ben Franklin proved he
could get a response from the lightning, however destructive. He was
able to create the lightning rod, And Faraday and the others who put
electricity to use were not far behind him.”

“All right,” said Revere. “I’m convinced. But how in _purt_ are we
going to get our new friend to say uncle when we want it to?”

Something clicked in Lynne’s trained coordinator’s brain. She said,
mentally scanning the notes and records they had been consulting during
the meeting, “Revere--Rolf--Rana--what is the one thing that is common
to each of E’s destructive retaliations when irritated?”

Rana looked helpless. Revere scowled at the floor, then shrugged and
gave up. Rolf studied the opaque ceiling of the Rec Room, then said
suddenly, “Maybe this is fresh out of your mind, _vinral_, but as I
get it there were two things--a flash of light and an impression of
enormous, sudden sound. Certainly I got those impressions when we were
up against E or his cousin on Callisto. Am I right?”

“How about it?” Lynne asked the other two. Rana, looking scared in
retrospect, nodded slowly, and Revere said, “It’s on the record.”

“Doesn’t that particular combination of phenomena remind you of
something? No, it wouldn’t since you’re all Martians. But as an
Earthwoman, it makes me think of just one thing--a thunderstorm.”

Revere looked incredulous, said, “But that’s impossible. There
isn’t enough atmosphere on Mars yet for any rain, much less for a
thunderstorm. And on Callisto, the air is frozen on the ground.”

“Just a moment,” said Rolf, his dark eyes gleaming. “I think I’m
beginning to understand what Mrs. Marcein is driving at.” Lynne reacted
with a shaft of pure delight to his use of her new name and title, then
forced herself to listen attentively as he went on with, “If E has
the elements of an atmosphere around him--I call it ‘him’ by courtesy
only--he is capable of transmuting them in any form he wishes for self
defence. But, Lynne, there has been no sign of rain with any of E’s
blasts against his irritators.”

“Let an Earth-girl speak on that,” said Lynne quietly. “If E can create
an atmosphere capable of thunder and lightning, however briefly, that
atmosphere must be capable of rain. Our problem is to keep E irritated
long enough so rain will fall. Keep him irritated directionally so that
he will harm no one and so localized that the area that needs moisture
will receive the fruits of E’s irritation.”

“_Crehut!_” said Revere. “And how do you propose to do that?”

“By using the same techniques used to harness electricity on Earth,”
said Lynne. “Relays of batteries using telepathic playbacks for
irritants. We can set up such a relay and shield it by placing it
underground. We can give it direction by placing it well upwind of
Woomera Station. And we can work it by remote video control.”

Rolf looked at her and frowned. “Why put it so near the Station?”
he asked. “Aren’t you running the risk of its being damaged if your
experiment proves successful, _vinral?_”

Lynne said patiently, “What does Mars need most, and where does Mars
need it most? The answers are rain and at Woomera Station. Since there
are no hills on Mars, there’s no danger of a flash flood. And if it
rains too much, we turn our gadget off. Simple?”

“No,” said Rolf with a slow smile. “It’s _farbishly_ complex. But I’ll
fly to New Samarkand tonight and see what can be done about getting
official permission. In the meantime, Lynne, you and Revere and Rana
start getting the machinery set up. You have the full resources of the
depot at your disposal.”

The next morning, Lynne, Revere, Rana and a volunteer crew of Nampura
Depot experts were busily installing the relay circuits Lynne had
devised in a block of non-metallic instant-concrete on the far side of
a gentle rise some twenty kilometers from E area, northwest of Woomera
Station.

Rolf had flashed her message that, though they had as yet no official
okay, he had won them sub-rosa permission from Agriculture boss Radchev
and other interested authorities to go ahead. Rolf had promised to be
there within the hour, when they set the switch that would prove their
mastery of E or the reverse.

Lynne had to fight hard to maintain a semblance of assurance as the
zero hour approached. She was checking the relays for the irritant
playback for the forty-ninth time when a government planetplane, with
its blue body and bright red disc markings, circled above them and came
in to a smooth landing. When Rolf appeared, followed by Radchev and
other high brass, she directed toward him a thought of relief.

Once again, before pressing the switch that would put the new E project
into work, she was forced to explain its theory. Weather, a tall human
skeleton named Krausemeier, was frankly worried. He said, “What if it
works and this artificial storm of yours wipes out the moisture in the
atmosphere?”

“It can’t, and you know it,” Lynne replied promptly and was aghast at
her own temerity. “There isn’t enough air around Mars right now to
create a drizzle--so how can a rainstorm lessen it? It’s got to _add_
to the moisture if it works at all.”

Shaking his head, Weather subsided. There were other arguments and
discussions and final check-ups against anything going wrong with the
relay. When, at 1131 Mars Time, Lynne pressed the button from the
control station, two kilometers away from the power plant, it was
almost an anti-climax.

For a long, nervous time, lasting some twenty minutes that seemed to
Lynne like as many hours, nothing happened. Then, inside herself, she
felt a stirring of angry forces, a gathering tension that rose and
rose until it seemed past the breaking point. She gripped Rolf’s hand
tightly, and he returned the grip. Unease was evident on the faces of
Revere and Rana and the other telepaths present from Nampura Station.
But the rest--the non-telepathic--merely looked bored or restless or
impatient or interested or hopeful as the case might be.

Lynne thought, _it has to work, it has to. I’ve made no mistake._

And Rolf returned her thought with, _don’t worry_, VINRAL, _it’s
working. I can feel something happening right now!_

A sudden, long-repressed _aaaaah_ rose from a hundred throats as a
blaze of light flashed on the horizon. It was followed by another, and
another, and another, until the sky resembled a vidar-image of one of
the ancient atomic-war battles that had so nearly destroyed humanity
two centuries earlier. The ground above the spot where the relays were
planted in their concrete casing, seemed to shimmer and leap.

And then came the thunderclaps, rolling like drumfire over the flat
Martian plain. The air shook around them and their eardrums hurt,
even from two kilometers away. But the sky remained its usual dark,
undisturbed blue, with the sun small and reddish-hued near the meridian.

“Where’s your rain, young lady?” Weather wanted to know.

It was Rana who pointed in the direction of the irritated entity and
cried in her small voice, “Look, here it comes.”

Again there was a gasp of excitement from the assemblage as a moving
barrier appeared, first low against the horizon, then rising higher and
higher as it approached. To men and women who had spent all their adult
lives under the cloudless Martian sky, it was a miracle--and like all
miracles, terrifying.

Lynne could sense the thoughts of panic darting about her. A scientist,
checking a barometer to make sure too much moisture was not being
drained from the atmosphere, suddenly shouted, “Believe it or not, the
moisture-table’s rising!”

Panic faded before excitement and delight but Lynne, watching the
approaching weather front, its edge ominous with the lightning
flickers, felt mounting disquiet. This didn’t look like a rainstorm
approaching to her. It looked at lot more like....

It _was!_ As the sun was obscured, the snowflakes fluttered down
upon them, first by ones and twos, then by dozens, then in countless
armies that blotted out the far horizon. And Lynne laughed, laughed
wholeheartedly for the first time since her brother’s wedding. She
laughed until she cried.

Why hadn’t anyone thought of it? Of course, in the chill Martian
climate, it would have to be snow, except in the tropics during the
height of the brief summer season. But snow was merely crystalized
rain and there was sufficient power on Mars to turn it back to water
by heating the ground. And once the soil was watered, it would bloom
again, as it had not bloomed in millions of years.

The snow fell for a solid hour, piling a good three inches of soft
cotton wool on the gaunt ground. Then Lynne, with the agreement of
the authorities present, turned off the device. They had harnessed
the alien entity, put the super-brain to use for men. It would be
irritated, of course, but so superior an entity could neither know
nor care about the source of its irritation. It would merely seek to
sweep it away--which it could not hope to do, any more than an Earthly
elephant could hope to catch a fly.

There followed fervent congratulations and a hurried conference of
officials, all of them wreathed in smiles at the prospect of employing
this unlooked-for source of moisture to speed up the reconstitution of
the Red Planet’s atmosphere.

Krausemeier, acting as spokesman, called Rolf and Lynne over and said,
“The Governing Council of Mars offers you its gratitude, not only
for what you have achieved but for the dangers you have undergone in
accomplishing this invaluable feat. In view of these factors, we hope
you will allow us to offer you a six-month visit to Earth with all
expenses paid.”

_Earth!_ Lynne’s heart sang the word. Her home planet--and six whole
months. Yet, as she walked beside Rolf to their ship, she was glad
their trip together was to last no longer. Here on Mars, there was so
much to be done. And even though they had attained control of a sort
over the Entity, it could still kill. Juan, and the prospectors and the
dead members of the Callisto expedition proved it. Perhaps it would be
wiser if she and Rolf postponed....

Rolf cut in on her thoughts with a rude, _stow that bosh! Revere and
Tony and some of these other_ MARLETS _can carry the ball for a while.
You and I_, VINRAL, _we’re having ourselves a honeymoon, beginning
right now. We’re going to live it up--really live it up!_

In sheer jubilation, he did a little skipping dance and, before Lynne
could warn him, he slipped in the soft snow and fell. Lynne read the
thoughts of the physician who hurried to his aid, even before that
worthy opened his mouth to say, “I’m afraid he’s broken his leg.”

It looked as if the honeymoon would have to wait.




Transcriber’s note:


 This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, May 1955 (Vol. 3, No.
4.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

 Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor
inconsistencies have been retained as printed.



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