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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78055 ***
+
+
+
+
+                          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.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78055 ***