by Earl
Again it flashed, and a ship gleamed in the void. It rapidly neared, then slowed and hovered. It seemed to be watching, waiting, perhaps for a sign of hostility. Finally a space-suited figure emerged from a lock and drifted across. Kaine heard it clumping with magnetic shoes all around the ship’s hull.
Kaine screamed, but knew he couldn’t be heard. He couldn’t open the welded lock. But he had to signal the figure somehow, before it left, thinking the ship a derelict.
He grabbed up the rail and pounded against the metal walls. The vibrations should be felt on the hull. The footsteps paused, then resumed. A helmeted, indistinct face peered in through the port. Kaine gestured wildly.
The figure saw. Kaine knew that, with a surging joy, just before he slumped to the floor, gasping for oxygen.
Kaine opened his eyes and saw faces through a visor. It was part of a sealed helmet that pumped invigorating oxygen past his nostrils. He breathed deeply, feeling strength stealing back through his limp body.
The faces cleared to his eyes. They were strange beings, of a dozen varieties. Beings of the Milky Way Galaxy, who had somehow come to rescue them? No. Kaine was aware that the beings, though a mixed group, were subtly different from any mixed group of the Milky Way. It was an indefinable something, as vague but definite as the slight distinctions between Earthmen and Dymoorans.
Then they must be from another galaxy!
“You are awake?” asked one of the beings. They had voice-machines, too, operating through telepathy.
“Yes. We are from the Milky Way Galaxy. You saved our lives.” Kaine went on to tell the story, in brief.
The spokesman nodded, and introduced himself.
“I am Ji Tu. We are citizens of the galaxy nearest to yours. Cruising through outer space, our long-range detectors told us of your ship, drifting along. We came to it and found you.”
ZlkZee awakened. They had fitted a breathing helmet around him. He heard the last words.
“How did you happen to be so far from your galaxy?” he queried. “Far more than half-way to ours! Were you visiting ours?”
“No. We patrol space, however, that far out.”
MacLean came to now, stretching luxuriously. “Blessed oxygen!” he cried. “We’re saved. What a joke on the Tharkyans!” But then he eyed Ji Tu, having heard his last statement. “Why do you patrol so far out? It’s lucky for us, but it seems pointless.”
“Our galaxy was attacked once!”
Now Kylar sat bolt upright. “By the Tharkyans!” he said. “It is not widely known, but thousands of years ago the Tharkyans outfitted an expedition and attempted to invade the next galaxy, in their thirst for power. They were beaten back, and hushed it up.”
The galactic alien nodded. “We beat them back, the Tharkyans you mention. Since then, we’ve patrolled space around our galaxy. We want nothing of their method of rule. Our system is a commonwealth of worlds, for the good of all.”
The four from the Milky Way looked at each other. It was a significant statement.
“That is the system we wish to achieve in our galaxy,” Kylar said wistfully. “A democracy of worlds, with a president. We’ve groaned under Tharkyan dictatorship for a million years.”
Kaine’s thoughts crackled.
“You beat off the Tharkyans?” he said. “That means you are more powerful than they! With your help, we could—” Instantly, Ji Tu shook his head.
“I thought you would say that. I am sorry, but we cannot help. We have determined to follow a policy of strict neutrality, with other galaxies.”
Kaine looked at the others helplessly. It didn’t seem right, but he could see their viewpoint. Meddling in other people’s affairs never brought good. It applied to galaxies, as well as to worlds, nations, or families.
“You must have large stores of energon,” MacLean said. He seemed casual, but Kaine saw the cunning in his eyes. “Perhaps we could make a deal. What are you in need of, Ji Tu—rare metals, priceless jewels, delectable foods? Name your price!”
Ji Tu smiled. “I’m story. I’m really sorry. We cannot sell you energon either.”
“Damn!” MacLean growled. “In our galaxy, everyone has a price.”
“I appeal to your sympathy,” Kylar tried hopelessly. “Surely you can’t refuse to lift a finger, when a whole galaxy’s fate is at stake—”
“Enough!” Ji Tu cut in sharply. “I will listen to no more arguments. We cannot interfere. Fight your own battle. We are outfitting your ship with food and air supplies and fuel, to enable you to return safely to your galaxy. Beyond that, we can do nothing more.”
The note of finality in his tones struck the four dumb.
Ji Tu turned. “I must report this incident to our headquarters.” He placed a queer helmet over his skull. No words issued from his lips. After a moment he turned away.
ZLKZEE had said nothing so far. His beady, canny eyes had been going around the cabin. He had watched Ji Tu with narrowed eyes. “You can actually communicate all that distance to your galaxy, from here? It is a thousand times the range of our best spacion-chronon radios!”
“Simple enough,” Ji Tu returned, apparently willing to satisfy their scientific curiosity. “Psychon transmission. Projection of psychons, the units of thought. Their range is intergalactic. Our best scientists also use psychon-baths to stimulate their minds into advanced scientific research.”
“Psychons!” ZlkZee breathed, looking at the others. It was a manifestation of the super-science of this other galaxy.
Kaine started. The word was new, its implication strange. His thoughts clicked rapidly. Earth had known of neutrons, electrons and photons. The galaxy knew further of spacions, chronons and energons. The next obvious step was this. All the things of the universe reduced to primal particles.
Thought too!
Psychons—it seemed to open up a tremendous new scope of science. If only they knew more of this—
Ji Tu interrupted his clashing, eager thoughts.
“Your ship is ready. We will transfer you back immediately. Please—” He shook his head at Kaine as he seemed about to speak. “Not another word. Goodbye and good luck!”
A few minutes later, after the transfer, the alien ship dipped in farewell and then plunged away, vanishing from sight.
MacLean started their engine. It purred smoothly. “Tanks chock full of radium-oil,” he announced. “Back we go! I’d like to see a Tharkyan’s face, if he knew of this!”
“Back we go—to what?” Kylar said tonelessly. “Back to hunted, outlawed lives. Hiding for the rest of our days. No revolt can be organized for at least another thousand years.”
Kaine’s voice was bitter. “Psychons! We were at the verge of learning about them. And they might have meant something to us. Even the Tharkyans don’t suspect psychons. But it would take centuries of research to isolate them, use them—”
“Would it?” ZlkZee interrupted. “With this to go by?”
Kaine stared at the object he held up, blankly. Then he let out a yelp of amazed joy.
“The psychon-helmet! How did you get it?”
“I have eight arms,” ZlkZee said simply. “As I passed by Ji Tu on the way out, I waved five of them, distracting his attention. With another, I snatched the helmet from its hook and tucked it under my thorax. Or as MacLean would say, hid it in the long, coarse hair of my ugly misshapen body. Anyway, to be candid, I stole it.”
“You don’t think you’ll get away with it?” MacLean said sourly. “When they notice it gone, they’ll chase us down before we can say Betelgeuse.”
ZlkZee smiled strangely.
“They did notice it! Not Ji Tu, but three of his under-officers. One winked at me, the other two turned away. Our story, I suppose, struck sympathy after all. Those three will probably contrive to keep Ji Tu from noticing.”
The helmet glowed suddenly, with a cold light. ZlkZee promptly slipped the flexible headgear over his squat head.
“Ji Tu speaking. A psychon-helmet is reported missing. It undoub
tedly slipped down a ventilator and was burned in the engine exhaust. Good luck!”
“I’ll be double damned!” MacLean muttered, when ZlkZee repeated the message. “Those fellows are human!”
When the Milky Way Galaxy had enlarged and expanded to fill all the firmament before them, Kaine had wormed out no tiniest clue to the instrument’s operation.
“This helmet represents advanced science,” he announced. “Head and shoulders above anything even the Tharkyans know. It produces psychons—but how? I must know. This is only a communicator-helmet. I want to make a mind-stimulator, much more powerful. With that, the wearer would become a superscientist, as Ji Tu hinted. But it looks like first, to solve this fundamental secret, I’d need the best scientific minds of our galaxy to help!”
“We’ll contact those scientists,” Kylar promised.
BUT the promise seemed an empty one.
Reaching the fringes of the galaxy, Tharkyan Patrol ships seemed everywhere. Kaine dodged from dark nebula to dead sun, keeping from being detected by the skin of his teeth.
“Naturally, after the revolt,” Kylar said tensely, “the Tharkyans are doubly watchful for any further uprisings. All space is being patrolled rigidly. Every ship is being watched and accounted for.”
When they neared Dymoor, after narrow escapes, sentinel Patrols blocked every avenue of approach.
“If we check in anywhere, we’re sunk,” Kylar warned.
Kaine set his lips. “Hang on! We’re going to run the blockade, on the night side.”
It was ticklish work. He lowered cautiously. Suddenly a Tharkyan watchdog, spotting them on its long-range detectors, raced close.
“Halt and report!” was the message spoken by the red signal rocket that arced across the bow.
Kaine dropped his ship like a stone. Down and down it plummeted, whistling through the atmosphere. Reactions keyed to hair-line pitch, he brought the ship to a stop fifty feet above an ocean surface, dark and stormy in the night. Then, gently, he slid the craft under water, nose first, using his gravity-drive to plow a hundred miles along, like a submarine.
When he was forced to come up, before the engine short-circuited and burned out, the ship rose dripping into the air. No Tharkyan ship was in sight.
“He’s got an ocean to search, for where I came up,” Kaine grinned. “Their detectors don’t work on water. Learned that trick from them too!”
“Good work!” Kylar commended thankfully. “Now head for my garden hideaway.” He gave directions, and Kaine glided the ship low over the planet.
XIII
AT dawn, Kaine slid the ship into a leafy grove of orchard trees, and they stepped out. “This is the one place they would never suspect we’d return to, where we were captured,” Kylar reasoned.
The house was dark. Kaine’s heart beat, ringing the bell. Veloa was within.
A sleepy-eyed blackman answered the door, Kylar’s faithful servant, Korio. The white eyeballs sprang open. He stood frozen at the apparition of the four, returned from the dead.
“Ghosts!” he wailed, like any superstitious negro of Earth.
“Nonsense, Korio,” Kylar said. “Snap out of it. Hide us, quickly, in the secret basement. Then bring down food.”
Before the panel-door slit shut behind them, down below, Kaine grasped the black Dymooran’s arm. “Veloa! Where is she?”
“She’s not here,” Korio informed. “Doctor Voro took her last week to a big medical institute in Myr.”
“She’s in danger?” Kaine gulped. “Dying?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Korio returned, shortly. “I have other things on my mind. I handle this estate for Master Kylar. Taxes have gone up, to meet the new production schedule for twice as much energon-tax this year.”
And over the radio, they heard news items of conditions throughout the galaxy. Worlds of people laboring to meet the new tax burden. Interstellar trading running at a loss, with the Tharkyans confiscating whatever they pleased. Millions of beings rounded up, on suspicion of being former Legionnaires, and executed without trial.
Tharkya was mercilessly making the galaxy pay, over and over, for the bombing of its sacred soil.
“Life won’t be worth living for generations,” Kylar said dismally. “Tharkya must be downed!”
“I need those scientists, before we can do anything,” Kaine said. “How can you get them to me?”
“J don’t know—I don’t know!” Kylar groaned. “We don’t dare show ourselves, or radio them. The Tharkyans must have every communication line tapped. We might try to wait for the worst of this to blow over.”
They waited a month, their nerves grinding to shreds. It was worse, almost, than the waiting for death out in space.
“I can’t stand it,” MacLean growled one day. “I’m not built to be a worm, hiding in holes. Let’s do something!”
“Too bad you cannot spin a web, like I,” ZlkZee sympathized. He indicated the shimmering webwork that occupied one corner of the cave. Strand by strand he had meticulously spun the gossamer structure. “Isn’t it beautiful? It’s our race’s expression of art. It keeps my mind off other things.”
“Damn your web!” MacLean raged, tearing into it with his arms and legs, ripping it to pieces. “You nearly drove me mad, watching you stick it together, humming to yourself.”
The spider-man stared in shock, at his destroyed handiwork. His tiny eyes gleamed balefully. With sudden silent ferocity, he leaped at MacLean, fangs outstretched.
“Stop!” Kaine commanded.
The spider-man came on, bowled MacLean over like a doll with four club-like legs, and then leaped at his throat. Kaine leaped faster. ZlkZee turned on him. Kaine took blows without effect. He grasped the spider-man’s foremost pair of arms and bent them back till ZlkZee grunted in pain.
“Stop, you fools!” Kylar shouted, running up. “Tharkyans are outside!”
Kaine released ZlkZee and ran to the detector. It connected with the upper ground, transmitting sound and sight from above. The scene showed a Tharkyan and Dymooran stepping from an aerocar. Korio answered the door.
“Census bureau,” the Tharkyan announced, taking out a pad and electropencil.
Kylar gasped in relief. “Just the census-takers. This is census-year. I had forgotten.”
“Census-year!” Kaine whispered. “The census-takers, going from planet to planet, throughout the galaxy! Kylar, there’s our answer. If we could join the census-bureau, somehow, Tharkya would be officially taking us from world to world. It would be comparatively easy, then, to leave a message on each planet, to the scientists we need!”
“But they know us,” Kylar said doubtfully.
“A disguise,” Kaine said quickly. “Any simple disguise. They wouldn’t dream we’d walk right in their hands. But if we tried circulating through the galaxy in a ship, we’d be caught and exposed in no time. It’ll work, I tell you. It’s just crazy enough to work!”
“It is sheer daring,” Kylar mused. He nodded. “We’ll try it! I can still pull strings, secretly. The Tharkyans need assistants, for the gigantic task of censusing a galaxy. They welcome recruits. I’ll get you into the branch that picks up reports from the various worlds. They’ll start in a month’s time. Just you alone, Kaine? Would that be best?”
Kaine pondered.
“MacLean and ZlkZee with me,” he stated. “There might be problems. Three heads are better than one.” He turned. “That is, if they want to—together.” MacLean looked sheepishly at the spider-man, then stuck out his hand. “It was just nerves. Shake?”
“Which one?” asked ZlkZee, extending four paws.
Kaine grinned, then turned back. “It’s up to you, Kylar, to do the rest. Where can we set up a secret laboratory?”
“We already have it,” Kylar said. “It’s on a planet called—Earth!”
“Earth!” Kaine and MacLean gasped in chorus.
Kylar nodded. “The Legion established it, in your South America, ten years ago. Many o
f our guns were manufactured there. Earth is the latest Tharkyan colony, the one least suspected by them to harbor a Legion outpost. That was our reason. All the scientists you contact must be sent there. I’ll have things prepared.”
A MONTH later, three figures embarked for Tharkya in a census bureau ship.
With greenish-dyed hair, a practiced accent, and swathed silken clothing, the two Earthmen easily passed for native Dymoorans—to Tharkyans at least. Terrance Kaine and Lon MacLean, arch-conspirators, were of Earth, not Dymoor, in the Tharkyan records. ZlkZee was bleached to an albino-shade, posing as a member of the “white race” of his planet. Simple disguise, but therefore cleverly deceptive. More elaborate preparations would have been hard to live up to.
“You look like a pale nightmare,” MacLean vouched to the spider-man.
“You look,” ZlkZee retorted, “like what was eaten to produce that nightmare!” Kaine silenced them. “Keep in character,” he warned. “Simple-minded clerks who joined the census-bureau to see the universe.”
The ship, one of similar hundreds, worked its way through allotted sectors, picking up reports. It stopped at each world’s main city or center, where the previous population census had been completed. It was a statistical job gigantic in scope. A million worlds to file away in the records of Tharkya.
Routine labors occupied the three men while the ship cruised from planet to planet. A staff of a hundred, of which they were part, compiled figures, crossindexes, references. They were allowed an hour of leisure at each stop-over on a world.
During this hour, the message was delivered, to that world’s greatest scientist known to be sympathetic to the Legion’s cause. The method was simple, infallible. ZlkZee’s hypnotic powers were used.
Standing on a street comer, he would fasten his glittering eyes on the nearest being of that particular world. Silently, he would command that mind to go to the nearest public communication station and send a message.
The message was uniform, on all worlds:
“Psychon lecture taking place on Earth, sector N-99, through the auspices of the InterGalactic Science Society. You are cordially invited to attend, (signed) President Wyrwyn, D.G., Ph.D., S.Sn., L.F.”