He screamed, or seemed to scream, and the planet and its denizens faded out, as if the hand within his brain had turned the viewing lens out of proper focus.
He was back, entire, in the land of fireplace and of storeroom, with the transo machine standing in its corner. The door that went into the store was opening and Grant was coming through.
Grant moved out into the room and eased the door behind him to its dosed position. Then he swung around and stood silently, huge and stolid, staring at the man upon the floor.
“Mr. Blaine,” he said, speaking softly. “Mr. Blaine, are you awake?”
Blaine did not answer.
“Your eyes are open, Mr. Blaine. Is there something wrong with you?”
“Not a thing,” said Blaine. “I was just lying here and thinking.”
“Good thoughts, Mr. Blaine?”
“Very good, indeed.”
Grant moved forward slowly, catfooted, as if he might be stalking something. He reached the table and picked up the bottle. He put it to his mouth and let it gurgle.
He put the bottle down.
“Mr. Blaine, why don’t you get up? We could sit around and talk and have a drink or two. I don’t get to talk to people much, they come here and buy, of course, but they don’t talk to me any more than they just have to.”
“No, thanks,” said Blaine. “I’m quite comfortable.”
Grant moved from the table and sat down in one of the chairs before the fireplace.
“It was a shame,” he said, “you didn’t go back to Fishhook with Mr. Rand. Fishhook is an exciting place.”
“You’re quite right,” Blaine told him, replying automatically, not paying much attention.
For now he knew—lie knew where he’d got that memory, where he’d picked up the mental picture of chat other planer. He had gotten it from the neat stacks of information he’d picked up from the Pinkness. He, himself, of course, had never visited the planet, but the Pinkness had.
And there was more to the memory than just the magic lantern picture of the place. There was, as well, a file of data about the planet and its life. But disorderly, not yet sorted out, and very hard to get at.
Grant reached out a hand and tapped his fingers on the robe. It gave forth a sound like a muted drum.
Grant leaned back into his chair, smirking just a little.
“Well,” he demanded, “how do you like it, Mr. Blaine?”
“I’ll let you know,” Blaine told him, “when I get my hands on you.”
Grant got up from the chair and walked back to the table, following an exaggerated, mocking path around the stretched-out Blaine. He picked up the bottle and had another slug.
“You won’t get your hands on me,” he said, “because in just another minute I’m going to shove you into the transo over there and back you go to Fishhook.”
He took another drink and set the bottle back.
“I don’t know what you done,” he said. “I don’t know why they want you. But I got my orders.”
He half lifted the bottle, then thought better of it. He shoved it back to the center of the table. He walked forward and stood towering over Blaine.
There was another picture, of another planet, and there was a thing that walked along what might have been a road. The thing was nothing such as Blaine had ever seen before. It looked something like a walking cactus, but it was not a cactus and there was every doubt that it was vegetable. But neither the creature nor the road were too significant. What was significant was that following at the creature’s heels, gamboling awkwardly along the could-be-road, were a half dozen of the robes.
Hunting dogs, thought Blaine. The cactus was a hunter and these were his hunting dogs. Or he was a trapper and these things were his traps. Robes, domesticated from that other jungle planet, perhaps picked up by some space-going trader, tough enough to survive stellar radiation, and brought to this planet to be bartered for something else of value.
Perhaps, Blaine thought wildly, it was from this very planet that the robe now wrapped around him had been found and taken back to Fishhook.
There was something else pounding in his brain—some sort of phrase, a very alien phrase, perhaps a phrase from the cactus language. It was barbarous in its twisting of the tongue and it made no sense, but as Grant stooped with his hands outstretched to lift him, Blaine shouted out the phrase with all his strength.
And as he shouted, the robe came loose. It no longer held him. Blaine rolled, with a powerful twist of body, against the legs of the man who was bending over him.
Grant went over, face forward on the floor, with a roar of rage. Blaine, clawing his way to his hands and knees, broke free and lunged to his feet out beyond the table.
Grant swarmed off the floor. Blood dripped slowly from his nose where it had struck against the boards. One hand was raw with blood oozing from the knuckles where his hand had scraped.
He took a quick step forward and his face was twisted with a double fear.
Then he lunged, head lowered, arms outthrust, fingers spread, driving straight for Blaine. He was big and powerful and he was driven by an utter desperation that made him doubly dangerous since he would be careless of any danger to himself.
Blaine pivoted to one side—not quite far enough. One of Grant’s outstretched hands caught at his shoulder, slipped off it, the fingers dragging, clawing wildly, and closing on Blaine’s shirt. The cloth held momentarily, throwing Blaine off balance, then the fabric parted and ripped loose.
Grant swung around, then flung forward once again, a snarl rising in his throat. Blaine, his heels dug into the floor, brought his fist up fast, felt the jolt of it hitting bone and flesh, sensed the shiver that went through Grant’s body as the big man staggered back.
Blaine swung again and yet again, following Grant, blows that started from his knees and landed with an impact that made his arm a dead thing from the elbow down—blows that shook and staggered Grant and drove him back, relentlessly.
It was no anger that drove Blaine, although there was anger in him, nor fear, nor confidence, but a plain and simple logic that this was his only chance, that he had to finish the man in front of him or himself be finished.
He had gotten in one lucky blow and he must never stop. No rough and tumble fighter, he would lose everything he’d gained if he let Grant regain his balance, if he ever gave him a chance to rush him again or land a solid blow.
Grant tottered blindly, hands clawing frantically at the air, groggy with the blows. Deliberately, mercilessly, Blaine aimed at the chin.
The blow smacked hollowly and Grant’s head snapped back, pivoting to one side. His body became a limp thing without any bone or muscle that folded in upon itself. Grant slumped and hit the floor, lying like a rag doll robbed of its inner strength of sawdust.
Blaine let his arms fall to his side. He felt the stinging of the cuts across his knuckles and the dead, dull ache that went through his punished muscles.
He’d got in the first good blow and that had been nothing but pure and simple luck. And he had found the key that unlocked the robe and had that been a piece of luck as well?
He thought about it and he knew that it had not been luck, that it had been good and solid information plucked from the file of facts dumped into his brain when the creature on that planet five thousand light-years distant had traded minds with him. The phrase had been a command to the robe to get its clutches off whatever it had trapped. Sometime in its mental wanderings across unimagined space, the Pinkness had soaked up a wondrous amount of information about the cactus people. And out of this incredible junk heap of miscellaneous facts the terribly discerning brain that belonged to humankind had been able to select the one undistinguished fact which at a given moment had high survival value.
Blaine stood and stared at Grant and there was still no movement in the man.
And what did he do now, Blaine wondered.
He’d get out of here as quickly as he could.
He would ru
n again, of course, Blaine told himself with bitterness. Running was the one thing he could do really well. He’d been running now for weeks on end and there seemed no end to it.
Some day, he knew, he would have to stop the running. Somewhere he’d have to make a stand, for the salvation of his self-respect if for no other reason.
But that time had not yet come. Tonight he’d run again, but this time he’d run with purpose.
He turned to get the bottle off the table and as he moved, he bumped into the robe, which was humping slowly on the floor. He kicked it savagely and it skidded weakly, almost wetly, into a lump in the fireplace corner.
Blaine grabbed the bottle in his fist and went across the room to the pile of goods stacked in the warehouse section.
He found a bale of goods and prodded it and it was soft and dry. He poured the contents of the bottle over it, then threw the bottle back into the corner of the room.
Back at the fireplace, he lifted the screen away, found the shovel and scooped up flaming coals. He dumped the coals on top the liquor-wetted goods, then flung the shovel from him and stepped back.
Little blue flames licked along the bale. They spread and grew.
It was all right, Blaine knew.
Given five good minutes and the place would be in flames. The warehouse would be an inferno and there’d be nothing that could stop it. The transo would buckle and melt down and the trail to Fishhook would be closed.
He bent and grasped the collar of Grant’s shirt and tugged him to the door. He opened the door and hauled the man out into the yard, some thirty feet distance from the building.
Grant groaned and tried to get to hands and knees, then collapsed upon the ground.
Blaine stood watching the windows of the Post fill with the red of roaring flames.
Blaine turned and padded softly down the alley.
Now, he told himself, would be a splendid time to make a call on Finn. In just a little while the town would be agog with the burning of the Post and the police much too busy and officious to bother with a man out on the street in violation of the curfew.
TO BE CONCLUDED
Conclusion. Compromise and co-operation are not always possible—for you can compromise only within the limits of what can be endured. And you cant compromise with pure murder . . .
SYNOPSIS
Man is physically barred from space by solar radiations, but he has found another way to go there. Through the use of paranormal kinetics, he is able to go anywhere, absolutely anywhere, he wishes—in mind, but not in body.
The utilization of paranormal kinetics was developed by a group of researchers, against the laughter of the world, after science had failed to get men to the stars. Out of this effort has arisen a center in northern Mexico, called Fishhook, because it is concerned with a fishing out into space for whatever may be found there.
Fishhook, sending out exploratory and exploitation machines with the minds of the men who travel to the stars through the aid of what are known as star machines, has found much there. Fishhook is a vast complex of research and manufacturing centers, which sell the products of the stars through a worldwide chain of retail outlets known as Trading Posts.
Fishhook is hated by the world, a hate compounded of envy, fear, economic pressure and a newly-risen superstition, but the world can’t get along without Fishhook. The superstition has arisen through misunderstanding which views paranormal kinetics as magic. Once again men are afraid of the dark. They paint hex signs on their homes to ward off goblin, witch and werewolf. Urged on by fanatical reformers, they hunt down the paranormal people—called parries—who live outside of Fishhook.
The story begins some hundred years after Fishhook was first established. Shepherd Blaine, an explorer for Fishhook, finds on a far planet a strange intelligence which he dubs the Pinkness. By way of greeting, the Pinkness exchanges minds with him, so that Blaine becomes two persons—himself and the Pinkness.
Back in Fishhook, Blaine is forced to flee, for he has been warned by an old friend, Godfrey Stone, that if he ever turned alien he should take it on the lam. Stone himself had never been heard from after phoning Blaine the warning.
Eluding Kirby Rand, Fishhook security chief, Blaine is aided in his escape by Harriet Quimby, a mysterious newspaper reporter. Across the border, in, the United States the two of them are attacked by a mob, which recognizes them as parries. A sheriff intercedes and saves them from the mob, running Harriet out of town and jailing Blaine.
Blaine is visited in his cell by Father Flanagan, the parish priest, who is curious about paranormal kinetics. That evening the mob comes for Blaine, takes him out to hang him. Blaine escapes when the Pinkness part of his mind is able to transport his body a half an hour or so into the past.
The past is a barren place. Life, Blaine realizes, rides the crest of the present. All that exists in the past are the shadows and the skeletons of the inorganic and the dead.
Returning to the present, Blaine falls in with a frightened trucker by the name of Riley. Riley is driving a mysterious cargo in an old truck. The truck is covered by hex signs and Riley carries a shotgun loaded with silver shot as protection against the imagined dwellers in the darkness.
Harriet had told Blaine to meet her at Pierre, South Dakota, and when Riley offers to give Blaine a lift, Blaine eagerly accepts when he learns the trip will take him near South Dakota,
Almost to the Missouri River, the two are waylaid by a coven of witches, actually a group of teen-age paranormal levitators out for a midnight lark. Blaine prevents Riley from shooting them, meets one of the group, a beautiful girl named Anita Andrews. She offers to help him, but he prefers to stay with Riley.
Riley, frightened and suspicious of Blaine, however, ditches him at the first opportunity. Blaine finds a hiding place and while there starts thinking back along the chain of circumstances which has brought him here.
Thinking of his meeting with the Pinkness, he is suddenly back with the Pinkness again—he has traveled to the planet in mind without the benefit of a star machine.
Talking with the Pinkness, he realized that the creature is deathless, that it has no memory of its beginning, no concept of an end, and that it has visited mentally millions of planets scattered through billions of cubic light-years. The mind is cluttered with a terrific amount of information which it is incapable of organizing and using. Blaine realizes that he, through virtue of possessing a carbon copy of the Pinkness’ mind, possesses this same information.
When he returns from the visit with the Pinkness, he finds that he is in a hospital. His body, apparently in deep coma, has been found and taken there. In the bed next to him is Riley, dying of injuries received when his truck went off the road. Before he dies, Riley tries to give Blaine a message for someone named Finn. The name rings a bell and Blaine remembers a former Fishhook explorer by the name of Lambert Finn who one day came home from the stars a screaming maniac.
Blaine is rescued from the hospital by Godfrey Stone and Harriet Quimby, who have actually come in search of Riley, since, it develops, the mysterious cargo which Riley had been carrying consisted of a star machine which Stone had stolen from Fishhook.
Stopping at a motel a short distance out of town, Stone fills Blaine in on what has happened since that night he phoned the warning. Stone had been captured and taken by Fishhook to a pleasure resort internment camp where the internees live a life of luxury and ease. Lambert Finn, held in the same camp years before, had escaped. Stone also escaped and is now engaged in building up an underground movement which is aimed at bringing the non-Fishhook parries into their own rights. He feels that Fishhook cannot retain the monopoly on paranormal kinetics, that they must be allowed to demonstrate to the world that they can make the world a better place to live.
Blaine and Harriet go to eat, leaving Stone in the motel Harriet explains that Stone is obsessed by a culture which he found among the stars—an almost perfect state of living. He feels Man can reach this state, but only
through free use of paranormal kinetics.
Finn, on the other band, had found an utterly evil place and is equally convinced that men must stay huddled on the earth rather than going out to the stars and becoming exposed to evil such as he found. Therefore he is preaching up and down the land, trying to lead a purge against both Fishhook and the non-Fishhook parries. In consequence, he and Stone are bitter enemies.
Back at the motel room, Harriet and Blaine find Stone murdered, realize that the police have been tipped off and that they will be implicated in the killing. Harriet tells Blaine that the police have found the star machine which Riley was carrying. She feels that Finn has had a band in whatever is happening.
Blaine, remembering that the parry village—a form of ghetto—in which Anita Andrews lives is nearby, phones her and she comes with a band of levitators to spirit Stone’s body away even as the police arrive.
Blaine and Harriet go into the town where the star machine is held. They locate it in an old highway shed, learn that Finn is in town and plans on holding a great rally the next day, using the star machine as a horrible example to impress the people with the evil of the parries.
While Harriet waits outside, Blaine enters the shed and takes the machine into the future. Safely trapped in the future, the machine leaves in the present nothing at a mocking shadow which, Blaine hopes, will serve as a boomerang against Finn.
Returning to the present, Blaine finds Kirby Rand, Fishhook security chief, in the shed. Rand also has been tracking down the machine. He seems to believe that Blaine has had a hand in stealing it.
Outside, Blaine finds that Harriet has disappeared. Since he has no place to stay and there is a tight after-dark curfew clamped on the town—a normal procedure because of the fear of darkness—Rand invites Blaine to spend the night at the local Trading Post.
The Complete Serials Page 77