Dr. West cried out from the pain in his chest. He felt an abstract brain dying. Diagrammatically, he saw the vital differences in electric potential of neuron cells leaking out like water until all were level and in stasis. Unconsciousness. No directional electron flow. Random movement of free electrons up through the cell walls. If there had been an electroencephalographic machine available, it would have graphed this brain as clinically dead.
For the electrons which had outlined the brain's pattern, Dr. West saw their freed movements of "escape" were not wholly random. They were moving upward because of the repelling pressure of gravity upon their whirling satellites, the unknown symbols. And the orbits of the unknown symbols still overlapped adjoining symbols' orbits, so that the whole pattern which had been in the brain still held its shape.
"This is the spirit?" Dr. West cried out in realization. Out of the diagrammatic brain, perhaps representing a dead Esk, rose the whole intricate pattern of the unknown symbols like the skeleton of the Esk's consciousness and memory. It retained its general shape even as the free electrons were skipping upward from one temporary molecular perch to another as they rose from the dead Esk's skull into the air. The overlapping orbits of the billions of unknown symbols maintained the general shape reminiscent of a brain even though the brain pattern was spreading as the electrons skipped upward through the thinning atmosphere.
Atomic perches were further apart in the stratosphere. Yet the enlarging orbit of each unknown symbol around its electron still overlapped the orbits of adjoining unknown symbols. The shape of a man's brain pattern, with all its intricate electroskeletal pathways, still was being maintained even though the diameter of his brain pattern had spread to hundreds of yards.
Continuously repelled outward by the diminishing force of gravity, the man's brain pattern was spreading over the sparse atoms in the near vacuum beyond the Moon. Now the immense brain pattern was being driven out of the solar system by the gravitational force from the sun, out into the hard vacuum between the stars, where each Esk's mind pattern was expanding larger than a planet.
"Are they still alive?" Dr. West cried aloud. "Are they conscious?"
In his chest, in his mind he was given the feeling of pressure of billions of Esks' patterns like invisible balloons packing together due to the speed of their individual expansions. Their individual brain patterns could not overlap, perhaps because within each brain pattern the orbits of the unknown symbols had developed characteristics unique to that individual. Pressing outward against each other in every direction, the brain patterns pushed outward from Earth in contiguous expansion through the solar system. Except where repelled by gravity of the planets and the sun, the brain patterns filled the solar system like invisible bubble-foam. Beyond the solar system, they were pressing outward in every direction into the blackness of space.
Toward the gravitationless void between two distant stars, the outermost patterns were expanding toward -- Dr. West's heart hammered with excitement -- toward an immense extrusion from another group of strange patterns stretching in from vast light-year dimensions of the Galaxy. This immensity was not born of Esks. Its billions of strange patterns extending had reached the brain patterns of the Esks.
Dr. West understood from whence his mind-pictures had been transmitted. Already the billions of Esks who must have died a year ago on every continent of the Earth, while his Esks clawed in frustrated rapture at their tunnel, had spread across the intervening blackness. From galactic space, contact through those Esks and through his Esks who had just died in the Great Square, still crowding from Earth into the stratosphere, had been made with Dr. West. He feared this contact would be lost forever when gravity forced away the last mind patterns of the Esks from Earth. "Wait!"
"Wait -- " He did not know to whom he spoke.
His awareness was lifted through the blackness and dazzle of space. As if overwhelmed in a psychedelic journey, he soared outward toward the rim of the Galaxy. He remembered rapture. He remembered his passion of years ago when he strained with Marthalik in his arms. Again he was falling toward that Strange Sun. Again, as if he were sharing the subconscious dreams of the Esks, he was searching for the green planet.
Without Marthalik to support him, he fell past mountainous asteroids dotted with white domes. Like colossal barnacles, they opened their gigantic green nets toward the strange sun below. As if trapping the sun's radiant energy, they turned their chlorophyllous green nets. And he glimpsed an opening in the whiteness of one of these rock-digesting domes. It was expelling spherical white eggs.
With unfolding purple fringes like immense curved sails, these gigantic organic-lime eggs slowly drifted away from the pressure of the strange sun's light, their purple sails diminishing into the blackness. Its fleshy sail burned off , he thought in recognition, when its white shell fell through our atmosphere smashing down on the Boothia Peninsula --
He was falling toward the third planet. The planet was brown and dead.
For him, the picturization spun backward in time, and the planet became green and densely populated. Slender and with a seemingly infinite variety of specialized organs, nevertheless they were all of one species, capable of skilled psionic electron adjustments of the genes of their unborn. He felt the frightened thoughts of a varied population. Rich in telepathic empathy, they had achieved gentle social control of themselves. But they had not achieved space flight. Their evolutionary climb was trapped on their single planet when the viral catastrophe exterminated them. All together they died. Their bodies had decomposed while their planet turned brown.
Their strange brain patterns rose across Dr. West's inner vision, expanding out through their solar system, past the minimum gravity asteroids into the emptiness of space. His heart struggled with the nervous expectation of a miracle.
But death, irrevocable and complete, loomed at him. He saw that their brain patterns, like the patterns of the Esks, simply were rising in nonconscious death.
The only movement was outward expansion. He was shown a single brain pattern outlined in glowing dots. He knew each dot represented an electron surrounded by the activity of its whirling satellite, the unknown symbol whose orbit-shell still overlapped the orbits of adjoining symbols, so that the dots remained in contact, the pattern retained its cohesiveness. As the pattern expanded, so did the diameters of its dot-orbits of the unknown symbols connecting its electrons. Intricate bead necklaces of dots still formed the electroskeletal pathways of what had been a brain.
But there was no flow of dots along the pathways, within the pattern no circulation of dots analogous to consciousness. Without an energy source, the dots simply retained their positions relative to the whole pattern. The only movement was expansion. Like the mental patterns of the Esks and everything that had ever died, in their billions these dead brain patterns were expanding outward through the universe in eternal death.
But we are alive! The immense thought overlapped his consciousness. We have made death reversible. Almost --
Dr. West was made to feel their crowded patterns pressing against each other, each still lacking internal dot circulation and consciousness.
Due to their vast numbers, each was receiving more and more exterior pressure because the sum of their individual expansion rates was greater than the expansion of the outer surface of their whole group. Either there was a limiting velocity for brain patterns, which those on the outer surface had reached, or the faint gravitational fields of surrounding stars supplied at least a temporary caging effect. Something was maintaining a pressure within the group.
Within the vast group, he felt the individual patterns being pressed and pressing warmer and warmer against each other. Not warmth in a human sense, this pressure-energy was being released not as warmth but as movement of the symbolic dots within their brain patterns. Along familiar pathways, the bead strings of dots were flowing faster and faster throughout each brain pattern in a circulation similar to consciousness. We are alive!
Dr. W
est's erratic heart struggled with excitement. With the primitive desire of LIFE, his mind and body contorted with joy.
But then he saw that the pressure-energy was provided by the repelling gravitational forces from the stars. Between the stars, in all directions, the vast group continued to expand outward into the infinity of space. Another massive pain cramped his blood-starving heart muscle. As if personally defeated, he saw their diminishing pressure-energy; unconsciousness and final death were awaiting as the finite group expanded in the infinite emptiness of space.
He understood their fatal problem. Although repelled by gravity, they were spreading out between the stars along the channels of least gravitational pressure. Already the group's immense outer surface had expanded so many light-years through the Galaxy, there was lessening of the vital pressure within. As they expanded, the pressure which gave them the energy of consciousness could only decline. The number in the group was finite. Space seemed infinite, he thought sadly.
To maintain and stabilize their inner pressure, they would have to fill all of space. But their brain patterns could not reproduce themselves. Their own numbers could not increase. Their individual expansion rates were reaching their limits. As pressure-energy against a brain pattern lessened, the inner circulation of dots of consciousness slowed.
Even though the brain patterns of other dead creatures arisen forever from a billion planets throughout the Galaxy were being swept up and by inertia packing against the outer surface of the expanding group, the pressure within continued to decline. For all, death was returning.
Now Dr. West thought he understood the purpose for the Esks within the larger purpose, which was immortality. He understood the purpose of dying in cohesive billions at one time, all over one planet, the Esks -- "Their brain patterns fill a little more of space," he whispered, "to help maintain the pressure of life for YOU."
But they too are alive, the immense thoughts soared. Billions of -- souls rising from your planet into immortality.
"You gave the Esks life on my planet," Dr. West sighed, "and you have taken them away." He realized those strange patterns out there were unable, because of repelling gravity, to reach in and kill the life-forms on a billion planets. "To increase the pressure, to maintain your consciousness, if you were able would you have murdered all of us?" Gravity kept them away . "You gave so little. One white shell failing toward the Boothia -- "
You! Man of so little faith in life over death, see! Believe! Eternal life is triumphing for everyone. For you --
In his mind he was shown, distant in space, an insensible white dome feeding in perpetual isolation on its rocky asteroid. As it always had, the dome emitted a white egg. As the egg unfolded its purple sail, Dr. West realized it must be drifting through the invisible brain patterns.
"You reached in," Dr. West muttered. "Against the gravity of Earth, you reached us indirectly by means of -- "
He was shown the symbolic lines of dots from space overlapping the huge white egg as it drifted through the Galaxy. The overlapping mind pattern was concentrating a node of dots within the immature reproductive cells of the egg. Within an incomplete sexual cell, within one chromosome, he saw the glowing dots flowing through the genes of the egg's inherited characteristics.
As his view magnified within a gene, he saw the glowing dots flowing through the gene's complex molecules of life. As if he were falling inward among vibrating atoms, he saw the glowing necklaces of symbolic dots among the molecules. He saw these controlled lines of electrons flowing, influencing the movements of other electrons among the ionized atoms of the genetic molecules. Here within the gene, within its molecules, he saw the egg's characteristics of inheritance were being altered.
Not like cosmic radiation causing a random mutation, here a whole set of interrelated characteristics had been altered purposefully for a purpose beyond the egg.
Outwardly unaffected, the egg sailed on through space. Instinctively, its sun-sails altered its course toward another drifting egg in their age-old necessity for inheritance variation by mating, for adaptive survival of their species. Mating would have been impossible for the adult white domes immobile on their scattered asteroids. Only in the drifting egg stage could they meet. In space, he was shown two stony shells on converging courses. The two impenetrable eggs bumped. Between them flashed lightning. Exchanging electrical imprints of their genetic essence, they had mated for an instant. They drifted apart into the vastness of the Galaxy. Each carried the new characteristics the strange brain patterns had designed for them to transmit throughout the universe.
Within the huge white egg, he was shown that the incomplete sex cell by mating had been doubled. Doubling itself, the new half completed the whole. One half resembled the genetic arrangement from the other egg. The completed cell replicated while the huge shell drifted, and on collision course, smashed against an unoccupied asteroid. The new dome grew, and in time it began to emit eggs with unnatural rapidity.
Opening their purple sails, the altered eggs sailed unnatural courses. In the past, sailing by light-pressure from the stars through space, eggs always had steered away from gravitational fields. For species survival this was necessary because the white domes could feed and grow only on asteroids of minimal gravity. But genetically altered eggs steered toward gravity forces, toward stars and then away from these blazing suns when radiation stabbed with unbearable intensity through the flesh within the inner shell.
Down toward a billion planets the aberrant eggs were plunging, now attracted by gravity but at the last moment repelled by the radiation belts trapped by magnetic forces around gravity planets. Readjusting their sun-sails, deflected eggs streaked on orbiting courses above the radiation belts shaped by the planets' magnetic lines of force.
Down through the polar funnel in the Earth's radiation belts, down through the inward turning of the Earth's magnetic lines of force, THE egg had plunged toward the North Magnetic Pole. Its fleshy sun-sail burning away in the atmosphere, the egg had smashed down on the Boothia Peninsula. In time turned back forty-two years, Dr. West was shown Peterluk, with a puzzled smile, poking the fleshy contents of the inner shell with his finger.
No mind pattern of the unknown symbols was waiting to invade Peterluk's genes. The Earth's repelling gravitons would have driven out any stowaway brain pattern while the egg still was above the ionosphere.
But the life-force designed by the strange brain patterns was there. Indirectly they could cause mutations in Earth's sanctuary.
Within the egg's electrogenetic material, its altered chromosomes quivered. The slippery outer mass which Peterluk's finger touched had a cellular consistency similar to the batteries of an electric eel. This egg had not mated. It had not discharged. Since the parent domes are stationary on their asteroids, it is only through the drifting eggs that genetic imprints are exchanged -- with electric jolts!
Dr. West felt Peterluk's surprise and chagrin to regain consciousness lying on his back on the cold rocks of the Burned Place. "Evil jelly flesh!" Peterhtk's voice echoed through time as he struggled to his feet. "May foxes devour you!" He had fled.
That night, Peterluk did not confess his mysterious fainting weakness to his wife. Boasting, he warmed himself in her smile, and in her arms. In the rhythmically gasping darkness, of the millions of his sperm the successful one to penetrate Eevvaalik's monthly ovum carried his altered chromosomes. The first Esk was conceived with the designed characteristics of adaptability, fetal growth efficiency resulting in a one-month gestation period, a rapid maturation rate with the potentiality of rapid multiplication -- and an unlit fuse. This fuse was the hope of the strange brain patterns distant in space. On Earth, population maximum would ignite it. As long as the delicate psychic emanations of the Esks increased, their fuses were dormant. When their total emanation shrouding the Earth no longer increased, the Esk population would have reached its zenith; the maximum number had been achieved. The physiological fuse within each Esk on the surface of the Earth had ig
nited.
Instinctively joining hands for death, the Esks had fallen-risen. Their freed brain patterns had ballooned into space. Too well, Dr. West understood the purpose for which the Esks had died.
But they are alive! the great thoughts surged through Dr. West's brain. We -- they -- everything which has ever lived will become alive. When we have filled the universe there will be eternal life.
From distant space the great thoughts flowed --
Dr. West felt their hope and excitement as he lay in the golden dust of the Great Square, his contorted body gasping for breath. From his heart the massive pain so filled his chest that he felt himself being squeezed out of himself.
The Eskimo Invasion Page 45