by Eando Binder
Hillory picked up Jorzz’s faint telepathic cries from a mile down. “Rise! Rise, you clumsy thing…stop sinking…rise.”
Jorzz was putting all his psi-power into it, but it could never counteract the immense psi-energy Hillory had piled up with his dozen tektite “pumps”. It was a losing battle—for the mind-alien.
With a telepathic curse, Jorzz gave up. Hillory knew that his free mind had abandoned the sinking robot form, now ten miles down and going at almost rocket speed through the crust of earth, heading for its final eternal haven at the planet’s center where zero-g existed.
Hillory had separated Jorzz from his steel fortress. A big step. But the next step was even more vital. Hillory again drew down power through the psi-crystals, frantically increasing it to a flood.
Then, holding his breath, he gave the verbal command that would be translated in some subtle manner into psi-action—SEPARATE MY MIND FROM MY BODY…MAKE ME A FREE MIND…NOW!
Instant pain shot through Hillory’s head. An intense pain beyond description. He felt as if some great tongs were yanking and trying to pull his brain out by the roots. But he knew what it was—psi-forces severing the tight bond between his mind and the host body it was born into. And clung to, stubbornly.
Hillory now felt as if he—his mental self—were being stretched out like a rubber band. The agony went beyond his sense of feeling, like a sound rising in pitch beyond the human ear. He felt nothing now except the ferocious tugging force.
Then suddenly there was a silent whung like a rubber band snapping loose. Hillory’s senses blacked out—hearing, sight, smell, taste, feeling. But to his amazement, he was now “seeing” more clearly than ever before. And “hearing” with extraordinary sharpness. Extrasensory perception…ESP…was his, unimpeded.
Though prepared, it gave him a little shock to see his body—his physical body—lying inert on the floor, the tektite crown askew. The body looked dead, lifeless. But Hillory knew that its life processes were merely suspended.
But the real Hillory—his mental identity—was hanging in mid-air in the lab, as if divorced entirely from the pull of gravity. To his astonishment, Hillory looked down and saw that he still had a body—a wraithlike naked body—exactly like his material body.
Fleetingly, he thought how this followed the paranormal thesis that within the human body existed an exact formfitting “astral body” which was infinitely less dense than living flesh. Paired throughout life, these two “bodies” separated at death—but there was no death really. The astral form, the real person, lived on….
Hillory shook those thoughts away. No time now to speculate on those lofty, soul-shaking concepts. He had a job to do. He was now a free mind and could battle the free mind of Jorzz, on equal terms.
He tensed and swam a bit through the air as he heard a rushing sound from below and then an ectoplasmic form shot up through the hole in the floor that the robot had made.
For the first time, with his psychic eyes, Hillory saw his enemy in human form, a wraithlike duplicate of his living form. Big and broad-shouldered, Jorzz had thick arms and legs. His short neck supported a broad head with fleshy lips, a jutting chin, and two coal-black eyes that burned in towering rage.
A telepathic hiss came from the alien. “You have ruined my present plans, earthling. For this I shall destroy you. I’ll draw down great psi-forces and blast you into oblivion.”
Jorzz pointed his finger and a chain of sparkles extended through the air between them touching Hillory and making him tingle all over agonizingly. Hillory realized it was some strange form of psi-electricity that could electrocute him in his pure-mind form.
Hillory was also drawing down psi-energy from the universal pool and found he could now do it without the tektite crystals. He hastily erected a ghost-like shield in front of him that warded off the livid sparks.
“Two can play this game, Jorzz,” said Hillory grimly, and at the same time he used psi-force to hurl the shield at his enemy. It struck him quite like a steel shield would and hurled him back.
Jorzz recovered and snarled. Then he suddenly changed his form into that of a towering monster with long tentacles. This was a complete surprise to Hillory, not knowing of the eerie powers of a pure-mind entity. The tentacles lashed forth and whipped around him, squeezing ferociously. Hillory did not feel his breath gasping out—he had no breath. But he could feel his psi-body being slowly crushed. Something akin to having his body mangled would result, and the ending would be death to his mental form.
Struggling desperately, Hillory willed himself to turn into a serpentine form, which he instantly did. He was then able to wriggle out of the monsters clutches.
They both snapped back to their psi-forms, and Hillory stood for a moment dizzy from the mauling he had received.
“Ah, you are weakened,” gloated Jorzz, quickly forming a huge ectoplasmic hand that rammed forward and clipped Hillory on his chin, knocking him off his feet. As Jorzz came rushing at him with an ectoplasmic spear, Hillory realized he had to act fast.
Summoning up psi-energy, Hillory improvised on the spur of the moment and created a dazzling globe of blinding light. Unable to see momentarily, Jorzz stumbled and thrust wildly with his spear, missing Hillory by a wide margin.
The blinding ball and spear vanished quickly. Such ectoplasmic or psi-formed phenomena could not be sustained for more than a short time. Hillory saw that he was at a disadvantage. The pure-mind state was entirely new to him, whereas Jorzz had experienced it for thousands of years and knew what weird manifestations he could produce. Hillory would have to use his wits and second-guess his enemy until he felt more confident in his new role.
Hillory also knew that none of this could be seen or heard by anyone in Serendipity Labs. The human eye was blind to such psychic activity. It was like two ghosts battling, having no material effect on their surroundings. No furniture would be smashed or windows broken. It was all taking place on the etheric plane, divorced from the earth plane, though they could see everything around them.
Jorzz stood blinking to clear his eyes, after the blinding light. “Clever, earthling,” he conceded. “But you have no idea of the many psi-tricks I can use. And here they come, faster than you can avoid them….”
Twin beams of a peculiar color shot from Jorzz’s eyes, turning into a stream of steely daggers aimed straight at Hillory’s heart. Hillory instantly folded his flexible body at the hips in a right-angle and bent backwards. The daggers spun over him and faded.
Flashingly, Hillory saw his only hope—to make Jorzz use up his psi-energy reserves as fast as possible. So Hillory willed himself to flit up in the air. He oozed through the lab building’s roof as if it weren’t there and soared into the sky.
“Coward,” yelled Jorzz, in hot pursuit. “My barrage will still get you.”
Jorzz began hurling forth an assortment of deadly things—spinning saw-blades, spiked clubs, axes and hatchets, even bombs and missiles. Though modeled after material weapons, they were made of psi-matter and could quite definitely wound Hillory if they struck him.
Flying through the air, Hillory dodged wildly. Queer, how the astral body inherited many of the physical body’s attributes, such as reflexes. Hillory relied on them to escape Jorzz’s barrage of death.
But as a buzz-saw blade whistled narrowly past his ear, Hillory desperately flew down into a mountain, penetrating through its rock, hoping to lose himself from his relentless pursuer.
“Fool. I simply switch on clairvoyant vision,” roared Jorzz. Twin beams shot from Jorzz’s eyes, and he kept on Hillory’s heels through the solid stone. Hillory knew he could hide nowhere from that psi-sight, nowhere on earth. How about space?
Hillory shot himself upward at mounting speed, straight toward the moon. The mind-alien’s hoarse cry sounded behind him. “I’ll follow you to the moon, the planets, the stars. You cannot escape me anywhere in the universe.”
And in open space, Hillory stood out as a clear target so that a psi-ar
row clipped his shoulder. In panic, Hillory turned down toward earth again and plunged into thick clouds, which momentarily hindered Jorzz until he focused his clairvoyant vision.
It was a grim and deadly chase as they sped back to earth. Hillory began to feel like the hunted rabbit or fox. How could he elude the vengeful alien? Hillory did not dare turn and meet him face to face—not yet. He did not know how to handle his astral form and psi-powers adequately in comparison to Jorzz’s psi-skills.
But the chase could not go on forever. He had to think of something quickly, something to turn the tables, to take Jorzz by surprise. Keeping his eyes turned backward, Hillory saw Jorzz hurl a bomb with a burning fuse. Inspiration leaped into Hillory s mind. He turned swiftly to meet the bomb and catch it, hurling it back.
It did not reach Jorzz, but it exploded near him and surrounded him with thick smoke. When the smoke cleared before the alien’s eyes, Hillory was gone.
Jorzz looked around, bewildered. “Where are you, coward?” he bellowed. “But you can’t hide from my clairvoyant vision.” Jorzz swung his eyes from side to side, scanning all areas ahead. But he saw nothing of his quarry. Puzzled, Jorzz began to walk forward, searching in all directions.
Directly behind Jorzz moved his shadow. But it was a peculiar shadow that walked upright on the ground. Besides, a pure-mind entity had no shadow.
Hillory grinned a bit to himself, at the simple trick he had pulled. While the bomb smoke had momentarily obscured the alien’s vision, Hillory had swiftly leaped behind Jorzz and darkened his skin to look like a shadow. Even if Jorzz caught a glimpse of him through the corner of his eye, he would take it for some kind of shadow of something.
Hillory followed the mind-alien’s footsteps precisely to keep from being detected. Jorzz was becoming more and more baffled, as Hillory could see by the way he rapped his knuckles against his head at times.
And this gave Hillory time to gather in potent amounts of psi-energy. Hillory finally used it to expand his hands to triple their size. Then he banged one oversized fist against the back of the alien’s head, stunning him.
Jorzz lurched around, in shocked surprise.
“I was right behind you all the time,” mocked Hillory, at the same time going into a boxer’s stance and slamming his huge fists into the alien’s face. “Better not try conjuring up weapons, Jorzz. Conserve your psi-power, what you have left, to defend yourself. This is the earth style of man-to-man fighting. Put up your dukes, as we say.”
All the while Hillory was battering Jorzz. The alien saw he had no choice and tried to strike back, but kept missing the one-time college boxing champ. Odd, thought Hillory fleetingly, that it should all end up this way—in a common brawl. Two mind-entities battling it out with etheric fists.
But the etheric blows counted against an etheric chin. With savage joy, Hillory pounded away, reducing Jorzz to a staggering mass of bruises. Any referee would have called the match as being sheer slaughter. But Hillory’s referee was his own rage.
“Recreate your evil world, eh? Have a left to the jaw. Conquer earth? A nice uppercut. Enslave the universe like a mad dog? Here’s the knockout.”
One last blow, with all of Hillory’s psi-power behind it, flattened Jorzz. He groaned a little, then lay sprawled. Hillory sat down, his head on his knees, spent.
Too late he saw the alien stir, then leap erect. Hillory realized, bitterly, that Jorzz had faked being knocked out. And now it was Hillory in pursuit as the alien sped purposefully through the air, toward Serendipity Labs.
When Hillory caught up, he saw Jorzz flitting into one of the androids in Dr. Chumley’s lab. Hillory tried to grab the android, but his hands passed through. Cursing at forgetting his astral state, Hillory wafted himself to his own lab and oozed back into his inert body. He felt a sort of shock as his physical and mental forms interlocked again.
Then he arose, once more in human form. He raced down the hall and saw the android in the computer lab, gathering up all the treasure tapes. Hillory stopped dead as the android held up a peculiar weapon.
“The time-shaker gun,” said Jorzz through the android’s lips. “The engineers finished the test model for me. Now a psi-bubble will waft me away from earth with the Kaljj tape. On some other world I can still take over control of scientists and have them build the playback machine. So my second Star Empire is only delayed in its debut. I win after all. As for you, earthling, be prepared to be puffed into eternity….”
Barton and Merry were in the doorway, staring in horror. They had snapped out of their somnambulistic trance when the battle between Hillory and Jorzz had begun, with Jorzz unable to keep feeding psi-energy into the mental spell he held over them.
With a mocking laugh that came from Jorzz, the android pressed the trigger-stud. There was a soundless puff….
But Hillory still stood there. The android had vanished.
An engineer came dashing in. “Jorzz didn’t know he was pointing the time-shaker gun the wrong way. He was aiming it at himself.”
“Ridiculous,” cried Merry Vedec, laughing hysterically, “How could the greatest menace in the universe be wiped out that easily, by his own stupid doing?”
Hillory stared around at the others with a strange glint in his eyes. “An incredible blunder like that could only happen because of one thing…” He didn’t have to tell them the word….
Serendipity.