With a light, sure touch he fingered the controls and eased the ship inches off the ground, floating it to the take-off field, deeply furrowed with the scars of thousands of departing rockets. There was no fanfare or hullabaloo as he depressed the engraved silver bar on the extreme right of the dash. But in response to that finger-touch the ship simply vanished from the few observers and a gale whipped their clothes about them.
Maclure was again in the black of space, the blinking stars lancing through the infinitely tough plastic windows. And he was traveling at a speed which had never before been approached by any man. "Huh!" he grunted. "I always knew I could work it out." He saw the moon in the distance—about a million miles behind and to starboard.
Deliberately he cut into the plane of the ecliptic, determined to take on any meteorites that might be coming. He had a deflection device that needed testing.
Through the clear window before him he saw a jagged chunk of rock far off, glinting in the sun. Deliberately he set out to intersect with its path.
As they met there was a tension in the atmosphere of the ship that set his hair on end. But there was no shock as he met the meteorite; he did not meet it at all, for when it was about a yard from the ship it shimmered and seemed to vanish.
Maclure was satisfied; the distortion unit was in order. And the chances of meeting anything so freakish as a meteorite were so small that he did not need any further protection. He was whistling happily as he headed back to Earth.
Then, abruptly, there was a peculiar chiming resonance to the idling whisper of the drive-units. And in the back of Angel's head a little chord seemed to sound. It was like something remembered and forgotten again. Scarcely knowing what he was saying and not caring at all he called softly: "I can hear you!"
The chiming sound mounted shrilly, seemed to be struggling to form words. Finally, in a silvery tinkle of language he heard: "We're superhet with your malloidin coils. Can't keep it up like this. Full stop—all power in malloidin for reception. Okay?"
That, at least, he could understand. Someone had performed the almost impossible task of superheterodyning some sort of nodular wave of constant phase-velocity into a coil set up as an anchor-band! He groaned at the thought of the power it must have taken and flung the ship to a halt, reversing his power to flow through the anchoring coil that was receiving the message. It sounded again: "That's better. Can you make it 7:7:3, please?"
He snapped insulated gloves on his hands and adjusted the armature windings. "God knows where they get their juice from," he thought.
"But I hope they have plenty of it."
"We can't hear you, Angel Maclure," said the voice from the coils. "This must be going through to you, though, because you've followed our requests. I can't get detailed, because this little message will burn out every power-plant we have. Do not return to Earth. Do not return to Earth. Do you get that? Come instead to coordinates x-3, y-4.5, z-. 1—get that? three, four point five, point one. We'll be able to contact you further there. But whatever you do, don't return to Earth. Signing off—"
The metallic voice clicked into silence. Maclure, mind racing, grabbed for a star-map. The coordinates indicated in the message were those of a fairly distant and thinly-filled sector of space. He hesitated. Why the hell not? No man had ever been beyond Pluto, but was he a man?
He grinned when he remembered his tight-fisted, close-mouthed father, who had made him what he was with a grueling course of training that began actually before he was born.
Yes, he decided, he was a man all right, and with all of a man's insatiable curiosity he set his course for the distant cubic parsec that was indicated by the coordinates he had so strangely heard through a drive-unit receiver. And with all the fantastic speed of which his craft was capable he did not want to drive it beyond its capacity. Having set the controls, he relaxed in a sort of trance in preparation for his week-long trip.
After locating himself among the unfamiliar stars of his destination, he rearranged his coils. "That wasn't necessary," they said almost immediately in the metallic chimes. "We're coming out for you." Then they fell silent. But minutes later a craft hove alongside and fastened onto his hull with a sort of sucker arrangement. It was no larger than his own, but somehow sleeker and simpler in its lines.
They had clamped right over his bulkhead and were hammering on it.
He opened up, trusting to luck and logic that their atmosphere was not chlorinous. "Come in," he called.
"Thanks," said the foremost of three ordinary individuals. "My name's Jackson."
"Yeah?" asked Maclure, staring at him hard. He was dressed exactly as Maclure was dressed, and his features were only slightly different.
Jackson smiled deprecatingly. "You're right," he said. "But you can call me Jackson anyway. I'd rather not show you my real shape. Okay?"
"You should know best," shrugged Angel. "Now tell me what's up."
"Gladly," said Jackson, settling himself in a chair with a curiously loose-jointed gesture. "You're not very much of a superman, you know."
"Pardon the contradiction," said Angel ominously, "but I happen to know for a fact that I'm very far above the normal human being."
"Intellectually," said Jackson. "Not emotionally. And that's very important. You don't mind my speaking plainly?"
"Not at all."
"Very well. You're much like an extremely brilliant child. You have a downright genius for mechanics and physical sciences, but your understanding of human relationships is very sub-average. That must be why you were so badly taken in by Mr. Sapphire."
"Taken in?" reflected Angel. "I don't think he fooled me. I knew that he'd try to get me out of the way—murder or otherwise—as soon as he got what he wanted from me. I trusted myself to take care of him."
"Good, but not reasoned far enough. Did it ever strike you that Mr.
Sapphire—as you persist in thinking of him—was not a free agent? That he was—ah—grinding somebody else's axe.
"Holy smokes!" yelped Maclure. The strange discrepancies which he had bundled into the back of his mind suddenly resolved themselves into a frightening pattern.
"Exactly," smiled Jackson. "You are the key piece in the problem. Both sides must take care of you, for if you are lost the game is at an end.
Shall I begin at the beginning?"
"You'd better," said Angel weakly.
"Very well," began Jackson. "Our opponents are known to us as the Morlens; we are the Amters. For some thousands of your years there has been an intermittent warfare going on between us. You must take my word for it that it is they who are bent on destroying us and that we act only in self-defense. They are situated about nine parsecs away from us, which makes attack a difficult and dangerous undertaking, yet they have not hesitated to risk their entire generations in desperate attempts to wipe us out.
"Of late there had been little of that; when our spies reported they informed us that an intensive psychological campaign was going on against us. This we could repulse with ease. But we could not very well block their attempts to gain mental domination of Earth and its solar system. They did not, of course, control every individual, but they reached sufficient key-persons like Mr. Sapphire to be nearly masters of your world."
"One moment," interrupted Angel. "I can assure you that Mr. Sapphire knew that they were at work on him. I also believe that he only pretended submission. His ends were his own."
"Perhaps," Jackson shrugged. "At any rate, what they needed was mechanical and physical genius. And you, Angel Maclure, are the outstanding mechanical and physical genius of the universe. You can solve problems that no other mind could even approach. And the first of such problems was the one of Dead Center, which we have been investigating for many generations."
"Investigating?" snapped Angel. "How?"
"Purely psychological investigations, such as the projection of minds within the region of the Center. This has been actually a desperate race against the Morlens, for we believe that who is
master of the Center is master of the universe."
"That's probably true enough," said Maclure thoughtfully. "And so you make your bid for my support?"
"We do," said Jackson somberly.
"That's nice," snapped Angel viciously. "Now get this and get it straight: I'm not playing anybody's game but my own, and if helping you out against the damn Morlens helps me out I'll do it. On those terms—
okay?"
"Okay," said Jackson gravely. "And you'd better begin helping us out pretty fast, because your benefactor Sapphire either relayed to or had his mind read by the Morlens, and they know the results of your calculations. They know where the Center is and, in a way, how to get there."
"Yeah," jeered Angel. "Give me a piece of land and some tools and I'll build you a spaceship that'll make this thing look like a waterbug for size and speed!"
"Haw!" laughed Jackson. "More damn fun!"
3
Maclure had mostly duplicated the calculating work he had done back on Earth, working speedily and accurately though somehow depressed by the strangeness of the planet on which he had landed. Not yet had he seen the actual shapes of the Amters; they preferred to show themselves as almost replicas of his own face and body. Jackson had become his guide and companion.
"Look," said Angel, glowing with pride. "Something new." He indicated a little sphere of silvery metal that looked somehow infinitely heavy. It rested ponderously on a concrete table well braced with steel beams, and even that sagged beneath it.
Jackson inspected the thing. "Weapon?" he asked.
"Darn tootin', friend! I found this as a by-product of warp-synthesis.
The base is osmium, the heaviest by volume of any natural element.
And over that is a film one molecule thick of neutronium itself. How do you like it?"
"How do you use it?" asked Jackson cautiously.
"Mix up about a hundred of these things and when you get near enough to an enemy scoot them out into space. And unless they have a damned efficient screen they'll be riddled by simple contact with the things."
"Um," grunted Jackson. "Child's play, of course. When does the real job begin?"
"Any minute now, if you mean the ship. And I have some bad news for you," Maclure added grimly. "You boys're supposed to be the prime exponents of hypnotism and telepathy in the galaxy, right?"
"I think we are," snapped Jackson.
"Well, laugh this off: I happened to get curious about the Morlens so I rigged up a projection gimmick that traces interferences of the eighth magnitude. Or, to translate my terms back into yours, a thought detector."
"Go on, Angel. I think I know what you found," said Jackson slowly. "The Morlens—they're at it?"
"Right," said Angel. "My setup showed a complete blanketing spy system. The minds of all workers on the calculators were being picked over carefully. In some cases they even substituted Morlen personalities for the workers' and used their eyes. Naturally the Morlens didn't try to tap your mind or mine; we would have known it. I did what I could—put up a dome screen of counter-vibrations that seem to shut off our friends. But—what do you think?"
"You have more to tell me," said Jackson. "Go on."
"At it again?" asked Maclure with a grin. "Okay, mind-reader. Lamp this gimmick." He opened a cabinet and produced a small, flimsy device.
"The engineering's pretty sound on this," he said, "but I'm still shaky on the psycho-manipulation you folks taught me last week. We'll see if it works."
He plugged leads and conductors into ponderously insulated power-pickups and laughed as Jackson laid a worried hand on his.
"That's fixed," he said. "I need all the juice I can get to bring over a video beam. Not wanting to blow out your power stations again I built a little thing of my own." Angel patted a stubby little casing of thick, tough glass. "Underneath that baby's hide," he said, "is 39 volts. Not that I'll ever need anything near that."
Angel's deft fingers made minute adjustments within the spidery frame of his new gimmick; finally he connected it with a standard television screen. "Lights out," he said as he snapped the switch. The room went dark.
Slowly, with writhing worms of light wriggling across the ground glass screen, the scene illuminated and went into full color. Maclure grimaced at the fantastic spectacle. The things he saw—!
The Morlens on whom he had focused, nine parsecs away, were hideous creatures. Like giant crabs in a way, and partly suggestions of octopi, they sprawled horribly over machinery and furniture. "That them?" he asked hoarsely.
"The Morlens," said Jackson. "Do you wonder that I have used my hypnotic powers to mask from you my own form?"
"I suspected that you were the same race," said Maclure. He turned again to the screen, and cut in the sound factor. A dull, clacking babble sounded from the speaker. "You know their language?"
Jackson shook his head. "They aren't talking language. It's a code that can't be broken without a key. They don't underestimate you, Angel.
What else has the gimmick got?"
"Psycho circuit. If the damn thing works we won't need to break their code. We'll be able to tap their thoughts. Shall I try it? The most I've done before was to scout around back on Earth. Couldn't find much there, though. Okay?"
"Okay," snapped Jackson. "You only live once."
Delicately, with the most painful precision, knowing well that a too sudden and too amplified projection of the Morlens' minds would blow his mind out the way a thunderclap could deafen him, he turned the tiny screws of the gimmick.
Angel winced and set his jaw as a surge of hate filled the room. It was the Morlens, far across the galaxy, who were the source. Like the pulsing roar of a dynamo the undersurge of detestation and the will to destroy beat into his brain. Hastily he turned down the psycho band, and concrete thoughts emerged from the welter of elemental emotion that rushed from the screen.
It took Maclure only a moment to solve the unfamiliar thought-patterns of the Morlens. One of them, in some commanding position, was addressing the rest in cold, measured tones. Angel's mind strained at the effort of encompassing the weird concepts and imagery of the creatures.
" …increase of destruction," the Morlen was saying. "Not very well pleased with the technique displayed, he has come to lend the weight of his personality and training to our efforts. I remind you that I am his direct representative. I remind you that any sort of rebellion is futility, for his innate ability is such and his immense experience is such that he can cope with any problem set him. It was he who devised the spy system which was successfully operated on the Amters up to a short time ago when their prodigy from Earth began to understand. It was he who devised the penetration-proof screen which shields us from any outside detection, either physical or intellectual."
"They think so," interjected Angel grimly. He averted his eyes from the screen. Jackson stirred at his side. "Look!" he gasped.
There was a slow motion on the wall of the room in which the Morlens were gathered. And there entered a crawling vehicle of glass, surrounded by a tangle of machinery slick with moisture. Within the glass Maclure saw, obscured by moisture and drifts of steam, the shriveled, lofty, crusted brow of Mr. Sapphire.
The eyes, behind their ponderous lenses, turned directly on Angel.
"Maclure!" the voiceless whisper rang out. "Now you should know who is your adversary. I cannot hear you, but I know you have a one-way setup on this room. A man does not meditate for one hundred years without a moment's pause and fail to learn many things about his own mind and the minds of others. To you I was a financier, I think. Now learn your error.
"It is true that my passion is for life and being. And I will brook no opposition in the way of that end. I waited the long years for you to reach the full colossal apex of your genius; a genius so profound that you yourself do not realize one tenth of its capacities.
"Maclure, you will come to heel or be crushed. You have fulfilled your mission. You have plotted the course to Dead Center, and
you have given me the faster-than-light drive which enables me to see for the first time that race of beings over whom I have for half a century been unquestioned master. My Morlens are my hands; they will duplicate for me the drive which you have devised for the Amters. Now I offer you your choice:
"Either cut your Amters dead, for from them you have nothing to gain, or refuse me and suffer the terrible consequences. For you have nothing to offer me, Angel. All you can do with the Center I now know.
Only on the chance that you will in the future be of use to me do I offer to spare you. What is your answer?" The aged monster whispered in a tone of mockery: "I shall know by your actions. Within the hour I start for the Center in a perfect duplicate of the ship you have devised for your friends. Follow or oppose and you shall take the consequences.
Now cut off?"
And from the ancient creature's mind there radiated such a stream of destructive hate that Angel winced and shut off the machine at its power lead. "Mr. Sapphire," he meditated aloud, "is not all that I had thought him to be."
Jackson grinned feebly. "What're you going to do, Maclure?"
Angel said thoughtfully: "Mr. Sapphire must not get to the Center before us. You heard that he was starting—we must follow. And we must work on the way."
"He's terribly strong," said Jackson. "Terribly strong now that he has his own mind and a good part of yours in his grasp. How do we lick his psychological lead?"
"The only way I can and with the only weapons I got, chum. Cold science and brainwork. Now roll out that bus we have and collect the star-maps I got up. Round up every top-notch intellect you have and slug them if you have to, but at any cost get them into the ship. We're going to Dead Center, and it's a long, hard trip."
Comfortably ensconced in the cabin of the Memnon, which was the altogether cryptic name Maclure had given the Center ship, Jackson was listening worriedly.
His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction Page 94