by Jeff Sutton
Lara dropped flat to the floor and began rolling toward the outer door. The workbench spun wildly above her. Duvall pulled Robin down, urging her to follow. When she hesitated, he shouted, "Quick, or you're dead!"
Panicky, she forced herself to roll under the spinning bench. A chair struck Duvall, smashed him against the wall. He fell and came up bloody. Vanishing into the sleeping quarters, he reappeared with his medical kit. Drops of sweat and blood clung to his brow. He rolled toward the doorway, dragging the kit with him.
"The door won't open," screamed Lara. She had risen to her knees, was tugging at the knob. The metal bench spun wildly a few feet away. Duvall lifted his laser, sliced through the hinges. The door fell inward, was smashed by the bench. Sharp fragments flew through the air.
Keim dropped flat and rolled toward the others as they scrambled out into the corridor. A flying object struck his shoulder, hurling him to one side. Gritting to suppress the pain, he dove toward the open door. Duvall reached in, caught his arm and jerked him to safety.
"God, * what's happening?" The psychmedic's voice was shaking.
"Later." Keim shook his head groggily. "We have to find new quarters, quick!"
"My rooms?" suggested Lara.
"No, Fong was there." He fought to bring order to his thoughts. They had to find a place not apt to be known to the alien's memories, or at least one that wouldn't be immediately suspected. The sound of the spinning bench smashing the furnishings in Yozell's quarters told him the alien was not yet aware of their escape.
Lara screamed. Keim jerked up his weapon, glimpsed a bird flying toward him. Ice touched his brain. Instinctively he sprayed the passageway with a deadly beam. The bird fell off to one side, a wing gone. Fluttering wildly, it dropped to the floor.
He fired again, conscious of what might happen if a beam sliced through an outer bulkhead. With the drop in barometric pressure, automatic safety doors would seal off the area from the rest of the ship; everyone within that area would die. He hadn't considered that. It made his threat to the alien hollow. Did the alien know that?
The question startled him, then he realized the alien did know; it was the kind of thing he would have gotten from Captain Woon's mind. Still, why hadn't the alien destroyed an outer bulkhead, killed them in just that way? He felt suddenly jittery. But there was knowledge in his own mind that he seldom tapped, that seldom rose into his awareness. Perhaps it was that way with the alien; the knowledge was there but he hadn't tapped it. Neither could the alien be certain that he couldn't destroy the ship. A man with a laser—a man willing to die—could destroy the giant energy converters, the bridge, the sensitive equipment that meant life or death for the ship. Equipment that couldn't be sealed off!
The aft air-conditioning compartment! It struck him suddenly. One of the several such centers, it serviced the bridge, the energy converters, and other operational centers. If the outer bulkheads near it were destroyed, the ship would die. It was a double weapon; the alien couldn't afford to destroy it, and if Keim had to, he could.
"Better get moving," Duvall suggested nervously. Keim jerked his head, started along the corridor. Fixing the location of the air-conditioning unit in mind, he sent out swift probes, got only silence. He explained the situation tersely. Duvall nodded acquiescence. He dropped down two more ladders, then heard the soft purr of machinery. The sound was reassuring. He sent out another probe before opening the hatch>then stepped aside to let the others enter.
When he closed it behind him, the psychmedic asked heavily, "Now what in God's name was it, Roger?"
"The mind power, I told you." Robin's face blanched.
"Hearing it and seeing it are two different things," admitted Duvall. "What kind of a monster is it?"
"A small, egg-shaped creature that's near-immortal, telepathic, can make robots out of men, live in space, and which possesses the mind power; that's what we're up against."
Duvall's body sagged, his face heavy with resignation. "How can we fight that kind of power?"
Keim smiled, all at once cheerful. "Just before the house-warming, I got an idea," he explained. "If we're lucky, it'll work."
"If we're lucky!"
Keim looked at Lara. "We can only die once," he said.
ELEVEN
The telepaths had escaped!
Nestled in the small drawer where Yozell had placed him, Uli sought to stifle his ^fear. When, through Henry Fong's eyes, he'd first realized that the telepaths were in the biologist's quarters, he'd been terror-stricken beyond belief. Had not the Alpha Tauri been in unspace, he would have destroyed it instantly. But the telepaths hadn't suspected his presence; he'd determined that quickly enough. For a while he'd felt certain that the telepaths and their companions had died in the violent destruction of the room, but the brief glimpse he'd caught of them through the eyes of the bird had told him otherwise. Worse, the male telepath was more determined than ever to kill him. Mere thought of it brought back his terror anew; his small body, almost totally brain, seethed with it. At first formless, the terror rapidly took shape—the shape of death! To not be! The single, blinding possibility engulfed him with fear and horror.
Uli struggled to bring his emotions under control. It wasn't that the telepath might destroy the ship; he would, if necessary, and if not prevented. Although it was less likely since he'd learned that Uli could survive in space. He'd gleaned that much during his brief moments in the telepath's mind. But the alarming thing, the source of much of his inner turmoil, lay in the telepath's supreme confidence that he could kill him. That was one thing; the other was the strength of the telepath's mind.
Uli contemplated it fearfully. Every mind he'd ever entered had resisted to one degree or another. In the case of lower life forms, such as birds and quadrupeds, resistance would crumble almost instantly. Neither was such resistance based on intelligence, but rather was an instinctive response to the invasion of the territoriality of the self. The response was common to all life forms however insignificant. It was only the bipeds that differed. Their response, while instinctual, also held elements of intellectual resistance, hence was more prolonged. (Ah, the bipeds of long ago—how he had smashed and obliterated every trace of their civilization!) Some had resisted quite fiercely, but their struggles had been as nothing when compared with the humans. And of the latter, none had resisted like the male telepath.
The thought perturbed him. Given time, of course, he could conquer him, possess him just as he had the others. Yet it wasn't the strength of the male telepath's mind that disquieted him so much as the quality. Beyond his unique power of telepathy (unique to Uli because it operated beyond the visual field), he had sensed still greater powers. Strangely enough, the telepath himself was unaware of them. Aside from the recognition of clairvoyance, he had no comprehension whatever of his mind's full potential.
But what powers had he? He had seen the temple fall before it fell! He had looked into the future! What lay hidden in the telepath's mind? What latent powers lay there . . . waiting? One day the telepath would sense them —if he lived! But he wouldn't live!
Uli pushed the frightening thoughts from his mind. He was the master of death, not the telepath. Despite the self-assurance, he couldn't quite stem his apprehension. It came to him that it was caused by still another of the telepath's traits—his total lack of fear of personal death. He would never have believed it had he not looked into the telepath's mind. Such a lack of fear was completely incomprehensible. Fear of death was the stimulus to survival, the governor of decision, the ultimate parameter that determined the nature and scope of action. Without it, how could decision and action be predictable? That was the frightening thing—the knowledge that he couldn't predict what the telepath might attempt next.
Perhaps he should have Woon bring the ship from un-space, destroy it. While savoring the idea, he knew that he wouldn't except, perhaps, as a last recourse. Memory of the fates of his companions in the deeps of the universe cautioned against it; the perils were sim
ply too many.
But neither would the telepath attempt to destroy the ship, he decided. More likely he would attempt to reach the bridge and commandeer the ship, return it to Krado 1 or some planet well outside the Third Empire, attempt to persuade Uli to abandon his plan under threat of death. That seemed the most logical course. But was the telepath logical? Logical, yes, but not predictable. There was a vast difference.
Uli held one certainty: the telepath had to die! Still, it would be interesting to acquire Keim's mind, plumb its innermost depths, assess its strengths and weaknesses, analyze its full potential. Perhaps he could acquire the human's ability to extend his telepathic range beyond the visual field. He could with his hosts, of course, but they were part of him—an extension of the self. Keim's ability went beyond that. But while the human exceeded him in that respect, it was a small achievement when compared with his own vast powers. Could the telepath shake a planet to its core? Never! Uli considered that the final measure of the telepath's true significance. Really quite paltry. Judging by the human minds he now possessed, the entire matter scarcely was worth his consideration. Yet Yozell, Kimbrough, Bascomb, and Henry Fong had failed in the attempt to trick Keim and kill him. Somehow the telepath had detected the falseness of identity, had acted too swiftly for them.
That was it, Uli decided; Keim had acted out of pre-knowledge. He had to make his human hosts more human, less host—pay more attention to movement, expression, voice, to what the telepath thought of as "a blankness of mind." With such a host he could rid himself of the telepath both easily and safely. It was imperative that he do so. He had to kill Roger Keim. Now, now, now. . . .
The word became a scream in his brain.
Keim probed the ship.
The compartments around him and long corridors above were devoid of response. He could sense no one on the bridge, nor in the small cabin adjacent to it that Woon used when the ship was in deep space. He knew that meant nothing. Not when robots roamed the decks; not when the alien moved through the passageways on the silent wings of gulls.
He did sense life deep in the bowels of the ship. Two men—no, three now—were hiding among the giant energy converters. He tried to capture the clairvoyance he'd experienced earlier. The interior of the converter room flickered fuzzily in his consciousness, a place of shadowy impressions. He found it strange how the power waxed and waned, but he knew that somewhere in those shadows were three men; their fear screamed in his brain.
He shifted his probe slowly, scanning the ship compartment by compartment. Two men in a storeroom, another in the crew's galley, still another in a forward hold—their thoughts, heavy with fear, touched his mind. Occasionally brief images flared in his consciousness and died. How many of the crew still lived? But that conjecture was useless. Whatever had to be done, had to be done by the four remaining members of the science staff. By himself, he amended.
He looked at Lara, debating an earlier idea. It was risky, yet there seemed no other way. Finally he said, "I'm going to the bridge."
She started to protest, but caught herself. Wincing from the battering he'd taken in Yozell's quarters, the psych-medic struggled to his feet. "I'll go with you," he offered.
Keim shook his head, related his plan. "Wait here till you hear from me," he finished.
"How?" asked Duvall. "The interphones are out."
Keim glanced at Lara. "I'll manage."
"You can't go alone," she protested.
"It's more dangerous for two." He added telepathically, "Keep in contact with me. That's essential."
"I'll still worry." She tried a smile that didn't quite come off. Neither could she hide the pain in her eyes.
Keim paused at the door, his eyes on the psychmedic. Duvall caught the unspoken message and said, "Don't worry about this end."
Keim's last look was at Lara. "Take care of yourself."
"Come back… safely."
"Before you know it." Slipping out of the air-conditioning room, he closed the hatch behind him. He knew it wasn't courage that motivated him to go alone; it was simply that he had powers the others lacked. If he failed, they had the most difficult task of all.
He moved stealthily up a ladder, his mind probing above, below, to all sides. Two shadowy figures in a supply room, another in an auxiliary power center—he touched their minds briefly as he made his way toward the dim corridor that ran through the science quarters. A crewman here, a crewman there—perhaps more lived than he'd suspected. The hope was reassuring.
What was the alien doing? The nagging question brought a distraction that he fought to fend off. But what ^would the alien try next? Where would he strike? On the answers, perhaps, depended his life—the life of the Empire. But there were no answers. He was a blind man picking his way through an unknown maze, and somewhere in the maze was a predator. He had to banish such thoughts. His job was to reach the bridge. And then? He'd have to play it by ear. Could a human outsmart the alien? An intriguing question!
Danger! Like a sharp needle jabbed into his brain, the signal came. A tingling ran along his spine. An alarm clanged from somewhere deep in his subconscious. Someone was near! He halted, waited with laser ready, finger on the firing key. As the sense of presence grew stronger, his muscles tightened. An image flickered, faded, but not the sense of presence. Not a hint! If it were, he would never sense him so clearly. His hopes soared. He moved his head fitfully, trying to locate the other.
There, in an upper passageway! His mind focused on the area, he tried to see it clairvoyantly. A shimmery image danced in his brain, grew stronger. Gray hair, a round face with eyes that he knew were a mild blue. Burl Ashford! The recognition jarred him. He'd long since counted the geologist among the dead; now he was here, alone, creeping along the upper corridor. Keim probed more deeply. Ashford's mind, although bewildered and incoherent, held nothing of the alien. How had he escaped? Keim felt a quick surprise.
"Lara?" he called silently.
"Yes?" Her answer came instantly, nervously.
"I've located Burl Ashford?"
"Is he… one of them?"
"His mind is clear." He recognized the answer as an evasion and added, "I don't believe so."
"Be careful," she pleaded. He sensed her dilemma: the obligation to help the geologist and the fear that he might be another of the alien's hosts. But she was right; they could trust no one.
"I'll test him," he promised. He jerked his concentration back to the geologist. The image came again, moving up and up until Ashford's face filled the landscape of his mind. A sad face, puzzled, bewildered… the image danced and flickered, faded, came back more strongly than ever. Ashford's mind was a chaotic jumble. He reached a stairwell, moved down haltingly.
Keim watched him uneasily. The geologist's movements, rather than mechanical, were those of a man in shock. Perhaps, like Duvall, like himself, he had been touched by the alien, had escaped. Or perhaps he was reacting from the knowledge of the carnage. Either would be sufficient to account for his strange behavior. Acting on impulse, Keim hurried to intercept him.
"Burl?" He called the name sharply as the geologist came into view. Ashford's head jerked up. He turned disbelievingly. Although his hands were empty, Keim kept a tight grip on his laser.
"Roger!" Ashford took a faltering step forward. "Is it really you?"
"Flesh and blood," answered Keim. He moved toward the other warily.
"My God, Roger, what's happening?" Ashford's eyes dropped to the laser, came up again. He hadn't seemed to notice it.
"We have an alien aboard," Keim told him. He watched closely for a reaction.
"Alien?" Ashford's body jerked spasmodically. "That's what I was afraid of. I warned Woon, I warned them all. You remember, Roger. I told them we had to get off the planet, get off before it was too late. I pleaded with Woon, but he wouldn't listen."
"Where is he?"
"Captain Woon? I don't know. I only know that everyone's dead. This is a death ship." His eyes rolled wildly. "You have
to help me, Roger."
Keim felt a quick sympathy for him. Weaker than most, Ashford now was dangerously near a complete crack-up. "They're not all dead," he said.
"Others… are alive?" Hope flared in the ashen face.
"A few."
"For God's sake, where?"
Keim deliberated. Ashford held no taint of the alien that he could discern. He seemed more a man suffering from the horrors he had witnessed. If allowed to wander, he couldn't escape the alien for long. Either that, or he'd be murdered by the first panicky crewman he met. The stricken look on the geologist's face decided for him. "Go down to the aft air-conditioning compartment," he instructed.
"Aft air-conditioning?" Ashford looked puzzled.
"Lara's there, and others. You know where it is?"
"Below the staff quarters? Yes, I remember."
"Watch yourself, Burl."
"Aft air-conditioning compartment," Ashford intoned. He mumbled his thanks and stumbled toward the stairwell. Keim watched him uneasily until he vanished from view, then contacted Lara.
"Ashford's on his way," he advised. "Keep a close watch on him"
"I know," she answered doubtfully.
"Were you reading us?"
"You," she corrected. "His thoughts were too incoherent. Do you really believe he's safe?"
"He's in shock, but I believe that's all. If Duvall can bring him out of it, he might be of help. I'd keep the laser handy," he added.
"We'll do what we can," she promised.
Keim diverted his attention to the empty corridor ahead. In the dim glow of the night lights, it held a ^ gloomy air of long abandonment. He refrained from glancing into the quarters on either side, knowing what he would find. The knowledge that each was a tomb sparked his horror. Deliberately he sent his probes ranging. From isolated parts of the ship, panicky thoughts were borne in on waves of terror.