by Jeff Sutton
Duvall withdrew, leaving him alone with Lara. A long silence ensued before she said, "Don't be afraid, Roger."
"Afraid?" He turned toward her.
"Of what's in your mind."
"You believe…"
"That it was the mind power? Yes, it was the only way."
The mind power! He sensed a sudden stillness inside him. Again he had the swift impression of gazing at the red handle, of thinking that he had to push it up, up, up. And he had pushed it up! Was this a new stage, or had he accomplished it through the fragment of Uli left behind in his mind?
"What difference does it make?" she asked softly. "The alien tried to capture your mind and failed. Instead, you captured part of his."
"Impossible!"
"Either that, or you've tapped new resources. Beyond clairvoyance," she added.
He didn't answer. Instead he swung his gaze to the console. The needles of the rad meters rested motionlessly in the black. Fixing his mind on one, he concentrated. The needle leaped, fluttered wildly in the red before subsiding.
Lara gripped his hand convulsively. "Does it frighten you?"
He shook his head slowly, his eyes drawn back to the telescreens. What was the nature of man? Was evolution a constantly ascending function until the universe itself died? What of himself? Had the alien opened his mind to powers long latent, or had they been given to him? Lara, a telepath; himself something more. What might their children be? Was this a new dawn?
Gazing into the vast emptiness of unspace, he wondered what lay ahead.
Keim woke suddenly.
The ceiling above him clouded in darkness, the room around him still, he lay tense and alert, wondering what had brought him so abruptly from his deep sleep.
Why hadn't the alien killed him? The question leaped into his mind and he knew that subconsciously it had been troubling him. Yet why hadn't the alien killed him?
The alien! Suddenly, definitely, he knew that the alien still lived. Yet the alien was dead, had perished in the blazing inferno of the great green-white sun. There had been no escape. None? So why his perturbation?
He forced himself to think calmly, step by step, of those last harrowing moments when the alien had attempted to escape in the lifeboat—had attempted to destroy the Alpha Tauri by the mind power. Destroy the Alpha Tauri?
He conjured up a picture of huge trees being uprooted, tossed around like twigs in a high wind—of the entire forest and low hills on which it had stood being wiped from existence. My God, the alien could have destroyed the Alpha Tauri with ease! But he hadn't! Why not? Because the alien was still aboard! That explained why the alien hadn't killed him; he needed him to save the ship! It was the only answer.
In the darkness of his room, Keim knew he'd guessed right. And it made sense. The alien, after all, had penetrated the deepest corridors of his mind, had unraveled the most submerged of plans. In turn, he had sent Captain Woon alone into the lifeboat to perish in the inferno of the sun. Then he had shaken the ship, had shaken it violently to give the impression of trying to destroy it. The alien had tried to panic him—he panicked him!—into a supreme effort to save the ship. Perhaps the alien had left the fragment of mind power with him to enable him to do it, or had sensed that he had the strength to accomplish it. The alien could have destroyed the ship, but hadn't. That was the duel.
A vein pulsed at the base of Keim's neck. His hands suddenly were wet, clammy. Still, unmoving, he forced himself to think. The ship was free of the alien's hosts… the once men. He winced again at the term. That meant the alien had no eyes, no ears—nothing but the tremendous power of its brain wrapped in whatever small shell it inhabited. And it was in Yozell's quarters!
He resurrected the brief glimpses he'd had into the alien's mind—the planet of the purpling sun, galaxies like fireflies, the small, egg-shaped body huddled in the small chamber. He relived the terrible moments during which the alien had attempted to kill them in the biologist's quarters. The hurled chairs, the bench, Henry Fong's battered body.
His mind's eye scanned the room, halted, fixed on a small specimen table with the single drawer beneath. Alone, of all the furniture in the room, it remained undamaged. It loomed there, clairvoyantly, untouched. Carefully, meticulously, he fitted the shape of the drawer into the geometry of the space in which the alien had been—was, he was certain—hiding.
He rose, padded to his desk, got the laser. Then, quietly, he went out into the corridor.
Uli suddenly sensed the danger; it assailed him with alarming intensity. With no eyes or ears to alert him, no host to serve him, the awareness had come through the sensing of vibrations—vibrations that he identified by their rhythmical nature as the movement of human feet. Feet coming toward him! Danger! Danger! Danger! It screamed in every fiber of his being.
Instantly his single eye opened, staring into the blackness of the small chamber where Yozell had placed him. If anyone opened the drawer, he could immediately seize his mind, acquire him as a host. The knowledge lessened his tension. He concentrated on the vibrations; the feet were coming closer and closer.
What if it were the telepath? What if the telepath knew? He felt the fear surge through him in great terrifying waves. He could destroy the ship, but then he'd be in unspace. He'd be locked there until the end of time, until the universe died. He had to chance it.
He waited.
Suddenly his mind made contact with the small fragment he'd left behind. Roger Keim, the T-man! And Keim knew! An eternity, an eternity in the utter blackness of starless space! Even as the thought smote him, Uli knew he had wasted the precious seconds that spelled existence.
He was trying to muster the mind power to destroy the ship when the laser beam sliced through the drawer, through his body's hard shell. For the fractional part of a second he felt the tremendous heat, and the greatest terror of all: to not be!
Consciousness fled.