The Sci-Fi Stories - Cyril M. Kornbluth Edition. Cyril M. Kornbluth

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 vidio 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.”

      * * * * *

      The 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.

      The Angel winced and set his jaws 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. The 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 the 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 the 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 set-up 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 the 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?”

      The 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.

      “The directive factor in the course,” said Angel, “is not where we’re going but how we get there. Thus it’s nothing so simple as getting into the fourth dimension, because that’s a cognate field to ours and a very big place. Dead Center is wholly unique, therefore there’s only one way to get there.”

      “And finding out that way,” interjected Jackson, “was what had you in a trance for thirty hours mumbling and raving about matrix mechanics and quintessimal noduloids. Right?”

      “Right,” admitted Angel, shuddering a little at the recollection. “Half of the math was the most incredibly advanced stuff that you have to devote a lifetime to, and the rest I made up myself. Look.” He gestured outside the window of the ship.

      Obediently Jackson stared through the plastic transparency at the absolute, desolate bleakness that was everywhere around them. In spite of the small, sickening sensation in the stomach they might as well have been stranded in space instead of rushing wildly at almost the fourth power of light’s speed into nothing and still