The white rain came
the blueprint MacDougald produced from a cupboard. He scanned it,
scowling, then flashed a picture to Lynne, showing the generator, where
it was buried, where the switch was that alone could turn it off.
_Lynne, do you feel strong enough to try it?_ he asked silently.
Lynne knew what he meant. On Earth, with its dense atmosphere and
metallic atmosphere vapors telepathy was almost unknown. On Mars, where
the air was thinner and purer, it flourished but other telekinetic
powers were weak and incapable of being controlled. Here on Callisto,
with no atmosphere save what was frozen solid underfoot, there was
just a chance.... Perhaps, if they worked together, they could exert
sufficient psychic power to turn the switch and put the super-entity
out of its misery.
_Why doesn’t it turn the_ FARBISH _thing off itself?_ Lynne telepathed.
_Did you ever hear of any creature, however advanced, removing an alien
object from its own brain?_ was the quick response. And somehow Lynne
knew Rolf was right. It was going to be up to them.
_We’ll have to keep cover behind the revetment_, she replied, _in case
we fumble at first and our friend starts blasting again._
Rolf asked that they be left alone in the compression chamber for a
bit. And there they practiced on small objects--a stencil-recorder, a
gravity-weight, a set of earphones. It was the hardest kind of work
but, even within the metal shell of the ship, they were able at first,
by linking up in the tightest of combinations and willing as one, to
move aimlessly, then to attain control over the objects and move them
about at will, even to lift them briefly from the deck.
Exhausted, they rested, sitting close together on the floor of the
chamber, their backs against the wall. And Rolf said, “We’ve got to do
a lot better before we can risk a real trial. If we’re wrong--or if we
make a mistake....” He let it hang there.
Lynne nodded. Like him, she was too mentally exhausted for telepathy.
She said, “I wish I weren’t telepathic. I wish nobody were telepathic.
Then none of this would have happened.”
He nodded and told her, “I suppose Columbus wished he’d never tried
to cross the Atlantic when his men threatened mutiny. I suppose Henry
Condon felt the same way when his spaceship broke down on the first
trip to the Moon. I _know_ we’ve all felt that way at times on Mars
when things looked bad. But feeling that way isn’t going to save those
poor devils upstairs. And it won’t get us off Callisto.”
“I know,” she said with an attempt at a smile. “Let’s go on up and tell
them we’re making progress.”
As Rolf helped Lynne to her feet, he said, “Actually, you know, we’ve
done amazingly well.”
Lynne lost track of time as she and Rolf slept and practiced, slept
and practiced, sheltered from the wrath of the strange entity beyond
the rock revetment by the metal skin of the E.I.A. ship. At times,
especially when she was tired or distracted, it seemed as if they were
never going to master telekinesis at a distance. Staying in the ship,
they were sorely limited. But they dared not test outside lest their
efforts add to the entity’s irritation and cause it to strike back with
renewed fury.
They did not even dare risk another message to Mars.
Finally, when Lynne found herself able to move objects about in the
control cabin, abetted by Rolf’s mind-power, she said, “Well, what do
you think?”
Rolf nodded and directed a thought at her. _It’s got to be after our
next rest period_, VINRAL. _We can’t just sit here forever._
* * * * *
Upstairs, in the cabin, they worked out final plans with Suzuki. He and
Goldberg and half the crew were to stay put, while MacDougald and the
rest of the E.I.A. survivors were to move to the other expeditionary
ship.
“That way,” Rolf suggested, “your chances of getting one ship back will
be doubled in case something goes wrong.”
“Got you,” said Suzuki matter-of-factly. “Here, have some of the
panktosteak. Cook’s outdone himself on the sauce.”
The atmosphere as they ate what might be their their final meal
together was almost gay. After the long period of inactive
confinement, the E.I.A. men were welcoming the prospect of a change
of condition--even if the change were death. Reading their thoughts,
Lynne felt proud to be a human. She had never quite believed in heroes
before--they had seemed buried so far back in a pre-scientific human
past--yet here she was, with a whole group of them.
Rolf’s thought reached her. _You’re not doing so badly yourself_,
VINRAL--and she turned her face toward the wall as her cheeks grew hot.
To her surprise, she slept, and dreamt she was back on Earth, working
at the brain-station with her teammates. And then Rolf was awakening
her and, after a silent handshake with Suzuki, she was clambering into
a heavy space-suit once more. Then, again, she and Rolf were treading
on frozen atmosphere, the two of them alone this time, moving slowly
along the base of the jagged revetment until they were a good kilometer
away from the other ships. Again Lynne’s nose itched unbearably, and
this time the itching seemed to be spreading, to include other parts of
her body. She had to force herself to ignore it completely.
_Good girl!_ Rolf approved her effort. _Here, I think we’ve gone far
enough. Here goes...._
They stood clear of the gaunt rock wall, against the chance of falling
fragments, and Lynne looked at the twin tall spires of the E.I.A. ships
and at the shorter, stubbier vessel, a half-kilometer beyond them. Then
they put their minds as one on the Sodium generator, lying beneath the
surface of the plain amid the flattened E.I.A. sheds.
They concentrated with all of their newly-awakened telekinetic power
on the switch a few centimeters to the left of the main control panel.
And they thought fiercely. Lynne could feel a gathering storm of alien
irritation. Thoughts of cathedrals were replaced by hideous concepts of
suns exploding into novae, of planets burning to ash.
Then Lynne felt the switch move slightly under the force of the mental
shaft she and Rolf were directing upon it. Instantly, she almost
blacked out under the countering wave of black anguish that threatened
to blanket her thoughts. She wavered, felt for Rolf’s mind, found it.
She drew strength from it, felt it push with hers against the switch,
felt the switch move further, further, then all the way to _off_--just
as a tremendous blast of leviathan outrage knocked her flat on the
frozen atmosphere while the rim of the revetment above was seared and
shattered by an appalling blast of purple power.
Then the mental pressure was gone, and the pulsing retreated to a soft
throb that was almost a purr. There was no gratitude. The entity,
whatever it was, had far outgrown such puerile emotion. But the
physical turmoil its reaction had created was far from over.
Even as Lynne watched, the rock revetment crumbled from the force of
the blow it had received. She felt mounting horror as huge pieces
of rock broke off in a mounting torrent that fell without sound in
the airless void about them. She saw one of the E.I.A. ships struck
and sent toppling on its side, the other’s nose shattered by a grey,
wedgelike piece of stone.
Then she and Rolf were tumbling, leaping toward the ships. It was a
time of terror, though the source of the terror was under control once
more. Frantically, they tugged at the rocks about the toppled ship,
seeking to clear the emergency doorway. _Poor Suzuki! Poor Goldberg!_
she thought and Rolf’s thoughts seconded hers.
“Here--let us use the instruments.” The voice came through the
earphones, not her mind. Shaken, she looked around to see a trio of
space-suited figures behind her, carrying odd-looking instruments. It
was MacDougald and the crew of the other E.I.A. ship.
A half-hour, Mars-time, and they had cut their way into the toppled
ship. Lynne had to fight against being physically sick inside her
spacesuit at what they found. Suzuki and his four-man crew were dead.
The ship had been splintered as she fell and their bodies had burst in
the airlessness.
When the mess had been cleaned up and they were back at the other
E.I.A. ship, MacDougald revealed his Gaelic practicality when he told
them, “You did a good job--you licked it. I’m sorry about Suzuki, but
he knew what the odds were. We all do. I had one of the men look at
your little ship and she’s all right. You’d better be getting the lady
back to Mars, Mr. Marcein.”
“But what about you? This ship of yours is in no shape to take off,”
Rolf protested.
“Thanks to you, help is on the way,” said MacDougald. Then, eyeing
Lynne keenly, “You’d better get the lady off Callisto.”
V
It had never occured to Lynne, in her wildest imaginings during the
trip out to Callisto, that the little spaceship which had brought them,
with its cramped cockpit and utterly inside plumbing, would feel like
home. But once she and Rolf were in it together, on their way back
to Mars, she curled up beside him in the warmth of the tiny cabin,
grateful for the artificial gravity, feeling utterly relaxed, and
basked in the warmth of his thoughts toward her.
_Still sore at me_, VINRAL_?_ he telepathed.
_Of course not, you_ FARBISH _idiot_, she replied silently.
He turned her around on the narrow, curving couch, so that she was
facing him, in his arms, with her face close to his. She thought, _My
husband! Maybe there are more important things than a ceremony._
_You’re so right, my_ VINRAL, came his answering thought. And then,
as a flicker of concern crossed his powerful features, _You’re not
seriously ill, are you_, VINRAL_?_
MARLET, she reproved him fondly, _I never felt better in my life. Just
being alive--and off Callisto!_
_But your face--your arms--they’re all broken out!_
She looked at her arms and it was so. Blisters--ugly, yellowish
blisters--seemed to be rising on her skin even as she watched. She felt
a thrill of panic that made her shudder. And then, as if waiting for a
signal, the itching began. It started on her face, flowed through her
arms, through her body, her legs, her feet.
_Goldberg’s poisoning! You poor_ ZWIRCHY VINRAL_!_ His thought was
clear and alarmed. Somewhere, somehow, on the frozen satellite, she had
picked up the virulent vegetable poison. As she stripped and let Rolf
daub her all over with antiseptic that gave only momentary and partial
relief, an ancient song kept running through her head, a centuries-old
lilt that went, _A fine romance, with no kisses--a fine romance, my
dear, this is...._ And then she thought, _Poor Goldberg, poor Suzuki,
poor...._
Thereafter, until a day before they landed back at Nampura Depot, Lynne
was too sick to remember much of anything. The blisters broke and, with
them, the fever that had made her delirious. But when they came away
they took patches of skin with them, leaving her too miserable to move.
Nor was her misery lessened by recollection that it was she who had
spoiled the honeymoon on the outward voyage through injured vanity at
her provisional husband’s high-handed behavior. As if, when you loved a
man, it made any difference _how_ you got married....
Contact with the infinite, with the immensity of the alien intellect,
had considerably widened her vision--even while Goldberg’s poisoning
had severely limited her sphere of physical action.
Revere came to visit her in the infirmary, which she shared with
a convalescent Rana, and told her, telepathically, _You know, you
and Rolf are both up for E.I.A. gonging. Officially, you violated a
security regulation, but since you saved what was left of Callisto
Mission, they’re going to slip you a citation under the table._