The white rain came
_At the moment, I couldn’t care less_, Lynne replied. _What do you hear
from Lei on Earth?_
Revere’s bride, she learned, was doing fabulously well and a
successful, uninduced twin birth was prophesied by the doctors. Lynne
felt a flash of pride for both of them, as well as a flash of envy. By
the time she and Rolf got around to having babies, she surmised, they’d
both be candidates for the geriatrics bureau. Discouraging thought. But
she kept it from Revere. He was too happy for sadness.
When he had gone, she shared a skinless gasper with the tiny
dark-skinned Rana and asked her about the fatal experiment that had
put her into coma. After all, the necro-recorder could only take down
thoughts over a very limited period of its subject’s mental activity.
Rana told her, talking aloud, since she was still forbidden to
overuse her telepathic qualities. She said, “I know now it was wrong,
of course, but we were filled with the excitement of discovery. I
don’t understand why you and Rolf went to Callisto. We beamed our
relay-thinking right here on Mars, somewhere in the Syrtis Major
prairie, near Woomera Station. At first it was like being in some
incredible temple. It was vast and awe-inspiring and--Lynne, I can’t
really describe it.”
“I know,” said Lynne. “What turned it sour?”
“That,” said the dark girl, “is what I don’t understand. We were
receiving wonderful stuff--sort of soul-healing. But when Juan flicked
on the recorder to take it down it vanished.”
Lynne probed the girl’s thoughts and found she was holding nothing
back. She was heartsick at the tragic result, for her companion, of an
experiment for which she felt herself responsible. Lynne lay back and
did some thinking while the dark girl slept and had reached a number of
conclusions by the time Rolf appeared that afternoon.
He, it seemed, had been terribly busy since their return to the Red
Planet. All sorts of crises had come or were coming to a head. There
had been a localized reappearance of the disembodied aborigines that
had for so long threatened all communications on Mars--and a campaign
had had to be organized to exterminate them.
There had been a squabble over efficiency credits between the
communications crews of New Walla Walla and Cathayville which had had
to be settled. Earth Interplanetary Authority was anxious for Rolf and
Lynne to visit their Rio de Janeiro Headquarters as soon as possible
to discuss the ramifications of the Callisto incident. And the problem
of decreasing moisture in the Martian atmosphere table was becoming
critical.
_Which is why I have not been able to stay here at your side_, VINRAL,
he told Lynne silently. _And now, I must leave you again._
_Oh, Rolf!_ Lynne was desolate. _I have so much to tell you. I think
I’m beginning to understand a little about our--entity._
_Hold it_, VINRAL, was the reply. _Right now, I haven’t even the_
FARBISH _time to give it a thought. It will keep till I get back from
New Samarkand. I’ve got to address a council meeting there tonight._
And he was gone. Resentfully, Lynne thought she might as well have
gotten herself married to the legendary old-fashioned country general
practitioner of nineteenth century America. She eyed her messed-up face
in a hand mirror and wondered when, if ever, she was going to look like
herself again. Goldberg’s poison! Poor Goldberg....
The next day, with Rolf still in New Samarkand, she had the
practitioner patch her up and, with the aid of makeup, managed to
present a passable front to the world. She had made up her mind to
get busy. According to Rana, there might be an entity in the New
Woomera district, and New Woomera Station was where Lynne’s one-time
cabin-mate, Joanna, had her home. And Joanna had invited Lynne to pay
her a visit at the weddings. Lynne managed to get the use of a somewhat
battered runabout and took off from the Depot, shortly before noon.
Mars might be considered a small planet, she thought as she sped
low over its level plains and prairies, but it was a planet of vast
distances. Without oceans, it actually had a far greater land surface
than Earth. And its lack of real mountains added to the illusion of
vastness. It was, she thought, like flying over an ocean of land.
Woomera Station, when she sighted it, looked like a small oblate bit of
green and yellow, around a cluster of red-and-white farm structures,
stuck like a postage stamp in the middle of an immense envelope.
Yet, as she walked from the landing field, she realized as never
before what an imposing plant it was. Here were hundreds of hectares
of hydroponic greenhouses, some five square kilometers in all of lush
grassland for cattle raising, interspersed with long stretches of
barns, barracks and storehouses. Here, wonder of wonders on Mars, was
even a small pond where the pigs, long-staple mutton and musk-oxen
could drink. Truly a man-made oasis, in the midst of desolation.
The pond was Joanna’s special pride and joy. “We just got our atomic
transmuter three months ago,” she said, “and already it is turning the
sand into drinking water for the cattle. Maybe someday, we shall all
have swimming pools on Mars, quite as wonderful as those in Joberg or
Rio on Earth.”
Lynne said, “It’s pretty expensive, isn’t it? And aren’t you afraid
that the water may be radioactive and poisonous?”
The girl’s face fell. She said, “I guess it _is_ expensive. But it’s
better than draining the atmosphere of moisture. And in time, our
scientists will learn to cut the cost drastically.”
Lynne read the sternly suppressed lack of assurance in the girl’s
mind. She had pinned her hopes on the transmuter, which was in truth a
remarkable invention for turning dry mineral matter into water. But,
as an ex-brain team coordinator, Lynne saw clearly that the expense
must outstrip any real benefit which might accrue, except in special
isolated instances. She kept her conclusion to herself, however,
and said, “I’m awfully glad you asked me to visit you, Joanna. I’m
tremendously impressed.”
Joanna got a two-place tracto-scooter and took Lynne on a tour of the
entire project. She admired the plump hogs and flocks of turkeys, the
long-staple sheep and the small, furry musk-oxen, imported to endure
the arctic cold of the Martian winters. She admired the artificial
drinking pond, where the animals clustered to slake their thirst.
Finally she asked, “How do you shield the transmuter?”
Joanna waved toward the northeastern corner of the station. “The
transmuter has its own shield on three sides,” she explained. “We
keep the open side facing away from the station. There are some odd
sort of radioactive deposits out that way but our chief figures a
bit more radiation isn’t going to hurt anything. Come on, I’ll show
you the out-of-bounds markers. The whole area--about fifty square
kilometers--is fenced off. A few years ago, a couple of prospectors
went in there to dig. They were never seen again.”
“Let’s go,” said Lynne a trifle grimly. A distant thrumming inside
her head grew more intense as they neared the northeast corner of the
grazing grounds. She opened her mind a little--and was once more in an
unearthly cathedral, full of dread and love and clamor.
“Let’s go back, Joanna,” she said tightly. Her nerves were singing
like guitar strings and it seemed impossible the black girl shouldn’t
feel it too. But Joanna’s dark face remained amiably impassive. At the
Station proper, Lynne said, “I’d like to talk to your chief.”
* * * * *
Ultimately, to get him to turn off the transmuter, Lynne had to
communicate with Rolf and New Samarkand, and tell him that she had
discovered another deposit of the super-entity on Mars. In the end it
was Agriculture Boss Radchev who ordered the disconnection. The worst
of it was, she could not explain her reasons to Joanna and the Station
chief in terms they were capable of understanding.
All the chief said was, “You know, without the pool, the Station will
perish. We are no longer allowed to draw the water we need from the
atmosphere.”
“You keep that transmuter on much longer, and the whole Station will be
wiped out--just as Callisto Project was wiped out,” Lynne warned. “I’m
not trying to wreck you. I’m trying to save your lives.”
“I wish I’d never asked you to come here!” Joanna cried passionately.
“Why couldn’t you have left us alone?”
Relations remained strained until Rolf and Radchev, a swarthy giant
with an unexpected, and quite startling shock of corn-white hair,
arrived on the scene. A gingerly magnetic-tracer investigation was
conducted over the suspected area until the eroded entrance of the
narrow mine-shaft the prospectors had sunk was located. Then Rolf and
a couple of Station hands, leaving all electronic gadgets turned off,
approached via tracto-scooter and went down the shaft. When they got
back, Rolf nodded.
“It’s sunk a lot deeper under the ground surface here,” he said. “I’m
becoming convinced there’s at least one of them on every stable planet
and satellite. In some frightening, inexplicable fashion, they’re
interrelated--which is why we got sent tracking off to Callisto.”
Radchev said, “You think there’s one on Earth then?”
Rolf nodded. “Probably buried far underground. The more eroded the
area, the closer they lie to the surface. On Callisto, the creature was
actually exposed. Here, it’s buried just under the subsoil.”
“Then why hasn’t one been found on Luna?” Radchev asked. “I thought
Earth’s moon was completely charted for mineral elements.”
Rolf hesitated, but Lynne came up with the answer. “I think it’s
because the creature needs the gaseous elements of an atmosphere to
survive. The atmosphere is thick on Earth, thin here. On Callisto it
lies frozen on the ground. But it’s there. The Moon has none--just as
Deimos and Phobos have none. We know it doesn’t exist on them.”
“I think you’re right,” said Rolf, his face grim. “Somehow, this
mysterious entity has to breathe. I have a hunch that otherwise
it’s nothing more than a sort of super-brain, which has long since
surrendered all other physical properties.”
“Then,” said Redchev, puzzled, “why is it we haven’t stumbled across a
single one of the creatures. This one must have--”
“It has probably been here forever by our measure of time,” Lynne
interrupted eagerly. “Can’t you see, Mr. Radchev, that it hasn’t been
discovered sooner because non-telepathic human mental processes were
too far below its reception or broadcast level to make contact with it?”
The Agriculture boss shook his massive head. “That won’t do, I’m
afraid,” he said. “The coincidence is too steep. Don’t you think
it remarkable to put it mildly that, almost to the moment when
you discover your new life-form telepathically the non-telepathic
E.I.A. should have stumbled into it on Callisto? I tell you--I’m not
convinced.”
“But you will be!” Lynne persisted. “We know it can be irritated by
human physical and mental contact under some conditions, and that
when the irritation is sufficient, it strikes back at its tormentor.
Think of the unexplained blasts and disasters that have killed men and
destroyed their works all through known history. Isn’t it possible,
even probable, that some of those disasters were caused by our new
friend under the stimulation of physical irritation?”
Radchev rumbled like an incipient Krakatoa, then subsided to a
querulous, “But if this is so, how are we going to combat it?”
And Rolf and Lynne, thinking in concert, spoke in unison, “We aren’t
going to try to combat it. We’re going to put it to use.”
VI
Rolf flew back to Nampura Depot with Lynne in the runabout but they
were unable to enjoy their brief respite alone together. In the