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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59535 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+                            Project Hi-Psi
+
+                            BY FRANK RILEY
+
+                    _The aliens were conducting an
+                experiment under laboratory conditions.
+                  So, how could they guess that their
+                guinea pigs held the ultimate weapon?_
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1956.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+Dr. Lucifer Brill stepped briskly down the corridor of the Federal
+Building. The taps on his leather heels clicked a precise rhythm on the
+marble floor.
+
+He ignored the door that offered "Information", passed up office after
+office until he came to the glass paneled door which informed him that
+behind it functioned the Director of FBI operations in the Los Angeles
+area.
+
+The door was locked.
+
+Lucifer Brill rubbed the knuckles of his left hand over the bristles
+of his sand-colored, neatly trimmed bit of mustache. It was a gesture
+known to all graduate students, Department of Parapsychology, Western
+University, as an indication of annoyance.
+
+The possibility of this office being closed had definitely not been
+part of Lucifer Brill's prospectus.
+
+A movement behind the opaque glass panel caught his attention. He
+rattled the knob. When this produced no results, he tapped with his
+immaculate fingernails on the glass.
+
+A shadow moved inside the office. The lock clicked. The door opened.
+
+An overweight young woman, obviously interrupted in the act of painting
+a lush mouth over thin lips, glared at him through a veneer of
+politeness.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I have an appointment with the Director." Lucifer Brill's voice still
+carried the twang of boyhood in Chelmsford, Mass.
+
+The young woman's plucked eyebrows arched.
+
+"This office is closed. If there is an emergency, you may...."
+
+Lucifer handed her his card. The eyebrows arched still higher.
+
+"Dr. Brill! Your appointment was for 3:45!"
+
+"I am aware of that," he told her, severely, "but the other drivers
+were not, and there were an incredible number of them on the road. Now,
+if you please...."
+
+"Would you care to make another appointment for tomorrow?"
+
+"I would not. You may inform the Director that I have arrived, that I
+regret my tardiness and that the purpose of my visit involves a matter
+of extreme urgency."
+
+Lucifer hadn't raised the level of his voice, but behind the rimless
+spectacles, his mild blue eyes became very cold and direct. The
+secretary unpursed her lips and flounced toward the inner office.
+
+She was back in a moment, and said with disapproval,
+
+"This way, please--Sir."
+
+The Director greeted Lucifer Brill with a courtesy that was somewhat
+strained. His briefcase was on his desk. So was his hat.
+
+Lucifer went peremptorily to the point.
+
+"I must report a most serious case."
+
+From long training, the Director ignored the tone and inquired with
+careful politeness.
+
+"What sort of a case, Dr. Brill?"
+
+"I believe you would call it a case of kidnapping--multiple kidnapping."
+
+"Kid--kidnapping!"
+
+The Director's large hands hit the desk top with a cracking sound. His
+knee touched a button to flip on the tape recorder.
+
+"When?--Where?--Who?"
+
+Lucifer considered the questions, methodically organized his answers.
+
+"As to when, I would say over the last eight years."
+
+"What?"
+
+"As to where, I would say all over the United States."
+
+"Now, one moment ... please!"
+
+"As to who.... Well, that would require a rather lengthy answer."
+
+The Director's voice shook with an effort to keep calm.
+
+"Dr. Brill, I would appreciate an answer to my question."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Lucifer took a small, brown leather notebook from the inside pocket of
+his beautifully pressed gabardine.
+
+"It will take a little time. You see, I believe that over 3,000 persons
+have been kidnapped."
+
+The Director's thick neck turned prime-rib red, and swelled over the
+collar of his shirt. Lucifer began to read:
+
+"Anthell, Ruth ... Atwater, Horace ... Borsook, George...."
+
+"That's enough, Dr. Brill!"
+
+"Thank you. Time really is of the essence, you know. I learned this
+morning that two of the missing persons disappeared as recently as four
+days ago."
+
+The Director breathed heavily.
+
+"Just who are these people, Dr. Brill?"
+
+"They are all positives. Some of them are positive positives."
+
+The Director made a small, strangling sound.
+
+"If you don't mind, Dr. Brill--just what in the hell are positive
+positives?"
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry. I had presumed you were familiar with my work."
+
+"I'm a little vague about it."
+
+"I see." Lucifer's expression showed intolerance for this cultural
+lag, but he condescended to explain. "For several years I have been
+re-evaluating psi card tests at Western University, with the project
+goal of answering criticism that Rhine and other researchers ended
+scoring runs at so-called convenient points. While one cannot approach
+the statistical ideal of infinity in any series, it is nevertheless
+mathematically possible, through multitudinous repetitions...."
+
+There was an expression on the Director's face of a man trying to plod
+doggedly against a strong gale.
+
+"Positives ..." he reminded, a little desperately.
+
+"... to amass statistics that are conclusively beyond the bounds of
+chance. In this rechecking, I have received excellent cooperation from
+researchers at other universities, and consequently have compiled what
+may well be the largest list of psi cases on record, whereby...."
+
+"Positives," grated the Director. "Kidnapping ... remember, Dr.
+Brill...?"
+
+"... I have been able to establish categories--in my own
+terminology--of non-positives, positives and positive-positives. Do you
+follow me, Sir?"
+
+"Absolutely." The FBI Director removed sweat from his forehead with the
+back of his hand. "Now, shall we get on with this kidnapping...."
+
+"I am convinced that my positives and positive positives are either
+being kidnapped, or otherwise caused to disappear involuntarily."
+
+"3,000 of them?"
+
+"3,116."
+
+The Director, in this crisis, took refuge in routine. He picked up
+Lucifer's card.
+
+"Do you have any other identification with you, Dr. Brill."
+
+The routine was a mistake. Lucifer produced an expired driver's
+license, an unpaid gas bill, a membership card in the American Society
+for Psychic Research, a faculty football ticket, a credit slip from the
+May Company, six traffic citations....
+
+The Director held up his hand in weary surrender.
+
+"O.K.," he said. "Tell me all about it."
+
+Lucifer told his story with an admirable lack of detail, and a certain
+intensity that compelled attention.
+
+At a certain phase of his project, it was necessary to start
+re-evaluating cases he had previously re-evaluated. That phase had
+been reached two months ago. He had selected five hundred names from
+his card file, and had sent them form letters preparatory to arranging
+for tests.
+
+When 480 came back marked "Address Unknown", or "No Forwarding
+Address", he was disturbed, but not unduly so. In an era of great
+population shifts, people could be lost and forgotten.
+
+He mailed out another 500 forms. Four hundred and sixty-three came back
+unopened.
+
+A third mailing brought similar results. Subsequent mailings added
+up to the startling statistic that some 3,000 people apparently had
+vanished.
+
+Lucifer personally checked a score of names in the greater Los Angeles
+area. Five could not be located; seven seemed to have moved without
+leaving a forwarding address; one was reported drowned in the surf off
+Point Fermin; six were listed with the Missing Persons Bureau. Of the
+latter, two had briefly made headlines. They had kissed their wives
+goodby, driven off to work and had never been seen again.
+
+Against his will, the FBI Director was impressed by Lucifer Brill's
+calm recital of these facts.
+
+"But 3,000 people," he demurred. "Isn't it simply incredible that 3,000
+people could disappear without causing a commotion?"
+
+"Do you know the number of missing persons listed annually by the Los
+Angeles Police Department?"
+
+The Director admitted he did not.
+
+"Nearly 4,000 juveniles and adults. The number in other cities is
+roughly proportionate to the population ... New York, for example, had
+about eight...."
+
+The FBI Director made his decision.
+
+"Dr. Brill," he said, "Give me that list of names and addresses."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within twenty-four hours, teletypes began pouring in from the District
+Offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Individually, the
+reports meant nothing. Obscure people who simply were missing. Many of
+them were not even missed enough to be listed as missing persons.
+
+The final tabulation showed that 3,223 men and women were missing out
+of 4,775 people who had registered significantly above-chance in the
+psi re-evaluation tests conducted by Western University.
+
+Lucifer Brill pointed out something else.
+
+"The missing positives were my stronger positives. Most of those who
+have not disappeared were closer to borderline cases."
+
+At this point, to the infinite relief of the Los Angeles office, prime
+responsibility for the case shifted to Washington, D.C.
+
+A tight lid of security was clamped over the whole affair. FBI analysts
+went to work on the facts and figures. Mathematically, they proved that
+the percentage of missing psi test cases was fantastically above the
+probability of coincidence.
+
+One by one, the people had dropped from sight, lost in the swirling
+undercurrents of a vast, shifting population. A school teacher in
+Little Rock, a side-show freak in Chattanooga, a TV salesman in
+Milwaukee, an artist in Philadelphia--all had disappeared, obscurely
+but definitely.
+
+And the disappearances were continuing.
+
+Only two days before an inquiring FBI agent called on a pharmacist
+in Dubuque, the man had closed up the drugstore, started for home
+and had never been seen again. He was listed as an amnesia victim at
+the local police department. In his psi test, four years earlier,
+he had consistently averaged seventeen out of twenty-five calls.
+Remorselessly, the accrual of new facts added to the Bureau's
+bewilderment.
+
+One of the FBI statisticians pointed out that almost an identical
+number of men and women were missing: 1,596 men; 1,627 women.
+
+Another perceptive young researcher ran cards on the missing positives
+through an IBM machine, and came up with this statistic: The women
+were between the ages of 17 and 35; the men between 19 and 45. Eighty
+percent of both sexes were in their late twenties.
+
+When all possible data had been assembled, the FBI gingerly submitted
+its report to a super-secret meeting of the Central Intelligence Agency.
+
+The reaction was not flattering.
+
+Navy's slightly profane comment was that someone in the Bureau had
+flipped his wig.
+
+Army looked disgusted.
+
+State Department was pained.
+
+White House was silent.
+
+The Chairman smiled, and waited for someone else to laugh.
+
+No one laughed.
+
+Red-faced but unyielding, FBI insisted that its report merited serious
+consideration.
+
+"We've kept this thing quiet," FBI said, "but you know what the
+reporters could do with it."
+
+State looked less pained. Even Army and Navy gave reluctant attention.
+White House asked tentatively,
+
+"What about the Russian angle? If even a fraction of this nonsense we
+hear about psi is true, these people might serve an espionage purpose.
+Could Soviet agents have smuggled them out of the country?"
+
+"A few, maybe," admitted FBI. "But not 3,223. Not by any known method
+of transportation."
+
+"Any subversives among them?" asked Army.
+
+"One hard-shelled Commie, a few fuzzy-minded joiners ... about par for
+the course."
+
+"Then why in the hell is this important, anyway?" demanded Navy.
+
+A large hassle ensued, but all eventually agreed that if more than
+3,000 people actually had been caused to vanish, it was at least
+potentially a cause for security concern. Army pointed out:
+
+"Next time, they might not waste the effort on these crackpots. They
+might bag some important people."
+
+White House asked:
+
+"What are we going to do about it?"
+
+There was an outburst of silence.
+
+Finally, State spoke up:
+
+"By all means, keep the matter quiet. It could be deucedly
+embarrassing."
+
+But something, of course, had to be done.
+
+And while something was being debated, at top level, in top secrecy, in
+eyes-only, Q-clearance sanctums, Lucifer Brill took matters into his
+own hands.
+
+He felt a compelling personal responsibility to the missing people.
+Their names had been compiled together in his files; he had made no
+effort to protect the lists. Anyone who wanted to make the attempt
+could have found a way to copy the cards.
+
+Lucifer also felt a sense of responsibility to science. And by science,
+he meant his own branch of parapsychology. All other science existed
+for him in a vague limbo into which no serious psychological student
+would venture. "Nuts and bolts," was the way Lucifer customarily
+dismissed the shadow-world of science outside his own laboratory.
+
+But what use was it to go on confirming and re-confirming the existence
+of positives and positive positives if they just up and disappeared?
+
+The answer was discouraging.
+
+So Lucifer Brill took stock of himself.
+
+He was forty-four years old. He had no dependents, and was dependent
+on no one. Except for chronic nearsightedness, and hay fever in the
+months of July and August, he was sound of limb and body.
+
+Lucifer withdrew from the bank the balance of his inheritance and
+life savings. He placed the money in a trust fund to be given to
+Western University for continuance of psi research, five years after
+his death or disappearance. He drew up a holographic will bequeathing
+and bequesting his library and papers to the University. He prepared
+a sealed envelope containing three hundred dollars in cash and
+instructions for the care of his two parrots for the balance of their
+natural lives.
+
+And then Lucifer Brill released to the profession the news that after
+testing thousands of people for the psi talent, he had finally tested
+himself--and had scored an average of 19 out of 25 in 4,000 PT tests,
+all conducted under strict laboratory conditions.
+
+Parapsychological circles reacted with an affectionate blend of awe and
+amusement. Fellow professors wrote him congratulatory notes, some with
+postscripts that jibed at him goodnaturedly. The editors of two psychic
+journals called to ask for articles. One Eastern university wanted
+to test him for PC and PK, but Lucifer stalled for time, waiting for
+something or someone to cause him to vanish from the face of the earth.
+
+On the evening of August 23, about eight-thirty, there was a knock on
+the screen door of his bachelor apartment. Lucifer called, "Come in,
+please," but he continued to work at a statistical tabulation.
+
+The door opened; footsteps approached his desk.
+
+"Sit down," said Lucifer. He had been expecting a summer school
+graduate student to come by for a book. "I'll be through with this
+column in just a moment."
+
+"There is no hurry, Dr. Brill."
+
+The voice was strange. It had almost a metallic ring.
+
+Lucifer's fingers turned white where they gripped the pencil. But he
+carefully totalled up the column and rechecked the answer, ferreting
+out an error in the addition of 29 plus 8.
+
+Only then did he swivel around to face the tall, thin, dark-faced
+stranger. Lucifer said quietly,
+
+"Good evening. I am sorry to have kept you waiting."
+
+The stranger nodded, and took a small blue phial from his pocket. Long,
+lean-muscled fingers squeezed the phial.
+
+Lucifer's apartment faded gently away in the sweet, cloying odor of
+hyacinth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Lucifer Brill opened his eyes, his face was half buried in a white
+pillow. A damp breeze blew across the back of his neck. The breeze was
+heavy with tropical odors. Yet there was something curious about them.
+Lucifer sniffed, and sniffed again. He discovered that his hay fever
+wasn't bothering him.
+
+Through one probing eye, Lucifer could see his glasses on a
+nightstand. Beyond them was a window down which drops of rain were
+beginning to streak.
+
+Memories of the blue phial and the strange visitor flooded back. His
+right arm was numb, but he decided he had been sleeping on it. He
+experimented with his toes and legs.
+
+They moved.
+
+His right knee bumped against an object on the other side of the
+bed. The object felt alien to anything in Lucifer Brill's previous
+experience. He pushed firmly with his knee, and felt something that was
+both firm and soft, yielding and unyielding, warm and slightly cold.
+
+There was a sleepy murmur of protest, and the alien object moved away.
+
+Lucifer Brill obeyed habit. He reached for his glasses. Then he raised
+himself on his tingling right elbow and peered cautiously toward the
+other side of the bed.
+
+By many standards, Lucifer could have been adjudged a brave man. But
+what he saw had a curiously frightening effect on him.
+
+He saw the back of a woman's head, and a tangle of dark hair, a bare,
+sun-brown arm, a bare shoulder.
+
+Lucifer took off his glasses, breathed upon them, polished them
+thoughtfully on a corner of the sheet, and looked again.
+
+The apparition was still there. Only now the head was turned. The eyes
+that were watching him were wide and startled. The lips moved in sort
+of a gasping sound. They framed the words:
+
+"Get out of my bed!"
+
+In spite of a certain paralysis, Lucifer bridled at the words. He was a
+rational man, and believed that words should originate in a context of
+rationality.
+
+"I can assure you," he stated, "that I am not voluntarily in your bed,
+and that I have no intention of remaining here."
+
+There was another gasping sound. The eyes widened still more. The lips
+exclaimed. "Dr. Brill! Dr. Lucifer Brill!"
+
+Lucifer made a sound that was as close to a gurgle as he had come since
+infancy.
+
+When he had collated his emotions, he asked in his customary tone,
+
+"Have we met?"
+
+The lips smiled wryly.
+
+"It looks that way."
+
+"Ah ... Yes, of course. But, I mean ... under social or professional
+circumstances?"
+
+"You're the odd little man who gave me those card tests in San Diego
+last winter."
+
+Lucifer Brill digested this information in dignified silence. He
+considered the woman gravely, then took the white sheet and covered her
+up to her chin.
+
+She gasped again.
+
+"There are certain proprieties," he reminded her severely.
+
+He considered her again, trying to place her face and its personality
+among the thousands of people he had psi-tested. It was what he would
+term a Type III face, although he had never been able to establish
+any defineable connection between bone structure and psi positive
+characteristics. This was a strong face on the pillow beside him.
+Strong and at the same time possessed of certain female qualities,
+principally in the fullness of the rather large lips and in the throat
+lines. The cheek bones were fairly high. The skin texture indicated a
+chronological age of about thirty.
+
+Having thus appraised and catalogued the woman, Lucifer asked, "May I
+have the privilege of making your acquaintance?"
+
+"Wh ... what?"
+
+"Your name," he said impatiently. "Do you mind telling me your name?"
+
+"Nina ... Nina Poteil. They call me Nina ... professionally."
+
+"Professionally ...." Lucifer rolled the word on his tongue as though
+he relished its flavor. "May I inquire as to the nature of your
+profession?"
+
+"You don't remember? Oh, well, I guess you'd call me a psychologist."
+
+"A psychologist!" Lucifer's eyes glowed with relief and approval. If he
+had to awake to find himself in these distressing circumstances, it was
+good to know that he was with a confrere.
+
+"Really!" he said. "I had no idea! It astonishes me that I do not
+remember you. What is your specialization?"
+
+"I'm called an entertainment psychologist."
+
+"How extraordinary! Where do you practice?"
+
+"At the Blue Grotto on Fifth Street. I'm billed for character readings.
+Cards are my medium, but I don't need them, of course."
+
+"Oh."
+
+Lucifer adjusted his glasses. He said, "Now, if you will kindly face
+toward the opposite wall, I will get out of this bed."
+
+As Lucifer climbed out of bed, he was painfully conscious of a short
+kimono that scarcely reached to his white, bony knees. Panic-stricken,
+he looked around for something else to wear, and found some neatly
+folded garments on a chair behind his side of the bed. With a shock, he
+realized this was exactly the way he had always left his own clothes
+overnight.
+
+Only these were not his own clothes. They appeared to be made of a
+light, semi-transparent plastic material. There was a pair of trousers
+that fit rather like jodhpurs, a loose, practical tunic, and boots of
+the same thin material. When he had dressed, he still felt like a man
+in a goldfish bowl.
+
+Looking out the window, he saw that they were near the center of a
+very large compound, comprising hundreds of small dwellings, all
+constructed of a slate-like grey metal. Each dwelling was surrounded
+with a neat area of what appeared at first glance to be a lawn. On
+closer observation, it was a lush, mossy growth, deep green in color.
+At one end of the compound was a much larger building, sprawling into
+many wings and substructures. Behind it rose a tremendous, yet somehow
+slender and graceful, silhouette of a shining projectile, aimed toward
+the clouds. Around the compound, at intervals of about two hundred
+yards, were tall guard towers. The compound itself seemed to be located
+in a vast, towering forest that rolled away in all directions until it
+disappeared in the low-hanging mists. Through a break in the clouds,
+Lucifer saw a giant, orange wheel, many times the size of the sun he
+had known all his life.
+
+"Amazing," Lucifer murmured.
+
+Averting his eyes from the bed, he walked across the room and opened
+a door. It led to a large, bright room, artificially lighted from a
+source he could not determine. At the far end of the room were a door
+and glass casement windows that opened on a small, mossy clearing. The
+forest curved in behind the clearing, and walled it off. In the room
+itself, a large screen occupied most of one wall. The furniture was
+extremely functional. Everything, even the cushions on a low couch,
+appeared to be made of a tinted metal. But when Lucifer touched one of
+the cushions, it yielded resiliently.
+
+"Amazing," he repeated.
+
+In his astonishment, Lucifer forgot himself and looked toward the bed.
+
+"Miss Poteil, have you any idea where we are?"
+
+"I woke up after you did," she reminded him.
+
+"I see." He regarded her sternly. "What is your last recollection prior
+to awakening?"
+
+"I don't know.... Yes, I do!" She sat up, then sank back and covered
+herself again as he glared disapproval. "I was in the Blue Grotto--It
+was getting late, and I had just left my card--like I always do--at a
+table where two men were drinking. One of them said, 'Sure, we want a
+reading.' Then I sat down, and that's all I remember."
+
+"All?" he insisted, as if questioning a reluctant student.
+
+"There was kind of a strange odor...."
+
+"I know."
+
+"You do!" She bolted upright, forgetting the sheet. She looked
+accusingly at him.
+
+"Naturally, I recall the same odor. How else do you suppose I happened
+to wake up in this bed?"
+
+"I wondered."
+
+Lucifer turned back to the window in time to see two men, in the same
+plastic tunic and leggings he was wearing, approaching the front of
+their bungalow.
+
+"We have visitors," he said. "Perhaps we shall also have some answers.
+While I greet them, I suggest that you make an effort to acquire some
+kind of apparel."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the visitors was a gaunt, heavy-boned man, exceedingly tall.
+Lucifer guessed his height at close to seven feet. The bone structure
+of his face was harsh and massive. His head was shaved; the flesh
+deeply bronzed. The second visitor was nearly as tall, but he was
+older, and his shoulders sagged. Bronze skin hung loosely over the
+bones of his face.
+
+After a cautious glance over his shoulder indicated that Nina had
+stepped into the semi-transparent leggings and tunic that appeared to
+be standard garb, Lucifer opened the door and faced the men coming up
+the path.
+
+The younger of the two nodded.
+
+"Good morning, Dr. Brill."
+
+His voice had the same metallic timbre that Lucifer had first heard
+from the tall visitor in his own study.
+
+The older man stepped close to Lucifer and gazed intently into his eyes.
+
+"He has emerged," he said.
+
+"Good. In that case, we must introduce ourselves all over again." The
+large man bowed slightly, then drew himself stiffly erect. "Dr. Brill,
+in your language, my name would approximate the phonetic sounds: Huth
+Glaspac. You may call me Huth. I am the Administrative Director of
+this project." He indicated his older companion. "This is our medical
+director. For simplicity, you may call him Dr. Thame."
+
+Lucifer studied them gravely.
+
+"Come in, Gentlemen," he said.
+
+Awkwardly, he went through the motions of introducing them to Nina. Dr.
+Thame examined Nina's eyes, and nodded.
+
+"Our laboratory calculations were correct," he pronounced in a brittle
+voice that reflected satisfaction. To Nina and Lucifer he explained.
+"Due to the differing metabolisms of your bodies, it required a rather
+delicate calculation to bring you both out of the drug at the same
+time. It was estimated to occur about four cintros ... that is,
+hours ... ago, during your sleep...."
+
+"Gentlemen," Lucifer interrupted impatiently, "do you mind telling us
+where we are and what this is all about?"
+
+Huth's massive bronze features lightened with the shadow of a smile.
+
+"It is doubtful that the answer to either question will be helpful at
+this time. However, in response to the first, may I inquire: Have you
+studied astronomy?"
+
+Lucifer drew himself up with dignity. "I am a Parapsychologist."
+
+Again there was the shadow of a smile on Huth's bronze features.
+
+"The extreme specialization of your science will never cease to amaze
+me. At any rate, you are on the planet Melus, one of the outer planets
+of the star which your Earth astronomers call Capella, and which they
+place in the constellation of Auriga."
+
+Lucifer blinked rapidly and rubbed the bristles of his mustache with
+more than ordinary vigor. Some of his colleagues at Western University
+had worked on rocket projects. He had always suspected they were fools;
+now he was sure of it. Why else would they be wasting their time with
+rockets, while another race was running around the universe, kidnapping
+positives?
+
+It was Nina who spoke up first, her dark, deep-set eyes burning with
+excitement.
+
+"Capella ... I know!" she exclaimed. "Sometimes I work with the medium
+of astrology. It doesn't mean anything, really, no more than the cards.
+I could do just as well without either. But the customers.... Say,
+unless you're not telling the truth, Mr. Huth, we're quite a ways from
+San Diego!"
+
+"The distance is not important," said Huth. "Melus is now your home,
+and will be for the rest of your lives."
+
+As the import of his words reached them, Lucifer blinked again. Nina
+sat down on the edge of the steel-grey couch.
+
+"For the rest of our lives," she repeated wonderingly. "That's a long
+time."
+
+"It is to be hoped," said Dr. Thame.
+
+Lucifer had to speak with more than usual severity in order to keep the
+tremor out of his voice. "I asked two questions," he reminded Huth.
+
+Huth nodded.
+
+"Your second question will be answered during your orientation period."
+
+"And how long does that last?"
+
+"It varies. For you, Dr. Brill, it could be much longer than for your
+wife."
+
+"My--" This time, Lucifer's dry New England twang definitely broke.
+
+"Oh, yes. We learned that by observing the rituals of your culture
+we can minimize emotional trauma and thereby hasten orientation." He
+turned to Nina. "I can assure you that the proper Earth rituals were
+performed in the prescribed manner. Since neither of you were married,
+we could dispense with the Earth divorce ritual and perform only the
+marriage ritual. Does that ease your mind?"
+
+She stared at him without answering.
+
+Lucifer's temper bristled.
+
+"I refuse to recognize such mockery. It is immoral, illegal and
+definitely unethical."
+
+Huth dismissed the matter with a slight shake of his massive head, and
+proceeded to explain some of the objective facts of their situation.
+
+During orientation period, they would be required to remain on their
+own premises, except for their educational sessions at Center. They
+would be taken to Center once or twice each day, depending on their
+progress. Food preparation was handled at the Project commissary.
+Huth opened a small pantry. Meals, cooked by molecular agitation in
+the commissary, would be delivered to the pantry via the commissary
+tubicular. He showed them how to turn on the visagraph screen.
+
+"This is used for communication, education and also entertainment.
+You will find it very pleasant to read micro-filmed books off the
+screen. We also have a rather complete repertory of Earth music. After
+orientation, you will be assigned duties, and, of course, can become
+acquainted with fellow members of this project."
+
+Dr. Thame added briefly that Melus had been chosen for the project
+because it was a hydrogen-oxygen planet similar to Earth, although
+almost uniformly tropical. The inner planets of the system were not
+inhabitable, since Capella, with three times the mass of Sol, produced
+one hundred times more heat.
+
+"You'll discover that members of your Project have given this planet
+another name," he concluded. "But don't let it disturb you."
+
+Nina spoke up suddenly.
+
+"The name is--It's Mendel's Planet!"
+
+A muscle twitched in Huth's bronze cheek. "How did you know that?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I never know how. Things just come to me. Sometimes I say--said things
+to my customers at the Blue Grotto, and they would ask me the same
+thing. How do I know?" She shrugged her strong shoulders. "How does
+anyone know they know anything?"
+
+Huth and Dr. Thame exchanged quick glances.
+
+"Very interesting," said Huth. He moved toward the door. "We will send
+for you in two hours for your basic family record test."
+
+"Basic fam--." Lucifer choked on the word. He asked bleakly. "What
+might that be?"
+
+"It will be elementary to you, Dr. Brill. Just a basic psi-card test.
+We have your record, of course, but for purposes of standardization, we
+always start a new family's record in this manner. You undoubtedly will
+score rather close to your high test score on Earth."
+
+Lucifer hoped his apprehension did not show. He had not expected having
+to meet this challenge so soon.
+
+Nina had been pursing her lips, frowning and thoughtful. Now she asked.
+
+"Mr. Huth, how long have we, Dr. Brill and I, been here on Melus?"
+
+A hint of humor flickered in Huth's somber eyes.
+
+"Two Earth months."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For several moments after their departure, Lucifer stalked silently
+around the room. Nina remained on the couch. Her eyes were closed; her
+hands folded on her legs. There was a click in the pantry. Nina got up
+and looked inside. Breakfast had arrived.
+
+"We'd better eat something," she told Lucifer.
+
+"I am not hungry, Miss Poteil."
+
+She brought a plate, and stood resolutely before him.
+
+"This is going to be a hard day. You will need the food."
+
+He tried to stare her down, but couldn't. He accepted the plate,
+feeling like a chided school boy.
+
+Lucifer ate in silence, and when he had finished, he wandered out into
+the mossy patio behind the bungalow. There was a milky opaqueness,
+without obvious form or solidity, that walled the area off from the
+bungalow on either side. The rear of the patio, facing the forest, was
+clear, but when he walked too far in that direction, an invisible force
+shocked him warningly, and he leaped back.
+
+The trees were incredibly high; their canopy of branches and leaves
+was tightly interwoven. The rain had stopped momentarily, but water
+dripped unceasingly from the canopy to the mat of leaves on the forest
+floor. Spidery root tendrils crawled upward to mesh with tree boles and
+hanging vines. There was a smell of eternal dampness. Somewhere back in
+the shadows, an animal cried out. It sounded like a woman in pain.
+
+Lucifer shivered. He wished forlornly that he had left matters up to
+the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency. He reviewed his prospects,
+and did not find them good. In a narrow sense, he had succeeded. He had
+found his positives and positive positives, but he did not yet know why
+they had been kidnapped. Nor was it likely that the knowledge would do
+him much good. He was on a strange planet, in the system of a distant
+star, apparently destined to spend the rest of his life with a woman
+who had been a nightclub fortune teller.
+
+As a doctor of parapsychology, Lucifer was appalled. As a confirmed
+bachelor, he was horrified.
+
+But a more immediate problem clamored for consideration. What happened
+to non-positives on Melus?
+
+He would soon know.
+
+The two attendants who came to take them to Center were much younger
+than Huth. They carried themselves with military stiffness. Nina and
+Lucifer were led to what vaguely resembled a motorboat, covered with a
+transparent bubble. The conveyance hovered in the air, about two feet
+above a narrow pathway that was surfaced with a dark, burnished metal.
+Lucifer accepted the vehicle without surprise. Physical scientists
+had always reminded him of boys playing with erector sets, and their
+accomplishments bored him.
+
+Center was a series of low slate-metal buildings scattered over several
+acres. Some were inter-connected; some were separated by mossy areas.
+The outer walls were broken by tall casement windows that extended from
+just above the ground to just below the eaves.
+
+As they circled among the buildings, the casement windows began to
+swing shut. Lucifer thought at first that this had something to do with
+their coming, but then he saw the thunder clouds tumbling in over the
+forest roof and heard the approaching rain.
+
+The hot wind swept open a gate as they were rounding one of the
+opaquely enclosed areas. Lucifer caught a nerve-shocking glimpse of
+many grotesquely malformed creatures stumbling, sprawling and hopping
+into the building, under the supervision of several bronzed, statuesque
+attendants. One creature, with a huge bulging head that flopped
+uncontrollably from shoulder to shoulder, was bounding along on a
+single leg. Its twisted features were grimacing horribly.
+
+Lucifer did not raise his eyes to Nina's face, but through the
+transparent sleeves of her tunic, he saw the muscles in her arms grow
+rigid.
+
+The conveyance stopped in front of the entrance to one of the larger
+buildings. An attendant met them as they stepped out of the vehicle. He
+led them down a long, glass-roofed corridor. The rain was now drumming
+dismally against the glass.
+
+A blindfolded girl of about six passed them in the corridor. She
+stepped politely to one side, then continued surely and unconcernedly
+on her way.
+
+Huth received them in a large room equipped with two rows of facing
+desks.
+
+"As I told you," he explained to Lucifer, "these tests will be very
+elementary. Together with your Earth records, they will form part of
+your basic family file. And," he added, harshness edging into his
+voice, "it will be wise for you to give us your complete cooperation."
+
+One of the attendants led Nina to a seat in front of a desk. The other
+attendant beckoned to Lucifer.
+
+"If you please," Lucifer said to Huth, "I would like to observe your
+technique. Being a professional man, you know...."
+
+Huth assented.
+
+"May I compliment you on your attitude, Dr. Brill. Such an interest
+can shorten your period of orientation, and it raises my already
+considerable expectations for you. But we do not pretend to any
+originality of technique."
+
+After watching the attendant run through twenty-five cards with Nina,
+Lucifer was quite ready to agree with Huth. The technique was crude,
+far below minimal laboratory standards.
+
+Nina's attention wandered about the room, but she called off the cards
+without hesitation. The attendant took her through three runs, checked
+his file record and stood up with a shrug. He said something to Huth in
+a language that blurred and rasped.
+
+"Dr. Brill," said Huth, "will you oblige us now?"
+
+Lucifer stepped resolutely to the desk, but the palms of his hands were
+moist. Over the past two decades he had taken many tests, enough to
+know that he could never score above chance save for an occasional run
+of coincidence.
+
+And this was not one of those runs. He saw it in the attendant's manner
+before five cards had been turned. Desperately, he fumbled ahead,
+guessing blindly.
+
+At the end of the first run, the attendant spoke rapidly to Huth.
+
+Lucifer saw Nina watching him with surprise.
+
+"This technique is incredible!" he snapped at Huth. "With all the
+distractions in this room, not to mention the emotional stress of our
+situation, a true score would have to depend on chance!"
+
+"That is not necessarily so," Huth answered calmly. "The stronger a psi
+sense may be, the more easily it is brought into use, regardless of
+external circumstances. You Earth scientists go to incredible lengths
+to test under laboratory conditions an ability that does not belong in
+the laboratory."
+
+"Ridiculous! Laboratory standards were necessary to prove the existence
+of psi."
+
+"Therefore, Earth scientists will go on proving it to each other for
+the next hundred years."
+
+"What are you proving by this inferior duplication of our psi tests?"
+Lucifer challenged, hoping to divert attention from another disastrous
+run of the cards.
+
+"More than you suspect, Dr. Brill. For one thing, by checking this
+first test with your Earth record, and later with additional tests, we
+can obtain an indication of your response to orientation. This could
+be important to you, vitally important, I might add. Now, shall we
+proceed."
+
+It was an order, not a question.
+
+Lucifer saw Nina nod at him, and try to smile encouragingly. This fed
+his anger with the fuel of humiliation.
+
+The attendant took a new deck of cards, began to turn them.
+
+Brill felt his eyes drawn again to Nina. He called out his answer,
+unthinkingly. "Circle ... circle ... star ... rectangle ... circle...."
+
+When the run was completed, the attendant instantly started another.
+
+A third and a fourth run, then the attendant turned to Huth with a
+rapid burst of language.
+
+"Excellent," said Huth. "Excellent, Dr. Brill. All you needed to do was
+relax! Excepting the first run, you averaged very close to your Earth
+score."
+
+Since awakening that morning, Lucifer had found his professional
+equanimity tried sorely on several occasions. But never more so than
+at this moment. To have scored so significantly above chance on three
+consecutive card runs was a greater shock than awakening to find
+himself with a strange wife on a strange planet. The law of probability
+was the unchallengeable bastion of his private world.
+
+He caught Nina's glance again. Her dark eyes were watching him in a way
+he could not understand.
+
+Huth said, "This has been a most satisfactory prelude to orientation.
+We can proceed immediately." He touched a button. In a moment, Dr.
+Thame entered. "You will go with Dr. Thame," Huth told Nina. "Your
+husband will remain here."
+
+Nina looked at Lucifer again, hesitated, then turned away without
+comment and followed Dr. Thame out of the room. Huth led Lucifer into a
+smaller office.
+
+"This procedure is somewhat unusual," Huth commented. "Ordinarily, new
+arrivals are assigned directly to units of the Orientation Staff. But
+we have special hopes and plans for both of you. In particular, Dr.
+Brill, you can be of great service to us."
+
+It was difficult for Lucifer to be anything but forthright, but he
+tried. "Psi is my work," he said. "I suppose it matters little enough
+where I work at it. But it would help to know the purpose of all this."
+
+"Undoubtedly. But it will not be easy for you."
+
+"I am not a child."
+
+"No, but you are an Earth scientist."
+
+Lucifer felt his anger rising again.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't follow you."
+
+"I intended no invidious comparison, Dr. Brill. But, as orientation
+progresses, you will better understand what I mean. Have you ever
+thought how your science would appear to an extra-terrestrial mind?"
+
+"The concept has never occurred to me," Lucifer snapped, thinking of
+the grotesque creatures running out of the rain, and the blindfolded
+child walking alone down the corridor. "We see your science as a great
+number of cubicles, all operating within one structure, with a minimum
+amount of inter-communication. Each cubicle is engrossed in a process
+of infinite abstraction from a body of potential knowledge self-doomed
+to be finite. It studies every new idea chiefly in terms of concepts
+fundamental to its own specialized body of knowledge."
+
+Huth waved a large hand to cut off a protest from Lucifer.
+
+"And what of the phenomena an individual scientist observes and
+evaluates? He shapes the facts into an hypothesis that may be valid
+only within his own cubicle. He does not venture outside. A most
+glaring example is that of your medical diagnostician. He uses the
+tools of his science brilliantly, then lays them down and becomes a
+therapeutic nihilist!"
+
+"Specialization has meant progress," Lucifer protested.
+
+"Progress, yes, but progress only to the frontiers of infinity. Will
+you dare venture into that frontier, Dr. Brill?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Be careful! The price of that venture is very high. Consider for a
+moment your Earth biologist: The very nature of the subject on which
+he has founded his science eventually dooms him to technological
+unemployment! If he follows the living cells to their ultimate sequence
+of interactions between ions and molecules, biology ends as it
+began--as applied chemistry and physics!"
+
+Lucifer shifted uneasily.
+
+"From another value judgement," Huth continued, "the orthodoxy of
+Earth science is a product of its fragmentation. Within each cubicle,
+isolated from the fertilization of new concepts, the unorthodox all too
+often and too soon can become rigidly orthodox. This is the circle
+around which each science seems forever to travel!"
+
+Lucifer felt himself being moved skillfully toward an unknown
+objective. It was like being a Knight on a chessboard in the hands of
+an expert player.
+
+Huth moved in closer to his objective. "And so it is with psi, Dr.
+Brill. Or so it appears to an extra-terrestrial viewpoint, which is now
+necessarily your own! Parapsychology had to depart from the physiology
+of orthodox psychology in order to get a look at itself. It became
+unorthodox avant guarde! It established a scientific case for psi,
+and for two decades thereafter established little else. What have you
+proved that Rhine did not prove twenty years ago?"
+
+"It is necess--"
+
+"Already we see forming a dogma of psychic research, a cult
+of psychologizers that may match in exclusivity the cult of
+physiologizers--each declining to draw upon the resources of the other!
+We see a tendency to look backward instead of forward, a bemusement
+with the historical concepts of association theories, psychon systems
+and continuums of cosmic consciousness--all of which suggests a turning
+away from the frontiers of infinity to an interminable abstraction of
+possibilities from your own finite knowledge.
+
+"Do you follow me, Dr. Brill?"
+
+Lucifer removed his glasses, breathed on them, polished them carefully
+on the sleeve of his tunic. He looked beyond Huth to the window and
+the steaming tropical rain. When his thoughts were composed again, he
+answered, "I follow you--with reservations."
+
+"Naturally. Now consider this question: Have you looked into other
+cubicles of science for answers to psi?"
+
+"We welcome all viewpoints."
+
+"Do you now? I wonder! From our extra-terrestrial viewpoint, it is
+evident that biology, chemistry and physics all have within their
+present finite bodies of knowledge the fragments of concepts that
+could propel psi, and hence all of science, into the very frontier of
+infinity."
+
+Huth paused, looked searchingly at Lucifer.
+
+"Dr. Brill, are you ready to share your primacy in psi research with
+the physicial scientist?"
+
+"The physical scientist scoffs at us."
+
+"He also is reluctant to leave his cubicle. However, by using the
+mathematical tools of logic to enclose psi research in a framework of
+anti-logic, built on the principle that man cannot know, your psychic
+theorist has alienated the handyman physical scientist who has so much
+to contribute--but who insists that man must know."
+
+Huth raised himself to his magnificent seven feet of height.
+
+"Let the thoughts germinate, Dr. Brill. This is only your first
+orientation session. On the whole, we have made good progress."
+
+He handed Lucifer a printed card.
+
+"This will instruct you how to tune in your visagraph to a closed
+circuit orientation program after the dinner hour. Do not fail to
+follow instructions."
+
+With the briefest of nods, Huth stalked toward the door, where he
+turned, as if in response to an afterthought.
+
+"Your motivations to progress in orientation will be several, Dr.
+Brill, but it may be well for you to know that you already have a
+hostage to the future success of our program."
+
+"Hostage?"
+
+"Your first child, Dr. Brill. It will be born in approximately seven
+Earth months, according to the calculations of Dr. Thame.
+
+"Meditate on this while you await the attendant who will return you to
+your quarters."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lucifer tried to square his thin shoulders against the straight-backed
+chair. He ran the tips of his fingers over his upper lip, and out
+of the numbness that gripped his brain came a vagrant thought: His
+mustache really did need trimming; it wouldn't do at all to let down
+about such things.
+
+The door clicked open. He turned, expecting to see one of Huth's
+attendants, instead he faced Nina. Her cheekbones made two spots of
+white against her olive skin.
+
+"Hello, Lucifer," she said. Her voice was even deeper, huskier than
+usual.
+
+Her tone and the way she used his first name told him she knew about
+the child. But he pretended not to notice. He couldn't discuss the
+child until he had time to evaluate the meaning of it all.
+
+"Miss Poteil," he began firmly. His voice shook a little, and he
+started again, "Miss Poteil, I trust your first orientation session was
+not too unhappy an experience."
+
+Her dark eyes were thoughtful, troubled.
+
+"What is unhappiness?" She shrugged in reply to her own question. "I am
+never sure about crossing the line between happiness and unhappiness.
+Are you?"
+
+She sat down facing him.
+
+"Is your question philosophical or psychological, Miss Poteil?"
+
+She smiled faintly, and shook her head.
+
+There was silence between them. Finally she spoke again, "I saw the
+little girl as I came in."
+
+"The girl with the blindfold?"
+
+"Yes. She stepped right past me, and went into a room just down the
+corridor. The room seemed to be full of children."
+
+Lucifer stood up with sudden decision. "I believe I will try to look
+around."
+
+The white spots grew in her cheeks. Her full, expressive lips tightened.
+
+"Be careful, Lucifer," she said quietly.
+
+The long corridor was frighteningly deserted. With so many doors
+opening off it, the odds seemed overwhelming that someone would step
+out one of them at any moment and challenge his right to be there.
+
+Lucifer's plastic boots scraped on the metallic composition floor.
+
+A subdued tinkle of children's voices drew him to a door some thirty
+steps down the corridor. The door appeared to be of a glass-like
+material, but it was opaqued. He pushed against it, and it moved. He
+drew a long breath, then inched the door open.
+
+A tall, bronzed women of Huth's racial characteristics was grouping
+a dozen or so youngsters into an activity pattern. The children were
+all around five or six years old. Their fair skin and bone structure
+indicated they were offspring of Earth parents.
+
+The woman blindfolded one of the youngsters, a square-shouldered, blond
+little fellow. The she tossed a ball to one of the other boys, and gave
+a short command in her own language.
+
+The children scattered about the large room. The boy with the ball ran
+and stood against the window, which was blurred from the driving rain.
+
+After chanting what appeared to be a number count, the blindfolded
+boy began to move around the room. As he approached one child after
+another, he would hesitate while still three or four steps away, shake
+his head and move on to someone else.
+
+Finally, when still some ten feet from the window, he swerved abruptly
+toward the boy holding the ball. He ran directly to him, grabbed him by
+the arm, then fumbled for the ball and clutched it triumphantly.
+
+The other children broke into an excited babble, and everyone seemed to
+be clamoring for the next chance to be blindfolded. The woman looked
+disconsolately at the rain-streaked window, and began to blindfold
+another child.
+
+Lucifer eased the door shut. He moved on down the corridor, past room
+after room that seemed deserted. A tentative testing of several doors
+proved they were locked.
+
+Near the end of the corridor, where it turned at right angles and
+headed down an equally long wing of the building, Lucifer found another
+room that sounded occupied.
+
+Again he inched the door open.
+
+This room was occupied by smaller children, mostly of prenursery school
+age. They were playing a version of a game Lucifer recognized from his
+own childhood: Tail on the donkey. Only this donkey was a sinister
+looking creature with tiny ears and formidable jaws.
+
+One by one the children toddled up to pin a stubby tail on his
+derriere. Three of them hit the target with biological exactitude. The
+fourth missed badly. It was a little girl. When the others laughed, she
+tore off her blindfold, stamped her tiny foot.
+
+A bench sailed across the room, thudded flatly against the opposite
+wall.
+
+The children's derisive laugh changed to one of excitement, and the
+girl felt encouraged to expand her tantrum. The bench caromed from wall
+to wall to ceiling and off, with a crash, into a corner. The woman
+attendant picked up the child by the shoulders and shook her.
+
+For an instant, wild defiance flared on the childish features. Then the
+girl pouted, and two tears trickled down her soft cheeks.
+
+Lucifer didn't try to analyze his impressions. There would be time
+for that later. Now it was important only to gather as many facts as
+possible before he was detected.
+
+The second corridor contained many rooms. From the sound of the voices
+coming through the doors, and from spot-checking several rooms, Lucifer
+judged they were all occupied by children engaged in some form of play
+activity that required psionic ability.
+
+At the end of the corridor, Lucifer opened a door and found himself
+staring out into the rain.
+
+Urged on by a growing eagerness to learn as much as he could before
+he was stopped, he ducked outside and ran across a mossy stretch of
+courtyard toward a second building.
+
+Rain plastered his hair, and trickled down his neck, but his tunic and
+leggings seemed waterproof.
+
+The rain was hot and stinging, and the wind surged out of the forest
+with lashing force. Half-blinded, Lucifer stumbled over some unseen
+object. He sprawled to his knees. He got up, slipped again, and skidded
+into the partial shelter of a doorway.
+
+The door couldn't be moved. Lucifer moved out into the rain again, and
+groped his way along the side of the building.
+
+He stumbled over something else, fell heavily.
+
+A hoarse outcry, lifting above the wind and the rain, brought him to
+his knees. Shielding his eyes, he saw that he had stumbled over a
+figure huddled in a corner of the building. The figure straightened
+above him. Its movements were jerky, like a carpenter's rule unfolding.
+
+It was one of the grotesque, misshapen creatures Lucifer had glimpsed
+on first approaching Center. Through the slanting rain, Lucifer could
+make out a gigantic head that bulged sickeningly and was utterly devoid
+of hair. The head sagged forward, flopped back again until it struck
+the wall of the building, then snapped forward. It had two blank eyes,
+a flattened horror of a nose, a mouth that sagged and twitched.
+
+The mouth was trying to say something, but the words dissolved in a
+bubble of red saliva and a merciful wash of rain.
+
+The head flopped back and forth. The figure jerked toward Lucifer,
+lunged and fell on top of him.
+
+For the first time in his adult life, Lucifer lost control of himself.
+
+He screamed, and screamed again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hands clawed him down, smashed his face into a choking puddle of water
+and wet moss. The hands and arms beat against his back and ribs. Each
+blow was a flailing, uncoordinated effort, but the impact was crushing.
+
+Water bubbled into Lucifer's mouth and nostrils. He raised his head to
+breath, and a random blow smashed it back down. He gulped air and water
+together. He choked, strangled.
+
+And then the weight was gone from his back. The hands and arms stopped
+smashing against his flesh and bones. Lucifer raised himself on his
+elbows, retched chokingly.
+
+A powerful pair of hands picked him up and half carried him out of the
+rain. Someone brushed back his hair, wiped his eyes. He opened them.
+A tall attendant held him up. Nina dried a trickle of water from his
+cheek. Her dark features showed shock and concern. Huth watched him
+sardonically.
+
+"It was fortunate your wife sensed your danger and helped us find you,"
+Huth said. "Your zeal for orientation is commendable, Dr. Brill, but I
+suggest you proceed less rigorously."
+
+Lucifer took the handkerchief from Nina, wiped his mouth. It tasted
+salty. He attempted to stand with some measure of dignity.
+
+"Who or what was that creature?" he demanded.
+
+"I think you have had quite enough orientation for the time being,"
+Huth replied.
+
+The strange conveyance whisked them back to their bungalow. Lucifer
+soaked himself in a hot bath, and it was a long time before his
+trembling muscles relaxed. Dinner, via the tubicular, consisted of
+a meat dish, more strongly flavored than venison, two rather salty
+green vegetables and a flagon of warm, spicy amber liquid. They ate in
+silence.
+
+Soon after dinner, Huth appeared on the visagraph screen, for what he
+called their second orientation session. This was largely a development
+of the first, and so were those that followed on succeeding days. Each
+left Lucifer feeling more unsure of himself, tense, mentally adrift.
+The distance between Melus and his safe, secure little laboratory at
+Western University was becoming greater than could be measured in light
+years.
+
+Ranging from geology to biochemistry, from physio-psychical sources of
+neurosis to what he called the "molecular site of understanding", Huth
+hammered incessantly with semantics and logic against the carefully
+mortared bricks of Lucifer's own scientific cubicle. Sometimes he
+spoke with almost mystical fervor of a frontier beyond a frontier, a
+science beyond a science. One evening, during a visagraph session, Nina
+suddenly interrupted:
+
+"Your words speak about the infinite," she murmured, "but your mind
+does not sing with the music of infinity."
+
+Now, for the first time, Lucifer saw uncertainty on Huth's face.
+
+Uncertainty, and a look of indescribable sadness.
+
+Then the visagraphs screen went dark.
+
+Nina was on the couch beside Lucifer. Her eyes were half-closed; her
+strong fingers were clasped around her knees and she rocked back and
+forth gently.
+
+"What a strange man," she said. "What a strange and strong and lonely
+man. For a moment, I saw all the loneliness of the universe in his
+eyes...."
+
+Lucifer regarded her uneasily. "You see many things, Miss Poteil."
+
+"No, Lucifer, I see so very little. But what little I do see makes me
+feel like a blind person the rest of the time. Isn't it terrible to
+look at shadows?"
+
+"Really, Miss Poteil--"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+She put her finger to his lips.
+
+He started.
+
+"Wha--?"
+
+"Please, Lucifer--Oh, be quiet--Please!"
+
+Her breasts rose and fell sharply beneath the thin tunic. He saw the
+tendons stand out in her throat. Finally she whispered: "I think
+someone is coming to see us! Tonight. I'm not sure.... Oh, this damned
+blindness!"
+
+She beat her fists furiously on her knees.
+
+Lucifer tried to speak casually: "If someone comes, we'll know about it
+soon enough. Meanwhile, I suggest we try to get some sleep."
+
+There was a strange weariness in her as she got up from the couch and
+started toward the bedroom, which Lucifer had sternly assigned to
+her after the first morning of awakening. But after a few steps, she
+stopped and turned back to him.
+
+"Lucifer, they say you are the father of my baby. If that is so, I am
+grateful."
+
+It was the first time they had mentioned the child. Lucifer felt
+shocked, and very humble. This was another new feeling. He decided it
+would be wisest not to speak.
+
+"You are a man, Lucifer," she went on, in her husky voice. "I knew it
+when you tried to take that test, knowing you would fail."
+
+She brushed her lips across his forehead.
+
+"Goodnight, Lucifer. I have known many males, but very few men. There
+is a great difference...."
+
+He lay awake on the couch for a long time, his body aching for sleep,
+his mind spinning with strange thoughts, stranger concepts. He was
+just beginning to slip into the twilight zone between wakefulness and
+troubled sleep when a foreign sound in the room jarred him awake.
+
+Forcing himself to lie completely still, to continue his even
+breathing, he strained to catch a repetition of the sound; his eyes
+turned toward the rear window. The latest rain squall had swept by,
+and the window was now a luminous rectangle against a brilliant,
+star-filled sky.
+
+As his vision cleared and focused, he saw that the casement window was
+partly open. A fresh breeze, warm and fragrant with the odors of the
+rain forest, swept across the couch.
+
+Lucifer heard a definite, sharp click from the visagraph. It was as
+though a switch had been snapped. But there was no shadow of a physical
+presence in the room.
+
+The bedroom door opened suddenly. Nina stood there for an instant,
+silhouetted in her short, white nightgown. Then she moved quickly
+across the room, knelt beside his couch. Her lips, warm and dry,
+pressed close to his ear; her long hair tumbled over his cheek and
+throat. She whispered:
+
+"Can I stay here a little while?"
+
+He nodded, and felt her body crowd against him on the narrow couch.
+
+They lay there together, breathing quietly, watching the open window.
+
+And then there was a shadow there, a darker something against the
+darkness. Nina's body stiffened. With an unconscious gesture older than
+remembered time, Lucifer put his arm over her.
+
+A voice spoke out quietly from the window.
+
+"It's O.K. now, Dr. Brill."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A figure stepped through the window, stumbled over the hassock and sat
+on the edge of it.
+
+"You both there?" a man's voice asked, then, without waiting for an
+answer, continued: "... Good!.... Fetzer's my name. Albert Fetzer.
+Remember me, Dr. Brill?"
+
+"I regret to say--"
+
+"That's O.K. It was a long time ago--when I was GI-ing my way through
+electrical engineering at Western. You gave me a lot of card tests. I
+did pretty well, too--damm-it!"
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"None of us blames you anymore. We were kind of bitter at first--now
+we're glad you're here."
+
+"Glad?"
+
+"Sure. We've got a lot of things figured out, but there's still a lot
+more we don't get. You could be a big help to us."
+
+"I sincerely hope so, but--"
+
+"But, nothing, Doc. It looks like they're really giving you the
+orientation business--like they need you and are going all the way this
+time!"
+
+Lucifer's tongue felt dry, and difficult to maneuver. He was grateful
+that Fetzer didn't seem to expect an answer.
+
+"They've been cozy with some of us before, but always cooled off. You
+just play it smart, learn all you can! But be careful, or you'll end up
+with the _Goolies_."
+
+Fetzer listened intently, then chuckled.
+
+"I guess they're still kind of fouled up! We had to warp the force
+field behind your place--shorted their magnetic track, too! But
+before they get here there's something else I've got to warn you
+about--'specially you, Mrs. Brill."
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"What is it?" Nina prompted.
+
+"Well, when you think you get a message from us don't bust out with it
+like you did a while ago. They pick up everything you say on that damn
+visagraph--I had to short the magnetic track in order to get at the
+control wire to block it off--"
+
+"Just a moment, Albert," Lucifer interrupted. "How did you know what
+was said in this room?"
+
+Fetzer sounded embarrassed:
+
+"Well, it's a funny thing, Doc, but back on Earth we were all kind
+of ashamed of this psi thing. We tried to keep it hid from other
+people. Here, it's different. We're all the same way, more or less.
+So we try to use psi instead of hide it. Doesn't work on Huth's gang,
+though. They got minds like machines--It's like trying to psi into a
+quarter-horse motor!"
+
+There was a pounding of footsteps outside the front door.
+
+"Gotta go!" said Fetzer.
+
+He twisted lithely through the window, closed it behind him and
+vanished into the sultry night.
+
+Nina slipped from the couch and hurried into the bedroom.
+
+The front door banged open. The room light flared on, blinding Lucifer.
+
+Huth was there, with two of his men. The men ranged about the place
+with giant strides, going through the living room, the bedroom and out
+into the rear enclosure. One of the men worked on the visagraph, trying
+to light it up. He had no success.
+
+Huth stood over Lucifer's couch. "Has anyone been here?" he demanded
+sternly.
+
+"If there was, he was more quiet and courteous than you have been,"
+snapped Lucifer. "Need I remind you that this has been a most
+exhausting day, and that to be awakened in this manner--"
+
+"Mrs. Brill received a message, and informed you of it."
+
+"Miss Poteil talks a great deal of nonsense, which you must also have
+overheard. However, I assure you, Sir, that I am not interested in her
+hallucinations, and if you are, I suggest you discuss them with her in
+the morning."
+
+"What happened to the visagraph."
+
+"If I knew, I wouldn't care. Your electronic gadgets impress me as
+being rather juvenile."
+
+Huth bowed.
+
+"Perhaps because you do not understand them, Dr. Brill."
+
+The warning in his voice was clear. He turned sharply on his heel,
+motioned his men out of the room and left, shutting the door quietly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With breakfast, the tubicular delivered a metal-backed manuscript that
+bore the scholarly title: "Genetics and Psi, with an Evaluation of
+Three Case Histories as Compiled from Earth Records."
+
+Nina glanced at the title across the breakfast tray, then shifted her
+chair beside Lucifer's.
+
+"I'd better read that, too," she said. "Maybe it will tell us something
+about our own genetics experiment."
+
+Lucifer pursed his lips in disapproval at her frankness, but he held
+the manuscript so that both could study it. The introduction began:
+
+"After studying the incidence of psi on Earth, we felt that the
+genetics approach should receive considerable concentration of effort.
+Our chemists, biochemists and physicists are naturally continuing
+their experimentation, but the geneticists seem to promise the maximum
+results in the minimum amount of time. If psi can be explained,
+understood and propagated through genetics, it can no longer be
+mis-nomered 'extra-sensory'. It will become no more 'extra-sensory'
+than sense of direction, sense of time and, in the case of musical
+aptitude, such component primary senses as sense of absolute pitch,
+sense of intensity, sense of harmony, sense of rhythm and sense of
+tonal memory. Thousands of tests have indicated that these musical
+senses may have an hereditary base."
+
+"Physiologizers!" Lucifer exclaimed, contemptuously.
+
+"Let's keep our windows clean," Nina murmured.
+
+He stared at her in surprise.
+
+"My father used to say that," she explained. "He told us to keep our
+windows clean--so truth can look in and out."
+
+Lucifer turned back the manuscript. He felt somehow chastened.
+
+After several paragraphs of further discussion on the hereditary
+aspects of the various senses, even including the inheritance through a
+dominant gene of the ability to taste, the manuscript went into a long
+analysis of the family trees of Arturo Toscanini, Kirsten Flagstad and
+the 19th century mystic, Daniel Dunglas Home.
+
+"Please note," the manuscript emphasized, "that in all three family
+trees a favorable heredity and a favorable environment were perfectly
+blended."
+
+Nina gasped excitedly.
+
+"Oh, Lucifer--if this project can bring the right parents together...."
+
+"Human beings are not white mice!" Lucifer snapped!
+
+"They are on Mendel's Planet!"
+
+Nina seized his hand.
+
+"Think, Lucifer! Our child may be able to see things we have never
+dreamed of seeing! We will teach him to use his eyes from the very
+moment of birth--even before!"
+
+Deep anger and resentment stirred within Lucifer, but before he could
+answer her, a click from the visagraph screen told them they were not
+alone.
+
+Huth's usually calm voice betrayed his excitement. His dark eyes glowed.
+
+"Mrs. Brill--how would you propose to train a child so early?"
+
+"By encouraging him to use his own true senses rather than his
+superficial senses for his very first needs! My father raised all six
+of us and he used to say I was a good baby, because I never cried to be
+fed or changed. But maybe it was because he knew what I wanted and took
+care of me before I cried!"
+
+Huth insisted on sending for them immediately. There was a
+three-day-old Earth child at Center. Huth had the baby's records before
+him when they arrived. Nina, flushed with eagerness, asked:
+
+"How is the baby fed?"
+
+Huth consulted a chart.
+
+"Both formula and breast. But it doesn't appear that the mother will be
+able to nurse much longer."
+
+"When is the next feeding time?"
+
+"In approximately one hour."
+
+Huth took them to the nursery. Through the window, they could see that
+the baby was still asleep.
+
+The young mother was sitting up in her room. A tiny, thin-faced woman,
+she looked at them with alarm.
+
+"Is something wrong with my baby?"
+
+Nina knelt beside her chair.
+
+"Don't you know your baby is all right?" she asked gently.
+
+"I--I thought so. But when you all walked in like this, I wasn't sure."
+
+Lucifer didn't recognize this young woman; nor did she appear to
+recognize him. Her eyes, still dilated, roved apprehensively from face
+to face.
+
+"You're not going to do something to my baby?"
+
+Lucifer felt a great pity for this young woman, snatched away from
+Earth to bear a child with an unknown mate on this strange planet.
+
+"I wouldn't harm your child," Nina told her. "I'm from San Diego--how
+about you?"
+
+"Masselon, Ohio."
+
+"Now tell me," Nina asked, "is your baby awake yet?"
+
+The dilated eyes stared at Nina.
+
+"I'm ... I'm not sure, but I don't think so."
+
+"That's fine. Now, please don't be scared. I want to help you and your
+baby. Do you trust me?"
+
+The young mother studied Nina unblinkingly. After an instant of
+hesitation, she nodded.
+
+"Thank you. Now, are you going to feed your baby yourself this next
+time?"
+
+"I'll try again; but I haven't been doing so well."
+
+"Can you tell when your baby is starting to wake up?"
+
+"I thought I could the first day or so. But then I didn't try--I guess
+I got used to having my baby brought to me every four hours."
+
+"Is the baby usually crying when it is brought into the room?"
+
+The young mother smiled.
+
+"Oh, yes! She's got a strong, healthy cry!"
+
+"Will you try to feed her this time before she cries, when she first
+tells you that she is hungry?"
+
+"What--what do you mean?"
+
+Nina took the young mother's thin hand between her strong, brown
+fingers. "You know what I mean! Don't be afraid to use what God has
+given you! Let's stop talking now so you can keep your thoughts with
+your child!"
+
+Under the dominance of Nina's personality, the woman settled back in
+her chair.
+
+Outside, the first rain of the morning swept over the forest and
+steamed up the windows. Huth stood statuesquely by the door, arms
+folded. The tall nurse remained watchfully beside him.
+
+Lucifer struggled with an unaccustomed inner turmoil. Dissecting the
+tangle of his emotions, he was astonished to realize that his pulse was
+thumping with excitement.
+
+Abruptly, the young mother spoke up. "My baby is hungry. She wants to
+be fed."
+
+"Go feed her then!" commanded Nina.
+
+She helped the young woman from the chair. Together they led the way
+down the corridor. As they neared the nursery, Lucifer edged closer to
+them. He saw that the child was still asleep. The mother saw it, too.
+
+"But she's still asleep!" she said, bewildered. "I thought--"
+
+"Does a child have to be awake to tell of its hunger?" Nina asked
+gently.
+
+The young mother went ahead of them into the nursery. She took the
+child from the crib and cradled it in her arms.
+
+The baby stirred, grimaced. Its lips groped in small, sucking motions.
+
+The young mother hesitated, then opened her robe and brought the baby's
+lips to her breast. The child began to feed contentedly.
+
+At a gesture from Nina, the others left the mother and child alone in
+the nursery.
+
+When they were well down the corridor, Nina burst out triumphantly,
+
+"The first contact! Child has communicated to mother. Message received
+and answered. Child has used primary sense of communication, rather
+than learning to rely on secondary!" Nina squared her shoulders
+proudly. "My baby won't have to cry to tell me that it's hungry or cold
+or wet and miserable!"
+
+Lucifer's New England conscience prodded him. If indeed there was
+anything to this psi heredity business, then he had again hurt someone
+else, unknowingly, but deeply. What would Nina say and feel when she
+learned that he had no psi talent to pass on to their child?
+
+But this uneasy remorse conflicted with another emotion in Lucifer: The
+sense of excitement that he suddenly realized had been lost somewhere
+back in the early years of his psi testing. Somewhere, sometime along
+the way the sense of wonder had gone out of his work and his life. The
+constant repetition of the same basic testing technique had made a
+familiar backyard out of--what had Huth called it?--the very frontier
+of science.
+
+Huth was speaking to him.
+
+"What do you think now, Dr. Brill? Could it be possible after all that
+the unorthodoxy of Earth's parapsychology might have to be shaken from
+its own orthodoxy?"
+
+Lucifer frowned. "I do not want to split definitions with you. But it
+should be obvious to any scientific mind that Miss Poteil's experiment,
+although interesting, was painfully inadequate in methodology. In the
+first place, can we determine whether the child was communicating a
+need, or whether a psi-positive mother had some precognition of her
+child's need? In the second place, would a large number of children
+born of psi-positive parents react with significant difference from a
+similar number of children born of psi negatives?"
+
+"A flash of lightning can be duplicated in the laboratory," said Huth,
+"but it is still a flash of lightning. We recognize lightning, we admit
+its existence, but we do not wish to go on proving forever in the
+laboratory that lightning is in fact lightning. If some of your earlier
+scientists had been content to do that, your cities would still be
+illuminated by oil lamps."
+
+"A fallacious comparison!"
+
+"Not entirely so! I merely wished to make a point. It is all a matter
+of objective. You have seen how older children are developing their
+psi talents in our classes. Your wife may have shown us how to begin
+training at a much earlier age, when training is most important."
+
+"Still, I should think you would require more substantiation, some
+further testing, to support Miss Poteil's little experiment."
+
+"Of course. Do you have any suggestions, Dr. Brill?"
+
+Once more Lucifer found himself backed toward a corner. Only this time
+he did not try to escape. The challenge intrigued him, in spite of his
+determination not to become involved with this nonsense. A controlled
+experiment was quite a different thing....
+
+"I might have," he replied, with an effort to be casual. He plucked
+at his mustache. "But you must grant that a valid basis for
+experimentation cannot be improvised on the spur of the moment."
+
+"Improvise at your leisure, Dr. Brill."
+
+Nina was sent off to continue orientation work with Dr. Thame. Lucifer
+was given a small cubicle near Huth's office. It consisted of little
+more than a desk, a stool, three bare walls and a floor to ceiling
+window through which an orange rim of the planet's great sun was now
+shining mistily.
+
+Lucifer scribbled notes, drew crude diagrams, tore them up and started
+all over again. Spots of color flushed his cheeks. Though he would not
+have made the admission, he hadn't enjoyed himself so much in fifteen
+years. He didn't even notice when a new squall rustled across the wet
+jungle, blotting out the sun and drumming against the window.
+
+Huth came in with the attendant who brought lunch.
+
+"How many children are there here now?" Lucifer asked crisply.
+
+"I believe we have about thirty under the age of nine months."
+
+"Do you have another nursery room, like the one we visited this
+morning?"
+
+"We have three more in the Maternity Division."
+
+Lucifer explained his immediate needs. Huth issued orders that three
+more babies be brought to the Maternity Division. Each was installed
+alone in a nursery. Two were placed in cribs, and soon fell asleep. The
+third, a boy of about eight months, refused to nap. He wasn't happy
+until allowed to crawl around the floor, exploring the strange wonders
+of the nursery. Lucifer made a quick procedural adjustment, and hoped
+the youngster would stay awake until feeding time.
+
+He tried to tell himself, whenever he thought about it, that he was
+doing all this only to point up the absurdity of Huth's theories.
+
+As feeding time neared, three bottles of heated formula were brought
+in warmers and placed at Lucifer's direction in rooms immediately
+adjacent to each of the nurseries. Two of the children were still
+asleep; the third had discovered a pack of disposable diapers and was
+systematically tearing it apart. Dr. Thame joined them to watch the
+experiment, and he brought Nina along. Her eyes sparkled with interest
+and understanding as she watched Lucifer's preparations. After one
+quick nod, he did not look her way again, and he stifled the thought
+that Nina would be watching the experiment with their own child in mind.
+
+One of the babies stirred in its sleep, and whimpered a little.
+
+"Normally," explained Dr. Thame, "a child of this age would awaken
+shortly and begin to cry."
+
+The baby squirmed again, then turned toward the room in which one of
+the bottles had been placed. Its tiny lips worked in a sucking motion.
+
+"How wonderful!" whispered Nina.
+
+Lucifer picked up the bottle, moved slowly into the corridor.
+
+The child appeared confused. Its eyes screwed up tightly, and its face
+reddened. Then it jerked its head toward the new position of the bottle
+and repeated the sucking motion.
+
+Nina, who had followed Lucifer, squeezed his arm in excitement. He gave
+her the bottle, and she hurried into the nursery to reward the child.
+Its lips groped eagerly for the nipple.
+
+By this time, the second child was stirring. Its reactions were much
+slower, and more uncertain, than those of the first baby, but they
+followed the same pattern.
+
+Nina went on to the third child, which had been left playing on the
+floor of the nursery.
+
+"Lucifer! Come quickly!" she called.
+
+The child had crept over to the wall nearest the room in which its
+bottle had been placed. It was pawing, bewildered, at the rough surface.
+
+Ducking below the window edge, Lucifer picked up the bottle and moved
+it to the other side of the room.
+
+For a moment the child looked like it was about to cry. But it hitched
+around on its knees, sprawled flat, raised up again and crawled across
+the floor. When it was midway to the other side of the nursery, Lucifer
+switched the bottle back to its original position.
+
+The child continued its forward progress for a few feet, faltered and
+stopped. Its red button of a nose wrinkled, and two big tears squeezed
+down its round cheeks.
+
+Nina rushed into the nursery, picked up the youngster, cooed over it
+and thrust the nipple of the bottle between its anxious lips.
+
+"My compliments, Dr. Brill," said Huth. "Does this begin to satisfy
+your laws of probability?"
+
+Lucifer was determined not to show his excitement. He shrugged. "Five
+thousand more tests might prove something--providing you counterposed
+5,000 tests on children whose ancestry was psi negative."
+
+"We're not interested in psi negative children, Dr. Brill."
+
+Lucifer faced him squarely.
+
+"Just what are you interested in? I think we are entitled to an
+explanation."
+
+Huth hesitated, then nodded.
+
+"Perhaps you are."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they were settled in Huth's office, he stood by the window and
+folded his huge, bronzed arms.
+
+"My home planet," he began, "is also in the system of Capella. We
+are an old race, but neither decadent nor degenerative. Our physical
+sciences--as you can judge from your presence here--are at least 500
+orbits beyond the outermost probings of science on Earth."
+
+He paced across to the door, and back to the window again.
+
+"But in our obsession and fascination with the ever new horizons
+of physical science, we neglected that which was potentially of
+far greater significance. We ignored the possibilities of psionic
+evolution--we ignored them until it was almost too late!"
+
+"Too late," breathed Nina. "Is that why your mind feels like a machine?"
+
+Huth inclined his massive head in her direction.
+
+"That could be why, Mrs. Brill. What society--or our bodies--neglect
+will eventually die. It is true even of psi, Dr. Brill."
+
+"Can you be specific?" Lucifer challenged.
+
+"I can. If you had taken your eyes out of the laboratory long enough
+to look at your world as it is and has been, you would have learned
+that psi manifestations were quite customary on Earth during the 13th
+and 14th centuries. But your industrial age did not have much room for
+psionics. With Daniel Dunglas Home went the last of your great psi
+talents!"
+
+"Our card tests have discovered many psi positives," Lucifer
+interjected heatedly. "You ought to know--you have many of them here
+now!"
+
+"Psi positives with thwarted, arrested or frustrated talents," replied
+Huth. "Psi positives who wanted to be 'normal', because that is what
+society demanded.... Psi positives who were ashamed of their talent and
+quite willing to have it overlooked! Yes, we have them here ... and,
+what is more important, we have their less inhibited children!"
+
+"Your logic escapes me."
+
+"It wouldn't if you had emerged from your cubicle and looked around you
+among the physical sciences. Some of your more venturesome geneticists
+believe that man will soon be the master of his heredity and that the
+next five million years of evolution on Earth will be the controlled
+evolution of the human mind. That could mean controlled evolution
+toward psi, Dr. Brill--if Earth science can ever escape the terrible
+drag of orthodoxy and if the unorthodox can ever learn to avoid the
+trap of its own dogma."
+
+Nina had been watching Huth with the unblinking intensity that was so
+characteristic of her in moments of total concentration.
+
+"So we are your nursery!" she exclaimed. "We produce the plants that
+will bring life back to your own soil!"
+
+Huth came close to one of his rare smiles. "You have admirably reduced
+the milleniums and mathematics of evolution to a single sentence!" He
+turned to Lucifer. "Is this a laboratory big enough to challenge you?"
+
+Lucifer took refuge in a question of his own. "What about your
+_Goolies_?"
+
+From the shadow on Huth's face, and the faint gasp from Nina's parted
+lips, Lucifer knew he had made a mistake.
+
+"Where did you learn that name?" Huth asked him coldly.
+
+Lucifer was not a good liar, but he tried. "I--I don't really know.
+Perhaps--from one of your nurses or drivers...."
+
+"We will accept that explanation, for the moment. Later, I trust you
+will volunteer another."
+
+Huth's emphasis on "volunteer" was almost imperceptible, yet it had the
+effect of two pieces of steel striking together.
+
+"You have already met one of these--_Goolies_. Let us go and meet some
+more."
+
+Nina put out her hand. "Is this necessary?"
+
+Huth regarded her thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, I believe it is. If we are going to work together, you should
+know everything."
+
+"And if we're not?" Lucifer snapped. Huth shrugged. "Then it won't make
+any difference, I assure you."
+
+Outside, the wet moss of the courtyard was springy underfoot. Lucifer
+flinched with the remembered horror of trying to breath through that
+moss and water.
+
+Nina took his hand. Her fingers were strong and warm.
+
+A tall attendant let them into the building. Lucifer looked down a
+long, sterile-white corridor, flanked by small, seemingly transparent
+doors.
+
+"The doors are transparent only from this side, and then only when
+subjected to the proper wave frequency to make them so," Huth explained.
+
+"Like the rooms we live in!" Nina burst out.
+
+Huth blinked, and assented, "Like the rooms you live in."
+
+Before Lucifer could assimilate this bit of information, Huth had
+stopped before the first door.
+
+Inside was a shrunken monstrosity of a creature. It had the torso of a
+grown woman, but its legs were bone thin, twisted and scarcely eighteen
+inches long. It was hairless; its face was one ovular blob of flesh, in
+which the eyes, mouth and nostrils were knife-edge slits. It seemed to
+be watching the rain-streaked window.
+
+There were two beings in the next room, apparently male and female.
+Both were naked, and seated cross-legged on a thick mat. They were
+playing a complicated game with marked and colored blocks. The woman's
+body was covered with a fine, brown hair. Her breasts were tiny for the
+dimensions of her body. Her head was also small out of all proportion,
+as was the male's. Lucifer saw that though both were eyeless they were
+playing their game rapidly and skillfully. Their hands were lumps of
+flesh, with just rudimentary fingers.
+
+"They are quite sentient," Huth observed. And he added with pride, "You
+would classify them as definite psi positives--altogether our most
+successful experiment of this type!"
+
+As they neared the next door, it suddenly became opaque. Huth led
+them past it without comment. Nina winced, and her fingers tightened
+convulsively.
+
+They were led quickly down the rest of the corridor. Some of the doors
+were opaque. Through others, they caught glimpses of more grotesquely
+distorted creatures, some asleep, some lurching or crawling about their
+rooms.
+
+The corridor ended in a large multi-purpose type of room in which
+semi-human creatures of all shapes and sizes were milling about.
+
+Huth opened the door. "Go on in," he said.
+
+It took all of Lucifer's will to control his revulsion and trembling
+and step through that door. Nina followed. Her fingers rigid in his
+hand.
+
+One of the creatures nearest them turned nimbly around on one leg and
+hopped closer. It reached out a long arm, touched Nina's forehead. A
+harsh, croaking sound came from its mouth. Nina's lips quivered, but
+she smiled and patted the leathery hand.
+
+Others bounded and crept around them, jibbering, feeling their faces
+and hair, probing at their bodies with stumps of arms or with hands
+that seemed all fingers.
+
+"All of these people show some traces of psi," Huth explained. Again
+there was quiet pride in his voice.
+
+A wracking cry came from one corner of the room. A huge shape hurtled
+into the group around them, knocking others out of its way. Lucifer saw
+the wildly flopping head, then long arms reached for him and a crushing
+weight bore him to the floor. There was a choking odor of hot, oily
+flesh.
+
+And then the weight was gone. Two attendants led the creature, still
+mouthing angry cries, out of the room.
+
+Huth helped Lucifer to his feet. "You must forgive Tetla. He shows up
+well in some basic psi tests, but certain other faculties were lost in
+the manipulation of his chromosomes. We never quite know what he will
+do."
+
+The other beings had fallen back in silence during the assault. Now
+they began to babble in wild disharmony, each gesticulating in its own
+way.
+
+Lucifer's cheeks were grey, but his lips were compressed into a thin
+line under the stubble of his mustache. He took Nina's arm and strode
+out of the room. Huth followed, without comment.
+
+Out in the corridor, Lucifer confronted him. A sweep of his arm
+encompassed the long corridor, the room they had just left.
+
+"This--this is a monstrous inhumanity--a terrible perversion of
+science!"
+
+His voice was flinty with rage. Deep within him, the conscience of his
+puritan ancestry was revolted.
+
+Huth raised an admonishing hand. "Don't forget your scientific
+training, Dr. Brill. You can't impose the value judgements of one
+culture upon the framework of another."
+
+"There must be certain principles basic to all cultures!"
+
+"A true Aristotelian fallacy! Form is actual reality, matter is
+potential reality and the form is ever in the matter! Surely, Dr. Bill,
+you can rise above such ontology!"
+
+"Can you justify what you have done to these people even from your own
+value judgement basis?"
+
+"You treat justification as a valid entity, which leads you deeper
+into the morass of attempting to substantialize abstracta. We do not
+justify, we do! Let me clarify:
+
+"With the future of our evolution in the balance, with the unbounded
+horizons of the universe that will be opened by psi, we have taken
+certain measures. Once we postulated the genetic characteristics of
+psi, there was no limit to possible methodology. You have seen only two
+of many methods we are exploring: One, of course, is the Earth project;
+the second is an attempt to induce psi mutations in the offspring of
+certain of our own people. Naturally, since the external results of
+such experiments are often unpleasant, we bring the newly born infants
+directly to our laboratory on Melus."
+
+Nina's eyes were still wide with horror.
+
+"How do you do this thing?"
+
+"Really, Mrs. Brill, it's nothing to be so shocked about. As a matter
+of fact, it's only a further step in what your own experimenters do
+by exposing Drosophilae to X-rays and plants to colchicine. We are
+endeavoring by many methods not only to mutate a gene by re-arranging
+the atoms in its molecules, but also to increase the quota of
+chromosomes in certain cells. The difficulty, as yet, is to single out
+the right string of chromosomes or to hit the right gene and influence
+it toward the desired psi mutation. We are still groping in the dark,
+simply increasing the chances that one or another gene, at random, will
+psi mutate."
+
+As Huth spoke, he had been leading them toward a side exit. A vehicle
+was waiting. Huth put his hand on Lucifer's shoulder.
+
+"We did not bring you to Melus, Dr. Brill, merely to reproduce your own
+psi characteristics. We feel that your background will enable you to
+make many notable contributions, once you become oriented. Already you
+have justified this feeling. Your people will do things for you and
+Mrs. Brill that they would not willingly do for us."
+
+"I want nothing more to do with this project."
+
+"I am sure you will recognize your present reaction as purely
+emotional, and come quickly to realize that here you have the answer to
+a true scientist's dream--a laboratory on the scale of life itself! For
+twenty years you have taken timid steps around the periphery of your
+science. Now you are at the heart of it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What should he think?
+
+What should he believe?
+
+What should he do?
+
+Lucifer walked slowly around the small clearing behind their quarters.
+He stared, for the most part unseeingly, through the force field and
+into the shadows of the forest.
+
+His shoulder brushed the invisible barricade, and the shock broke the
+rhythm of his stride.
+
+What should he believe?
+
+This question bubbled most frequently to the roiled surface of his
+thoughts. With belief would come the mental framework, the pattern
+for action. It was disturbing and confusing that credo should be so
+important to a scientific mind. Couldn't facts take form without credo?
+Did facts shape the framework, or were they molded to conform to it?
+Einstein made truth relative to its own framework, but which came
+first--the framework or the truth? And if the answer was framework,
+could there be truth? Perhaps the childhood riddle of the chicken
+and the egg could have cosmic implications. A vagrant phrase from a
+long-ago literature class came back to prod him now: To an egg the
+chicken is merely the means of producing another egg. Samuel Butler.
+
+A shaft of sunlight speared down through the whispering canopy of
+branches high above him. It kindled to life a spot of riotous color in
+the perpetual shadow world at the base of the great trees. Blossoms of
+delicate blue, petals flecked with orange and gold. Leaves so green
+they brought an ache of loneliness for a forgotten spring morning of
+youth.
+
+What should he believe?
+
+With sudden percipience, Lucifer knew that he had moved in the shadows
+for a long time. The riotous dreams of youth, the exciting sense of
+being a pioneer among pioneers, had become like a bit of stop-motion
+film. It preserved the form, without the life or action. A dream cannot
+be framed and kept behind glass. It cannot be static. To remain, it
+must change.
+
+Parapsychology had been the high road. The glorious adventure. It had
+made the son of a New England minister an explorer on a new frontier.
+But does a frontier of science have purpose other than to lead to an
+infinite succession of new frontiers? Had he remained too long on one
+frontier?
+
+The unorthodox becomes the orthodox. The theory crustifies into the
+dogma. The method becomes methodology. Was this forever to be the
+entrapment of science? There were an infinite number of exploratory
+possibilities on this frontier of today; and, for all their challenge,
+they could be a soporific. The frontier itself was finite. But what
+about the next frontier? And the next? And the next?
+
+Huth could be right, in this at least: Perhaps parapsychology had been
+too long exploring the unknown of its present frontier. Some must
+remain behind to develop and consolidate. But others must keep moving
+on!
+
+To look forever beyond the next horizon! There was the challenge. There
+was the dream forever bright.
+
+Lucifer thought of his crude experiment with the psi positive children,
+and he admitted now what he had denied at the time: Not for a decade
+had he been so excited by any experiment; it had brought back the
+wonder of the moment when an aimless undergraduate had first come upon
+the Rhine card tests. Lord, that was more than twenty years ago! For
+twenty years he had been walking in Rhine's shadow. And his personal,
+private dreams had never lived to see sunlight.
+
+When would science learn to use genius without being smothered by
+it? Freud and Einstein had left a vision to their sciences, not a
+citadel. They had tried to cast a light, not a shadow. Rhine had
+brought psi into his laboratory to demonstrate its scientific validity.
+Now, the physicist, the biochemist, the mathematician and, yes,
+the geneticist--all of them, must take this validity into their own
+laboratories. The parapsychologist must become the physical scientist;
+the physical scientist must become the parapsychologist. Only from the
+total crucible of science could psi emerge in a useful form.
+
+But what of Huth, and Mendel's Planet?
+
+However it had been brought together, whatever one thought of it, this
+living laboratory was now a fact. Psi was being mated to psi; children
+were being born, children with a psi potential that could be trained
+into a power of unknown magnitude. Huth had described it well: A
+laboratory on the scale of life itself!
+
+Huth knew his semantics, all right. The barbs of his words got under
+the skin, hooked and held fast. How pallid an Earth laboratory would
+seem after Mendel's Planet. The symbol cards seemed to have lost their
+meaning.
+
+A dozen projects clamored to reach the surface of Lucifer's thinking.
+Each cried out its siren challenge; each demanded experimentation. How
+much there was to do here on Mendel's Planet!
+
+Now, Nina was at his side, and she said gently, "It's raining again,
+Lucifer. Won't you come in?"
+
+The rain had returned, and the big, splashing drops hadn't fallen
+into his thoughts. But they were coursing in streams down his cheeks,
+dripping from his eyebrows. He brushed them away, and stared at the
+forest. The shadows had merged. The flowering beauty was like a mirage
+that had never been, and never could be. There was only the wash of the
+rain on the forest roof, the drip-drop-drip on the molding carpet of
+dead leaves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Albert Fetzer came back that night. The click in the visagraph, the
+deeper blackness of the walls, the silent opening of the casement
+window--these were the now recognizable signs of his coming.
+
+Lucifer hadn't been able to sleep. Nina had already gone to bed, after
+pressing her lips to his cheek in a swift gesture that left him more
+unsettled than ever.
+
+When he realized that Fetzer was coming, Lucifer sat up on the couch
+and drew the sheet around his shoulders. In a moment the stocky figure
+squeezed through the window.
+
+"Hi, there," Fetzer called softly. "You awake, Dr. Brill?"
+
+"I haven't slept."
+
+"How'd things go today?"
+
+How had things gone?
+
+"I'm not sure," Lucifer evaded.
+
+"You got it all figured out?"
+
+"Well--not exactly."
+
+Lucifer was stunned at his own reluctance to discuss matters with
+Fetzer. Anything less than total frankness was a new facet of himself.
+It was one he didn't like. But how could he share his indecision?
+
+"We had an organization meeting after I left here last night," Fetzer
+said. "All the section leaders made it this time. We're set to pull the
+plug any time you say?"
+
+"Pull.... Oh, I hadn't realized.... What do you think you can do?"
+
+"Plenty. We've learned to short-circuit the force fields in a hurry,
+and we can spring over a thousand men inside of two minutes. Within
+five minutes more, we'd be able to hit Center and the landing field."
+
+Lucifer felt himself withdrawing even more. He could see the whole
+psi project swept away in turmoil. Then he thought of Huth's men, so
+towering in their stature, so well organized, so completely equipped
+by a fantastically advanced technology. The revolt would be brutally
+crushed.
+
+"You can't do it!" he told Fetzer.
+
+"Huh?" The stocky figure tensed. "Spell it out, Doc."
+
+"You wouldn't have a chance!"
+
+"We've got a few tricks. There's a lot of vets in this bunch."
+
+"It would be suicide."
+
+Fetzer hunched closer to the couch.
+
+"Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. But a man can't always stop to
+think of things like that. You do what you got to do."
+
+The words triggered a release, and Lucifer started to talk.
+
+With an eloquence that would have astounded his graduate students at
+Western University, Lucifer drew a word picture of the psi project and
+the theory behind it. As he talked, Nina came in quietly and sat on the
+couch beside him, drawing up her knees inside her short gown.
+
+Lucifer spoke of their own experiments with the babies, and of the
+sweep of five million years of evolution foreshortened through
+understanding and application of Hardy's Law. Only when he came to
+the radiation and chemical phases of the psi project, to the pitiable
+_Goolies_, did his flow of words falter. He tried to pick up quickly
+with analysis of what training would do for their own children. But the
+nagging awareness of this second dishonesty, the knowledge that Nina
+knew what he had done and was watching him in the darkness, broke the
+flow of thought and his explanation trailed off into awkward silence.
+
+Albert Fetzer didn't say anything. He squatted on his heels, a humped
+blur in the darkness of the room. Lucifer could feel the probe of his
+eyes and darting mind.
+
+"So that's it," Fetzer said at last. "We guessed some of it, but we
+couldn't fill in the missing pieces. You learned a lot, Doc."
+
+"There's so much I haven't yet learned."
+
+"You learned enough."
+
+"Enough for what?"
+
+"We're going to pull that plug, remember?"
+
+"No!" Lucifer stood up in his agitation. "There must be another way--a
+better way."
+
+"You name it."
+
+"Well--naturally I'd have to think more about it. Everything here is so
+new to me."
+
+Fetzer stepped closer to him. His shadow was shorter even than
+Lucifer's, but it bulked with unseen strength.
+
+"Anything else, Doc?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"You've gone for this stuff, haven't you."
+
+Lucifer recoiled from the bluntness of the question.
+
+"I am a scientist," he replied. "Or at least I have always assumed
+that. These ideas are as strange to me as they are to you, but I'm
+trying to understand and evaluate them. Isn't that important?"
+
+"Not to me it isn't--not right now. I think the other boys will feel
+the same."
+
+"You don't care what all this may mean?"
+
+"Nope. Not yet, anyway. I'm not a scientist, Dr. Brill. Maybe I'm not
+even a very smart guy and maybe I'm just as glad of it, because my feet
+are on the ground and I know where I want them to go. Sure, this psi
+stuff could be big, mighty big. Our kids could go a long way with it.
+I can see that. But I'm a man, not a guinea pig. I happen to go for
+the woman they teamed me up with, and she feels the same way about me.
+That's true of most of the folks here. But we're not breeding kids for
+someone else. We'd rather run our own show. Guess you professors have
+been away from ordinary people too long to realize that. You should
+listen to some of our boys who fought with the underground in the last
+war. Makes you feel kind of good about people."
+
+"Don't you realize that Huth can destroy all of you?"
+
+"I'm not the hero type, Dr. Brill. In the war, I always kept my head
+down and squeezed as deep in the mud as I could. But there's some
+things you have to do, no matter how cold your stomach feels about it."
+
+"When do you plan to do this?"
+
+From the forest came a wild, plaintive cry. Fetzer took a quick step
+toward the window, then paused.
+
+"You better come with me--both of you."
+
+Lucifer drew back.
+
+"Where? Why?"
+
+"I don't like to do this, Doc. But I don't like the way you sound,
+either. We can't take any chances."
+
+"You don't think ..."
+
+"I don't know. I'm sorry, but I don't know enough about your kind.
+Hurry up, now."
+
+Lucifer still held back, but Nina stood up and moved wordlessly toward
+the window. Fetzer's voice toughened.
+
+"Make it easy on yourself, Doc. You're coming along, one way or the
+other."
+
+His legs shaking, Lucifer followed Nina through the window.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The warp in the force field was at the far corner of the enclosure. At
+a command from Fetzer, they dropped to their knees and crawled through.
+A voice whispered a challenge. Fetzer answered, and they proceeded,
+single file, deeper into the forest. The leader guided them with a
+pinpoint of light escaping from his cupped hand.
+
+They followed a winding course around the root structures of the trees.
+Lucifer tripped once and fell sprawling into the wet, leathery leaves.
+As he got up, the spider loop of a vine caught him around the throat
+and flipped him again.
+
+"Pick up your feet and keep your head down," Fetzer warned impatiently.
+
+Their direction took them to a shallow stream, and they splashed
+up the middle of it for a hundred yards. The cacophony of night
+sounds retreated before them, closed in behind them. The rooftop of
+intermeshed branches and leaves dripped endlessly. Some alien creature
+followed them through the branches, yapping in a strident monotone.
+
+They emerged from the stream to crawl into a semi-cave formed by the
+enjoining roots of two great trees. Vegetation had webbed over the
+roots until even the dropping of water was cut off.
+
+The light of a guttering torch showed several men waiting for them. A
+few carried strange weapons stolen from Huth's men. Others were armed
+with vicious looking clubs, and long, needle-pointed stakes.
+
+It's fantastic, thought Lucifer. Cavemen prepared to challenge a
+mechanized force. Cavemen forty light years from home.
+
+When they saw Nina, the men stood up, surprised, uneasy. Fetzer went
+into some detail on what Lucifer had told him. One of the men swore,
+and smashed the head of his club on the sodden floor of the cave.
+
+A balding man seated Nina on a hummock in one corner of the cave.
+Ignoring Lucifer, they plunged into discussion of their plans. None
+could see any reason for further delay. The supply ship had been gone
+for some time, and might return soon. Its crew would add strength
+to Huth's base force, which numbered around eight hundred, including
+nurses, doctors and various technical personnel.
+
+To Lucifer, the plan sounded bold. Pathetically bold. A sizeable group
+would break out of their quarters and flee into the forest, drawing a
+portion of Huth's men in pursuit. Another group would attack Center,
+making it appear that this was the chief point of concentration. After
+delaying as long as possible, the main force would hit the landing
+field and try to capture the auxiliary spaceship. The men knew they
+couldn't handle the ship, but their work around the field had taught
+them enough about it to know that its armament could give them control
+of the base.
+
+As Lucifer listened, a sense of familiarity kept tugging at him. It
+was a strange sensation that he had been through something like this
+before. But that was ridiculous. He'd never been any closer to military
+action than rejection by his draftboard, which had stupidly considered
+parapsychology non-essential.
+
+The feeling persisted, and suddenly he identified it: Hempstead House,
+New London, Conn. The stories he had been told in childhood about the
+underground railroad and the abolitionist meetings held by the few who
+believed men should be free and were willing to do something about it!
+
+The memory came to him across thirty-five years of his life, and half
+the span of the galaxy. It came with an impact that snapped something
+inside him, to bring the entity, the changing personality that was
+himself, into focus again. But it wasn't the same focus as before. It
+would never be. Yet he felt more a whole person than ever before, and
+within him there was a surging current that could not be held back.
+
+Hempstead House had been a verity that could not be fitted into any
+neat cubicle of orthodoxy. New England ministers and spinsters,
+businessmen and farmers--all of them motivated by a life force that
+couldn't be duplicated in any laboratory. The same life force was in
+this tree cave tonight, far away from Earth. It would go with men
+forever, through all space and time.
+
+It would go with Lucifer Brill, too--to the end of this experience,
+to whatever new frontiers of science he might live to reach. It would
+prevent the vision from becoming the still-life picture, the theory
+from crystalizing into dogma. As long as the force lived in any man,
+it had the potential of leading all men to freedom. Psi was an unknown
+part of that life force. It could not always remain in the laboratory.
+It must bring freedom from blindness, freedom from the cubicles that
+restricted each man, each science. It was a weapon ...
+
+A weapon!
+
+Good Lord, why not?
+
+Lucifer stepped into the center of the group before he knew what he
+was going to say. But the words came: "Wait ... there may be a better
+way--if you have the courage to try it!"
+
+Fetzer eyed him sceptically.
+
+"We don't have much time, Doc."
+
+"Then you must make time! It's your only chance--our only chance!"
+
+The men were silent, uncertain.
+
+"Go ahead," Fetzer said. "But make it fast."
+
+"Would you fight with a knife if you had a machine gun? Would you
+attack on horseback if you had a jet loaded with atom bombs?"
+
+"Keep talking," said Fetzer.
+
+"The answer is obvious. You would use the best weapon available.
+Yet here you sit with clubs and wooden spears, ignoring a weapon so
+potentially powerful that it makes our H-Bomb, or some undoubtedly
+greater weapon of Huth's, seem like an old crossbow!"
+
+He had their attention now. He felt the force of concentration on his
+words. He sensed the awareness in Nina, though her eyes were hidden in
+the shadows beyond the wavering circle of torchlight.
+
+"Think of what I learned from Huth--what Albert Fetzer has told
+you. Every person was brought here because they were psi positives,
+because they possessed some individual psi talent. Some of you have
+been ashamed of that talent. Perhaps you tried to hide it back on
+Earth--because it made you different from other people. But you
+know something about it. You may have learned more about it--even
+experimented with it--during your months and years on this planet.
+You may know what even limited talents have done in perception,
+clairvoyance and the moving of objects through telekinesis.
+
+"These things were done by individual people, operating, as we might
+say, on single generators.
+
+"But now for the first time in history we have more than three thousand
+psi talents grouped together in one small area.
+
+"What if all the psi power here could be focused on one objective? All
+the men and women of Mendel's Planet--all the children--especially the
+children! ... focusing their combined power!
+
+"Wouldn't that give us the force of three thousand generators--fused
+into one unit? Instead of moving a chair across the room, making a
+table jump, levitating a person--why couldn't a building be moved? A
+spaceship crushed? An attacking force cut down like grass under an
+invisible mower?
+
+"Gentlemen, is there any limit to the power of a psi focus?
+
+"If a psi focus is possible, we have our own world to win--the
+frontiers of infinity to explore....
+
+"Are you willing to try?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The silence within the tree-cave lasted for an eternity.
+
+Even the breathing of the men was hushed as each struggled with this
+new concept.
+
+His emotional fire spent in the greatest effort of his life, Lucifer
+stood limp and awkward in the center of the circle, looking around at
+the set faces. Their eyes were fixed on the humus beneath their crossed
+legs.
+
+Faintly, high above the tree-cave, the wind moaned over the forest
+canopy, and a new wash of rain approached. It was a cold sound, though
+the night was steaming hot.
+
+There was a stir in the shadows, and Nina stepped between two men to
+join him in the circle. Her fists were clenched.
+
+"What's the matter," she cried, "don't you have faith in yourselves?
+Are you afraid to fight with a new weapon?"
+
+The faces turned up toward her.
+
+"Look at that torch!" she commanded. "Now, put it out! All of us
+together put it out!"
+
+She turned toward the torch, which had been thrust into a fibrous root
+structure. She half-closed her eyes. Her lips stretched taut; her
+fingers knotted and unknotted in an agony of concentration.
+
+The flame flickered violently in the still air of the cave, but it did
+not go out.
+
+"You're not helping me!" Nina cried: "I'm not strong enough alone--none
+of us are! Please!"
+
+Abruptly, the torch twisted in its base, the wood snapped with the
+crack of a rifle shot.
+
+The tree-cave was dark.
+
+Nina's voice was spent, triumphant.
+
+"See! Now do you have faith in yourselves? Didn't you feel what Dr.
+Brill meant by a psi focus? Think of what it will be like to be in a
+focus of three thousand minds! Are you still afraid?"
+
+A man groped his way to the broken remnant of the torch. He re-lit the
+upper portion.
+
+"I'm thinking of my own kid," he said. "I've seen what he can do all by
+himself."
+
+Fetzer spoke up.
+
+"I've tried it myself. I can't do it always, but sometimes it happens.
+I don't know why, but it happens."
+
+One after another the men spoke out, digging into hidden memories for
+some personal or observed experience.
+
+"My wife was a kick," recalled a scrawny little man with a huge nose.
+"Not the woman I got me now, but the one I had back in Portland. She
+never would read no cards, but when she got mad, all hell would bust
+loose! Once we both got mad the same time, and you never saw so much
+stuff zinging around! The neighbors called the cops."
+
+They fell silent again, thinking.
+
+Nina slipped her hand into Lucifer's. It was icy cold.
+
+"You'd better sit down," he told her.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+Then Fetzer spoke up.
+
+"How could we try this thing, Doc?"
+
+It was the question Lucifer had been hoping for, and fearing. The
+problems ahead were piling up. He was a teacher, a scientist, not a
+leader. But he couldn't let his doubts show now.
+
+"We can test it tomorrow night--if you can get word to all the people
+by that time."
+
+"We can."
+
+Once committed, the men plunged quickly into new plans. The guard
+tower on the hill behind the compound was picked for the first target.
+Almost everyone could see it from their own quarters. And it was large
+enough to provide a valid test for Lucifer's psi focus theory. The
+searchlight that always blazed on with the coming of dusk would be the
+signal.
+
+"If it works," said Fetzer, "we've got to be ready to go all the way.
+They might not know what happened exactly, but you can be sure they'll
+move in and clamp down fast."
+
+It was decided that a modified version of the original attack plan
+would be followed if the experiment succeeded. Only this time the
+diversionary forces would hit the Center and the small spaceport, while
+the main effort would be concentrated on getting the rest of the people
+into a clearing just outside the compound. From there they would try to
+function as a psi unit.
+
+The wail of a forest animal drifted through the night.
+
+"The boys are getting ready to short the field again," Fetzer
+explained. "We'd better get back."
+
+He held out his hand to Lucifer. "Sorry, Doc."
+
+They made good time back to the compound, and the group split up as
+they approached it. Fetzer took Nina and Lucifer to their quarters and
+showed them how to locate the warp.
+
+"So long," he said. "Good luck to us all."
+
+Nina and Lucifer ducked through the warp, but did not go immediately
+inside. They watched the clouds shred apart, and the incredibly
+brilliant stars light up the night.
+
+"I wonder where Earth is?" Nina whispered.
+
+"We couldn't see it if we knew."
+
+"Do you think we'll ever get back, Lucifer?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+She slipped her arm through his.
+
+"Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I have a feeling that we won't. That
+we will never see our own sun rise again."
+
+He was silent, feeling the weight of her words, the unknown to come,
+the burden of his responsibility.
+
+"It was hard for me to say that," she continued quietly. "I loved
+Earth. I loved its beauty and its ugliness. I loved its poor blind
+people. I loved them all, for I was part of them, and my eyes belonged
+to them. I could never hate anyone."
+
+She put her cheek against his, and her breath was warmer than the
+warmth of the night.
+
+Lucifer did not draw away. He asked, "Do you have a sense of what may
+happen tomorrow?"
+
+"Only a sense of much pain. Beyond that, I can't see. It may be just as
+well. Are you afraid, Lucifer?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"It is good to be a little afraid, always."
+
+"What about you--are you ever afraid, Nina?"
+
+It was the first time he had spoken the name of this strange woman who
+bore his child.
+
+"I am afraid, but I am at peace, too. If we do not come through this,
+there will be nothing more to the end of time. But if we do, we will
+have a child who can see, and its life will belong to us. Isn't that a
+wonderful thought?"
+
+Lucifer trembled under the added burden, but he thrust it from his
+mind, lest she perceive it there. Time enough for her to know the
+truth when they knew the future.
+
+"We'd better go in," he said.
+
+Her cheek turned. Her mouth found his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Huth called them shortly after breakfast, Lucifer was already
+at work in front of the visagraph screen. He held up a sheet of
+scribbling, and forced himself to speak with animation.
+
+"Here are some further possibilities based on our findings of
+yesterday. Can we work on them here today?"
+
+Huth looked interested. "Along what lines are you proceeding, Dr.
+Brill?"
+
+"All the primary needs and functions of a child could be related to
+psi, just as well as the feeding. I am intrigued by the possibility
+of stimulus and response in the prenatal stage. Mrs. Brill believes
+she has heard or read that thumb-sucking begins within the womb.
+Could you verify this with Dr. Thame? If it is indeed the case, the
+need expressed by the foetus in sucking its thumb might be answered
+psionically by a perceptive mother, thus strengthening the psi sense
+and building reliance on it at an even earlier stage of development."
+
+"Splendid, Dr. Brill!"
+
+Lucifer pointed to the stack of books beside him on the couch.
+
+"Earlier this morning, I asked for some works on the infant brain,
+and several books on electroencephalography were delivered by the
+tubicular. In scanning them, I find several items that may be fruitful
+for future research. For example, electrodes attached to the belly of
+a pregnant woman in the eighth month of gestation record an irregular
+pattern of delta waves. It also appears that both delta and theta
+are typically infantile rhythms, and that theta activity is early
+associated with such non-visual stimulation as pleasure, pain and
+frustration. The pathways on this frontier go in many directions."
+
+"Follow them where you will!" There was deep satisfaction in Huth's
+voice. "May I say, Dr. Brill, that I have misjudged the potential
+adaptability of the Earth scientific mind, when it is given proper
+stimulus and motivation. Your progress has been remarkable, truly
+remarkable! Would you be content to return to your old cubicle?"
+
+"No," Lucifer answered steadily. "I would not."
+
+The day dragged endlessly, even with the research to occupy his
+attention. It might have been easier if he could have talked with
+Nina about what lay ahead, but he dared not risk a chance word being
+monitored. They could only try to talk casually about themselves and
+the research.
+
+As the minutes crawled by, new doubts tormented him. Would Fetzer and
+his men be able to contact everyone? Would the people believe enough in
+their own power to make a serious attempt at focusing it on the guard
+tower? If the test failed, he had no doubts that the men would go ahead
+with their original plan.
+
+Nina smiled whenever their eyes met, but for all its strength her dark
+face showed the strain of waiting. Near the end of the day, she sat
+beside him, brushed her lips against the edge of his mustache, and let
+them creep up to his ear.
+
+"I love you," she whispered. "I want to say it now, and then think only
+of what we must try to do."
+
+Rain came with the first of dusk. It had been holding back since
+mid-day, building up rolling black thunderheads. Now it came with such
+fury that it blotted out the view of the compound and the guard tower.
+Nina looked stricken.
+
+"The signal!" she whispered. "What will we do?"
+
+Lucifer could only stare through the rain-washed window and repeat to
+himself the fragment of a prayer he had learned from his father.
+
+With deepening of dusk, the rain lifted a little, but they still
+couldn't know whether the light would be visible. A sudden gust could
+blot it out.
+
+Huth called on the visagraph. "I will send a car for you," he said. "I
+thought it might be pleasant to dine together and pass this miserable
+evening in stimulating conversation!"
+
+"Thank you," said Lucifer. He hoped his concern didn't show. From the
+corner of his eye he could see Nina by the window, straining to catch
+the first glimpse of the signal light.
+
+He must delay Huth in sending for them!
+
+Lucifer picked up a book.
+
+"I will bring this along," he said. "This afternoon I encountered
+another concept that may help...."
+
+As he had hoped, Huth could not resist the bait.
+
+"That's most interesting, Dr. Brill."
+
+"It has to do with what might be called the relationship between the
+anatomical maturing of the brain and the changing of rhythm patterns as
+the child grows older. This has not been applied to psi patterns--"
+
+"By all means, let's discuss it, Dr. Brill! Now--"
+
+"Another factor," Lucifer continued desperately, "may be the alpha
+rhythm patterns in a child. While these emerge very infrequently below
+the age of three, and do not appear with regularity until around
+the age of eleven, there is evidence to indicate that alpha rhythm
+characteristics are hereditary, and that...."
+
+As Lucifer talked, he saw that Nina's body had become rigid, that her
+fingers were extended and shaking, with the frenzy of a drowning person
+trying to reach something just beyond his grasp.
+
+"... and that environmental factors may affect the frequency of alpha
+rhythms during the period of childhood. For example, two uniovular
+twins--"
+
+A cry of pain escaped from Nina's lips. Huth showed he had heard it.
+
+"Is something wrong, Dr. Brill?"
+
+"Mrs. Brill may have fallen--I will--"
+
+And then it came, more a rending than an explosion. It was like a
+gigantic steel beam snapping apart from an irresistible pressure within
+its molecules.
+
+Their dwelling and the ground beneath it shuddered.
+
+Nina cried out again, a cry in which agony and triumph were one.
+
+Huth leaped back from the screen. A terrible rage was stamped on his
+bronze features.
+
+"Dr. Brill, if you are responsible for whatever has happened...."
+
+The screen went dark.
+
+Lucifer rushed to the window, tore Nina away from it. He caught a
+glimpse of white flames in the darkness.
+
+"Hurry! Through the warp!" he shouted.
+
+She followed woodenly, in a state of psychic shock. Her head struck the
+edge of the warp. Lucifer had to make her bend in order to get through.
+
+The drenching rain revived her a little.
+
+"Oh, Lucifer.... It hurt me so.... I tried so hard...."
+
+She was sobbing, and her tears became part of the rain on her cheeks.
+
+"It was like trying to swim against the tide of all the oceans in the
+universe. And the tide was pushing me back--and then, all of a sudden,
+the tide was with me--and I was tumbled and choked--in breakers as high
+as the stars."
+
+She pressed hard against him, her strong body contorting in a spasm
+that was more than muscular. Words tore themselves from lips that
+quivered and twisted:
+
+"Dear God! We've never lived before! A new world, and we're not strong
+enough to live there, Lucifer--Not strong enough yet! I can't go back
+to it--but I want to--I want to so much."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They skirted the compound, just within the fringe of the forest. As
+they ran, other shadow forms joined them in the scramble toward the
+meeting place. Children, awed momentarily to silence, ran nimbly ahead
+of their parents. A baby wailed.
+
+Seachlights probed through the rain, thrusting at the forest. Blocks
+of light and shadow flickered between the trees. It was like a film
+running wild in its projector.
+
+The light in the bow of the spaceship blazed on, and the misty twilight
+became a phosphorescent glow, a great dome of brilliance that arched up
+to the churning black clouds.
+
+A shouting came from the direction of Center. The first attack group
+had struck.
+
+Sounds of the second attack came from the area of the spaceship. The
+dome of light shimmered, then steadied, with eye-aching brightness. The
+second diversionary group, the one led by the little man with the huge
+nose, was now engaged.
+
+The clearing opened ahead. It already teemed with activity. Fetzer and
+his sector leaders were channeling all comers into groups of about
+fifty, each under one of the leaders. The groups were fanned out along
+the edge of the clearing, facing toward the compound. Except for the
+muted crying of the very young, and the low-voiced commands from the
+sector leaders, the groups were quiet.
+
+Fetzer ran to Lucifer.
+
+"Better stay with me. This is your show from now on! Just tell me what
+you want us to do, and I'll pass the signal along. My God! Did you see
+what happened to the guard tower?"
+
+"Some of it."
+
+"Do you think we can do anything like that again?"
+
+Lucifer looked over the nearest group. Many of the adults showed the
+same shock he had seen in Nina. The children were no longer so awed,
+and their eyes were strangely bright.
+
+"I don't know what we can do again," he answered. "And I'm not sure I
+want to know."
+
+The clearing filled rapidly. Each sector leader's group was separated
+by about ten yards from the next, and all formed an uneven, convex line
+some four hundred yards from end to end.
+
+"All set, Doc," said Fetzer. He fired a cylindrical weapon, and a
+streak of orange light curved over the compound.
+
+"That's to give our boys a chance to get back into the woods--those
+that still can. They'll be ready to hit again--if this other thing
+doesn't work."
+
+He waited for orders.
+
+Lucifer stared across the compound. The fear in his stomach made
+him feel like retching. These people were waiting for him to lead!
+Incredible.
+
+"You have to go on now," Nina said.
+
+His stomach was still sick, but he managed to smile at her. Through
+the slackening downpour he saw the bare walls and flat roof of Center.
+
+"The Center," he told Fetzer.
+
+Word leaped from group to group. Center. Center. Children picked it up
+excitedly.
+
+"Now," said Lucifer.
+
+Fetzer brought his arm down sharply. Lucifer saw the people around him
+pull themselves together for another effort. Nina looked faint.
+
+Nothing happened.
+
+Most of the children were bouncing with excitement. They still hadn't
+joined the psi focus. Lucifer ran up to a freckle-faced boy of about
+five.
+
+"Let's have some fun," he said. "Blow up Center just like you did the
+guard tower!"
+
+The words rippled from child to child, spoken and unspoken. Now it
+was a game instead of an awesome duty. Hey, Tommy, this is going to
+be neat. Blow up Center! Wow! Watch me. Aw, you aren't so hot! Quit
+shovin', will ya'? I can't see. Center. Blow up Center! Oh, boy!
+
+Lucifer gripped the freckled boy by the shoulders.
+
+"All right," he said, "you show them all.... Now!"
+
+The boy's eyes glowed brighter. He'd show 'em. Right here in front of
+Mom and Dad. You bet he would! Just watch.
+
+As child after child joined the psi focus, each grew quiet.
+
+In some deep center of his being, Lucifer had the sense of a dark,
+rushing wind, a nightmare sense of falling into a void, and screaming,
+though you knew you would never reach the bottom.
+
+Once again came that rending crack. Center disintegrated. There were no
+flying fragments. Just disintegration. A white light that was whiter
+than light.
+
+The children buzzed ecstatically. Their parents were numb and silent.
+
+Lucifer knew that if Huth still lived, he must be reorganizing his
+concept of what had originally happened. His reasoning would soon bring
+him to the truth.
+
+There was a period of quiet. It strengthened in Lucifer the belief that
+Huth was alive and calmly directing the operation. He found himself
+hoping that Huth, indeed, was alive. He had a respect for the man that
+bordered on a sense of kinship.
+
+The quiet was broken as Huth's men fanned in small groups through the
+compound. They moved with great, leaping strides. One squad probed
+toward the clearing. When its leader realized how many Earth people
+were assembled there, he signalled for a quick retreat toward the
+spaceship.
+
+Again there was stillness.
+
+"What now, Doc?" asked Fetzer. He looked five years older. "Shall we
+blast that ship before it opens up on us?"
+
+Lucifer shook his head.
+
+"I don't think it will open up--not just yet. This project means too
+much to Huth. He'll try to save as much of it as possible."
+
+Once more groups of Huth's men scattered through the compound. This
+time the groups were larger. They followed converging courses that
+would end at the clearing.
+
+"They're rushing us!" cried Fetzer.
+
+"Stop them!"
+
+The command leaped from sector leader to sector leader. Lucifer picked
+up the freckled boy so that he could see across the compound.
+
+"Now we'll have some more fun," he said. "Those men are trying to get
+here. Let's see if you can stop them."
+
+"Betcha we can!"
+
+Stop 'em! Stop 'em!
+
+Word of the new game spread psionically from child to child, and was
+repeated vocally. One tiny girl bounced up and down in glee, dancing,
+first on one foot and then the other, as if she were skipping rope.
+
+A shrill whistle launched the attack. Five squads converged on the
+clearing. The bronze faces of Huth's men were impassive. Their long
+legs covered nearly three yards at a stride. Each man carried a short,
+silver-colored tube.
+
+Once again the adults were first to project themselves into psi focus.
+But this time the children were not so slow to join and reinforce them.
+
+The rain had stopped. The hot, humid air was motionless.
+
+And it was a motionless wind that seemed to strike Huth's men. They
+were swept off their feet and spun around as if caught in a tornado.
+The huge leader of the squad bearing down on Lucifer's sector shot
+backward in a rising trajectory that cleared the compound. He screamed
+once. A hoarse, wild scream.
+
+The freckled boy in Lucifer's arms clapped his chubby hands.
+
+Some of Huth's men smashed into dwellings and fell in broken heaps.
+Others landed in open spaces and rolled like tumbleweeds. The survivors
+crawled or ran, screaming and sobbing, toward the spaceship.
+
+"We'd better get that ship now!" Fetzer urged.
+
+"Perhaps Huth will try to talk to us first."
+
+Five minutes passed. No sign came from Huth.
+
+"They're up to something," said Fetzer. "Let's not wait anymore."
+
+The gates of one of the administration training buildings swung open,
+and the _Goolies_ poured out, driven and prodded by their attendants.
+They came straight toward the clearing, running in weird, disjointed
+strides or bounding along on footless stumps of legs. Monstrous heads
+rolled loosely, snapping from shoulder to shoulder, from chest to back.
+Tiny, hairless, eyeless heads were fixed and rigid. Slack mouths gaped
+and drooled. Lipless mouths bared perpetual smiles. Dwarfed, naked
+creatures bumped against the knees of eight-foot giants.
+
+It was an unbelievable synthesis of every nightmare since time began.
+
+The freckled boy wrapped his arms around Lucifer's neck. His small body
+shuddered.
+
+Lucifer felt his own stomach twist with the remembered horror, but he
+held fast to reason. The _Goolies_ were in themselves no danger. It was
+only their psychological effect. Huth was shrewd. He knew well the
+Earth framework of prejudice. If they could break up the psi focus, his
+own men could crash in behind them.
+
+Confirming this line of reason, Huth's men were forming again on the
+outskirts of the compound.
+
+"Don't let them reach the clearing!" he told Fetzer.
+
+Fetzer waved his signal. Though shaken, the adults, too, responded
+to reason. They tried to focus. Children pressed against their legs,
+sobbing.
+
+A focus seemed to form, but weakly. It was like an exhausted,
+distraught athlete trying to pull himself together.
+
+The _Goolies_ faltered, appeared to lose some momentum and balance.
+The attendants drove them forward again. They came on as though wading
+against a strong current.
+
+"Don't be afraid," Lucifer told the boy. "They really can't hurt you."
+
+The small body continued to tremble.
+
+"Try to stop them ... try!"
+
+"I want my Mommy...."
+
+Nina took the boy into her own arms. She cradled his face against her
+breasts, pressed her lips to his cheek.
+
+"Just keep your eyes closed," she cooed gently. "Everything is all
+right now."
+
+She stroked the wiry red hair, and murmured.
+
+"You don't have to look to stop them, do you? Why, you can stop them
+any time you want to! Let's tell all the other boys and girls to keep
+their eyes closed--and stop those people so they can't hurt Mommy and
+Daddy! Here, I'll help you--we'll do it together."
+
+Nina pressed her cheek tightly to the child's, and closed her eyes. The
+boy stopped trembling.
+
+The _Goolies_ slowed. It became harder and harder for them to move
+against the invisible current. An attendant picked up one of the
+smaller creatures and hurled it forward. In midair, the _Goolie_
+rebounded and knocked the attendant off his feet.
+
+The psi current broke loose. Clusters of bodies flew in all directions,
+like the exploding fragments of a grenade, crashing in and through the
+metal walls of the compound buildings.
+
+And then all was still, except for a few broken moans. They were the
+loneliest sounds Lucifer had ever heard.
+
+He saw Huth, palms outstretched, walking steadily toward the clearing.
+
+"Let him come," said Lucifer. "I will talk to him."
+
+They met about thirty yards in front of the clearing. Huth's bronze
+features were chiseled deep with new lines.
+
+"Dr. Brill," he said, "I am shocked and disappointed. I thought you had
+come to believe in this great experiment."
+
+"There is no longer a question of belief--its success to this point is
+very obvious."
+
+"Then why do you destroy it?"
+
+"I am trying to save it."
+
+"I don't understand," said Huth. But there was hope in his eyes.
+
+"You have learned much about Earth and its people, but there is one
+thing you failed to learn: Man may be blind, warped and prejudiced, but
+his frameworks can be changed, and he must--above all--he must control
+his own destiny. This law has been proved so often through our history
+that I am surprised you missed it."
+
+Huth bowed his head to acknowledge the rebuke.
+
+"Then what do you see in the future of this project?"
+
+"I see great problems, almost insurmountable obstacles; and the
+threshold of a vast unknown. I see our people slowly approaching that
+threshold--to find their own future."
+
+Huth looked silently over the compound, over the shell of the project
+to which he had dedicated his life, and not even his tremendous will
+could keep his shoulders from sagging.
+
+"I cannot say that I truly disagree with you, Dr. Brill. But my own
+culture views this project from its own framework. I, too, had to fight
+with prejudice to keep it going. We are a mighty race, in control of
+a great section of the galaxy, and I doubt that you could hold out
+against our full power, as you have done tonight against a fragment of
+it on this isolated outpost."
+
+"There seems to be a new power on this tiny planet. A power greater
+than any of us can yet conceive," Lucifer answered calmly.
+
+"That may be; but there is the extreme likelihood of its total
+destruction before you can find out how to use it. I could not prevent
+this destruction if I tried--once it is known what happened here
+tonight. My people, too, have a destiny, and they are determined to
+pursue it."
+
+A great rumble, a mighty rush of air, swept them off their feet. The
+spaceship rose in a straight vertical line and leveled off some five
+hundred feet above the clearing. Its prow swung toward the Earth
+people. A finger of blue flame probed downward.
+
+Huth heaved himself to his feet.
+
+"No! No!" he shouted. "Oh, you fools...."
+
+The blue flame broadened at its extremity, until it resembled a long,
+inverted funnel. When it touched the ground, it reduced to grey ash a
+fifty foot area of buildings and trees. There was no burning, no odor,
+no smoke. Just a sifting of ashes that fell like snowflakes.
+
+Huth cried out in agony at this destruction of his dream. He ran toward
+the path of the flame, waving his arms.
+
+In the instant before the flame reached him, Huth stood motionless,
+arms outstretched, face straining upward, the great muscles of his neck
+standing out in rigid cords.
+
+And then his statuesque body was a sifting handful of grey ash, falling
+gently to the damp ground. The flame leaped forward.
+
+Lucifer got to his feet. He could think only one thought: That he must
+try to stand upright with as much dignity as possible.
+
+He heard Nina's voice, but couldn't make out the words.
+
+They were followed by a shrill, whistling sound. Surprisingly, the
+sound grew fainter, like a siren fading into the distance.
+
+Lucifer realized he had closed his eyes. He opened them and saw the
+spaceship streaking upward. It tumbled end over end, out of control.
+The blue funnel of flame whipped in wild circles, hissing against the
+clouds. The ship disappeared momentarily behind a cloud bank, then
+could be seen again, glowing with an incandescent brilliance.
+
+Suddenly it burst into a shower of sparks that flared like a dying
+meteor, and fell away into nothingness.
+
+In the clearing behind Lucifer, children chattered gleefully.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lucifer stood by the window and listened in silence as Albert Fetzer
+made his report.
+
+The Earth people had returned to their quarters. Those whose dwellings
+had been destroyed or badly damaged were sheltered with friends for the
+night. Fifty-three of Huth's men and thirty of the women had survived.
+A score of _Goolies_ had come crawling and whimpering out of the
+forest. All were put under guard in one of the training buildings. Dr.
+Thame, his own shoulder smashed, was helping with the injured.
+
+A twenty-four hour guard was set up to watch for return of the supply
+ship, or any other that might come.
+
+"What about the children?" Lucifer asked.
+
+"Mostly asleep. Some of them got a little frisky and started knocking
+over things--until their mothers marched them off to bed."
+
+Lucifer shivered, and he was not cold.
+
+"You'd better get some sleep," he told Fetzer. "We'll meet with the
+section leaders early in the morning."
+
+When Fetzer was gone, Lucifer remained by the window. Nina came out of
+the bedroom to join him. Together they watched the clouds close out the
+stars, listened to the sweep of the rising wind and the drumbeat of the
+returning rain. The eternal rain.
+
+"Our world," said Nina. "Our new world."
+
+Lucifer started to answer, then could not speak. The weight of his
+thoughts was too great a burden to ease with words.
+
+Nina put her arm around him.
+
+"A frontier must always be like this," she said.
+
+But what a frontier! There were the physical problems of existence,
+with Huth's administration and most of his technology gone. There was
+the moment when the supply ship would return, when a great fleet of
+ships might come to see what had happened to the project.
+
+Yet those problems seemed like foothills to the towering peaks ahead,
+rising in range after range, beyond the outermost perimeter of thought.
+
+As Lucifer stared into this unknown, he felt his mental stature shrivel
+to microscopic size. How could he, or any combination of men, offer
+leadership into such a future? If the project could survive against
+the return of Huth's people, what would keep it from disintegrating
+and destroying itself? How could a psi focus be channeled and used
+constructively? How could a professor of parapsychology, a professor
+who knew less about his subject than the youngest child on this planet,
+assail such peaks?
+
+And the children! A freckled boy whimpering in his arms. A boy with a
+potential power that was as yet beyond the imagination. Lucifer thought
+of a tiny child behind the wheel of a great diesel truck, speeding
+through the crowded streets of a city. Or a child toying with the fuse
+of a hydrogen bomb. Raise that capacity for destruction to the nth
+power, and then....
+
+God!
+
+Tonight, for the first time, the children had glimpsed how great their
+power could be. Tomorrow they would begin to play new games. Quickly
+they would realize that they were stronger than their parents and other
+adult authorities. How could such children be controlled, educated,
+guided to maturity? If there were problem adolescents on Earth, what
+problems lay ahead with adolescents who could hotrod among the stars?
+
+"But there are more than problems," Nina said, in a hushed voice. "A
+frontier means so much more!"
+
+His thoughts, so recently liberated from their cubicle, drew back with
+conditioned reluctance, then leaped toward those towering peaks. A free
+thought could surmount any pinnacle, and look beyond the problems to
+the grandeur of the infinite.
+
+The view was of a magnitude and beauty beyond his capacity to absorb.
+But small, incredibly wonderful details focused before him.
+
+Now he saw knowledge and knowing from all the universe pour into this
+steaming jungle planet through communication channels opened by a psi
+focus that could leap time and space.
+
+He saw knowledge and love and understanding transmitted outward again
+to fall like rain wherever there was parched earth.
+
+His mind drew back from the summit. It was enough to see, for an
+evanescent moment of wonder, just a fragment of what lay beyond the
+wild mountains. It was madness to look too long.
+
+The future receded; the present returned.
+
+"I was there with you," Nina said, breathlessly.
+
+He buried his face in the softness of her hair and the warm curve of
+her throat and shoulder.
+
+He told her about himself, and their child.
+
+She was silent and still for a long time.
+
+"I must have known," she said. "I must have known all the time, without
+admitting it to myself."
+
+"I'm sorry, Nina."
+
+Her strong arm tightened around him. Her answer was steady:
+
+"We must have hope, because there is so much to learn. But if our child
+cannot see...."
+
+Her voice shook a little, then went on firmly,
+
+"... If our child cannot see, we must find a Braille for the psi-blind!
+And we will walk together ... as long as we can ... on our frontier ...
+of infinity."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Project Hi-Psi, by Frank Riley
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59535 ***