Starblood Part 7

He went through the parlor, through a dining nook and into the well-appointed kitchen which Thelma Boggs did not keep in a very admirable state. There were dirty dishes in the sink, on the drainboard, slimed with grease and dried food. There was a dirty pan and skillet on the stove and a scattering of cooking utensils and ingredients on the kitchen table. There was a desk in the corner littered with pieces of mail, recipes, women's magazines, two dirty gla.s.ses, an overflowing ashtray, and a stat order catalogue with a dozen felt markers dangling from it.

His eye strayed from the teetering piles of junk on the desk to a door recessed slightly in the wall to his left. He floated to it, opened it with invisible hands, and flipped the light switch along the wall. Panels of glow lights burst into bright existence in the ceiling, the sort of thing one might expect to see in a place of business or a supermodern house-but hardly in a renovated farm. He dropped down the stairwell, ignoring the steps.

As he fell, he flushed his psionic power into the lower chambers. He found no one waiting for him, no mental activity whatsoever.

As he floated out of the stairwell, he found himself in a square, concrete-walled room where tools were racked on peg-boards. Two workbenches flanked him, their tops fixed with hand vises and hand drill braces. In the right corner there was a drill press, and next to it an electric sander and buffer. Beside one of the workbenches was a crate of souvenirs, little bra.s.s Mexican men leading little bra.s.s donkeys, similar if not identical to the piece he had seen in Leonard Taguster's house.

He picked one of the souvenirs up, holding it above him so he could see it from all angles as he twirled it lazily in his unseen fingers. There were no marks on it to indicate where it might have been violated, but he thought he knew exactly what had been done. He threaded his ESP through the tightly packed molecules until he found the cylindrical pocket inside the statuette where a small flask of PBT was contained, perhaps a large enough amount-once cut to proper potency-for thirty doses.

Here, at these two benches and with these machines, the Brethren hollowed out the figures, placed the drug inside, then resmelted the chips of bra.s.s that had been scooped out, filled in over the flask, sanded, buffed, polished, and replaced the pieces in the crates. After that, someone would come and pick the souvenirs up for mailing to various points in this country and all over the world. It was a tedious and time-consuming process, to be sure, but the price of PBT and the small quant.i.ty needed for a usual dose made it quite worthwhile. Besides, it was safe, and men like the Brethren put a price on safety that was higher than that placed on turning a large profit. They knew very well that the United Nations would use the slightest excuse to stick them away in some well-guarded prison for the rest of their lives.

This explained the difficulty the narcotics agents had met with for so long, though it still did not explain how PBT was manufactured or what it was. And it certainly did not explain the terror with which the Brethren regarded the cellar. He drifted from this room into another where crates of figurines of various types lined all the walls. Without slowing, he entered the final chamber. It was an unfinished bas.e.m.e.nt room with cement slapped formlessly over the earth walls. The floor was dirt. There was no light here, except what drifted in from other chambers. Somehow, he felt as if he were on the verge of discovering what he had been looking for...

The place was a storage chamber for junk, broken lawn-mowers and shattered wheelbarrows, old newspapers and magazines, the things everyone saves against his best judgment. In the far corner of the room, the floor sloped into a jumble of rocks, then disappeared altogether as a limestone sinkhole yawned in the bowels of the earth. The hole had probably opened after the house had been built He wondered how long it would take before it would split wide enough to swallow one of the foundation walls.

He balanced above the gap in the floor, looking down into blackness. Using his ESP, he felt about the rim of the aperture and discovered a switch box just inside the rim of the depression. When he threw the toggle, soft yellow light sprang up within the cave, and he knew he had discovered the production center for the hallucinogen.

And, looking down into that hole, he had an inkling of the horror with which the Brethren viewed this place. He could not pinpoint what bothered him, but there was a feel of the-supernatural. It was a silly word, but it fit. He shuddered, took a deep breath, and descended...

The primary drop shaft of the sinkhole was some seventy feet long, breaking a bit to the left, then back to the right, but maintaining a fairly true vertical descent. Huge blocks of fractured rock formed the sides, tumbled against one another to form small caves and cul-de-sacs cul-de-sacs that were either too small for men to gain admittance or led nowhere once one was inside them. Here and there bats clung to overhanging rocks, eyes blinded by the light, wings folded tight against them, as if the flimsy membranes would give them protection. Along the right side, a series of rungs bolted firmly into the stone provided a means down for those who had no ESP. that were either too small for men to gain admittance or led nowhere once one was inside them. Here and there bats clung to overhanging rocks, eyes blinded by the light, wings folded tight against them, as if the flimsy membranes would give them protection. Along the right side, a series of rungs bolted firmly into the stone provided a means down for those who had no ESP.

At the bottom of the main plummet, Timothy found he had to angle his body sideways to get through a bottleneck in the tunnel He brushed through, sc.r.a.ping the worn surfaces of the rocks, and found himself in a large chamber whose dimensions rivaled those of an old-fas.h.i.+oned baseball stadium. He righted himself and spent a few moments marveling at the stalact.i.tes and stalagmites, at the grotesque weathering of the stone that dripping streams of water had managed to sculpt in the last handful of centuries. A stream of water, no wider than a yardstick and perhaps a foot or two deep, wound through the vaulted cavern, making gurgling, baby laughter that rang from the walls in hundreds of different echoes that sounded like other streams whispering in response. The air was almost cold and carried a damp, musty smell that was unpleasant and generated a feeling of claustrophobia despite the dimensions of the cave.

He drifted along the room toward the far end, which was slanted downward at a rather sharp angle. When the floor began tilting at a forty-five-degree slope, he saw the rungs again, bolted solidly into the stone, and he knew he was still on the trail of whatever it was that was nestled here in the belly of the earth.

And then he saw it...

At the bottom of the long slope, a magnificent length of emerald-colored metal gleamed as if it had been buffed and waxed only moments before. It was a hundred feet long and seemed to disappear into the rock itself, as if it were a piece of cosmic pipe that had been capped here in case an extension was ever required. It tapered as it grew closer to him, unlike a pipe, and the end of it was not capped but open. As he drew closer, he realized that the huge tubes, each twenty feet across, that were recessed in the terminal aperture were vaguely reminiscent of rocket boosters, although of an altogether different type and size from anything he had seen before.

As his sense of eeriness and fear began to blossom within him, he realized that he was looking upon what could be only a portion of an alien vessel, a stars.h.i.+p which buried itself in the earth so long ago that no man could have existed to watch it. At that time, man was little more than a slimy thing newly crawled from the ocean and fighting desperately to grow legs fast enough to keep from being pushed into extinction by the irresistible natural forces of the world which had sp.a.w.ned it.

He drifted along the hull, looking for a way inside, for he was now certain that the Brethren were getting the PBT from this artifact that could-despite the death of its crew-just possibly still be functioning in some areas. Perhaps the stuff came from the s.h.i.+p's medical supplies, drugs which were nothing more than antibiotics to the extraterrestrials but hallucinogenics to men. At last, he saw the circular port which stood open on the far side of the s.h.i.+p, giving view to impenetrable blackness.

He hovered before it, trying to peer inside, but could not see anything. He searched for a light switch. There was none.

He waited, listening, but could hear no noise within the great s.h.i.+p. He searched for the telltale sign of Brethren presence with his psionic abilities. There was no one here. Hesitantly, he went inside...

CHAPTER 13.

The corridor of the stars.h.i.+p was more of a tube than a hallway, lacking any well-defined floor, the walls and ceiling merely curving together without benefit of a seam. As he floated warily into the alien structure, the walls themselves began to illuminate his way, glowing dully blue for twenty feet on either side of him. He tried to see how the lighting functioned, but his gaze met only the flat surface of the metal walls, and he could not focus well enough to see any way the light could possibly be s.h.i.+ning through. He abandoned that pursuit when his eye began to water. He continued down the corridor, carefully studying every projection or recession along the way, waiting expectantly for something horrible to happen.

Shortly, the entrance tube pa.s.sed through the reinforced doorway, and it seemed as if his progress was to be halted by a thick door painted in spirals of green and gray. But as he approached, the spirals swirled, the door irised, and he pa.s.sed through into the first room that he had seen since clambering through the exterior hatch.

It was a small room, perhaps fifteen feet square-except that it was not not square; it had no angles whatsoever. The room was perfectly round inside. There was a storage rack of what appeared to be s.p.a.ce activity suits, though they were not suits so much as very small cars, hardly larger than a man, into which a man might slide like a foot into a boot. square; it had no angles whatsoever. The room was perfectly round inside. There was a storage rack of what appeared to be s.p.a.ce activity suits, though they were not suits so much as very small cars, hardly larger than a man, into which a man might slide like a foot into a boot.

Timothy noticed with interest that there was no room for a man's legs in one of these capsules, though the vehicles were otherwise roughly tailored to humanoid dimensions and requirements. Perhaps even more mysteriously, there was no control console of any sort visible within the devices, no wheel or stick for guiding them and no instruments for monitoring conditions internally or externally. There was only a seat shaped like a shallow cup, a great deal of rolled padding. It was the most alien thing he had seen thus far, this total lack of toggles and switches and b.u.t.tons which decorated all earthly devices.

The next stretch of hallway led to a huge chamber forty feet across and easily eighty feet long. Timothy was aware that now he must be in that portion of the stars.h.i.+p which was wedged into the rock, the part he had not been able to see from outside. He was amazed that the interior of the vessel showed no damage, and he suspected that the exterior might prove the same if it could be extricated from the viselike grip of the earth.

Again, this room contained no corners, and the eye was permitted to rest on hundreds of gentle curves both in the design of the room itself and in the furniture which had been bolted into it. There were chairs and couches and slings, all of which were heavily padded and low-slung. There were machines beside all the chairs and couches, thrusting down from the ceiling next to the slings. He investigated the mechanism of one of them and decided that it was a greatly perfected version of the senso-theater projector. He wondered what sort of programs it provided for the creatures who came here to be entertained; then he forced himself to stop extrapolating on every item that caught his attention. If he gave way to his questing curiosity about every device, it would take him a lifetime to make his way through the s.h.i.+p.

He left the theater and drifted into another brief section of corridor with irising doors to either side of it that led to private chambers which seemed to be living quarters with chain-hung sling beds. Shortly after entering the third major chamber through which the main tube corridor pa.s.sed, he gained the end of the temporary goal which he had set for himself: he uncovered the source of PBT.

The room was another sphere of approximately the same dimensions as the first he had encountered upon entering the stars.h.i.+p. Here, though, there were some noticeable and notable differences of architecture. The walls, ceiling, and even the floor were covered with access plates to blocks of machinery and with readout screens that appeared to be communications links to the s.h.i.+p computers. He searched into them with his ESP, through circuitry not unlike human electrical equipment, and verified that guess. There was a walkway through the maze of wires and slots and raised modules, although it was so straight and narrow that it could never have been used by the technicians who would have to service these machines when they malfunctioned, or by the crew who would be using the devices.

Timothy drifted to the first series of drawers that seemed to slide into the walls themselves and was not at all surprised when the thing rolled out at his approach. It was large enough, both in length and depth, to contain him, and he fancied it very nearly contoured to the form of a body, but for the lack of leg s.p.a.ce. It was laced across with friction straps to tie down whatever cargo it had been meant to hold. When he drifted lower to look in the drawer and to the s.p.a.ce above it that was revealed when it was open, he saw a series of spidery-fingered hands that seemed to hold surgical instruments. He straightened, his curiosity aroused more than it had been at any moment since his entrance. He opened the next drawer and found the same setup, the needles and surgical equipment. When he pulled open the third drawer, hoping that he would find some variance which-by comparison-would help him to understand the nature of these drawers, he was confronted by the penetrating stare of the alien which lay within...

CHAPTER 14.

He gasped, startled, and rushed backwards, away from the open drawer. He came to an abrupt halt as his own foolishness became evident to him. Even if he ran, he could not get out of here in time-not if they knew he was aboard. And if his extrasensory powers were of no use to him, there was nowhere on earth he could count himself safe; if they were useful, he had nothing to worry about.

He also began to realize that the thing he had seen was not a living, breathing creature, but a corpse. If it had been alive, the world would surely have heard about it and from it a good many years ago; the Brethren would not have been able to exploit the wonders of the stars.h.i.+p towards their own ends. That creature lying in the drawer was not the kind of fellow anyone exploited-if he wished to live to the end of his natural days.

He went back, somewhat ashamed at himself and his fainthearted reaction.

But he returned slowly, nevertheless.

He peered over the brink of a surgical drawer, far less frightened now that he knew what to be prepared for.

The alien stared up at him with two, huge, mulifaceted eyes that had no differentiation between pupil and iris. Each of them was nothing more than a fist-sized convexity of a milky blue opaque color that somehow reminded him of fine china. Each eye was beveled, like the eye of a fly. The nose was actually more human than Timothy's own, though somewhat wider and flatter and possessed of one nostril rather than two. The man was thin, and his lips were almost like pencil lines. Gleaming through a gap in those lips were teeth of a human character. Indeed, the eyes were the only truly alien features, aside from the abnormally high and bulbous forehead. But they were enough to have given Ti that mild case of panic when he had come across them unexpectedly.

He noticed, too, that the alien was armless and legless, though he did not consider this so nonhuman. Its condition had not been a matter of accident or amputation, for its body was too smoothly, perfectly, formed for that. It had been limbless its entire life-and apparently for the same reason that Timothy was limbless. He was excited by the thought. Both he and this alien had been born with an extrasensory power that made limbs unnecessary...

Timothy thought back over all the things he had noticed since he boarded the stars.h.i.+p, all the clues that should have fit together and completed the puzzle even before he was presented with the answer in the form of this corpse: the lack of true floors (which would not matter to a race which had the ability to levitate and propel itself with psychic energy rather than legs), the lack of controls in the extravehicular "s.p.a.cesuits" (which would not be even desirable to a race which had evolved away from hands and which could monitor its machines, for the most part, with its psionic eyes and ears and hands), and the lack of an overall lighting system in favor of one where illumination followed you around (a race with so much psionic power would certainly have no vestigal fears of the dark and would require light only as a convenience to show them the way more easily; indeed, they very well might have learned to see with their ESP and without light, in which case the illumination would be here for guests, other intelligent races of the galaxy that might come aboard). Here was a race whose "paranormal" abilities were its birthright; he wondered how much more advanced than he they were.

He was able to see, quite readily, why the Brethren had been so horrified by what they had discovered down here and had, to a man, tried to conceal what they had seen from even themselves. Timothy was accustomed to the corruption of the human form, for his own mortal sh.e.l.l was certainly as much of a freak as that of the alien. Years ago, he had ceased looking in the mirror, but he knew knew what corruption was, knew it with every breath he drew into lungs that were not quite right, with every mouthful of food his twisted stomach ingested. He could accept this alien form, even be pleased with it. However, those who were used to the pretty face and the handsome body would swiftly rebel at the concept of an entire race of beings such as this. They could only conceive of them as hideously evil and, to avoid nightmares, they would have to shove what they had seen deep into the subconscious pockets of their minds. what corruption was, knew it with every breath he drew into lungs that were not quite right, with every mouthful of food his twisted stomach ingested. He could accept this alien form, even be pleased with it. However, those who were used to the pretty face and the handsome body would swiftly rebel at the concept of an entire race of beings such as this. They could only conceive of them as hideously evil and, to avoid nightmares, they would have to shove what they had seen deep into the subconscious pockets of their minds.

He touched the nearly invisible transparent plastic s.h.i.+eld that fitted over the alien, traced his ESP fingers on it. It was bitter cold, though no frost had formed inside.

The morgue...

Yet, if these creatures had such well-developed psionic abilities, why was this man-thing lying here dead? Why couldn't he have reached within his own body and cured whatever was wrong with him, just as Timothy had found he could cure his own wounds, heal breached flesh? He examined the body more closely and discovered why it had been unable to heal itself. There was a hole in its neck, angled upward into the skull. Whatever had killed it had forced its way into the brain. It was the only sort of wound that could kill a psionic man-and it must have come too suddenly and unexpectedly for him to use his powers to avoid it.

He wondered if the Brethren had killed it. But the hole was ragged and too large to have been made by a bullet. He could not imagine a Brother carrying any weapon but a gun.

Turning from the drawer, he surveyed the rest of the chamber, now more aware of what he should be looking for. He began to see that much of the machinery was of a medical nature, designed to perform almost any surgical function.

This did not fit the concept of a psionic race that could cure itself. He reminded himself, however, that this was a totally alien culture and atmosphere he had entered and that his own rules did not necessarily apply. Besides, it was quite logical that a robotic hospital might be provided for guests on the s.h.i.+p who were of races other than that of these creatures. There was a walkway through the chamber, after all, and that that certainly wasn't for the creatures like that dead one in the morgue drawer. certainly wasn't for the creatures like that dead one in the morgue drawer.

As Ti continued his investigation of the room, he saw a series of plastic flasks into which stainless steel tubes were dripping fluids of various colors. His mind registered the data after his eye had pa.s.sed it by, and he looked swiftly back, more excited by this than he had been by his discovery of the alien corpse lying in the preservation drawer of the morgue. Of the six flasks, the second from the right was filling up with an amber fluid which looked strikingly like the PBT that Margle had boosted into his veins all those times in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the house in New England.

He drifted across the chamber to the bottle and looked at it more closely. On the floor, beneath the flask, there was a thick plasti-gla.s.s jug of the sort often used to hold cider or wine. It was half full of the amber fluid. Timothy lifted it, examined it, and discovered it had been made in Pernborth, New Jersey. It was most a.s.suredly not an artifact from another world. The Brethren entered the room every day, perhaps twice a day judging by the production rate of the fluid, collected a full bottle, dumped it into the jug, replaced the bottle and left When the jug was full, they would take the PBT away to be put into small flasks and inserted into bra.s.s statuettes for distribution. When they returned to collect the latest supply, a new jug would be brought along.

The combination of the supertechnical alien machines and the plastic cider jug was almost comical. He would have laughed, except for the thoughts of Leonard Taguster and the other thousands who had had their lives ruined by the stuff.

And it was no wonder that the police laboratories had not yet been able to break down the chemical composition of the stuff. Whatever it was, it was utterly unhuman, unearthly. It had come from another star system, perhaps even from another galaxy. There was little likelihood that any earthly a.n.a.lysis would ever decode the structure of the substance. Metals, such as these steel tubes, might be fairly uniform throughout large sections of the galaxy. But plant life would differ from world to world. Animal life would differ too, perhaps even more radically. And since the serums more than likely were produced from animal or vegetable sources, an earth laboratory would meet a blank wall every time it applied its own standards and knowledge to the task.

Around the machine, the access plating had been pried loose and bent back as if the Brethren had summoned experts to examine the guts of the mechanism, perhaps searching for some manner of accelerating the production of the priceless fluid. There was a fantastically miniaturized and complex system behind the plating, more involved than anything Timothy had ever seen, even in the SAM built by Weapons Psionic. This indecipherable mess of circuits and switches had apparently dissuaded the Brethren from tinkering with it (and thereby possibly losing what supply they could obtain), because they had never bothered to remove the plating the entire way. Considering the Brethren he knew, it was difficult to believe they would be satisfied with such a slight attempt to change the flow of PBT. Perhaps their fear augmented their ignorance of the machinery. Perhaps they felt that death waited on anyone who would attempt to fool with the works of creatures like the one lying in the morgue drawer.

Finally, there was nothing more to be discovered in the chamber, at least on a casual survey of the sort upon which he was now embarked. Later he would return and delve into things with his ESP, study and comprehend whatever he could. He moved toward the main tubeway.

He was anxious to return to the surface and his mountainside home where he could contact United Nations narcotics people and break the story to them. After, of course, breaking it to the world in Enterstat Enterstat first. He did not particularly care about getting the scoop on anyone anymore. Strangely, he did not even care whether first. He did not particularly care about getting the scoop on anyone anymore. Strangely, he did not even care whether Enterstat Enterstat folded. But the chance to explode something like this would give George Creel more pleasure than he received from editing a thousand regular editions. folded. But the chance to explode something like this would give George Creel more pleasure than he received from editing a thousand regular editions.

There was still more of the stars.h.i.+p to explore, and he wanted to have everything down pat before turning the matter over to the authorities. That was a habit he had gotten into after previous disastrous encounters with the police...

In the corridor, the eerie blue light preceded him, emanating softly and inexplicably from the walls. He was reminded of a funhouse in a carnival, one of those nightmare places where the public (most of them reasonably sane but in need of some fear in a world where daily life grew more and more comfortable and unadventurous) paid to be given the opportunity to find its way through a dark maze of pa.s.sages where anything and everything might leap out to block the way at the most unexpected times, where there were ghosts, goblins, and ghouls who were nonetheless frightening for their plastic, and cardboard natures. But the comparison did nothing for his nerves, and he abandoned it before the submerged fear rose out of his mind again.

In another twenty feet, the tubeway came to an abrupt end against a perfectly blank wall of burnished emerald metal similar to that which he had seen outside when he had first come upon the vast hull of the stars.h.i.+p. He looked for a doorway, but there was none. He knew that he could not possibly have seen all the s.h.i.+p, even though he had traveled over two hundred feet since entering the portal part way along from the tubes of the rockets. For one thing, there had been no control room or observation deck. Indeed, those need have been only of a minimal nature, but there should have been something. And the crew quarters he had thus far seen, those small rooms off the main tubeway, could have slept no more than two dozen. Considering the microminiaturization of the s.h.i.+p, it would have been foolish to have built so huge a vessel for so few inhabitants. The theater alone had been large enough to seat a hundred. So, though this was the end-it wasn't wasn't the end. It was a barrier of some sort, a fake part.i.tion meant to conceal the heart of the great vessel. the end. It was a barrier of some sort, a fake part.i.tion meant to conceal the heart of the great vessel.

The Brethren had reached similar conclusions and had made several attempts to cut their way through the part.i.tion that denied them access to whatever further wonders might lie ahead. There was a powerful hand drill lying on the deck, a dozen broken bits scattered around it. Ti saw that one of the bits was an industrial diamond and that it had done no better than the bits which were tempered steel. There was a robot drilling device whose bit and arm were mangled into uselessness. It had apparently been applying maximum pressure when the bit broke, and the destruction had carried back along the heavy arm in the form of harsh vibrations. A second robot worker with a laser drill instead of the standard bit was scattered all over the end of the hallway in pieces no larger than a man's hand, indicating that it had been set to continue drilling no matter what-and that the energy of the pencil-thin light beam had carried back on itself to climax in an explosion of rather severe magnitude.

But the wall was totally unmarked. It was as if gnats had been flying against it. There was not the slightest scratch or impression upon the alien alloy.

Timothy flushed his psionic power through the part.i.tion and was able to distinguish the hollow areas of rooms, a good number of them, bisected by thin gray shadows which were walls. He could not see anything more than what an X-ray might reveal of a man's intestines, but it was enough to convince him of the necessity of conquering this barrier. The Brethren may have failed repeatedly at the task, but they were not as equipped as he was, did not have psi fingers to pry with, to rip, rend, and tear.

He extended those insubstantial fingers now, with the same naturalness he had once had for the direction of his servo hands. He slid them between the terribly dense molecules of the emerald wall.

When he felt that he had correctly ascertained the nature of the atomic patterns of the material, he spread his psionic digits in an attempt to rip apart the very fabric of the structure before him.

Abruptly, his body expanded, exploding with a blinding white ball of flame, and flung itself apart in thousands of b.l.o.o.d.y pieces...

CHAPTER 15.

Blackness welled up like pooling blood, swallowing all traces of light and life.

There was a sensation of falling, and the understanding that the fall would never end. There was no bottom to the well into which he had been dropped, for that well was eternity.

He tried to breathe, but there was no air in this place. Just as there was no sound, light, color, odors, or sensations of a tactile nature. This was only nothingness. Nothingness...

Then he found himself in one piece, leaping backward on his psionic legs, away from the wall. He rebounded from the side of the tubeway, cracking his head a rather solid blow. The pain from that encounter was welcome, for it was proof that he was still alive and functioning. He looked down at himself, nevertheless surprised to discover that he could still see and that what he saw was as it had always been. That excruciatingly horrible plunge into death had seemed too real to be an illusion-and yet that was exactly what it appeared to have been.

He was tempted to feel and pinch himself with his extrasensory hands, to let out a yell of relief at the undamaged condition of his mutant husk. He had always enjoyed life, despite what he had suffered and the limitations his body had presented him with. But now, having experienced the moment of death, having suffered the micro-second spasm that somehow seemed to continue on and on, without regard to the pa.s.sing of objective time, life was far more precious than it had ever been.

Now he saw why the Brethren had brought in the robot machines to breach the wall for them. The agony of dying over and over again, every time he set his drill bit to the sheen of that unearthly metal, would have driven a human workman mad.

The star people had incorporated an alarm into the wall to insure its sanct.i.ty. Or perhaps a better word than "alarm" was "deterrent." It was not a warning to the possessors of this vessel so much as a show of their muscle to those who would depose them. Some sort of structured subliminal broadcast was played whenever the solidity of the part.i.tion was endangered, thrusting deep into the fear centers of the brain and dredging up that most ingrained of fears-death.

There was only one pleasant thing about discovering this deterrent the hard way: the knowledge that, though they were races from vastly different star systems, their basic fears must be similar. Unless, in other species, the broadcast aroused fears of a different nature than that of death. It was impossible to say what some alien mind might find terrifying.

His optimism about their similarity was further shattered when he thought that the alarm-deterrent might very well have been set up after an a.n.a.lysis of the human brain. Indeed, to have compared mankind's struggling intellect to that of a race traveling casually between the stars was like comparing his fellow human beings to himself now that, his psionic abilities were fully flowered. It was almost certain then. They had structured this deterrent after studying human intelligence. But how long ago? Ten years ago? A century ago? Ten thousand years ago?

He touched the metal with ESP fingers once more, threading the power into the molecules. Perhaps his problem had been in not exerting a sudden enough force-and thus being caught by a trap the aliens had laid for lesser men. They could not have been antic.i.p.ating a psionically gifted mind, much like their own, to attempt to destroy their handi work.

He fed more power into the wall, between the small, tightly packed molecules.

It surged there, waiting for him to make some use of it.

He tensed himself. He was afraid, but there was no sense in admitting that to himself now.

Without warning, he blasted the ESP power outward in an attempt to rip the wall asunder...

... And staggered backward as his body was impaled on a dozen long and wicked spikes which sprung out of the wall and snapped angrily into his soft flesh...

Blood fountained up, splattering across the ceiling, dripping down the walls, and then the spikes were worked completely through him, and he was sliding and sliding and sliding down a very long trough, toward inky blackness. Somehow, he knew the slide would require several million years to complete...

When this vision pa.s.sed, he found himself curled at the. waist against the awful pain-both physical and psychological-of dying. The deterrent worked much faster than his ESP power ever could, negating any chance of opening the wall by force. He simply could not withstand too many spiralings down into the grave, artificial or real, without being thoroughly unhinged by them. And if he lost his sanity, he was not at all certain he would be able to make use of the extrasensory powers to heal himself. If his mind were unhinged, so might be his psionic abilities.

He floated before the s.h.i.+mmering emerald panel, searching for a switch that might send the wall up or sideways, knowing even as he looked that such a thing was impossible. This was no cleverly disguised door before him, but a thick and st.u.r.dy wall. As he had thought, there was no sign of a switch.

He did not even consider returning topside, to the mountainside home that had once been the main part of his life. That was unthinkable. Now that he had discovered the source of PBT and had cracked the hold of the Brethren on the underworld and on all the people addicted to their amber-colored drug, he needed another goal, something more to be met and engaged and conquered. If he did not tackle the challenge of this wall, the time would have come when he would have to stop deluding himself about the unimportance of his new-found powers. He would have to plan for the future. And the future scared him. If he had been a freak in a normal world before, he was a superfreak now. There was no possible way he could fit into the fabric of modern society. No way at all.

His life had been a desperate race to be accepted, to have at least a goodly number of peripheral friends, if he had to be restricted to only Taguster as a confidant Enterstat Enterstat had connected him with the beautiful people, the favored, the talented, the wealthy. He had boosted himself into the second-echelon corridors of high society. Now he had completed the circle of his mutation and had pa.s.sed out of their world, forever and without question. He was alone. had connected him with the beautiful people, the favored, the talented, the wealthy. He had boosted himself into the second-echelon corridors of high society. Now he had completed the circle of his mutation and had pa.s.sed out of their world, forever and without question. He was alone.

In the back of his mind he knew there was one other thing he could try-to get beyond this wall. And though it was a dangerous plan, it was far safer-psychologically-than giving up and returning to the surface. The answer was simple enough: he must teleport...

The problem was that he had only the vaguest of impressions concerning the area beyond this wall. It was not nearly enough to fix it in his mind as a solid point in s.p.a.ce-time. As a result, he was not certain that, if he teleported without a distinct destination embedded in his mind, he would end up where he wished to go. He might find himself inextricably wound up in the molecular patterns of this part.i.tion, his own molecules hopelessly enmeshed in those of the emerald substance. It was not the pleasantest of thoughts-especially if it were to happen and he were to maintain his mental powers as he had while teleporting the first time...

Yet he had not known any exact coordinates when he had come to this farm from New England. He had known what it looked like and that it was close to Charter Oak, Iowa, but that was hardly hair-fine sighting. Perhaps an exact impression of the destination was not essential. If it were, then he could never teleport beyond this wall, for he would have to be there first to ascertain the landscape. Therefore, he stopped worrying about it and decided to take the plunge.

The life he would have to lead once he was in the outside world again, and reported this to the United Nations was more frightening with each pa.s.sing moment And though his ESP might have expanded, his emotions were still primitively human. Out there, it would be an emotional problem, something his great power could not help him cope with.

He turned back to the green wall, examined it carefully, tried to establish a mental image of the ghostly X-ray he had seen of the chambers beyond.

He sucked in breath; the air seemed infinitely cooler than it had been moments earlier.

He teleported...

The time spent in transit was no different than it had been when he had taken the much longer jump from New England to the Brethren farmhouse. The landscape of the eerie, non-matter universe through which he pa.s.sed like a beam of black light was just as it had been before: dark, singing yet silent, warm yet cold...

Then he was standing within the core of the vast s.h.i.+p, beyond the green barrier that had been erected to stop him. He felt a flush of triumph, of superiority-which a glance around at the marvelous s.h.i.+p dispelled immediately. He was at the very front of the stars.h.i.+p, in a small chamber that served as a minimal guidance deck. It was very bare of decoration and contained only three seats, all on swivel bases, all heavily padded. He would have to walk backward toward the barrier through which he had traveled to see what the other rooms contained.