be broken at this exact time? The only possible explanation is that we caused the
break. And any way I look at that concept, it’s plain idiocy.-Both were silent for minutes;
and then it was demonstrated again that Terra’s Advisory Board had done better than it
knew in choosing Sandra Cummings to be Jarvis Hilton’s working mate.
“We did cause it, Jarve,” she said, finally. “They knew we were coming, even before
we got to Fuel Bin. They knew we were human and tried to wipe out the Omans before
we got there. Preventive warfare, you know.”
“They couldn’t have known!” he snorted. “Strett detectors are no better than Oman,
and you know what Sam Bryant had to say about them.”
“I know.” Sandra grinned appreciatively. “It’s becoming a classic. But it couldn’t have
been any other way. Besides, I know they did.”
He stared at her helplessly, then swung on Larry. “Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes, sir. The Stretts could peyondire as well as the old Masters could, and they
undoubtedly still can and do.”
“Okay, it does make sense, then.” He absented himself in thought, then came to life
with a snap. “Okay! The next thing on the agenda is a crash-priority try at a peyondix
team. Tuly, you organized a team to generate sathura. Can you do the same for
peyondix?”
“If we can find the ingredients, yes, sir.”
“I have a hunch. Larry, please ask Teddy Blake’s Oman to brine her in here . . .”
“I’ll be running along, then.” Sandra started to get up.
“I hope to kiss a green pig you won’t!” Hilton snapped. “You’re one of the biggest
wheels. Larry, we’ll want Temple Bells and Beverly Bell-for a start.”
“Chief, you positively amaze me,” Sandra said then. “Every time you get one of these
attacks of genius—or whatever it is-you have me gasping like a fish. Just what can you
possibly want of Bev Bell?”
“Whatever it was that enabled her to hit the target against odds of almost infinity to
one; not just once, but time after time. By definition, intuition. What quality did you use
just now in getting me off the hook? Intuition. What makes Teddy Blake such an
unerring performer? Intuition again. My hunches-they’re intuition, too. Intuition, hell!
Labels-based on utterly abysmal damned dumb ignorance of our own basic frames of
reference. Do you think those four kinds of intuition are alike, by seven thousand rows
of apple trees?”
“Of course not. I see what you’re getting at . . . Oh! This’ll be fun!”
The others came in and, one by one, Tuly examined each of the four women and the
man. Each felt the probing, questioning feelers of her thought prying into the deepest
recesses of his mind.
“There is not quite enough of each of three components, all of which are usually
associated with the male. You, sir, have much of each, but not enough. I know your
men quite well, and I think we will need the doctors Kincaid and Karns and Poynter. But
such deep probing is felt. Have I permission, sir?”
“Yes. Tell ’em I said so.”
Tuly scanned. “Yes, sir, we should have all three.”
“Get ’em, Larry.” Then, in the pause that followed: “Sandy, remember yowling about
too many sweeties on a team? What do you think of this business of all sweeties?”
“All that proves is that nobody can be wrong all the time,” she replied flippantly.
The three men arrived and were instructed. Tuly said: “Me great trouble is that each of
you must use a portion of your mind that you do not know you have. You, this one. You,
that one.” Tuly probed mercilessly; so poignantly that each in turn flinched under
brand-new and almost unbearable pain. “With you, Doctor Hilton, it will be by far the
worst. For you must learn to use almost all the portions of both your minds, the
conscious and the unconscious. This must be, because you are the actual peyondixer.
The others merely supply energies in which you yourself are deficient. Are you ready for
a terrible shock, sir?”
“Shoot.”
He thought for a second that he had been shot; that his brain had blown up.
He couldn’t stand it-he knew he was going to die-he wished he could die-anything,
anything whatever, to end this unbearable agony . . .
It ended.
Writhing, white and sweating, Hilton opened his eyes. “Ouch,” he remarked,
conversationally. “What next?”
“You will seize hold of the energies your friends offer. You will bind them to yours and
shape the whole into a dimensionless sphere of pure, controlled, dirigible energy. And,
as well as being the binding force, the cohesiveness, you must also be the captain and
the pilot and the astrogator and the ultimately complex computer itself.”
“But how can I . . . Okay, damn it, I will!”
“Of course you will, sir. Remember also that once the joinings are made I can be of
very little more assistance, for my peyondix is as nothing compared to that of your
fusion of eight. Now, to assemble the energies and join them you will, all together, deny
the existence of the sum total of reality as you know it. Distance does not exist-every
point in the reachable universe coincides with every other point and that common point
is the focus of your attention. You can be and actually are anywhere you please or
everywhere at once. Time does not exist. Space does not exist. There is no such thing
as opacity; everything is perfectly transparent, yet every molecule of substance is
perceptible in its relationship to every other molecule in the cosmos. Senses do not
exist. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, sathura, endovix-all are parts of the one great
sense of peyondix. I am guiding each of you seven closer! Tighter! There! Seize it,
sir-and when you work the Stretts you must fix it clearly that time does not exist. You
must work in millionths of microseconds instead of in minutes, for they have minds of
tremendous power. Reality does not exist! Compress it more, sir. Tighter! Smaller!
Rounder! There! Hold it! Reality does not exist-all possible points are . . . Wonderful!”
Tuly screamed the word and the thought: “Good-by! Good luck!”
Chapter 8
Hilton did not have to drive the peyondix-beam to the-planet Strett; it was already there.
And there was the monstrous First Lord Thinker Zoyar.
Into that mind his multimind flashed, its every member as responsive to his will as his
own fingers-almost infinitely more so, in fact, because of the tremendous lengths of
time required to send messages along nerves.
That horrid mind was scanned cell by cell. Then, after what seemed like a few hours,
when a shield began sluggishly to form, Hilton transferred his probe to the mind of the
Second Thinker, one Lord Ynos, and absorbed everything she knew. Then, the minds
of all the other Thinkers being screened, he studied the whole Strett planet, foot by foot,
and everything that was on it.
Then, mission accomplished, Hilton snapped his attention back to his office and the
multi-mind fell apart. As he opened his eyes be heard Tuly scream: “. . . Luck!”
“Oh-you still here, Tuly? How long have we been gone?” “Approximately one and
one-tenth seconds, sir.” “WHAT!”
Beverly Bell, in the haven of Franklin Poynter’s arms, fainted quietly. Sandra shrieked
piercingly. The four men stared, goggle-eyed. Temple and Teddy, as though by com-
mon thought, burrowed their faces into brawny shoulders.
Hilton recovered first. “So that’s what peyondix is.”
“Yes, sir-I mean no, sir. No, I mean yes, but . . .” Tuly paused, licking her lips in that
peculiarly human-female gesture of uncertainty.
“Well, what do you mean? It either is or isn’t. Or is that necessarily so?”
“Not exactly, sir. That is, it started as peyondix. But it became something else. Not
even the most powerful of the old Masters-nobody-ever did or ever could possibly
generate such a force as that. Or handle it so fast.”
“Well, with seven of the best minds of Terra and a . . .” “Chip-chop the chit-chat!”
Karns said, harshly. “What I want to know is whether I was having a nightmare. Can
there possibly be a race such as I thought I saw? So utterly savage-ruthless-merciless!
So devoid of every human trace and so hell-bent determined on the extermination of
every other race in the Galaxy? God damn it, it simply doesn’t make sense!”
Eyes went from eyes to eyes to eyes.
All had seen the same indescribably horrible, abysmally atrocious, things. Qualities and
quantities and urges and drives that no words in any language could even begin to
portray.
“It doesn’t seem to, but there it is.” Teddy Blake shook her head hopelessly.
Big Bill Karns, hands still shaking, lit a cigarette before he spoke again. “Well, I’ve
never been a proponent of genocide. But it’s my considered opinion that the Stretts are