one race the Galaxy can get along without.”
“A hell of a lot better without,” Poynter said, and all agreed.
“The point is, what can we do about it?” Kincaid asked. “The first thing, I would say, is
to see whether we can do this-whatever it is-without Tuly’s help. Shall we try it? Al-
though I, for one, don’t feel like doing it right away.”
“Not I, either.” Beverly Bell held up her right hand, which was shaking uncontrollably. “I
feel as though I’d been bucking waves, wind and tide for forty-eight straight hours
without food, water or touch. Maybe in about a week I’ll be ready for another try at it.
But today-not a chance!”
“Okay. Scat, all of you,” Hilton ordered. “Take the rest of the day off and rest up. Put
on your thought-screens and don’t take them off for a second from now on. Those
Stretts are tough hombres.”
Sandra was the last to leave. “And you, boss?” she asked, pointedly.
“I’ve got some thinking to do.” “I’ll stay and help you think?”
“Not yet.” He shook his head, frowned and then grinned. “You see, chick, I don’t even
know yet what it is I’m going to have to think about.”
“A bit unclear, but I know what you mean-I think. Luck, chief.”
In their subterranean sanctum on distant Strett, two of the deepest thinkers of that
horribly unhuman race were in coldly intent conference via thought.
“My mind has been plundered, Ynos,” First Lord Thinker Zoyar radiated, harshly.
“Despite the extremely high reactivity of my shield some information-I do not know how
much was taken. The operator was one of the humans of that ship.”
“I, too, felt a plucking at my mind. But those humans could not peyondire, First Lord.”
“Be logical, fool! At that contact, in the matter of which you erred in not following up
continuously, they succeeded in concealing their real abilities from you.”
“”That could be the truth. Our ancestors erred, then, in recording that all those weak
and timid humans had been slain. These offenders are probably their descendants,
returning to reclaim their former world.”
“The probability must be evaluated and considered. Was it or was it not through human
aid that the Omans destroyed most of our task-force?”
“Highly probable, but impossible of evaluation with the data now available.”
“Obtain more data at once. That point must be and shall be fully evaluated and fully
considered. This entire situation is intolerable. It must be abated.”
“True, First Lord. But every operator and operation is now tightly screened. Oh, if I
could only go out there myself . . . “Hold, fool! Your thought is completely disloyal and
unStrettly.”
“True, oh First Lord Thinker Zoyar. I will forthwith remove my unworthy self from this
plane of existence.”
“You will not! I hereby abolish that custom. Our numbers are too few by far. Too many
have failed to adapt. Also, as Second Thinker, your death at this time would be slightly
detrimental to certain matters now in work. I will myself, however, slay the unfit. To that
end repeat The Words under my peyondiring.”
“I am a Strett. I will devote my every iota of mental and of physical strength to
forwarding the Great Plan. I am, and will remain, a Strett.”
“You do believe in The Words.”
“Of course I believe in them! I know that in a few more hundreds of thousands of years
we will be rid of material bodies and will become invincible and invulnerable. Then
comes the Conquest of the Galaxy . . . then the Conquest of the Universe!”
“No more, then, on your life, of this weak and cowardly repining! Now, what of your
constructive thinking?” “Programming must be such as to obviate time-lag. We must
evaluate the factors already mentioned and many others, such as the reactivation of the
spacecraft which was thought to have been destroyed so long ago. After having
considered all these evaluations, I will construct a Minor Plan to destroy these Omans,
whom we have permitted to exist on sufferance, and with them that shipload of
despicably interloping humans.”
“That is well.” Zoyar’s mind seethed with a malevolent ferocity starkly impossible for
any human mind to grasp. “And to that end?”
“To that end we must intensify still more our program of procuring data. We must
revise our mechs in the light of our every technological advance during the many
thousands of cycles since the last such revision was made. Our every instrument of
power, of offense and of defense, must be brought up to the theoretical ultimate of
capability.”
“And as to the Great Brain?”
“I have been able to think of nothing, First Lord, to add to the undertakings you have
already set forth.”
“It was not expected that you would. Now: is it your final thought that these interlopers
are in fact the descendants of those despised humans of so long ago?”
“It is.”
“It is also mine. I return, then, to my work upon the Brain. You will take whatever
measures are necessary. Use every artifice of intellect and of ingenuity and our every
resource. But abate this intolerable nuisance, and soon.”
“It shall be done, First Lord.”
The Second Thinker issued orders. Frenzied, round-the-clock activity ensued.
Hundreds of mechs operated upon the brains of hundreds of others, who in turn
operated upon the operators.
Then, all those brains charged with the technological advances of many thousands of
years, the combined hundreds went unrestingly to work. Thousands of work-mechs
were built and put to work at the construction of larger and more powerful spacecraft.
As has been implied, those battle-skeletons of the Stretts were controlled by their own
built-in mechanical brains, which were programmed for only the simplest of battle
maneuvers. Anything at all out of the ordinary had to be handled by remote control, by
the specialist-mechs at their two-miles-long control board.
This was now to be changed. Programming was to be made so complete that almost
any situation could be handled by the warship or the missile itself-instantly.
The Stretts knew that they were the most powerful, the most highly advanced race in
the universe. Their science was the highest in the universe. Hence, with every operating
unit brought up to the full possibilities of that science, that would be more than enough.
Period.
This work, while it required much time, was very much simpler than the task which the
First Thinker had laid out for himself on the giant computer-plus which the Stretts called
“The Great Brain.” In stating his project, First Lord Zoyar had said:
“Assignment: To construct a machine that will have the following abilities: One, to
contain and retain all knowledge and information fed into it, however great the amount.
Two, to feed itself additional information by peyondiring all planets, wherever situate,
bearing intelligent life. Three, to call up instantly any and all items of information
pertaining to any problem we may give it. Four, to combine and recombine any number
of items required to form new concepts. Five, to formulate theories, test them and draw
conclusions helpful to us in any matter in work.”
It will have been noticed that these specifications vary in one important respect from
those of the Eniacs and Univacs of Earth. Since we of Earth can not peyondire, we do
not expect that ability from our computers. The Stretts could, and did.
When Sandra came back into the office at five o’clock she found Hilton still sitting
there, in almost exactly the same position.
“Come out of it, Jarve!” She snapped a finger. “That much of that is just simply too
damned much.”
“`You’re so right, child.” He got up, stretched and by main strength shrugged off his foul
mood. “But we’re up against something that is really a something and I don’t mean per-
chance.”
“How well I know it.” She put an arm around him, gave him a quick, hard hug. “But after
all, you don’t have to solve it this evening, you know.”
“No, thank God.”
“So why don’t you and Temple have supper with me? Or better yet, why don’t all eight
of us have supper together in that bachelors’ paradise of yours and Bill’s?”
“That’d be fun.” And it was.
Nor did it take a week for Beverly Bell to recover from the Ordeal of Eight. On the
following evening, she herself suggested that the team should take another shot at that
utterly fantastic terra incognita of the multiple mind, jolting though it had been.
“But are you sure you can take it again so soon?” Hilton asked.
“Sure. I’m like that famous gangster’s moll, you know, who bruised easy but healed
quick. And I want to know about it as much as anyone else does.”
They could do it this time without any help from Tuly. The linkage fairly snapped
together and shrank instantaneously to a point. Hilton thought of Terra and there it was;
full size, yet occupying only one infinitesimal section of a dimensionless point. The