multimind visited relatives of all eight, but could not make intelligible contact. If asleep, it
caused pleasant dreams; if awake, pleasant thoughts of the loved one so far away in
space; but that was all. It visited mediums, in trance and otherwise-many of whom, not
surprisingly now, were genuine-with whom it held lucid conversations. Even in linkage,
however, the multimind knew that none of the mediums would be believed, even if they
all told, simultaneously, exactly the same story. The multimind weakened suddenly and
Hilton snapped it back to Ardry.
Beverly was almost in collapse. The other girls were white, shaken and trembling.
Hilton himself, strong and rugged as he was, felt as though he had done two weeks of
hard labor on a rock-pile. He glanced questioningly at Larry.
“Point six three eight seconds, sir,” the Oman said, holding up a millisecond timer.
“How do you explain that?” Karns demanded.
“I’m afraid it means that without Oman backing we’re out of luck.”
Hilton had other ideas, but he did not voice any of them until the following day, when
he was rested and had Larry alone. “So carbon-based brains can’t take it. One second
of that stuff would have killed all eight of us. Why? The Masters had the same kind of
brains we have.”
“I don’t know, sir. It’s something completely new. No Master, or group of Masters, ever
generated such a force as that. I can scarcely believe such power possible. even
though I have felt it twice. It may be that over the generations your individual powers,
never united or controlled, have developed so much strength that no human brain can
handle them in fusion.”
“And none of us ever knew anything about any of them. I’ve been doing a lot of
thinking. The Masters had qualities and abilities now unknown to any of us. How come?
You Omans-and the Stretts, too-think we’re descendants of the Masters. Maybe we are.
You think they came originally from Arth-Earth or Terra-to Ardu. That’d account for our
legends of Mu, Atlantis and so on. Since Ardu was within peyondix range of Strett, the
Stretts attacked it. They killed all the Masters, they thought, and made the planet
uninhabitable for any kind of life, even their own. But one shipload of Masters escaped
and came here to Ardry-far beyond peyondix range. They stayed here for a long time.
Then, for some reason or other-which may be someplace in their records-they left here,
fully intending to come back. Do any of you Omans know why they left? Or where they
went?”
“No, sir. We can read only the simplest of the Masters’ records. They arranged our
brains that way, sir.”
“I know. They’re the type. However, I suspect now that your thinking is reversed. Let’s
turn it around. Say the Masters didn’t come from Terra, but from some other planet. Say
that they left here because they were dying out. They were, weren’t they?”
“Yes, sir. Their numbers became fewer and fewer each century.”
“I was sure of it. They were committing race suicide by letting you Omans do
everything they themselves should have been doing. Finally they saw the truth. In a
desperate effort to save their race they pulled out, leaving you here. Probably they
intended to come back when they had bred enough guts back into themselves to set
you Omans down where you belong . . .”
“But they were always the Masters, sir!”
“”They were not! They were hopelessly enslaved. Think it over. Anyway, say they went
to Terra from here. That still accounts for the legends and so on. However, they were
too far gone to make a recovery, and yet they had enough fixity of purpose not to
manufacture any of you Omans there. So their descendants went a long way down the
scale before they began to work back up. Does that make sense to you?”
“It explains many things, sir. It can very well be the truth.” “Okay. However it was, we’re
here, and facing a condition that isn’t funny. While we were teamed up I learned a lot,
but not nearly enough. Am I right in thinking that I now don’t need the other seven at
all-that my cells are fully charged and I can go it alone?”
“Probably, sir, but . . .”
“I’m coming to that. Every time I do it-up to maximum performance, of course it comes
easier and faster and hits harder. So next time, or maybe the fourth or fifth time, it’ll kill
me. And the other seven, too, if they’re along.”
“I’m not sure, sir, but I think so.”
“Nice. Very, very nice.” Hilton got up, shoved both hands into his pockets, and prowled
about the room. “But can’t the damned stuff be controlled? Choked-throttled down-
damped-muzzled, some way or other?”
“We do not know of any way, sir. The Masters were always working toward more
power, not less.”
“That makes sense. The more power the better, as long as you can handle it. But I
can’t handle this. And neither can the team. So how about organizing another team,
one that hasn’t got quite so much whammo? Enough punch to do the job, but not
enough to backfire that way?”
“It is highly improbable that such a team is possible, sir.” If an Oman could be acutely
embarrassed, Larry was. “That is, sir . . . I should tell you, sir . . .”
“You certainly should. You’ve been stalling all along, and now you’re stalled. Spill it.”
“Yes, sir. The Tuly begged me not to mention it, but I must. When it organized your
team it had no idea of what it was really going to do . . .”
“Let’s talk the same language, shall we? Say ‘he’ and “she.’ Not ‘it.’ ”
“She thought she was setting up the peyondix, the same as all of us Omans have. But
after she formed in your mind the peyondix matrix, your mind went on of itself to form a
something else; a thing we can not understand. That was why she was so extremely . .
. I think ‘frightened’ might be your term.”
“I knew something was biting her. Why?”
“Because it very nearly killed you. You perhaps have not considered the effect upon us
all if any Oman, however unintentionally, should kill a Master?”
“No, I hadn’t . . . I see. So she won’t play with fire any more, and none of the rest of you
can?”
“Yes, sir. Nothing could force her to. If she could be so coerced we would destroy her
brain before she could act. That brain, as you know, is imperfect, or she could not have
done what she did. It should have been destroyed long since.”
“Don’t ever act on that assumption, Larry.” Hilton thought for minutes. “Simple
peyondix, such as yours, is not enough to read the Masters’ records. If I’d had three
brain cells working I’d’ve tried them then. I wonder if I could read them?”
“You have all the old Masters’ power and more. But you must not assemble them
again, sir. It would mean death.” “But I’ve got to know . . . I’ve got to know! Anyway, a
thousandth of a second would be enough. I don’t think that d hurt me very much.”
He concentrated-read a few feet of top-secret braided wire and came back to
consciousness in the sick-bay of the Perseus, with two doctors working on him;
Hastings, the top Navy medico, and Flandres, the surgeon.
“What the hell happened to you?” Flandres demanded. “Were you trying to kill
yourself?”
“And if so, how?” Hastings wanted to know.
“No, I was trying not to,” Hilton said, weakly, “and I guess I didn’t much more than
succeed.”
“That was just about the closest shave I ever saw a man come through. Whatever it
was, don’t do it again.”
“I won’t,” he promised, feelingly.
When they let him out of the hospital, four days later, he called in Larry and Tuly.
“The next time would be the last time. So there won’t be any,” he told them. “But just
how sure are you that some other of our boys or girls may not have just enough of
whatever it takes to do the job? Enough oomph, but not too much?”
“Since we, too, are on strange ground the probability is vanishingly small. We have
been making inquiries, however, and scanning. You were selected from all the minds of
Terra as the one having the widest vision, the greatest scope, the most comprehensive
grasp. The ablest at synthesis and correlation and so on.”
“That’s printing it in big letters, but that was more or less what they were after.”
“Hence the probability approaches unity that any more such ignorant meddling as this
obnoxious Tuly did will result almost certainly in failure and death. Therefore we can not
and will not meddle again.”
“You’ve got a point there . . . So what I am is some kind of a freak. Maybe a kind of