“What do you mean by ‘they’, Dick?” she demanded. “You said it was an inhabited
planet. That one isn’t inhabited. It never was, and it can’t possibly be, ever!”
“When I spoke I thought that it was inhabited, in the ordinary sense of the word, but I see
now that it isn’t,” he replied, quietly and thoughtfully. “But they were there a minute ago,
and they’ll probably be back. Don’t kid yourself, Dimples. It’s inhabited, all right, and by
somebody we don’t know much about-or rather, by something that we knew once
altogether too well.”
“The pure intellectuals,” Crane stated, rather than asked.
“Yes; and that accounts for the impossible location of the planet, too. They probably
materialized it out there, just for the exercise. There, they’re coming back. Feel ’em?’
Vivid thoughts, for the most part incomprehensible, flashed from the headsets into their
minds; and instantly the surroundings of their projections changed. With the speed of
thought a building materialized upon that barren ground, and they found themselves
looking into a brilliantly lighted and spacious hall. Walls of alabaster, giving forth a living,
almost fluid light. Tapestries, whose fantastically intricate designs changed from moment
to moment into ever new. and ever more amazingly complex delineations. Gem-studded
fountains, whose plumes and gorgeous sprays of dancing liquid obeyed no Earthly laws
of mechanics. Chairs and benches, writhing, changing in form constantly and with no
understandable rhythm. And in that hall were the intellectualsthe entities who had
materialized those objects from the ultimately elemental radiant energy of open space.
Their number could not even be guessed. Sometimes only one was visible, sometimes it
seemed that the great hall was crowded with them-ever-changing shapes varying in tex-
ture from the tenuousness of a wraith to a density greater than that of any Earthly metal.
So bewilderingly rapid were the changes in form that no one appearance could be
intelligently grasped. Before one outlandish and unearthly shape could really be
perceived it had vanished-had melted and flowed into one entirely different in form and in
sense, but one equally monstrous to Terrestrial eyes. Even if grasped mentally, no one
of those grotesque shapes could have been described in language, so utterly foreign
were they to all human knowledge, history, and experience.
And now, the sixth-order projections in perfect synchronism, the thoughts of the
Outlanders came clearly into the minds of the four watchers-thoughts cold, hard, and
clear, diamondlike in polish and in definition; thoughts with the perfection of finish and
detail possible only to the fleshless mentalities who for countless millions of years had
done little save perfect themselves in the technique of pure and absolute thinking.
The four sat tense and strained as the awful import of those thoughts struck home; then,
at another thought of horribly unmistakable meaning, Seaton snapped off his power and
drove lightning fingers over his keyboard, while the two women slumped back, white-
faced and trembling, into their seats.
“I thought it was funny, back there that time, that that fellow couldn’t integrate in the
ninety-seven dimensions necessary to dematerialize us, and I didn’t know anything then.”
Seaton, his preparations complete, leaned back in his operator’s seat at the console. “He
was just kidding us-playing with us, just to see what we’d do, and as for not being able to
think his way back-phooie! He can think his way through ninety-seven universes if he
wants to. They’re certainly extragalactic, and very probably extrauniversal, and the one
that played with us could have dematerialized us instantly if he had felt like it.”
“That is apparent, now,” Crane conceded. “They are quite evidently patterns of sixth-
order forces, and as such have a velocity of anything they want to use. They absorb
force from the radiations in free space, and are capable of diverting and of utilizing those
forces in any fashion they may choose. They would of course be eternal, and, so far as I
can see, they would be indestructible. What are we going to do about it, Dick? What can
we do about it?”
“We’ll do something!” Seaton gritted. “We’re not as helpless as they think we are. I’ve
got out five courses of sixply screen, with full interliners of zones of force. I’ve got
everything blocked, clear down to the sixth order. If they can think their way through
those screens they’re better than I think they are, and if they try anything else we’ll do
our darndest to block that, too-and with this Norlaminian keyboard and all the uranium
we’ve got that’ll be a mighty lot, believe me! After that last crack of theirs they’ll hunt for
us, of course, and I’m pretty sure they’ll find us. I thought so here they are!
Materialization, huh? I told him once that if he’d stick to stuff that I could understand, I’d
give him a run for his money!”
6 MIND VERSUS MATTER
Far out in the depths of the intergalactic void there sped along upon its strange course
the newly materialized planet of the intellectuals. Desolate and barren it was, and
apparently destitute of life; but life was thereeternal, disembodied life, unaffected by any
possible extreme of heat or cold, requiring for its continuance neither water nor air, nor,
for that matter, any material substance whatsoever. And from somewhere in the vacuum
above that planet’s forbidding surface there emanated a thought-a thought coldly clear,
abysmally hopeless.
“I have but one remaining aim in this life. While I have failed again, as I have failed
innumerable times in the past, I shall keep on trying until I succeed in assembling in
sufficient strength the exact forces necessary to disrupt this sixth-order pattern which is
I.”
“You speak foolishly, Eight, as does each of us now and again,” came instant response.
“There is much more to perceive, much more to do, much more to learn. Why be
discouraged or disheartened? An infinity of time is necessary in which to explore infinite
space and to acquire infinite knowledge.”
“Foolish I may be, but this is no simple recurrent outburst of melancholia. I am definitely
weary of this cycle of existence, and I wish to pass on to the next, whatever of
experience or of sheer oblivion it may bring. In fact, I wish that you, One, had never
worked out the particular pattern of forces that liberated our eleven minds from the so-
called shackles of our material bodies. For we cannot die. We are simply patterns of
force eternal, marking the passage of time only by the life cycles of the suns of the
galaxies.
“Why, I envy even the creatures inhabiting the planets throughout the galaxy we visited
but a moment ago. Partially intelligent though they are, struggling and groping, each
individual dying after only a fleeting instant of life; born, growing old, and passing on in a
minute fraction of a millionth of one cycle-yet I envy even them.”
“That was the reason you did not dematerialize those you accompanied briefly while they
were flitting about in their crude space ship?”
“Yes. Being alive for such an infinitesimal period of time, they value life highly. Why hurry
them into the future that is so soon to be theirs?”
“Do not dwell upon such thoughts, Eight,” advised One. “They lead only to greater and
greater depths of despondency. Consider instead what we have done and what we shall
do.”
“I have considered everything, at length,” the entity known as Eight thought back
stubbornly. “What benefit or satisfaction do we get out of this continuous sojourn in the
cycle of existence from which we should have departed aeons ago? We have power, it is
true, but what of it? It is barren. We create for ourselves bodies and their material
surroundings, like this”-the great hall came into being, and so vast was the mentality
creating it that the flow of thought continued without a break-“but what of it? We do not
enjoy them as lesser beings enjoy the bodies which to them are synonymous with life.
“We have traveled endlessly, we have seen much, we have studied much; but what of it?
Fundamentally we have accomplished nothing and we know nothing. We know but little
more than we knew countless thousands of cycles ago, when our home planet was shill
substance. We know nothing of time; we know nothing of space; we know nothing even
of the fourth dimension save that the three of us who rotated themselves into it have
never returned. And until one of us succeeds in building a neutralizing pattern we can
never die -we must face a drab and cheerless eternity of existence as we now are.”
“An eternity, yes, but an eternity neither drab nor cheerless. We know but little, as you
have said, but in that fact lies a stimulus; we can and shall go on forever, learning more
and ever more. Think of it! But hold-what is that?
I feel a foreign thought. It must emanate from a mind powerful indeed to have come so