“In the excitement of the moment,” Arretapec said, “I had forgotten that you require a mechanical device to teleport. Please accept my apologies.”
“Q-quite all right,” said Conway shakily. He made an effort to steady his jumping nerves, then caught sight of a pressor beam crew on the surface below him. He called suddenly, “Get another radio and projector locus here, quick!”
Ten minutes later he was bruised, battered but ready to continue again. He stood at the water’s edge with Arretapec hovering at his shoulder and his fifty-foot image again rising above him. The VUXG doctor, in rapport with the brontosaur under the surface of the lake, reported that success or failure hung in the balance. The patient had gone through what was to it a mind-wrecking experience, but the fact that it was now in what it felt to be the safety of underwater-where it had hitherto sought refuge from hunger and attacks of its enemies-was, together with the mental reassurances of Arretapec, exerting a steadying influence.
At times hopefully, at others in utter despair, Conway waited. Sometimes the strength of his feelings made him swear. It would not have been so bad, meant so much to him, if he hadn’t caught that glimpse of what Arretapec’s purpose had been, or if he had not grown to like the rather prim and over-condescending ball of goo so much. But any being with a mind like that who intended doing what it hoped to do had a right to be condescending.
Abruptly the huge head broke surface and the enormous body heaved itself onto the bank. Slowly, ponderously, the hind legs bent double and the long, tapering neck stretched upward. The brontosaurus wanted to play again.
Something caught in Conway’s throat. He looked to where a dozen bundles of succulent greenery lay ready for use, with one already being maneuvered toward him. He waved his arm abruptly and said, “Oh, give it the whole lot, it deserves them. .
….. So that when Arretapec saw the conditions on the patient’s world,” Conway said a little stiffly, “and its precognitive faculty told him what the brontosaur’s most likely future would be, it just had to try to change it.”
Conway was in the Chief Psychologist’s office making a preliminary, verbal report and the intent faces of O’Mara, Hardin, Skempton and the hospital’s Director encircled him. He felt anything but comfortable as, clearing his throat, he went on, “But Arretapec belongs to an old, proud race, and being telepathic added to its sensitivity-telepaths really feel what others think about them. What Arretapec proposed doing was so radical, it would leave itself and its race open to such ridicule if it failed, that it just had to be secretive. Conditions on the brontosaur’s planet indicated that there would be no rise of an intelligent life-form after the great reptiles became extinct, and geologically speaking that extinction would not be long delayed. The patient’s species had been around for a long time-that armored tail and amphibious nature had allowed it to survive more predatory and specialized contemporaries-but climatic changes were imminent and it could not follow the sun toward the equator because the planetary surface was composed of a large number of island continents. A brontosaurus could not cross an ocean. But if these giant reptiles could be made to develop the psi faculty of teleportation, the ocean barrier would disappear and with it the danger from the encroaching cold and shortage of food. It was this which Dr. Arretapec succeeded in doing.”
O’Mara broke in at that point: “If Arretapec gave the brontosaurus the teleportive ability by working directly on its brain, why can’t the same be done for us?”
“Probably because we’ve managed fine without it,” replied Conway. “The patient, on the other hand, was shown and made to understand that this faculty was necessary for its survival. Once this is realized the ability will be used and passed on, because it is latent in nearly all species. Now that Arretapec has proved the idea possible his whole race will want to get in on it. Fostering intelligence on what would otherwise be a dead planet is the sort of big project which appeals to those high-minded types…