“This is your chance to become respected, Gunnderson.”
“A hero, respected, and for the first time,” he paused, as though not wishing to say what was next, “for the first time — worthy of your world.”
The rasp-rasp-rasp of the silent record filled the stateroom. Gunnderson said nothing. He could hear the phrase whirling, whirling in his head: There’s a war on, There’s a war on. There’s a war on , THERE’S A WAR ON! He stood up and slowly walked to the door.
“Sorry, Mr. Gunnderson,” the mindee said emphatically, “we can’t allow you to leave this room.”
He sat down and lifted the battered mouth organ from where it had fallen. He fingered it for a while, then put it to his lips. He blew, but made no sound.
And he didn’t leave.
They thought he was asleep, The mindee — a cadaverously thin man with hair grayed at the temples and slicked back in strips on top, with a gasping speech and a nervous movement of hand to ear — spoke to the blaster.
“He doesn’t seem to be thinking, John!”
The blaster’s smooth, hard features moved vaguely, in the nearest thing to an expression, and a quirking frown split his ink-line mouth. “Can he do it?”
The mindee rose, ran a hand quickly through the straight, slicked hair.
“Can he do it? No, he shouldn’t be able to do it, but he’s doing it! I can’t figure it out … it’s eerie, uncanny. Either I’ve lost it, or he’s got something new.”
“Trauma barrier?”
“That’s what they told me before I left, that he seemed to be blocked off. But they thought it was only temporary, once he was away from the Bureau buildings he would clear up.
“But he isn’t cleared up.”
The blaster looked concerned. “Maybe it’s you.”
“I didn’t get a master’s rating for nothing, John, and I tell you there isn’t a trauma barrier I can’t at least get something through. If only a snatch of gabble. But there’s nothing … nothing!”
“Maybe it’s you,” the blaster repeated, still concerned.
“Damn it! It’s not me! I can read you, can’t I — your right foot hurts from new boots, you wish you could have the bunk to lie down on, you … oh hell, I can read you — and I can read the captain up front, and I can read the pitmen in the hold, but I can’t read him!
“It’s like hitting a sheet of glass in his head. There should be a reflection or some penetration, but it seems to be opaqued. I didn’t want to say anything when he was awake, of course.”
“Do you think I should twit him a little — wake him up and warn him we’re on to his game?”
The mindee raised a hand to stop the very thought of the blaster. “Great Gods, no!” He gestured wildly, “This Gunnderson’s invaluable. If they found out we’d done anything unauthorized to him, we’d both be tanked.”
Gunnderson lay on his acceleration bunk, feigning sleep, listening to them. It was a new discovery to him, what they were saying. He had always suspected the pyrotic faculty of his mind. It was just too unstable to be a true-bred trait. There had to be side effects, other differences from the norm. He knew he could not read minds; was this now another factor? Impenetrability by mindees? He wondered.
Perhaps the blaster was powerless, too.
It would never clear away his problem — that was something he could do only in his own mind — but it might make his position and final decision safer.
There was only one way to find out. He knew the blaster could not actually harm him severely, by SpaceCom’s orders, but he wouldn’t hesitate blasting off one of the pyrotic’s arms — cauterizing it as it disappeared — to warn him, if the situation seemed desperate enough.
The blaster had seemed to Gunnderson a singularly overzealous man, in any case. It was a terrible risk, but he had to know.
There was only one way to find out, and he took it … finding a startling new vitality in himself … for the first time in over thirty years …
He snapped his legs off the bunk, and lunged across the stateroom, shouldering aside the mindee, and straight-arming the blaster in the mouth. The blaster, surprised by the rapid and completely unexpected movement, had a reflex thought, and one entire bulkhead was washed by bolts of power. They crackled, and the plasteel buckled. His direction had been upset, had been poor, but Gunnderson knew the instant he regained his mental balance, the power would be directed at him.
The bulkhead oxidized, and popped as it was broken, revealing the outer insulating hull of the invership; rivets snapped out of their holes and clattered to the floor.
Gunnderson was at the stateroom door, palming the loktite open — having watched the manner used by the blaster when he had left on several occasions — and putting one foot into the companionway.
Then the blaster struck. His fury rose, and he lost his sense of duty. This man had struck him; he was a psioid … an accepted psioid, not an oddie! His eyes deepened their black immeasurably, and his face strained. His cheekbones rose in a stricture of a grin, and the force materialized.
All around Gunnderson
He could feel the heat.
He could see his clothes sparking and disappearing.
He could feel his hair charring at the tips.
He could feel the strain of psi power in the air.
But there was no effect on him.
He was safe.
Safe from the power of the blasters.
Then he knew he didn’t have to run.
He turned back to the cabin.
The two psioids were staring at him in open terror.
It was always night in inverspace.
The ship constantly ploughed through a swamp of black, with metal inside, and metal outside, and the cold, unchanging devil-dark beyond the metal. Men hated inverspace — they sometimes took the years-long journey through normal space, to avoid the chilling life of inverspace. For one moment the total black would surround the ship, and the next they would be sifting through a field of changing, flickering, crazy-quilt colors. Then ebony again, then light, then dots, then shafts, then the dark once more. It was ever-changing, like a madman’s dream. But not interestingly changing, so one would wish to watch, as one might watch a kaleidoscope. This was strange, and unnatural, something beyond the powers of the mind, or the abilities of the eye to comprehend. Ports were allowed only in the officer’s country, and those had solid lead shields that would slam down and dog close at the slap of a button. Nothing could be done, for men were men, and space was his eternal enemy. But no man willingly stared back at the deep of inverspace.
In the officer’s country, Alf Gunnderson reached with his sight and his mind into the coal soot that now lay beyond the ship. Since he had proved his invulnerability over the blaster, he had been given the run of the ship. Where could he go? Nowhere that he could not be found. Guards watched the egress ports at all times, so he was still, in effect, a prisoner on the invership. He had managed to secure time alone, however, and so with the captain and his officers locked out of the country, he stood alone, watching.
He stared from the giant quartz window, all shields open, all the darkness flowing in. The cabin was dark, but not half so dark as that darkness that was everywhere.
That darkness deeper than the darkness.
What was he? Was he man or was he machine … to be told he must turn a sun nova? What of the people on that sun’s planets? What of the women and the children … alien or not? What of the people who hated war, and the people who served because they had been told to serve, and the people who wanted to be left alone? What of the men who went into the fields, while their fellow troops dutifully sharpened their war knives, and cried? Cried because they were afraid, and they were tired, and they wanted home without death. What of those men?
Was this war one of salvation or liberation or duty as they parroted the phrases of patriotism? Or was this still another of the unending wars for domination, larger holdings, richer worlds? Was this another dupe of the Universe, where men were sent to their deaths so one type of government, no better than another, could rule? He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. He was afraid. He had a power beyond all powers in his hands, and he suddenly found himself not a tramp and a waste, but a man who could demolish a solar system at his own will.