“Amro, the disciple of violence,” Faven said, yawning. “That idea of yours about striking first is dandy. But how? Their espionage is as good or maybe even better than ours. Four fifths of Center agents are constantly assigned to the problem of seeing that they don’t strike first. Do you think their forces are distributed any differently?
“Your reasoning has always been superficial, Amro. In order to strike first, there has to be a concentration of power and a place to strike from. Their surveillance makes that as impossible for us as ours makes it impractical for them. And neither side will move into the open unless they can be sure of complete surprise. Outnumbering is no good when one determined space cruiser left at large can reverse the entire war.”
Massio stood up. He wore a puzzled look. “I wonder—”
“What?” Faven asked.
“Maybe this unheard-of planet could be the base, the place for a concentration of power.”
The three of them were silent. Amro hit his hard thigh with a clenched fist. “It could be exactly that!”
The excitement in them slowly dwindled as the hours went by. They practised the new tongue for a long time and then played a word game. Massio devised in his mind a complicated sentence of ten words and then projected them, one at a time, into Amro’s mind.
To receive each word Amro had to relax his guard at the moment he felt the thrust and then close his mind before Faven could catch the word. Faven could either snatch the word by thrusting at Massio’s mind during the moment of sending or by entering Amro’s mind during the fraction of a second of relaxation.
To Amro’s intense annoyance she made no attempt to wrest the word from Massio. On the third word she slipped by his guard with perfect timing, thrusting so unnecessarily deep that the pain sickened him for a moment. She did the same on the sixth and seventh word and that gave her enough to guess the sense of the sentence. Since she had wrested the words from Amro she took his place for the next round with Massio sending again.
Amro concentrated on Faven, annoyed beyond measure as he counted the transmittal of six words, stopped each time by the rapidity with which she erected a guard against intrusion.
The seventh word slipped by. Amro suddenly jumped up and turned toward the door, his body tense. He anticipated that, for a fraction of a second, Faven would assume receptivity for whoever might be approaching the door.
He thrust back along that channel of receptivity with all his strength, smashing so far back into her mind that he reached the threshold of the instinctive level. He plucked the seven transmitted words out of her fading mind as he turned just in time to see her topple from the couch.
She recovered almost immediately and crouched there, her mouth twisting and working. “You’re vile!” she said.
“It’s a lesson you’ve been needing, Faven. And watch what you say. You won’t have immunity back for several minutes. Do you understand?” He thrust along the same channel again, pushing easily by the slowly accumulating resistance, seeing her eyes lose focus, her lips pale. “I could do you serious damage,” he said gently.
“I hate you,” she gasped.
He grinned, resting easily within her mind, feeling the hate shadows and the pain. The will eluded him, circling like a trapped thing until he clenched it firmly. Still smiling he brought her to her feet and toward him in the jerky uncoordinated walk of the hypnotic resistance level. He forced her to drop to her knees, caress his foot and kiss the bare instep. Then he released her.
To his shocked surprise she did not move but stayed there, looking up at him. He waited for the return whiplash of her mind as her strength returned. Her eyes, however, held no glint of anger. He pushed gently and found her mind completely open and undefended, held open by her will.
He probed until he found the thought, sparklingly clear, “You should have punished me long ago, Amro.”
“Why?”
“No one has ever been able to discipline me before. I’ll do anything you ask of me.”
I’ll at ease, he walked over to the food terminal, said aloud, “Do you have any particular preferences, Faven, Massio? I starve.”
“Order for me,” Faven said.
When he looked around she was seated on the couch, her eyes glowing. Massio acted embarrassed.
They selected the food and they ate.
Chapter II
Doorway
Jerry Raymond, stripped down to swimming trunks, stared at the watercolor block and grunted with disgust. He sat crosslegged on a dune a hundred feet from the water’s edge. He had wanted to get the effect of the afternoon light on that lonesome strip of sand and brush with the deep green water beyond it.
But how was it possible to do anything right when Fran had been gone over three hours with that supposed friend, Quinn French?
He turned and stood up, peeling the spoiled, botched watercolor off the block, staring back up the coastline to where the lighthouse at Port Isabel was a tiny projection against the deepening blue of the late afternoon sky.
His wife, Fran, had claimed that there was shopping to do. Only after Jerry had indicated that he would stay behind had Quinn French remembered that he had some errands of his own. Three hours — more than enough time to drive into Harlingen.
He shook out the brush, picked up the cardboard box of tubes and the plastic pallet and walked slowly back to the house. It had been built long ago by a fisherman. The gray wood had writhed away from the rusted nails. Four rooms and modern inconveniences — but ample for Fran and himself.
When the company doctors had discovered that the infected skin rash had come from the new compound he had been working on, the company had authorized a six months’ leave of absence with pay. It could have been the best time of their lives, he thought dourly. Sun and sand and Fran and moonlight across the quiet Gulf water, protected by the outlying reef.
He had never been completely sure of Fran. She was too lovely and too alive to be sure of. Then Quinn French had shown up. “Surprise!” he had shouted.
Fran seemed glad to see him. And two became three. They could both out-swim him. Quinn French was built with enormous shoulders, honey tan slanting down across broad chest into flat belly and slim hips, then bulging out again into the convexity of thigh muscles and thick calves. His laugh was a deep boom.
Jerry Raymond was forced to admit that when he saw Fran and Quinn walking along the beach they made a spectacular couple. He wondered if Fran felt the same way. And Quinn, of course, would never have to work a day in his life. When they swam out, so far that he could barely see their heads, he knew that they swam too close together. He thought of Quinn touching her and hate made him feel faint.
Ever since the skin rash — and now it was almost gone — Fran had acted a bit odd. He had sensed the restraint in her, as though he had become something distasteful to her.
Fran and Quinn were too much together. And so Jerry had eagerly agreed when Quinn had tentatively suggested asking another guest down, a girl. She would arrive from New York within the week. Jerry had seen the glint of anger in Fran’s eyes when Quinn had suggested the fourth member of the party.
He stood and looked down the road, hoping to see the sun glint on the chrome of Quinn’s convertible. Why were they staying away so long?
Before marriage he had never minded being alone. But now whenever Fran was away from him he felt incomplete. They had said that after a year or so of marriage some of the spice was gone. But here it was, nearly three years. And still the thought of her mouth, sun-sheen on her misty black hair, round length of thigh, insolence of breast, made him feel faint and even ill when he dwelt on them too long. I’ll with the need for her. Ill because somehow she never quite ceased to be a stranger.