Rabd had arrived with his posse.
“Three of you move down that way,” the young flefnobe ordered. “I want two each to cover the side streets. Don’t spend too much time searching through the buildings. I’m positive we’ll find this monster skulking somewhere in the dark streets, looking for new victims. Tanj, Zogt and Lewv—come with me. And keep on your tentacle-tips, everybody—this thing is crazy dangerous. But remember, we’ve got to blast it before it starts reproducing. Imagine what this planet would be like with a couple of hundred of these flat-eyed monsters running around!”
Manship let out a long, slow sigh of relief. If they hoped to find him on the streets, he might have a little time.
He let his mind follow that of Rabd. It wasn’t too hard—just a matter of concentration—and you pretty much blocked out the thoughts of the other individuals. Follow Rabd’s mind, Rabd’s thoughts. Now block out most of Rabd’s conscious thoughts. There. The subliminal layer, the memory patterns. No, not the stuff about that female flefnobe last month, all eyes and soft tentacles, dammit!
The memory patterns, the older ones. “When landing on a C-12 type planet…” No, not that one. A little further. There!… “Having fired the forward jet to clear it, gently depress the…”
Manship combed through the operational instructions in Rabd’s mind, pausing every once in a while to clear up a concept peculiar to flefnobe terminology, stopping now and then as a grinning thought about Tekt wandered in and threw everything out of focus.
He noticed that whatever information he absorbed in this fashion, he seemed to absorb permanently; there was no need to go back to previous data. Probably left a permanent print on his mind, he concluded.
He had it all now, at least as much about running the ship as it was possible to understand. In the last few moments, he had been operating the ship—and operating the ship for years and years—at least through Rabd’s memories. For the first time, Manship began to feel a little confident.
But how was he to find the little spaceship in the streets of this utterly strange city? He clasped his hands in perspired bafflement. After all this—
Then he had the answer. He’d get the directions from Rabd’s mind. Of course. Good old encyclopedia Rabd! He’d certainly remember where he parked the vessel.
And he did. With a skill that seemed to have come from ages of practice, Clyde Manship riffled through the flefnobe’s thoughts, discarding this one, absorbing that one—“…the indigo stream for five blocks. Then take the first merging red one and…”—until he had as thorough and as permanent a picture of the route to Rabd’s three-jet runabout as if he’d been studying the subject in graduate school for six months.
Pretty good going for a stodgy young assistant professor of Comparative Literature who up to this night had about as much experience with telepathy as African lion-hunting! But perhaps—perhaps it had been a matter of conscious experience of telepathy; perhaps the human mind was accustomed to a sort of regular, deep-in-the-brain, unconscious telepathy from infancy and being exposed to creatures so easy to receive from as flefnobes had brought the latently exercised powers to the surface.
That would explain the quickly acquired skill that felt so much like the sudden surprising ability to type whole words and sentences after months of practicing nothing but meaningless combinations of letters in certain set alphabetical patterns.
Well, it might be interesting, but that particular speculation was not his field of research and not his problem. Not for tonight, anyway.
Right now, what he had to do was somehow slip out of the building unobserved by the crowd of flefnobe vigilantes outside, and get on his way fast. After all, it might not be long before the militia was called out to deal with something as viciously destructive as himself…
He slipped out of his hiding place and made for the wall. The zigzag doorway opened. He stepped through—and bowled over a tentacled black suitcase who’d apparently been coming in.
The flefnobe recovered fast. He pointed his spiraly weapon at Manship from where he lay and began winding it. Once more, the Earthman went rigid with fright; he’d seen what that thing could do. To be killed now, after all he’d gone through…
And once more, there was a quiver and a mental scream of distress from the flefnobe: “The flat-eyed monster—I’ve found him—his eyes—his eyes. Zogt, Rabd, help! His eyes—”
There was nothing left but a twitching tentacle or two and a puddle of liquid rippling back and forth in a little hollow near the building wall. Without looking back, Manship fled.
A stream of red dots chattered over his shoulder and dissolved a domed roof directly ahead of him. Then he had turned the corner and was picking up speed. From the dwindling telepathic shouts behind him, he deduced with relief that feet moved faster than tentacles.
He found the correct colored streams and began to work his way in the direction of Rabd’s spaceship. Only once or twice did he come across a flefnobe. And none of them seemed to be armed.
At sight of him, these passersby wound their tentacles about their bodies, huddled against the nearest wall, and, after a few dismal mutters to the effect of “Qrm save me, Qrm save me,” seemed to pass out.
He was grateful for the absence of heavy traffic, but wondered why it should be so, especially since he was now moving through the residential quarters of the city according to the mental map he had purloined from Rabd.
Another overpowering roar in his mind gave him the answer.
“This is Pukr, the son of Kimp, returning to you with more news of the flat-eyed monster. First, the Council wishes me to notify all who have not already been informed through their blelg service that a state of martial law has been proclaimed in the city.
“Repeat: a state of martial law has been proclaimed in the city! All citizens are to stay off the streets until further notice. Units of the army and space fleet as well as heavy maizeltoovers are being moved in hurriedly. Don’t get in their way! Stay off the streets!
“The flat-eyed monster has struck again. Just ten short skims ago, it struck down Lewv, the son of Yifg, in a running battle outside the College of Advanced Turkaslerg, almost trampling Rabd, the son of Glomg, who courageously hurled himself in its path in a valiant attempt to delay the monster’s flight. Rabd, however, believes he seriously wounded it with a well-placed bolt from his blaster. The monster’s weapon was the high-frequency beam from its eyes—
“Shortly before this battle, the flat-eyed horror from the outer galactic wastes had evidently wandered into a museum where it completely destroyed a valuable collection of green fermfnaks. They were found in a useless winged condition. Why did it do this? Pure viciousness? Some scientists believe that this act indicates intelligence of a very high order indeed, and that this intelligence, together with the fantastic powers already in evidence, will make the killing of the monster a much more difficult task than the local authorities expect.
“Professor Wuvb is one of these scientists. He feels that only through a correct psycho-sociological evaluation of the monster and an understanding of the peculiar cultural milieu from which it evidently derives will we be able to work out adequate counter-measures and save the planet. Therefore, in the interests of flefnobe survival, we have brought the professor here tonight to give you his views. The next mind you hear will be that of Professor Wuvb.”