“He doesn’t seem to be thinking, John!”
The Blaster’s smooth, hard features moved vaguely, and a quirking frown split his inkline 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. 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, and that once he was away from the Bureau buildings he’d clear up.
“But he hasn’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 here 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 if not penetration, but he 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 sometimes suspected that the pyrotic faculty of his mind was not the only way he differed from the norm-perhaps there were others. And if it was a side-effect, there ought to be others. He knew he could not read minds; was this impenetrability by Mindees another factor?
Perhaps the Blaster was powerless against him, 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 to blast 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, but Gunnderson knew the instant he regained his mental balance, the power would be directed at him.
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-an accepted psioid, not an oddie! The black of his eyes deepened, and his face strained. His cheekbones rose in the stricture of a grin, and the force materialized.
It was all around Gunnderson.
He could feel the heat...see his clothes sparking and disappearing...feel his hair charring at the tips...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 Blaster.
Then he knew he didn’t have to run, and he turned back to the cabin.
The two psioids were staring at him in open terror.
It was almost always night in inverspace.
The ship ploughed constantly 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 mystery 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 dark 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 unlocked only in the officer’s country, and those had solid lead shields that would slam down and dog closed at the slap of a button. Nothing else could be done: for men were men, and space was their 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 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 vast joke 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 might demolish a solar system at his own will.
Not even sure he could do it, he considered the possibility, and it terrified him, making his legs turn to rubber, his blood to liquid oxygen. He was suddenly quite lost, and immersed in a deeper darkness than he had ever known. With no way out.
He spoke to himself, letting his words sound foolish to himself, but speaking them just the same, knowing he had avoided speaking them for far too long:
“Can I do it?
“Should I? I’ve waited so long, so long, to find a place, and now they tell me I’ve found a place. Is this my final place? Is this what I’ve lived and searched for? I can be a valuable war weapon. I can be the man the others turn to when they want a job done. But what sort of job?
“Can I do it? Is it more important to me to find peace-even a peace such as this-and to destroy, than to go on with the unrest?”