Chapter VII

All this Lynne learned in an eyelid’s flicker, while the leader lowered his horns to charge, and the lazy snake of Joanna’s long whip made a black silhouette against the Martian sky. She sensed the revelry and sense of power that came from possession of a strong animal body after uncounted ages of disembodiment. But that feeling of power was accompanied by the unsureness of not knowing exactly the stolen body’s limitations or what animal instincts the possessor might have to control at a moment’s notice. She sensed concern at the defection of some of the herd, evidently against the wishes of their zombie controllers.

Deliberately, Lynne lowered the level of her probe, shutting out the aboriginal brain completely. Somewhere, underneath, lay the stupid, foolish, instinct-ridden cattle brain. Never before had Lynne--or anyone else to her knowledge--sought telepathic contact with an animal mind. Yet alien brains of all levels had been contacted during the long-range experiments at Nampura Depot.

It could be done. It had to be done. She was dealing with the leader. If she could force his bovine body to revolt, to stampede wildly, other bovine bodies would follow--for such unreasoning obedience was deeply instinctive in all cattle.

Suddenly she caught it--faint, inchoate as the mind of the unborn child within her--a fear buried deep beneath the alien mentality. But she caught it, and held it, probing it relentlessly. She felt it catch explosively. She saw the great beast halt and tremble, helpless in the grip of three minds, just as Joanna cracked the whip with aggressive violence.

There was a frantic shaking of a shaggy head, a momentary quivering. Then the leader turned and began to trot in front of his followers--began to trot, to lope, to canter, finally to cut around the body of them at a full, heavy gallop.

There was a confused chorus of other cattle sounds. Then, punctuated by the lashings of the bullwhip, the entire herd was galloping away in helpless stampede toward the distant rim of the ever-widening Patagonia pasturage.

Joanna coiled her whip, and stared after the galloping herd. “Spooky _marlets_,” she muttered. “I hardly cracked the whip at them, and they take off like a bunch of locos.”

Lynne, who was still trembling violently, looked at the girl in amazement. “You don’t sound very happy about they’re not trampling us into the ground,” she said.

“That’s not the point,” Joanna replied. “I just don’t like having them stampede. They’ll run off fifty pounds a head before they’re through. It means fattening them up all over again, and a serious delay in our schedule.”

There, thought Lynne, spoke the dedicated animal husbandry woman. She followed slowly while Joanna walked to the base of a vidar-tower, plucked a communicator from a plastobox, and called Woomera to send out a pickup for them. Both girls waited by the tower, smoking cigarettes, until the low-built airsled arrived.

Less than two hours later, Marstime, Lynne and Joanna were in conference with Martin Juarez and Nicholas Radchev, Planetary Agricultural Director, who had hopped a rocket from New Samarkand to confer on the emergency. A huge, swarthy man with tousled white hair, he shook his head slowly at the conclusion of Lynne’s report.

“An unfortunate mess, Mrs. Marcein,” he said. “What do you suggest we do about it?” He spoke with respect, for he had not forgotten that it was Lynne and her husband who had made Patagonia Station possible through their harnessing of the hitherto deadly and uncontrollable E-power.

“I’d like to know a bit more about it before I suggest anything,” said Lynne quietly.

Joanna said: “I thought that big fellow spooked _ferkab_ easily when I cracked the whip at him. Lynne, why didn’t you _tell_ me you were using TP on him?”

“I didn’t want to bore you with long explanations just then,” said Lynne, her eyes bright with amusement. Then, becoming serious once more, she asked, “Any results on the anion-gun tests?”

Juarez, who had been busying himself with a vidar screen in a corner of his office turned and replied, “The report just came in. The results, I’m sorry to say, are negative. The zombie steer used for the testing is dead.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Radchev, running thick, muscular fingers through his shock of white hair. “The poor beast was well electrocuted. They’re a lot more sensitive than sheep in some ways. They have more delicate nervous systems.”

“What about the zombie?” Lynne asked.

“Burned out, too,” said Juarez. “The _marlet_ couldn’t shake itself out in time and took a full negative charge.”

There was a moment of silence. Lynne didn’t have to probe the other minds in the room to know what they were thinking. Her own mind was following the same channel. If mechanical means--via the anion-guns which had routed the disembodied zombies--failed conspicuously now, the problem remained grave. For uninhibited possession would destroy the all-important Patagonia Station development and, with it, all hope of future beef for Mars. Left in possession the aborigines would run the cattle ragged, foul up the breeding lines, and destroy one another in spurts of sheer malice.

Furthermore, it was conceivable that they might batten on their bovine hosts until they grew sufficiently strong to leave them and assume some form still more dangerous to humanity on Mars.

Director Radchev spoke in his deep rumble of a voice. “You say, Lynne, it’s positive emanations from the E-for-Entity that has made them strong enough to take over the beeves?”

“I’m sure of it,” Lynne told him. “Whenever we irritate E to create a storm, he releases plenty of positive electricity over the entire area--and that’s what the zombies feed on.”

“How long can Woomera and Patagonia endure without rain or snow?” Radchev asked Martin Juarez.

“Not long enough,” said the station boss quickly. “One Marsweek without moisture would dry us up. Two would cripple us.”

The director nodded, his full lips tightly compressed. Then he turned deliberately to Lynne and said, “Any suggestions?”

She returned his level stare while she turned over in her mind the idea that had been burgeoning there. “Just one,” she said. “While I was probing the leader out there I received a number of definite impressions. Most of them were straight zombie--the usual ghastly _swackish_ stuff.”

After a brief, organizational pause, she added, “But there was also an impression of discomfort, almost of fear. The only comparison I can make is to the uneasiness a green rider feels mounted on a new and too-spirited horse. He knows he has control, but he isn’t quite sure what the beast may try on him, and he isn’t quite sure just how he’s going to come down--of his own volition, or his mount’s.”

“Then you think--”

“I think they’re still struggling for control,” Lynne said. “They can’t control the human mind because it’s too tough, too alien, and complex. They failed to take permanent possession even of a wide open TP brain. Now they’ve hit the other extreme--a bovine brain that is beneath their comprehension. They can move in on it, they can blanket it--but they can’t be sure it won’t kick off the covers.

“Not one of those beasts wanted to stampede the way they did. But once I triggered the beast-brain in the leader, and Joanna cracked her whip, he had to obey steer-instinct and flee. And the others had to follow him, zombie control or not.”

“What’s this leading up to?” Radchev asked. He had pulled out a plastopipe, and was packing it with coarse Martian shag. Lynne caught a wry longing for good Earth-tobacco, inhibited by a stern resolve to fulfill his obligations as Agricultural Director of Mars by using only the home-grown product.

She checked her amusement out of courtesy, and said, “There’s another factor that may prove vital--_farbishly_ so. In their disembodied form the zombies went streaking off at the first threat of danger. That’s why we haven’t been able to put them out of business for keeps. But this time, they may be in trouble. I’m not at all sure they can get out of these bovine bodies they’ve taken over.”

“So what do you propose?” Martin Juarez asked.

“We’re going to try to put the zombies to sleep,” said Lynne quietly. “I’ve already sent out a call for help to my TP pals from Nampura Depot. We’re going to set up a TP brain-team on Patagonia Station and use mass-hypnosis on the whole _farbish_ herd.”

“You’re going to hypnotize the zombies?” Joanna was appalled.

Lynne shook her head and smiled. “Hardly!” she said. “We don’t even know that they’ll react to our suggestions. We’re going to give the cattle immunity to possession.”

Radchev and Juarez exchanged glances. Then the director rose and took her small hand in his. “Young lady,” he said, “you seem to have done it again.”

“Better save your congratulations until the job is completed,” she told him. “We may not even get out of the batter’s box.”

Lynne and her colleagues were waiting at the trim Woomera Station landing field when the newcomers’ Nampura Depot runabout landed, and her twin brother and Rana Willis got out. Rana, looking irrepressible as usual, went into a bowlegged stance and said, “Well, pardner, how’s the roundup?”

Lynne sensed that the girl was glad to get briefly away from her first-born Mars-child as she made the introductions. At their conclusion, Revere Fenlay said, “Well, we brought the tri-di projector along.”

“Okay,” said Lynne. “Don’t unpack it yet. We’ve got a bit further to go. Back in with you, _czanworms_.” She waved farewell to the others and climbed into the runabout after them, to make the short hop to Mars’ still small cattle country.

They landed at the far side of Patagonia Station’s fenced-in acres, and Lynne stood by while Revere and Rana unpacked the light but sturdy gear. She had asked for and secured a three-dimensional projector, knowing that the eyes of cattle would not respond to a picture on a flat screen. Her plan was to flash a series of flickering, bright-moving objects before the animals, hoping to attract their attention willy nilly, very much as a toreador’s cape attracts a ring bull. Then, when the cattle were all focused, she planned to use the combined TP power of three minds like a trebly stepped-up battery--to hypnotize the entire herd and build a protective mental wall around each of the stupid steer brains.

If all went well, the zombies would be locked in their new bodies, but would be unable to control them at all.