Chapter V

It had never occured to Lynne, in her wildest imaginings during the trip out to Callisto, that the little spaceship which had brought them, with its cramped cockpit and utterly inside plumbing, would feel like home. But once she and Rolf were in it together, on their way back to Mars, she curled up beside him in the warmth of the tiny cabin, grateful for the artificial gravity, feeling utterly relaxed, and basked in the warmth of his thoughts toward her.

_Still sore at me_, VINRAL_?_ he telepathed.

_Of course not, you_ FARBISH _idiot_, she replied silently.

He turned her around on the narrow, curving couch, so that she was facing him, in his arms, with her face close to his. She thought, _My husband! Maybe there are more important things than a ceremony._

_You’re so right, my_ VINRAL, came his answering thought. And then, as a flicker of concern crossed his powerful features, _You’re not seriously ill, are you_, VINRAL_?_

MARLET, she reproved him fondly, _I never felt better in my life. Just being alive--and off Callisto!_

_But your face--your arms--they’re all broken out!_

She looked at her arms and it was so. Blisters--ugly, yellowish blisters--seemed to be rising on her skin even as she watched. She felt a thrill of panic that made her shudder. And then, as if waiting for a signal, the itching began. It started on her face, flowed through her arms, through her body, her legs, her feet.

_Goldberg’s poisoning! You poor_ ZWIRCHY VINRAL_!_ His thought was clear and alarmed. Somewhere, somehow, on the frozen satellite, she had picked up the virulent vegetable poison. As she stripped and let Rolf daub her all over with antiseptic that gave only momentary and partial relief, an ancient song kept running through her head, a centuries-old lilt that went, _A fine romance, with no kisses--a fine romance, my dear, this is...._ And then she thought, _Poor Goldberg, poor Suzuki, poor...._

Thereafter, until a day before they landed back at Nampura Depot, Lynne was too sick to remember much of anything. The blisters broke and, with them, the fever that had made her delirious. But when they came away they took patches of skin with them, leaving her too miserable to move. Nor was her misery lessened by recollection that it was she who had spoiled the honeymoon on the outward voyage through injured vanity at her provisional husband’s high-handed behavior. As if, when you loved a man, it made any difference _how_ you got married....

Contact with the infinite, with the immensity of the alien intellect, had considerably widened her vision--even while Goldberg’s poisoning had severely limited her sphere of physical action.

Revere came to visit her in the infirmary, which she shared with a convalescent Rana, and told her, telepathically, _You know, you and Rolf are both up for E.I.A. gonging. Officially, you violated a security regulation, but since you saved what was left of Callisto Mission, they’re going to slip you a citation under the table._

_At the moment, I couldn’t care less_, Lynne replied. _What do you hear from Lei on Earth?_

Revere’s bride, she learned, was doing fabulously well and a successful, uninduced twin birth was prophesied by the doctors. Lynne felt a flash of pride for both of them, as well as a flash of envy. By the time she and Rolf got around to having babies, she surmised, they’d both be candidates for the geriatrics bureau. Discouraging thought. But she kept it from Revere. He was too happy for sadness.

When he had gone, she shared a skinless gasper with the tiny dark-skinned Rana and asked her about the fatal experiment that had put her into coma. After all, the necro-recorder could only take down thoughts over a very limited period of its subject’s mental activity.

Rana told her, talking aloud, since she was still forbidden to overuse her telepathic qualities. She said, “I know now it was wrong, of course, but we were filled with the excitement of discovery. I don’t understand why you and Rolf went to Callisto. We beamed our relay-thinking right here on Mars, somewhere in the Syrtis Major prairie, near Woomera Station. At first it was like being in some incredible temple. It was vast and awe-inspiring and--Lynne, I can’t really describe it.”

“I know,” said Lynne. “What turned it sour?”

“That,” said the dark girl, “is what I don’t understand. We were receiving wonderful stuff--sort of soul-healing. But when Juan flicked on the recorder to take it down it vanished.”

Lynne probed the girl’s thoughts and found she was holding nothing back. She was heartsick at the tragic result, for her companion, of an experiment for which she felt herself responsible. Lynne lay back and did some thinking while the dark girl slept and had reached a number of conclusions by the time Rolf appeared that afternoon.

He, it seemed, had been terribly busy since their return to the Red Planet. All sorts of crises had come or were coming to a head. There had been a localized reappearance of the disembodied aborigines that had for so long threatened all communications on Mars--and a campaign had had to be organized to exterminate them.

There had been a squabble over efficiency credits between the communications crews of New Walla Walla and Cathayville which had had to be settled. Earth Interplanetary Authority was anxious for Rolf and Lynne to visit their Rio de Janeiro Headquarters as soon as possible to discuss the ramifications of the Callisto incident. And the problem of decreasing moisture in the Martian atmosphere table was becoming critical.

_Which is why I have not been able to stay here at your side_, VINRAL, he told Lynne silently. _And now, I must leave you again._

_Oh, Rolf!_ Lynne was desolate. _I have so much to tell you. I think I’m beginning to understand a little about our--entity._

_Hold it_, VINRAL, was the reply. _Right now, I haven’t even the_ FARBISH _time to give it a thought. It will keep till I get back from New Samarkand. I’ve got to address a council meeting there tonight._

And he was gone. Resentfully, Lynne thought she might as well have gotten herself married to the legendary old-fashioned country general practitioner of nineteenth century America. She eyed her messed-up face in a hand mirror and wondered when, if ever, she was going to look like herself again. Goldberg’s poison! Poor Goldberg....

The next day, with Rolf still in New Samarkand, she had the practitioner patch her up and, with the aid of makeup, managed to present a passable front to the world. She had made up her mind to get busy. According to Rana, there might be an entity in the New Woomera district, and New Woomera Station was where Lynne’s one-time cabin-mate, Joanna, had her home. And Joanna had invited Lynne to pay her a visit at the weddings. Lynne managed to get the use of a somewhat battered runabout and took off from the Depot, shortly before noon.

Mars might be considered a small planet, she thought as she sped low over its level plains and prairies, but it was a planet of vast distances. Without oceans, it actually had a far greater land surface than Earth. And its lack of real mountains added to the illusion of vastness. It was, she thought, like flying over an ocean of land. Woomera Station, when she sighted it, looked like a small oblate bit of green and yellow, around a cluster of red-and-white farm structures, stuck like a postage stamp in the middle of an immense envelope.

Yet, as she walked from the landing field, she realized as never before what an imposing plant it was. Here were hundreds of hectares of hydroponic greenhouses, some five square kilometers in all of lush grassland for cattle raising, interspersed with long stretches of barns, barracks and storehouses. Here, wonder of wonders on Mars, was even a small pond where the pigs, long-staple mutton and musk-oxen could drink. Truly a man-made oasis, in the midst of desolation.

The pond was Joanna’s special pride and joy. “We just got our atomic transmuter three months ago,” she said, “and already it is turning the sand into drinking water for the cattle. Maybe someday, we shall all have swimming pools on Mars, quite as wonderful as those in Joberg or Rio on Earth.”

Lynne said, “It’s pretty expensive, isn’t it? And aren’t you afraid that the water may be radioactive and poisonous?”

The girl’s face fell. She said, “I guess it _is_ expensive. But it’s better than draining the atmosphere of moisture. And in time, our scientists will learn to cut the cost drastically.”

Lynne read the sternly suppressed lack of assurance in the girl’s mind. She had pinned her hopes on the transmuter, which was in truth a remarkable invention for turning dry mineral matter into water. But, as an ex-brain team coordinator, Lynne saw clearly that the expense must outstrip any real benefit which might accrue, except in special isolated instances. She kept her conclusion to herself, however, and said, “I’m awfully glad you asked me to visit you, Joanna. I’m tremendously impressed.”

Joanna got a two-place tracto-scooter and took Lynne on a tour of the entire project. She admired the plump hogs and flocks of turkeys, the long-staple sheep and the small, furry musk-oxen, imported to endure the arctic cold of the Martian winters. She admired the artificial drinking pond, where the animals clustered to slake their thirst. Finally she asked, “How do you shield the transmuter?”

Joanna waved toward the northeastern corner of the station. “The transmuter has its own shield on three sides,” she explained. “We keep the open side facing away from the station. There are some odd sort of radioactive deposits out that way but our chief figures a bit more radiation isn’t going to hurt anything. Come on, I’ll show you the out-of-bounds markers. The whole area--about fifty square kilometers--is fenced off. A few years ago, a couple of prospectors went in there to dig. They were never seen again.”

“Let’s go,” said Lynne a trifle grimly. A distant thrumming inside her head grew more intense as they neared the northeast corner of the grazing grounds. She opened her mind a little--and was once more in an unearthly cathedral, full of dread and love and clamor.

“Let’s go back, Joanna,” she said tightly. Her nerves were singing like guitar strings and it seemed impossible the black girl shouldn’t feel it too. But Joanna’s dark face remained amiably impassive. At the Station proper, Lynne said, “I’d like to talk to your chief.”

* * * * *

Ultimately, to get him to turn off the transmuter, Lynne had to communicate with Rolf and New Samarkand, and tell him that she had discovered another deposit of the super-entity on Mars. In the end it was Agriculture Boss Radchev who ordered the disconnection. The worst of it was, she could not explain her reasons to Joanna and the Station chief in terms they were capable of understanding.

All the chief said was, “You know, without the pool, the Station will perish. We are no longer allowed to draw the water we need from the atmosphere.”

“You keep that transmuter on much longer, and the whole Station will be wiped out--just as Callisto Project was wiped out,” Lynne warned. “I’m not trying to wreck you. I’m trying to save your lives.”

“I wish I’d never asked you to come here!” Joanna cried passionately. “Why couldn’t you have left us alone?”

Relations remained strained until Rolf and Radchev, a swarthy giant with an unexpected, and quite startling shock of corn-white hair, arrived on the scene. A gingerly magnetic-tracer investigation was conducted over the suspected area until the eroded entrance of the narrow mine-shaft the prospectors had sunk was located. Then Rolf and a couple of Station hands, leaving all electronic gadgets turned off, approached via tracto-scooter and went down the shaft. When they got back, Rolf nodded.

“It’s sunk a lot deeper under the ground surface here,” he said. “I’m becoming convinced there’s at least one of them on every stable planet and satellite. In some frightening, inexplicable fashion, they’re interrelated--which is why we got sent tracking off to Callisto.”

Radchev said, “You think there’s one on Earth then?”

Rolf nodded. “Probably buried far underground. The more eroded the area, the closer they lie to the surface. On Callisto, the creature was actually exposed. Here, it’s buried just under the subsoil.”

“Then why hasn’t one been found on Luna?” Radchev asked. “I thought Earth’s moon was completely charted for mineral elements.”

Rolf hesitated, but Lynne came up with the answer. “I think it’s because the creature needs the gaseous elements of an atmosphere to survive. The atmosphere is thick on Earth, thin here. On Callisto it lies frozen on the ground. But it’s there. The Moon has none--just as Deimos and Phobos have none. We know it doesn’t exist on them.”

“I think you’re right,” said Rolf, his face grim. “Somehow, this mysterious entity has to breathe. I have a hunch that otherwise it’s nothing more than a sort of super-brain, which has long since surrendered all other physical properties.”

“Then,” said Redchev, puzzled, “why is it we haven’t stumbled across a single one of the creatures. This one must have--”

“It has probably been here forever by our measure of time,” Lynne interrupted eagerly. “Can’t you see, Mr. Radchev, that it hasn’t been discovered sooner because non-telepathic human mental processes were too far below its reception or broadcast level to make contact with it?”

The Agriculture boss shook his massive head. “That won’t do, I’m afraid,” he said. “The coincidence is too steep. Don’t you think it remarkable to put it mildly that, almost to the moment when you discover your new life-form telepathically the non-telepathic E.I.A. should have stumbled into it on Callisto? I tell you--I’m not convinced.”

“But you will be!” Lynne persisted. “We know it can be irritated by human physical and mental contact under some conditions, and that when the irritation is sufficient, it strikes back at its tormentor. Think of the unexplained blasts and disasters that have killed men and destroyed their works all through known history. Isn’t it possible, even probable, that some of those disasters were caused by our new friend under the stimulation of physical irritation?”

Radchev rumbled like an incipient Krakatoa, then subsided to a querulous, “But if this is so, how are we going to combat it?”

And Rolf and Lynne, thinking in concert, spoke in unison, “We aren’t going to try to combat it. We’re going to put it to use.”