The contribution of even a single life's pattern, the great thoughts surged, increases the vital pressure of immortality for all. He felt their sympathy. Believe! Life can be sustained beyond physical death -- for all. The feeling was excitement, hope.
In his physical agony, he knew he should try to reach his hand into his pocket for the bottle of nitros, the trinitroglycerine pills for his heart. It might not be too late to survive a little longer. His thoughts were dimming as he felt their enveloping sympathy. He was not yet alone. Surrounding patterns of his departing Esks still were transmitting the thoughts of those beyond -- to him -- with sympathy. Why else, he realized, would he have been communicated with in this last possible moment as the last expanding mind patterns of the Esks crowded upward from the Great Square in continuous contact across space --
Writhing on its side, his breathless body contracted in a fetal position. He glimpsed the blue sky so beautiful. He laughed like a naked savage with wonder and awe, but soundlessly. He laughed as his heart's terminal fibrillations stagnated the flow of blood to his brain into visual darkness, and he did not take the pill.
Freed from lifelong fear he laughed with amazement at the universe of which he was a part. Marthalik?
His last human thoughts rose above the bodies of the Esks in the Great Square. He imagined a sharply questioning voice in Chinese. Hard hands were attempting to lift his body. But his heart had stopped long ago.
In the dissolution of death, the electrical flowing within his brain was completed. It -- he had risen outside. His upward expanding thoughts laughed with joy at the purpose of the Esks and those beyond.
Hopefully he pondered with wonder at the tiny Earth. Now all we need to know is OUR purpose in life.
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This is an original publication -- not a reprint Cover printed in U.S.A.
Dr. West was puzzled,
frustrated, and mad.
He knew something was wrong up
there in the Boothia Sanctuary,
but what?
Why, really, did the government
want to keep him out?
He didn't for a moment believe
the spurious political excuse
of preserving a
"cultural sanctuary" intact.
What were they hiding?
What could possibly be wrong
with a harmless, lovable
group of Eskimos?
Dr. West could never
leave a puzzle alone.
Besides, if he went up there,
maybe he could get proof.
Of something.
Unfortunately,
even when he did,
no one believed him . . .
AND DON'T MISS!
Sam Moskowitz -- Anne McCaffrey -- Robert Silverberg
Seekers of Tomorrow -- Restoree -- Thorns
The Eskimo Invasion Page 46
